by Kara Silver
“I’m driving people to the party. The club.”
“You don’t need to shout and speak slowly. Why do people here keep doing that?” His words sank in. “Driving? Oh. Emma mentioned the place wasn’t in the town centre, but I didn’t think…”
“It’s in Iffley. A few miles. I’m glad you’re coming.” He made a sort of, “shall we?” gesture, leaving Kennedy little choice but to shove what she needed into her pockets and leave.
“What is it, exactly, this new venue?” Emma and Petra had been very mysterious about the party location and she hadn’t found out much.
“Oh, some new place. Bit off the beaten track, trying to make it different?” He followed her gaze, and she pulled her head back from where she’d been looking over at the museum. “A company trying to develop quirky entertainment venues. They’ve got an old brewery in London they’re fitting out, hoping to attract the City crowd. It seems okay. I might go in with them too.”
“Iffley, you said. And what’s the name?”
“Contagion.” He grinned, sweeping back his thick brown hair with a large hand. “You ask a lot of questions. But then you would, right?”
“I would…”
“Being a journalist. Well, writing articles, to pitch? Gotta get your start somewhere!”
She started. How had that rumour sparked? But actually, it was fairly useful… “Yeah. Oh, hold on. I dropped my keys. Think one rolled that way?”
The ever-obliging Keir stepped over to look and Kennedy chalked A: Contagion, Iffley. KS low down on the wall as she pretended to scrabble around on the ground. Best she could do. She also whispered the words into the stone.
“Wow. Nice jeep!” she exclaimed out in the street where the vehicle gleamed, new and proud.
“Thanks. Parental gift for getting in here. Want to drive?”
“No! Hey, shouldn’t we wait for the others?”
“Oh, this ride is just you and me.” He unlocked the vehicle.
“Really? That’s…not very green,” was her comeback.
He laughed, taking some of the edge off. “I never get the chance to speak to you. Thought this was a good one. Sorry.”
“No, it’s fine,” she assured him. She could take care of herself. “What are you studying?”
“Geography. And you’re Anthropology, right?”
Iffley wasn’t far, as he’d said, the journey going quickly as they chatted, and the venue, wherever it was, just through the village, near the river.
“We going to a rave?” she enquired, taking in the parked cars in the field. Then she saw the building. “Wait. We’re going to a church?”
“It was a church. Hasn’t been one for many years and Forefront Entertainment managed to buy it!” He took her hand to lead her in.
“Oh my God!” Kennedy could hardly believe it. The long building, all pointed roof and rounded-arch windows, even retained a stained-glass panel, although any colours it might have shed onto the altar, now a DJ station or band platform, were lost in the place’s lights. A long bar ran the length of the aisle, almost from the door to the altar, and a high upper balcony graced each side of the building. “It’s going to be a pub as well as a nightclub?” she guessed.
“And for private hire. Maybe a restaurant in a back part. Let’s get you a drink.” An arm around her shoulders, Keir steered her to the bar.
It was some sort of pre-inauguration event, a practice run, she gathered, from what she could catch over the beat of music. She nodded at whichever one of them, Bill or Tom, perhaps, who was explaining it all. They all seemed chatty and happy, as if in on some joke. She wasn’t quite sure how she’d found herself in that upper-floor corner huddle around one of the few tables in the place, not when all the other girls there had long straight blonde hair and names that ended in A, and wore brand-name clothes and perma-smirks on their tanned faces.
“Get you another?” Ed stood and pointed at Kennedy’s empty glass.
“No, thanks. Let me get you a drink, say thanks for the lift?” she said to Keir, leaning close to make him hear, which was quite easy to do as he perched on the other half of her stool with her. “And I should look for Emma.” And Aeth.
“Oh, time for that later.” Keir stood, looming over her. “I’ll come with.”
She didn’t like the look in his eye, all of a sudden.
“Kennedy, ignore that oaf. Oh, did you try the house cocktail?” Ed was unexpectedly in front of her, pulling her to her feet. She toppled forward and landed against him. He grabbed her shoulders and bent his head, planting a kiss on her lips as she stumbled. Derisive cheers and whistles sounded from the group and a hand smacked her ass.
