Darkness Brutal (The Dark Cycle Book 1) (38 page)

I land on him and raise my own blade, bringing it down again and again, into his neck, his chest, his shoulders, screams of rage and horror filling the cave, until I’m spent and he’s not fighting back anymore.

I blink, looking down at my new creation. There’s no blood. He’s just lying there, staring up. Grinning.

I stand and back away, putting myself between him and Ava.

He rises to his feet. His face is a strange mask of bloodless cuts and misshapen features. His skin hangs in flaps at his neck. “This will only end one way,” he says through his sliced lips.

“I’m going to kill you,” I say.

He sneers. “No.” He glances at the white stone archway. An escape?

“Don’t even think about it,” I say.

He shakes his head and raises his dagger hand, showing it to me. It’s smeared with blood. Ava’s blood. “Now it will be much worse for you.” He grins, his features like a badly fitted mask as he places his bloody palm flat against the wall behind him.

Cracks instantly emerge in the stone, growing from the smudges of Ava’s blood. The ground shudders. The air hisses. And the wall within the archway indents with a thud. The fissures multiply, more and more of them, until the sound of snapping granite vibrates in my skull.

And then, in a suck of air, the cave wall disappears, revealing a torrent, a vortex of wind and gasses, angry and alive with sparks of silver and flashes of red energy. Its will is fierce, a raging storm, pulling me closer, urging every molecule in me to fly into its arms.

I stumble back, tearing my gaze from the eye of the torrent. My hip bumps into the altar. I reach for Ava—she’s so cold and so stiff.

She can’t be gone from me.

“I have a deal for you, young man,” the Heart-Keeper says as the world thunders and swirls behind him. “Sheol is on its way. I can mitigate the approaching war. I merely need to come back with your sister.”

I look down at Ava, at her violet-tinted lips. Her humanity is fading. “You can’t have her.”

“You would sacrifice the world’s fate for her?”

“She’s mine.”

He clenches his teeth. “This is my game, Seer, not yours. Her heart belongs to me.”

A spark lights in me, an idea. “Not if I allow you to have me.”

That’s the answer. It always was. My life for Ava’s.

“If I take her place,” I continue, “you have to release your hold on her. You have to balance the scale back to the way it should be.”

His eyes widen in surprise. He licks his misshaped lips. “It is not what I want.”

“I claim her. You can only have me.” The demon that put the mark on my sister to claim her is dead. Shouldn’t that mean she doesn’t belong to anyone now?

He stares through me, and I wonder if I’m wrong—if he won’t have to take the deal just because I claimed my sister like I claimed Kara. But then he motions for me to come closer.

I force myself to move toward him. This is the only way. Me for her.

The Heart-Keeper reaches out and places his hand over my heart, slinking his dark energy over my skin. He closes his eyes, and his visage flickers again, revealing for a flash the twisted demon beneath the mask.

“Surprising,” he whispers. His eyes fly open, and he grins wide and horrifying. “You bear murder on your soul. It’s delicious.” His fingers slide down my chest, and something like elation fills his sapphire eyes. “My brothers will enjoy ripping the flesh from your bones. You are not Other as your sister is, but perhaps we can make your soul into something even more wonderful.” He takes my hand in his, like a lover would, and nudges me toward the swirling black of the doorway.

It’s impossible to move. But I step forward, following his lead, unable to stop the shaking, the overwhelming fear that wraps around me as we face the darkness. Cries filter out of the vortex, soulless screams of anguish that I suddenly know with stark clarity will soon be mine. I prepare to step into it, resigning myself—

Something green moves out of the corner of my eye. A leaf uncurls over the stone near my head. Then a budding stem emerges, bursting open into a white flower. Another follows beside that, and another, and another, until they’re growing everywhere, covering the archway and the sandy ground beneath my feet like a blanket.

Fiona.

A burst of energy heavy with emotion unfurls in the air, swirling around me. The spirit takes shape, a warm caress against my skin, just a breath, and I’m wrapped in her arms, wrapped in a love so strong it hurts.

Just as quickly as the warmth comes, it ends. The spirit becomes a force. Fury and wind. A golden mist shimmering in the air. It pushes through me, into the Heart-Keeper, catching him off guard and knocking him off his feet.

I jerk back, slipping from his grasp as he tips into the void.

He reaches out, trying to catch hold of something, but the golden mist moves faster, sending him reeling. Fiona’s shape appears, falling with him, her spirit curled around his body, holding him captive, as they fade further and further into the dark storm. I watch in horror as they descend, until they’re gone from view.

