Darkness Brutal (The Dark Cycle Book 1) (36 page)

FORTY-EIGHT

We pull up to Mrs. O’Linn’s house as the sun disappears below the horizon. I’m seriously considering tying Kara to the steering wheel, since she’s not listening to me at all.

“You’re being ridiculous.” I shove the box and a few other things in a backpack.

“Me? That’s rich.”

“I should’ve just left you at the hotel.”

“Maybe I should just use my ‘sex powers’ on you to make you shut the hell up about it.” She smirks.

It’s obvious I’m not going to be able to stop her from following me into this fight—she’s made it clear the whole way here she’d be happy to force me to let her. “You’re impossible,” I grumble. I toss the pack over my shoulder and look for the path.

We make our way through the jungle of a yard, quick and quiet, and come to the pathway that leads down the cliff. I wish we’d brought a flashlight—it’s getting darker by the second. With no moon in the sky tonight it’ll be almost impossible to see.

As we start down, Kara slips in the same spot she did yesterday and grabs my arm for balance.

I steady her, feeling her tough shell crack a little as my fingers skim her arm. “I told you, this is a bad idea, Kara.”

She shoves me off. “Seriously? Shut up. Once this is over, you’ll be rid of me all right.”

“I don’t want to be rid of you,” I snap back. “I just don’t want you to die!”

“Well, ditto, asshole!”

I grunt in frustration and start moving more quickly down the path.

The horizon is a pink and orange swath above the calm grey water. It feels wrong—the beauty and stillness don’t match my mood at all. The tide should be crashing and beating at the rocks, echoing the emotions in my gut, reflecting the knowledge that everything I care about is about to be crushed.

Even as we make our way to the sand, I begin to feel the force of the doorway and the tug of the power around us.

The swath of green that trails from the cave is even larger now; the white flowers are stark against the gathering night. I sense my mom’s spirit from here. She fills the beach with her urgency.
Run, run!
she seems to call. And my feet itch to obey her.

The opening of the cave is like the mouth of some horrible beast waiting to swallow us whole. The ghostly figure of Fiona flickers. She can’t hold on much longer. She knows her daughter is almost lost.

“My God, Aidan,” Kara whispers. “Do you feel that?”

“It’s my mom.” My throat goes tight. The anguish of her spirit overwhelms me.

“That can’t just be your mom,” she says. “There’s something else, something not good.”

I close my eyes and focus. Yes, there, under the urgency and desperation, is a presence that’s clinging to the shadows.

“I think it’s a demon, but I can’t tell,” she says.

I’m not sure either. “We need to hurry.” My mother’s energy is turning my already raw nerves frantic. I kneel down and slip the backpack off my shoulder, pulling the jar of rowan ash from the bag and handing it to Kara. “Rub this on your face.” Then I pull out the sack of sacred dirt and set it at her feet. “And this on your hands.”

She smears the ash onto her cheeks and forehead and drops the bottle back to the sand. I do the same. Then we both knead our hands and arms in the sacred dirt.

“Here.” I reach in my pocket and pass her the exorcism medallion. “This will be your job.” I have my amulet, and I need her to have some sort of weapon to defend herself or I’ll be too distracted worrying about her.

She takes it, hesitating. “I just press it against Lester’s chest?”

“Yes. Then say
Immanu’El
. It means ‘God is with us.’”

“That’s it. The demon will just obey?”

“According to Hanna, it won’t have a choice. The command is on the amulet, so your pronouncement of power should seal the deal.”

Kara bites her lip. “What about Ava?”

“What about her?”

“Well, you heard what Holly said. Your sister may not want to be saved.”

“I know.”

“She might fight us, Aidan.”

I look over to the cave opening. “She won’t hurt me.”

“Not you, maybe.”

“Let me handle Ava.” But I can’t fight my own sister. If she’s too far gone, what’ll I do?

“I’ll take care of Lester,” Kara says, like she’s making it clear she’s not here to help Ava, only to help me.

“Listen,” I say, realizing I can’t go into this with anything hidden. “There’s something I have to tell you.” I take in a breath and try to say it. “When that demon comes out of Lester, he won’t . . . well, he’s not ever going to be Lester again.” I swallow. The taint of what I’ve done seems to peel back my skin to reveal itself. “He’s dead. I killed him.”

