Dark Descent

by Nicole R. Taylor

  “There’s your second problem,” Wilder fired back, his voice rising. “You don’t see yourself as a Natural. You see it as you versus the world. Has anything I’ve said to you stuck in that brain of yours?”

  “Obviously not.” I reached out, shielding the movement from Wilder, and snatched the closest arondight blade. Slipping it down the front of my trousers, I let my anger percolate. “While I’m in here, the Infernal who ruined my friend’s life is still out there. How many other people has it mutated? Ten, twenty?”

  “Going after the Infernal is not your problem, Scarlett.”

  It always gave me the shivers whenever he used my name instead of Purples. Maybe because I knew he was being serious. Serious Wilder was bad news.

  “So, your boyfriend is mad at you because you’re busy training so you can hunt the demon who mutated him? Sounds like a really great guy.”

  I pinched the bridge of my nose. “He’s not my—”

  “If he’s so short-sighted that he can’t see the sacrifice you’re making to protect humanity, then he’s not worth it,” Wilder stated. “Get over it and move on. He’s dead weight.”

  “Dead weight?” I scoffed. “Clearly you’ve never cared about anyone but yourself!”

  “And there’s another reason why you’re not leaving the Sanctum.”

  I grunted and glanced at the door. This was a control thing, right? My life was spinning into chaos and the only solid thing I had was hunting the Infernal who started all of this. I could get answers and revenge. Impatient or practical, who knew.

  “I need to get out of here,” I muttered, my body itching.

  Everything ached. From head to toe, I tingled with the need for action. It was a need that couldn’t be sated by training alone. I couldn’t see the results of training like I could the blood on a sword. Besides, I could go back to the flat and get some things. I could bring Jackson something from home. Man, talk about trying to justify my crazy.

  I strode towards the door, snatching up my boots on the way. Wilder was oddly silent as I slammed the door closed behind me and stormed through the gym. Ignoring the other Naturals going about their training, I went back to my room, not even stopping to put my boots on until I’d closed myself inside.

  Tearing through the chest of drawers, I pulled out the light woollen jumper I wore the day of Jackson’s tournament at the O2. It seemed like years had passed since that night and I scowled. Pushing away the unwanted memories, I dragged the jumper over my head, laced up my boots and threw on my leather jacket.

  Fishing the arondight blade out of my trousers, I slid the hilt into the inside pocket of my jacket, then stuffed my keys to the flat in the other. Glancing at my mobile phone, I hesitated. After a moment of deliberation, I left it behind.

  The hallway was empty as I left, as were all the others as I made my way towards the exit. The air was stifling, the pressure heavy on my chest. I didn’t know if that was metaphorical or not, but I had to get outside. Once I crossed the threshold, I’d know if this mission was crazy or completely and utterly brilliant.

  The foyer was dark as I strode across the marble. I pushed the outer door open with a violent jab, almost expecting an alarm to go off, but the only thing that happened was a blast of cold air buffeting through the gap and tugging at me with icy fingers.

  I stepped over the threshold and onto the street. Glancing over my shoulder, all I saw was the illusion that protected the Naturals’ home base from the human world.

  No one tried to stop me. No one at all. It was a little too easy if you asked me, but I walked away all the same.

  After weeks of being inside, the outside world had become a strange place.

  Everything looked different, it smelled weird, and I didn’t quite fit. As I walked towards the river, I knew it was me that’d changed, not the city. London was one of those places that was always the same, no matter how much time had passed. It was this ancient, heaving mass of Englishness that would survive anything—fires, wars, famines, demon invasions. It was the inhabitants who evolved.

  Slinking down Kentish Town Road, I stuck to the shadows, avoiding pools of light. Whenever I came across another pedestrian, I crossed the street. The result had been an erratic zigzag across London, but I didn’t know any other way to remain undetectable. Wilder hadn’t even begun to teach me how to use my Light, and I wasn’t keen on repeating my first attempt.

