Darker Days tda-1

by Jus Accardo

  He slipped the button through the hole. When his fingers went for the zipper, I started to scream.

  Thrashing. Kicking. Clawing. Anything to keep from remaining still. I was screaming incoherently—no words—just sound. Awful, ear-damaging sound. Anything that might attract attention. It bounced off the trees and echoed though the forest. My muscles were on fire, straining and pulling to get free.

  But it was useless. Like a bimbo from a bad horror flick, I’d run us into the woods. Away from his house. Away from people. We were secluded.

  Idiot. I was an idiot.

  I continued to thrash, pinned down by strong hands wrapped securely around my neck to keep me in place. Through my hair, I could see his eyes. The icy, almost inhuman sound of his voice was nothing compared to the spark of madness I saw gleaming there. This person wore his face—had his body on like a cheap suit—but it wasn’t Garrett.

  The zipper slipped a few teeth and I stilled.

  “You’ll see,” he whispered in my ear. Funny how at that moment, I thought about Lukas and the way I’d felt when he’d whispered in my ear. Amazing how the same thing, done under such different circumstances, could have such a vastly different effect.

  I tried to push him away again, but my energy was gone. Stupid, stupid, stupid. Instead of the wild thrashing, I should have conserved.

  “We’ll be so good together,” Garrett continued. “We were meant to be.”

  And then he was gone.

  The pressure of his body lifted and the space where he’d been was nothing more than chilly, empty air.

  “Where I come from,” a dark voice snarled. “You treat a woman with respect.”

  Garrett crashed through the trees and landed somewhere to my right. It was too dark to see, but I knew that voice. Lukas.

  “You never raise your voice,” Lukas hissed, his dark silhouette advancing. “You never use foul language.”

  He grabbed Garrett by the shirt front and spun him around. Slamming him up against the nearest tree, he said, “And you never lay hands on her.”

  For a moment, all I could do was watch. Watch and think. About running myself into the middle of nowhere. About what had almost happened. About what Lukas might be capable of doing to Garrett… Everything felt watery and surreal, but I still knew right from wrong. Regardless of how twisted my insides felt, this hadn’t been Garrett’s fault.

  Hip throbbing and wrist on fire, I staggered to my feet just in time to stop him. Garrett was limp in his arms, head lolling awkwardly to the side. His eyes were closed and, even in the dark, I could see the trail of red leaking from his nose and the right corner of his lip.

  “Lukas—Stop…” I grabbed his arm as he was about to strike again. My heart hammered so hard that I was sure it would explode from my chest, and I could barely breathe, but I managed to say, “Vida. It was Vida. She touched him in the cafeteria yesterday, remember? He wasn’t thinking straight. He was infected.”

  The muscles in his arm twitched, but he didn’t lower his fist.

  “Nothing happened. I’m okay.”

  He turned to me, eyes wide and mouth agape. For a second, he actually looked angry. Not at Garrett, but at me. “Nothing happened?”

  “He knocked me to the ground. That’s all. You got here before it could go any further.” I tugged on his arm again, this time harder, hoping to God he couldn’t hear the terror I felt. “You got here in time.”

  Lukas took a deep breath and held it. Slowly, he blew out through pressed lips and lowered his hand. I grabbed it and squeezed, afraid he’d lash out again.

  His fingers wrapped tight around mine. He was squeezing so hard, I thought my fingers might pop off. “You’re all right?”

  I nodded. “I’m all right.” Truthfully, I was numb, but telling Lukas that would only make things worse.

  With my free hand, I tugged the cuff of his shirt. “Let’s get him back to the office. Mom will know what to do with him ’til this wears off.”

  Chapter Eighteen

  Garrett screamed for almost an hour after we got him back to the office. It got so bad that Mom had to gag him so the neighbors wouldn’t call the cops. Most of it was incoherent. Rage-fed growls and a string of inventive curses, but once in awhile, he’d scream my name.

