Pretty Dark Sacrifice (4 page)

“That’s what happens when you don’t wrap your hands before you start wailing. Plus, those gloves are too thin for heavy bag work.”

“It’s fine. Just a little cut.”

“It will get infected if you aren’t careful.”

“What’s it to you?”

“Just trying to do my job. How can we continue to take your money if you injure yourself and cancel your membership?” Caleb pulled a small tube from the pocket of his sweatpants and threw it at her. “Use this at least.”

Quinn mumbled her thanks and made her escape to the locker room.

“What was that?” Caleb called to her before she opened the door.

“Thank you, Meathead,” she replied over her shoulder, putting all the sarcasm she could behind her words.

“You’re welcome, Blondie.”

The heavy wooden door to the women’s changing room swung closed. Leaning against the wall, she rolled the tube of antibacterial ointment between her fingers then tossed it into the trash.

Quinn half-smiled and nodded at the dark-haired woman changing into tight-fitting spandex shorts and made her way to her locker to retrieve her towel. Caleb’s next victim. Good luck to her.

Quinn checked her phone. Still no reply from Reese. Her best friend would be sitting in homeroom right now, probably flirting with Marcus and sharing the latest gossip with Ami. A pang of jealousy pinched at her heart. If only it were that easy for her to go back to being normal. What was normal? She couldn’t remember.

Quinn wrapped the white cotton towel tight around her chest, tucking one end snugly against the other to hold it in place, and slipped on her flip-flops. No matter how clean the gym might look, who knew what kind of fungus lurked on the wet floor. Water dripped in the empty shower stall. She reached in, set the handle midway between hot and cold, and waited for it to warm up.

“What do you think you’re doing?”

Quinn jumped and whirled around.

“You can’t be in here,” she hissed and pulled her towel tighter around her. Drops of red dotted the edge, evidence of her injured hand. She looked at the ground and tried to hide it behind her back.

Azrael leaned against the tiled wall, eyes burning with unexpressed accusation. “Naked human flesh means nothing to me. Go about your business.”

“I need my privacy.”

The dark-haired woman glanced at her, oblivious to Azrael. Quinn smiled and turned the shower to full stream. The woman grabbed her water bottle, raised an eyebrow at Quinn, and left.

“You have now lost your privacy privileges.” Azrael wrenched her wrist from behind her back and pulled her split knuckles to the light. Blood dripped onto the tiled floor, and he shook his head. Quinn squirmed but couldn’t escape his grasp. His touch burned like too-hot tea spilled over flesh.

“I can command you away.” It was an empty threat, all the fight had already drained out of her and been replaced with a light-headed wooziness that pushed her off-balance.

“You could.” Azrael’s voice soothed her, all low dulcet tones and soft coos, and her hand relaxed in his. “This is my fault. I have been too soft on you, cleaning up your mess for weeks now and not allowing you to suffer the consequences.”

Azrael didn’t need to explain what the demons could do; she had experienced it first-hand. Besides, she could handle them, cut them off anytime she wanted. Azrael caught her gaze, and his look told her that her thoughts were not her own.

“This is not just about you. Those demons you let feed on you? They’re dead by my sword. If they had been allowed to live, they would have gone on to create more chaos and darkness, perhaps with an unloved and broken vagrant on the street or one of your beloved friends, Reese or Marcus. No one is immune.”

Quinn broke eye contact and looked at her feet, and Azrael went back to inspecting her injuries.

“This is bigger than you. Stop being selfish. Now, I need you to take a deep breath, Quinn. No healing comes without pain.”

Pulses of hot electricity coursed up her fingers, between her muscles, soaking through her bones. The bruise on her ankle turned purple, black, green, and then faded all together.

Every ache deepened and throbbed like a bitch, and she wanted to cry out, but before she could, her muscles relaxed. Pain replaced by a warm tingle.

“This one will be the worst. You have a small fracture in your finger.”

Quinn bit her lip and pushed back a sob. She refused to let him know how much it hurt. Fire, the cracking of bone, and pain so intense she thought she might vomit. And then it was over, the skin over her knuckles weaved back together, leaving nothing but a smear of blood across clean skin and a light scar.

“Thank you.” Quinn flexed her fist.

“You should take up that trainer’s offer to help you. He is right. Your form is erroneous.”

“Who, Meathead? No way!”

“I do not want to spend every day treating self-inflicted wounds. You want to punish your body, take your anger out on that bag hanging from a chain, fine, but you will learn to do it properly.”

“Whatever.” Quinn folded her arms over her chest and glared at Azrael. “Can I take my shower now?”

Azrael nodded and turned his back.

Quinn pulled the curtain closed and waited for him to leave. He didn’t.

“Really? You’re going to stand there the whole time?” Nothing but a thin sheet of plastic separated her from her Sentinel.

“You have privacy. I cannot see you.”

Quinn stomped a foot in protest, turned the water up as hot as it would go, and let it pour over her head and down her body.

“You may be able to cut them off, but once they have drained you, taken all the misery you have to give, then what?”

Quinn rolled her eyes, a captive audience to more lectures.

“It comes back, does it not? The emotions, darker and deeper?”

Quinn paused, hand on her shampoo bottle.

“And the demons live to find another victim. The more pain and chaos they are allowed to create, the more demons can cross the veil. The more demons that cross the veil, the more chaos and darkness they exploit, and the weaker the veil between worlds becomes. It’s a vicious cycle.”

