The Book of Broken Creatures: (A Broken Creatures Novel, Book 1)

by A L Hart

  “That’s because you’re naive, Peter. Those who aren’t your friends are your enemies. Friends are useful. Enemies are nuisances. Elise and Vincent are doing nothing more than digging you into debt for their own future gain.”

  As a businessman, I understood how her words could easily hold truth. As a man who’d been face to face with the lovestruck couple, however, I had a hard time believing they were entrepreneurs disguising themselves with bleeding hearts. Maybe that was where my naivety kicked in.

  “Do you think it’s too early to call?” I wondered. I wasn’t sure what schedule vampires kept or if they even bothered with such a miniscule thing as sleep. After all, apparently I could go days without it.

  Jera only shook her head before pushing herself to her feet. “I’ll go check on the boy’s state.”

  “Wait—”

  She glanced down at me.

  My nerve went out the window. I wanted to ask what we would do about Danny and Ethan when this was done. Where would they go? Did they have relatives that could take them? Or would they be forced into the foster care system? If the latter, would they be separated? As much as it irked me to consider that option, what bothered me more was—surprisingly—the thought of losing the golden-eyed, too-smart-for-his-own-good kid zipping around the shop like the Tasmanian Devil, his high spirits mixing with Ophelia’s intoxicating warmth, creating something of a perfect storm on clockwork.

  But what would Jera care where either boy went? She considered Danny a pest and it wasn’t like I could keep Danny without Ethan. It wasn’t like I had a say in either matter.

  I would have to turn them over to the policemen when this was over, ensuring neither boy had traces of dark energy inside of them in the event HB did a sweep of their location. It was my problem. Mine alone.

  “Nevermind,” I muttered, pushing to my feet. The lethargy was still there, swooning me, but not as prominent as before.

  Jera looked me over and decided to let the matter drop, disappearing into the office while I took out my cell phone to dial up Vincent.

  Elise answered instead, telling me Vincent was asleep—noted, vampires sleep—but she would be happy to leave a message. Or, better yet, how about they join us this evening at sunset to discuss whatever the matter was?

  “Uh, sure. Though it’s not necessary.”

  She insisted, which made me revisit Jera’s earlier claim, that the sweet voice on the other end was just out to swindle me into a friendship to later utilize me for her own gain. Though, to me, it seemed more like a couple who simply enjoyed spending time with new friends. Or anyone, really. They were both amicable.

  We scheduled for seven.

  No sooner than I pressed ‘end’ did my day take a drastic turn.

  For the worse.

  *****

  “Peter!”

  One moment I was standing outside the office and the next I was behind my office desk, standing right beside Jera’s panicked form. It was the fastest I’d ever moved, my body humming, electrified. The unearthly dexterity left a disorienting fog over me, my focus drifting in and out until Jera’s hand clamped onto my arm.

  “You have to stop the passage.”

  “Passage . . ?” My voice trailed, my eyes falling to Danny clutching his dog and standing back with wide-eyed shock, then Ethan—whose breaths had once more become erratic.

  “The dark energy,” Jera said, confusion contorting her visage. “It’s . . . bypassing the light energy and going straight for his brain. You have to remove all the dark energy.”

  I looked at her. Removing it all would take days. But if this was a time sensitive emergency, I would have to proceed with more than one vine, trusting my own dark energy to behave as it did last time, not to mention it required a steadfast bout of multitasking concentration to control all of those vines at once.

  And she’d said he was too young and frail to withstand the stress of untangling all of the dark and light energy rapidly without giving his body a chance to stabilize in between disconnects.

  Her face said it all.

  Something terrible was happening in his mind and it was now or never.

  I nodded.

  She stepped from behind the desk, shuffling Danny back to give me a wide berth.

  No hesitation, I slipped my eyes closed, emptied my mind, and instantly projected awareness into Ethan’s body, where I located the fuchsia ribbons instantly. This time, without thinking about it, I urged a multitude of black vines into him, leading them towards the boy’s brain.

