Embrace of Darkness

by Bilinda Sheehan

  I shook my head, noting the way the Sheriff’s face had paled considerably at the mention of babies eating their way out of their mothers.

  “We can take it from here,” I said, “we’ll finish up here and then make our way back to town. You should head back ahead of us, Sheriff.”

  The grey haired man, pushed the brim of his hat back from his face before rubbing his hand down over his eyes. “I never thought I’d hear myself say this but I sure am glad you ladies are here to take charge of this. My men are good but I wouldn’t want to pit them against these man-eaters…”

  I nodded. “That’s smart,” I said, “this’s why the Elite exists. We’re here to deal with the things, the humans can’t.”

  The Sheriff shot me a curious glance. “I can understand how she takes care of herself,” he said inclining his head in Victoria’s direction, “but you’re human. How can you fight these things?”

  Before everything with Graham and losing my power, I might have given the Sheriff a flippant answer about the training I went through with the Elite. It wasn’t strictly a lie. I was well trained but ever since my power had started to grow I’d grown careless, sloppy even. My time with Steve was proof of that. There were so many things I could have done differently. So many times I could have sent him on his way and instead, I’d allowed my own panic and fear to unravel every bit of training I had.

  If I planned on surviving this and I definitely wanted to survive. There was so much I still wanted to do. Not to mention the fact that I wanted to see Graham’s killer brought to justice. And I couldn’t do any of that if I let my lapse in training get me killed.

  “Or are you not human either?”

  “I’m human,” I said. Jon and the Saga Venatione might argue with that but as far as I was concerned being a witch didn’t make me inhuman. “I’ve spent years training and so far I’ve been lucky. But the day will come when that luck runs out.”

  “And then what happens?” he asked.

  “Then,” I said, “if I’m lucky, I’ll be dead. If I’m not lucky then I’ll become one of the things the Elite hunt. And I’ll eventually find myself put down.”

  “That’s a cheerful outlook,” he said, “the worst thing I’ve got to worry about is how I’ll fill my days once I retire.” He sighed and stared out over the river for a moment before he turned back toward the path that led up through the trees to the road. “If you’re sure I should go, then I guess I will.”

  “We’re sure,” Victoria said, there was almost an eagerness to her words and I found myself wondering just what she had noticed while I’d been walking the scene.

  The Sheriff tilted his hat politely and started the climb back up toward the road, leaving us alone.

  I waited, until the noise of ascent grew further away before I turned back to Victoria. “What do you know?”

  “I couldn’t see everything,” she said. “I saw enough, more than if the spell had been performed by a normal member of the Elite.”

  “And?”

  “And, Mr Taylor was correct when he said the second troll went after the girl.”

  “But if it did, then why is Jessie sitting safely in the hospital, instead of facing the same fate as her boyfriend?”

  Victoria shrugged. “I don’t have the answers. The circle didn’t extend all the way into the tress.”

  “You looked?”

  She nodded and stalked toward the edge of the trees next to the path up the embankment. “The troll disappeared in here,” she said, her voice growing fainter, “and then Jessie began screaming…”

  Victoria’s sudden silence worried me and I followed her. Settling the bag a little more securely across my chest as I entered the tree line.

  “Have you found something?”

  “There was a struggle here,” she said, her voice muffled.

  Twigs and branches tugged at my hair and scratched my skin as I pushed through the dense underbrush. Pushing aside a particularly prickly patch of branches, I broke into a small clearing to find Victoria crouched over something on the ground.

  “More blood?”

  She nodded, without lifting her gaze. “Definitely blood,” she said, “although too much to belong to Jessie.”

  “Could it belong to Steve?”

  Victoria shook her head. “No, the troll carrying him went in the other direction and look at this.” She straightened up, holding a thin scrap of pale, almost bleached fabric from the tip of her pen.

  “That looks like a piece of the shift the second troll was wearing,” I said, moving to get a closer look at the fabric. “Is that blood?”

  “Looks like it.”

  “We’re going to have to pay a visit to Jessie,” I said. “She has to have seen something, whether she wants to remember or not.” I pulled a plastic evidence bag from my pocket as I spoke and waited while Victoria shoved the scrap of fabric inside.

  “And another thing,” I said. “The trolls were emaciated. I’ve never seen them like that before, have you?” Not that I was an expert on trolls, the limited experience I had with them said they were big, lumbering creatures. Muscular, their bodies packed solidly with a combination of fat and thick corded muscles that made them dangerous opponents if they got their hands on you. But the trolls that had attacked Jessie and Steve were none of those things.

  Victoria pursed her lips. “Once,” she said, “I’ve seen trolls like that once before as prisoners of the fae. They were starving them as punishment.”

  “Do you think the fae are doing the same thing here?”

  She shook her head. “I can’t be certain but I’ve seen no evidence of the fae here at all so my guess is no. But there’s definitely something strange about the whole situation. Trolls don’t usually come out of hiding to hunt, they’re more opportunistic types. It takes a really screwed up troll to break habits that have been ingrained into them over centuries of conditioning.”

  She was right. It wasn’t entirely unusual to hear of trolls murdering humans but never usually like this.