  Mom asked if I was all right and let it drop. She promised to pick it up tomorrow, though, because technically, I’d snuck out and she wasn’t thrilled. It probably hadn’t helped that I’d been covered in mud and wearing the forest floor as a fashion accessory when we walked through the door, either.

  I didn’t know what I’d tell her. What I could tell her. With a mom like mine, the last thing you want to do is tattle on someone. His fault or not, she’d have Garrett hanging upside down over an unending pit of ravenous, flesh eating demons for trying to hurt her little girl. And with Dad there? I didn’t even want to think about the things he’d do.

  I’d sat quietly and listened to Mom call Mrs. Redding at the hospital to tell her we got into the liquor cabinet. Since we were snockered, Mom told her she was going to keep Garrett here overnight and would bring him home in the morning.

  In truth, an associate of Mom’s, a Voodoo priestess named McKenna, was coming over at first light to fling a whammy on Garrett. It would help speed things along. After McKenna did her mojo, Garrett would sleep for a day and wake up normal.

  We hoped.

  After everything was squared away, Mom and Dad slipped away to follow a lead they’d heard on the police scanner. A nightclub downtown had erupted into a scene from a porno gone wrong. They hoped to catch Lust. I was instructed to stay put, and I think I made Mom more suspicious when I didn’t bother arguing. They headed out and I promptly left Lukas curled up on the couch and retreated to shower.

  When I got back to my room, I heaved my backpack onto the bed and pulled out the first thing my fingers touched. My history book. Flipping to a random page, I sucked in a deep breath and gripped the edge of the book like it might try to run away. The words danced in blurry waves, and everything grew hazy. The fiery unease I’d been trying so hard to tamp down since we’d left the woods ignited, and the tears spilled over. I’d been doing a great job ignoring what happened—what could have happened—but here in the dark, alone, it was a neon elephant dancing a jig with bells on in the middle in the room.

  I don’t know how long I sat there—curled into a ball and crying like a baby—before he came in.

  I didn’t look up as he crossed the room, or as the bed sagged under his weight. I didn’t pull away or stop crying when he slipped behind me and wrapped his arms around my shoulders. Normally, I would’ve sucked it up. Even Mom didn’t get to see me bawling like a baby. But part of me wanted Lukas there. I wanted him to see that under my hard shell and weirdness—according to him—I was just a human girl.

  Just a girl…

  “You’re all right now,” he whispered. His voice sent soothing ripples over my skin and chased away the numbness. A tiny voice in the back of my mind raged at me over the reaction, but for once, I ignored it.

  We sat there, silent except for my occasional sniffle. The moon peeked through the window on the other side of the room, casting our shadows across the wall behind the bed.

  After a while, the silence got too heavy. Plus, there was something I’d been wanting to ask him. “How did you find me in the woods? How did you know?”

  “I saw you leave. Out the window. I followed.”

  Wow. Way to be stealthy. I seriously needed to work on that. “Why?”

  He didn’t answer right away. When he did, his voice came barely above a whisper. “I’m not sure. I suppose I was worried. About you.”

  A few more minutes passed. All I could hear was the soft sound of Lukas’ heart beating in my ear. With the window open, the cool night breeze blew through the room, chilling the air. His arms, wrapped tight around me, were almost electrifying in contrast. I snuggled closer and breathed in deep. He still smelled like the forest—which should have bother
ed me after what happened—but there was something else. Something comforting. Something all Lukas.

  “Tell me something.” I felt comfortable—safe—and somehow that felt wrong. Too intimate. It went well beyond liking his voice and taking comfort in his presence, and that scared me. “About you. Tell me something no one else knew. A secret.”

  “Painting,” he answered almost instantly.

  I shifted around so I could see him. With his head tilted down, his bangs had fallen across his eyes so that the only part of his face I could see was from the nose down. He was smiling. Not a passing grin or a two-second smirk, but a genuine smile.

  It was amazing. It lit up the dark and made the butterflies in my stomach dance in crazy circles.

  “Painting?”

  “It’s all I ever wanted to do. Paint.”