  Physically, my hands absentmindedly traveled up the boy’s arms, his neck, syncing to the path my mind traveled until both were at the boy’s head.

  I saw the problem.

  Before, the fuchsia strands had been a cluster surrounding the diseased black pearl at the center of his brain. Now that black pearl surrounded the purple ribbons of dark energy, eating it away and taking over the light energy. Plaguing the entire network of Ethan’s mind.

  I understood something then.

  Something that should have made sense from the very beginning.

  “Jera,” I whispered, feeling myself start to shake. “This . . .”

  Before, the dark energy had clustered around the black pearl of energy, connecting with the iridescent strands of light energy. It’d looked as though that black pearl was encouraging the dark energy to feed on the light energy.

  That wasn’t the case at all.

  The dark energy had been helping the light energy.

  Attempting to contain the black pearl which I now realized wasn’t a marble of dark energy. It was something else. Something wholly within the realm of human afflictions and had nothing to do with the otherworldly substance.

  “You said I can’t alter light energy or human illness, right?” I whispered now.

  “Yes,” Jera confirmed.

  “But can I identify it?”

  “Yes.”

  I swallowed. “Is it possible for dark energy to combat human illnesses?”

  “Yes.”

  I nodded, something in my chest caving. “I see.”

  Tentatively, I searched the black pearl for signs of the dark energy’s fuchsia ribbons, but there was nothing but the unwholly mass nestled at the center of the boy’s brain.

  A mass that could be none other than a tumor.

  One the dark energy had attempted to contain with the aid of light energy. Did I . . .?

  When untangling the dark energy from the light energy, had I given that black pearl an opportunity to grow into this?

  “Talk to me, Peter,” Jera said gently.

  “Before, I untangled the dark energy from the light energy, just like you said. But . . . I don’t think that’s what was killing him. He has a tumor. In the middle of it. And now it’s outgrown the cluster of dark energy. Jera, tell me I didn’t—”

  “You didn’t,” she fired back.

  “I can’t see any of the ribbons.”

  “Ribbons?”

  “Of dark energy.”

  I didn’t like the silence that ensued next. The way the atmosphere seemed to hold its breath in anticipation for something.

  “Tell me I didn’t do this.”

  “Peter, that thing has been growing for a long time now.”

  I should have taken him to the hospital.

  “Had you taken him to that human medical center, one of HB’s agents would have detected him and would not have hesitated to put him down. I’ve seen them do it to countless others.”

  “Not Kyda.”

  “No, they merely paid her house a visit in search of her and likely captured, tortured and killed anyone who expressed a relationship with Anisah. Calm down and use your brain, Peter. This boy is infected with dark energy. You’re the only one capable of handling this dark energy.”

  “But it isn’t the dark energy that’s killing him. It’s the tumor. The dark energy was trying to suppress it.”

  “You said so yourself, the tumor outgrew the dark energy.”<
br />
  “Because I separated it from the light energy!”

  “Are you looking for reasons to blame yourself? The boy was on death’s door when we found him. Whatever his dark and light energy were doing clearly wasn’t enough. Not to mention, your human anesthesia causes a lethal reaction with dark energy, so the mass was inoperable either way.”

  If that was true, then there really was no hope for him.

  Danny must have been following the back and forth acutely. “You can’t help him?!”

  Jera shushed him and he fell silently immediately, likely aware she was not above locking him out again.

  I didn’t answer. Partly because I wasn’t sure anymore and partly because an idea was forming.

  Ethan’s dark energy had been suppressing the tumor, but as it went, you were only as strong as your weakest link. I didn’t know how long he’d been sick, but I knew his life was fading, his pulse weak, his breaths shallow and fast. That dark energy couldn’t have been any more powerful than his immune system.

  But what about mine?

  The dark energy within me felt like a depthless abyss. Ever since I’d been burdened with the substance, any injury I sustained was immediately repelled by the dark energy. It’d healed me without a second thought.

