I feel her come closer. A small hand grips my shoulder, cold as death. Just don’t try and stop him when he comes. Let him have them, Aidan. Please. You won’t like it when he’s angry.
The voice echoes in my pounding skull and swallows me. It swallows me whole.
I walk up the Marshalls’ front lawn, dread and anticipation scratching at my insides. What could Ava have seen? She was frantic and inconsolable on the phone, insisting I come right away, that something was very wrong. I can only hope it wasn’t because of her powers, I can only hope she didn’t break or hurt anything too vital this time.
I linger on the porch, wondering if I should try and open myself up a little to read the place before knocking. I hesitate, keeping my walls up tight. I don’t let them down much since Mom’s—since she left us. Because I want to pretend to be normal. I want to pretend like she died of drugs or a drunk-driving accident, not believing that—
No. I won’t look at it. I shove the memories down to that dark place where no one sees. Not even me. If all those social services minions taught me nothing else, they at least taught me that. Faking it works better than dealing with shit any day. Otherwise adults want you to “talk it through.” And there’s usually puppets involved. Show me on the doll where the bad man touched your mommy.
But as I stand within a few feet of the Marshalls’ front door, the familiar dread slowly trickles in. I feel something deep in me stir. And I know. If it’s something I can’t block out, then it can only be one kind of thing.
My heartbeat speeds up, making it tough to breathe. Yes, I see demons. I see them all the time. But I’ve tried to protect this house, Ava’s house. I’ve placed wards around the property when the Marshalls weren’t looking. I buried protection pouches and salted the perimeter. How could there be a demon here? If there even is a demon here. How can I be sure? I don’t really want to find out.
It’s probably nothing, jackass, just knock on the fucking door.
My nerves still at the inner voice. Reason, I need to be reasonable and not freak out over nothing all the time. I’m just paranoid because I’ve had a shitty day and Ava’s birthday’s tomorrow. I’ll be here for her then and she’ll be okay. Everything will be fine.
I shake off the paranoia and reach out to knock on the Marshalls’ door.
THIRTY-SIX
Aidan
My nerves jump as the air enters my lungs in a rush. I gasp it in, surfacing from a dark hole.
I’m sitting up, gripping the cushion under me. My nails have dug into the weathered leather and torn it open. My teeth ache.
I loosen my body one muscle at a time and look around . . . the cab of a car. I’m in Connor’s Jeep. We’re not moving. And from the view out the window it looks like we’re parked on a vista point somewhere around Griffith Park. It’s morning, the sun just breaking over the city skyline. Connor’s behind the wheel, head tipped to the side, and Kara’s quiet in the passenger seat in front of me. Tray is next to me—not just next to me, but snuggled into my side. His head is resting on my shoulder, and he’s drooling on my shirt in his sleep.
I frown down at him in confusion, wondering where he came from, because last I remember—
A chill sweeps over me as the images and emotions flash inside my head, bringing it all back. I see the demon stab Kara, everyone choking as the sticky black creature strangled us from across the room. And Ava telling me to save her . . .
I lunge forward and lean over the seat. “Kara!”
Tray slides down behind me and groans.
She’s wrapped in a white blanket. Stained with red splotches, one very dark red stain where she was stabbed. I touch her cheek and say her name again, but she doesn’t stir in response, she doesn’t move. Her skin is drained of color, her lips tinted violet. I jump out of the cab and open her door. “Kara!” I shake her shoulder, and her head lolls to the side.
I check her pulse and feel a small flutter in my fingertips, barely there. It’s so weak. But it’s beating.
I shut her door and go around to the driver’s side, opening it and yanking Connor out by the arm. “Wake up! We need to get Kara to the ER!”
I don’t know how we got away from the tar creature, not sure why my sister would just let us go, where Jax and Holly are, or how we ended up in the Jeep. But I do know if we sit here much longer, Kara’s not going to wake up again, ever.
Connor falls to the dirt and grunts. It takes him too long to sit up and open his eyes. “Get the fuck in the car, Connor, please.” My voice breaks as I plead with him to move.
