by Jus Accardo
The thrill of the fight and the surge of adrenaline was the kind of thing I lived for. Nothing made me feel more alive than facing off against some big bad and cutting it down to size.
One by one, we took them down. Twenty minutes later, we stood in the wreckage of the room, all covered in viscous, black blood, smelling like mold, and gasping for air. Ruined bodies spread out before us, things were finally silent.
“I haven’t had a workout like that in some time,” Dad said, wiping a hand across his jeans. It left a trail of black slime. His eyes met Mom’s, and suddenly I could see why there’d never been anyone else in her life. Why there’d never be anyone else. She and Dad were two of a kind. A pair of deadly peas in a pod. He crossed the room and swept her into his arms.
“Reminds me of our first date,” he laughed softly.
Mom’s reply was a soft chuckle and a quick peck on the lips.
Their first date? They went mashing on their first date? Seriously. Now I was way jealous.
I flicked a glob of slime from my own hand and reached under the bed to pull out the first aid kit. Nothing devastating. A couple gashes, a crap-ton of bruises, and I was betting quite a few strained muscles judging by the way Mom was moving, but all in all, pretty clean. No broken bones and no sliced arteries. Any fight you could walk away from was a win. Any fight you could walk away from without needing a transfusion or a cast? Epic win.
Silence set in as we went to work, checking each other over and taking stock. The bedroom door was in two large pieces out in the hall, and we’d never get the lamiae bloodstains off the floor. Time to carpet the apartment. Why was it that all demon bodily fluid stained?
Lukas and I sat on the floor, leaning against Mom’s ruined dresser as I cleaned a sizeable slash on his forearm. Dad was over by the closet stitching up Mom’s shoulder while she bandaged her own wrist. Battlefield triage had nothing on us.
Unfortunately, the silence didn’t last long. From the first floor, something loud shattered. More glass.
“What was that?” Lukas was on his feet and in the doorway before I could stop him.
Seconds later, he got his answer as another wave of lamiae swarmed the stairs. He scrambled back into the room as the window behind us shattered.
Bottlenecking the doorway and crashing through the windows like ants to a picnic, the lamiae were everywhere. Three times as many as before. We held them off for a few minutes, but even with one and a half demons, the incarnation of rage, and the queen of kick-ass, we never stood a chance.
It all happened so fast. One minute, we were licking our wounds, the next we were drowning in carnage. They swarmed Lukas, two hitting him from behind and knocking him to the floor. I launched forward to help, blindly shoving through the crowd, but one of the lamiae grabbed me. I jammed my elbow back and heard the bone-crunching crack as it connected with the thing’s head. It howled in pain and made another attempt, but I whirled around, wedging my sneaker hard into its gut. It careened backwards, colliding with the two advancing on Mom, and knocking them all to the ground like icky bowling pins toppling for the perfect strike. When I turned back, Lukas had managed to wrestle himself out from under the first two, but there were too many. I watched helplessly as more came, one baring its teeth and piercing the skin at the hollow of his neck. He screamed, eyes rolling back as they dragged him back to the ground and I swallowed back a cry as he disappeared beneath them.
Dad was next. Three of them piled on top of him, teeth piercing the flesh of his legs and forearm in multiple spots. Demons were tougher than humans. It took a little more effort, but with a few extra chomps, the venom did its trick and Dad crumbled to the floor just like Lukas.
“Stay close!” Mom yelled above the chaos. I heard her, but barely. The only other sound I could hear was the whooshing noise her machete made as it sliced through the air—and lamiae flesh.
We kept them off for a few minutes, but there were just too many. Even for us. Stuck in a small space with limited resources and two soldiers down for the count, this wasn’t going to end well.
Something hit me from behind. A sharp knock between my neck and right shoulder blade. Vision swam and a chill raced up my spine as the ground kind of wobbled, taking me down. A second later, there was a sharp stinging in my left shoulder. Mom screamed, and when I tried to turn around, the world went dark.
