Nameless: The Darkness Comes (3 page)

Chapter Four

The encounter with Sparkles rocked me more th
an I cared to admit. How could somebody so vile have a child as sweet as Lydia? She’s definitely cute, I can tell you that much. And smart. And astute. I can tell she has my genes in there somewhere.

And, like me, after a few minutes
swabbing at the counters with a washcloth and the like, she was bored.

“Right, let’s go shopping,” I told her, and then I sprayed her down with sunscreen.
Hey, even out here in the Northwest, you can’t be too careful. Demons and sunburn and cancer, oh my. Not my little girl.

I ran a dark red lip stain around my
mouth, pulled tall boots up over my jeans and threw on my sunglasses. Suddenly I was a femme fatale, a woman of mystique. And all under ten minutes.

Lydia had pulled out her pigtails, so we did them over again, and that took nearly
another ten minutes right there. She has a knack for yanking beautiful doodads out of her hair. For this, I blame her father.

“Ready, Princess Pretty Fingers?” I asked her.
She pursed her lips and twisted her chubby wrist in a wave.

“Mama,” she said.

“No, Luna.
Lu
na.”

“Mama.”

“Have it your way, kid,” I said. I buckled her into her car seat and lugged her out to the car. It was heavy, and I had to use both hands.

I like taking Lydia to the grocery store, quite honestly.
I like showing her off. People always peer and coo at her, and Lydia takes it as her due. And I like it because she can usually put a smile on the face of the most dour crone and codger. Lydia has charm.

It’s me that gets us into trouble.

“What a beautiful baby,” the woman next to us exclaimed. Lydia flirted from her seat in the wonky-wheeled cart.

“Thanks, she
’s my brother’s,” I said, and the woman narrowed her eyes and scurried away from me, still glancing back over her shoulder from time to time.

Anyway, I was standing there comparing prices on ground beef, when I felt a presence.
I turned around, and again, there was nobody there.

I firmly ignored it.
If it wasn’t going to be polite enough to show itself, then I wasn’t going to give it the time of day.

“What do you think, Lydia?
It’s never too early to learn about economics and the state of the nation’s food supply.”

Lydia apparently didn’t care about the state of our food supply, because she was smiling and peeking out from under her lashes.
At who, you ask? Well, me too, because I couldn’t see the darn thing.

“Lydia, ignore it, darling.”

Lydia ignored somebody, all right, but it wasn’t the mysterious presence. It was Luna Mama.

“Lydia, I’m being serious.
Talk to me about hamburger, okay? Don’t pay any attention to that thing.”

Lydia waved at the empty space.
“Hi, hi, hi, hi, hi,” she said.

I tossed the hamburger back into the case and whirled around to address the presence.

“I know
you can hear me,” I hissed. I was absolutely furious. “I want you to know it is completely unacceptable to hang around a baby girl, do you understand me? I simply won’t have it, you freaking perv. Back off!”

“Did that beef do something to offend you?”

I spun around, and faced the green-eyed, bland haired man from the clinic earlier. He was trying valiantly not to smile, and if I hadn’t been half blind with protective rage, I would have given him props for it.

“
You,” I accused. “It hangs around
you.
Anyway, it started it.” I grabbed the cart to push it away.

Lydia pointed at the presence.
“Pretty,” she said. “Pretty.” Then she started to cry.

I looked at the presence, but of course there wasn’t anything there.
Bland-haired Reed Taylor was eyeing Lydia quietly, but that wasn’t causing her tears.

“
What about her?” I heard him ask, but he wasn’t talking to me and my attention was elsewhere.

“Oh good heavens,” I said under my breath.
Reed Taylor tore his gaze away from Lydia, and looked at me curiously. I didn’t have time for him.

“Duck,” I said, an
d the strain in my voice startled even me.

Reed Taylor hesitated only a second, and then hit the supermarket floor like a pro.
I’ll have to give him props for that later, too.

