Darkness Brutal (The Dark Cycle Book 1) (22 page)

THIRTY

“Aidan?” Kara’s voice comes closer.

“How did you get in here?” Sid asks, angry.

But I barely hear them or see them. My face is buried in my hands. What in the name of God is going on?

There’s got to be some explanation. Sid’s been looking for someone he thinks is me—someone who Kara thinks is me. She even had a dream about me, a dream about lions.

A dream that echoes what my mom said that day she painted my wall:
“The lions won’t touch you, Aidan. They can’t hurt you. God’s closed their mouths.”

No. No, this doesn’t make sense. This can’t actually be happening. I’ve been duped. I’ve gotten mixed up with a bunch of crazy people.

They called me the Son of Daniel.

“He looks like he’s in shock,” Connor says.

“Aidan, come out of the shed,” Sid says, sounding concerned. “Being in there is affecting you, son.”

Daniel.

Daniel who? They were talking about the Bible. A lions’ den. A Sunday school story: Daniel in the lions’ den? The prophet Daniel lived a million years ago—okay, about twenty-six hundred years ago. But in any case, the guy can’t be my father.

No way.

It’s literally impossible. Maybe they’re thinking of it symbolically.

Someone takes me by the arm. “Wake up, Aidan.”

“He can’t hear you, Kara. He’s freaking right now.”

“He needs to get out of that shed.”

I knew this place was off. I knew something was up with Sid. I should’ve listened to my instincts. You’d think by now I’d know better. But . . . my instincts also told me to come inside, to look in that trunk.

Nothing makes sense. I have to get Ava out of here.

Now.

I push through the bodies in front of me and stumble from the shed, nearly diving headfirst into a pile of old paint cans.

“Take it easy,” Sid says.

“Go get some water, Connor,” Kara says, and then she’s standing in front of me, holding my chin in her small hand. “Are you here, Aidan? Can you hear me?”

I blink at her and feel the weight that was coating me lift from my chest. But so many questions stay behind.

Connor comes up beside me, and a glass of water is shoved in my face.

I push it back and jerk from Kara’s touch. “I need to get out of here,” I say.

As they watch me, fear obvious on their faces, I turn and head for the house. Inside, I take the stairs two at a time and burst into my bedroom.

“Ava, you need to pack your—” But she’s not there. The room’s empty. My eyes catch a piece of paper resting on my pillow. A note. The amulet is on top of it. And written in the bubbly script of an eleven-year-old are the words:
Protect yourself. I can fix everything so we’ll both be free
.

It’s signed off with a heart and the letter
A
.

My shaking body goes cold. Her words sound just like my mom’s did the day she told me she was pregnant, right after she started calling up the darkness.

Ava.

I pick up the amulet and clench it in my fist. I stare at the empty hook on the wall where she’s been hanging her bag—the one she keeps hiding things in. I fumble with my mind, looking for her, saying her name through the din of my frantic thoughts. But she’s not answering.

I race downstairs. The house is empty. I check the office, and even Lester’s not in his usual spot. I ask Finger if he’s seen Ava, but he just chews on his lip.

Kara, Connor, and Sid all come back into the house, watching me like I’m about to lose it completely. Which I am.

I focus my energy on Sid. “Did you do something that’ll hurt her, you evil shit?”

He flinches a little, but his eyes remain on mine. “Who, Aidan?”

“My sister!”

He shakes his head. Then he looks over at Kara. “Do you know where the others went?”

I can tell from the way she’s breathing that she’s debating what to say. I can also see that she’s afraid of me.

I’m afraid of myself right now. “Tell me what you did to my sister, or I swear to God—” But I can’t finish. I swear
what
? I swear I’ll kill you? I’ll do something else horrifying? What the hell am I prepared to do?

Connor steps forward, holding out a calming hand. “Look, Aidan, you’re freaked out. I get it. I assume you just got a fairly huge dose of dark casting magic standing in that shed. And you may have heard some things. Just take a deep breath and—”

A toilet flushes, and everyone turns to see Jax emerge from the downstairs bathroom holding a Victoria’s Secret catalogue and chewing on a Red Vine. “Yo, what up,” he says, oblivious. As he looks from one face to the next he stops chewing. He swallows hard. “Everything okay?”

“No,” I say.

He points at me like he just thought of something. “You’re looking for your sister.”

I nod slowly.

“They all went to some beach.”

“The
beach
?” I say, incredulous.

“Yep.” He points at the living room behind us. “I’m gonna hang with F-Boy and kill me some Nazis, is that cool?” He’s asking as if I have a gun to all their heads. They all have that look in their eyes. Like they’re worried I’ll pull the trigger if they make the wrong move.

