DARK SOULS (Dark Souls Series) (21 page)

At first, I thought she was caught in a tangle of equipment, cables stretching over her skin and causing her cries, but it turns out I wasn’t even close.

 It was tentacles the color of the mud, slimy and wet as they slithered around her. Upon closer inspection I saw little suction cups scattered across the slick masses, each one making a wet, popping sound before clamping onto her. The tentacles palpitated as they latched onto her skin, and as each one clamped onto her, she let out another cry.  

I stiffened, my head jerking around, my eyes shooting in all directions.

Where was her brother?

I lay my hands against the white metal of the warehouse as I leaned forward, afraid of what I might be forced to do. I couldn’t expose myself, not this way, not when it posed so much danger to me.

She screamed again.

No one came.

“Ah, shit,” I said before stepping out of my hiding place.

Her face was twisted into a look of agony as her hands slipped over and under the tentacles, trying to pry them off her even as her hands kept skidding against the slime. 

Move!

My mind felt alert, but my body seemed incredibly slow to respond as I stood frozen in the empty lot, vulnerable, wide-eyed. This was my first time facing a demon on a full stomach. There was no starvation, no frenzy to propel me forward. Just fear.

I forced myself to step closer. Before me sat a globular mass of pustules, its greasy brown skin reflecting off the spotlights overhead. I tried to locate its eyes among the pustules that burst open with yellowed slime every time it moved. I thought I found them, located at the center, two glassy black marbles that were so out of place on this slick, glopping mass sitting before me.

“Emily!”

I met Gwyn’s eyes, angry and staring as the tentacles began to wrap around her face. “Get lost!”

The tentacles pulsated again, and Gwyn let out one more cry of pain, fear and pain etching across her face as I watched her eyes roll to the back of her head. She went slack underneath the tentacles, suddenly looking like a broken china doll that was being devoured by a monster.  

I had to save her.

The next few seconds were a blur as I tried to figure out what to do. I was as frozen as a statue, stiff with fear but shaking with uncertainty as I watched this demon-sludge readying itself to eat Gwyn. I was no match for this thing. If I wanted to save Gwyn, if I wanted to redeem myself from what happened with Rob, the girl, the cop…I knew what I had to do.         

Okay
, I told the darkness. I felt her titter with excitement as I spoke.
Come forth. Kill.

My body jolted, my arms shooting out behind me and my chest arching to the sky as the burn fired through my system with such potency that I cried out. I wanted to fall to my knees, but in an instant, they were no longer my own. That quickly, the darkness had cannoned forth and ripped through my body, taking my hands, filling my legs, controlling my mouth.

I felt myself being pushed back, like a hand had clamped over my face and shoved me underwater, my vision blurring and my eyes looking through a tunnel as my darkness stepped forward and took my place. But like a slingshot, I was flown forward again, the tunnel vision disappearing as my eyesight came back. But I couldn’t move my eyes. I couldn’t even tell myself to blink. She was in control, and I had just become a spectator in my own body.

Oh man, this was a really, really bad idea.  

There was no time to dwell. The demon had already started sucking the life out of Gwyn, its black beady eyes rolling up to the top of its globular head as a white, sparkling mist began to coat her body.

Her soul. It had to be. 

“
You imbecile
,” I heard my voice say to it.

I got its attention. It stopped its popping, sucking noises, and its tiny, empty eyes focused on me.

“You think you could feast on one of them?”
I heard myself ask.

It growled, the sound wet and grating as it began to rise and direct its attention to me. Before, I didn’t think it had a mouth. Now, I knew better. With a wet, smacking sound, a mouth formed at the center of the dirty glob, yawning wide, its fangs white and gleaming despite the dripping mess that surrounded them.

It let out a deafening roar, and I wished I could cover my ears. But my darker self remained poised and unperturbed by the angry, spitting mass in front of her.