Her mouth opens with a small gasp.

“It happened yesterday when he was going to cut you. I couldn’t see straight. I went crazy and slit his throat.” I choke on the words.

She’s still for a second as she lets it sink in, but then something seems to dawn on her. “He said something before he knocked me out . . .” She leans forward a little, looking desperate. “Aidan, I think the demon
wanted
you to kill Lester.”

“What? Why?”

“He told me if I lived, it was because you’d made the wrong choice—I wasn’t sure what that meant. But then I lived. Maybe he wanted you to kill him—to weaken your purity. You’ve killed, Aidan—you have blood on your hands. Didn’t Hanna say something about a choice?”

“What Hanna was talking about hasn’t happened yet.” I’m pretty clear on that. “I’m not sure what the demon meant, or what this will mean for my soul, but you need to know so you won’t think that exorcising the demon is what kills Lester—that his death was your fault.”

She’s studying me intently, like she’s seeing me again for the first time. “I know what those stains feel like, Aidan.”

Her energy reaches out to mine, tentative, as if she’s wanting to console me but doesn’t know how. I’m struck by the way her soul looks in the moonlight. My eyes follow the lines of scars and handprints that I’ve gotten to know so well on her arms and throat. The mark on her nape shimmers light blue. My own mark casts a light golden color—I can see it reflecting a warm glow onto her face as I move to touch her. A heartbeat passes and then another, and it’s as if an opening unfolds between us and there’s an understanding, like we’re finally seeing the truth of how we fit together. It’s so subtle. I would have missed it if I’d blinked.

I run my fingers over her hair and whisper, “I know.”

Our souls carry scars. Hers are handprints. And now I have my own—those little cracks along the skin at my eye that speak of what I’ve done—the blood on my hands.

Innocent blood.

Because it wasn’t Lester who hurt Rebecca and Kara. It was the demon.

Kara slides a switchblade from her pocket; I hadn’t even realized she had it. She flips it open like a pro, and I suddenly want to grab her and kiss her. She wraps the chain of the possession necklace tight around her knuckles and grips the amulet in her palm. Then she holds out the bag of sacred dirt to me. “Let’s kick some demon ass.”

I take it and fill the pockets of my hoodie until they overflow with dirt and shove the remainder of the sack into the backpack. I hold the stone box under my arm and take a deep breath before making my feet move forward. We walk toward the gaping mouth of the void.

FORTY-NINE

We skim our backs along the cliff wall, me in front of Kara, as we try to keep out of sight. I only hope the Darkness won’t sense us like we can sense it. I grip the stone box with one hand and take a fistful of dirt out of my pocket with the other as we approach the edge of the opening.

A voice comes from the cave.

The demon inside Lester.

He’s speaking to someone—or some
thing
. He’s saying it’s nearly time.

Fiona’s spirit is a blur against the black, so close I can almost touch her. She’s outlined in a swirling green light, her hands reaching out, fingers grasping like she’s trying to pull me in, urging me to hurry. I try to breathe slow and attempt a glance into the mouth of the tunnel. I can’t see anything except pitch-black nothing, but the force I felt earlier hits me hard, nearly knocking me backward. I cling to the rock and press against the energy, trying to block it out as much as I can. I have to keep my head straight.

But just as I tense my leg muscles and get ready to face what’s around those rocks, the crunch of approaching footsteps comes from behind us, breaking through the thunder of my heartbeat.

Kara screams.

I spin around. She’s kicking and fighting against the hold of a guy—twentysomething, light skin, muscular—as he drags her by the hair, yelling into the cave, “We have visitors!”

He socks her in the face as she comes at him with her blade, the amulet still gripped tight in her fist. She goes limp from the blow, and he pulls her to her feet, twisting her arm behind her back, trying to hold her still.

I move to act, but he slips Kara’s switchblade against her throat, his arm tight across her middle.

I freeze.

The guy’s eyes are blacked out with possession and rimmed with red. He licks his cracked lips and takes a whiff of Kara’s hair. And that’s when I recognize him.

It’s the guy who attacked Rebecca in the alley. The ringleader.

Kara jerks in his arms, and the blade digs into her skin.