“Hey!” Keir shoved Ed. “Brute force doesn’t count!”
“A kiss is a kiss is a kiss,” Ed retorted, wiping his hand across his lips. “Seize the day, bro.”
“Seize the ho, you mean. Well, we did say anything goes,” Bill added, throwing a mock punch at Keir. His laughter was echoed by the rest of the small group. “How much did we say?”
“Pay up, Keir!” called someone.
It sank in to a bewildered Kennedy. “What? You had some pathetic bet going, about me?”
“Oh, no.” Charlotte, Kennedy realised, clutched her throat. “You didn’t think they were all—” She was giggling too much to speak, so mimed swooning and sighing instead.
“You pathetic bunch of pigs.” Kennedy breathed deeply to remain calm. She wanted to hurt them all so much, but wouldn’t waste her energy on them. “No. That’s a fucking insult to pigs. I like pigs. They’re of some use to society.”
She stormed off, stopping when she saw Emma waving and rushing over. “I wouldn’t go there,” Kennedy said, jerking her thumb over her shoulder. “Cretins and morons.”
“What? I missed it! You bastards! Who won?” Emma shrieked. “I had money on Keir!”
“Emma?”
“I did warn you,” Emma cut her off, shouting in her ear. “You didn’t listen. I don’t think you do, much, do you?” She gave her a nudge. “Oh, take a joke, can’t you! Kennedy!”
But she was gone, pushing her way to the stairs at the end of the balcony, stumbling down, belatedly wiping her sleeve over her mouth, scrubbing the taste and feel of Ed from her lips. This party was no use. It wasn’t anything to do with her investigation. Just some stupid excuse to— She almost fell down the last few steps, and strong hands steadied her. Power coursed through her to whoever held her, shot from her to be received and answered. She rocked back and for a second thought it was—
“What happened? You okay?”
That smoky bar room drawl was far removed from Aeth’s crisp tones. The tall guy from the tattoo place stepped back from her, raising his hands to show he meant no harm. A wash of colours from a light turning slowly on the ceiling played over him, glinting on his piercings, then left him in a patch of darkness that turned from smoke to ink. No, that was his clothes, Kennedy thought. Black leather would do that. He stood still, absorbing the dark, and his scent, tar or coals, was stronger.
“Lady, I don’t know who or what you are, but if one of these human cretins hurt you, I’ll happily—”
“Cretins and morons. No, I’m fine.” She dashed an angry tear from her cheek.
“That you are.” His face moved into a grin, showing very white teeth. “This…isn’t your scene, is it? These people aren’t your type. Come with me.”
She did need to leave and found herself following Long Legs in Black Leather through the crowd to the other side of the room, then into an alcove that was quieter. And darker. It was comforting. As was the way he didn’t speak, didn’t offer her a drink, didn’t tell her his name or what he was studying. She was sick and tired of college and students and talking. Then someone behind him tugged him back to speak to him and the guy leaned backwards to hear. When he straightened again, he was even stiller, even sharper, if that was the right word.
Drawn, impelled, she turned to look up at him. The satisfied twist to his lips,
his wood smoke scent and the shadows in his eyes drew her closer still.
“Yeah?” he murmured, which made no sense, but she nodded, her movement unhurried.
“Of your own free will?” he asked, his voice as slow as the blood moving sluggishly through her veins.
That confused her, made her frown, trying to puzzle it out. The man gave a low, deep chuckle and his breath tickled her, heated her. Drawn, hypnotised by the gleam, perhaps, Kennedy reached up to touch his piercing. As her forefinger traced the circle of metal, a sharp sudden sting caught at the inside of her forearm and she exclaimed.
“Pay no mind. Come with me.”
This time, he didn’t lead but looped an arm over her shoulders and drew her with him to the back of the alcove and a room there. This room was moodily lit too, with one spinning light that span a trail of rainbow colours to chase one another in patterns and swirls over the ceiling and walls and floor and people. The music wasn’t the irritating techno of the bar or the hard demand of the rock that had played in the Cowley tattoo place. She didn’t know what kind of music it was.