  As I approached home, I passed the kebab shop. It was lit up, late-night customers coming and going, all of them probably drunk. Honestly, I kind of missed 8-bit. I hardly fit in amongst all the gamers but working there was the closest I’d ever been to liking what I did for a living.

  Glancing up at the flat, I hesitated and stumbled a step before coming to a complete halt. The lights were on.

  Ducking into the lane across the street, I flattened against the brick wall of the neighbouring building and focused on the windows.

  It didn’t make sense. Jackson was still in the vaults at the Sanctum and I was here. No one else had a key.

  A hot poker of rage stabbed me though the chest as I watched for movement above. Someone was in our flat. Our flat. How dare a stranger go through our stuff. At this point, I seriously doubted it was a human burglar, so knowing a demon was pawing through my underwear drawer made me want to projectile vomit.

  The arondight blade was heavy in my pocket. If I went upstairs, I’d have to be prepared to slice through anything that attacked me. Wilder was wrong about the way I’d killed that lesser demon—that was so not a fluke. I could do it if I had to and right now, it looked like I had to.

  Don’t think, Scarlett. Just do.

  I tensed, my head tilting slightly to the side. Movement. Someone was behind me.

  It was a gradual awareness, like a cold drop of water had oozed down my spine, chilling me as it went. Eyes were boring into my back, and warm, slimy breath tickled the shell of my ear. Reaching into the inner pocket of my jacket, my fingers closed around the arondight blade.

  I turned slowly, tensing as the shadow behind me solidified. White eyes stared back at me, the male demon grinning from ear to ear.

  “Boo.”

  I cried out, tore the hilt free, and swung, willing the blade into life. On cue, the sword erupted in a shower of purple sparks, its metal links slotting together as it arced through the air.

  The demon ducked, and the sword collided with the wall, sparks flying everywhere. Before I had time to react, his arm flew upward at an unnatural speed. Its palm slammed into my forearm, the force loosening my grip on the sword.

  The hilt flew over my head, the blade disappearing as suddenly as it came to life. Metal clattered onto the cobblestones and skidded away, and panic took me.

  A hand clamped around my neck and I was thrown against the wall. I collided with the brick, then my body swung the other way and I hit the opposite building with a thud. Dazed, I fell to the ground, my head cracking against the cobblestones.

  The demon laughed and folded itself over me, its weight pinning me in place.

  I cried out as its fingernails dug into my skin and pried my eyelid open. He lowered his face towards mine, his tongue dangling out of his mouth. Was he going to lick my eyeball? Man, now I’d seen everything.

  “Arondight,” it hissed. “Where is it? Where is it?”

  “I don’t know!”

  “You do know. You do!”

  I gritted my teeth, desperately searching for an escape. The demon forced my head to the side, its tongue dipping dangerously low to my eyeball. It was the Infernal who’d attacked me and Jackson. It had to be.

  “Infernal,” I said. “You’re the Infernal who’s been following me.”

  “Arondight,” it hissed.

  I squirmed, trying to work my way out of the demon’s grasp, but he was too strong.

  “Wriggle all you like, Natural, but you will tell me. Then I’ll pry your skull open and fu—”

  A scream tore from my throat as the Infernal flew to the
side, rolling across the lane. It slammed into the wall, landing face-first on the ground.

  “Get back,” a voice commanded.

  I glanced up at the silhouette, my heart beating wildly. Martin.

  I scrambled away, my back hitting the opposite wall, and swiped at my face. The side of my hand came back smeared with red, the action making my face sting where the demon had tried to pry my eye open.

  The Infernal was pushing to its feet as Romy appeared out of the shadows. Martin wrestled the creature to the ground, pinning it underneath his body. Then Romy lunged, burying her dagger deep into its chest. The Infernal wailed, its arms thrashing, and a plume of black smoke poured from the man’s mouth and into the air.

  Romy wrenched her blade free, dropped it, and snatched something from her pocket. Whatever it was, she held it high and the Infernal’s smoky essence began to pull towards it. The mass writhed and sparked, hissing as it was sucked into the Natural’s hand. Then, with a strange sucking sound, the demon was trapped.

