by Jenna Black
I swallowed hard. In other words, he’d been carrying it around so he had it ready the moment he talked me into doing this. I suddenly wondered if this weren’t all some big illusion, meant to trick me into spilling my own blood for his use. Maybe I didn’t have to have complete blackouts during the daylight hours and that was just some magic Aleric was performing on me so I’d want to do his bidding.
Deciding it didn’t matter, I took a deep breath and reached for the knife. Trick or not, I wasn’t getting those hours of my day back unless I did as Aleric wanted and drew some blood.
The blade glinted in the moonlight. The hilt was of some dull gray metal that felt cold and heavy in my palm, and I found my hand was shaking. I wasn’t sure I could go through with it.
“We need more than a pinprick,” Aleric said, “but we don’t need buckets. Just make a small cut in the center of your palm. The knife is so sharp it will hardly hurt at all.” His voice had gone low and seductive, as if he were urging me to give him a kiss rather than cut myself.
I knew the part about how it would “hardly hurt at all” was bullshit. I didn’t care how sharp the knife was: this was going to suck. But I wanted those missing hours back, and if I had to endure a little pain to get them, I was just going to have to deal with it.
Biting my lip and wincing in anticipation, I poked the tip of the knife into the center of my palm and gave it a little flick. For half a second, I thought I’d been too timid and hadn’t broken the skin. And then the fierce stinging started, and a thin line of blood welled from the cut. Aleric took the knife from my unresisting hand, retracting the blade and sticking it back in his pocket. I stood motionless, my hand cupped as I stared at the thickening red line.
I felt light-headed and faintly queasy, but I couldn’t seem to stop myself from staring at the blood. In hindsight, I don’t think it was really that much, but at the time it looked to me like I’d gashed myself open to the bone.
Aleric took my wrist and turned my hand over so that the blood dropped to the pavement. I swayed on my feet as the fat drops splattered down. My pulse was fluttering erratically, and I doubted I had a hint of color in my cheeks. My stomach gave an unhappy lurch.
If Aleric noticed my distress, he paid no attention to it, his eyes instead focused on the constellation of drops that collected at our feet. My blood shone almost black in the moonlight, and I told myself those were just spatters of ink, nothing to be concerned about at all. As I watched, the blood changed somehow, the color going from almost black to true black. Like ink for real, only no light reflected off it at all.
And then the drops started to spread. And rise.
“You might want to back up,” Aleric said, but he didn’t have to tell me twice.
I didn’t realize just how sick and shaky I was feeling until I tried to take that first step back, and my knees buckled. I would have gone down if Aleric hadn’t caught me. The blackness continued to grow, and he half-carried me backward, keeping us about a foot or two from the edge of the darkness.
Once when I was a kid, my mom and dad and I went to visit a show cave. The tour guide led us inside, telling us all about how the cave was formed. I remembered it being beautiful and almost alien. When we entered the heart of the cave, we stopped for the guide to do his spiel—and he turned the lights off. I think I was about five years old at the time, and I had never been so terrified in my entire life. The guide was showing us something you never see in everyday life: the true absence of light. And you realized the darkest darkness you’d ever experienced before was nothing compared to what it was like when it was really and truly dark.
The darkness that was emerging from the splatter of blood I’d spilled was like the darkness in that cave. It seemed to absorb all light around it, and I felt something like a strange gravitational pull trying to suck me in. It was like a freaking black hole had suddenly formed in the square, and it wanted to eat me.
I let out a frantic sound somewhere between a bleat and a squeak and tried to speed up my retreat. My heart was beating so hard I could hardly breathe, and my eyes were in danger of bugging out of my head. It wasn’t just how that darkness looked that had me so freaked out, it was how it felt. Wrong. So, so wrong.
And it was of my own making.
My vision went gray around the edges. I was vaguely aware of Aleric laughing at my reaction. A model of compassion he was not, but I was too close to passing out to let him know what I thought of him.