“Kara, don’t move!” I scream as a thin line of blood trails down her chest from her neck. “Don’t hurt her,” I say desperately to the demon boy, as if he’d listen to me. He wouldn’t hesitate to slice her open.

Demon Lester comes from the darkness of the cave, the wound I gave him on his neck now puffy and red. A bit of skin is peeling beneath his eye, like he’s already begun to rot. “Dinner’s here,” he yells into the void behind him.

Ringleader hugs Kara closer, his eyes hungry. “And it brought dessert.”

“Screw you,” Kara growls.

Ringleader’s mouth twists into a horrifying grin. His eyes turn to me. “This body I’m in remembers you, boy, and it wants to rip your head off. Right after it makes you watch as I rape and kill this delicious girl.”

My horror is swallowed by rage. I clench every muscle in my body to keep from tearing into him. Not yet.

Demon Lester steps closer. He’s only a few feet away from me now. “You’re not going to save your sister. You’re too late,” he says, but there’s a spark of doubt in his voice.

It’s enough to give me a window of hope.

I don’t think. I just drop the stone box and lunge, tossing a handful of sacred dirt in Demon Lester’s eyes and shoving into him with my shoulder. The dirt doesn’t singe him like it would a demon, but it blinds him for a second so I can pull out my pocketknife. He snarls in rage and grabs for my neck.

I duck and sock him in the kidney; it doesn’t even faze him. He grabs my head and slams it into the cliff wall.

Color flashes across my vision and pain sears through my skull.

Ringleader hesitates, loosening his grip on Kara as he tries to back away from the fight.

She shifts in his arms, coming up with her fist and striking his jaw with the chain still wrapped around her knuckles. He stumbles back, and the switchblade slips from his hand.

She lunges at him, screaming “
Immanu
’
El
!” as she shoves the medallion against his chest. Both of them fall to the sand. “Get out, dammit!” she yells again, her face strained as she straddles him, smoke coming from where her fist grips the medallion.

Demon Lester scuttles back at the sight of the talisman. Ringleader starts to shriek and squeal.

I use the distraction to ram Lester in the gut as I lift him up off his feet and take us both down with a thud against the ground. I pound his face as he bites and scratches. We roll, closer to the water, sand flying around us.

He spits blood in my face and hisses at me in demon tongue. The thunder of the waves drowns him out, but I hear his meaning: what he’ll do to my sister once I’m dead and then what he’ll do to Kara. My mind goes blank as fury takes over. I drag him to the water, hitting him again and again when he tries to stand, my rage making me stronger. I’m tugging him closer and closer to the tide, the wet sand sticking to my clothes.

“I’m already dead!” he yells at me. “You killed me. You killed me! I can’t drown! I can’t!”

“Let’s try it anyway,” I say, gasping for air as I fight against him, splashing into the shallows. I have to get where I can immerse him so I can yank the demon out—a little incantation, determination, and water is all I need.

He flails and slips from my grip.

Then he punches out, hitting me in the chest, a sudden impact against the seal over my heart, knocking the air from my lungs with a rush of breath.

I stumble back, hearing a crack as something knocks free inside, and I lose my balance, falling with a splash into the waves. The cold bites at me. Lester takes the opening, falling on me, pressing my back into the sand as the sea water comes at us, washing over my head. I spit and gasp, twisting to get free, but something has stopped working. It’s like I have no control. My body won’t listen to my brain, leaving me helpless as another wave rolls over my face, the salt water choking me.

The tide pulls back, and I gulp in a mouthful of air, trying to get out from under my attacker. Lester releases a maniacal laugh and grabs me by the arm, pulling me farther into the waves.

“You reap what you sow,” he says in a singsong voice. Then he drops my limp body into an approaching wave with a splash, and the freezing, brine-thickened water swallows me. My head strikes a rock. I try to fight the tide, but I can’t. Something happened when Lester hit my seal; he broke something—

Sand and salt fill my throat, my nose. Black splotches flash across my vision. And just as I’m being pulled under, the pressure too much, not able to fight against my body taking the water into my lungs, it comes to me in a flash of awareness. I’m standing in the hotel room again, and Eric’s reminding me:
The demon’s energy will be what flips the switch. You’ll feel the breaking, and then you merely have to relax and let it do what it wants to do
.

