ShadowLight

By G. C. Colby

Miraculously surviving a freak car accident caused by a demon creature on his seventh birthday, Chance Jordan, now eighteen and secretly a virgin, is the star slugger for the Wellington Preparatory Academy Spartans, the East Coast's most elite coed boarding school.

But his dreams of being selected in Major League Baseball's upcoming draft is jeopardized when he meets Marina Robbins, an eighteen-year-old asylum patient at the eerie Havenhurst Psychiatric Hospital, where the patients undergo dark secret experiments.

She believes him to be her soulmate, the War Bringer, Dayan'el--lead general for the armies of Michael the Archangel in the Great War for the throne of heaven.

But she's crazy, right? And love? Well, he's given up on girls. Relationships with them are like milk. Both seem to come with an expiration and go sour.

Yet he had felt something when she touched him, and she did feel familiar somehow. And deep down inside, he often questioned if there was something more to life than sex, money, fame, and power.

With his life spiraling out of control from peers determined to stop him, use or abuse him for their own desires, and the law for the murder of a fellow student, he must uncover the truth about the insane girl, about himself, and the very real dark forces that will do anything to have him.

If he can't find a way to defeat them and somehow save the strange girl, his doppelganger best friend, and his tormentors, he'll be forever lost in hell, damned for all eternity.

• Language: English
• Publisher: Newman Springs Publishing, Inc.
• Release date: Nov 8, 2023
• ISBN: 9798887638287

Book preview

Table of Contents

Title

Copyright

Prologue

Chapter 1

Chapter 2

Chapter 3

Chapter 4

Chapter 5

Chapter 6

Chapter 7

Chapter 8

Chapter 9

Chapter 10

Chapter 11

Chapter 12

Chapter 13

Chapter 14

Chapter 15

Chapter 16

Chapter 17

Chapter 18

Chapter 19

Chapter 20

Chapter 21

Chapter 22

Chapter 23

Chapter 24

Chapter 25

Chapter 26

Chapter 27

Chapter 28

Chapter 29

Chapter 30

Chapter 31

Chapter 32

Chapter 33

Chapter 34

Chapter 35

Chapter 36

Chapter 37

Chapter 38

Chapter 39

Chapter 40

Chapter 41

Chapter 42

Chapter 43

Chapter 44

Chapter 45

Chapter 46

Chapter 47

Chapter 48

Chapter 49

Chapter 50

Chapter 51

Chapter 52

Chapter 53

Chapter 54

Chapter 55

Chapter 56

Chapter 57

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ShadowLight

G. C. Colby

Copyright © 2023 G. C. Colby

All rights reserved

First Edition

NEWMAN SPRINGS PUBLISHING

320 Broad Street

Red Bank, NJ 07701

First originally published by Newman Springs Publishing 2023

ISBN 979-8-88763-827-0 (Paperback)

ISBN 979-8-88763-828-7 (Digital)

Printed in the United States of America

As above, so below. As within, so without.

—Emerald Tablet, circa 36,000 BC

Prologue

Complete blackness. Empty. Cold. Infinite.

Then a pinprick of light appears, growing larger, brighter. Twinkling with a hypnotic trance to an ethereally vocalization, it mesmerizes with an alluring perfection.

In the Before Time, we were, an almost whispering voice announced. And there was joy.

Instead of being a single star, it is actually an immense cluster of stars, all varied in luminosity of pastels and whites, and the source of the heavenly singing.

Though there was one who secretly desired to rule, the voice continued. And many were seduced to his enticings.

The vocalization changed; no longer the perfection of harmony but growing evermore discordant and threatening. A third of the stars become dark shades of deep crimson, violets, and grays.

Numerous volatile rumblings, mixed with lightning and thunder, grow ever ominous, ever louder.

War.

With a supernova force, the cluster exploded with uncountable fragments ripping across the black expanse. Multiple fragments become planets, suns, moons, and asteroids.

The insurrection isn't over. Only the theater of the war has changed. It now takes place in the realm known as Terra.

Streaking into Earth's atmosphere, a star shot across, lighting up the darkness over the northeastern sky of New England.

