Free The Conclave of Shadow by Alyc Helms Page B

screen-out to the room.
    Dark shapes with thick, smooth wings like manta rays cringed in every corner of the ceiling. There were so many that the black edges of their wings overlapped, creating that silken whisper as they shuffled over one another to escape the light of my laptop. It looked like something had hatched and was spreading out from the dark alcove near the front door.
    â€œFuck.”
    Something crinkled under my hip. I flailed at it to cast it away, but it was only paper, not shadow. Paper with a clear photo print of one of the sets of sigils from the Academy.
    â€œFuck!” Several other sheets scattered across the floor where the printer had spit them out. I was a goddamned idiot. And now I had to get rid of the portals I’d accidentally created before something worse than creepy, cringing manta rays blundered through. But first I had to flush my flock of shadow mantas before they stopped cringing from my meager light and decided to attack. I rose to one knee, still wielding my laptop like a shield, and sidestepped to the kitchenette. The mantas shifted with my movement, shuffling across the ceiling to stay as far from my light as their overlapping mass would allow. Good. I opened the fridge door, inciting a wave of flapping and hissing. The mantas clustered in the entry alcove fled to the corner above the TV.
    Even better. I darted to the entry and flipped on the main switch, illuminating the room with lamps and Christmas lights. The new illumination sparked a mad, flappy exodus into the dark hallway and through my open bedroom door.
    I was never going to be able to sleep in my bedroom again. I set aside my laptop and gathered up the fallen printouts, tearing them into quarters, eighths. I put the pieces next to the laptop for burning later.
    The shadow mantas didn’t like the light, but it didn’t seem to hurt them the way it did some of the weaker Shadow Realms denizens. That meant I couldn’t just turn on every light in the apartment and wait for them to sizzle out of existence. I’d have to open a portal back to the Shadow Realms and herd them through it.
    Right. I grabbed a flashlight from the utility drawer. Bypassing my room, I turned on the bathroom light to make sure that room was clean and then closed the door. The door to Shimizu’s room was already closed, but I reached in, flicked on the light, and closed the door again, just in case.
    With the rest of the apartment as brightly lit as it had ever been, I set the Maglite on the floor in the hallway and ventured down the beam into my room.
    My walls and ceiling seemed to be made of shifting sheets, and the rustling sounded loud as trees in a windstorm. But close. Close enough to stir the hair on my arms. Something brushed past the top of my head. I grabbed it, twisting it like taffy, and swung it down to one side of my beam of light. Instead of hitting ground, it hit the space I’d created between darkness and light, hurtling back into its proper realm with the force of my throw.
    After that first brush, every shadow in the room descended on me. Only my Maglite beam kept me from being overwhelmed. I couldn’t keep my portals open long for fear that the mantas would fly right back through them – or that something worse would follow. In my experience, most of the denizens of the Shadow Realms make up in mindless hunger what they lack in basic sense.
    Each manta I slammed into floor, wall, and bed was another portal opened and closed. I was flagging, fingers slipping, grip slackening, as the effort sapped my energy. I felt a little of myself bleed away each time I connected to the Shadow Realms.
    I thought maybe the crowd was thinning when three of the mantas attacked at once. I stumbled back from their combined force, my heel hitting the Maglite. It spun crazily, beam shining back down the hallway and casting my room into gloom once more.
    The three on me became legion, all flapping and hissing and bearing me