Darkness Brutal (The Dark Cycle Book 1) (21 page)

TWENTY-EIGHT

The next morning, the moment I step out of my room, I run into Rebecca.

Her hand flies to her mouth as she notices my scratches. “Oh my God. What . . . ?”

I shake my head. “I’m fine. It’s nothing. Just a . . . cat.” I back away a little. I don’t want her caring about me. Not like that. Not now. “Listen, now that you’re here, Sid says he can help you. If you want. He has a special, um, blessing he can do to help your sadness and stuff.”

God, what am I doing? I suck at lying. But then again, how can I explain that he is going to use magic to bind a protective amulet to her aura that will make her invisible to demons? I don’t think she’ll stick around for that.

“Oh, Sid can help,” Rebecca says. “Well, that’s good.” She doesn’t know what to think; I can see it in her eyes.

“Yeah, so I just have to talk to my sister, and then we’ll go find Sid, and he can fix this so you can go home.”

“Leave? Today?” She glances down the stairs, a worried look on her face.

“Um, sure. Or tomorrow. It’s gonna be okay.” I pat her on the shoulder like a lame-ass, then hurry past her, toward the bathroom, away from the conversation.

Ava’s coming out, her hair all braided with ribbons and twisted on top of her head. Her eyelids are covered in blue shadow; her lips are pink with gloss. “Holly said I could use her makeup,” she says like she’s worried I’m going to be mad at her.

“I need to talk to you.” I nod to our bedroom. I’ve decided something in the last twelve hours. I’ll give one of the amulets to Rebecca, but I’m not going to take the other one for myself. Ava needs it more than I do, the way things are going. I can fight my own battles. She can’t.

After we shut ourselves in our room, I sit with her on my bed. “I have something for you.” I take her hand and press one of the amulets into her palm. “Sid gave it to me and said it’ll keep you safe from
them
. It could mean no more demon attacks on your birthday. No more running.”

She looks down at the amulet. “What? But how?”

“We’re going to do a spell, lock it to your aura. It’ll hide you from them.”

Her eyes snap to mine. “Aidan . . . casting magic? But you—”

I wave her shock away. “I know, I hate it. It terrifies me. But I love you more than I hate it. And right now, losing you scares me more than anything in this whole wide world. You need to be safe. This is the best way. The only way I can see, really. We’re running out of time and options. I don’t trust the wards on this house. It’s too much property to keep hidden entirely. And I have a feeling whatever’s been chasing us all this time is fairly powerful.”

She rolls the amulet in her palm. “A bonding spell. That’s it?”

“That’s what Sid says. We’ll do it today. As soon as we can.”

“And he just gave it to you?” She bites her lip, looking troubled.

“Yeah, why?”

“Well, I’ve seen this before. And I wasn’t wearing it.”

“When?”

“That spell I did when I saw Rebecca. She was wearing it around her neck in the vision I had.”

I fold my arms across my chest. “Well, there are two of them. She’ll take the other one.”

“Two?” Her mouth opens in realization. “But what about you?” She starts to panic when she sees I’m not budging. Her eyes search mine. “Aidan . . . it’s not right.”

“It is right. You said so yourself; you saw it in a vision. Rebecca’s wearing one. And I’m with her, right?” She just keeps staring at me with those ancient-looking eyes until I can’t stand the silence. “It’s right,” I say again. “So get dressed and then come down to the backyard so we can do this thing.” I turn away before I change my mind and take back everything. I’ve made a choice. And it’s the right one.

I’ve gained a level of respect from Jax, it seems. He’s still buzzing about what happened yesterday, blathering to Lester about it when I walk into the office looking for Sid.

“Hey, there he is,” Jax says, holding out his arm like he wants to side-hug me. “The man of the hour.”

“Did you really glow?” Lester asks, looking my skin over.

“I didn’t see anything glowing,” I say as Jax catches hold of me.

“Oh, he was glowing.” Jax squeezes my shoulder to his. “This badass actually held on to a demon with his bare hands, like he was wrangling a beast.”