He must finally sense the urgency, because he fumbles his way into the backseat and shuts the door as I’m starting the engine, and then I’m heading out onto the main road.
Connor and Tray are wide-awake once we pull into the drop-off. They jump out of the backseat, and Tray opens the door to grab Kara. He pulls her limp, pale body into his arms, and I ache looking at her, I ache knowing I can’t follow them inside.
I grip the steering wheel. “Please call as soon as you know anything. Anything.”
“We will,” Connor says.
“Can you check on my mom and Selena?” Tray asks me.
I nod, and the two of them disappear through the ER doors. This isn’t the same one where they brought me. Maybe I could go in and just wait with them, no one has to know I’m with the girl who got stabbed. The cops will be called, but will they really be paying attention to some dumbass in the waiting room? I glance down at my marked arm and I know, if I give Ava the chance, she’ll make sure I’m spotted, that I’m caught. I can’t walk right into that possibility and put Kara in jeopardy again. I’ve already done that enough.
Shit. I can’t believe how helpless I feel.
We called Jax on the way here. He and Holly somehow ended up in the Camaro off Mulholland, but they’re all right. They went back to pick up Raul and then they were going home.
I drive out of the loading zone and circle the parking lot a little. I end up in the parking garage, my phone in my lap, waiting to hear from Connor. I rack my brain to try and think of why Ava wouldn’t just kill us all. She’s been trying to rip us apart for almost a week now. Why did she tell her demons they could only kill one of the others? The demon implied Kara was chosen because she would be in the way. In the way of what? I comb through what Ava said, over and over. I’m supposed to save her like I always do? But then she said someone’s coming . . . I’m supposed to let him have them. She has to know I’d never let one of her minions have anyone. Still, she’s winning her sick game, because I don’t know the rules or get the reasoning behind it.
And Rebecca is still missing. Probably taken somewhere by Ava.
I lean on the steering wheel and bite back a scream. My chest throbs, my head hurts. Where would my sister take her? What twisted thing is she doing with her? Ava knew we would come try to find Rebecca, to save her. She knew one of us would be hurt and that the creature in the house would—
I sit up straight as every muscle tenses—holy shit, I wonder if that thing is still there, waiting for Rebecca’s dad to get home. The guy is a sitting duck.
I turn over the engine and gun it out of the parking garage, into traffic.
What can you do about a mind-controlling creature that has no name? I’ve never encountered anything like it. Obviously, wards won’t cut it with Ava’s minions running around undoing them ten minutes after I set them. And my power didn’t faze the creature at all, so who knows if I can even kill it.
I’ll need something outside of my usual arsenal to push it back. Something I’d usually keep away from. Something I’ve buried. The closer I get to Rebecca’s house, the more I feel like it’s the only way. If I can just remember how to do it.
I recall far too much about my mom’s casting habit. This is the first moment in my life that I’m grateful for those memories. It helps that I don’t have the luxury of caution anymore.
I pass the house and pull over a block up the road, parking the Jeep under the sh
ade of a tree. Everything seems quiet, and I didn’t see her dad’s car parked in the driveway, but that doesn’t mean anything—he keeps it in the garage.
After scrounging in the back of the Jeep and getting what limited supplies I can find—salt and chalk and sage—I rub my hands in some sacred dirt and whisper a prayer before shutting the hatch and locking it. Then I make my way back toward Rebecca’s house. Remembering that I need flowers for the spell, I gather some rose petals from a bush along the way and put them in my pocket, hoping this isn’t a suicide mission.
Instead of going through the front door, I walk up the driveway and slip through the side gate. As I move past the floor-to-ceiling windows that line the back of the large house, I peek through the glass now and then, trying to see past the sheer white curtains. Nothing seems out of place that I can tell. I don’t see Rebecca’s dad. No new demons. The house is empty from the look of it.
