Nameless: The Darkness Comes (16 page)

Chapter Thirty-One

I wasn’t stupid enough to think I could shout out the demon’s name a time or two and have it collapse at my feet. But it was certainly hurting enough that I could scramble through the ragged hole in the stone and escape that ancient room. Their names have power. Exactly how much, I wasn’t sure. But it was enough, at least for now.

I used both hands to pull my body through, and then I got to my feet
on the other side of the hole. The ground still heaved and hoisted under me, but I leaned against the wall while I got my bearings.

“Lydia?”
I called. “Sweet Girl?”

The cries were faint, but they were definitely her.
I looked around in shock. Instead of the nice, postage-stamp sized backyard I had expected, I was standing in the middle of what looked like the Black Forest. Not to mention it was suddenly the middle of the night when it should have been closer to 3:00 p.m. How could this be?

I needed to stop thinking about it before my mind broke.
Demons liked the dark and dreary, anyway. My priority was Lydia. Nothing else mattered.

I ran toward the sound, my hands out in front of me to protect my graceful self from running headlong into branches.
The trees were spiny black shadows in the darkness.
Great, even the trees look like demons here.

“Lydia,
it’s Mama Luna! I’m coming for you, sweetheart.”

I was
going to kick Sparkles in the face when I found her. Then I was going to knock her down, sit on her chest, and punch her in her bitter, twisted mouth until I was too tired to punch anymore. Then I’d spit on her. When I was done, I would start all over again, and then take Lydia and go home. Sparkles won’t be more than shreds of meat by the time I’m through with her. She’d never come after Lydia again.

The Mark
pulsed and seared with my thoughts. It almost felt good. It
did
feel good.

In the back of my mind, something that
strangely sounded like common sense was warning me that physical assault might not be the best way to go about this, especially if Lydia ended up with her biological mother due to my family’s questionable mental state. But I never was big on listening to that certain part of my mind. Get bent, common sense. I have some revenge to wreak.

I was almost there.
Lydia sounded only a few feet ahead of me. The thick night was getting even blacker, and the tiny sliver of moon disappeared behind a cloud. Fantastic. I couldn’t see a thing, freezing in the paranormal fog, and I was getting more creeped out by the second. The Mark on my back ached even more, growling like an angry stomach.

They’re here.

Something zipped past me in the trees, zig-zagging its way easily through the brambles and branches that repeatedly caught me up. Something else rustled the leaves overhead. I knew they weren’t birds or innocent little woodland animals that would come cuddling up to wayward princesses and dashing princes. They were dark and sinister and evil. They were attracted to the Mark, and I was afraid they were also attracted to the innocence that was Lydia.

My legs pumped harder.
I was racing disaster in the woods. If I got it to her first then everything would be okay, I kept telling myself. I needed to believe it.

I found
Lydia in a little clearing. She sat on the dead, leafy floor, her pigtails haphazard and her face covered in dirt and tears. Her yellow sundress looked out of place in the menacing, freak-of-nature woods. She looked like goodness personified. She looked like bait.

“Lydia
,” I called out, and her head turned my way. She held her pudgy arms out to me. They were covered in filth or blood, I couldn’t tell, and the sudden surge of anger I felt made me want to snap my teeth on somebody’s throat. I didn’t care if it was a trap. Didn’t care what the darkness was planning. I needed to get to my sweet girl.

“Lydia, I’m here
.”

A dark shadow that smelled of must and sweat darted in front of my legs.
I actually stumbled on the darn thing. If it was that close to physical form, I’d better be ready for anything.

“Get back, demon
. You can’t have her.”

It grinned at me, its teeth wrapping most of the way around its head, and then it dropped to all fours.
It ran awkwardly, and then the gait straightened into something smooth and loping. Its ears pulled back and its toothy face opened into a snarl.

A wolf.

