Lucien Vale's Arc

Chapter 2 of 4

The crack in the crystal widened while Lucien watched. He had sealed the cottage against the shadows outside. Now one was inside. The dark thing slipped from the stone and poured onto the floor, no bigger than a cat but wrong in every line. It did not cast a shadow. It was one. She backed against the wall. Lucien stepped between her and the thing without thinking. The pale light at the windows still held the hunters out. That same light now trapped this one in with them. "Stay behind me," he said. He did not look away from the floor. The shadow tested the room. It slid along the baseboard, probing for a seam, the way the ones outside had probed the barrier. Lucien knew that pattern. He had studied it for years. The thing was not hunting yet. It was learning the walls. He lifted the relic by its chain. The violet crystal still glowed, but the glow flickered now, weaker where the crack ran through it. This stone had let the shadow in. He wondered if it could call the shadow back. The thing froze when the light touched it. It drew toward the crystal the way iron draws to a magnet. Lucien understood. It wanted to go home. The crystal was where it had come from. He moved slow. He held the relic low, near the floor, and let the glow spill across the boards. The shadow crept after it. One careful pull at a time, he drew the thing across the room, back toward the sealed door and the carved marks that ringed it. "What are you doing?" she whispered. "Sending it back." The shadow reached the keyhole beneath the oldest mark. Lucien knelt and pressed the cracked crystal against the carved stone, the same place he had turned it to seal them in. He did not turn it this time. He held it still and willed the thing to return. The shadow rose. For one moment it stood taller than the dog it had resembled, taller than a man, and reached for her. Lucien drove the crystal hard against the keyhole. Violet light flared along the thorn-shaped frame. The shadow bent, thinned, and drained into the crack like water down a drain. The crystal flashed once and went dim. Silence. The thing was gone. The barrier at the windows still held the hunters out. Lucien sank back on his heels. His hands shook. He turned the relic over. The crack had not closed. It had grown. A second thin line now split the violet beside the first. He had put one shadow back. The stone that held it was failing faster now. She knelt beside him and took his hand. He let her. For the first time he thought the words instead of the name he would not say. The cottage would not keep her safe much longer. He had to learn why the crystal was breaking, and he had to learn it soon.