The End of Darkness (4 page)

Magnus nodded and turned a corner, losing sight of the man. The urge to run pressed harder. He veered off the trail and into the woods. 
Better get out of sight now before I Become in front of someone.
 

Finding no one in sight, he let the lion loose.

Had he made her? Erica picked up her pace along the trail, hoping to spot him in the distance. She came around a bend, where the path straightened, but saw no sign of Magnus. He had to have left the trail. Which meant he was probably getting into position somewhere, waiting for the right victim. What if she walked by? Would he think it a coincidence? Would he choose her? She flexed her fingers, the scars tightening across the backs of her hands. She hoped so.

After passing a man going in the same direction, he startled her with a chipper, “Morning!”

She whirled around. “Uh, hi.”

He had pale blond hair that was starting to thin, the complexion of someone with an indoor job, and the bright smile of a man who'd never been trashed by life. Or he was a good actor.

His smile faltered. “You all right?”

She forced one of her own. “Fine. I got this brilliant idea to jog down the path and remembered very quickly how out of shape I am.” He couldn't see her toned body beneath her sweater and pants. 

“You've got to pace yourself on these kinds of walks. Be the tortoise, not the hare. Are you searching for the mysterious black smoke, too?”

She fell into step beside him, all the while searching for Magnus. “What smoke?”

“People have been reporting a plume of smoke coming from a crack in the ground.” He whipped out his compass. “Somewhere to the east. After they've seen it, they feel disoriented and fuzzy; some even reported memory loss. With all the strange behavior going on here lately, I'm going to investigate it. Maybe the tremors have opened a crack in the ground and unleashed toxic gas.”

“Is that what you do, air safety?”

He chuckled. “No. I'm a preacher, actually. But I care about people. If there's a toxic leak, I want to map it so it can be investigated.” He thrust out his hand. “I'm Graham.”

“Erica,” she said, accepting his handshake for, oh, about a second before letting go. A preacher who wanted to help mankind. Yeah, this guy could be the killer, too. “Mind if I check it out with you?”

“Not at all. I'd enjoy the company.”

If this man was the real deal, what would he think if he knew she'd killed eight people? At least she killed for a reason; her quarry killed for pleasure.

Sometime later, Graham paused, consulting his map and compass. “This is where we leave the trail. The two people I spoke with have sketchy memories, but they were both certain they strayed here.” He squinted as he looked into the distance. “They saw the smoke…there!”

Against the bright, clear sky, a trail of black smoke snaked up. It didn't look like ordinary smoke but was thick and almost oily. 

Graham slathered on sun block, holding out the bottle when he was done.

“No, thanks.” She didn't think she'd live long enough to die from something normal like that.

He stared at the trail of smoke, his jovial expression now somber. “There's something evil about it. It just feels wrong.”

“I thought I was imagining it.”

He touched the cross pendant at his neck. “You sure you want to go?”

“I've always been drawn to the dark side,” she said, then laughed when he glanced her way. “Figuratively speaking. Let's go check it out.”

She kept a comfortable distance between them as they slogged their way across the open land. An intermittent gust pelted them with sand that stung her face and hands. The wilderness spread out in all directions, making her feel isolated. Vulnerable. Yes, this was the landscape of her soul, barren and scarred and so all alone. Ever since she'd left home at sixteen.

The sun beat down on them as they closed in on the smoke, which drifted from a crack in a grouping of rocks. She detected no smell but could feel the dizzying effect Graham had described. The smoke was cooler than the air temperature and odd. 

She glanced over to find him blinking. “You all right?” 

 “It's evil.” He said the words with complete seriousness. “Like Hell's sprung a leak.” He pulled out his map and made a notation, then brought out a camera and snapped some pictures. 

Graham pointed to the west. “There's a man coming.”

Another smoke seeker? The man stumbled into view, his clothing wrinkled, brown hair disheveled. He appeared to be in his thirties.

Graham started forward, his hand already pulling the water bottle from his hip. His hiking shoes kicked up puffs of sand. The man fell and couldn’t get to his feet after several tries. Finally he pulled himself across the sand, his breath coming in shallow gasps as he stared at the smoke. She saw no blood on him, no sign of injury. Maybe one of the disoriented. She remained back for a reason she couldn't quite name.

Graham dropped beside the man, tilting the bottle to his mouth and speaking words she could not hear. 

It happened so fast, Erica couldn't open her mouth to warn him. The man shoved his fist toward Graham's chest. 
Into
 his chest. Blood sluiced out of the gaping hole. He pulled out a bloody mass and howled. 
 

Not real. Couldn't be. The horror of it froze her even as her fingers twitched to do something. He held…held…
Graham's heart
. Her own heart stopped, the sight draining all the blood from her head and the breath from her chest. She knew the serial killer tore out hearts, but seeing it was beyond horrible.
 

Graham slumped back and fell to the sand. 

She launched toward the carnage. Toward the man who held…God, he was holding up Graham’s heart as though offering it to the sky. 

His gaze snapped to her, and he smiled. “More.” He shimmered, turning black. Not a mirage. He was changing form, to something that looked like a large animal. 

She held her hand toward him, focusing all her fury and fear into a deadly stream of energy. Like lightning, it arced in brilliant blue, forks snaking out in all directions. Pain arced up along her arms, too, moving like fire across her existing scars. The man-thing flew back, landing several feet away. He trembled and became man again, struggling to sit up. She aimed the flow at him until his body shuddered and then stilled.