“Did you decide on your tattoo?” asked the guy, whose name she still didn’t know, as if picking up on her thoughts. Or maybe, that being his livelihood, it was a frequent subject with him. Kennedy shook her head and overbalanced, to sit abruptly—onto her host’s knees.
“So, scholarship girl,” he whispered. “Who are you?”
“Kennedy Smith.” She twisted to shake his hand and he examined hers as he held it. He didn’t give his name.
“Yeah. I guess the better question would be, what are you?” he asked, right in her ear.
Time seemed to move even more differently here—the shiver his nearness provoked, that stopped her forming an answer, seemed to ripple for long minutes, and spread to the room. No, she realised. Something else had caused that, some news being passed around that made the hearers stiffen, then turn to where she sat.
A figure materialised from the shadows next to the guy and murmured in his ear. Whatever he said made the guy not freeze but sort of solidify for a second before he stood, pulling her with him.
“Kennedy Smith.” His words wreathed around her, coalescing like midnight. “Are you gonna fight me over this?” He dipped his head, looking at her from under his lashes. “Is it a little perverse of me to hope y’are?”
Something ran through the crowd of people who were gathering, pressing closer. Amusement? Anticipation? Whatever it was, it wasn’t good. The kaleidoscope of lights sped up, and the music quickened.
“I-I usually fight about everything,” Kennedy muttered, understanding something was happening here, something serious. Something deadly. She struggled to clear her mind, to rid it of its haze, to focus.
“Do you know?”
She didn’t think this question came from the guy, but turned to him for an answer.
“How wonderfully pure your blood is.”
The words wonderfully pure sounded incongruous in his smoke-dipped accent, and she was so caught up in that the words your blood only registered after. And then, now, it was after, and she stood, as obedient as a robot, as a toy and—
“Kennedy!”
“Aeth!” She spun, clawing and jerking, towards his horrified shout from the doorway.
“Kennedy, what are you doing? No! Stand still! Pull your shirt back up. Now!”
The last word was a harsh command and she scrambled to cover herself, stumbled backward and away, but saw from Aeth’s horrified expression it was too late, that not only he, but everyone else in the room had seen her mark. Her demon mark.
25
“Well, now. Isn’t that…interesting?”
He sounds like a gunslinger, came Kennedy’s almost hysterical thought. She knew she had to get to Aeth. His coolness and rock solidity would vanquish the smoke and dark and—
“Let go of me!” She wriggled to shake off the long, sinewy arm clamped around her waist.
“You came of your own free will,” wreathed inside her ear, tickling her senses.
“And now I’m leaving the same way.” She kicked out, connecting, and wrenched free.
“And what makes you think I’d let you leave?”
Kennedy stilled, rebuttoning her shirt, stumbling for the door. “Let me see… How about this?” She whirled and directed a wobbly blast of her power, but a blast all the same, at the ceiling. Seconds later, a huge patch of its stone crashed down. But the guy no longer stood in its path. Kennedy gaped at the wisp of black left in his place, a twist that whisked away to a nothing. A non-thing.
“Shadow demon!”
Kennedy didn’t need Aeth’s hiss to tell her that. Not his, “Kennedy, watch out!” She was watching, watching the people in the room dissolve, seemingly into the floor and walls and ceiling, because these rippled, tiny cracks forming, before plumes of ink poured out. Not ink, not smoke, but shadow, but yes, pouring, into forms, which surrounded her and Aeth.
“Like in the cemetery!” Kennedy gasped, forced back to back with Aeth. “This is what I saw. You didn’t see it, but I did.” When they were attacking Janey.
“You know, now would be a really good time to develop umbrakinesis,” he remarked.
“Perhaps if I knew what it was!” she snapped back.
“Manipulation of darkness and shadows.”
She tried, she really did, tried to focus despite the heartbeat-like tom-tom noise, or music or whatever it was and the lights scrambling her senses.