Chapter Twenty-nine
12 hours left…
Something was ringing. Soft and distant. Too low to be my alarm and too warbly to be my cell. Fingers splayed, I felt underneath me. Cold and hard. A little slippery. Not soft. Not my bed.
Screaming. Black blood and crooked teeth. Flashes of steel and the sound of clinking metal.
The lamiae.
Craps.
Eyes open, I struggled to my feet. Everything was hazy. Like someone had come along and coated the entire room in several layers of plastic wrap. Blinking, things snapped into focus for a second—bodies and blood—then out the next. Faint shapes and blurry colors were all that remained.
“Mom?” My throat was sore. Like I’d swallowed something too hot. When I got no answer, a knot started to form in the pit of my stomach and a chill tickled my spine. “Dad?” I tried.
Nothing except more ringing.
What the hell was that? Still wobbly, I made my way toward the sound. Something on the floor—something big and unmoving—sent me to the ground. I landed hard on my knees, hand thrust in front of me. When I pulled back, my fingers were coated with something dark and sticky. I sniffed it and almost gagged. I wiped them down the side of my shirt and, after several failed attempts, stumbled upright.
“Lukas?” I called. From somewhere behind me, he groaned. Good. Alive. That was all I needed for the moment. “Mom?”
Still no answer. The quiet was wrong. She should be answering me.
The ringing continued. It seemed to be coming from somewhere below. The office, maybe. When I got to the stairs, I crouched down. I didn’t trust myself to get down them without tripping, so I inched one step at a time on my butt like I had when I was a kid. Even then, I managed to slip once and slide a few extra steps, bruising my tailbone. It was official. Now everything ached.
When I hit the bottom, things snapped back into focus again—this time for a few seconds longer. I was able to see the source of the noise. The phone on Mom’s desk.
“Ma?” I called as everything phased back to blurry again. The lamiae venom. It had to be. After a few spills and not-so-near misses with the furniture on the way across the room, then several swipes of nothing but air, I managed to grab the phone. Several more attempts and I actually got it to my ear.
“Look who has finally decided to grace us with her presence,” an annoying, sing-song voice said on the other end.
“Who the—” The venom might’ve been making me slower, but at the sound of her voice, it all clicked. That knot in my stomach exploded and the air got caught in my throat. “Where are they?”
Laughter.
Gripping the edge of the desk, I let myself sink to the floor. Things were still a blurry mesh of shapeless blobs of color, and it was starting to make me nauseous. If I hadn’t sat down, I probably would have fallen down.
“You have—” My mind went blank. I had to concentrate. The venom was making it nearly impossible to focus. Mom. Dad. Trouble. The chill in my spine spread throughout my body. This couldn’t be happening—the venom was making me hallucinate. “If you hurt them—”
“Here’s how it’s going to work,” she said, all business now. “You bring your spunky self to a location of my choosing—along with Lukas, the box, and the three Sins you’ve got—and Mommy and Daddy go free.”
“I wanna talk—”
More laughter. “I don’t care what you want, sister. This is all about what I want now.”
“You said this wasn’t about the Sins. Why do you want the box?”
“One more question and one of your parents doesn’t see tomorrow,” she warned.
/> I pinched the bridge of my nose hard. Meredith’s elevator didn’t go all the way to the top. Arguing with crazy never got you anywhere good. Thinking about Mom and Dad, I bit my tongue. If I pushed her, she might really hurt them. “Where?”
“Some place festive. Give me a bit. I’ll call you back.”
“How—”
The line went dead.
…
Lukas squirmed a little in his seat. “You’re quiet. Are you okay?”
“Well, I’m not feelin’ the double rainbow, but I’ll live.”
“She said nothing else?”
