The Darkening (Immortals)

by Robin T. Popp

  “Even if it means your death?”

  “I can’t shy away from exposing the truth because of what might happen. Besides, I think you’re exaggerating.”

  “Oh, excuse me,” Lexi said sarcastically. “Wasn’t that you who almost died last night?”

  Mai sighed again. “But I didn’t die, and now I have an obligation to expose them. Now, are you going with me?”

  Lexi crossed her arms and stared defiantly at her friend. If she had to stop Mai by force, she would. “No.”

  “Okay, then. I’ll see you later.” Mai waved her hand and was gone.

  Lexi swore. She’d forgotten that Mai’s magic allowed her to teleport like that.

  Left standing alone, Lexi didn’t know what to do. She could go after her friend, but then what? Mai had just proved how easy it was for her to get away.

  Lexi used her key to lock Mai’s front door and left. There had to be another way to keep Mai from getting in trouble, but it would be easier to shut down the club than to convince Mai to leave.

  That was when it hit her. She would call in an anonymous tip to the police branch of the Department of Vampirism and report an illegal mass conversion taking place at the club. Such an event would be equivalent to mass killing. After last night’s disaster, the police would shut down the club in a heartbeat.

  She caught a cab and had the driver drop her off about a block from the club where she found a pay phone and placed the call. Then she ducked behind a trash Dumpster, where she took off her clothes and shifted to wolf form. No one would pay much attention to a stray dog.

  She only had to wait about ten minutes before she heard the sirens. It wouldn’t be long now.

  Inside the Crypt, Darius sat at the bar nursing his drink. He was scanning the crowd, looking for Paddy Darby, when a commotion to his left caught his attention. He turned and saw the crowd part for a little gray-haired man who climbed up on a bar stool.

  He seemed unsteady in his movements, and Darius knew the leprechaun had been doing some heavy drinking that evening.

  Darius stood and moved along the bar until he reached the empty stool beside the little man. “Hello, Paddy,” he said, sitting down.

  The leprechaun looked up, startled. “What are you doing here? You can’t take me in. My court date isn’t for another week.”

  “Relax. I’m not really a bounty hunter. I was just helping out a friend,” Darius added when Paddy looked confused.

  That seemed to make the little man less worried, and he called to the bartender. “You there—how about a drink over here?” Paddy turned his attention back to Darius. “You want a drink?”

  “No, but I’d like some answers.”

  “Can I get a glass of whiskey over here?” Paddy shouted impatiently at the bartender, who seemed to be ignoring him. He sighed and turned back to Darius. “What kind of answers?”

  “Like what’s your name doing all over a bunch of ACFs found at last night’s vampire initiation ceremony, Dr. D. Patrick?”

  The leprechaun sighed. “I help people die,” he said. “I’m the Dr. Kevorkian of the vampire world. Just because you don’t approve doesn’t mean what I do is illegal. I assure you that my medical credentials are quite legitimate, and the signatures on those forms were put there by the initiates themselves.”

  Darius was starting to think that there was more to Paddy Darby than he’d first assumed. About to press him further about his participation in the conversions, he was stopped by the sound of a shrill whistle. People suddenly started shouting and running for the door.

  “What’s going on?” he asked Paddy, who was using the opportunity to lean over the counter and help himself to a full bottle of whiskey while the bartender was distracted.

  “It’s a raid,” he said casually. “They’re trying to outrun the I.S.”

  Darius wasn’t sure he wanted to ask. “What’s the I.S.?”

  Paddy glanced at him in surprise. “Where are you from anyway?” Before Darius could answer him, Paddy’s eyes shifted to something behind Darius’s shoulder. “That,” he said, gesturing with the whiskey bottle, “is the I.S. Immobilization Spell.” He tipped the bottle back and took several healthy swallows. “They’re all crazy.” He gestured to the people scrambling to get out. “No one ever outruns the I.S.”