  “Wasn’t there a case out in Norway, or Sweden, a few years ago that saw a bunch of people disappear from a camping trip?”

  “They discovered the den,” she said thoughtfully, turning her attention back to the scene before us. “Do you think the den is somewhere nearby then and Steve and Jessie were just the unlucky two who stumbled over it?”

  It was a possibility but also pretty unlikely. “No,” I said, “I’m really just spitballing here. The others who disappeared were closer to town.”

  “We should check those places out too,” Victoria said, “see if we can find a common thread between he locations.”

  Glancing over my shoulder, I shielded my eyes against the glare of the setting sun. The orange fiery ball was sinking behind the horizon, leaving the sky coloured with vibrant reds and purples.

  “Something wrong?” Victoria touched my elbow.

  “Just thinking we should probably head back.” I sighed. “If this is their hunting ground, I’d rather be prepared for a confrontation and this knife isn’t going to do much besides irritate them.”

  Victoria left and I took one last look around at my surroundings. There was definitely something more going on here. The trolls were behaving too out of character for my liking and when creatures of that size started acting out, it was only a matter of time before the humans started paying the price. A price Steve had already paid.

  Pushing open the door to the diner, we slipped inside. There was one booth in the corner free. I headed there and flopped into the seat. I was grateful to be doing something other than driving. My stomach grumbled and I grabbed the menu, flicking through the pages quickly as I tried to ignore the curious stares from the patrons in the restaurant.

  “You think they know we’re from the Elite?”

  Victoria cast a speculative glance at the other customers. “Most certainly.”

  I spotted four familiar faces observing us from the booth across the aisle. The moment they reali
sed they’d been caught, they turned away and leaned in together, conversing in hushed tones.

  “We can hear you,” Victoria said loud enough for the boys to hear.

  They glanced amongst themselves before finally digging up some courage. They scrambled from their booth and crowded around ours instead.

  “Is it true you hunt monsters?”

  “We eat children too,” Victoria said without the slightest trace of humour in her voice.

  “You work for the Elite, right?” the serious one with the dark eyes asked.

  “Paolo, isn’t it?” I asked.

  He nodded.

  “Yeah, we work for the Elite.”

  “And you’re here about the disappearances?”

  It was my turn to nod. “Yeah, we’ve been asked to investigate. Why, do you know something?”

  He shrugged. “Maybe…”

  The middle boy jabbed him in the ribs. “Don’t be such a douche,” he said. “We do know things.” He gave me a coy smile and held his hand out. “I’m Harrison…”

  “Amber,” I said, taking his hand and pumping it up and down.

  “So, boys,” I said, “what have you got for us?”

  “We know it’s trolls,” he said. “We think me might even know where they…”

  It was Paolo’s turn to jab his friend in the ribs. “Don’t mind him, he doesn’t know what he’s talking about.”

  I nodded and bit my lip, trying to keep my smile in check.

  “I don’t want you boys investigating on your own, it’s not safe.”

  The one I remembered as Keith rolled his eyes dramatically. “You sound just like my mom…”

  “Well, she’s right. These are dangerous creatures. You could get hurt. Or worse.”

  “Or die,” you mean the one with the glasses said, shoving them back up the bridge of his nose.

  “That’s right,” I said. “Leave the investigating to us is all I’m saying. But if you find something out, feel free to call us.” I fished a business card out of my pocket and held it out.

  The one with the glasses took it.

  “If it’s all the same with you, we’ll probably just call the Sheriff,” Paolo said. “He’s a real cop.” He turned on his heel and stalked away from the table. The other three boys followed, making me think Paolo must be the ring leader.

  “I think I’ve lost my appetite,” I said, pushing up from the table. Victoria hopped to her feet too.

  “I’ll order to go,” she said, making her way to the counter, leaving me to follow the boys outside but by the time I’d made it out there, they were long gone.

  13

  I left Victoria in her room at the motel and headed for my bed. After the last few days I’d had, all I wanted to do was curl up in a ball and sleep.

  The room was small and stuffy, the mattress lumpy and the sheets made me itch. Knowing my luck it was probably full of bedbugs. With that final cheerful image firmly planted in my head, I climbed out of the bed and headed for the vending machine I’d seen outside. I pulled my holster on over my T-shirt and checked the gun before I left the room. People were disappearing, it wouldn’t be particularly smart to go wandering around in the dark, alone, and unarmed. Especially with my power on the fritz.

  I suddenly found myself wishing I could talk to my mother. We hadn’t been particularly close, I’d always resented her for sending me away at such an early age, believing she hated me because I wasn’t like her. I’d been wrong, the older I got, the more I was beginning to realise I was wrong a lot. Of course, now that she was dead, that knowledge was cold comfort.

  My hand strayed to the cell phone in the pocket of my jeans. Graham would know what to do, he always did. He’d know why the trolls were starving, why people were disappearing and better still, he would know why my power was screwed up.

  My fingers closed over the hard plastic shell of the cell phone and the realisation slammed into me. Enough to buckle my knees and I found myself sagging against the cool glass front of the vending machine.