  “That’s a secret?”

  He nodded, smile fading. “It was. I never told anyone.”

  “Why would you keep that a secret?”

  “Where I’m from, a man is expected to follow his father—not pursue unrealistic dreams.”

  “What did you paint?”

  “Anything. People were my passion, though.”

  “Why people?”

  “Because there’s so much to see. When you paint someone, you have to look at them. Really look at them. You can see it all—everything they keep hidden. It’s all in the eyes. Truly a window to the soul.” He sighed. “It was my peace. My calm. It kept me grounded when all else was in upheaval.”

  “It sounds nice.”

  “Your turn. Tell me something about you.”

  “There’s nothing secret about me.” I gave him a small smile and swiped a hand across my damp eyes, suddenly embarrassed. “I’m an open book.”

  “Surely there’s something. Do you like helping your mother at the agency? Don’t you ever get scared?”

  Not until today. “I was raised around this stuff. It’s second nature to me. I guess my big confession is that normal people scare me.”

  “Normal people? Why would normal people scare you?”

  “Things aren’t the same as your time. Read the paper—watch the news. Demons and all the other nasty things that go bump in the shadows—they have an excuse most of the time. It’s their nature. People, though? They’re horrible because they choose to be. Humans are more dangerous than any Otherworlder I’ve ever come in contact with.”

  “Working with your mother, you must see human atrocities.”

  “I guess—they just never happen to me. It doesn’t seem real. It’s a pretty messed up world where a girl can take down a high ranking demon but—”

  “What happened with your friend wasn’t—”

  “I know…” It was the truth. Garrett would never have done anything to hurt me if he’d been thinking straight. He just wasn’t that kind of guy. But even knowing that, I wasn’t sure I could ever look at him—or people in general—the same way again.

  Lukas was right. I’d seen plenty in the years I’d been helping Mom. But it was different. Detached. People were bad—but I was never the target of that bad. I’d never been made to feel like a victim. It scared me because, really, Garrett was my lifeline to normal. Not Garrett specifically, but school. I meant it when I told Mom I had no interest in living a normal life, but I did like to visit on occasion. But now, every time I closed my eyes, I saw him hovering above me. I felt the weight of his body pinning me down. Pressing the air from my lungs…

  “I believe the effects on Garrett were heightened because he has feelings for you.”

  An insane giggle slipped past my lips despite my best efforts to keep it in. “That’s hysterical! Garrett doesn’t have a thing for me.”

  Lukas shook his head. “That is one thing about women I see has not changed. You are all so oblivious…”

  “Quite the comedian when ya wanna be, eh?”

  He chuckled, then took a deep breath. Face serious, he said, “I have a confession as well.”

  For some reason my heart sped up. His arms still around me, we were face to face—inches apart. “Oh?”

  “The day I asked for your help, that first day in the office—it wasn’t about securing my freedom from the box. It was about revenge.”

  “Against the witch?”

  “Yes.”

  “But Meredith Wells is long dead.”

  “It was Meredith’s bloodline that kept me there—trapped. The Wells bloodline. When the box was opened, all I could think about was destroying her descendants.”

  “But if you destroyed the descendants, you’d never be free.”

  “It didn’t matter. I was consumed by anger and hate. I’d been betrayed by the same line three times.”

  “It’s understandable that you’d want revenge.”

  He nodded. “Jessie, that’s only half my confession.”

  “There’s more?”

  “There is. As I said, it was about revenge in the beginning. I didn’t care about what happened after I destroyed Meredith’s line.”

  “And now?”

  He tilted his head to the right. The curtain of hair parted and the moonlight glittered off the light in his liquid brown eyes. “I don’t want to go back. I’m willing to let my revenge go—as long as I can stay.”

  “Well, this is an awesome time to live—”

  He reached out and cupped the side of my face. “You.” He leaned closer—our lips were almost touching now, but he didn’t push forward. “I want to stay because of you. I’ve never come across someone like you. Your strength and determination is astounding. It’s odd because you’re so incredibly infuriating—”

  “Kids our age don’t say things like incredibly infuriating—just so you know.”

