Darkness Brutal (The Dark Cycle Book 1) (33 page)

I start walking, and she falls in beside me. “So how are you feeling?” I ask, even though I already know.

She shrugs.

There’s an ocean of unsaid things between us suddenly, and I have no idea why.

I stop walking and turn to her. “Kara, please.”

She bites her lip.

This afternoon she was offering to have sex with me, and now she’s not talking to me. “What’s going on?”

Her eyes turn glassy. I can’t help touching her, running my fingers over her arm, trying to draw her out.

Warmth tingles at my fingertips, and her body sways toward me, almost involuntarily. She’s so lovely. Her dark hair framing her face, the colorful lights of the city casting a soft glow on her skin.

I move closer and whisper, “I’m sorry.” Because I feel it needs to be said. My being in her life nearly got her killed. And it makes me crazy thinking of her lying there so vulnerable, with Demon Lester ready to cut her open.

I felt crazy with fear when he sliced into Rebecca’s arm, but Kara . . .

I killed for Kara.

The realization comes in a rush, washing over me. “I can’t lose you,” I say, feeling breathless. Just the thought of her slipping away too makes me frantic.

Her eyes lock with mine.

“I need you.” I reach up and touch her face, running my thumb over her cheek.

Her brows draw together, like she’s confused. Or in pain.

A tear slips down, wetting my palm.

But then she’s moving in, curling her light-blue energy around me. Her lips meet mine, her breath hot in my mouth. Her fingers twist in my shirt, pulling me closer.

I grip her face, her hair, drinking her in, so familiar, so real it hurts.

Kara releases a small sigh, like she’s relieved, and pulls away, but I don’t let her go. I keep my arm around her, holding her to me, and kiss her nose, gently.

“I thought you wouldn’t want me now,” she says, her voice shaky.

I lean back to see her face clearly. “What? Why?”

She hesitates like she doesn’t want to say it. “I was going to help you save your sister.” Pain fills her features again. “But now that might not be possible. And you don’t care about your powers or your destiny. So you don’t need me.”

“I didn’t kiss you because I wanted some mystical power, Kara. I did it because I wanted to kiss you.”

“But the curse is what makes you want to kiss me.”

As true as that is, it doesn’t represent everything I feel about her. “It’s not that simple, and you know it.”

“I’m not playing games anymore, Aidan.”

“Is that why you were afraid of me when you saw me walk up?”

She bows her head, embarrassment filtering between us. “I was afraid you’d leave. That you’d want to forget all this ever happened.”

I can see how she’d think that. I haven’t been Mr. Congenial over the last few hours. And I’m not even sure what comes next for me. My sister just ran off with a demon and might be ending the world. Oh, and I killed someone. “I’m just processing, Kara. It has nothing to do with you—or how I feel about you. That hasn’t changed.” If anything, it’s only intensified how I feel about her. I don’t want to let her go.

“How do you think I felt when Connor kissed your cheek?” I ask. “I wanted to break his face.”

Her lips tip in a half smile. “Connor just wants to protect me.”

“From me.”

“From what you’re doing to me.” She says it so quietly I wonder if I heard her right.

“What am I doing to you?”

She leans into me and rests her forehead on my chest. “You’re making me fall for you.”

I wrap my arms around her and pull her closer, feeling her fear, her vulnerability. I have it in me too: the awareness of being dragged into the current, taken against all sense into this place I’ve never been. “I know,” I say, pressing my lips against her hair.

It’s terrifying.

FORTY-THREE

We walk for a few more minutes in silence, but soon end up turning back and heading for the hotel again. I follow Kara to her room, across from Sid’s room and three down from the one I’m supposed to be sharing with Jax. We pause. She doesn’t reach for the door. She leans against the wall instead, looking exhausted.

I shift my feet, wondering if I should just say goodnight and keep walking. I’m standing on another ledge, deciding if I want to leap. God, I want to kiss this girl. But mostly I just don’t want to hurt her. And part of me knows that I will if I’m not careful.

I can’t see the next step, that’s part of the problem. Where will I live, how will I survive, how should I—how
can
I—go on now that Ava’s gone? She was my purpose. She was everything. Now I’m cut loose. But then that could be a reason not to care about the consequences and just leap for once.

“Holly’s in the room,” Kara says, glancing up at me. “She’s probably not asleep yet.”

