Born in Darkness

by J. Kenner

  “Don’t think of it as killing. Think of it as saving the world.”

  “But—”

  “Look,” he said sharply, “what did you want to be when you grew up? Before your life made a left turn, I mean.”

  I clenched my teeth together and didn’t say a word. I really wasn’t interested in playing mind games. I needed to think. Needed to figure out what I was going to do about being stuck in a body in Boarhurst while Rose was unprotected and alone in the Flats.

  “Humor me,” he said. “Before. What did you want to be?”

  “A doctor. I wanted to be a doctor.” That dream had died with my mother. When my stepfather had sunk into uselessness and I’d become the one who had to put food on the table at the ripe old age of fourteen. I love my stepfather—or at least I know that my mom loved him. But sometimes I hate him for his weaknesses. And for not protecting me as I tried to protect Rose.

  “Pretty self-sacrificing profession, medicine. Putting others first. Taking care to keep other people safe.”

  “It is,” I agreed. “And in case you missed the memo, I’m not a doctor.” The most I’d been able to manage was a few EMT courses picked up when I landed a job with shifts that lined up with the community college schedule, and when I could scrounge or steal money that didn’t have to go toward food or the mortgage or the occasional hit. Most often, schedule and money didn’t align.

  I’d told no one, not even Rose. If I didn’t finish, I didn’t want the stink of failure on me any more than it already was.

  And it was there all right, that rotten smell of decaying dreams. My failure had come complete with cliches—bad jobs, a few bags of pot or hits of X on the side, a wallet lifted here and there if I didn’t think the owner would miss the cash too much, pirating DVDs and selling them under the table, and more shit, too, if I took the time to think about it. And, yeah, I even slept with a few guys I didn’t like because I figured I could hit them up for a loan-turned-gift.

  I’m not proud, but I did what I had to do, and I’d kept a roof over our head even when Joe did nothing but stare at the wall and scratch his ass.

  I looked at Clarence defiantly through the haze of broken dreams. “I’m not a doctor. I’m not even close.”

  “Aren’t you? Maybe you don’t got a caduceus on your sleeve, but you went out to protect Rose.” He leaned in close, his eyes so knowing it made me want to cry. “You did what you had to do so that she didn’t have to feel the pinch. You did it even knowing that in the end, it wasn’t going to be good.”

  I licked my lips, remembering the feel of the gun in my hand as I’d made my way into the basement room Johnson had rented. I’d known I was going to die. I hoped I wouldn’t, don’t get me wrong, but the odds weren’t great. I didn’t care. I was willing to go into the blackness—the nothingness—that had terrified me so much as a kid. I was willing—so long as I could take him out with me.

  I went out, in other words, intending to kill.

  “Well, there you go.”

  But that didn’t mean any of this made sense. I couldn’t wrap my mind around why I was there. Why I was being given a second chance. I didn’t get it. I really didn’t.

  Clarence sighed. “Come on, Lily. You ain’t here ’cause you were a saint. A saint wouldn’t need redemption, would she? No, girl, you’re here because your intentions earned you another shot. What you did for your sister. Going out like that. Facing a monster like that. That was one hell of a sacrifice you were willing to make.”

  I blinked. Slowly . . . very slowly . . . maybe this was starting to make some sense.

  “So here’s the deal, kid. This is just like when you wanted to be a doctor—just like when you went all out to protect Rose. Only now you’re protecting the whole big world. Keeping us all safe from demons and those that do their bidding. The enemy. The ones who are trying to bring a scourge upon the earth. To eradicate good. To destroy humanity. To bring hell to the surface and desolation to the land.”

  He pointed at me, his face animated. “And you, Lily—you’re a barrier against their efforts. You’re body armor protecting the whole human race. The secret weapon that’s gonna fight to make the world right. And your first job’s protecting the Ninth Gate.”

  I swallowed and tried to keep my face from betraying my emotions, which was ridiculous considering the little beast could get inside my head. But you know what? I didn’t much care. Because I felt something inside me right then, something I hadn’t felt in a long time. I felt hope.