I shuddered as I realized the implications. I had never seen a demon change into another form, and I was scared beyond anything I could remember. If it could do that, what else could it do? I thought I was so knowledgeable, but I didn’t really know anything about them, did I?

Isn’t that what Mouth kept trying to tell me?

The demon barked, its guttural voice several octaves too low for it to belong to a real wolf. It was a terrible thing to hear, and my mouth went dry.

It was head
ed straight for Lydia.

“No!” I screamed, and grabbed a rock from the ground without breaking my stride. I threw wildly
, and it hit the rump of the wolf with a thud. “Leave her alone.”

The wolf shrugged off my attack and padded up to Sweet Girl
. It huffed hot air on her, blowing her hair back, and I felt the blood flow out of my face. It felt like dying slow.

“Please, don’t touch her,” I begged.
I stood stock still, trying not to scare it, trying to think clearly. If I ran at the wolf, it would give Lydia a few seconds to get away. Before I’m torn apart and the wolf went after her, that is.

I
didn’t know what to do. I was terrified and alone and Lydia didn’t have anybody but me. The poor girl was in big, big trouble.

The wolf nipped the tender white toddler shoulder, drawing blood.
Both Lydia and I shrieked at the same time. That’s it. If it wanted a fight, it’d get a fight. I snarled and darted forward.

The wolf opened its jaws wider than I would have thought possible, but its lips didn’t move.
The voice that came from its canine vocal chords sounded strained and broken. It was absolutely terrifying.

“Stop or I will kill the girl.”

“Looks to me like you plan on killing her, anyway.” I slowed to a careful walk, but I didn’t stop moving toward Lydia, who was screaming and trying to crawl to me. The wolf snapped its jaws inches from her face, and the shrieks started anew.

“Do not assume you know my intentions.”

“You’re a demon, therefore your intentions are evil. I know your kind.
I know what I’m up against.”

The wolf laughed, a terrible sound, and I wanted to curl up into a ball right there.

“You have no idea what you’re up against.”

It was true.
I was completely in the dark, and I knew it, but what was I supposed to do? I was less than ten feet from Lydia and her terror made my heart pound. I needed to clean the wound on her shoulder. I couldn’t imagine that demonic wolf bites could be good for the soul. I needed to snuggle her and bring her back to her daddy.

Two more wolves materialized behind Lydia.
One hadn’t finished changing shape correctly and still wore the sharp teeth that wrapped most of the way around his head. I’d be seeing that grin in my nightmares for the rest of my life, I knew it. I just hoped the rest of my life lasted longer than two or three minutes. There was still so much to do. The thought of giving up here made me sad.

“What…what do you want in exchange for the girl?” I asked.
The pressure on the Mark intensified suddenly, making me gasp, driving me to one knee. It felt like a giant claw planted firmly between my shoulder blades, as though the demon who cursed me had never really left. Perhaps he never had.

“What makes you think you have anything to exchange, girl?”

The pain was so severe that I saw comets. I wasn’t going to pass out, I just wasn’t. I raised my head as high as I could, meeting the wolf’s eyes.

“Demons are all about want.
You’re created by want and need. She’ll never be enough for you; you’ll always want more.”

“
Perhaps,” the alpha wolf said. “All I know is need. Desire. The pressure to take and
have
and destroy.” His eyes glittered. “Your soul for hers.”

His jaws were held impossibly wide, and I thought
, with horror, perhaps they would split open from the force. I anticipated the sound of his jaws breaking, the bone splintering, and I imagined what that would look like, how Lydia and I would be forced to watch it. I wondered if she’d remember, if it would come to her in her dreams, or maybe when she was older and getting ready for school. It was too much for me. I turned my head to the side and threw up.

“Selfish,” the wolf said, and made a strange clicking noise deep inside his throat.

The deformed, toothy wolf moved faster than I thought possible. He bit down hard on Lydia’s foot, and I heard a crunch that sounded like gravel being poured in a bag. Lydia’s eyes bulged and her mouth opened in something too painful to be a scream.