“I should go back to my room.”

She nods.

We both agree, apparently. Now’s not the time.

But I don’t leave.

Her finger brushes against my hand. A current runs up my arm, and I hear her breath catch, like she felt it, too.

“I should go,” I say, thinking of the key in my pocket and wondering if I should mention it.

She licks her lips. “Yeah.” She moves closer, her heat filling the small space between us, but she shoves her hands in her jean pockets, like she’s having trouble keeping them to herself.

I reach out and brush my fingertips over her knuckles, and the feel of her skin is like heaven. I decide to claim it. “I have Sid’s key.”

She looks at me with wide eyes, realizing what I mean.

My touch runs along her arm to her elbow, strengthening the current between us even more. She sways into the energy with a small sound in the back of her throat, and I lean closer, every muscle in my body tight, every molecule screaming at me to grab her and drag her across the hall to the empty room.

The door opens with a loud click, and Holly pokes her head out. “What’re you two up to?”

We blink at her, both of us a little dazed.

“Should I vacate so you two can DIY?” She pushes her reading glasses up her nose. “I can study in the hall.”

Kara rolls her eyes and then slips past Holly into the room. Disappearing.

Shit.

I squint at Holly in annoyance. “Seriously?”

“What? I’m just trying to help.” She snorts, obviously aware of the help she’s
not
giving.

I recall all the other things she’s been “helping” with lately, and I push the door open and invite myself in.

“Hey,” she says as I walk past her, “this isn’t going to be a threesome, buddy, NFW.”

“I’m heartbroken.” I pull a chair from the desk and sit down, making myself at home.

“What the hell?” She gives me an annoyed frown.

“Oh, I just thought you could tell me what happened between you and my sister and Lester.”

Her eyes bug out of her head. “Excuse me?”

“You heard me, Holly. Come on. There’s no point in hiding it now. I mean you’ve done such an awesome job of sneaking around and screwing me over that there’s no way for me to fix any of it, so your wicked plan is safe.”

“Hey! That wasn’t
my
wicked plan. It was your sister’s.” She points at the window like Ava’s out there beyond the dark glass. “I never would’ve helped her if I knew it meant Lester was gonna be . . . ya know.”

“She’s just a kid,” I add, even though I’m aware that’s not true anymore. “You should’ve talked to me.”

“She said you’d freak.”

“For good reason!”

Kara sits on the bed looking like a child who’s watching her parents fight.

“Sure. Like I’m psychic.” She shakes her head, obviously not seeing the full picture. “That first night when you all went on the job and you told me to babysit her, we girl bonded about how she wanted to find her mom. I felt bad for her. She’s really sweet when she wants to be.”

My heart sinks, thinking of Ava talking to a perfect stranger about our mom. How lonely and desperate she must’ve been.

“And then,” Holly continues, “the real shit happened the next night or so. Your mom came to me in a dream.”

“What?”

“It’s my thing, ya know. Ghost dreams.” She motions like I should get it. “So anyway, your mom’s ghost came to me and said to get a message to Ava. So I gave her the message, and—”

“What was the message?” I ask, interrupting.

“To come find her at this cave.”

Kara and I share a look. The ocean cave. I was right: Ava had been there, looking for my mom.

“In Malibu?” I ask. “Is that when you said you were going to the beach?”

“No, when I said we were at the ice cream store-slash-beach, that was the second time—can I just tell the damn story, please?”

I lean back in the chair and groan.

“So,” she continues, “I gave your sister the message about the cave, and she pleaded with me to take her to this place that she said was a bookstore, and it had to be a secret.
But
it turned out to be some sort of creepy witch den with potion stuff and animals. She bought a bird and a bunch of tiny bags of herbs and candles, and then we went to the cave her mom talked about in the message, and she did some ritual that was supposed to tell Ava
more
stuff about her mom—at least, that’s what she said, but then it ended up being completely insane. She pulled the tiny bird from the box and held it all sweet, chanting, then stabbed it in the heart with a needle.” She gives me a confounded look. “Stabbed! She, like,
killed
the bird! Bleck!” She visibly shivers. “Then she did some sort of magic thing that had her trying to talk to a spirit, but she couldn’t hear what it said, so that’s why she needed Lester.”

“To channel the spirit.” Kara looks at me as the pieces start to click into place.

I suddenly feel like vomiting.