I think the only thing that kept me conscious was the fear that if I passed out, Aleric would let the darkness touch me. I couldn’t imagine anything I wanted less than to come into contact with it. Hell, just looking at it made everything in my body want to rebel.
I forced my eyes shut, then turned away and ran blindly. I would have run smack into a tree if Aleric hadn’t reached out to stop me. I started to struggle, thinking he was going to make me look at the darkness again, but he scooped me up into his arms.
“Just keep your eyes closed,” he advised me. “I’ll get you to where you can’t see the Night Maker anymore.”
A shudder racked my body, and I buried my face against his shoulder. I was no longer sure having a few more hours in my day was worth the price I had paid.
* * *
The first thing I noticed when I woke up was that my head was pounding. I squinched my eyes more tightly shut and curled in around myself. The ground was unpleasantly hard beneath me, and my body felt chilled and achy. I had to find somewhere more comfortable to sleep. Groaning, I turned onto my back and slitted my eyes open.
I was looking up at a clear blue sky, dotted with fluffy white clouds. The sun was shining merrily, and I should have felt its warmth on my face. But I didn’t.
I closed my eyes again and breathed deep, wanting nothing more than to go back to sleep. Maybe when I woke up next, my head wouldn’t hurt, and I wouldn’t feel so groggy. My brain was so fogged I had almost drifted back to sleep before I fully registered what I’d seen: the sun shining in a blue sky. Something I thought I’d never see again.
Like magic, I was suddenly wide awake, sitting up so fast I practically gave myself whiplash. I blinked and rubbed my eyes, sure the sun and the blue sky would disappear like a mirage, and for a moment I thought that was exactly what happened.
I was sitting on a blanket on the ground in Rittenhouse Square. All around me was the familiar darkness that had now become my whole life. Music was pounding from a wireless speaker, but there was nobody dancing. The Nightstruck were scattered all around me, most of them sleeping in positions that looked terribly uncomfortable. A few of them were sitting around staring into space, empty bottles and burnt-out butts providing an explanation for the spaced-out look.
I glanced over at one of the nearby park benches and saw that it was still in its nighttime form: rows of wicked sharp teeth just waiting to snap down on anyone or anything stupid enough to get too close. Then I looked up at the sky.
I hadn’t been imagining it or dreaming it. There was definitely blue sky up there. And clouds. And the sun.
But somewhere between the sky and the square, that sunlight seemed to disappear. Not a single ray penetrated into the square, where it was still dark as night.
A wave of dread rolled over me, and I remembered what I’d done last night, remembered that blackness growing and spreading in the middle of the square. I shuddered and wrapped my arms around myself, more relieved than I could say that I saw no sign of that blackness—the Night Maker—now. I had no doubt it was still there, lurking in the center of the square, but I was heartily glad not to have to look at it. I took another look up at the sky to remind myself why I’d done it, and though the sunlight didn’t reach down far enough to warm my face, it warmed my spirit.
Last night had been terrifying and sickening, but it was over now and I had my days back. That was a big win in my book.
You’ve changed more than you think, Luke’s voice whispered in my head, and for the first time I wondered if he was rig
ht. I still felt like myself, still felt like the Becket I remembered being before—with a few notable and pleasant exceptions. But the me of before would not have been okay with what I’d done last night. I hadn’t killed or even hurt anyone, but there was no mistaking the evil that emanated from the Night Maker, and I had let it into our world for purely selfish reasons.
I probed my conscience in search of guilt, but there was none to be found. I let out a sigh of relief and thanked my lucky stars that I was Nightstruck.
CHAPTER SEVEN
My life settled into a comfortable new routine. My nights were wild and full of an excess I never would have dreamed I’d enjoy in my earlier life. There was a party in the square every night, and now that I’d given Aleric what he wanted, he went out of his way to show me a good time. As long as I stayed away from the center of the square, I could almost pretend everything was normal, and I mostly forgot about the malevolent, light-absorbing darkness that squatted there.