“No!
No!” I shouted, and tried to crawl forward, but the agonizing pressure on the Mark pushed me further to the ground. I was on my belly, scrabbling through the dead leaves and rotted refuse as I tried to claw my way to my broken Lydia.

The second demon wolf dove in, and a sickening fight
ensued. The screaming stopped, and I heard the sound of snarling wolves and the tearing of flesh and clothes.

“
Yes! My soul for hers! My soul for hers!” I twisted and fought, screaming and writhing toward Lydia with everything I had. My boots scraped in the dirt, my fingernails broke and bled while I struggled against the unfathomable power that pinned me to the ground.

Lydia
wasn’t moving. She wasn’t moving. One wolf lost interest and wandered away. The toothy wolf played with Lydia’s tiny body a while longer, dragging her along the ground by her shattered leg as I watched. Lydia’s eyes were open. Her tiny starfish hands were white and still.

“
Mmm, the blood of the innocent. It makes me hungry.” The alpha wolf turned toward Sweet Girl’s broken body.

“You can’t have her
,” I screamed, and I went wild again, fighting just as fiercely as before, even though I knew there was nothing left to save, that I had failed, that Lydia was gone, that part of my heart had been torn apart alongside her.

Chapter Thirty-
Two

I thought I had experienced despair before. Finding my father swinging inside of our very own home nearly broke me. Finding Seth in the bathtub drove me closer to the brink than I had ever been. I didn’t think it could get any worse than that. I thought a mind had a threshold, and once you hit it you were somehow immune to the horror. Like the universe would somehow say, “Congratulations, my dear, you have officially hit your allotment of misery. Now destruction will pass you by.”

I thought if I was tough enough, and dealt with everything well enough, and kept a positive attitude, well, as much as possible, then somehow I would be rewarded.
Everything would end up all right. Evil would fall and good would prevail, and there would be some glorious shining prize at the end of this terrible game, something that made it worth the constant struggle we call life.

But I was wrong.
There is no light at the end of the tunnel. No reward for living a good life. There’s just death, and more misery, and tiny little girls who become caught in the middle of it even though they did absolutely nothing wrong.

I couldn’t save her.
I tried my best and I failed. Miserably. The terror and pain Lydia had gone through in her last moments…I couldn’t think about it. The struggle and the fight went out of me. I couldn’t find the strength to care about protecting the Mark from the demon who currently prodded around, testing the strength of my soul. It didn’t matter anymore. Nothing mattered. This was misery, and despair. This was Hell.

I curled up on the ground and cried.
I had never sobbed so hard. Even when I felt the cool fingers of the demon slide over the Tracing, I didn’t move.

“I win, Luna,” the demon said and laughed and laughed and laughed.

Chapter Thirty-Three

“Luna?”

Somewhere in the back of my mind, I heard my name.
I didn’t wonder who it was. I didn’t care.

“Luna,
tell me what’s wrong.”

A warm hand slid through my hair, over my scalp, down my arms and legs.
Checking for broken bones. Checking for damage. It slid over the demonic Tracing and I heard a hiss as it pulled away. I almost missed its chilling touch. It cooled the nearly unbearable heat between my shoulders.

“Luna. I need you to look at me.
Can you sit up?”

I couldn’t remember how to speak.
Something to do with my tongue and moving my lips, but then I thought of the demon speaking through the wolf’s cavernous mouth like an old record being played on a phonograph. I began to shudder. I was quickly pulled into a seated position, held close to somebody’s warm chest.

“
I’m here. I have you. You’re safe.”

The wolf demon
stood close by. It snorted and I winced. “You’re never safe, Luna. We always know where you are. We always know what you are doing. We will follow you until the end of time.” It grinned.

I blinked, wiped my face with my sleeve.
Looked up.

“Reed Taylor?”

His gorgeous greens tight around the edges with worry. One eye was starting to blacken, and his lips were cut.

