A Patch of Darkness

by Yolanda Sfetsos

  I’d heard a howl when I left the office and stopped to look around, hoping he’d step out of the shadows. As curious as I was about his wolf side, I’d secretly hoped it would be plain old Papan.

  My pulse sped up at the thought of seeing him again. It was strange, but finding out he was some sort of shape-shifting animal hadn’t affected my mixed emotions towards him.

  Would Vixen continue to hunt him down until he was dead? I couldn’t let her kill Papan. He was a friend. No, he was more than that. I held a special place in my heart for him. Things were complicated between us but I was starting to realize something I wasn’t ready to admit just yet.

  My stomach twisted into a tight knot as I turned the key and unlocked the front door. The rush of cold air caused a bout of pins and needles to race along my skin.

  I walked inside, hoping to catch Grandpa so we could chat before I collapsed into sleep. See if he’d felt any further disturbances.

  “Grandpa,” I called, dumping my keys and wallet onto the hall table. He always knew when I arrived home. Yet there was no response.

  “Grandpa, I’m home. We need to talk!”

  Still nothing. Even if he was in one of his fade-out sessions, he usually answered my calls.

  My heart sped up when the cold intensified along my spine so sharply that I fell forward, landing on the carpet in the hallway. My arms were barely able to keep me up.

  The front door slammed shut behind me with a thunderous thump. My breath misted in front of my face.

  This wasn’t my grandfather.

  I slowly flipped my body over in an attempt to get up, but instead slipped onto my back, and came face-to-face with Travis’s young face. He hovered above me, our bodies perfectly aligned, without touching. He was no longer solid, instead had become a wispy, vapor ghost horizontally positioned above me.

  This didn’t make any sense. I thought he was a witch. The pink eyes in the stairwell had confirmed that, right?

  “What the hell are you doing in my house? I didn’t invite you,” I spat between gritted teeth. The cold waves were so constant I was fighting to keep my teeth from chattering.

  “I don’t need an invitation to visit you, Sierra. I’m not a vampire.” A smirk curved the corners of his mouth as his wispy hair hung translucently over my face. “You didn’t think it would be so easy to get rid of me, did you? It’ll take more than a tumble down a few stairs to hurt my brother and me.”

  “Grandpa,” I yelled, turning my head to the side.

  “He can’t hear you right now.”

  My heart drummed with worry. “What did you do to him?”

  “My brother was so upset that he asked a friend for help. He managed to sweep your grandfather into the nothingness every spirit fears the most. Although soon, most of them will eventually end up there,” Travis said with a laugh. “You really have no idea what happens to the ghosts you so easily relocate, do you?”

  Why would he know? The strict rules of the Council gave every spook a fair trial. The troublesome spirits ended up outcast into the ghostly patch, but the others moved on into the natural cycle after death.

  “What are you?” It came out as a whisper.

  “I don’t think that’s important at the moment, do you?”

  Not knowing what Travis really was didn’t matter because right now he was a spook. That made certain possibilities available to me. I didn’t know much about witches but I could handle ghosts.

  I prepared to enter into his personal space, but instead the curtains of reality cascaded around us until we both stood in the center of the darkness I’d already pulled Travis into once before.

  We were no longer on the floor and horizontal. The playing field had been leveled. But why did we always end up here? This wasn’t the destination my other ghostly encounters took me.

  Travis looked a little surprised. “Well, I didn’t expect this again.”

  “I’d like to know why we always seem to end up here,” I said.

  “Don’t expect an answer from me—you’re the one driving this place,” he said with a shake of his head.

  “I’m not scared of you.” A little cockiness washed over me. It wasn’t good to gloat, but for some reason I always felt in control in this patch. “I’ve faced worse things than you.”

  “Yes, you have. Many as I recall. There are so many pissed-off spirits trapped on the ghostly patch because of you, that finding someone willing to help us out was easy.”

  “What’re you talking about?”

  He shook his head. “You can’t kill me, Sierra. I’ve been dead a long time, yet my brother managed to keep me inside himself. There are many things a witch can do, but the exertion caused him to age at a rapid rate. So fast, that we were both at risk of slipping away.” Travis paused and met my gaze. “That’s when we found our salvation and were pointed to you. Thanks to you, we found out about the rip in the fibers and were able to use it to our advantage. That way, no one could ever tear us apart.”

  What was he saying? That he was a ghost residing inside the body of his witch brother? “None of what you’re saying makes any sense.”

  “Sure it does. Think about it, sweetie.” He took a step to the left and then back again. “You’re incredibly strong. The power flowing through you rivals that of even your grandmother. We tried to solve our problems through her first but things didn’t work out. She’s just not as powerful dead as she was alive. It’s a real shame what happened to poor, old Pepita.”

  “I don’t believe you.” The darkness quivered. Was it a reflection of my anger? This monster couldn’t have something to do with my grandmother’s disappearance, could he?

  “Believe what you want, but she’s gone, just like your grandfather. Now that I’ve got you here, you’ll be able to join them soon. How would you like to become a ghost? The very thing you’ve hunted all these years?” he asked with a grin. “You’ve left so many of them to wander lost, making them easy pickings for the Council. They’ve wanted revenge for so long.”

