Racing the Dark

Racing the Dark

Racing the Dark

Alaya Dawn Johnson

To Lauren,

my partner in crime and novel agony aunt. You don't get to pick your sister, but you do get to pick your best friend.

To Scott,

who opened up my world so I could write this one.

Prologue

N THE SECOND NIGHT, the girl who was not yet an angel fell asleep and dreamed. She dreamed of water, thick and viscous as blood, home to what seemed like a thousand terrifyingly alien creatures. They caressed her adult wings as they pulled her deeper into the water and she cried out in pain. She could hardly see them through the murk-but what she glimpsed seemed inverted, impossible, sickening. A disembodied heart with grasping hands. A monstrous fish whose tail had melted into its head. She shrieked and struggled to swim away, but her wings weighed her down, and she sank deeper. When she opened her mouth, the water came flowing in and now it really was blood-metallic, salty (and slightly sweet?). Was it her own? It seemed to be streaming from her back.

She used to love water. Even through all the pain and fear, she remembered that. But the old love had been replaced by terror, and she knew her longing for the past was futile. No, she could not turn back now-she could only plummet. As she descended, the pressure drove at her ears relentlessly. First the left, then the right-she felt them pop and rupture. Her screams tore at her vocal chords, but she could not hear a sound.

And still she sank.

The strange creatures around her grew more substantial, and subtly less menacing. A silent crowd of them accompanied her on her descent, and in their gazes she saw a wary acceptance and could that be fear? No one had ever told her it was possible for a spirit to fear a human. But then again, she was more than half spirit herself, this far down-a creature of wind and water and earth and death. Yes, perhaps death most of all.

As they neared the bottom of this ocean of blood and water, she felt a growing anticipation. Something was waiting for her down there. She felt herself sinking into its consciousness as though it were a physical force, at once repelling her and reeling her in. Her limbs jerked and spasmed, while the pain in her back grew more intense. Her wings were the first to touch the mud-soft clay of the sea floor: a sudden, searing pain. When she opened her mouth to scream, she felt the unbearable force emanating from the creature that had been waiting for her. It rushed down her throat, then gripped her heart and her bowels. She would die, she thought. A relief.

Who are you? she thought, since she couldn't very well speak, or hear herself even if she could.

To her surprise, the creature eased its bodiless grip and its outline slowly emerged from the sea's red-tinged fog.

This was entirely different from your average dream phantom. It existed, in far more concrete terms than any of the spirits that had accompanied her here. And yet, sure as she was of its existence, she had a much harder time comprehending its appearance. Massive, with oddly malleable edges that seemed to shrink and expand at whim. Were those wings she saw, or fins? Or hands? But feathers-of those she was certain-coated its body in slick cerulean and a black dark as octopus ink. Two eyes that seemed almost normal until you actually looked into them and noticed how they reflected your face like shards of a broken mirror, shattering the watcher into infinity. She shrank back at the sight-somehow, in those horrifying eyes, infinity felt like nonexistence.

Is that death, then, or something beyond it?

"Both," the creature said, its surprisingly gentle voice somehow penetrating her thoughts. She shuddered.

Who are you? What are you? Panic, desperation, infinitely reflected in those impossible eyes.

The voice smiled. "You don't realize, even now?"

A possibility occurred to her. The waterbird? But why?

"A glimpse of your future. Do you understand yet, Lana?"

No. No, no, no.

"You will."

And when she awoke, alone except for the death among the long-deserted ruins, the dream seeped from her mind, wrung free by blood and pain and fear like water from a rag.

PART I

Bloody Sunrise