  Which meant, if it were truly behaving simply to have another taste of the fiery dark energy Jera had fed it, then it would do everything within its power to save Ethan. Those had been Jera’s terms, right?

  I didn’t question it further.

  I sent a legion of the dark vines towards the cancerous mass in the boy’s head and watched as the vines coiled around it gently, a rubber band ball. I felt the moment it began to wear it down, eating away the diabolical tumor gradually.

  At the same time, I felt the disease travel through my vines. Into me. I didn’t stop, didn’t think about it as I felt a deep nausea come over me.

  Ethan’s tumor grew smaller.

  And smaller.

  Until I could see the fuchsia ribbons again, feel the boy’s joyous life energy beating around him happily.

  Slowly, I began to retract the vines, all but one. With that one, I tied the dark energy ribbons back onto the light energy strands.

  I could feel the sickness at the pit of me, the cancerous cells spiraling around, but the dark mass at my core was more vicious. Simply opened its formless mouth, and when it closed, the sickness in me vanished.

  The nausea cleared.

  I opened my eyes.

  And found a violet pair staring back at me.

  Were I not so drained, barely standing, barely comprehending, I may have jumped, may have questioned. But instead, I looked into Ethan’s gaze and acknowledged. There was no whites around his eyes. Only an unnatural glassy violet, and inside of them was a cluster of starlight. A glade of eternity.

  He was awake.

  “Tathri . . .” the boy wheezed on a raw throat.

  Danny was beside him instantly, holding the dog out to him. “Ethan!”

  “Tathri,” the boy said again, those eyes of cosmos overlooking us all. Faintly, he reached for the dog, but his limbs fell weakly back to the table.

  “He’s here,” Danny said, grinning ear to ear. He placed the dread-locked dog by the boy’s chest and the thing licked his cheek, tail wagging. The smell of wet dog was suddenly overbearing.

  “Are you okay?” Danny asked then, his hand snaring his little brothers with no intention of ever letting go.

  “Danny . . . thank you,” Ethan rasped.

  Brown curls whipped as he shook his head hard. “You’re my brother. I told Mom and Dad I’d take care of you.”

  An unsettling shadow swept past those glassy-violets and I had to wonder if I imagined the next words. “Let no god disarm you, brother. Let no death hinder you.”

  My eyes rose to Jera who looked equally confounded by the eerie words.

  When I turned back to the boy, I asked hesitantly, “Ethan, how are you feeling?”

  The boy looked at me. The blue gash of his mouth curved upwards, a fleck of sadness beaming from those stars. “When the time comes . . . let them die. Let them fall—and the pain . . . you do not have to bear it alone.”

  My brows creased. This boy couldn’t possibly know about my family. “Ethan, do you know me?”

  “I know many.”

  “Do you remember who your parents are?”

  “Gone.” Hollow, inflectionless, acceptance.

  “Do you remember how old you are?”

  “One hundred and seven years,” he answered.

  “Ethan, you’re seven,” Danny insisted, worry claiming his face. “Boss, he’s seven.”

  Had I done something to his brain? I’d only heard of it through medical shows, surgeons accidentally damaging the part of the brain responsible for memory. Would Ethan’s return or had I damaged him permanently? He had no problem with speech. If anything, there was an eloquent, admittedly eerie way about the way in which the boy spoke. As though he actually was 107 years old.

  He looked back to the dog who now sat staring at him with those mismatched eyes. They watched each other for a long moment, until finally the boy whispered, “Thank you, Tathri. Thank you for all of the years.” Then he said words that I didn’t think would ever leave me, they were so richly spoken, too puerile and gleeful for this world. “I can’t wait . . . to meet you again.”

  That was when the boy began to seize.

  Ch. 28

  He died before either of us got the chance to react. Before Danny finished screaming the boy’s name one last time and before I could reach into the boy’s mind again, find the source and extract it.