  Darius turned to see what Paddy had been pointing to and saw a shimmering wave of light passing over the room. Each person it touched froze instantly. Darius didn’t even have a chance to consider outrunning it before the beam touched him and left his body in a state of paralysis.

  The noise of chaos in the room slowly subsided as more patrons were touched by the spell until, finally, silence reigned. After several long minutes, he heard voices talking behind him.

  “Did you find anything in the back?” one asked.

  “Just the usual,” a second answered. “No initiation taking place here.”

  “Damn it,” the first voice swore. “It must have been a crank. Still, after that incident at the KOB, better safe than sorry. Let’s take everyone back until we can sort things out.”

  “The van’s here,” a third voice announced.

  “Then let’s get started,” the first replied.

  Though he couldn’t move his head, to a limited extent Darius could still see what was going on around him. Men in uniforms moved into his field of vision and, one by one, picked up an immobilized patron and walked off with them. When it was Darius’s turn, he tried to move, but whatever magic they were using still held him in its grip.

  He was carried outside and placed, standing up, in the back of a van. When it was full, the doors were closed and the van took off.

  It didn’t take long to make the trip to the police station, where he was placed in a large cell with others. They stood like so many statues, and then, as soon as the doors were closed and locked, the spell wore off and they could move about.

  Immediately several men started yelling for their lawyers. Darius noticed that Paddy simply walked over to one of the benches and sat down.

  Darius went to sit beside him. “Now what?” he asked.

  Paddy gave him a surprised look. “You really don’t know?”

  Darius shook his head. “I’m not from around here,” he said simply.

  Paddy studied him through blurry eyes. “You might as well sit back and relax. The police will have to talk to everyone in order to decide who they want to detain and who should be released.”

  “How long will that take?” It occurred to Darius that if he could get to the club while everyone was still being questioned, he’d have time to start exploring what lay beyond that magically protected door he’d discovered.

  Paddy shrugged. “I don’t know. A couple of hours, at least—unless you know someone who can get you out early.”

  “Like?”

  “Like a lawyer, or what about your girlfriend? She’s in the business, right?”

  Darius wasn’t about to tell him that he’d be lucky if Lexi ever talked to him again. “Yeah, but I don’t want to bother her.”

  Paddy gave him a look that clearly said he thought Darius was crazy, but he only shrugged. “Suit yourself.”

  The little man leaned his head against the back wall and closed his eyes. Darius let him sit for a minute before asking him a question that had been bothering him since he first started talking to him in the bar. “What happened to your accent?”

  Paddy opened a single eye to stare at him for a long moment. At first, Darius thought it was because he either didn’t understand the question or didn’t want to answer it, but then he realized it was because the little man was starting to feel the full effects of having guzzled all that whiskey just before being brought in.

  “The accent?” Darius reminded him.

  “Never had it,” he admitted, his words growing a bit slurred. He teetered precariously on the edge of the cot until Darius was afraid he might fall off. “Born and raised here in New York City.”

  Darius gave him a curi
ous look. “Then why—”

  “Because people expect to hear it, don’t they? They see a leprechaun and expect him to talk like he just stepped off the boat from Ireland.”

  Darius supposed Paddy was right. They fell silent, and Darius’s gaze traveled over the other men in the cell. They were an assortment of vampires, humans and possibly even werewolves, though he wasn’t positive. Definitely not the type one wanted to get chummy with.

  As he continued to study them, he slowly became aware of a soft humming coming from beside him.

  “Oh, the end is nigh, me bonny lass, so here’s a kiss good-bye. We’ll not fare well when they loose the hounds of hell, so lift the tankard high, love, and drink until ye die.”

  “Hey, wee man,” one of the men across the way shouted. “Shut the fuck up.”

  Darius looked over and saw three inmates glaring at Paddy, who fell quiet beside him.

  “On second thought,” the man continued, “why don’t I come over there and show you what you can do with your mouth?” He stood up. “I bet you’re the perfect height for it—you won’t even have to get on your knees.”