Everything in me goes still as realization courses through me. But I can’t hold my breath any longer.

I take in a gulp of the sea even as my mind screams
no!
The water rushes in, filling my lungs like hungry fire. Everything in me turns to stone. The painful weight in my chest sinks me deeper. The tide drags my body farther into the ocean as my muscles twitch.

I blow out the sea. Then take a second gulp into my lungs. As if I’m breathing underwater. I blink as I resurface and find myself on my feet, the waves now wrapping themselves around my waist. I cough out a lungful of ocean. One spasm and then another.

Lester is walking out of the water. He’s almost at the dry sand. He turns, hearing me, and his facial expression changes from satisfaction to shock.

I stumble my way through the waves toward him.

He can’t seem to move; his feet are stuck to the sand. I glance up the beach, but I can’t see Kara or the possessed ringleader through the darkness.

“What are you?” Lester asks, black eyes wide.

“The guy who’s going to send your ass back to hell.”

“It won’t matter,” he says. “I’ll just come back and find a new game to play.”

Standing there, it’s all suddenly clear. I can see both human and demon. Lester’s soul is weakened, nearly flickering out, and the demon is woven into the human spark, wrapped around it like a python strangling its prey.

“Let go of him and leave,” I say, the tide wrapping around my ankles. “Now.”

Demon Lester hisses at me and steps back.

I know what I have to do. I see it like a blur of movement around us, as if I’m sensing the future. I lunge and grip him by the throat as the same burst of energy that came to me at Griffith Park surges in my bones. I begin muttering the same strange words that I didn’t understand before.

But now I do.

My strength and my shield is Elyon.

Hear what the servant says, dever.

Your spark is weak.

Your life is mine.

Into stone and ash I cast you
.

Over and over it comes from my lips until it takes on a life of its own, burning in my gut so intensely it nearly doubles me over. Every ounce of my will pushes into the shell of Lester. “Let. Him. Go.”

Light bursts to life inside me. I see it this time, the glowing molten colors on my skin, running along my marks like a river of lava, radiating golden shards of light over Lester’s terrified face. And the demon obeys; the snake uncurls from the soul of its host, rising up. Its black form emerges from Lester’s forehead, bursting its energy from the body in a surge of power.

The demon flops to the sand, writhing and convulsing on the shore for a second before it stops. Going perfectly still. Like stone. The same way the cat-demon did.

I release my hold on Lester. His lifeless body sinks to the wet sand like a rag doll. His mouth gapes, his eyes stare up at the stars, clear of corruption. His weakened soul flickers out, and his spirit rises, hovering above his chest—a small white orb.

And Lester, the boy, is gone.

When I look up, Kara’s standing a few feet away, blood staining her face, her neck. She steps into the water, breath coming hard like she ran to help.

I reach for her, taking her in my arms and clutching her to my chest, relief and sorrow like the rush of the tide washing over me.

“I did it,” she says, gasping. “It’s gone.”

“My God, Kara,” I say, not sure words can express what I’m feeling.

We hold each other, catching our breath for a minute. But we have no time. As I pull away, she slips her hand in mine. We stumble from the water, both weak from the surge of adrenaline. The dark cave rises up to meet us, almost as if it’s opening wider to swallow us whole. After a second of walking toward it I realize we’re not on sand anymore; we’re treading on the swath of thimbleweed, following the path that my mother laid out for me.

I pick up the alabaster box from the sand, somehow sure I can open it now. I pull on the lid, and it unseals with a chink, revealing a white feather inside.

Confusion fills me. And anger.
This
is what I have to work with? A feather.

I almost toss it away in frustration, but then I see something written on the quill. A line of Hebrew:
He shall cover you in His feathers; and under His wings you will find refuge
. Psalm 91.

I pick the feather up, trying to see the writing more clearly.

“I don’t get it,” Kara says.

I shake my head.

Suddenly my arm jolts with a spasm, and my skin stings like I’ve been stung by a hundred bees at once. Then the pain is gone, and I’m not holding a feather anymore.

It’s a dagger: polished iron blade, curved a little at the tip, with a hilt of etched gold.

“Oh, wow.” Kara steps back.

I drop the empty stone box onto the sand and take her hand again, readying the dagger at my side.