Surrender the Dark

by Tibby Armstrong

  He was a hunter born…He was a…

  Benjamin opened his mouth to yell.

  Something heavy smashed against his temple, and a world growing dim went completely dark.

  Chapter 1

  2016

  Clack-clack, clack-clack, clack-clack.

  Tip-tap.

  The patter of the ceramic ball ticking over uneven brick gave way to the smoother run of the assistive cane over concrete. Benjamin’s shoulders relaxed. It was always iffy, that section along Pinckney Street where the sidewalk seemed to heave overnight. At twenty-eight he should be running down Boston’s city streets, not picking his way as if he were eighty; but it wasn’t as if even sighted people dared race down the antiquated excuses for pavement very often. Doing so was an invitation to a sprained ankle or broken limb, no matter one’s age or ability.

  Wind gathered speed on Joy Street, its downward incline carrying the scent of the ocean on gusts that chilled Benjamin’s face and lifted his hair. Dampness clung to his skin, promising a snowstorm that would keep pedestrian traffic low. For several seconds, only the scrape-tap of Benjamin’s cane echoed back at him from remembered brownstone façades. Twenty years after his fight with the War King, he strained the bounds of his recollections to form a mental picture of historic gaslights and Victorian ironwork twined with fog.

  As he drew closer to Beacon Street, city sounds—the hiss of pneumatics from a kneeling bus and the grating of a car’s less-than-secure exhaust system—painted a clearer picture of his surroundings, and he let go of the visual memories that now seemed less real than the aural world around him. Several blocks away, the bells of Park Street Church chimed the hour.

  Steps quickening, Benjamin pulled his collar higher. His friends and sometime vampire-hunting companions, Akito and Nyx, would be waiting near the Common’s Parkman Bandstand where Akito thought he’d seen a vampire attack a human the previous evening. Another night of skulking around trying to do what the police couldn’t. And how could they? Even if the authorities would believe them—that Boston’s homeless were of late being snatched up and eaten by vampires—it wasn’t as if they knew how to fight the things that went bump in the night. Not like Akito or Nyx did, and especially not like Benjamin.

  I’ve time for you now.

  Adrenaline surged in a sickening tide. Stick in hand, Benjamin turned to the left and right, and used his hunter’s second sight to scan the area for his assailant. Musk made of smoke, sin, and things not of this earth coated the back of his throat. The scent curled around him, raising his hackles and his heart rate. Though he detected no telltale supernatural aura, his other senses warned him he might not be alone.

  “Who’s there?”

  Over the sound of his labored breath, he heard cars, a bicycle on Beacon Street, and the rustle of the last dead leaves in a nearby tree. He tilted his head this way and that, attempting to catch sound and scent. Nothing. He breathed deep and squared his shoulders, lowering the cane and the hidden sword inside he’d been about to unsheathe. It had only been the wind, and smoke from one of the many Beacon Hill fireplaces lit to ward off the chill.

  By the time he reached the nearest entrance to Boston Common, he’d convinced himself the voice had been imagined. A scant two minutes of hurried walking brought him down twenty-two granite steps and past the quiet Frog Pond skating rink. Senses on high alert, he heard every scuttling leaf and pedestrian footfall. People walked by him blithely unaware that there indeed were things that went bump in the night. He envied their oblivion.

  “Benj?”

  Benjamin whirled, brandishing his cane, then sagged when he recognized Nyx’s softly glowing golden aura—the only visible touchstone in his otherwise sightless world. “Shit. Don’t sneak up like that.”

  “Sorry.” Nyx strode toward him, the pulse of her aura strong and healthy. “Are you okay?”

  “Yeah.” He searched the darkness beyond Nyx, seeking out monsters he didn’t truly want to find.

  “Liar,” Nyx accused as they walked. “What happened?”

  “What makes you think something happened?”

  Nyx placed a hand over his, and he realized he’d been tapping his cane against the pavement in a nervous tic. “I’ve known you since we were kids. I can tell when something’s wrong.”

  Quieting, Benjamin forced a smile. “I just got spooked on the way here. It was nothing.”