  The man and his buddies gave roars of laughter while Paddy shifted nervously on his seat.

  “Leave him alone,” Darius said, standing up.

  The man gave him a condescending smile. “I’m sorry, did you say something?”

  “You heard me,” Darius said as the two buddies stood to join their friend. “Leave him alone.”

  “Or what?”

  Darius didn’t have a chance to reply before the three attacked. Since none of them had weapons, it didn’t even occur to him to lift one of his tattoos. He blocked the first man’s punch, slammed his fist into the man’s stomach and heard the satisfying sound of hissing air.

  “Is that all you’ve got?” Darius taunted.

  The other two rushed him, and he smiled. He hadn’t trained for seven hundred years for nothing.

  He went to work, fists flying, and soon the two lay in a heap on the floor. Darius turned to find the first man holding Paddy against the wall, his hand gripping the leprechaun’s throat. Already, Paddy’s face was turning a dark red as the man’s hand tightened.

  Darius moved with lightning-fast speed, grabbed the man by his shoulder and turned him enough that Darius could drive his fist into his face. It was enough to snap his head to the side, and he fell to the ground, unconscious.

  Darius turned to address the rest of his cellmates with a hard look. “Is there anyone else who wants to make sport with the leprechaun? No?” He nodded and sat down on the bench. “Someone get this scum out of my sight,” he muttered, scowling at the man’s unconscious form. Several men stepped forward and pulled the body to the other side of the cell. They dropped him beside the bodies of his two friends.

  Suddenly tired, Darius leaned forward, resting his elbows on his knees.

  “Thank you,” Paddy said beside him.

  “No problem,” Darius said without bothering to lift his head. He heard the little man walk off, and a second later, he felt something cool against the back of his neck just before it started stinging.

  “You’re bleeding,” Paddy said when Darius tried to lift his head. “Let me take a look at the cut.”

  Darius put his head down, gathered his hair in one hand and pulled it out of the way. Paddy had to stand on the bench in order to see.

  “Is it bad?” Darius asked, hearing the leprechaun’s quick intake of breath.

  “This pentacle tattoo—where’d you get it?”

  Darius considered how best to answer. “It’s a family mark,” he said.

  Paddy stared at it a little longer. “I know someone with this same mark on them. Only it’s not on his neck. It’s on his cheek.”

  Darius tried not to show his excitement. “You’ve met my brother Tain?”

  Caution flashed across Paddy’s eyes. “He’s your brother?”

  Darius nodded.

  “What about Amadja?” Paddy asked. “Do you know him?”

  “He’s an old acquaintance,” Darius said.

  “How come I haven’t seen you around the club before?” Paddy asked warily.

  “Because I’ve been away, tending to other business,” Darius replied. “I only got back the other day, and before I let Amadja drag me into his schemes, I wanted to spend a little time with a certain bounty hunter. You can understand that.” He gave the leprechaun a wink and waited to see if the little man bought his story.

  Apparently he did, so Darius pressed his advantage. “Why does a leprechaun physician get mixed up with demons?”

  Paddy sighed. “Money.” Darius felt more of an explanation was coming, so he didn’t say anything. “About six years ago, I got drunk before an operation and I accidentally maimed a patient. A child.” So far, the story meshed with what Darius had heard from Alise.

  “I lost everything” Paddy continued. “That’s when I fell in with the vampires. Vampire gangs pay for new members, and I needed the money. Someone wants to become a vampire? I don’t care. I’ll sign their conversion forms. The money was good—better than I was getting paid from my regular practice, so I started focusing on just the conversions.” He looked away, and Darius knew that what the little man wasn’t telling him was that he’d focused a little too much on finding new converts—to the point of occasionally converting patients who didn’t want to be converted.