Behind him, darkness was gathering.
Right there in the refrigerator section, the very jaws of Hell were opening up. This wouldn’t be good.

It had happened before, so I knew what to expect.
Nastiness. Complete and utter nastiness. The first time it had happened, the darkness had been so consuming that I was overwhelmed. Out of that darkness had climbed an even blacker shadow who hated me.
Hated me.
I had never been on the receiving end of so much hate.

The idea of it happening now, right in the middle of the Turk’s Goodie Grocery, was enough to make me puke.
The idea of it happening in the presence of my sweet and pure Lydia was enough to make me tamp down the sickness and stand up and fight.

“What’s going on?” Reed Taylor asked from the floor.
I didn’t have time to answer him.

The darkness had gathered fully, and I couldn’t see the rest of the grocery store anymore.
A cold wind blew past me, and I felt my hair ruffle.

“Holy crap,” I heard from the floor, but I ignored him again.

A featureless form was zipping out of the darkness. It came at me in short diagonal bursts. I felt my breath become too heavy for my chest, felt the strength pulled from my body as the shadow tried to feed on my essence in order to take shape. I felt pieces of myself unspool from my soul like intestines. This was trouble. A demon is one thing, but a demon that’s fully formed and can manipulate things in the real world? It’s the proverbial double-edged sword. On one hand, if it has enough substance, I can usually beat the crap out of it. On the other, well, it can do the same thing to me, and anybody else that’s around. I couldn’t chance it with baby girl. I pictured my essence as a rope and tried to mentally pull it back into my body, a tug-o-war between myself and the demon. I wasn’t winning easily.

The thing slowed down a little bit, but still continued to
ward us. My teeth began to chatter.

“Get back.
Get back. Get back,
get back!
” I shouted and continued my invisible tug-o-war. The wind grew colder and blew harder, and my hair and clothes whipped around me like I was standing in a hurricane. The shadow wasn’t slowing down any more, not at all.

It’s stronger than I am
, I thought, and despair overcame me.

There was a sound from the floor, some type of order, and suddenly the unseen presence rushed out from behind me and tackled the thing coming out of the darkness.
The shadow seemed enraged and panicked, and I saw it grappling against air. Its struggle pulled me out of my trance.

I growled, willing my body to absorb all of the power the demon had
leeched from it. I felt it weaken.

“Get back,” I
commanded, my voice strong and low. The thing turned its head in my direction, and the invisible presence used this distraction to literally stuff it back into the darkness. It howled angrily, and the darkness wafted in all around it, and was suddenly gone.

“My hero,” I said to the presence, and then I blacked out cold.

Chapter Five

Somebody was saying something indecipherable, and it was much too loud. I groaned and tried to put a hand to my head, but the effort made my stomach heave.

“Cleanup in frozen foods,” the muffled voice shouted again.
It sounded slightly hysterical.

“Cleanup.
That would be you,” said a different voice. A calmer voice.

I managed to force open one eye.
It was teary from the effort.

“Bartholomew? Are you back with me?”
Bland-haired Reed Taylor was kneeling over me, peering at me with his fantastic eyes.

I groaned, and shut my eyes again.
Suddenly I shot up into a sitting position. It made my head spin. “Lydia!”

Reed Taylor put his arms around me.
“Calm down. She’s okay, just sitting right there in the cart. Can you see her?”

Lydia peered down from her
seat and smiled at me. “Mama,” she exclaimed.

Reed Taylor’s arms loosened
around me. He stood up and started to pull me off the floor.

“She’s my niece,” I said a bit too quickly.

“What’s going on around here?”
A red-faced, beefy man came waddling furiously up the aisle. He eyed Reed Taylor heaving me off of the floor. It was obvious this paranoid Chef Boyardee suspected shenanigans. Golly.

“Bartholomew here has a little sugar problem.
If she doesn’t eat, her blood sugar goes all wacky and she passes out. Isn’t that true, dear?”