Chapter 1

A postcard-perfect winter wonderland with snowflakes sprinkling over the pristine landscape and the river, which happily played with the flakes beside a winding two-lane road, now frosted white.

He was happy, the little boy with short Godiva-chocolate hair, on his seventh birthday. Sitting in the back of his father's new metallic-red Audi 8 sedan with the camel-tan leather, he sipped his favorite Welch's grape juice while the new-car aroma filled his nostrils, and classical music on the radio filled his ears.

Today was a good day.

At the wheel, his father drove. He would have been a spitting image of the model handsome man, at the over-the-hill age of forty-nine, but for his bright sea-green eyes, which he got from his mother seated in front next to him.

They usually argued, almost always about him. But no such instance had occurred today, even when he was not in their presence, such as when he excused himself to go to the bathroom at the New Hampshire ski resort they were returning from. Not that he could ski, mind you, or even enjoyed the theater in Burlington, where they watched his mom's model-turned-actress girlfriend, who was the lead.

He couldn't recall the name of the former long-running Broadway play, but it didn't matter. For him, it wasn't really about what they did but more that they did it together.

He was always timid around his father, who often didn't come home from work until well after his 7:30 p.m. bedtime and was seldom around on the weekends. When he was home, his father didn't do anything with him unless it was to punish him. Anything could upset the self-made multimillionaire and CEO of the Jordan Technology Group. Still, in spite of all of this, he sought his father's approval, hoping to make him proud somehow. Though he had yet to succeed, it only made his determination stronger.

His mother, on the other hand, he adored. She wasn't just his mom. She was his best friend, but not in some sissy way or anything like that. She was just different from all the other moms. When they were entertaining or hobnobbing with Boston's high society at the country club or some other posh locale, she'd choose to be home with him.

They'd go to parks, the zoo, the museums, the beach, or stay home and make cookies, play games, and quietly talk about God and her faith, something forbidden by her husband as only weak-minded people believe in any deity.

Look, Mom! he exclaimed as a shooting star with hues of greens, blues, yellows, and reds streaked above in the night sky.

Make a wish, it's lucky, she replied, enjoying the beauty in the sky.

He did, wishing for a little brother.

New Englanders are mourning the tragic deaths of ten children in what authorities are calling freak accidents, announced the soothing female National Public Radio reporter after the symphony concluded.

Seems your god was once again asleep at the wheel, needled his father.

Please, Nelson. Can we not argue? It's still his birthday, she pleaded with genuine love and desperation.

Don't argue then, he smugly retorted, turning up the volume to taunt her even more.

Each victim was just seven years old, added the reporter. In lighter news, tonight begins the winter solstice with overnight lows of seventeen in Boston.

Nelson turned off the radio before glancing in the rearview mirror to see his kid, who had paused from drinking his juice box and had twisted himself to look out the window up in the sky. He checked his driver's side mirror for what it might be, though he didn't see anything special.

But there was something in the night, in the dark, flying just above and to the side of the luxury sedan.

A creature, car-sized with eyes of blood and wings like a bat's, gargoyle-looking in form, was focused on one thing: the boy.

Chance suddenly convulsed, unnoticed by his parents. It lasted a few seconds before he went limp, staring blankly at the sky.

The creature's wings flapped once as time came to a stop.

*****

On a pebble-covered New England beach, a mid-thirties couple, in their Sunday best clothes from church, strolled arm in arm while their twin seven-year-old daughters, with dark honey-colored hair in ribbons, scampered yards ahead with a doll that looked like them.

Something dark and sinister, hidden in the evergreen thickets and nude deciduous shrubbery, eyed the girls, breathing heavy, waiting.

Closer. Still closer. Now.

The girls screamed. Terror swept over their parents. They raced back toward the safety of their early-twentieth-century two-story colonial-styled home with pitched attic, so close, yet so far away.

The man realized they wouldn't make it. Desperate, he grabbed a piece of driftwood to make a last stand.

One of the twins tripped, crashing to the ground, the doll flying out of her hand. Her mom scooped her into her arms as her sister saved the doll and continued for the house, too terrified to look back.

The screams from her parents and sister by rabid gnashing was too much for the girl with the doll as she tried to cover her ears as she ran.