Days were mostly for sleeping, although I didn’t need as much sleep as I had in my pre-Nightstruck days. I spent at least part of each day sitting at one of the square’s entrances. It was like looking out of a window, watching people go by, being reminded of what life was like for those who weren’t Nightstruck. People gave the square a wide berth. They had to know that the Nightstruck and the constructs couldn’t get out—there was no other way to explain why we all stayed inside during the day—but I guessed they preferred not to see the unnatural patch of night. I couldn’t blame them, though I wished someone would come close enough to talk to me just to pass the time.
I had tried making friends with my fellow Nightstruck, but I had yet to meet one who was good friendship material. The night took only the cruel and the selfish, and they weren’t the kind of people I wanted to hang out with, at least not beyond the most casual acquaintance. Since the night had taken me, I guess that meant I was more selfish than I liked to think, although Piper and Aleric had had to work awfully hard to get me into a vulnerable state of mind. But I was different enough from the rest of the Nightstruck that I just couldn’t relate.
I’m making it sound like I was lonely and miserable, but of course I wasn’t. I was merely aware that I wanted things the rest of the Nightstruck didn’t care about, and that therefore—unlike them, and contrary to what Aleric kept telling me—I couldn’t actually have everything I wanted after all.
Luke’s house wasn’t far from the square, so I wasn’t entirely surprised when one day I saw him walking by on the far side of Walnut Street. Some pedestrians were wary enough of the square that they’d go out of their way to avoid walking by even on the far side of the street, and long before he saw me, Luke was casting anxious glances at the giant, spiky fence that surrounded the square. I wondered what our patch of night looked like to those who walked by during the day. It had to be a pretty weird sight.
Because it was dark inside the square, I wasn’t sure if Luke would see me. Hell, I wasn’t sure if I wanted Luke to see me. After all, the last time we’d talked, he’d actually shot at me. If I’d had any sense at all, I’d have forgotten all about him. I certainly wouldn’t have forgiven him. And yet even now, when we lived in separate worlds and there was no hope we could ever be friends, much less a couple, I was drawn to him in a visceral way I couldn’t deny.
Slowly, I stood up, my limbs stiff from sitting on the cold ground for so long. One thing I would readily admit I missed was central heating. We had fires in the square every night, but even with those and even with my coat, I was always cold.
The movement drew Luke’s attention, and he came to a stop across the street, staring at me as if not sure if I was really there. I waved at him and smiled. He just stood there and stared, unsmiling, until I dropped my hand back to my side and let my own smile fade. I figured he’d eventually get tired of giving me that cold stare and would walk away, but instead he waited for a break in the traffic—not that he had to wait long, since even people in cars tended to avoid the square—and crossed the street.
He came to stand a few feet from the entrance to the square, almost within touching distance of me. The darkness behind me made him visibly nervous, especially when Billy the goat trotted by on his clawed metal hooves. Luke had been with me when Billy killed my father, so I wouldn’t have blamed him if he’d changed his mind and crossed back to the other side of the street.
“He can’t get out of the square,” I assured Luke. “Nothing can get out of here during the day.”
“Even you?” he asked, cocking his head to one side.
“Even me.” I demonstrated by walking to the very limit of the square, at which point I was suddenly and inexorably stopped. I gave him a wry grin. “I’d love to know how the government is explaining that it’s always night in Rittenhouse Square these days. Is the leading theory still some kind of mass hallucination?”
The theories that had been bandied about by the press—back when I had access to the Internet and actually had some clue what was going on in the world—were sometimes downright hysterical, but unless things had changed since I’d been Nightstruck, the government was still treating it as if the entire city had some crazy communicable disease that caused hallucinations. That was why they’d quarantined the city and I hadn’t been able to go to Boston to live with my mom after my dad died.