  More than that, I felt special. They wanted me. Lily Carlyle. They’d plucked me from death and told me I was special.

  And how cool was that?

  Except . . .

  I gnawed on my lower lip.

  “What?” Clarence said, eyes narrowed.

  “You said something about a prophecy. Are you sure that’s me?”

  “You gotta have more faith in yourself, kid. And in us.” He cocked his finger at me. “Trust me. The prophecy points to you. Only question now is, do you step up to the plate?”

  I ran my fingers through my hair, getting them tangled in the unfamiliar length. I’m not sure why I was hesitating, because there was no way I was backing off from this. Like he said, I’d been chosen. I’d been plucked from obscurity to make the bad guys pay.

  Men like Lucas Johnson.

  I stood up and started pacing the room, the something I’d called hope growing in me. I hadn’t felt it in a long time. Not since before my mother died. So fragile I wasn’t even sure I should look at it. But it was there, peeking up out of the muck. A chance for a purpose. For a future.

  And, yeah, a second chance at Johnson, too.

  “It’s yours if you take it,” Clarence said, peering at me through narrowed eyes, his expression unreadable. I looked down, not wanting him to see the thoughts of revenge in my head. I had a feeling they were less than holy.

  “What if I say no?” I asked, knowing there was no way I would. I was too pumped by the idea. Too keen on the prospect of doing whatever it took to wipe out the kind of evil that made men like Lucas Johnson tick.

  “Is it something you’re likely to say?”

  I shook my head.

  “Good. Because that would put you right back at square one, the sins of your acts staining your soul.” He slipped his hand into a deep pocket of his trench coat and pulled out a lethal-looking blade, then shrugged ruefully. “And your blood staining this blade. Rules are rules.”

  “Holy crap! What kind of an angel are you?”

  He slipped the knife back out of sight. “I never said I was an angel. I just work here. And now so do you.”

  4

  “All right,” I said, starting to get used this Über-girl idea. “Let’s say I do this thing. What exactly does that mean? How am I supposed to protect this gate?”

  “Good question, pet. Like to see you’re on top of your game.”

  “Clarence . . . ”

  “First, you find them. The ones who seek to open the gate. Then you stop them. Turn their plans right around on them. Kill the demon priest and use the key to lock the gate instead of giving them a chance to perform the ceremony to open it. Oh, yeah. It’s gonna be a beautiful thing.”

  “What ceremony?” I asked.

  “A dark ritual, recently discovered, revealed in a scroll buried deep in a mountain in Turkey. Laid it all out. The ritual. The talismans. They get going on it, and poof. Too late’s gonna come barreling down on us.”

  I swallowed. “When? When are they doing this thing?”

  “Soon. We’ve learned that they still need one item. The Box of Shankara. Open the Box during the ceremony, and it turns into a doorway, creating a portal to hell.”

  “Oh.” I swallowed, more than a little overwhelmed. “Well, that sucks.”

  “You could say that.”

  “And I’m supposed to jump in and muck up the ceremony?”

  “We don’t even want it to get that far. Our first line of defense is the Box. Mor
e specifically, the Caller.”

  I blinked. “Of course it is. What’s a Caller?”

  “A demon possessed of the power to Call the Box back to him from another location. Even another dimension. Ancient stories say the Box was hidden away a couple thousand years ago. A Caller can bring it back.”

  “Oh.” I really needed to stop saying that, but my brain was using all its energy to sort this story out. “So not just any old demon can get the box back?”

  “Different demons got different skills.”

  I pondered that. Demon sub-specialization. Who knew?

  “So how do I find the Caller?”

  “Well, that’s the problem, pet. We don’t have a way to find the Caller. So instead, we’re going to find what he’s looking for.”

  “The Box,” I said, because, hey, I’d been paying attention.

  “A gold star for you.” He grinned at me. “Give me your arm, and let’s see if the bastard has summoned the Box yet.”

  “Excuse me?” I protested as he took my hand and pulled it toward him, stretching out my arm. “Hey!”