Her trembling fingers fumbled with the doorknob but finally managed to open the French door. Just as she crossed the doorway threshold, her pursuer snagged a lock of her hair, ripping it out of the scalp.

Screaming, she broke free, just as a yelping shriek pierced the air as her pursuer suddenly smacked against an unseen force field around the house, searing its face.

Inside, she curled up and cried on the hardwood floor of the main room, its windows looking over the beach and ocean. The reflection on the glass panes showed a hellhound, the size of a bear, raging with guttural hate, gnashing in vain inches outside the window. Behind it, the pack ravaged the bodies of her family.

*****

The creature's wings flapped again slowly before time returned. It soared ahead, disappearing into the night.

Nelson glanced back at his kid, who he knew was pretending to be asleep, leaving his juice dripping out onto the seat.

Damn it, Chance. Enough, he snapped, upset. Stop messing around. You know how much this car cost?

But his boy didn't respond, which further angered him. Unbuckling his seat belt, he reached back for the juice box while his wife did nothing to support him.

He's asleep, honey. This is why you got the leather seats, remember? she patronizingly asked.

That wasn't the real reason, but it was the one he had given.

There she was, defending him. She always defended their boy, even when, like now, he was clearly misbehaving. He glared at her as he hit the button to roll his window down in preparation to toss out the offending box.

He's a child, doing what children do.

Which was why I wanted the abortion, he snapped before softening his tone when tears swelled in her eyes. I still would have married you, though. You know that, right?

Lie. He was so good at lying. He never wanted marriage, let alone to have a child. He did everything to coerce her to have an abortion. Nothing worked. Damn her religious tenants.

The tarnish to his public image and his engineering company with a sensitive negotiation of a multibillion-dollar deal forced him to marry her. It helped that, in addition to her stunning beauty, she was fantastic in bed, and he knew that she really loved him. He'd never have to worry about her cheating, though he, himself, had multiple dalliances since their wedding. Truth be told, he could never reciprocate the measure of love that she had for him. He just didn't have it in him.

Nelson! she screamed, her voice filled with terror.

He turned his head back to discover the danger in the middle of the road: a magnificent stag of enormous girth. Instinctively, he swerved, hitting a patch of black ice.

The car careened violently off the road, flipping over multiple times as it crashed down a steep embankment, tossing him out of the car like a toy action figure.

At the top beside the embankment, the stag watched as the car plunged into the river's fast current, submerging completely into its watery dark grave. No movement equaled no survivors. Content with the scene, it transformed back into its gargoyle form and shot up into the dark of night.

A gust of wind heavy with snowflakes swirled, hazing in a tight circular motion on the steep embankment. A sudden flash of light, all but obscured by the trunk of a massive old tree, followed almost instantly after it.

A figure—slight in stature, wearing torn blue jeans, worn sneakers, and an oversized gray hoodie that hid the face—emerged from behind the old tree ladened with heavy snow. Casually making its way down the rugged terrain, the figure glanced at the bloodied semiconscious man, who lay awkwardly on the frozen terrain, before bounding down to the bank of the river.

Unfazed by the icy water, the figure swam upstream against the current as the juice box bobbed by. Finding the lifeless boy floating facedown in the river, it caught the child and brought him onto the snowpacked riverbank.

Water trickled down from the hoodie-shrouded head as the figure checked the body. But instead of starting CPR, the figure calmly placed each palm just above the boy's chest, where a bluish-white light began emanating from them.

At first, nothing happened, then life returned to the boy, who coughed up water before taking in life giving air. With blurry vision, he saw the glowing blue irises looking down on him.

"Ae'ish, Ae'ishna, Dayan'el," a soothing voice from the figure spoke in a strange language and cradled him in its lap.

They stayed that way, huddled together without any further exchange of words; the boy warm, safe, and now slumbering.

The first rays of dawn saw the arrival of rescue personnel finding the young child, miraculously dry and curled up alone.

How he got there without a single footprint around in the snow was a mystery that was never really solved. It was eventually dismissed as the result of the wind.

