“Derek,” I said, jumping over the tomb, landing down beside him. “Just give them the body. She’s dead for goodness sake.”

“They want her soul. Didn’t you hear what Fala’s people called them…soul eaters, Renee, or some shit like that and they can’t have her.”

“God gets the soul, Derek. I’ve known that all my life. Those rules have applied since he created this world, not these things. They can’t have what belongs to the high creator, and you know that as well.” I gripped the front of his shirt.

“Look at us. Don’t you think things went a little wrong somewhere?”

Fala stormed over and yanked the girl out of Derek’s arms, by placing one of his hind feet on his chest. Derek yelled out, but Fala turned his upper body and flung the corpse into the air, it landed well behind the ghost things, and to me that’s what they were, shape shifting or not. They were ghosts that could mimic what they saw with their no eyes, and that was it. Our souls belonged to only one being. Whether or not a person believed it was his choice as to where that soul would end up spending an eternity, and it is written one of two places, not in the belly of one of those things. It took hearing one of my little one's screaming out to break the fear that was causing me to break down and convince me to run back into the graveyard.  Jacob jumped over the same tomb and knocked my courage back down a level and I screamed out.

“Fala, let him go,” he demanded, pushing on his leg.

“I will not,” Fala growled down, pushing in harder on Derek’s chest trying to keep Jacob from pushing his foot off.

“I can’t breathe,” Derek said through clenched teeth. “Stop pushing his leg, or he’s gonna kill me.”

              I yelled up at Fala to look at Derek’s face, which was turning a pale purple. Fala eased up and Derek was out from under him like greased lightning. He pulled his two-foot blade, screamed out in a full run and dove at the three things as they were fixing to lean down over the girl’s crumpled body. “Derek…no!” Fala screamed out in his werewolf voice, and ran out after him, regardless of his own built-in fear.

Derek kicked off one of the square headstones and leaped into the air, spinning around, slicing his blade through the midsection of the fur-covered thing closest to him. His blade passed through as the thing looked down, seeing the tip barely pierced the flesh on its stomach, but no blood spilled as Derek fell to the ground. His blade had gone completely through the ‘ghost’ body and did absolutely nothing. The fur-covered ghost threw back its head and howled out a gruesome sound that mimicked nothing that I had ever heard. As Derek got to his feet, it swung around and hit him so solid across the chest that he flew back into the angel statue, breaking it in half.

‘Maybe they weren’t just ghosts,’ I thought, running to check on Derek, while Jacob ran to help Fala.  Derek was lying on his side with fresh blood all over the side of his face, with the upper half of the statue on his lower body. I threw it off in anger, and prayed that I would find him alive when I rolled him over. His eyes rolled back and the first thing he said was, “That hurt like a son-of-a-bitch.” I smiled, and turned back when I heard one of the werewolves begin to growl.

“Will you be alright here?” I asked, getting to one knee.

              He nodded, closing his eyes. I laid his head back and ran to help the others. I stood up in time to see the werewolf with no eyes rake his claws down the side of Fala’s face. At the same time, Jacob came down on the back of its head with his blade going hilt deep. The same creature whose body was transparent earlier was now solid, and I was more confused now than I was when I first saw the things. It fell to the ground dissolving into a black mush that seeped into the soil, leaving nothing behind except Jacob’s blade. The other two ghost-like creatures turned into their liquid mist selves, with the girl in their arms and disappeared into the earth.

“Would someone please explain how that just happened?” I asked as I stared at the ground where the dead thing had turned to gore and sank in.

“Shadow walkers, they are like nothing, yet like everything,” Fala replied, dropping to one knee as he shifted back into his human form.

Jacob reached down to pick up his blade then slowly stood back up, watching steam rise where the black blood of the creature began to eat the metal. We both looked over at Fala, discovering the entire left side of his face was ripped open with four long indentions.

“It is in my system,” Fala said, then fell forward unconscious.

Jacob told me to go as fast as I could, staying far to the right, then follow the wall to the front and find Cates. Fala would be too much for the small frame of a fifteen year old to carry without problems, and I knew I couldn’t carry Derek, and help with a man the size of Fala. He would have to be bent halfway over at the waist to fit my much shorter height.

I ran over to Derek and told him that I would be right back. He didn’t open his eyes but he nodded a few times. I kissed his forehead and immediately wiped my lips on the inside of my shirt because he smelled like what I know I must have, I just couldn’t smell myself any more.

I did just as Jacob explained. I found Cates, brought him and Tammy back, and we got the hell out of there. Garvin tried the back door to Martin’s house but it was locked, so he leaned back and kicked it in. Sydney helped carry Derek inside, and Cates carried Fala. Tammy took charge, as she always did when wounds were involved, and I let her. She had Tanda cleaning the chips of stone out of Derek’s mangled cheek. Tammy then poured warm water over the side of Fala’s wounded face. “He shouldn’t get this infected so soon. Actually, he shouldn’t get infected at all. I heard weres don’t catch things like normals,” she explained to those of us who were watching, as she dug inside one of the wounds with a clean white strip of cloth.

“See the black, isn’t this what you said the thing turned into after you killed it?” she asked, holding the smeared cloth up to, Jacob.

“That’s it, no doubt,” I replied, first.

“It is,” was all that Jacob said, as he watched her clean out more.

“So, you don’t know anything about these things?” I asked, looking over at him. “None of y’all do?”

“Do you know that when you get nervous your accent from your home becomes worse? And no, I have never in my four hundred years ever encountered what Fala was calling a, shadow walker,” he replied never even glancing my way, because he was intently watching Tammy’s movements.

“I always talk the same.”

“No, you do not. You have learned a great deal from us, and speak much better because of it. But at times, you speak slang words like, ain’t and y’all.”

“Silly, those words ain’t slang, they’re Texan, and that’s where Derek and I come from. So, stick that in your pipe and smoke it.” I explained myself beautifully, I thought.

“I have never smoked a pipe, and what would I be sticking in it? I don’t think I understand any of that statement,” he replied, finally looking at me.

“Never mind. You think Martin will know about those things?” I asked, changing the subject back to where we started.

“He should,” Sydney added, coming over by us. “He lives here and those things are in his backyard.”

“And he’s been coming to London for almost two hundred years,” Garvin said, setting down another pitcher of hot water on the table in front of the couch that Fala was lying on.

“Derek’s ready to be sewn up, Tammy,” Tanda said, rechecking her work.

“Almost through here,” Tammy replied, cleaning out the last of the four wounds.

“It’ll heal. I don’t need to be sewn up,” Derek interjected, holding the cloth to his face that Tanda was using.