I take a deep breath and then open the door that leads to the dining room. I step in, cautious as I walk through the back of the house. I don’t smell anything, don’t see anything. But as I move farther in, the energy shifts, our terror from earlier still making the air vibrate around me. Jax’s terror, Connor’s. All of us. It’s all still here.
Including the spot of Kara’s blood on the couch. My gaze lingers on it for a moment before I walk into the kitchen, around the island—
My feet go still.
Rebecca’s dad is on the floor, eyes open wide in stunned death. There are broken blood vessels on his brow and at his temples, his lips are puffy and blue. His car keys are still in his hand, gripped tight.
All the air leaves my lungs.
“You’ve returned to me,” says the voice from before.
I don’t turn around to look. I can’t look it in the eye.
“I was told I cannot have you,” the voice says, “but perhaps it is what you would want. You should look upon me and tell me what you wish.”
I can only stare at the dead man I’d come to save. Too late . . . “Where’s my sister?” I ask, through the sting in my chest.
“She is here, she is there, the little queen is everywhere.”
How quaint. This thing should write a children’s book.
I close my eyes and try to breathe, try to think of what my next move should be. I open myself up even more and feel around the room, then around the house—
Wait. There! Near the back room, I sense a ghost. And I’m fairly positive it’s Rebecca’s dad. Which means I can bring him back. A small spark of hope fills me. I just have to rid the world of this creepy-ass thing behind me first.
Easier said than done.
It hasn’t strangled me yet, though. Maybe I need to be facing it for that trick to work on me?
I kneel down, keeping my back to the thing, then begin drawing in chalk on the dark tile floor.
“What does the strange human create?” it asks.
My power sizzles in my chest, and I wonder if the beast is getting closer.
Can’t think about that. I just keep drawing, trying to remember my mother’s spell. I’m doing this, I’m actually doing this. I’m about to cast. What the fuck am I doing?
But I can’t think about that, either. I can only focus my energy and sketch the image in my mind from memory. A double circle. Then writing in ancient Gaelic, the numbers for the five stars of the Dagda. And then the symbol for the moon in the West, where the sun sets, and the symbol for the sun in the East where it rises in rebirth once more . . .
This could either save me or bite me in the ass—it’s not always the safest thing to weave a small doorway into the unknown.
I start to sense the tingle of magic in my fingers and am shocked at how easily the spell comes to me. A spell my mother performed only twice as far as I know. It’s as if it were in my DNA. Like my power. And as I draw the last of the circle on the floor, the energy of it courses though my veins, a part of me. It’s in my blood, just like it’s in Ava’s blood, in my mother’s blood, and her mother’s before her. The idea terrifies me and awes me all at once.
Ignoring the dark creature still behind me, I finish the drawing and move to the next step, continuing to weave the spell, sprinkling rose petals around the edges of the circle. I place a petal over each of the dead man’s eyes so his ghost will stay and won’t think to leave through this doorway with the creature.
I let my power loose a little as I take two magnets off the fridge and place one over the East and one over the West. I test my fire energy to see what it does as it mingles with the casting energy. I’m a little worried it’s going to be like mixing the chemicals to create a bomb. But the two seem to not care about each other, my power only interested in the creature.
“The strange boy creates something that says good-bye to the man?” the beast asks, still clueless about what I’m doing. I’m shocked it hasn’t caught on. Obviously it wasn’t hired for its brains. “Is it a way to mourn? There is no need, I will eat the father human soon, and he will be gone.”
“Why haven’t you eaten him already?” I’m not sure why I’m asking this thing questions, but truthfully, I am curious.
“The flesh is not ready.”
“Well, I hate to break it to you, but you may have missed your chance.”
I can feel its confusion tickle the base of my neck, and the sucking sound of its skin moves closer, pressing the chill of its energy against my back.
I hold in a shiver and try to remember the right words. The spell is in Gaelic, so I should probably use that. I close my eyes and chance letting my power fill me more. It doesn’t hurt my skin this time as I allow it to flow over my chest, across my shoulder, down my arm, before I begin the final stage of the casting.