Chapter 2

Chance sat stoically between his maternal grandparents from Montana, dressed in a black suit and clasping his mother's shofar pendant in his hand. His emotions were iced like the ground around her casket, as the elderly preacher whom his grandparents contacted gave a heartfelt eulogy.

Though his father was still in the hospital recovering from multiple broken bones and organ damage, he had managed to tell the investigators how the accident occurred. The takeaway was the culpability for the crash and his wife's death laid with his son.

Sitting ladened with heavy guilt and an unimaginable pain of loss, his thoughts returned to the summers he spent with his mom and grandparents on their ranch outside of Helena, Montana.

Grandpa Joe, a no-nonsense real-life cowboy with watery blue eyes and leathered hands, had mentored him, taught him the measures of an honest man and honest work. He helped with the castrating, the branding, the feeding, and the guarding of the cattle along with the hired help.

Originally, the homestead consisted of just over 10,000 acres when his grandfather's great-grandfather first settled there in 1852. Now it was 5,500 acres running a thousand heads of cattle, with a half a dozen ranch hands.

He wished he could return to the ranch, when he was treated as an equal on the three-week cattle drives. Life was happy and fun then.

The service ended, and the small gathering of mourners returned to their cars in silence. He was the only one who looked back at his mom's casket, now abandoned to the snowflakes which dusted the crimson roses on it.

Seven blurry filled days later, his father was released from the hospital to finish recovering at home. Marguerite, their forty-year-old French maid for the last six years, now also cooked and looked after him, while his grandparents, staying at the Marriott, came over daily to be with him.

He couldn't sleep that first night with his father home, even though Marguerite had read him Peter Pan, just as his mother always did when he was sick or feeling down. It was his favorite, but she couldn't tell it the way his mom did, though he didn't say that to her and gave a small smile of appreciation. But something in the house was off and it felt bad.

His senses confirmed it when she hugged and kissed him good night, tucking him into bed after he had said his nightly prayers. He was skilled in walking on eggshells, and though no one verbally told him, he was sure that something was happening.

Even his grandparents hadn't left after their outing with him to the play of Charles Dickens' A Christmas Carol.

Tiptoeing out of his bedroom, ever diligent to be silent, he slipped through the hall and down the stairs. He snuck his way across the shiny marble-tiled floor and quietly lay down on the cool floor next to the closed double doors of the library.

Ardent voices escaped through the small crack between the bottom of the doors and the tiles, but he didn't really understand what was being said by the voices, which he didn't recognize from two men and one woman.

If you refuse my request, I'll tie you up in litigation until I have no more breath in me, his grandfather gritted vehemently. His voice was genuinely pained. We'll petition for full custody as well.

He didn't have any idea what that meant, though he certainly understood the tone of his grandpa's voice.

Don't threaten me. I'll make your life a living hell, his father spat back angrily. And he would too.

You've already done that when you murdered his daughter, a man replied.

The alpha men were in a heated deadlock, like bull elk battling for a herd of females. A long pause ensued.

Half, a female's voice offered, breaking the thick tension filling the room. "Two and a half million in a trust fund for your grandson, to be administered by his father. Then upon age twenty-one, turned over to him.

Joseph Steven Ryan had played many games of poker in his life, often bluffing his way into winning the prized pot. This time, though, he wasn't bluffing, and the stakes had never been higher nor more personal to him.

He was convinced that Nelson had intended his daughter's death. At the very least, he was responsible for it. So there was no way in hell that he was going to allow his son-in-law to profit a single penny from her death. The SOB didn't even pony up for a decent burial. Only a cremation would he cough up any money for.

Joe, please. She's gone, his grandmother's voice stated, breaking the silence. Take the offer.

He killed her! Our only child. What does he need five million dollars in life insurance for?

He paid the premiums, Mr. Ryan, another man's voice replied with a condescending tone, like that of a parent to a not-so-smart child.

Her life wasn't a part of his investment portfolio. By the time I'm finished crucifying him in the press, he will have lost much, much more. That, I swear to you, his grandfather retorted.

Chance had never heard a harsh word from him before, not even the time when he didn't completely close the pasture gate, and they had to spend the night in the rain to round up the stray cattle.