I was.

I pull out of Jax’s arms. “Have you guys seen Sid? Is he up yet?”

“Him and Connor and your goth girlfriend are in the shed
together
.” Then he winks.

I scowl at him, and Lester whacks him on the bicep. “Seriously?” Then he turns to me. “I think Sid wants you to meet them out there. He said something about you going with them to some church thing.”

“Yeah, to repent,” Jax says. “You big sinner.”

Before I head out to meet them, I stop in to say hi to Finger and sit beside him on the couch for a second. It’s more for me than a charity chat. The kid settles my nerves, and all this talk of my glowing marks and the demons is making my insides frantic.

Things are all right, though, when I think about it. They definitely could be worse. Sure, Ava is keeping secrets from me—sharing stuff with Holly she obviously doesn’t want me to know about—but she’s almost twelve. Aren’t preteens supposed to rebel? I know I did. And it’s probably good for her to have an older girl as a confidant. She still hasn’t used her powers yet—that I know of. We only have to get through a few more days before D-Day, and we have a place where we’re safe until then.

Plus, Sid is helping me find out more about my parents, and he’s making sure Rebecca and Ava will be protected. I have help. I’m not alone in this anymore.

Really, things are looking up when you think about it.

After a few more minutes of watching Finger kill zombies, I feel better and ready to figure out what’s next.

“Thanks, man,” I say, patting him on the back before I rise.

He makes a sound of approval and kills two zombies with one swing of his bat.

TWENTY-NINE

“They already did the protection thing on Rebecca,” Holly says as I come into the kitchen. “You totes missed the boring chanting.” She’s sitting at the kitchen table flipping through a magazine.

“Where are they?”

“Still outside, I think.” But before I can walk out the back door she asks, “When you’re kissing a girl, what are you thinking about?”

My hand freezes on the door handle and I turn. “Excuse me?”

“It’s for the quiz.” She points at the page with the tip of her pen. “What do you think about when you’re kissing?”

“I don’t.”

“You don’t, like,
think
?”

“I don’t talk to you about it, that’s for sure.”

“Whoa, bad boy on the loose.” She leans back in her chair, looking me over more closely. “It’s just a question. Like, what did you think about when you kissed Kara?”

How much I never wanted to stop
. “This is not a conversation I’m having with you.”

“Suit yourself.” She grins wide and leans back over the page, circling a number. Then she waves without looking up. “Ta-ta, grumpy.”

I walk out of the house with the sound of Ava’s violin beginning a sad tune upstairs. It follows me into the yard, making my nerves wake back up again. Or maybe my nerves were poked by Holly. It doesn’t matter; they’re at attention either way.

As I walk to the shed, the muted energy of the property lifts a little, letting me feel a tug coming from the white shack where a strange man sleeps every night.

The door is cracked open.

It’s empty when I peek inside. Wherever the others are, they aren’t here. The dank smell swirls around me, drawing me in. But I pull back, fear rising at the same time. As I move my head the door shuts, the latch clicking tight. The red circle painted on the door seems to blur and shift and then solidify again as I look at it.

I touch one of the crimson lines on the edge.

A flash of pain sears through me. The marking on my arm sparks with red lights, and electrical current hits me even as I step back, gasping.

All I hear is the sound of Ava’s violin and my racing heartbeat.

And I suddenly know without a doubt, with everything in me, that I need to get in that shed. I need to see what’s inside it. I pull on the handle, but the door doesn’t budge in spite of the fact that I can see all the metal locks hanging unlatched. Desperate, I search the ground and grab the first thing I see, an old rusty pipe, and I whack the door with it. It takes three hits, but on the third the silver handle falls to the side.

The door creaks open again.

I fix my inner walls tightly in place, take a deep breath, and slip inside.

The space is very small—the size of a closet. The air feels heavy, like I’m underwater. All I see at first is the darkness, with the shapes of Sid’s bed and the altar at one side. As my eyes adjust, I realize my foot is touching the chest Sid was digging in the other day when he gave me the amulets.