I rolled my eyes.
“Please, honey. How many times do I have to ask you to drop the formality and call me Bart? I was named after my father,” I confided to the man. He looked appalled.

“That’s a terrible name for a woman
,” he sputtered.

“I see your point...” I leaned in to read his nametag, “Shannon.”
Shannon?
“But Mother was a sentimental old thing.”

Sh
annon Boyardee continued glaring at us. “But the yelling and screaming. You can’t tell me that’s low blood sugar.”

Reed Taylor hung his head.
“Nah, that would be me. I just can’t resist when Bart here gets all swoony. It’s every romantic fantasy I’ve ever had, come to life. I can’t seem to help myself.” He looked properly shamed. I snorted in laughter and tried to cover it up with a cough.

“Well, thanks so much for your concern,
Shannon
, but I really ought to be going now. Obviously I need something to eat, and then everything will be just fine.” If the extra hostile demons manage to keep from flinging their soul-destroying selves at me, that is. A girl can always hope.

I pushed the empty cart out of the store with as much dignity as I could muster
, which wasn’t much, because that stupid wheel kept sticking and I had to throw my whole body weight against it in order to make it move. Every eye on the store was upon me.

“See ya, guys,” Reed Taylor said, waving at everybody.
“I’ll try to keep my hands off her until we get home, but I can’t make any promises.”

“Blood sugar?” I growled at him as we walked to my car.
Well, he walked. I was trying to do an angry stalk-like thing, but the cart was ruining it for me. Finally I snatched Lydia out of it, and did a much more satisfying stalk that way. Go, me.

“Well, what else was I going to say?
‘Bartholomew here had a psychotic breakdown? Help, run away, save yourselves and your children?’ You should be thanking me.”

I turned to face him.
“My name is not Bartholomew. Nobody names their daughters Bartholomew. I’m Luna.”

“I’m
slightly relieved to hear that. I think.”

“Get bent.”
I turned away. He jogged after me.

“Hey, why are you so angry at me, anyway?”

I stopped, and Reed Taylor nearly ran into me. He had a point.

I decided then and there that I would try my very best not to be horrible to him.
After all, it wasn’t his fault I saw the things I did. Besides, he hung around with a strange invisible presence that had the power to mess with the demonic. I needed to know what it was. I needed to know why Reed Taylor could see him.

I
smiled sweetly at him.

“Thank you for your help, Reed Taylor.”

He stopped short, eyed me a little bit. “That sounds highly unnatural coming from you.”

My smile quickly dropped into a s
cowl. “I was trying to be nice,” I nearly shouted. And winced. My head was killing me.

Reed Taylor shook his head. “Wait,” he said, looking frustrated.
“This is going all wrong. Let’s start over, shall we?”

He stopped and held out his hand.
I resituated Lydia so I could take it.

“Hi,” he said, and smiled winningly.
“My name is Reed Taylor. It’s nice to meet you…?”

“Luna.
Luna Masterson.” I shook his hand demurely.

“Well, that’s quite a moniker.”

My handshake became quite firm. Crushing, even. “I thought things were going to go well this time?”

Reed Taylor smiled at me.
“Maybe you and I are bound to create sparks, Luna.”

I snorted.
I couldn’t help it. That was so corny.

Apparently Reed Taylor agreed.
“I just…I’m just not batting a thousand. I swear I’m not so much of a loser.”

“
I don’t believe you.”

“Want to go to dinner?”

“I don’t date losers.”

“That’s pretty harsh.
Eight?”

I
grabbed my lipstick from my back pocket and scrawled my phone number on his arm.

“If you’re more than five minutes late, I’ll kill you.”

We glared at each other, and then we both grinned. He bounded away, and I was humming as I strapped Lydia into her seat. He seemed like a nice guy, and heaven knows I could do with a nice guy every now and then. But more than that, I needed to get a bead on that mysterious presence. What was it? Could it help me?

I was going to find out.
And I needed Reed Taylor in order to do it.