“That’s still the party line,” Luke confirmed, rolling his eyes. “I don’t know how they think so many people are having the same hallucination, but they’re sticking to their story. And of course no one can get a photograph of this.” He indicated the square with a sweeping gesture of his arm.
“What do the photos look like?” I asked, genuinely curious.
“It looks like Rittenhouse Square, only filled with hundreds of homeless people sleeping on the grass.”
I nodded, unsurprised. For whatever reason, the changes that took over the city at night were impossible to capture on film or video, which was why the government claimed we were all sick and hallucinating.
“Rumor has it this happened because there’s something called a Night Maker in the square,” Luke said. “Is it true?”
“Yeah.” I hoped the rumor didn’t include the news that I had brought that Night Maker into the world, but Luke would probably not be talking to me at all if he knew that part. “It’s super creepy. It’s like there’s a big black hole in the center of the square. On the plus side, I don’t … disappear during the day, or whatever it is that happens to the Nightstruck.”
His eyebrows shot up. “You don’t know?”
I shook my head. “I don’t know if I’m unconscious or what, but I don’t remember anything about the days before the Night Maker came.”
“Piper said the same thing, but I thought that was her way of saying she didn’t want to talk about it.”
“You’ve seen Piper?”
Luke nodded, his expression grim and haunted. “She’s out of the hospital now, convalescing at home.”
“How … is she?”
His expression had already clued me in that she wasn’t doing too great, so I wasn’t surprised that he shook his head. “She’s not doing so well. I mean, physically she’s going to be okay, but…” His voice trailed off, and he cleared his throat. He was silent for a moment before he continued more firmly. “She wanted me to tell you she was sorry. For everything.”
I snorted. There was no apology big enough to cover everything she had done to me. Being Nightstruck had changed her in ways she couldn’t have imagined before she let it happen, but the fact would always remain that she had let it happen. I’d been taken against my will, tricked by Aleric and Piper, and I’d tried desperately to get inside before the dawn struck and did whatever it had done to me. Piper had gone willingly, and for that I would never, ever forgive her.
“Feel free to tell her what she can do with her apology,” I said with a curl of my lip.
“She’s not expecting you to forgive her,” Luke said. “She just thought she should tell you any
way.”
“What about you? Do you forgive her?”
Luke frowned in thought. He and Piper had been dating for months before she was Nightstruck, but it seemed to me their relationship had already been starting to go downhill. Piper tended to go through boyfriends like potato chips, and I’d gotten the feeling he was losing patience with some of her less than considerate behavior.
“I don’t know,” Luke admitted. “She wasn’t in her right mind when she said and did all those terrible things, so I feel like I should forgive her.” He shrugged. “But I’m not sure I can.”
“Good,” I said with a firm nod. “She doesn’t deserve you. She never did.”
That was not something the old me would ever have said. I might have thought it, but I never, ever would have put it into words. Being able to say what I was thinking—without worrying about whether it hurt someone’s feelings or pissed them off—was such a great relief I couldn’t imagine how I’d survived all those years of self-censorship.
Luke gave me a disapproving look, and I thought I was about to get a lecture about what a bitch I was being. Luckily, he kept his opinion to himself.
“Her parents have her seeing a shrink,” he said. “Doesn’t sound like it’s helping much. They’re so afraid she’s going to run away and get herself Nightstruck again that they’re keeping her under twenty-four-hour supervision. They even lock her in her room at night.”
“My heart bleeds for her.” Of course Piper would want to run off again. The reason the night had taken her in the first place was that deep down she was so self-absorbed she sometimes forgot other people mattered. So why wouldn’t she want to be Nightstruck once more, even though she knew exactly what kind of creature it would turn her into? Her own comfort was far more important to her than the lives of the people she would kill or hurt when her stunted conscience went bye-bye again.
Luke shook his head. “I miss you. The real you, I mean.”
“This is the real me,” I insisted. “You just don’t want to accept it.”