  Graham was gone. Dead. And it was my fault…

  I wanted to scream, to vent my pain and anguish to the sky but there was nothing. My eyes were dry, chest tight.

  Everyone I’d come to count on was gone. Even Victoria was acting off with me.

  “You don’t have to be alone in this, you know?” Alastor’s voice cut through my thoughts. Jerking my head up away from the glass, I met his steady azure gaze.

  “What are you doing here?” My voice was hoarse, making it sound like I’d been crying when the truth was, I didn’t have any more tears in me.

  “I’m never very far away, Amber,” he said, quietly. “We’re bound, remember?”

  “And whose fault is that anyway?”

  He chuckled, the sound sending a frisson of desire racing through me. Was I nuts? Alastor was a demon, the one I’d summoned to kill my sister.

  He’d tried to kill me...

  And when that failed, he’d branded me with his mark.

  Not to mention the fact that I loved Nic.

  “You fight it,” he said sounding genuinely curious. “Why is that?”

  “Why is what?” I snapped, straightening my spine.

  “Your desire for me,” he said, “I can smell it on your skin. Yet you fight it… Why is that?”

  “Because it’s wrong,” I said, “I don’t want you. The only thing I want from you, is for you to leave me alone.”

  “Just out of curiosity,” he said, “how are your powers?”

  I’d started to stalk around him but his words saw me freeze.

  “Why would you ask me that?”

  “Just answer the question truthfully and I’ll leave you alone,” he said.

  “They’re just fine,” I lied.

  Alastor chuckled again making me squirm inwardly. “You’re a terrible liar, it’s a wonder you’ve managed to keep your secret as long as you have.”

  “It’s none of you business,” I gritted the words out.

  “But it is,” he said, his voice hardening. “You think everything is about you, don’t you?”

  Unease wrapped cold fingers around my spine.

  “People think demons are selfish but humans are far worse. You think the whole cosmos revolves around you and your petty problems.”

  “What do you want, Alastor?”

  “I want you,” he said. “We need each other. You don’t see it. And I can understand why. You love your little witch-hunter and it’s blinded you to the truth.”

  “I don’t need you,” I said, “I never wanted anything to do with you.”

  “Then why summon me?” It was a simple question but I could see the pitfall of answering. I’d summoned him because I’d needed him. In that instance he was right, I had never wanted him but I had needed him.

  But that was then.

  “You think you have all the answers,” he said, “when really you’re just a child playing with matches. Did you know all the Shadow Sorcerers were bound to demons?”

  I shook my head, my tongue sticking to the roof of my mouth.

  “It was a necessary precaution,” he said. “The human body is not built to deal with the kinds of power you can wield. Those without a demon as a counterbalance, destroyed themselves.”

  “So what, you were actually doing me a favour when you marked me?”

  He shrugged. “There are certain perks that come from being bound to a Shadow Sorceress,” he said, “I’m not a fool but you… You continue to disappoint me.”

  “Oh, I’m sorry, I’m not living up to your expectations,” I said bitterly, finally moving past him and the keys gripped tightly in my hands.

  I opened the door to my room and he was there before me, the same infuriating smirk playing around his full lips.

  “Why are you doing this to me?” I asked, leaving the door open, perhaps by leaving it open, he would get the hint and leave. I crossed the floor to my bed and sat down hard on the edge of it.

  “I told you
already, we can help each other. We both want the same thing, Amber, all you need to do is say yes…”

  “And if I don’t?”

  His shoulders dropped and for the first time since I’d met him, the self-satisfied smile he’d worn slipped.

  “We’re just going round in circles,” he said, “I thought threats would work but they haven’t… You’re not open to seduction…”

  He closed the distance between us, the demon mark on my shoulder tingling in anticipation of the nearness of his body.

  “I told you, I want nothing to do with you.”

  He shrugged. “I tried listening to you but you’re untrustworthy.”

  “What’s that supposed to mean?”

  “It means, you went off half-cocked to this two-bit-town in the middle of nowhere and to screw up a spell that even the most unremarkable of humans could perform unscathed.”

  “How do you know about that?” Remembering the feel of Steve’s essence as it clung to my skin. The helplessness I’d felt as he’d tried to take me over. Alastor was right, my power had failed me and I had no idea why.

  “I told you, I’m never very far away…”

  “What’s wrong with me?” The words left my mouth as a whisper before I could think to stop them.

  Alastor climbed onto the bed next to me and propped himself against the headboard, crossing his lean legs at the ankle. “So you admit, there is a problem?” He watched me from beneath half-lidded eyes.

  “My power is gone,” I said, “every time I search for it inside, there’s just nothing…”

  “It’s still there,” he said, “our bond would have failed if it was gone.”

  “But the mark,” I said, “it used to do more… but now it just…” I shrugged. “I doesn’t do anything anymore.”

  “Because it was a distraction,” he said, as though it were the most obvious answer in the world. “The more you embrace your power, the less of a distraction the mark becomes. Before your friend was murdered you were beginning to accept who you were. And more than once you loosened your hold enough to give me a taste of who you might become should you chose to. But now…” He eyed me carefully, his gaze travelling over my body from head to toe, as though mentally undressing me.