  Nyx took a breath, then let it out in a heavy sigh. “Yeah. You and I know better than anyone that Boston has plenty of things to be afraid of after dark.”

  Benjamin’s answering laugh was self-conscious. They stopped walking. Irony twitched his lips into a rueful grin. “Vampires, witches, and weres, oh my?”

  “Exactly.” Nyx’s aura flickered with the joy Benjamin recognized as her smile. At times like these he could make out the sharpness of her features and the darker swoop of her short hair. “And maybe some ghosts and faeries thrown in for good measure.”

  This time he snorted. “You ought to know about the faeries.”

  She shuddered. “Yeah. No kidding. My mother is up to something, by the way. There are rumblings about a power struggle with my father’s coven.”

  “Aren’t they always at loggerheads?” As Boston’s fae representative from the Faerie Court, Lady Morgana was as a rule embroiled in some sort of political scheme with or against her husband, the head of America’s oldest and most powerful coven. The real problems came when whatever plot they or she concocted involved their child—something that thankfully hadn’t happened in a while.

  “True.” Nyx sounded doubtful, started to say something, then shook her head. “It’s probably best if we just stay out of their way until they sort out whatever it is.”

  “Believe me, I have no intention of getting within one hundred yards of either of your parents.” It was bad enough that he had to tangle with vampires. Witches and faeries were firmly off the menu. Another thought struck him and he stopped cold. “And you shouldn’t either.”

  “Don’t worry. I have the cuff.” Nyx held up one adorned wrist.

  Benjamin eyed the jewelry. Nyx’s magic made the thing glow white-hot in his special vision. The cuff hid her location and identity while also preventing her from being unwillingly transported to faerie in the event she was discovered. Unfortunately, it also had a less desireable side effect of dampening her power.

  “If they find you and then find a way to get that thing off of you against your will—”

  “I’ll never understand how you find your way all over this park without a guide,” Nyx interrupted, clearly changing the subject as they began walking again. “I get lost in my own bathtub.”

  Nyx’s uncharacteristically insensitive comment had the intended effect of jerking him out of his contemplation of her family life. “I’ve lived here all my life.”

  A skateboarder whizzed past, kicking up leaves, their musty smell as much an indication of late fall as the nip of ozone in the air.

  “But how do you know where you are?” Nyx pressed. “If you can’t see, how do you know when to turn?”

  The truth was, getting around his neighborhood—Beacon Hill, the Common, and certain parts of downtown—was as natural to Benjamin as breathing. He knew every portion of pavement he walked over as if he’d mapped his own skin. Two grates and a metal door followed by a ridge in the sidewalk, and he could turn left onto Myrtle Street. A long stretch of brick walk with three lampposts followed by an area of concrete, and he was nearing Joy Street.

  “I recognize things. The sounds of people in a bar. The number of metal doors I’ve walked over in the sidewalk…” He ran over his journey here tonight, deliberately skipping over the scarier bits. “Or the openings in the curbs in the Common that tell me the number of lanes I’ve passed. I used to count them. Now it’s automatic.”

  “You don’t get confused?” Nyx clutched his arm harder, as if afraid she herself might get lost in Benjamin’s sightless world.

  “Do you stop to thin
k about your handwriting when you sign your name?” Anger flared a little when he recognized she viewed him as truly handicapped.

  “I guess not.” Her doubt stung. In all the years he’d known her, Nyx had never treated him as different.

  Probably she didn’t realize how she came across, but if anyone should it would be her. It wasn’t like Nix hadn’t had her own difficulties to overcome. Akito and Benjamin had gone to great lengths to understand and adapt to Nyx’s interesting…situation.

  “Well, I don’t stop to think about where I’m going because my feet know how to take me there. There’s no reason for me to be freaked out.”

  Except when someone stalks you. Benjamin gritted his teeth against the rogue thought. No one had been there. He’d imagined the voice.

  “Can you see Akito?” Benjamin asked, slamming the door on his thoughts.

  As a human without any supernatural abilities, Akito was invisible to Benjamin’s brand of extrasensory perception, whereas Nyx’s witch light reflected against her aura. He could detect the magic with a hunter’s sixth sense that mimicked sight, even despite her cuff.