  “You don’t scare me. I’ll never let you use my power.”

  “There’s nothing you can do to stop it. We’ve already had a taste and can’t wait to have it all.”

  “What you took in the stairwell was nothing.”

  “Maybe not, but what we took from your boyfriend was enough to give us the strength to finally confront you.”

  I felt as if he’d stabbed me in the chest. My heart ached. I took a couple of breaths to calm myself. “That’s why your brother has been passing himself off as a rare book supplier, isn’t it?” My growing suspicions about Jonathan were fully realized, and no amount of denial or benefit of the doubt would keep the wool over my eyes now.

  Travis tsked. “No, we can supply everything we promised. The trade-off wasn’t money, it was the exchange of power. Your sexual union with Jonathan was enough to transfer some of your energy to him. It helped awaken something deep inside of him and will aid the Obscurus.”

  “What’re you talking about?” What was an Obscurus?

  “You’ll find out soon enough. Now it’s time to stop the chatting and move on to what we’ve needed from you all this time.” His image faltered for a second before he returned. Travis opened his mouth and shook like an image on a screen. He was changing, but not into the old, raggedy Troy like I’d expected.

  “Give me the power,” he screamed, dropping his head back and spreading his arms on either side of his body.

  A multitude of shadows appeared around him—hundreds of tiny smoky cyclones whirling around his body to aid his transformation. As they swept over his head, torso and engulfed his legs, Travis screamed but held his steady position until all that was left was a tall, thin, black creature with a huge mouth and red glowing eyes.

  He blended perfectly into the darkness, and I couldn’t help but wonder if he’d just evened out the odds on my turf.

  I took an uneasy step back although there wasn’t a real floor beneath us.

  Thoughts of what
had happened to the teenage spook inside the Rempel basement replayed inside my head, confirming the shadow monster had been…Travis.

  I gazed at the monstrosity somehow able to absorb shadows.

  He stood with his head slumped over against his chest, so still I hoped he might be dead. If he was, it would make everything so much easier.

  Something clicked, and suddenly things were starting to make sense. As if a spark had somehow connected the dots, and everything that had happened during the last week was now undeniably linked. It hadn’t been paranoia or over-thinking that made me suspect everything was happening for a reason.

  Roger Hocking had conjured a demon he wanted to use for something. What if it had been the horrid fleshy demon I’d torn apart inside the Prevette kitchen?

  I possessed some sort of power all of these people were eager to suck out. I just hadn’t realized it because I hadn’t known my true origins.

  Oren tried to tell me but I didn’t want to listen. It still pained me to realize that if I’d accepted his help and let him speak his piece, I might not have ended up in this predicament.

  If Roger had used my body as a tool to save his wife back in his study, and now Travis was trying to absorb it to make it his own, I’d be damned if I was going to allow him the victory. I’d accepted my curse and turned it into a lifestyle long ago. If I was now an enhanced version, I wouldn’t give anyone the pleasure of taking it from me.

  Not even Jonathan.

  Travis floated closer. He hissed and was suddenly all around me, weaving his tail against my arm. I gasped when the sharp sting scorched my skin.

  I took small shallow breaths of air, trying to think straight even though a sound as scary as a thunderstorm filled my ears.

  How had I defeated the Prevette demon?

  I shut my body from all the confusion, fear and the raging thoughts. I struggled to fill my lungs with breath as Travis closed in. Trying to ignore the sensation of his writhing around me was hard, but if I didn’t, all of this would’ve been for nothing.

  His tail continued to sting my arms, legs and ankles, but the cold air of his ghostly presence slid along my skin to ease the pain.

  I took another breath and became a barren shell. I was completely closed off from everything physical. It had all fallen away and my spirit soared into the endless darkness above my shell.

  Frozen in another patch of existence, I couldn’t shake the unease of how risky this was. But there was only one way to defeat this determined creature. I’d managed it once before, I could do it again.

  Travis’s thoughts intermingled with those of the hundreds of shadows keeping his glamour alive. He was just another spook under the armor of his shadowy exterior. These shadow monsters were doing all the work while he stood by waiting. Thoughts of triumph spilled so loud from Travis that I almost recoiled.

  He was weak, almost dead. The line keeping the two brothers alive was wearing thin. I could feel the urgency behind his motives but couldn’t see or hear any mention of Jonathan’s involvement.

  The shadows’ intermingled thoughts drowned out those of Travis as I floated closer. They were all so happy at the prospect of having the freedom to roam this world and consume other ghosts after the two brothers set them free from their prison.

  One familiar voice rang higher than the rest, chanting the same thing over and over again: “Belle, sweet Belle, I’m almost there.”

  My shields almost collapsed.

  Belle was the little girl I’d saved from the shadow inside her bedroom two years before. The shadow was here and it was ready to reclaim her after all this time. What had Travis and Troy offered these monsters in order to get their help?

  I hovered in front of Travis and extended my almost transparent arm in front of me. It took several attempts to catch him because the swirling tornado slapped against my hands whenever I got too close. He was swift and fast at losing himself behind their protection.

