“As long as you save me from a fall like this, you can fall into me anytime, little one,” Bernard replied, quickly turning in Derek’s arms and kissing him instead.

Derek pulled back so fast that he actually ended up on his backside, wiping his mouth with the back of his arm, which was far worse than the mouth of the one that just touched his lips. Cates began laughing, reaching down to help him back up, stating that young Derek was a lover of women, but that he would take that kiss if it meant his woman could beat the shit out of Bernard this time and not him. Bernard looked back at Tammy who was standing with her arms crossed over her large breasts, right at the time a piece of gore fell from the side of her face, and he jumped. He shook his head holding out one hand and walked over behind Felicia, who grabbed his backside, giggling way too loud.

“I will leave the directions sometime before midnight. If you cannot make it tomorrow night then I will see you the night after. I’m sure your Martin will tell you about the night of the gala. I look forward to seeing you again,” Felicia said, curtseying then turning like royalty and walking away without another word.

We waited until they turned back into the kitchen entrance, then all took off running as if for our lives depended on it through the open yard, right beside the coaches, setting the horses in an uproar and waking every driver that was waiting for their master’s return. We hit the forest line like a small train of fire, dashing in and out around trees, not stopping until we were back at the tunnels.

“Please, don’t tell me we have to go back through there?” Tammy asked, leaning down holding her knees.

“Can’t we take the grounds?” Garvin asked. “I don’t think any being will try to deal with us looking like this and it will be twice as fast.”

“What about the girl?” Sydney asked, turning to look at Derek, who was laying her on the ground.

“She died a few minutes ago,” he replied, moving her hair away from her face. “I just couldn’t leave her in there to go through…”

“Let me take her from here. We can place her in the graveyard behind Martin’s estate,” Jacob walked over to Derek. “We’ll take the grounds. Garvin’s right, it will be faster.”

“Thank you, but I’ll carry her,” Derek replied, picking the girl’s body back up.

“Thank goodness,” Tammy added, letting out a breath. “I sure wasn’t looking forward to getting down in that again.”

“Neither was I,” Cates glared down at her, getting swatted in the stomach.

We moved with speed through the forest’s edge as far as we could. Fala stopped close to halfway there, squatting down. We followed his action, becoming as quite as we could to hear what he was listening to. He held up three fingers, pointing out to the center of the big forest and shook his head slowly, putting his finger to his mouth. Jacob pointed out to the direction to our left and took off. We ended up having to jump a six-foot tall brick fence, landing at the back of the graveyard that Jacob had spoken of, and one that I hadn’t seen when I had gone off walking the night before. Derek lifted the girl’s body up and Cates helped bring her over. Fala cleared the fence then jumped back up looking out into the darkness.

“I think they come,” he whispered.

“Who, Fala?” Jacob asked, pulling himself up on the wall and looking out.

“Night walkers, but not like you and the others. These are shifters like myself— but not.”

“I don’t understand,” Jacob replied dropping back down, with Fala right behind him.

“They are long dead, but can change from one form to the next. My people called them shadow walkers that feed from the souls of others.”

That’s all we needed to hear to keep moving. The graveyard was full of coffin length tombs and headstones that were twice my height. There were elaborate stone shapes of angles the size of Cates, all sitting in strange rows that seemed to be raised up off the earth. The trees were covered in long, draping moss that reached the ground and blew in the wind like tattered shrouds over the headstones. Derek stopped by one of the flat tombs and laid the girl’s body down. It was about that time a low moaning sound started up from the area that we had just moved from. Fala took off running, leaving the rest of us in his wake. I grabbed Derek’s arm just as he was about to reach down and pick the body back up. “We can come back,” I spoke harshly as I pulled on his arm.

“No!” he yelled, pulling away, grabbing her body, and throwing her over his shoulder. ***

Somehow I got lost from the others when Derek moved out into the shadows. I didn’t dare call out, letting those things know where we were, so I kept moving in the direction that I thought everyone else went. The moaning had turned into a deep growl, and then a soft purr. I thought I was going crazy until I looked back around the two-foot thick cross marker and saw one of the things walking at first, but then like liquid, moving in some sort of mist. The long white haired thing turned solid into the shape of a werewolf. Could it be possibly that it knew what Fala was? I thought as I watched it change into a woman with large breasts, but with no face…then it hit me. It was trying to shape into Tammy, and I turned and ran. I jumped over the headstones that I could, and darted around the ones that I couldn’t.

“Jacob, Cates,” I hissed as loud as I dared. “Derek, please?”

I was letting the panic take over and my mind was spinning with thoughts of being left alone and getting attacked by spirits of the damned that would suck out my soul. No one answered me, which made my fear grow higher. I heard rustling in the grass by the south wall that I had worked my way close to, and I dropped down on my stomach. My breathing was so labored that I couldn’t stop taking shaking breaths with small helpless sounds. I took in a deep breath to just hold it and felt a hand grab my ankle. I screamed out turning over kicking with everything I had and took off. I made it to fence and was taken to the ground hard with a hand clasping over my mouth.

“Shhhh,” Jacob mouthed and I began to cry. There were times like this that I wasn’t as brave as they all thought I was. It was easy to admit that the thing that I had just seen scared me worse than anything I had witnessed in the dark world.

He released my mouth and pulled me into a hug, whispering that it was going to be alright. I gripped his shirt tight, burying my face into the side of his neck, until I could control my breathing. He leaned back looking down at me as I nodded once. He rolled off of me, pulling me by the hand to the side of the wall. “Go to the far end then follow it back to the center. Most are waiting outside the main gate. I have to find Derek and Fala,” he whispered, pushing me in the direction he wanted me to go. I began crawling, looking back every so often then coming to a complete stop when I heard Derek scream out. I jumped to my feet and yelled out his name, then took off running back into the center of the graveyard.

I could hear him yelling, and took off towards the sound of his voice. When I came around a huge angel statue I saw him trying to hold on to the girl’s body as a werewolf was doing its best to pull it from his grip. Derek yelled out again. “They can’t have her.” He then pulled so hard that he and the girl’s corpse fell to the ground. The werewolf threw its head back and was about to howl out, when it stopped and spun around snapping its massive jaws. That’s when I knew it was Fala. My whole body jerked when I saw what he was looking at, because it was three figures that looked very much like him, Derek, and Tammy. How they had seen her over the rest of us, I couldn’t say, but they had Fala and Derek’s form down extremely well. It was the faces that were different; the mouths hung wide and the eyes were not even there, just empty socks of blackness with skin that looked slightly transparent. Fala’s look-alike was amazingly accurate compared to the others. The fur looked solid all the way to the snout, but like the other two, the jaw hung wide and it too had no eyes, and all three made horrible sounds as they made their way closer.