  “No. Oh, wait. There he is.” Nyx’s frame, easily a foot smaller than Benjamin’s, bobbed as she waved hello to their friend and hunting partner.

  Fat, wet snowflakes plopped against Benjamin’s cheek. He lifted his head automatically, and more landed on his nose. A nor’easter had been forecast for later that night, but he’d thought they would have a few hours before it began.

  “It’s going to ruin the scene,” he said, brushing the dampness from his face.

  Nyx upped her pace, and Benjamin trotted with her.

  “I’ll start casting when we get there,” she said, a little breathless. “Distracting passersby from noticing us, and amplifying the vibrations. Then you can tell us if you see anything.”

  If the place where Akito thought he’d seen the vampire feeding had been indoors, the energy might have been virtually indelible, but in this case they’d have to be quick. The amount of moisture in the air was increasing rapidly, and would soon wipe away any etheric trace that might have been left behind. It wasn’t that water per se was a problem, as much as its ability to conduct and therefore diffuse the energy the events had left behind. If he, Nyx, and Akito could beat the storm, then Nyx’s magic would be able to amplify the energy the interaction had imprinted, allowing Benjamin—with his special hunter’s sight—to see the vampiric assault.

  “Hey, Ben.” Akito’s voice always reminded Benjamin of the scent of warm leather gloves and the taste of Earl Grey tea. Nyx’s was more like shiny wrapping paper and tart-sweet Pixy Stix.

  They hugged briefly, Akito brushing Benjamin’s arm with lingering affection as he let go.

  “So what’s up?” Benjamin asked.

  “I scoped the area, and nothing’s on the police scanners.” Akito drew a verbal picture of the area in broad strokes, then added, “Rangers are on the opposite side of the Common. We have about ten minutes, give or take, before their patrols land them here.”

  “Less than that with the storm.” Nyx rummaged in her workbag for the items she needed to define the boundaries for a spell she was already working to cast.

  Fascinated as always, Benjamin watched her aura flicker. Like the neon signs he remembered from his early childhood, she buzzed at a frequency he was pretty sure only he could see, at least in the way he saw. None of her father’s darker magic tainted her energy—a fact for which Benjamin was grateful.

  The wind picked up, partly a result of the energies Nyx focused on the scene, partly the storm. Benjamin turned back to Akito. “Tell me more about what you saw the other night.”

  Alert, he scanned the area. The times when they’d run into vampires on their hunts over the years, they’d done all right; but Benjamin always worried their successes had been more due to dumb luck than his half-remembered childhood training and more recent years of martial arts practice with Akito.

  “You always say not to approach them on my own, so I didn’t; but it might have been the wrong decision,” Akito began. “I probably could have taken him out even without you and Nyx.”

  Not this again.

  “Look, Akito, you kick serious ass.” Benjamin tried to voice his disapproval gently, though they’d been over this more than once. “But killing these bastards is a hunter’s job. I appreciate your help—and I need it—but if you go after them alone, they’re just going to pop back up again when you can’t separate their souls from their bodies. Worse, you’ll get yourself killed.”

  Only someone with a connection to the supernatural could truly kill a vampire. Benjamin could do it because of his hunter lineage. Nyx would have a better chance than Akito because she could draw on esoteric energies to cleave a vampire’s soul from its human housing, whereupon its body would disintegrate. All of this, however, required mortally wounding the vampire first, something Akito was more than capable of. Together, the three made a great team.

  “I know.” Shoe leather met pavement—Akito kicking his toe against the asphalt. “But he had a guy with him. He was giving him the mother of all hickeys.” His inflection suggested air quotes, as he made reference to their one-time teenage slang for a vampire bite. “I should have done something.”

  Akito’s birth name was James, but he was an anime nut who had set out early on to become the embodiment of every martial arts cliché imaginable. Unfortunately, he’d developed an unhealthy obsession with Benjamin’s and Nyx’s special abilities. Even before they had all met, Akito had desperately wanted to be a superhero.

  “Ready!” Nyx called, trotting to him and Akito.

  Nyx stepped into her magic circle. The mirage of normalcy it created—everything is fine here on Boston Common, nothing to see, move along—would hide their activities from curious passersby. Benjamin followed her into the circle. Magic thrummed over his skin, making him shiver.