I listen to the inner part of me, deep down, the piece that usually tells me what angelic words will stop a demon or what will send a ghost home, the part of me that never wanted to touch this kind of magic in the first place.
And for some crazy reason, it gives me the right words to say.
I breathe deep, in and out, as I begin to whisper under my breath, about wind and rain, earth and sky, releasing the energy in me to mingle with the words . . . and for a flash I feel something different than my fire, something under the surface that smells of new life and . . . Rebecca. It smells like Rebecca’s energy. And I realize, I must have gotten a piece of her power in the bonding, too.
I reach for the life energy and weave it into the words as they emerge from deep inside me. And even as I hear a voice of warning behind me, I don’t stop. I’m locked in the moment now, unable to pause in the casting. Even as something weighs on my shoulder, yanks my body to the side—the creature, trying to stop me—my mind is gripped tight in the magic. I’m not sure my body is even involved at all.
In the background of my senses I smell death, I smell putrid flesh. But I can’t let myself look at it. I can’t look it in the eyes.
I can’t look.
I can only speak the words and feel the gravity of the room begin to gather around me as it closes in on the drawing. And the circle morphs into a place of passage.
Wind begins to whip past me, then tear at me as it gathers, stronger and stronger, looking for things that don’t belong, things not meant for this world. The gusts seek out the alien spirits and flesh as the casting births a doorway. And I dare to look at the creature.
In a huge push of magic, the gale yanks on tar-soaked skin, pulling snowy eyes from the skull as it tugs and tugs the beast into the circle, bit by gooey bit. The air roars with the sounds of it all, the thunder of it in my head, in my bones, as I speak the cast and remain unwavering in the assault rushing around me.
I close my eyes again and lift my heavy hands over my head as the torrent rages stronger and stronger. I feel the heat of my mark like it’s encouraging me to finish the task. And then I clap my palms together on the last word spoken.
Stillness falls. I open my eyes.
I’m on the floor several feet from where I started. The
house is torn to shreds around me, tiny bits of things—paper, fabric, pillow stuffing, I can’t tell—it all floats around me like snow, settling on destroyed surfaces, couches, counters, and the dead body of Rebecca’s father, a little at a time.
My skin tingles like I just stuck my finger in a light socket. I’ve never felt or seen casting magic that strong before. And it came from me . . .
I look at my marked hand, but my power’s gone quiet. I have to hope it’s not all used up since I’m going to need it to resurrect the dead in a second. I just have to get my bearings.
I take a few deep breaths and then reach a little with my insides, searching the house for anything else, any other creatures. Or a ghost. I’m relieved to find him on the landing of the stairs, he didn’t get pulled through the doorway.
His energy washes over the room, his story, and I push it back, feeling like it’s not my business. But pieces of it trickle into me, secrets he hasn’t spoken of—he wanted to tell her, he didn’t have a chance to tell her. It wasn’t her fault. Images come to me of a lovely blonde-haired woman, but I don’t recognize her . . . his wife?
“Stop,” I say, holding up a hand, trying to motion for him to settle himself. “Just hold on.” I walk over and kneel at the side of his body. Then I close my eyes and touch my marked hand to his arm. I breathe and pray for my power to work. Because she can’t lose everyone. You can’t leave Rebecca alone.
Please, just work.
As I feel the man’s ghost come closer behind me, my chest flickers to life, the fire emerging slowly, as if it’s just a small trickle now, after that spell. But it’s there. And I only need it for a few seconds.
The flames roll over my wrist, down to my fingers, and then they slink along the same spot where I’m holding the dead man’s arm. He wasn’t supposed to die. He was meant to live a long life with his daughter. If it wasn’t for me and my sister . . .
The power answers, a piece of my mark sliding down to wrap around the man’s arm, searing into his soul. And as I watch it move and settle in, I feel my energy and strength go with it, my fire weaving his spirit, his soul, back together with his flesh.
Darkness Savage (The Dark Cycle Book 3) Page 21