Holly nods in agreement. “Yeah, she kept saying she was feeling muddled energy in the cave.” Holly starts pacing. “So she asked Lester to help her—that was the ice cream day. Your sister told him she’d help him practice his ability if he’d help her talk to her mom. But the cave was way creepier the second time. The smell of these flowers growing around the cave was making me gag.”

“You saw my sister call up our mom’s spirit?” I ask.

She scoffs. “Oh, man, I wish that’s what I’d seen. She tried to raise your mom’s spirit, but she raised this demon instead. She seemed surprised, but she also seemed to recognize it. She kept talking to it about something or someone called Heart-Keeper, and it must’ve been one badass spell ’cause stuff was flying around your sister in circles, sand and bits of rock and wax and stuff, spinning around the pentagram. Her voice turned deep and strange and then this gross smell came, like, really strong.

“Lester was sitting on the other side of her circle, and she’d killed some other poor creature and painted his palms in its blood. According to your mom’s witchy book, the blood acted like an open door. Of course, Lester started talking in this freaky voice. Ava asked the spirit about her mom—your mom—and the thing told her there’d been a deal his boss made with your mom. Ava seemed really pissed off when it was all done telling the story.”

The deal. Ava knows now what it was. From what Holly’s saying, it doesn’t seem like she was able to accept it very well. “What did he say?”

“About the deal?” Holly looks to the side like she’s trying to remember. “It was something about your mom wanting to see her lost love one more time and how she bargained her body for it, or something. Like, she became some demon’s whore is what it sounded like—and all these demons and angels paid this Heart-Keeper so they could have sex with her—”

“Angels?” My stomach churns. “What do you mean? Did she—”

“I don’t know!” Holly barks. “God. I was too busy being freaked out by Lester being a puppet and how everything was floating around.”

Oh, God. One of those bastards my mother slept with is Ava’s father, and they were both angels
and
demons. But which one created my sister?

Kara must be thinking along the same line, because she says, “Like Sid was talking about: Nephilim or . . .”

Or demon spawn.

I still have no idea which is worse; it seems like being the daughter of an angel instead of a demon would be better, but any angel that would sink to having sex with a woman who’s been slaved out to some demon can’t be very pure of soul. I try to recall something about the men who would come to her—their faces, their smells—but my stomach clenches just thinking about it. How could I not have seen what they were? I should’ve seen through their illusions. Could my mom have done something to me to keep me from seeing right?

“But Lester didn’t just channel the demon,” Kara says. “It’s inside of him now.”

Holly shrugs. “I totally would’ve said something if I’d thought that could happen. I had no idea that something was up. I thought it was weird that he’d buy us all movie tickets, but I think that was Lester trying to keep us safe from what he knew might be hanging out inside him.”

The demon must’ve been hunkered down, waiting for the right moment. “Do you remember Ava talking to the demon about a deal that
she
wanted to make?”

Holly sits down on the bed and falls back. “So all I know for sure now is that this Heart-Keeper demon definitely wants your sister—because of the deal it made with your mom—and that the thing’s minion inside Lester then made a deal with Ava for you to be safe as long as she came back to the cave on the dark moon. Then Ava could do some kind of rebirthing thing. It was all very cousin’s brother’s uncle to me, so I don’t know.”

Be reborn. Just like Demon Lester said to the Boss Demon when he was warning it about Ava’s potential: that she wasn’t reborn yet. That’s going to happen tomorrow night at the dark of the moon, on Ava’s birthday.

“He said they would do the rebirth at the cave?” Hope filters into me, a thin thread.

“Uh-oh,” Holly says. “Not a fan of that look.”

“What is it, Aidan?” Kara asks, scooting to the edge of the bed.

“I think I can save her.” As the words emerge, they feel true. I can still save her.

“Excuse me?” Holly asks, looking suddenly worried.

“But, Aidan—” Kara starts.

I won’t let her finish. “I can’t let them take her if I have the power to stop it—if I still have time.”

“She chose that path, Aidan,” Kara says, a frantic tone growing in her voice. “We all make choices.”

I shake my head. “If she did this to save me, it’s my choice, too.”

“She did it to find her mom,” Holly says. “Saving you was just part of the deal.”

“I don’t care,” I say, rising to my feet. “I can’t just stand by and let this happen.”

“Not smart,” Holly says. “But it’s your funeral.”