Quinn lathered and rinsed, hands yanking through the short tangles. Where was he going with all of this?

“Other humans can’t see what’s out there, but you can.”

Ripping the towel from the hook, she covered herself up and turned off the spray. When she yanked back the curtain, Azrael grinned at her. Did he have any idea how much she wanted to punch him?

“I’m sick of hiding.”

“That’s why I have, what do you humans call it—a belated birthday present for you.” Azrael reached into his boot and pulled out a knife roughly eight inches long. Blue runes danced across the blade, reminiscent of Azrael’s Qeres sword. “A dagger, actually, very rare and imbued with Qeres poison. I had to jump through a lot of hoops to get this for you.”

So that’s where he’d been all morning. Laying the blade across both his palms, he offered it to Quinn. She picked it up by the ornate hilt and spun in between her hands. It hummed in her touch, the runes burning bright. A wicked grin spread across her lips. A poisoned blade, deadly to immortal essences. Now she could kill them.

After two near-death experiences, Aaron thought he wouldn’t fear the afterlife, but this time was different. Before, there was a tunnel of light, something tethering him to reality. Now, it was a tunnel of blackness. This time, nothing held him back as he spiraled down, down, down into oblivion, helpless and alone.

Days, months, minutes, years—time meant nothing as the swirling waters faded into a foggy cyclone. It tossed Aaron this way and that, like a limp towel in the spin cycle. This couldn’t be all there was? To be lost in a dark void forever, alone, cut off from everyone and everything he ever loved.

“Why now?”

Nothing.

“Why is this time different?”

No one. No answer.

“Why?”

His voice didn’t even echo. It was swallowed, choked off by the non-existent air. That was impossible. He needed air to breathe, to live. And that’s when he noticed the stillness within his lungs.

Denial gave way to anger, and he kicked and screamed until his voice was ragged and torn. He didn’t deserve this. Where was the light? His mom? Why had the image of Ruth abandoned him when he needed her most?

Because you abandoned her to the same fate, Aaron. You lived when she died in that river. It’s only fitting that you would suffer the same way. Payback’s a bitch.

No, that was madness talking. Ruth wasn’t like that. His sister loved him. She wouldn’t want him to suffer. It had been an accident, not his fault.

If only he could have one more chance. Josh needed him. Home, it was all he could think about. A warm bed, Josh and his dad arguing down the stairs, even the smell of whisky on his dad’s breath, he would treasure it all.

There was no escape. Exhaustion dragged at his limbs. His soul and his body relaxed, accepting his fate, his death. Nothing left to do but succumb and hope it would all be over soon, that he would find peace at the end of this journey. Go with the flow, ever downward, ever darker.

After an immeasurable time, the funnel slowed, and he noticed spots of light within the swirling gray. Pictures flashed on the wall of the maelstrom. Was this what people meant when they said their life passed before their eyes? He expected to see Josh, his dad, but instead he saw a mirage of flashing images, doors opening to show him a brief glimpse of strange worlds beyond before closing again.

One held a million tiny bubbles with glowing fireflies blinking in and out. Another showed the image of a tree made entirely of white butterflies. Then came cities of glass, piles of bones in a desert wasteland, and fields of ice with wraiths dancing beneath a green moon. Some light, some dark, all strange and wondrous.

Next, the portal opened on a garden being swallowed by darkness. Piercing screams tore through a swirling mist, and the smell of smoke and sulfur choked his lungs.

Sobs drew Aaron’s attention. There, in the middle of the twisting fog, sat a girl. She wept, a box held tight in her hands as demons destroyed the beauty and serenity of her home. As her tears fell on the wood, a rainbow of phosphorescent runes etched themselves upon the box, fading a second later. The writing seemed oddly familiar to Aaron, and his memory fumbled the puzzle of it over and over in his head, trying to find the answer to the curling shapes, but before he could decipher their meaning, the window slammed closed, and he was dragged down once again.

Still, he fell, the portals winking open and closed before him. When he stopped to float in front of a work of art, complete with an ornate gold frame, hope that his journey might be over surged through him.

A boy, similar to him with the same dark hair and green eyes, stood bare-chested in a field dotted with purple and white flowers. His face looked slightly more chiseled than Aaron’s, and a bit older, too. His beauty stood out, unparalleled, complete with muscles, sword and a short red tunic. Instead of Aaron’s pale white, the boy in the image had skin that glowed darker, as if the sun were trapped beneath the flesh. Unlike Aaron, his arms were blemish-free, no sign of his attempted suicide etched for the entire world to see. Aaron gasped as the boy in the image unfurled a set of golden-red wings that spread behind him in a twelve-foot span.

In the distance, an ivory tower sliced through the blood-orange horizon, its stained glass windows casting three-hundred-sixty-degree rainbows across the landscape. Aaron’s heart ached, and a longing he’d never felt before brought a tear to his eye. Deep down, he sensed this was his heaven, and he was ready to go. Finally, he would be home.

Are you here for me?
Aaron asked the angel, reaching out a hand to see if he could step through the painting and join him in paradise. The angel nodded and reached back, but before they could touch, something sucked him farther down the vortex and away from the one place he wanted to be. Sorrow filled him. Despair and anger made their way through him like poison as the portal winked shut, and he found himself wrapped in darkness, spinning on and on with no end in sight.