DARK SOULS (Dark Souls Series) (35 page)

My intentions were thwarted when the Leiche occupying the wall screeched and flew at me. I pushed myself off the ground and shot towards the bed, my own momentum sending me colliding into the far wall beside the window.

It was there I saw the third Leiche hovering on my desk in the shadows, his eyes glowing a garish ruby in the darkness.

If I were still myself, if I were still the regular Emily Chaucer who just happened to face intruders in her home, I would have scrambled on the floor until I reached the doorknob and flung the door open so hard it would almost rip off its hinges as I ran screaming for help in the stairwell.

Unfortunately, I was no longer in control, the darkness already making herself at home as she saw through my eyes and spoke through my mouth. She stood up and faced the three Leiches who were slowly crawling toward me like spiders, these three supposed children with their gap teeth and baby-soft tendrils of hair. My darkness even cocked a hip out arrogantly.

“
Just try and take me
,” she whispered to them.

“
You took one of ours
,” the one on the desk said, his plump little arms creeping forward as he slithered down onto the chair. The child couldn’t have been more than eleven, his baby cheeks still flushed with innocence despite the evil lurking inside him.

“
Now we will take you,”
the other two chorused. They were two girls about the same age as the boy, identical twins with long brown hair hanging lankily across their shoulders. One crawled over my bed, her filthy hands leaving marks as she weaved through the shadows.  The other one remained at the foot of the bed, watching, the filtered light of the window behind me causing her eyes to gleam with the color of blood.

I felt my mouth smile in anticipation. Instead of responding to their threat, my body leapt into the air, crashing into the twins and taking them both down and sending all three of us hurtling into the small divider island that separated my main room and the kitchenette.

Plaster and paint chips covered us, obscuring my vision but not my goal. I lay a hard hand on both of their faces and they screamed in agony, vapors of steam rising out of my hands as I touched them.

I felt the third one coming behind me, his mouth open in anticipation of connecting with my neck, and I propelled my right elbow backwards and felt it crack against the Leiche’s teeth. He screamed as he fell, and the sickening crunch of my elbow against his face led me to believe that I had broken at least one of those deadly incisors of his.

The twin I was forced to take my hand away from saw her chance and took it, leaping up and latching onto me, sending me toppling sideways and landing on her sister who was still crying out in agony, my left hand remaining firm.

My right hand shot up in defense and connected with her cheek, but it didn’t send her small form flying off me like I predicted it would. She laughed as she deflected my blow by catching my forearm and twisting it so hard I heard the snap of bone.

I screamed right along with the darkness, both of us feeling the shrieking pain, but we used that pain and turned it outward, coiling it into twisted hate against these creatures who dared to enter into
my
home. My eyes raging with golden fire, I lifted myself up and threw the Leiche off me, sending her flying into the vanity mirror above my dresser and shattering it, the shards tinkling like music as they fell upon her and cascaded across the floor. Satisfied that she was at least temporarily knocked out, I turned my attention to her sister, the Leiche I still had below me, and readied myself to latch onto her demon soul and absorb it into me, fuel me.

Crouching over her, I met her eyes, which were now flickering open and shut, barely maintaining consciousness. My skin had been touching hers for what seemed like seconds, but I also registered that I had never held onto a demon for so long before. The burn seared through my left arm and into my chest as I continued to maintain my grip on her.

Push the demon out,
I demanded to the darkness, but then I realized to my chagrin that I didn’t have to command anything from her.

We had been working together. She had been allowing me, and I her, to compete against these creatures together the entire time.

I didn’t dwell on that fact for long, as I had two other Leiches who were ready to leap at me again at any second. Instead, I locked eyes with the semi-conscious Leiche, feeling the pull of her, almost as if our eyes were connected by a long, translucent string. I tugged at that string, gathering power into my mind as I bored my eyes into hers, my stomach clenching as I pressed that power forward and heaved it at her with everything I had.