“See, the others are just at the beach,” Sid says in his calming voice. “It’s nothing nefarious, Aidan.”

“And if they’re all together we can call them,” Connor says, pulling out his phone and queuing up a number. He hands it to me. “I’m sure she’s okay, man. I get it. Family’s vital. But if she’s gone, it’s not us.”

I take the phone from him and listen to it ring.

Holly’s voice comes on the line. “Hey-loo,” she says in a singsong voice.

“Where’s my sister?” I growl into the phone.

She hesitates for a second and then says, “Calm down,
Dad
. She’s in the shop with Lester.”

I breathe in slow. “What shop?”

“The ice cream shop, duh. You said she could come with us. We’re doing a beach run with Rebecca now that she’s all invisible and all that skitch. But first an ice cream run for me. PMS, ya know.”

“I never said she could go anywhere.”

“What are you, her jailer? It’s ice cream and sand, not a night on the town.”

I take a few more breaths. Everything sounds normal. It’s just ice cream. Maybe the others are right. I’m overreacting. “Is she okay?”

“No, we’re selling her on the black market. Of course she’s okay. Jeez.”

I’m tense because of Sid. Holly isn’t some snake in the grass. She’s just a homeless girl like Ava. And Kara.

“I want her back here.”

“Wow. Controlling much?”

“She needs to come home, Holly,” I say as calmly as I can manage. “Please. As soon as you can.”

“Fine. God. We were gonna go to Malibu, but whatever. I’ll let her know that the freedom from the tyranny of her older brother is over. Give us a while; we’re off Wilshire, and it’s almost lunch rush.”

I hang up. Ava’s okay. She’ll be home soon.

And then what?

All the fire seems to have drained from my bones. I walk past Connor, handing him his phone, and lower myself to the steps.

“What the hell is going on?” I ask, exhaustion overtaking me. “Who are you people?”

“Let me talk to him,” Sid says, sounding resigned. He motions for the others to leave and comes to stand in front of me. “Can we go for a drive, Aidan? I promise to explain everything. Look at me and see that I’m telling the truth.”

I look up at him, and he says it again: “I promise to explain everything that I can.”

No spark lights his eyes. So I lift my tired body from the stairs and follow him back outside to the car, feeling as if I’m following him to my end.

THIRTY-ONE

It’s a ways to our destination, and neither of us speaks the whole time.

We end up in Pasadena. The answers are in
Pasadena
?

Sid leaves the car in a dirt parking lot, and I follow him down a trail. It looks like we’re heading toward a large bridge. Or maybe it’s a dam. Are there dams in California? Almost immediately I start to feel strange. Dizzy. And there’s a very familiar tug. Like the gravity in the shed, but a thousand times stronger.

“What is this place?” I ask, my legs becoming weak.

Sid walks farther down the path before answering. “This is how I would go home if I could.”

That answer makes no sense, so I stay quiet, studying the surroundings and the brush and taking in the dank smell of settled water far off. And that intense pull of something just ahead.

We go through a tunnel and find ourselves on the other side of the road, and then we’re walking in what I think is a dried riverbed. Trails have been cut through the brush over the years, but some areas look like they recently carried water. The path stays flat for a while, but then we’re almost climbing as we make our way up a runoff crevice in the hill that’s coated with dark stones. When we’re at the top, the pull nearly makes me run forward. I have to clench my fists the last few paces.

Until I see it, and my feet no longer want to go any closer.

A large rock juts up from the trees, carved out by wind and water into what appears to be a poor rendering of a demon’s profile. A cave mouth opens up at its base, blocked by iron gates. The surrounding stone edifice is painted in massive amounts of graffiti, making it all look like the perfect rave hangout. That’s where the pull is coming from. Right there in that dark cave.

“This is it,” Sid says. He’s visibly shaking, and his fist is gripping his walking stick like it’s a lifeline.

“This is
what
?” I ask. “Where you kill me and bury my body?” I’m only half joking. The feel of this place is full of murder and casting and darkness.

He breathes out. “No, son. This is where I come from.” He points at a sign that says
Los Angeles County Flood Control District,
and in large bold letters underneath:
Devil’s Gate Dam
.

“You’re from . . . hell?”

His shoulders slump like he’s tired, and he moves farther from the mammoth rocks, facing away from me. “You can see into other worlds, and you know when a person lies. You speak several languages long dead and have countless amounts of knowledge locked in that skull, but you’re as dumb as a post, boy.” When I don’t comment, he asks, “Can you see into a man’s soul?”

I hesitate, but then I realize that the time for hiding is over. “Yes.”

He faces me again. “Have you managed to see mine?”

“I tried, but I couldn’t.”

He nods. “I take precautions. Apparently they work.” He breathes in deep and lets it out slow. “If I show you my soul you’ll understand, I believe.”