To my relief, its tentacles slipped off Gwyn, and I could only hope that she was still alive. I half-expected the tentacles to swing in my direction, aiming straight for my face. Instead, the thing used its tentacles as chair legs, rising up in stature to tower over us. It roared once more, its fangs rising to the sky. In that instant, if I had control over my body, I knew I would have been dead.

It dove for me so quickly that before I could even process that it moved, my darker self had nimbly ducked, turned and twisted out of the way, my left leg rising and connecting with the side of the glob as my body landed with balanced ease.

I was so strong from my last feast that this sopping demon was sent sprawling, its four tentacles flailing in the air as it crashed back down. My body ducked again, narrowly missing a tentacle from slamming into it, but I had the sense that it was only a near miss because my darkness felt like playing again.

I hummed with annoyance, tired of these games she loved to play, as if this weren’t life and death but just a mere deck of cards to amuse her for a while.

Don’t toy with my body
.

She laughed back.
Don’t assume that your body can’t take it.

There was a moment of calm stillness, where she stood, unmoving except for the slow smile that began to creep onto her mouth. She let me see her next move, a brief picture in her mind that flickered across my vision like an old movie reel. I wanted to recoil from the sight, but of course I couldn’t. I threw myself against my confines instead, like a trapped animal in a cage, but it was no use.

Don’t you dare,
I said to her.

 She moved straight to the underside of the mass where the tentacles began, and I watched in horror as she let the tentacles close around us.

WHAT ARE YOU DOING?
I screamed, though my voice made no sound.
Do you want to kill us?

She remained calm as I fought against her, attempting to claw my way forward and stop this. Stop
her.
I pressed against her, but felt a hard wall slam up in front me, throwing me back. The pounding in my head was almost unbearable and my vision began to blur again, the tunnel becoming longer as I drifted back, descending into the dark.
No.

 I was trapped. Trapped inside my own body.

What have I done?

The tentacles tightened around my body, suffocating me, the suction cups latching to my arms and legs, coiling upwards as they moved toward my face. I felt the tentacles through my clothing, sucking my blood to the surface of my skin. I cried out silently, panicking, flailing against her restraints, but my body stayed poised, my face serene as she continued to remain in control.

She entertained my struggle for a few seconds, saying only:
You need to learn to trust me.

Just then, I felt my hands lashing out as she pushed hard against the tentacles. The gluttonous mass roared. I felt my jaw open, crack and expand to house my now sharp, deadly teeth.

She smiled again, macabre and garish before she turned my head and sank those teeth straight into the center mass of the glob.

This time, it wasn’t scarlet blood that gushed forth. It was opaque and tasted of black licorice as it filled my mouth. It fell on my body like a river, but my teeth remained buried deep in the demon’s skin. I wanted to gag with the slimy, bulbous feel of its flesh against my tongue.

Suddenly, my head whipped back, my jaw letting go at the same time my darkness began to recede. I felt like my face had just broken above water and I gasped for air as I found myself once again in control.

Trust me
… she whispered before she folded back into that place inside me. The place she had made her home.

Breathing heavily, I crawled up so I could stand on top of the demon, locating the mouth. I cringed at the thought of having to put my face close to it, but I knew it was necessary. I bent down, my disgust forgotten as I began to anticipate what would come next. Finally the darkness and I were on the same page. We both wanted this. We both needed this.

I sucked in a deep breath, watching as the bright blue mist came out of the demon’s mouth and into my lungs. Ecstasy overtook me as I breathed it in, and I welcomed it as the sparkling blue pulsed through me, sinking into my veins and pumping into my heart, my chest expanding with the pleasure of it.

At the same time, a golden cloud formed and enveloped the demon. As it evaporated from underneath me, I floated to the ground and landed with silent ease.  

But my suffering wasn’t over. I tried to prepare myself for what came next. Although I knew it was coming, I still wasn’t ready for the quaking pain that rushed into my head and caused me to buckle to my knees.

SOON
.

Just as quickly as the roar came, it retreated, and the pain gradually faded with it. I took in one gasping breath as I felt the last of the ache slip away.