I poured thick pink liquid onto the towel and blotted Lukas’ neck. Made from demon blood—which ironically had healing properties—and an obscure herb in the wilds of Australia, the Lupkee elixir was given to Mom by an Aborigine woman we’d helped once. We used it sparingly—worst cases only. Most Otherworlders, if they got enough salvia into a human’s bloodstream, caused serious infection. The Lupkee elixir was sort of supernaturally charged penicillin. We’d never had any serious after-effects from a bite, so I guessed it worked.
The lamiae bite foamed and sizzled, and Lukas took it like a trooper. The crap stung—I knew because I’d complained like a baby when he’d cleaned mine.
“She was vague,” I said, slapping white medical tape across the gauze. “Wouldn’t give me any info. Said she’d call back.” And in the meantime, I had to sit on my thumb and hope her particular brand of nuts didn’t explode all over my parents. Freaking awesome.
It was after midnight—we must have been out for hours after the attack. Stepping back, I fished into my back pocket for my cell, but what I pulled out wasn’t a phone. It was a key.
“What’s that?” Lukas took the small key ring from me. “Guardian Self Storage,” he read aloud.
I took the key back, examining it closer. “I found this under the couch the other day. Totally forgot about it.”
“What does it go to?”
I shrugged and pocketed the key. “No clue. It’s not mine, and it’s not Mom’s, which means it had to belong to Grandpa. He must’ve had a unit at the place a few blocks over.”
“A unit?”
“It’s like a locked room you keep stuff stashed inside.”
“And it’s not here?”
“No.”
“Why would someone keep their belongings someplace else?”
“A lot of reasons. Maybe they ran out of space, or maybe they wanted to keep something hidden.”
“Hidden?”
I nodded. “Yep. And knowing us Darkers, I’ll bet that’s exactly what it is.”
“You think Joseph had something to hide?”
I smiled. “Everyone has something to hide.” Grabbing my hoodie, I pulled it over my head. There was no way I could sit here in the dark waiting for Meredith to call back. My mind would come up with too many scenarios. Mom’s sharp tongue and Meredith’s random temper flares.
“Let’s go find out what. Knowing what I know of my grandfather, maybe we’ll find something useful.”
…
After making sure any calls to the office phone would be rerouted to my cell, Lukas and I set off for the storage place on Gateway Drive. Three blocks of brisk walking, and we stood in front of the darkened gates.
“It doesn’t look like you’re allowed entry at this late hour.”
A crooked smile slipped across my lips. “I know we haven’t known each other long, but do I really seem like the kinda girl to let that bother me?”
I dragged him away from the front gate and around to the back. I knew for a fact that the cameras attached to the perimeter fencing were there for show only. They didn’t even have night security.
Once we hopped the fence, I pulled the key out for another look.
Lukas peered over my shoulder. “Which one is it?”
Flipping the key over, I squinted against the dark. I had to lean back because Lukas was blocking my light. “Looks like it’s unit number seventy-five.”
Mom’s birthday was July fifth. I hadn’t gotten to meet my grandfather, but the stories Mom told were of a gruff man with an ooey-gooey center. Apparently, Grandpa had been the sentimental type.
The sign above us pointed to the lower numbers at the back of the lot. “That way,” I exclaimed and took off. I could hear Lukas’ footsteps behind me. In and out, I searched the rows ’til I finally found seventy-five. Holding my breath, I slipped the key into the lock. It was a perfect fit! Pulling up on the handle, I slid the door up and froze.
“Hell in a hail storm…”
It didn’t take me long to figure out why Grandpa kept this stash a secret.
A collection of the most dangerous tools and artifacts I’d ever read about. That’s what Grandpa had been trying to hide. Mom would be speechless if she could see this.
Speechless and drooling.
“What’s this?” Lukas held up a small black stone.
“Oh my God! Put that down!” I snatched the rock from him and gently laid it on the box it’d come from. “Shaking that stone will summon a demon of death.”
“That sounds bad.”