  Romy snapped the lid closed on what I could now see was some sort of vial.

  “What was that?” I asked, sitting up. My gaze was locked on her hand, where I could see black smoke billowing inside its prison.

  “Bloody hell,” Martin cursed, glaring at me. He turned and began to unashamedly search through the man’s pockets. He pulled out a wallet and flipped through the contents, holding up a photograph.

  “You’re lucky we came along when we did,” Romy said to me.

  “Did you really just ‘come along’?” I narrowed my eyes and hauled myself to my feet. Flaming embarrassment was now my middle name.

  “Unfortunately, Wilder called us when you left the Sanctum,” Martin declared, his pride obviously hurt. Obviously, being ordered around by the Sanctum’s resident misfit wasn’t his cup of tea.

  “It took us a while to find you,” Romy said with a shrug.

  I glanced at the vial in her hand and wondered if this was another one of those moments where I’d been manipulated, but it was unlikely. My stupidity had given them an opportunity to trap an Infernal.

  “At least we got it before it could escape,” Martin declared. “There’s an upside.”

  “But there’s someone in the flat,” I said, pointing across the street.

  “An illusion,” Romy explained.

  “Demons can create illusions?” Glancing up at the windows, which were now dark. Frowning, I didn’t get it.

  “There’s a lot you don’t know yet,” she replied. “There’s a reason we do the things we do.”

  “Yeah, it’s all fun and games until someone loses an eye,” Martin drawled.

  The man on the ground began to groan, and to my surprise, his chest was fine. Other than the hole in his shirt, there was no other evidence he’d just been stabbed by Romy’s cold iron dagger. No gaping wounds or pools of blood to be seen. I didn’t know how that worked yet, but somehow, I knew now wasn’t the time for a lesson in exorcisms.

  Martin knelt over the man and began to murmur, using his Light to alter and soothe.

  “Don’t worry,” Romy said, “he’ll be fine. Martin will send him home with new memories.”

  “But… if that’s the Infernal who mutated Jackson…”

  “He can tell,” she reassured me. “We wouldn’t send anyone away who was soul sick.”

  “Soul sick?” I scratched my head. “That’s what you call it?”

  Romy nodded and tucked the glass vial that held the Infernal into her pocket. “Let’s get you back to the Sanctum.”

  Groaning, I leaned against the wall as the unknown man stumbled down the lane to the street beyond.

  “You can’t avoid it,” Martin said, narrowing his eyes at me. “You’re in big trouble. Better face the music now, than later.”

  Romy offered me a half-smile and began to walk away. I had no other choice but to follow them with my tail between my legs.

  Wilder was right… Vendettas never ended well for anybody.

  16

  The lights of London twinkled across the river, the orange and white shimmering through the rising mists.

  I sat on the roof of the Sanctum, my feet dangling over the edge. Below, the empty street was dark, the industrialised laneway shimmered where it met the side of the building—that must be where the invisibility illusion kicked in.

  “Are you sulking?”

  The sound of Wilder’s voice grated against my raw heart and I winced. Humiliated wasn’t the right word to describe how I was feeling. I wasn’t sure there was a stronger word than that. Maybe I’d have to add an adjective to amplify the burning embarrassment at my failed romp through the city.

  “Yes,” I hissed, angling my face towards the shadows. There was no use lying. I was wallowing big time.

  I tensed as he sat beside me, a little closer than I’d like, his boots dangling over the edge. We sat in silence for a while, listening to the dull roar of the rumbling back and forth traffic. Sound echoed across the water, bringing the outside world to us, but our little pocket of London was isolated, even though we were in the centre of it all. Alone in a crowd—that was the curse of the Naturals, after all.

  “You didn’t think I’d be smart enough to see your sleight of hand?” Wilder asked.

  “You saw me swipe that arondight blade?”

  He snorted. “Of course I did.”