Her eyes widened as the white wave shuttled through her with a force similar to a brick wall slamming into her face. The demon rolled out of her, shrieking and scrambling to stand up on its legs.

By now, I was used to seeing the grotesque bodies of these things, but I couldn’t help the small shudder that ran through my body at the sight. Her tendons writhed as if they were live maggots, her eyes empty sockets in her gaunt, shriveled face. Instead of cheeks, deep, emaciated holes were in their place, her jaw held together only by the small tendons and muscles that hadn’t already deteriorated.

I didn’t give her time to rise to her full height as I shot forward and grabbed her by the ankle.

She shrieked louder, the sound almost bursting my eardrums as I dragged her back towards me.  I leaned my face in as I took a deep, anticipatory breath. My hand reached for her neck. She slackened immediately as I felt the heat beneath my eyes grow, lighting up the room in an eerie gold. I had her.

I didn’t expect the shove behind me, nor the force of it as I careened into the wall beside the shattered mirror, splinters of the destroyed dresser lodging into my body. I felt a sudden weight on my stomach, and squinted my eyes through the dust and plaster to see that the boy had landed on top of me. He wasn’t stupid enough to give me the same opportunity that the girl did, and in one fell swoop, sank his remaining fang into my neck.

            My last thought before the venom cannonballed through me and rendered me unconscious was, inexplicably, this:
Macy’s gonna kill me for ditching her again.

CHAPTER THIRTY-THREE

I came to slowly, feeling a type of heat that, for once, wasn’t coming from inside me.  I cracked my eyes open, the very act of opening my eyelids causing me excruciating pain.  I searched within myself, attempting to locate the dark flame, but she was nowhere to be found.

Sluggishly, I surveyed my surroundings. Filthy metal pillars encased me on all sides, the smell of rotting garbage and burnt oil invading my nostrils. A fire burned about fifteen feet in front of me. I blinked rapidly, my eyes feeling sensitive to the firelight, and swept my gaze around, instinctively checking my blind spots.

There they stood, all three of them, dancing around their handmade fire like bizarre evil cherubs. I noted through my fogged brain that the demon I had expelled from the child had slipped right back into her human host and was happily pirouetting with her cohorts, no harm done.

I once again searched for the dark flame. I couldn’t find her.

I tried not to panic as my mind finally connected to the rest of my body and I realized the pressure I had been feeling on my wrists were tight bindings, possibly rope. They had propped me up against one of the steel pillars, the bindings pulling my arms backwards, forcing me back painfully and straining my shoulders as they wrapped tightly around my upper body. Dust coated me every time I tried to move, falling onto my hands, hurting my eyes. But although I could barely move my torso and arms, my legs remained free.

Where was I?
The ground was cold and damp. The wetness had already seeped into the back of my jeans, causing me to shiver with cold. To test my leeway, I bent my knees up slowly, drawing them close to my chest.

Why didn’t they kill me when they had the chance?

Apparently, one fang full of venom was not enough to kill me, and the other two decided not to sink their own fangs into me just yet. I couldn’t help but be both suspicious and terrified at the same time. They wanted something from me, I just didn’t know what yet.

“Oh....”

My head snapped to the left as soon as I heard a very human-sounding moan coming from that direction.

“Oh no, please no,” I murmured in terror, my heart falling into my stomach. “Macy. No....”

There she was, my best friend, my whole heart, the girl who saved me from myself, trussed up and pressed against a metal pillar beside me, rust peeling like paper around her.

Her eyes fluttered open at my voice and widened as she took stock of her surroundings. Then she looked over at me, and my stomach dropped as I watched the terror slowly snake into her eyes.

“Emily? Emily, what’s happening? What’s going on?”

I tried to shush her so as to not draw the Leiches’ attention before I had time to formulate some sort of plan, or at the very least figure out where the hell we were, but it was too late. Her voice, rising in panic with every syllable, had caused them to look over.

“
She’s awake,
” one of them hissed, the boy, still one fang short.

I struggled uselessly against my restraints, but I had to do something. I had to keep their attention on me and not Macy.