“World’s lamest rave ever,” she called out to the wraiths weaving and bobbing like malevolent balloons all around them, trying especially hard to see which was the tallest, the leader. Then he was there! She struck out—at nothing. His form appeared to her left, making her swing out again, this time hitting Aeth.
“You fucking coward!” Kennedy shouted, “Animating your shadow to do your dirty work? Coward’s trick because you’re afraid to face me!”
“I don’t think that’s what he’s doing or that he is,” Aeth muttered. “I trust you know what you’re doing? And if so, perhaps do it a little quicker?”
The dark at her side coiled faster and faster until it solidified into the man once more. Like a test at the opticians, Kennedy saw the overlay of the lean, cocky, arrogant man and underneath or beneath—evil. The shadow that was his true form spilled through, eating his white skin, turning him as back as his eyes and hair. Maybe her words had antagonised him. Good.
The encroaching forms brought suffocation with them. The insistent pulse-beat of the drum quickened and the white light shone brighter each time it played over her. Aeth thudded against the wall at his back.
“Go through?” Kennedy muttered from the side of her mouth.
He shook his head. “They’d follow.”
The shadow’s hands reached for her throat, night-dark stumps.
“I was waiting until I could see the whites of their eyes.” Kennedy had passed beyond terror. She was free-falling. “But they don’t have them. So… You said about manipulating shadows? That’d be fighting fire with fire, wouldn’t it?”
“Kenne—”
“And, anyway, I can’t do that. But I can do…this.”
She unleashed her power and pulled down what she hoped was electrokinesis. But electricity didn’t crackle and fizz, as it had at the tower. Instead, pure, brilliant white burned down, bleaching, scalding, hurting. And that was all. The shadows closed in, right on them, muffling, choking, brimstone stinging her eyes, blackness burning her skin.
“We’re screwed.” Kennedy grabbed for Aeth’s hand, finding it stone-cold. “I’m sorry. You did your best. No reflection on—”
The room popped like a flashbulb, like a searchlight bursting. And then there was silence and emptiness.
“Photokinesis?” Aeth queried, squeezing her hand. “Since when?”
Kennedy stared around wildly. “I just wanted the opposite of shadow!”
“The opposite of shadow is light. Come on. They’ll regroup.”
She held her breath and plunged through the cool, welcoming stone of the wall, trusting Aeth would follow. This wasn’t like before. Instead of chill earth, this was cold stone, old and desolate, abandoned, unloved, with glimpses of bleached-bone hands and empty skulls lurking, beckoning, grinning just out of the corners of her eyes.
“We’re in the crypt.” Aeth pulled at her. “I don’t know this. Concentrate.”
It was hard, like forcing herself upwards after diving off a cliff into the depths of an ocean. Just when she thought she couldn’t go another step, couldn’t force in another breath, they shot upwards and outwards, the journey painful and tight. When she looked back, there was no sign of the ground being disturbed. She crouched in the feeble moonlight, dizzy and sick, her hands on her knees.
“We’re near the river.” Aeth pointed. “Can you make it?”
She nodded, already upright and limping across the strip of meadow, thinking she’d better save her breath for swimming. They were about three miles down from the city, she knew. But once they’d staggered to the water’s edge, it seemed Aeth had other ideas.
“Get in.”
She stared at the little wooden boat, tied up to someone’s gate. “Whose—”
“Does it matter?” He was already unhitching it. Seemed he didn’t like getting his feet wet. “I’ll return it.”
Kennedy shot a look back at the ex-church that was probably now an ex-pub and ex-nightclub. The clutch of those shadow hands was still on her body, the gasoline and matches stench still in her nostrils. Shaky and weak, she doubted she could swim three strokes, let alone three miles. She really needed physical training.
“Hell, woman!” Aeth kicked the wooden boat in frustration.
She tumbled in, as graceful as a sack of coal, grabbing at the madly rocking sides when Aeth climbed in after. The water smelled so soothing and cool, the rushes and willows so fresh. It became a haze. This can’t be real, can it? No one lives through things like this. It must be a dream.