  “Eventually, the Bloods found out what I was doing and refused to take any more, so I started working exclusively with the Vlads. Then Amadja came to see me and told me that he would replace my pot of gold if I sent him five hundred converts in a year’s time. It was a lot, but it was doable. Then, a couple of weeks ago, he tells me I have to find the five hundred in four weeks.” Paddy looked at Darius in frustration. “It’s impossible, but you know Amadja. You can’t cross him.”

  “So that’s what the initiation ceremony last night was all about? Meeting the quota for converts?”

  “You know about that?”

  Darius nodded.

  Paddy shook his head. “Then you know what a disaster it was. Now I have to find replacements. How can I possibly find that many people and get them converted by the full moon?”

  “Why the full moon?” Darius asked.

  “Because that’s when he’s going to open Satan’s Gate.”

  Darius could only stare at Paddy in amazement. He’d forgotten all about Satan’s Gate. How long ago was it that Re and Eosphoros, the “dawn-bringer,” fought? Eosphoros, later known as Lucifer, had unleashed his 666 shade demons on the world in an effort to destroy all human life. Many had died before Re had succeeded in luring the shade demons into a secret dimension, where he’d locked them away for all eternity.

  But if what Paddy said was true, then Amadja had found them and was planning to release his “hounds of hell” once more on an unsuspecting world. He was about to ask the little man more when several policemen walked in.

  “When I call your name, line up at the cell door,” one of them instructed.

  He started calling out names and, one by one, men from the cell went to stand by the door. Paddy was one of them. They were led off and didn’t return. About twenty minutes later, the police came back for another group.

  Darius began thinking about his escape. He considered using his key, but he wasn’t about to fight the entire New York City police force to get out of jail when he knew it was just a matter of time before he was released.

  Finally, he was led to another room where police questioned him about why he’d been in the bar. He assured them that he’d been there for a drink only, and after hours of no doubt hearing the same story, they believed him.

  “Okay, Darius with no last name. Do you have anyone who can come down to the station and vouch for you?” one of them asked when they were done with their questions.

  Darius gave him a bored look. “Can’t you just let me go?”

  “Normally, yes, but since you don’t have any ID on you, we’re go
ing to have to run your prints through the system first. That could take a while.”

  Darius was afraid “a while” might turn out to be a very long time. “You can try calling Lexi Corvin,” he said. “Her number is with the things you took from me.”

  The officer nodded. “I know Lexi. You’re a friend of hers?”

  The exact nature of their relationship was not something Darius cared to go into with a stranger, so he nodded and watched the officer leave.

  He returned a short while later with an amused expression on his face. “The good news is that she knows you. The bad news is that she’s not coming for you. You two have a fight?” The officer laughed. “You might as well get comfortable, friend. I’ll start running your prints through the system.”

  Darius couldn’t say he was surprised. He’d lived enough years with Sekhmet to know that hell truly hath no fury like a woman scorned.

  CHAPTER SIXTEEN

  Lexi walked into the office the next morning feeling drained and tired. She’d had no idea Darius was in the bar when she’d made the call to the police, so when Mike from the station had called asking if she could vouch for him and pick him up, she’d been stunned.

  Unfortunately, she had just returned from the police station with Mai, who was already talking about going back to the Crypt that night. There was no way Lexi could afford to leave her, and she hoped Darius would understand.

  Dealing with Mai had been a nightmare. Lexi had spent the whole night trying to convince her how dangerous the Crypt was. In the end, she was afraid her cautions had fallen on deaf ears. Mai was likely to return to the Crypt at her first opportunity, and Lexi simply could not spend every waking minute making sure she didn’t. Hence her reason for going into the office a little earlier than normal.

  Marge eyed her when she walked in. “You’re not looking so hot,” she said bluntly. “And don’t tell me it’s that time of month, because I’ve known you for three years and ‘that’ time of month has never been this hard on you.”

  “This month is the exception,” Lexi muttered, nodding toward the back. “Is TJ in?”

  “Yeah, he’s in.”