“It’s me. Try not to kick the crap out of me again, will you?”

The wolf demon growled, padded right up to Reed Taylor. Its ears laid back and it bared its teeth. Reed Taylor’s eyes narrowed and he leaned forward, searching the air in front of him. He and the wolf were nose to nose. I forgot how to breathe.

“I know you’re here, demon,” Reed Taylor said. His voice was unusually rough, and he held me with hands that were no longer gentle.
I was too tired and stunned to squirm out of them. “I want you to know you don’t scare me. How do you feel about that, hmm? I’m not afraid of you.”

The demon pushed his muzzle even closer.
They were only a few centimeters apart.

“I know
who you are, mortal man,” the demon spat. I jumped and Reed Taylor held me closer, his eyes straining to see a threat that was currently invisible to him. “I know you well. You have earned your place here in Hell.”

He growled, and then huffed.
The hot air ruffled Reed Taylor’s hair. Reed Taylor’s mouth tightened, and I sat frozen in his arms. This demon had the power to hurt him physically. I hoped Reed Taylor knew that. I was certain he did.

“Luna,” Reed Taylor repeated, his eyes still not on me.
“You’re crying. Tell me why.”

He hadn’t seen Lydia’s body.
My throat closed up, and my tears began anew.

Reed Taylor grabbed my face in his hands and searched my eyes.
“Tell me. I hate being left in the dark.”

I couldn’t say the words, so I just pointed.
I turned my face away and pointed at Lydia’s small corpse, still being guarded by the deformed, toothy wolf. I couldn’t make myself look at her. I couldn’t see her like that again, her adorable yellow sundress stained with blood.

“What are you pointing at?”

My gaze shot up to Reed Taylor’s. Was he kidding? Surely he couldn’t be this cruel. Was he going to make me say the words?

“L-l-
lydia,” I stuttered, and gestured wildly to her body. “They killed Lydia! Right in front of me. They made me watch, and I couldn’t get to her…”

I was going to go hysterical, and now wasn’t the time for that. I took a deep
breath, squeezed my eyes shut.

“Lydia?” he said, and his voice nearly made me cry again. He said the name with such love. I had almost forgotten what a monster I thought he was.

“Sh-she kept screaming, and the wolves, they tore her apart. I tried—”

“Here?” He said, and pointed.
Lydia’s bloody legs. Her tiny broken feet.

I nodded.

“Baby, there’s nothing there.”

I blinked at him.
Nothing there?

“What do you mean?” I asked.
My brain was working too slowly. I couldn’t process what he was saying. If it was a joke, it wasn’t funny, and I’d hold him down and make him pay for it later. But I knew he wasn’t joking. His beautiful green eyes were calm and serious.

“Luna, there isn’t anything there. I don’t see a thing. Do you see Lydia right now?”

I looked at her, bit my lips. I nodded.

“She isn’t there.
She isn’t real. Whatever you saw didn’t really happen.”

Could he be right?
Was it true? Had I finally gone crazy?

Reed Taylor pulled me close, nuzzled his nose into my hair.
“Luna, if it really was Lydia, I’d be able to see her. It must be an illusion. Look closely. “

I felt it, the barest glimmer of hope.
It felt like water on parched roots. It gave me the strength to lean out of his arms and really study Lydia’s body for the first time. The woods had disappeared; Lydia’s body lay on the beige carpeting of the cookie-cutter house. Her wounds and gashes were horrible. The dark bruising on her cheeks filled me with dread. But I took a deep breath and looked harder.

Lydia’s eyes weren’t Lydia’s eyes at all.
They were crafty, watching. They were eons older than the earth, older than time. Lydia’s cherubic lips parted.

“Your terror was delicious,”
the demon said, its dark voice terrifyingly out of place in Lydia’s body. “I could dine on it for weeks.” Lydia’s lips stretched in a smile far too wide for her face.

I shot to my feet.