Nelson flinched inside. Image was everything to him, and he knew a lengthy court battle, likely lasting years, was something he could ill afford. Not when he had the sympathy of the media and the social elite of not only New Englanders but of Washington, DC, as well.

Five million, no later than his twenty-first birthday, annual audits from a reputable CPA, and adherence to the terms of the trust, or I file a wrongful death lawsuit in federal court and hit the news circuit, the first unknown man proffered. Take it or leave it.

Everyone knew it was nonnegotiable.

Set up the trust, his father replied in a growling tone.

In retaliation, he vowed that his in-laws would never see their grandson.

Honey, whispered Marguerite as she came up from behind, picking him up and lovingly embracing him. You know your father will give it to you bad if he finds you out of bed. Come on. She carried him up to his room and, tucking him back in bed, kissed him good night again.

Closing the door behind her, he turned to the picture of his mom on his bedside table and cried, like every night since her passing, and hoped that tonight would be the night that Peter Pan would come and take him to Neverland.

Chapter 3

Strike 3, the rugged umpire roared. You're out!

The capacity-filled ballpark was chaos with a mixture of cheers and boos. The dashing batter, Eric Easton, glared at Bobby Redinger, filling the role of umpire and whose day job was that of a sheriff's deputy at the local substation of the county.

Easton shot daggers at him as he stormed back to the dugout and, breaking the Louisville Slugger bat in two with his knee, tossed its remains and his batting helmet aside, his wavy locks of gold falling free.

Two outs, bottom of the ninth with one on at second base and the score knotted at three. The game between the home team, the Wellington Preparatory Academy Spartans, and their rivals, the Saint Mark's Bulldogs—winner of their last six matchups—came down to the next batter: shortstop Chance Jordan.

Stepping up to the plate, Chance firmed his grip on the bat and got into his batting stance. All the commotion from the fans, the cheers from his teammates, and the jeering taunts from the opposing team in their dugout faded as he focused on the pitcher. His piercing gaze zoomed in on the 6'6" closer, whose ERA over the twenty-four-game season was an astounding 0.96. He gave up less than one run per nine innings pitched.

A fastball whizzed by, clocked at ninety-two miles per hour (mph), just getting the outside corner for strike 1. Chance could only manage to foul off the next two pitches: curveballs at an impressive eighty-five and eighty-seven miles per hour, respectively.

Working the ball in his grip, the Bulldogs' pitcher shook his head slightly at the signals his catcher gave him before finally nodding. He paused, staring down the Spartan's star slugger who, like himself, had already made the state's All First Team by the Boston Globe.

Chance called for a time-out. Stepping out of the batter's box, he figuratively girded up his loins. He glanced back to his teammates and coach, then found his girlfriend, Krissy, the beautiful flaxen-haired cheerleader, three rows up in the bleachers above the dugout, rooting her heart out for him. She was so intoxicatingly beautiful.

Time was up. Tapping his bat against his cleated right foot, he stepped back in the left batter's box and took his stance while offering a silent prayer. If they lost, it wouldn't be the end of the world. There would be far greater tragedies somewhere that night. But this was important to him—a tribute to his mother's memory.

A two-seam fastball rocketed down and away but sure to be within the strike zone. He swung.

Crack!

The ball soared up and away, easily sailing over the left-field fence to the despair of the outfielder, helpless to catch it.

He offered a prayer of thanks as he trotted past the first and second bases, then tipped his batting helmet to his coach, Randall McCune, a former MLB All-Star player, as he rounded third base.

The crowd roared with jubilation. Goliath had fallen. Euphoria ensued from his dugout, his teammates swarming him, along with the guys on the field.

But somewhere in the throng, as Easton lifted him up, carrying him in a bear hug, someone copped a generous feel of his buttock, squeezing it firmly.

Was it intentional?

He quickly dismissed it to the excitement of the guys.

Half an hour later, he appeared from the locker room, showered and wearing his designer duds which a student of Wellington Preparatory Academy must have to avoid social suicide.

Fresh from multiple short interviews with media, college, and pro scouts, he found his girlfriend patiently waiting for him in the now-very-thinned-out fan pool.

Mr. Jordan, a