Page 31 of Radiant Shadows

But no amount was ever really enough. What I wouldn’t give to find oblivion for even a single hour. Caesar would certainly be out for several.

Now I sat here, in the armchair of his room, with only a meager mellowness in my bones. Not enough to ease the grief warring inside me.

I reached for the half-empty bottle of scotch, then paused. I didn’t want to be in this room alone with my thoughts and Caesar’s raucous snoring. I needed to do something productive, clear my head, at least for a little while.

With a new purpose, I strode out of the room.

I had been sent here to investigate the possibility of gryphons nearby, and I had yet to do so personally. Caesar may have spent some time searching, but he’d only done so by air.

It stood to reason that such shifters were likely living as regular humans in the surrounding dwellings and only taking to the mountains to stretch their wings. And seeing as I had nothing better to do, I intended to scour the entire town for any signs ofthem. If I could accomplish this for my friend, it would ease at least one thing on my guilty conscience.

I stepped out onto the snow-covered ground outside the inn’s main doors, enjoying the crunch of ice as I crossed the clearing toward the shadowy trees that encircled the building. Once there, I harvested the shadows to conceal myself and broke into a vampire’s sprint.

I combed the nearest neighborhood—which was mostly houses spread out over a wide, hilly area. I focused my senses, homing in on every word spoken, every stray scent that might resemble Caesar’s, every flutter of wings in the night sky, as I passed each home.

I cleared the town in a half hour with no luck. But I wasn’t finished yet. I knew from peering out the window of the plane before landing that there were at least a handful of cabins and such scattered through the mountains in more remote locations.

So, I followed the road that led toward Mount Logan and trailed every path that strayed from it, all the while scanning with my eyes, ears, and nose.

With these more isolated residences, I took my time, circling each house, peeking through windows, sniffing doors. One after the other, they proved to be nothing more than the homes of regular humans—though I did find one family of ursas in a lavish cabin at the base of a mountain.

After coming up short so thoroughly, I decided to dash up to Mount Logan and scout the area for myself.

For any other creature—aside from one of the flying shifters—the trek up the steep and seemingly endlessly-climbing mountain would have been perilous, to say the least. Even I stumbled for the briefest second on a broken-off rock, but mysupernatural reflexes and powerful fingers allowed me to claw into the mountain face to catch myself before I’d even begun to call.

I held myself against the frosted rock for a long moment to regain my bearings, staring down at the blanket of white punctuated by dots of trees hundreds of feet below, and I wondered what it would be like to fall from this great height.

A human would die instantly on impact unless they bounced off one of the ridges that jutted out, smashing bones and making their last seconds of life agonizing. But would a vampire die? WouldIdie?

No. Unless I landed in such a way that my spinal cord severed at the base of my neck or some miraculously sharp rock punctured my heart, I would not be so lucky to die. The more likely scenario would be that I shattered every bone in my body and had no choice but to lie there for however long it took my bones to heal themselves.

Living was so much more painful than death.

I continued my climb, thinking back on what Caesar had said about Alice being at peace. He was right. It was beyond selfish of me to rip her out of whatever afterlife she’d found and subject her to the difficulties of life once more. As I was unwilling to ever damn another with immortality, the action would be ultimately moot.

She would age, get sick, experience loss, and one day die again. All only so I could steal a few decades with her. Would she want that? What if I brought her back, and she hated me for it?

Carrying the burden of my emotional discord like a heavy weight, I finally made it to the mountain’s peak and collapsedonto the snow. I stared up at the black sky, dotted with thousands of stars that didn’t seem to give a fuck I was here.

“What am I doing?” I murmured in a broken voice.

The mild winter wind whistled softly in reply, blowing a light dusting of snow over me.

“Alice, what would you have me do?” I asked, willing my desperate prayer to find her in the great beyond. “Am I meant to hold on to your memory? Am I meant to devote my existence to bringing you back, to share the life with me we both deserved?”

Of course, there was no answer. Not even a breeze anymore. I couldn’t even find her voice in my head now, the one I’d always turned to for guidance.

Perhaps that was because I truly didn’t know what her answer would be. My rigid loyalty told me I couldn’t let her go. She’d been the one good thing in my life, and I’d only gotten to call her mine for such a short time. It had been easy to hold on to her ghost when life was bleak, empty, meaningless.

But ever since Shea came into my life, therewasmeaning. Existence no longer felt empty or bleak. And maybe, just maybe, I was tired of being alone with my memories.

“Alice, please,” I whimpered, closing my eyes against the grief-stricken red that began to coat my vision. “Please give me a sign. Tell me what to do. Am I allowed to move on? Am I allowed to let you go?”

The air remained still and listless around me, and unable to hold it back anymore, I succumbed to my sorrow. Heavy, raw sobs fled from my chest, racking my shoulders as blood tears spilled down my cheeks.

I didn’t know how long I lay like that. Eventually, my lamenting croaks subsided, my tear wells ran dry, and I drifted into a nothingness akin to twilight slumber.

My stupor was broken by something small, moist, and oddly warm grazing my cheek. I immediately opened my eyes, my vampiric speed jackknifing me into sitting on instinct to prepare against a possible attack.

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