  I groaned and shrunk into myself. I knew I’d stuffed up and hearing it from Wilder made me feel even worse. It was news to me, but I hated that I’d disappointed him.

  “Get over it,” he drawled.

  He leaned back and fished in his pocket. A moment later, he pulled out something and set it on the ledge between us. A shock of purple acrylic hair made my eyebrows rise.

  “Where did you get that?” I asked, picking up the troll doll. The last time I’d seen it was when I’d left it behind at the Tate.

  “I followed you,” he said.

  “That was like a month ago…”

  “You didn’t cry.”

  “No. I wanted to, but not out of self-pity or anything.” I sighed, stroking the troll’s hair into a point. “I’ve been kicked down a lot. Crying seemed pointless.”

  “It is pointless.” There he went, handing out pointy passive insults again.

  I closed my eyes and took a deep breath. Having a heart-to-heart with Wilder wasn’t the most comforting thing in the world, especially when I knew I was probably going to get an epic knuckle wrapping from Greer and her cronies in the morning. “It’s just… I feel so powerless being stuck in here.”

  “I know you want to find out why demons are targeting you, and get revenge for what happened to Jackson, but you won’t solve anything by picking fights with every random bottom dweller you come across. You’ll just get yourself possessed or worse.”

  “There’s something worse than being possessed by a puff of black smoke?”

  Wilder nodded. “Yeah, there is. It’s called death.”

  His words conjured an image of my parents and I shivered. Sightless eyes were one thing, but when they belonged to your mum and dad? Stuff like that haunted people. It haunted me for sure. Now here I was, in the middle of something bigger and wilder than I’d ever imagined. Camelot, mythical swords, epic demon battles, knights, and magical women who lived in lakes… Yeah, it was wild all right.

  “It wanted to know where Arondight was,” I said, somehow knowing I could trust Wilder. There was just something about him.

  He tensed and glared at me. “Arondight? Are you sure?”

  “Wilder, a demon was trying to lick my eyeball at the time. I remember every detail.” I jabbed a finger at my face, where the Infernal’s fingernails had dug into my skin.

  “You’d be forgiven for hallucinating,” he quipped.

  “It was traumatising. I’m an over-thinker. Traumatic experiences give me fodder for months. It asked me where Arondight was. The Arondight.”

  Wilder looked troubled, but he didn’t voice his thoughts.
At least not the ones I wanted to hear. “You shouldn’t have gone out there, but at least we know why those demons were stalking you,” he said.

  I scoffed, “Dumb asses.”

  “There must be some reason they think you know where it is, Purples.”

  “Nuh-ah! Until you did your ninja shit with your sparky sword, I never knew what any of this was.”

  Wilder rubbed his hand over his face. “Did you? Did you, really?”

  “What’s that supposed to mean?”

  “The memories you have of your parents’ death… That Balan wanted something.”

  “You still think my parents knew where Arondight was?” My eyes widened.

  “It’s possible.”

  I looked out over the city and muttered, “Then why don’t I remember?”

  “You were a child who went through a traumatic experience, Scarlett. You likely blocked out most of it and simply forgot the things you didn’t understand.”

  “If I knew…” I sighed and rubbed my eyes. It wasn’t like I was keeping that part a secret. I genuinely didn’t know squat about the Natural’s magic sword.

  Besides, Wilder had a lot of secrets, most of which I’d probably never know, but right now it was obvious he was keeping something important from me. He was all vague and deliberately giving me just enough to be satisfied. Seemed like he’d never met an overachieving over-thinker like me.

  “What aren’t you telling me?” I demanded.

  He grunted and shoved his hands into the pockets of his leather jacket.

  “Wilder. This is my life we’re talking about. If you know something… well, I can take it.”

  “You’re very intuitive, you know that?”

  “Don’t make me shove you off the roof.”

  He turned, picking up a strand of my hair. He was always doing that. What was so special about my weird highlights that he felt the need to keep touching me?

  “Arondight had another name, actually it had many, but one was the Indigo Flame.” He met my gaze and dropped my hair.