  If his armor was going to protect him, I’d have to get rid of that first.

  I pressed both hands against the shadows surrounding him. Nothing happened at first because they writhed away like slimy snakes beneath my palm. Ever so slowly, their movements slackened and each started to ripple. Frantic yells echoed inside my head, but to struggle got them nowhere.

  One by one, each faded away from existence beneath my hands.

  Travis didn’t see it coming, but as each shadow vanished, I got closer to him. His skin wobbled beneath my contact, rippled as if he were made of water, and exploded into a thousand pieces of sparkly green stars that rained around me.

  “Belle!” the shadow monster screamed inside my head as I felt him slip away to nothing.

  My body rushed back into its shell, allowing the curtains of this existence to slip as fast as I did into my body.

  The darkness dropped from the top down and I returned, standing in the front hall just inside my house—achy and shaky, but still very much alive.

  “It’s good to have you back, Sierra. I’ve been waiting for my turn,” someone said from behind me.

  I spun around. Troy stood smiling a few steps away, looking haggard and bloodshot. I was surprised he had enough strength to stay upright. His complexion was tinged a sickly green. It looked as if his brother shattering into tiny pieces had stolen more of his time.

  “Your brother didn’t succeed. What makes you think you can?” A challenge, plain and simple, but if I didn’t end the ordeal with these two now, I’d end up dead.

  Troy’s smile fell from his stunned face. “You didn’t…”

  I shrugged. “I’m sorry. I think I just ruined your plans.”

  His black eyes filled with tears. “I’m going to take pleasure in killing you, bitch!”

  “I just want to know one thing before all of this is over. How did you get into the Spook Catcher Council Tower? Their security is topnotch.”

  He smiled, resembling a male version of a hag. “Employees don’t usually have any problems going in and out of the building.”

  What was he saying? “There’s no way, the Council doesn’t hire witches.” Did they even know about their existence?

  “You don’t know anything about the Council. You’d be surprised how many otherworldly creatures are on their payroll,” he said.

  The bastards! They’d been connected all along, probably the reason Papan was hired to provide answers about me. Had the assholes used these two moronic brothers, knowing what their personal intentions were? If they couldn’t do the job themselves, maybe they’d been willing to allow a bunch of evil spooks with grudges to weave into our world in order to terminate me.

  Was the Council masquerading under the name of Obscurus now? Wasn’t that the name Travis had mentioned? How could they be so careless and jeopardize so much? Maybe they were a bigger threat than I believed them to be. I’d always thought the Council just wanted to monopolize the spook catcher trade to reap all the takings. Obviously, there was more to it.

  “Well, at least I’ve blocked off your connection to the shadows.” He frowned at my comment. “You don’t have to look so shocked. I know Travis was your connection to them. Without him, you’re just a useless witch wasting away. I’ve got the perfect tool for that.”

  “What’re you talking about, you crazy bitch?”

  I pointed a finger over his shoulder, at the man now standing behind him.

  “You called?” Oren’s accent was as smooth as ever.

  I had no idea how he’d appeared out of nowhere. For all I knew he could’ve used the door while I’d been in the dark patch with Travis. I didn’t know or care. I just couldn’t believe I was actually glad to see him pop in unannounced.

  Chapter Twenty-Four

  “Oren McKee?” Troy said the name as if it were the stuff of frightening legends. He cowered away from him, backing up until the wall forced him to stop.

  “Yes, I’ve been trailing you for almost a decade now. You certainly are a slippery witch,” he said with a smile as he t
ook a step, dressed in all his black glory. “I’ve travelled all over Europe trying to find you but always remained one step behind. So, you were hiding your witch half behind your brother? What a clever way to remain undetected.”

  Troy lifted his hands in surrender. “I’ll do anything you say.” He pointed at me. “Anything she says. Just please, let me go. Don’t banish me!”

  “I’m afraid it’s too late for that. You managed to violate every single rule in the book. Troyan Slevani, I’ve been granted a warrant to cease your existence the instant we cross paths.” Oren clicked his fingers and an old, yellowed parchment floated in midair. I couldn’t read a word of it from where I stood.

  Oren clicked his fingers a second time and the parchment disappeared.

  “Please, I’ll do anything!”

  “As an Inquisitor for the Alliance, a soldier for ridding the world of all Heresy and Demon worship, it is my duty to burn you until there is nothing left of the black witchcraft travelling through your veins—”

  I took a step forward. “Hold on a sec.”

  Oren cocked an eyebrow. “What is it?”

  “I need to ask him something before you do whatever it is you’re about to do.” Could I sound any dumber?

  Troy fell to his knees and dropped his head. “Ask me anything. Please, just spare my life.”

  “I can’t promise that,” I said, “it’s out of my hands now. But I need to know who put you up to this? Who went to all the trouble of making sure you used the torn fibers to your advantage? I know it was someone at the Council, but which bastard was it?”

  Troy’s eyes widened, tears streamed down his wrinkled face. “We did this, it was all our idea.”

  “You can have him, Oren,” I said stepping back.

  “Wait!” Troy crawled to rest his forehead on my sneakers. “I, we…we were hired by Mace.”

  “Mace Clamber?”