“Are you so scared of me you have to tie me up?” I taunted them, causing all three heads to look at me.

“I had you,” I continued, “I had all of you.”

The two girls laughed at that, the boy remaining ominously silent as he continued to glare at me, fingering his sole fang.

“You never had us. We were just enjoying the exercise. We haven’t had that kind of fight in a while. We thank you for that,” one of the girls said, her voice unnaturally high-pitched as she walked towards me.

She leaned in close, her nose almost touching mine. I watched as her eyes crinkled up with a looming smile, a faint red glow pulsing beneath her pupils.

My stomach growled.

Behind me, I heard a low roar before it was followed by the telling sound of wheels shooting across steel.

Subway. We’re in some sort of abandoned section of the subway.

But where?
New York City’s subway map was like the colorful tentacles of a sea monster, streaming across the island and its surrounding boroughs, reaching into to every area, twisted and tangled, yet still a form of organized chaos. There were so many subway tunnels, all housing thousands of dark pockets. An underground city, secret with its caves, ripe with a sort of filthy protection for those that wanted to escape and hide.

 We could be anywhere in the city. Anywhere.

“Not so powerful now, are you, Cambion,” she whispered, her breath foul against my cheeks.

I jolted at her words.

She leaned back into a standing position, observing me as her words sunk in.

“Yes, we know what you are,” the other girl said as she sidled up next to her twin. “Since you killed our sister, we have been watching. We have been waiting.”

There is
nothing
creepier than possessed children. Nothing. I clenched my jaw hard in order to hide my fears. Where was the darkness? Why couldn’t I access her?

No
, I thought. I refused to accept defeat on the sole fact that I didn’t have my dark twin. For too long, I’d been trying to fight against my powers, refusing to accept what I was becoming and creating a deep hindrance within myself. That failure had led me here to this point, with my friend in peril, all because I refused to learn. All because I just wanted to be normal.

I couldn’t keep relying on the dark flame to continuously save me. I had to look deep within myself and find my own power. It couldn’t be only my dark side that would grow stronger.  

I just had to wait for my moment. Continue distracting.

“If you know what I am, then you know I’ll kill you,” I said with fake confidence that I hoped they couldn’t detect.

“Not before we get what we want from you,” the boy spoke to me softly, his eyes flashing against the firelight.

He was most definitely pissed at me.

One of the girls looked over to Macy and started wandering over, stepping over the subway tracks, looking like a goulish ballerina in her dirty pink dress. Panic laced through me, but I kept my tone neutral when I said, “What could you want with a mere human when you have me? One of the last in existence. You don’t need her for anything.”

The girl glanced back at me playfully. “Oh, we know. We also know that you care deeply for this one. We’ve seen. We’ve watched. You will do as we say, or else we will kill your human.”

I couldn’t help the fear from forming on my face. “What do you want me to do?”

Did they have yet another fact about me that I didn’t have access to? How did they even know what I was?

“We’ve learned about your kind since witnessing your power. The Warriors have been alerted. We’ve communicated with your demon cohort. What is it you call him? Oh yes, Derek,” the other girl said, twirling in circles as she spoke to me. She kicked up some of the putrid water, scattering it across my legs.

I felt unexplained fear over what they could have done to Derek at the same time utter betrayal flowed through me. I never thought Derek would do this to me. Give me up. Share my secret with evil.

“So, have you tied me up for the Warriors, then? Am I just awaiting my fate? Fine.” Part of me wanted it to end.  “But let the human go. She’s useless to you; she’s obviously too old for your tastes. She’s useless to the Warriors.”

“Oh, that is where you have it wrong, Cambion,” the boy said, his voice so close to my ear that I jumped as much as my restraints would allow. His face remained close to mine, his fang glistening with the moisture of his saliva. “We want your powers.”

“Yes, your powers!” the girls chorused as they continued to twirl.

One of the girls suddenly stopped, taking a direct path to Macy, who had been terrified into silence during the entire exchange.