“I sure hope so.”

“I can explain. I can
show
you why it’s vital you stay here with us.” Under his breath he adds, “So much depends on it.” The fear and intense focus in his eyes make my heart speed up a little. There’s tension in every muscle, like he’s about to let something loose that he’s been holding for a long time. “I was sent here to find you by men who want you dead. They want you extinguished before you can harness your potential, before that mark on your arm begins to grow. Of course, it’s too late for that now.”

My skin tingles as his words sink in. “Sent. To kill me. Are you high?” I want to scoff at him, but I can see in his eyes that he believes every word. In his heart what he’s saying is the truth. His job was to find me and kill me.

I take a step back.

“I won’t kill you, Aidan. Not now. Maybe I never would have. I see now how vital you are, how this may be what was meant all along—no matter what my fellow prophets say.”

“Prophets? What are you talking about?”

“Where I come from there are still prophets. Or seers, as some call them.”

“Where the hell are you from?” My heart thunders as I imagine him saying,
I’m from Krypton
, or even that he’s from some hidden monastery in the Holy Land. But instead he looks at me with a heightened sense of unease, like he knows what he’s going to tell me is even more insane than that.

And then he motions to the cave and the
Devil’s Gate
sign, again gripping his cane tight, and says, “That cave over there is a doorway. Part of the name is true, it is a
gate
. But not to a
devil
. I came through that doorway from another time, Aidan. Ancient Babylon. The sixth century BC.”

I laugh out loud. It’s absurd.

But then all the breath is sucked from my lungs as I remember my mom’s words:
his father’s place is another time . . .
And I watch Sid begin to change before my eyes, his face growing more etched, skin darkening as if he’s been in the dust and sun for days. I watch the air around him blur, see his pin-striped vest and pants turn into a sort of tunic made of coarse tan fabric, and the tattoos on his arms and chest morph into a language, symbols lost to history long ago. His markings clearly say that he’s a slave, and I suddenly have knowledge about him as I see his soul: he’s a servant of the king, a maker of potions and keeper of knowledge. His rank is low, but his teacher was the highest ranked in the palace. The head prophet.

His teacher’s name was Belteshazzar: the prince and protector of Bel. Once named Daniel of the Israelites, of the tribe of Judah.

“I know this is difficult to comprehend,” he says, studying me, “but it’s true. I came through a tear in the fabric of Creation, much like your father did. It’s how we prophets tell the future. We peek through the keyhole of time.”

“No.” I back up a step and nearly fall over a rock.

He keeps speaking, lost in his need to spill out all his secrets. “When King Darius’s council sent me here to kill you, they assumed you were merely a mistake, easily gotten rid of, that if you had any power at all you’d just be another magician, another prophet like them. But then I saw you, and I knew they were wrong. You’re a whole other creation. You can straddle the lines between spirit and flesh without any effort at all. I’ve never heard of such a thing. It’s why you can’t be put down as if you were only a mistake of nature, why you must see this through and finish awakening your powers.”

I put my hand up. “Hold on. What do you mean King Darius’s council?”

I know Darius was the name of the second king when the prophet Daniel was held captive and that Daniel was a servant in the palace—beloved by the king. Darius was the king who sentenced him to the lions’ den and then embraced Daniel as a brother when God saved him. Daniel was head of his
council of magicians
. But that would mean . . .

“Is Daniel one of the men who want me dead?”

Sid seems thrown by my question. “Your father? No, no. He was sentenced to execution because of his crime.”

“He was
killed
?”

“No, the story in the annals would have changed soon after my arrival here if that was true, and it didn’t. The story still says that Daniel remained in the palace of Babylon well into his life, even after his people, the Israelites, were set free of their captivity. So I can only assume God saved him from death a second time, as he saved him in the lions’ den.”

I swallow, too overwhelmed to know how to feel about it all. “What crime was he being punished for?”

“He broke a very important law by forging a relationship with your mother. That bond never should have happened. But that alone wasn’t the problem. He crossed a line that must never be crossed: he left something behind in his wake.” He gives me a pained look. “You.”

I blink at him, eyes stinging.

“When your parents conceived you, all the elements and threads of the future changed. All past futures became irrelevant. If you’d been a normal child, or even a boy like I was, with small gifts, it might not have been so catastrophic. But because of what you are, because of the potential locked inside you, it changed everything. The spiritual world has been affected. Your father should’ve taken care of it before leaving here and made sure your mother didn’t give birth to you, but he must not have known. He seemed pained beyond anything I’ve ever seen when he was brought to the temple and charged. He was the best of us all.”