I search the space for a light and find a small gas lamp beside the bed. There’s matches sitting on a stack of books right beside it. I pull a stick from the box and strike it, lighting the lamp.

As I lift it, my surroundings are revealed.

I nearly drop the lantern.

Over every surface of the walls are more of those same circle spells like the one painted on the door. And I’m very sure now that they’re painted with blood. The symbol repeats over and over,
grounding
,
grounding
,
grounding
. And in the gravity of their energy, I weigh a thousand pounds. The feeling makes me want to run, but I stand firm and lift the lamp higher to study the altar.

I’m not sure what I’m looking for, but I know I’m looking for
something
.

Or maybe something’s looking for me.

The altar was once a wine cabinet. Through the glass doors below, I can see rolls of paper instead of bottles in the circular spaces. The surface is coated in melted wax, dried blood, and burned paper. My mouth becomes a desert looking at it all. The skull of what looks like a cat sits to the side, with a symbol for slyness on the forehead. A bowl rests in the other corner filled with tiny bones that I’m hoping are from a bird. There are vials of various liquids and dried things. I don’t want to know what.

My walls are up tight as they can get, but I still feel the death, the loss. Something horrible happened to make this place. But what?

Urgency fills me as I kneel down and open the chest, the desire to run growing stronger. My fear tells me this is where the answers are. I move several scarves, pants, shirts out of the way, and my hand finds vials, a stack of thick books, what I think might be rolls of money, and a larger, hard, square object that I can’t get a good look at.

I lift the light closer and move a shirt out of the way. And uncover a stone that must be more than a thousand years old. Assyrian lines the top.

Bringer of Fire
.

A chill works over me as the knowledge sinks in. It doesn’t say
Aidan
, but I know these words are my name. It’s about me. Just like my mom told Ava:
The father’s place is another time, the son is becoming; Fire Bringer.

Everything around me goes still for a second.

I can’t stop looking at the words. I touch the stone with a shaking finger.

An image of robed men, commotion, arguing, flashes in my mind.

I pull my hand back, not wanting to see more.

But I can’t stop myself from reading across the surface:
The end follows behind him, a fire of cleansing sight. Broken from the vine. Unspoken of, he is hidden. The eyes that seek him lose their soul. Awakened through Love’s key. All hail, the one who brings Death to that which was Everlasting
.

My mind hears the word
death
over and over and over, and I can’t stop seeing the robed men, feeling the anger and turmoil. All because of the words on this stone.

Voices come from outside the shed, bringing me back to reality with a jolt. I panic. Tossing the clothes back into the trunk over the stone, I quickly shut the lid, ready to bolt. But before I can, the door to the shed shuts with a click.

I try to lift the latch, but it won’t budge. I press on the wood, but my arm sparks with red again, sending me back in pain.

I shake the zap from my arm and stare at the door, horrified. Then I hear Kara say, “We need to tell Aidan, Sid. It’s way past time. After that mess yesterday with the demon.”

All my attention focuses on listening.

“You need to finish your part first, Kara.” That’s Sid.

“It’s not going to work. He doesn’t want me.” Her voice moves closer to the shed.

“That is a lie,” Sid says. “The boy would follow you off a cliff. He’s smitten. And so are you.”

“No, I’m not,” she answers, sounding very sure. I suddenly wish that I could see her eyes. “I don’t like him, not like that.”

My gut turns hollow. She doesn’t like me—I knew that. I think I knew that. But hearing a denial, after the feelings I had when I kissed her . . . And I’d kiss her again, in a heartbeat.

“You’ve done well making the rest of us believe the opposite,” Sid says, sounding almost sad. “Including him.”

“I did what you wanted me to do. I kept him here so you could figure stuff out.”

My brain ticks back to all the moments Kara and I had together . . . She’s been manipulating me this whole time? She sure seemed to like me when I kissed her.