  “Shh.” He placed his index finger across my lips. “My entire life, all I wanted was to find something different. Special. I never would have guessed I’d have to sleep for so long to find it.”

  He paused, face so close to mine. A lot of girls would have pulled away. Maybe I should have, considering what had almost happened earlier, but being there with Lukas, in his arms, made me feel safer than I had in a long time. His nearness wasn’t uncomfortable like it had been with Garrett. In fact, it was just the opposite. It made me feel ten feet tall and nearly bullet proof. If this was anything like the feeling Mom got around Dad, then I understood everything.

  And then he kissed me. At first, I didn’t know what to do. His lips moved over mine, soft, warm, and tasting faintly of the ketchup he’d slathered his french fries in at dinner. Arms tightening around my waist, he urged me closer, teasing my lips apart with his tongue.

  I mimicked his movements, terrified I was doing it wrong. But he didn’t complain. Instead, a small noise of contentment sounded low in his throat. The sound tickled my stomach and sent a chill racing up my spine. Seconds later, that single chill exploded into fireworks. Grand finale on the Fourth of July fireworks.

  Falling. It was like falling. Wind in your hair, freefalling into perfection plus. In that moment, I really understood the fuss people made about love. The look in Mom’s eyes when she talked about Dad. The sappy grin I saw girls wearing as they gossiped about their first dates. I got it. And for the first time, I thought maybe, just maybe, I could have it, too.

  After a few moments, he pulled away, and even in the dark, I could see his face flushing.

  “I apologize. That was highly inappropriate.”

  I almost giggled. I wondered what he’d think of HBO or Showtime if he thought that had been inappropriate. “I’ve got a news flash for you—that’s not as inappropriate as it was in your time.”

  “Such things are kept between husbands and wives among honorable society. But you—”

  “Me?”

  “You do strange things to my control.” He sucked in a deep breath. “One minute, your simple presence is enough to pull me back from the brink—I would have killed your friend in the forest had it not been for you—and the next… The next, you make me forget myself entire
ly.”

  I clucked my tongue. “So much to learn, young Jedi. So much to learn.”

  “Jedi?”

  “Shh,” I whispered. Taking his face in my hands, I said, “Did you want to do that again?”

  Chapter Nineteen

  2 days left…

  When I woke up, Lukas had gone—but I wasn’t alone.

  And for some reason, I wasn’t in bed.

  “Mom?”

  She was sitting in the armchair across my room, coffee in hand. Bleh. Hazelnut. I could smell it. “Can I ask why you’re sleeping on the floor in the corner—and what that thing drooling on your foot is?”

  I looked down to see none other than Mr. Winkie, head resting on my foot and snoring softly. A trail of green, slimy drool leaked down my sock and pooled on the floor beneath my ankle. Good thing my room wasn’t carpeted. The stain would never come out. “For crap’s sake…”

  “Something you’d like to tell me?”

  I shook off the demon and climbed to my feet. The possessed corgi stretched and gave a lazy yawn. With a single yip and several swishes of the tail, he disappeared in a thick cloud of stinky black smoke.

  I waved it away and readied myself for a lecture. “Apparently, work followed me home from that pet possession the other day.” Arching my back, I stretched toward the ceiling to release a crick in my neck, muscles protesting as though I’d been down there all night. “And as for the floor, you can ask, but I can’t answer.”

  She let it go. “We need to talk.”

  Normally, a statement like that from Mom wouldn’t worry me. But lately, I’d broken so many rules—and with what happened with Garrett—I was nervous. I wasn’t ready to talk about it. I might never be ready.

  “I’m afraid I have some bad news.”

  Bad news sucked, but I breathed a sigh of relief. Any morning that didn’t start with a lecture was a win in my book.

  She hesitated, then set her coffee down on the floor beside the chair. “Jessie, I know you’re a smart girl, but I’m feeling the need to remind you Lukas isn’t human.”