  He’d pulled out a knife and was muttering over it in some language I didn’t understand.

  “Hello! What are you doing?” I tried to jerk my hand free, but he had me tight.

  “Lily,” he said sharply. “Be still.”

  And while I reeled from the verbal bitch slap, he sliced my arm horizontally, just below my elbow.

  And the weird thing? It didn’t hurt at all.

  As I watched, a thin line of blood rose from the wound, and he pressed the edge of his knife against the blood, smearing it down my arm. Some stayed where the knife placed it, but some seemed to move of its own accord, forming a strange pattern on my skin.

  I stared, confused, and then I gasped. Because now the pain was starting, and not from the wound but from the blood now burning into my skin. “Clarence! Shit! It’s like acid! Get it off me!” I tried to shake my arm, but he was having none of it.

  “One more moment, Lily. Just one more moment . . . there!”

  Once again, he dragged the knife down, covering the burned area with a fresh smear of blood. All at once, the pain ceased, and he released my arm. I fell backward onto my ass, my arm clutched to my gut. “What the hell was that about?”

  “Look at your arm, Lily.”

  “What? Look at my newly mutilated flesh? Screw you!”

  “Look.”

  Damn me, I did. And what I saw was pretty amazing: a circle with strange symbols around the edge, like something Aztec. Or, I don’t know, equally old. “What is it?”

  “A locator,” he said.

  “But what’s it doing on me?”

  “The prophecy,” he said, smiling up at me. “It’s you, pet. And this is one more sign that proves it.”

  “Some freaky prophecy turned me into a map?”

  “A locator,” he repeated. “But it’s pretty much the same thing.”

  “Fuck,” I whispered, because this was not the kind of thing I could easily wrap my head around. “Fuck. Okay. Right. Fine. How does it work?”

  He tapped the center of the circle, the one place not covered with images. “If the Caller had already retrieved the Box, then its symbol would be here.”

  “But it’s not, so what does that mean?”

  “The Box is still in a nether region,” he said, then frowned. “They’ll not retrieve it until the time for the ceremony is close. Reduce the risk that way.”

  “Of what?”

  He looked at me hard. “Of you.”

  “Oh.” I didn’t feel particularly threatening at the moment.

  “Right.” I frowned at the design on my arm. “What about the rest of the symbols?”

  “Some will become more prominent and it is those that you’ll use to find the Box’s location.”

  “I will?” I was beginning to begrudgingly admit that this was pretty cool. Freaky, but cool.

  “When the time is right, yes.”

  I decided to wait until the time was right to ask how exactly I’d do that. Right then, I was too overwhelmed by the fact that my arm was now the equivalent of a Shankara Box LoJack. “So what if it shows that the Box is in Tokyo?”

  “The bridge would get you there,” Clarence said.

  “The bridge?”

  He waved my question away. “Not to worry.”

  “But—”

  “The odds of the Box appearing elsewhere are slim.”

  “Why?”

  “Because the gate is here. At the convergence, the portal between worlds will open right here in Boston.”

  “No shit?” So much for all the hoopla in the Middle East. “Guess I’m glad I never bought real estate.”

  He shot me a hard look, and I shrugged. “Just keeping it light.” I cleared my throat. “So, um, what now? I mean, since there’s nothing in the center of my exciting new body art?”

  “The circle will fade,” he said, and in fact it already was beginning to disappear. “But when the Caller utilizes his skill and brings forth the Box, the mark will burn, and we’ll know where he has summoned it.” He met my eyes. “So pay attention.”

  “Roger that. And in the meantime, what? I just sit around watching my arm?”

  “In the meantime, you train.”

  “Right,” I said, realizing that at the end of all this arm-watching was a big battle with demons. Yeah, training sounded like it definitely needed to be on the agenda. “So, I’m training with a team, right? And when my arm burns, we’ll all go in together?”

  “Sorry, kid. This is a solo act.”

  “Sorry?” I repeated. “Sorry? Are you insane? What is this, a suicide mission? I don’t think so . . . ”

  He snorted. “As strong as you are? I don’t think suicide’s in the game plan.”