And I’m alone, staring at the torrent.

Suddenly a claw emerges, gripping the arch from the other side. Then another, larger one—talons digging into the stone rim. Something’s trying to climb through, into the cave.

Out of instinct, I run to Ava and swipe my hand across the blood that’s pooled beneath her on the altar. Hand dripping, I race back and hold my palm where I think the wall might be.

The stone wall reappears with a quake in the air and a loud
thud
. The void is gone, the air still, the arch wall solid once more. All that remains to tell me that the last few minutes of horror weren’t just a dream is the ringing in my ears—and the three severed talons in the sand. It was real. And yet I’m still here.

And Ava . . .

I turn back to her. I touch her porcelain cheek, her soft hair, saying her name, trying to call her back. My vision blurs. I put a shaking hand to the silver hilt of the dagger in her chest and pull. It slides out with a hiss of breath. I toss the blade across the room.

I try to close the wound with my hands. Her blood smears on my arms, on her face, as I fold the tear in her shirt and try to wipe the dirt from her cheek and arrange her hair. But I can’t put her back together. “Ava, please,” I say, feeling it all well up inside me. “Please, wake up.”

Her features are unnaturally smooth, like a wax figure frozen for all time. I reach out with my spirit looking for her, trying to hear her, to see her. Like I always do, I call out to her with my mind, with my heart. But there’s nothing.

I’ve lost her. Everything I am, everything I’ve done, was for her. And now she’s gone.

I hear a groan, and it breaks through my sorrow. Ava?

Not Ava. No. It’s Kara.

I pull myself away from Ava and kneel at Kara’s side. She tries to lift her head and gasps in pain, bringing her hand to her temple. Her fingers come away red. “Wha . . . what happened?” And then she moans and covers her mouth with her hand, like she might throw up.

“Don’t move,” I say, gripping her arm. “You probably have a concussion. You hit your head really hard.”

I sit on the ground, shivering from shock, and hold her against me. I try to decide what to do. Kara needs medical attention, and I don’t know if I can still help Ava. The Heart-Keeper said Ava would survive if he cut out her heart—because of her blood. But he never completed the ceremony. Was there something he was going to do to bring her back?

I don’t know any of the answers. All I know is that I need to get help for both of them. I pull out my cell phone, but it’s smashed to hell and waterlogged. I feel around in Kara’s pocket and find hers. I punch in Eric’s number and pray for reception.

It rings. Faint, but there. Hanna answers, “You’re all right!”

“I need help,” I say, my voice hollow. “Kara hit her head really hard and Ava—”

I can’t say anything else.

“It’s okay, Aidan,” she says. Her soft tone only makes the ache in my chest grow. “Where are you?”

“Sid knows,” I mumble and hang up. I rest my head against the altar, drawing Kara closer, needing to feel her. She curls into my chest, and the smell of her pain filters into the air around me. I touch her shoulder, her face. My fingers graze her bruised cheek and brush the hair from her eyes. I cradle her, wishing I could go back in time and tell her that I love her. Tell Ava that I love her, no matter what she is or what she does.

I settle in to wait for a future I don’t recognize.

FIFTY-ONE

Sid takes Kara from me. I can barely move. I want to follow him to the hospital, to watch after her. But I can’t leave Ava in this dark place. Alone.

I sit for what feels like days, staring at the stone archway, the bloody dagger lying in my lap. But the sun never comes up; the stars just keep shining like silver pinpricks in the piece of the sky that I can see through the hole in the ceiling. I wonder if time ended. I still feel like I’m on the edge of a precipice. I’m tempted to cast myself over it, like my grandmother. To put another bloody palm to that doorway, take Ava’s hand, and pull us both into the void, following our mother.

But when Fiona’s spirit wrapped herself around me in that last moment, it was like an order to not let go, to not lose hope. She threw herself into Sheol to save me once more. I can’t give up. Not now. Ava’s still here with me. I have to hope.

Sid is sitting across from me. I didn’t even notice him come back. He’s holding the alabaster box in his lap.

He motions for me to set the dagger back inside. I hesitate for a second and then rest the blade in its casket.

As soon as I remove my fingers, it shifts, becoming a feather again. There are specks of blood on it from where my hand gripped the hilt.

“It’s meant to become whatever you need at the time that you need it.” He holds out the lid to me. “You have to be the one to replace the cover. And once you do, you won’t be able to remove it again until you require the object’s help.”