“Um, hello? Demon of death? Yeah. Just don’t touch anything.” Once I was satisfied he could be trusted not to get us both obliterated, I went to work.
As far as organization went, there wasn’t any. Mom must have gotten her pack rat mentality from Grandpa. There were piles of unlabeled boxes, stacks of old books—I even scoped out what might have been a rotting apple core. Or it could have been half a sandwich. I couldn’t tell, and honestly? I didn’t want to know.
“Here,” I said, picking up a pile of books. “Go through these and see if you can find anything useful.” The chances were slim, but at least it was safe. He couldn’t accidentally curse us or summon something ugly.
Actually…
“And don’t read anything out loud.”
While Lukas set to work on the books, I started on the first pile of boxes. The first few were smaller than the rest and stuffed with rocks.
Well, more like stones. Quartz, onyx, chalcedony—the boxes were full. Some stones were loose, others hanging from delicate chains of silver or leather cords. Some were polished, shiny, and as perfect as anything you’d see in a new ager’s jewelry display. Others were in their natural form. Seemingly pulled right from the earth. Hell, some were still covered in dirt.
The next box I opened was full of papers. Old receipts, bills, I even found a Sears advertisement. There had been a big sale on refrigerators that week. Box after box, there was nothing that could be considered helpful to our current predicament.
“I think I found something.”
Lukas was sitting on the floor against the door with piles of open books spread around him, and I couldn’t help thinking how comfortable he looked. This was his element. Researching and fact-finding. He was like a kid in a candy store, face lit up and eyes hungry. I sank to the ground. “Okay…”
He pushed the nearest book across the floor. “What do you see?”
The page was spider webbed with names, all connected. “Looks like a family tree.”
“Look further than that,” he huffed, thumping the page. “Look at the details.”
I picked up the book and eyed the open page. It started with Simon and ended with my mom, but other than that, I didn’t get it. “They’re all…Darkers?”
Lukas pulled the book back. “Male. All the Darker offspring are men—until Klaire.”
I still didn’t get it. “Um, okay. So?”
He set the book down. “You don’t find that odd?”
“Well, sure it’s a little funky, but no cause to alert the papers.”
Pointing to the top of the page, he sighed. “And this? Is this simply funky?”
His finger was on Sarah, Simon’s wife. I shrugged.
“Look at the dates. Specifically the date of death.”
“1868. So?”
Lukas rolled his eyes. “Simon and Sarah’s son Andrew was born
in 1868. The same year she died.”
I still didn’t see what he was getting at. “Medicine wasn’t what it is now. A lot of women died in childbirth back then.”
“You’re correct. But don’t you find it odd that the same thing happened to all of them?”
As I skimmed the left side of the crudely drawn tree, I saw he was right. Every woman before Mom died in childbirth. How had I not seen that? “Holy craps.”
“So the question is, why was Klaire different? Not only was she the first female offspring to the Darker line, but she was the first mother not to die in childbirth.”
“That’s the question? I’d think it’d be why was it happening in the first place!”
Lukas frowned. “Well, of course. But why did your mother live when you were born? What broke the cycle?”
Broke the cycle.
I didn’t answer. Instead, I started digging through the pile of books in front of us. There was a knot forming in my stomach. A big one. When I didn’t find anything, I jumped to my feet and dove into the pile still against the far wall. Something. There had to be something here. Something that contradicted the itching fear building in the back of my head.
Lukas was oblivious. “It couldn’t have been because you were a girl,” he continued. “I imagine if that were true, Klaire’s mother would have lived.”
There were a million possibilities bouncing in my brain as to why the Darker wives always died in childbirth. It all started with Simon’s wife. Simon, who had pissed off Meredith by accusing her of Lukas’ murder, then later, trapping her with the help of a Belfair witch. His accusations caused her to flee town, never getting her skanky little happily ever after with Lukas’ dad. She could have easily laid the nasty mojo down. Cursed the Darkers.