  “But . . . but . . . a team. Why can’t I have backup?”

  “That’s just the way it’s gotta be, kid.”

  “What? Why? This prophecy comes with an instruction manual?” Did prophecies work that way? My knowledge was limited to television and movies, probably not the most venerable of sources.

  He chortled. “No, that’s the big guy’s mandate. Because what if we send you in with a team, and one of them is a mole? A plant for the forces of darkness? Pretty nasty result all the way around.”

  “A mole in heaven?”

  “I know, kid. Hard to even stomach the possibility. But this is war. And we gotta be careful.” He shrugged. “So that’s the bottom line, pet. You find. You destroy. The Caller and the Box.”

  “Oh. How?”

  “Your blood destroys the Box,” he said.

  “No shit?”

  “That is the lore of the prophecy. As for the Caller . . . ” He trailed off with a shrug. “The Caller you simply kill.”

  I drew in a breath, my I’m-a-cool-Über-chick hubris fading in the cold light of reality. It was one thing to want to go out there, battle evil, and score big ticky points on the side of good. It was another matter altogether to realize just how much was riding on me not screwing up. Like, oh, the entire fate of the world.

  “You got strength, Lily. Speed. All sorts of handy skills and tools. Comes with the prophecy. You’re good, trust me. And with training, you’ll be even better.”

  “Training,” I repeated, taking a deep breath. Okay. Training was something tangible. Something I could latch onto.

  I glanced at my arm—at the funky symbol now fading from my flesh—and shivered. How much good was training against demons? Against the forces of darkness and the Apocalypse? That was big, scary shit, and I was only one girl. One girl not allowed to have backup.

  “Don’t underestimate yourself, Lily. You can do this.” He looked at me seriously. “For that matter, you’re the only one who can.”

  I started to pace, my thoughts bouncing from saving the world to what had gotten me here in the first place—trying to save Rose.

  “I want to see her,” I said. “I want to see Rose.”

/>   “Can’t help you there, pet. You’re dead, remember? Can’t have you running around telling folks you’re not really Alice, now can we? You can’t tell anybody. Not your stepdad. Not Rose. Not anybody.”

  “But he’s out there. He’s going to start up again, Clarence. I know he will. And I’m not going to stand back while my sister’s tormented.” I met his eyes dead-on. “I won’t do that. Not for anyone.”

  “Yeah, pet. I get that. But it ain’t a problem, is it? The kid’s safe now. You took care of that.”

  I blinked at him. “What?”

  “Johnson,” he said. “That plague on humanity is dead.”

  I plunked my ass back down on the sofa. “No. No, I shot him, but he kept on coming.”

  “Maybe it was a second wind,” Clarence said. “But he blew through it. Trust me. The worm is dead.”

  “Really?” A sense of relief flooded me. Along with a disturbing hint of disappointment, and I realized I’d actually been looking forward to facing the bastard again. “You’re not shitting me?”

  He traced a cross over his heart. “Would I lie?”

  I licked my lips, trying to process the information. Johnson is dead. Rose is safe.

  She’d lost her big sister—and that really did break my heart—but I hadn’t been so naive going into it to think that I might walk away unscathed. I’d always understood the risks. But if I took Johnson down with me, then I’d been prepared to call it a victory.

  Which meant I’d won. Rose was safe.

  I’d actually, really, truly won.

  “You know what, Clarence,” I said, smiling so broadly it hurt. “My crappy day is turning out to be not so bad after all.”

  He chuckled, then dropped down on the couch beside me. “Glad to hear it, kid. So we’re clear?”

  “Absolutely,” I said. “Rose will never know her sister’s alive.”

  “She’s not, you know,” he said, looking at me earnestly.

  “Not?” I asked, assuming he was talking about Rose.

  “Alive. Rose’s sister isn’t alive. You’re not the same Lily that you were. You’ve been reborn.” He patted my knee. “It may seem a minor thing, but trust me when I say it’s the key to adjusting.”