I can’t take the lid from him. I can’t think about anything he’s saying. His words gather like fog in my head.

I look back at Ava. “I didn’t save her.”

He drops his hand. “But the demon didn’t get her, Aidan. It didn’t finish its task.”

“To awaken her.”

“She’s safe where she is.”

I shake my head. “You can’t know that.”

“Her soul is safe. She hasn’t chosen darkness yet. There’s still a chance you can save her.”

“How?”

He rests his hand on my shoulder. “We’ll find a way. I promise.” He holds out the alabaster lid again. “I’m here for you. Whatever you need from me, I’ll give it. I swear to serve you as I did your father.”

I take the lid from him this time. “How do you know all this stuff about the box?”

“Hanna explained.”

“This dagger helped me kill a demon in spirit form,” I say.

“No, it was your mark that allowed that. You could’ve used any blade—well, almost any blade. It should be gold or iron to do the job effectively.”

“The dagger isn’t special?”

“No, Aidan,” he says. “You are.”

“I can breathe underwater,” I blurt out, the memory flashing back.

He nods. “Yes, that makes sense.”

“How exactly does it make
sense
? How does any of this make sense?”

“Well, you’ve been given your resurrection form. It’s going to be more . . . resilient.”

“What, I’m immortal now or something?”

“No, no. Merely more in tune with nature—like Adam was before death was born.”

“I thought you didn’t know everything about this after-the-awakening stuff.”

He pulls a book from the folds of his coat and sets it between us, beside the open alabaster box. “Hanna found me and told me what I needed to do to help you. Eric left you his journal until he could return. He told Hanna she was meant to give it to you once you were able to face your choice. I assume that’s occurred.”

Yes. My choice. I chose to take Ava’s place, but my mother’s spirit did it instead. Once again she sacrificed herself for us.

I set the lid on the box. It settles with a sharp chink, locking into place.

We sit there like that for a while, just staring at the ground. At the stone box. The book left behind by Eric. And I silently swear to follow this calling. This thing that I am now. I will open myself up to it and accept it. Because what else do I have now?

Except hope.

FIFTY-TWO

I stand on the cliff and watch the waves below as they crash against the rocks and chase their way up the distant beach, toward the cave. The swath of green is gone now, sunk back into the sand as if it never was, and the mysterious tug from before is more distant, like it’s satisfied for now.

The damp air sticks to my skin in a coating of salt and sea. I fold my arms across my chest for warmth. A gull cries in the distance. Or maybe that’s Mrs. O’Linn hollering from the house behind me that I need to come in for coffee or tea or stale cookies. I think the woman is trying to drown me in Irish hospitality.

She still doesn’t know who I am. At least I don’t think she does. But by letting her think I’m here to help her with the yard and other things as penance for my odd behavior, she lets me hang out here. This way I can be close to Ava—who Mrs. O’Linn knows nothing about.

Ava sleeps in the cave. Exactly the same as she was two weeks ago. Not decomposing or waking up. Just . . . still.

I set her violin beside her, hoping the strings might call to her, a sort of familiarity. I hid her bag with Mr. Ribbons and Fiona’s grimoire in a crevice in the stone wall. Sid did a spell over the spot to make it invisible to human or demon eyes until we can figure things out. It wasn’t an easy spell, and I know it wasn’t natural or right, but I felt no hesitation in letting him do it. I’m ready to do what I have to now in order to protect her. I’ve killed; there’s not much worse than that. And even though Lester’s body is gone now, cremated before the authorities could find him, I can’t just forget. I still have that weight on me, the heavy stain of murder.

I’ve been reading through Eric’s journal to try and find answers, to find a way to be free, to wake Ava; half of it is a jumbled mess of things I barely understand. The other half of the thing is unintelligible.

My phone vibrates in my pocket, interrupting my thoughts. I check to see who it is, and my heart lightens at the picture on the screen: Rebecca crossing her eyes and sticking her tongue out at the camera. I tap the answer button. “Hey, you,” I say. “How was France?”

“Ireland, silly,” she says. Her father never left her side while she was in the hospital. After agreeing to put her in counseling, he decided they needed a vacation together, so he took ten days off and whisked her away to wherever she wanted to go. She sent me postcards of castles and texted lots of pictures of sheep and of old men smoking pipes with captions like “Acting the maggot,” and “On a pig’s back?”

“Ireland, France, it’s all Greek to me,” I say.

“Don’t let the folk of Erin hear you say that. Them’s fightin’ words.”