  One moment he was convulsing upon the desk, and the next he was as still as a corpse. He was a corpse. A foamy white discharge spilling over the side of his mouth, his eyes open wide as he stared sightlessly to the ceiling.

  It happened so suddenly, Danny and I both simply stared at Ethan’s motionless body for what seemed like forever. Neither of us comprehending. Neither of us accepting the boy was without pulse, without life. Stuck in between denial and shock.

  I may have stood there forever, set up camp and lived out the rest of my days in that ignorance, had Danny not tumbled back, collapsed to his knees and let out the most horrendous, anguished cry I ever heard.

  It shook me from my trance. Dropped me into the freezing cold waters of reality.

  Ethan was dead.

  I hadn’t saved him. I hadn’t . . .

  “Boss, do something, do something!” Danny wailed.

  I looked at him. I saw the tears running down the boy’s cheeks as they pinned to his brother. I felt his torment lash inside of me like brutal waves against a blackened cliffside.

  I hadn’t saved him.

  “Please, please!” Danny pleaded through choked cries.

  The cold was reaching my chest. My brain.

  I moved at the speed of dread. Slow, dysfunctional. My head, I couldn’t empty it, but it didn’t matter, because when I tried to project my awareness into the boy’s dead body, I felt nothing. There was no dark or light energy present here but my own and Jera’s. Didn’t Danny have light energy?

  My arms were moving. I was leaning down and my lips were against the boy’s mouth, breathing into him. Those dark vines inside of me, I was pushing them, begging them to go into the young boy’s chest. Give him another chance. Give Danny another chance.

  The heartbeat never returned. The warm mouth against mine would become as cold as my insides. He was dead. Gone. Never returning.

  Those words sifted through me, processed, filed away into that which was labeled Facts, Undeniable Truths.

  “Boss, help him! He’s my brother!”

  The ice pricked deeper.

  “He’s all I have,” he sobbed. “He’s all I have, boss, please.”

  What happened? How did he die? The tumor had been reduced, smaller than it’d been before. I’d even reconnected the dark energy ribbons to the light energy. Where had I gone wrong
?

  Danny’s cries began to sound the same. Sorrowful, despaired. It was all the noises I hadn’t made the day I lost Dad and Liz, the weeks after when I finally lost Mom. All the things I hadn’t allowed myself to feel, afraid of the pain I saw reddening Danny’s face then as he clutched at his chest, crumpling in on himself, begging me to fix him.

  Fix him.

  Fix him.

  “I . . . can’t,” I whispered so low it was nothing more than a breath.

  I hadn’t been able to bring Dave back. I was the cause of Ophelia’s capture and pain. And now, not only did I let this boy die right before me, I allowed a piece of Danny to die, too.

  “I don’t have anybody else,” he blubbered now, entering hysteria. “He was the last one. The last—”

  I sucked the inside of my cheek, compressing the threat of rage aimed at no one but myself as I watched Danny abruptly clammer onto the desk and simply curl up beside the smaller boy’s frame, his tears relentless, his cries turning to mulls.

  Kids, it wasn’t that they felt emotions any more than the rest of us. They just had no reserves to hide it. Transparent, they wore their hearts on their sleeves for all the world to see. And, just then, I saw the life bleeding from Danny’s.

  That was when something inside of me broke.

  And something else grew from the fissure.

  Ch. 29

  I couldn’t allow myself to feel anything. Not yet. There were other matters I needed to attend to, so I let in the cold, relished its chill as it iced that place in my chest that threatened to burn worse than hellfire.

  By the time Elise and Vincent arrived, the numbness had composed me just enough to evoke clarity and comprehension for when the succubus and vampire strode into the shop at sundown, found Jera and I waiting for them at the booth and joined us merrily.

  A merriness that vanished as they picked up the chill around me.

  Jera had been a silent observer throughout the entire ordeal. She hadn’t opted for words of comfort or those of derision. She’d kept a distance from it all. Understandably. No one wanted to get caught in the nasty web of death and sorrow. To her, the emotions associated with it were likely too human for her.