  “Tell me how I got involved in this shit again?” Benjamin asked.

  “Hunter bred, hunter born,” Nyx teased, mangling the macabre nursery rhyme. “Isn’t that what you told us growing up?”

  “How could I forget?” Benjamin grumbled.

  Unfortunately, Nyx was closer to the mark than Benjamin would have liked. Everything he was and everything he’d lost he owed to his lineage.

  He scanned the glowing bubble Nyx had created around them and the spot Akito had seen the vampire. The fact the creatures were now feeding in the open was disturbing, to say the least. He watched as Nyx’s magic coalesced, sticking to the etheric energy. Her spell created an auto-replay movie of the drama between the vampire and its victim. The indistinct image of two forms embracing fizzled and skipped like a bad recording. Even the vampire’s aura read as off. Usually blue, it appeared moldy-green.

  Benjamin cursed. If only the storm’s moisture hadn’t begun to disperse the energy. He focused harder, attempting to understand where one form ended and the other began. The vampire appeared to catch its victim as he crumpled. The flickering light shimmered, and the vampire disappeared, seemingly into thin air. Another form followed soon after, looking furtively over its shoulder before it too vanished.

  Where were the creatures going, or coming from? Benjamin moved closer until the magic played over his skin, making the hairs on his arms prickle. He frowned at a seeming void near the base of the bandstand. It looked like there was a…“What’s the hole in the ground?”

  “There’s no hole. Just a granite plaque at the base of the bandstand with some Greek lettering on it.” Nyx sounded as puzzled as Benjamin felt. “There’s a door on the other side of the bandstand, but just a foundation here.”

  The darker space seemed to be sucking energy inward from Nyx’s spell.

  “No hole?” Benjamin repeated, just to be sure.

  “Where exactly are you looking?” Nyx asked. “I only get the magic background noise that’s always in the Common.”

  Benjamin pointed to the spot with his cane. “There.”

 
; Nyx moved toward the blackness. A form materialized, shimmering against the backdrop of magical energy. It pulsed the same putrid green he’d seen around the vampire aura from Nyx’s playback spell. For a moment Benjamin thought the thing was a lingering manifestation of that spell. Then he heard Akito’s curse, and Nyx backed hurriedly away.

  Benjamin’s hand went to his cane, automatically unsheathing his hidden sword—a nineteenth-century ninjato that had belonged to his uncle, and that he’d repurposed as a hidden weapon. “Come to die, vampire?”

  The thing, aura dancing in Benjamin’s special sight, spread its arms wide, indicating the three friends. “When I’ve such a banquet before me? I think not.”

  Sword raised as Akito had taught him, Benjamin charged, conscious that he had to get the monster away from Nyx, who was stuck widening the area of her obfuscation spell so the tourists wouldn’t think they’d been granted a spectacular post-Halloween show. Where the hell had the vampire come from? Its aura was completely messed up, and it had seemed to simply walk out of the bandstand’s foundation.

  Benjamin swung wide, deliberately creating a deceptive opening with the feigned clumsiness of his maneuver. It wasn’t difficult to appear the weakest member of the team—a ruse Benjamin had used many times to his advantage.

  “I’ve heard of you, hunter.” The vampire moved away from rather than toward Benjamin, getting out of range and presumably going for Akito instead. “You won’t find me so easy to kill. I’ve just fed on the blood of an innocent.”

  A child?

  Benjamin growled, remembering his own treatment at a long-ago vampire’s hands. Their War King. “I can see you well enough to know you just made your first mistake.”

  On the bandstand now, Nyx chanted and sprinkled sweet-smelling herbs on the wind. Benjamin tracked the whistling air and thudding punches that said Akito had engaged the vampire. Moving into position, Benjamin waited.

  Akito kicked the vampire in the chest and it flew backward. Benjamin, crouching low, tensed and angled his sword for a lethal blow. At the last second, the creature’s aura flickered and faded. Benjamin’s swing became wild, and the vampire’s grapple took him from behind. Benjamin went down hard, his sunglasses flying from his face.