That was it. For once, that hateful roar wasn't going to stick around for more threats, more spiking pain. But with that one single word, it made its plans known. Whatever it was. Wherever it lived. I shivered under the pressure of it.

Finally, I allowed myself to open my eyes. I looked around, finding no trace of the demon glob as I took in the scene, the broken pieces of metal, the wet, shining curves of slime that covered the asphalt. The demon made quite a mess, and unfortunately, it wasn’t just on the ground.

This time, I had my own messy problem: I was still covered head to toe in black, sopping goo, and I smelled sickeningly of black licorice.

“What happened....?”

I turned to Gwyn, forgetting for only an instant that she was there. She was still on her back but staring straight at me. Her eyes, though tired and weak, still managed to stare daggers as she regained consciousness.

“Um...” I couldn’t think of one thing to say. I just continued to stare at her while still on my knees.

“You saw it?” She asked, sitting up, becoming more alert by the second.

“Yes.”

I couldn’t exactly answer any other way when I was still covered in its gook.

She looked around in panic. “Where is it? Where is it hiding?”

“Oh, you don’t have to worry, I—”

NO.

The dark flame flared up at me, actually
hissing
at me.
Remember. You can’t kill a demon. Only the Hunter can.

But what if I’m the Hunter?
I asked. It was a brave question, and while this darkness inside me scared the bejesus out of me, she knew things. She said things. She must know the answer to this.

If that were true, do you really want this girl to be your first witness?
Her voice was sharp. I felt her inside me, her movements reminding me so much like the brown glob we’d just killed as she slithered around, warning me. She could take me over whenever she wanted, turn her fire into tentacles and slide underneath my skin, suck me out. Become me.

Trust me…

I shivered.

“Emily.”

Despite being the victim, Gwyn’s voice left no room for weakness as she sat up and said my name, almost as if she were accusing me for being here.
How dare you save my life, Emily
, her voice seemed to say. It was enough to distract me from my own victim-like thoughts.

“I wounded it,” I said to her, gesturing to the black tar-like substance covering me. “It ran away.”

Her eyebrows rose at that. “You...fought it?” 

“Well...” I said, trying to buy time to form a plausible story. Then I spotted it. “I panicked. I saw you and you were in trouble. So without thinking, I just grabbed the sharpest piece of metal I could find and stabbed it from behind.”

Gwyn pondered this. I prayed I didn’t make any sort of lethal mistake. I didn’t even know if that thing’s slimy exterior could
be penetrated by a metal beam. I had used razor-sharp teeth, after all, but I couldn’t tell Gwyn that.

“Okay,” she said, seeming to accept my story. To her, there was probably no other plausible option, not when it was me
she was looking at. Innocent, bumbling Emily who stumbled upon a monster and just happened to throw some metal at it.

Then she looked at me, seeming to remember something. “Are you okay? I mean, I know this is hard to explain...”

Right. She probably expected me to be traumatized, never encountering an actual, real-life monster before and everything.

“I...I think so,” I said, but not wanting to overdo it. “What
was
that?”

She sighed, rising up to her feet and brushing off her jeans, more of an automatic gesture than actually trying to brush anything off. The lights above us were reflecting a clear, greasy goo on her that I doubt even dry cleaning would be able to rectify.

“You need to talk to Asher about that,” she said. “You want answers that I can’t give.” Pause. “I really
wish you hadn’t seen that.”

I was oddly happy to see him again, even despite Gwyn’s rude, cryptic-like behavior. If I weren’t here, she would’ve died. Didn’t she see that? She was acting so uncaring, so cavalier
,
doing nothing to reassure me about what I saw, not even bothering to explain this secret species away.
What the hell was going on?

“Come on.”

She already started walking towards Williamsburg. I supposed I was expected to get up and follow.

“Oh, and thank you,” she said, giving me a quick glance over her shoulder before turning back around.

“No problem,” I said, following behind, suddenly feeling like a downtrodden puppy. “A little more gratefulness would have been nice,” I added under my breath.