“How could you?” I shrieked. “How could you?”

They didn’t answer, but laughed that bone-chilling laughter
. Toothy demon pranced close to me on its deformed feet. Too close.

My hand flashed and caught it by the throat.
It gurgled in surprise.

I pushed it down and pinned it with my knee.

“I’m gonna cut that smile off of your face.” My voice was calm and steady. I felt strangely in control as I reached for the small knife in my pocket.

The demon’s
distorted grin faded. The others leaned forward, eyes glittering.

“Yes,” Alpha
demon encouraged. Toothy demon whimpered and tried to dissipate and wriggle away. I pushed my essence into it, forcing it to stay solid.

“Oh no,” I told it, running the blade of my knife underneath its eyes.
A thin line of blood appeared and I heard Lydia demon moan in lust. “None of that. This way it’s going to hurt more.”

“Luna!”
Reed Taylor’s voice. “What are you doing?”

A quick thrust with my knee against the
demon’s, and the joint busted. It screamed and gibbered.

“Legs aren’t supposed to bend that way, are they, demon?
That’ll teach you not to pull your little tricks when it comes to Lydia.”

“Luna, you need to stop it
. Do you hear me? This isn’t like you.”

This was exactly like me.
This was exactly who I wanted to become. The blood and the power and the hate sang through my veins. The Mark hummed and purred high on my back. It was pleased.

It was pleased.

This realization made me wrench myself back in horror. The demon whimpered and tried to scrabble to three legs. It fell down again, landing heavily on its wounded limb. A sliver of white pushed through its skin and I nearly retched. Reed pulled me to my feet and slid the knife out of my grasp.

“Let’s go,” he said.

Alpha wolf leaped forward and ripped out toothy demon’s throat. I stepped back from the snarling, yelping carnage in front of me.

“Such a pity.
You were so close,” Lydia Demon said, still in form. Alpha wolf licked its bloody lips, grabbed her by the neck and dragged her into the closet. It shut with a neat click.

Toothy
demon’s body disappeared, and I turned to face Reed Taylor.

“They’re gone,” I said.
I could feel the expression of anger on my face. I was certain it wasn’t pretty.

“I
’m worried about you.”

I
ignored that. “What are you doing here, anyway?”

He shrugged.
“I followed you. I wanted to talk to you about Cecilia, and then I saw you dart into this place.”

I paled.
“So that really was you, earlier? In the room?”

He grimaced and took a step back.
“You have a mean swing on you. I didn’t expect you to still be so angry, or I would have been more prepared. Worn a cup or something.”

I turned away, put my hands in my pockets.
“Yeah, well, sorry. I didn’t think it was you. I thought it was—”

“A demon? Yeah, I guessed that when you kept calling me ‘demon’ and telling me to shut up.
This place sounds like a nightmare for you.” The concern in his eyes nearly touched my heart, but I didn’t think I was ready to feel anything yet, so I looked away. “What are you doing here, Luna? What is this place? Why do you have to be somewhere that feels so
wrong?
”

I sighed and held my hand out for the pocketknife.
He handed it back. “It’s a long story, Reed Taylor, and although I’m grateful you helped me realize that wasn’t Lydia, I’m still not sure I trust you enough to tell you right now. I’m sorry, but that’s how I feel.”

The wind blew my black hair around my face.
The blue tips reminded me of doing my hair while working on Reed Taylor’s, and suddenly I wanted to change my hair more than anything. Cut it off. Dye it blonde. Change it in a way that didn’t have anything to do with this man I realized I loved, and who confused me more than anyone else on earth.

Reed Taylor nodded.
He put his hands in his pockets, his stance mirroring mine. “All right, then. We’ll talk. But not right now. Let’s get out of here first. This place creeps me out, and I can’t even see most of it.”

Shiny eyes followed us as we walked through the
deceptively cheery house. Neither of us said another word until we were outside on the front steps, walking away from the house of horrors.