I try to imagine him. My father. Not some alien, not an angel—or a demon, like I’d always seen in my nightmares. Flesh and bone. But not just any man. A prophet, a magician, who could travel through time, who lived thousands of years ago. And made the mistake of creating me.

“Your father asked that I be the one sent to find you,” Sid continues. “And because King Darius loved him, his request was granted. Before I left, he told me the story of how he met your mother, how he’d only just been taken from his father’s people and brought into slavery. A boy of twelve, Daniel was powerful even then, truly close to God, and he found a way through a doorway one night while he prayed. He stumbled into shadow and collided with your mother, a girl who felt as lost as he did. He said he only stayed a day, but it was as if his spirit had been lit on fire after that. He went back every year, soon discovering that the day he was slipping through the tear was your mother’s birthday. The last time he went they were both sixteen—that was the night before your father was going to be brought into the fold of the magicians’ council.”

Sid pauses for a moment before saying, “His manhood was going to be severed. He must have felt the fear of it.”

“Wait, what?”

“I believe you call men like your father and myself eunuchs.”

I look down at his crotch. “They cut off your . . . ?”

He smiles at my shock. “It’s quite common for men who live in the palace as servants of the king to be castrated. It keeps us focused on our tasks. Less . . . distracted, if you will. Plus, it keeps the king’s bloodline unsullied.”

My stomach rises. I shake my head as I try to wrap my mind around something like that. My own balls ache with the thought.

“I think your father knew I wouldn’t be able to kill you once I found you,” he continues. “In fact, I made my decision soon after Eric told me about you three years ago. He said there was a young man who could see demons and read the energy of ancient objects. Hearing him talk about you, I knew he’d found the child I was looking for.

“It was more than a relief; I could finish my task and return home. Of course, first I had to kill you.” He gives me an odd smile, and my insides squirm. “But then I saw you. A scraggly whelp of a boy sitting in Hanna’s office. You were eating a sandwich, so focused on your meal you didn’t even seem to notice I’d walked in the room.”

My pulse speeds up, thinking how stupid I was back then. Must’ve been around the time Ava’s foster parents were murdered. I was so hell-bent on blocking out everything and pretending I was normal.

“You had this glow about you—I can’t describe it, but I couldn’t stop staring at you. You look so much like your father, even the way you carry yourself.” He pauses. “I had a job to do, but in that moment I knew I couldn’t go through with it. I knew you were meant to be here in this place, in this time. So I found a way to remain here, to help you fulfill your destiny. And now that you’re here, now that I see what you’re capable of, I know I made the right choice.”

He leans forward on his walking stick like he’s exhausted himself. “Please don’t throw away everything I’ve sacrificed to find you and keep you alive—everything your father sacrificed. You have to see this through, follow the path that your destiny asks. You have to remain where you can stay safe.”

“Safe?” I say in disbelief. “How can things ever be
safe
? I have demons that may soon be after me, I have men in some other time plotting to come kill me and drag my body back to the stone age, and my sister is—” I stop, realizing what slipped out. Ava has to stay out of this. If her troubles collide with mine, my brain might implode.

“You don’t understand, Aidan.”

“I understand survival. That’s all I need to understand. I’ve been doing things on my own for eight years now—longer, really. I can do it on my own again.”

Sid reaches out but then lowers his hand. “You can’t leave before you’ve finished your awakening. You don’t understand everything that’s happening to you.”

I glance at the mark on my hand. “Is that why this thing on my arm is growing?”

“Yes. As it reaches your heart, it will near completion.”

“And it’s Kara that’s making this happen?” I still don’t understand how Kara’s connected to all this, why Sid is using her. I’m having enough trouble digesting all the bits about my father being some eunuch Bible character. Plus, the idea that Sid is from a time even archaeology can’t totally figure out.

“I chose her because of her curse: her power to attract would bring you to her, then to us. The counterspell I put on her could act as a sort of key to unlock your potential. And when you were finally . . . linked . . . you would find a sort of balance. Or at least that was the thinking.”

My teeth clench listening to him talk about her like that, like she’s a means to an end. I consider socking him in the balls and then remember he doesn’t have any. “Do you know how sick that sounds?” I ask.

“Kara understands what’s at stake. She chose this path as much as I did. I never lied to her.”

“No, you’re a saint. You just used her vulnerability to manipulate her.”

“Ask her yourself. I saved her, Aidan.”

“You’ve lied to yourself so much you believe your own bullshit now.”

The air around him flickers again. His clothes go back to the pin-striped suit, and his tattoos become more circus variety than ancient. It makes me wonder which version of him is real.

“How do you do that?” I ask. “Change what you look like?”

“I only allowed you to see a past version of me in my soul, to see through the veneer of flesh a little deeper than you normally go. Nothing about me actually changed as we stood here in this place.”