“Glad you’re home safe.” I smile. I am glad—it feels like I can finally set down one of these bags of rocks I’ve been carrying around.

“Well, Dad says I get to see friends now, and I pick you!”

“I’m weeding a garden at the moment. You’re free to come join in the fun.”

“Uh, no thanks. Just got my nails done, and I’m back to school tomorrow. Have to keep up appearances.” She giggles, but I wonder how that’ll go. Her friends aren’t the most sensitive humans. “But I have the car today. Maybe coffee later?”

“Sounds good.”

“And, um,” she pauses, like she’s not sure how to say something. “Maybe it could just be you.”

She means no Kara. “Sure.” I still haven’t told Rebecca about my feelings for Kara or about my powers waking up. It’s not the first thing you tell someone when they come out of the hospital:
Oh, by the way, I sort of bonded permanently with someone else
. But then maybe she’s over it. It’s not like there are no guys in Ireland. And they have those accents that girls melt over. “You can tell me all about the bangers and mash.”

She laughs again, and we talk for another few seconds, bantering back and forth about nothing. I know Sid was right. She’s connected to me—she’s a part of everything, a Light, like my mom said. It’s becoming clearer whenever we talk. I feel our link now, like a string tied to both of our wrists. The others are linked to me as well. They don’t know it—they sure don’t act like it—but the thing that urges me to walk the halls at night, to double-check the wards on the entrances, and to keep track of where everyone is in the house, all this makes it clear to me that I’m settling into something. Something larger than myself.

“Boy!” Mrs. O’Linn barks from the house, interrupting the story I’m telling Rebecca about the potato bug I found and put in Jax’s backpack.

“I gotta go,” I say. “Duty calls.”

I hang up and yell, “Yeah?” toward the house where I know my great-grandmother is waiting.

“The unwashed masses have descended!” she yells, sounding perturbed. “Please tell these foolish children to leave! I told you they were not welcome.”

I bite back a smile and move to save her from the “uncultured vultures,” as she calls them.

When I come around a large hydrangea bush, I’m tackled by a small form. “Hey, sexy,” Kara says with a giggle at the surprised look on my face.

She pushes me back into the bushes.

“Kara,” I say, trying to put a warning in my voice. But secretly I’m glad when she ignores it.

She leans into me, attacking me with a kiss. Her hands grip my shirt, holding me close. It’s the only thing keeping me upright as my body responds to hers.

She pulls away and smiles at me wickedly. “I just had to get some love in before we were surrounded by morons again.”

She’s so different than she was when I ran into her at the club, all sorrow and desperation. Now she’s full of light. There’s no more heaviness between us. No more fear. It floated away when I sat beside her hospital bed for three days and nights, holding her hand and reading to her from
Great Expectations
. Over those hours and days her spirit seemed to open up: a flower bud finally seeing the sun. Even now, as I look at her, I realize the things I felt for her have only grown more complex—the urge to study her, be near her.

She grins at me. “You look so cute when you’re frowning at me like that.” She tugs on me to follow her through the garden toward the house. “Sid found us a good spec. This one’s got a sexy divorcée and a murder and everything—like an episode of
Dallas
.”

“Lovely.”

“You can be Cagney, and I’ll be Lacey.”

I laugh. “Were we teleported to the eighties when I wasn’t looking?”

“If you prefer, I can be Laverne, and you can be Shirley.”

“Please stop making me a girl. You’re going to have me questioning my manhood.”

She leans in, pecks me on the cheek, and whispers, “Maybe it’s time we looked into that more,” which makes my face turn hot. Then she pulls me toward the car where the others are waiting, not giving me a chance to make her clarify that statement.

There’s a loud bang, and Jax bursts through the front door of the house, Mrs. O’Linn squawking after him, whacking his arm with what looks like a
TV Guide
, saying, “Put that down, you cretin!”

Jax’s holding a golden statue out to us, like he just found the cup of Christ. “Holy shit! The old bat won an Oscar!”

Sid shoos him into the car and hands the statue back to Mrs. O’Linn with an apology. We all pile into the Camaro, Connor driving, Kara, Jax, and me in the backseat, Sid sitting shotgun.

As we pull out onto PCH, I watch the waves rolling up the golden sand of the shoreline. I imagine that I see two figures down there near the rocks, laughing and searching for sea glass. A vision from the past, of my mother and father, maybe?

Whoever they are, they look happy. I hold tight to the idea, believing I can find a way back to that innocent joy. I settle into the seat, letting this new road take me to my next destination. I feel the future in front of me. And for once I’m not afraid.