Kara’s voice grows more quiet. I have to strain to hear. “If Aidan’s really this kid you’ve been looking for, he should be having a lot tougher time keeping his hands off me.”

“The spell wasn’t meant to work on its own,” Sid says. “Your job is to bring him to me fully awakened so that I can finish this.”

There’s another voice coming closer: “He’s not in the house.” It’s Connor. “What’s the big deal? We did the spell to protect his redhead. Now she can go home, and we can get back to work.”

“It’s not that simple, Connor,” Sid says, sounding tired.

“Aidan’s the one,” Kara says. “The one Sid’s been looking for.”

There’s silence for a second before Connor says in a disbelieving tone, “The
one
? As in the golden goose? You’re actually serious about this, Sid? I thought you were just . . . high.”

“No, Connor,” Kara says. “Aidan’s really the one Sid’s been looking for.”

My heart speeds up.

“Shit. But that means . . .” Connor’s voice fades.

“Yes,” Kara says.

“Are you sure?” Connor asks. “How can you be sure?”

What do they mean—Sid’s been looking for
me
?

“You saw it with your own eyes, Connor,” Kara says. “The way the mark on his hand and arm glowed? And it changed before that; it grew after I kissed him the other night—he said it did the first time, too. When I met him at Eric’s club.”

“Wait . . .” Connor sounds confused. I’m right there with him. “You met this guy before he got here? That’s why you came home all weird that night that you and Sid went to pick up those coins?”

My head spins with a million confused thoughts.
The one
? What the hell? Are these people nuts? Have they spent too much time watching
The Matrix
or something? God, if they start calling me Neo I’m going to flip out.

“Yes,” Kara continues, “I didn’t know who he was, but I saw him in Eric’s club, and I was drawn to him.”

“I can’t believe it,” Connor says. “Sid’s a bastard to do this to you.”

“Now, now,” Sid says. “Everyone has a choice—”

But Kara cuts him off. “No, I asked for this. It’s not Sid’s fault. He helped me, saved me. He saved you too, Connor.”

“So you’re going through with it?” Connor asks with a bite in his voice.

“I don’t know,” Kara bites back.

Silence answers, and my heart speeds up. Something about the whole exchange is wrong. I’m missing a vitally important piece. What does Connor mean
going through with it
? With what?

They’ve been expecting this kid—The One—who they think is me. But Kara hasn’t been trying to keep me here or draw me in like she said; she’s been pushing me away. She’s actually been acting a little terrified of me. And she said earlier that she felt something with me that frightened her. Like I was affecting her.

She definitely affects me.

God, by the sound of it, she’s made some psycho deal with Sid to keep me here, to keep me
happy
.

“But you really think it’s him?” Connor asks, breaking into my thoughts.

“There’s no doubt anymore,” Sid says.

“It’s just like Sid said it would feel, Connor,” Kara says. “Like I’m standing on a precipice, facing a pit of hungry beasts. But when I touch him, it all fades away.” She pauses and then says more quietly, “I had the nightmare again. You know, the one I started having after Sid did the spell on me to hold back the curse, about the lions.”

So she’s been having horrible nightmares like the one I heard through the wall ever since the spell. Sid did that to her, too.

“The men were dragging me to the mouth of the pit like always,” she continues. “But this time when they tossed me in, the lions surrounding me were quiet. They had blood on their claws and flesh in their teeth, and they were close enough to touch me, but this time they didn’t attack me. They just stood there, staring at something behind me, and when I turned around
he
was standing there, in the shadows.”

“Aidan was?” Connor asks.

“Yes,” Kara says. “He was holding them back. The lions—like Daniel in the lions’ den.”

Connor scoffs, “I’m supposed to believe a Bible story now?”

“You should,” Sid says.

“I believe it, Connor,” Kara says, sounding awed. “I’ve dreamed it—felt it on him. It’s Aidan. He’s the one we’ve been looking for. He’s the Son of Daniel.”

The name echoes in my head:
Daniel
.
The Son of Daniel . . .

Then the door in front of me unlatches, swinging open with a loud squeak.