No way would her knees hold her. She crawled across the sand. 
Get to Graham before it hits.
 Small sounds, like grunts came from her throat. Not cries or screams, but a twisted mess of both held captive. Besides the men she'd killed, she had only witnessed death once. She would see the car hitting her childhood friend for the rest of her life, the sound of metal hitting flesh, the sight of Missy's body landing on the street. It had imprinted on her nine-year-old mind forever.
 

She reached Graham, feeling her stomach tumble at the sight of the gaping hole in his chest. Sand pelted her and his body as wind gusted. The bloody lump of his heart lay in the sand. No chance of helping him. She looked at the man in the near distance, also dead. 

Was she having a nightmare? A psychotic break? She searched her surroundings, so normal and starkly beautiful. The shapes of the rocks and mountains in the distance didn't morph to monsters. The sand didn't writhe. 

The pain hit then. She cried out, unable to still the guttural scream. Her body jerked as the Lightning rocketed through her. She called it backlash. Fire screamed up her scars again, going higher, nearly to her shoulder this time. She dug her fingers into the sand, trying to anchor her. How many times could her body withstand this? And then she couldn’t think at all.

Copeland looked up as Lanna knocked on his door and then pushed it open. “What now?”

“Your brother’s gone again.”

“Dammit, we're too close for this crap.” He checked the time. Way too close. “There's only one place he could be. Let's get him.”

Nester had gone against the rules by tapping into the Darkness. Once they found the crack from which Darkness leaked, he couldn’t resist taking more, like a drug addict, becoming mad for it. If he was found out, he’d be executed on the spot by the rest of the group. Fortunately, Copeland had earned the autonomy of being the one who monitored the effects Darkness was having on Strasford. But it was only a matter of time before Torus caught wind of the Heart Ripper and tied it to someone with Darkness. Especially after there had recently been a murder attributed to the offspring of one of the other Darkened men. 

Their house sat alone at the far edge of civilization, desert and mountains stretching out beyond them. He spotted the faint plume of smoke in the distance.

“There are his tracks,” Lanna said, pointing to digs in the sand. 

Soon his footprints were harder to find in the wind-brushed sand, but he knew where his brother was headed. 

Word had gotten out locally about the mysterious smoke, a bad thing. So far only a few had ventured out to assuage their curiosity, and the smoke hadn’t always cooperated. 

He wished he had teletransportation abilities. Some lucky bastards from his dimension did, but he had to slog through thirty minutes of sand and sand-spiked wind to reach his destination.

Lanna pointed at a lump on the ground. “What’s that?” The wind whipped her fine blond hair across her face.

“I don’t know.” His chest constricted, though he couldn’t say why. 

As they neared, he saw another lump. Beyond them, Darkness drifted up and disappeared in the wind. He quickened his pace, his wife close behind.

They came upon the body of a man he didn’t know. A human from this dimension with a hole in his chest. 

“Nester.” The word came out a growl. He’d attacked this man. Copeland turned to the other lump on the ground a short distance away. And obviously someone else, too.

Lanna’s gasp echoed his own as they neared that body. 
Nester
. Life ebbed through his being, its hum nearly nonexistent. Copeland dropped down next to his brother. “Nester!”
 

No response. Copeland put his hands on his chest. Was there enough life to bring him back? Something had shocked his heart. There was a scorch mark on his shirt. 

“What could have done this?” Lanna checked the sky. “Lightning? But there isn't a storm cloud anywhere in sight.”

“This isn’t a human-inflicted wound.” He surveyed the area, ready for an attack, but saw nothing. “Keep an eye out.”

He used his energy to suffuse Nester’s heart with healing power. Copeland could feel it quivering. Lanna knelt across from him and put her hands on Nester, too. She didn’t have healing powers, but her energy would help nonetheless.

“I can feel it returning to a regular heartbeat,” she said. 

Their bodies weren’t that different than human bodies, anatomically speaking. An unpopular theory back in their home dimension was that his species had started out as humans. For reasons unknown, a large group decided to live belowground. Being exposed to the Earth’s magnetic field altered their bodies, allowing them to change form or use their energy differently than the more dense humans aboveground. 

Once the humans used biological weapons to kill each other off, the Callorians, as they called themselves, had eventually returned to the surface. Their leaders decided that emotions were the downfall and convinced an entire generation to repress them. They taught their children and thus, a much simpler way of life. 

When their group was dispatched to this dimension years ago, they had to generate the denser body of regular humans to blend in. They could not use their powers in public, nor were they permitted to socialize with the humans here. That was not a problem for him; he had no use for them. 

Lanna watched Nester’s face relax. “He’ll live?” Worry creased her forehead. The more they lived in this dimension, the more emotions infected them. Lanna was beginning to want certain things from him after devouring erotic romances. Things that repulsed him.

He felt the now steady heartbeat through his fingers. “Yes. Tell me what happened here.”

She stood, eyes closed and fingers flexed as she summoned the past. Her red, long nails glittered in the sunlight. She trembled as he knew images flashed through her mind. Her body tensed under the onslaught of them, her outstretched arms rigid. 

“I see what looks like a bolt of lightning shoot Nester in the chest.” She grimaced. “Pain, excruciating.”

“It was one of our people, wasn’t it? No human here has this kind of power.” His brother didn’t exactly endear himself to the others. Had he incited an altercation? Did anyone at the Las Vegas compound know of the leak?

“Wait. There’s a woman here, too. I can feel her outrage. And her pain.”

So Nester had also inflicted damage. He scanned the area for another body. “Who is she?”

“Not one of us.”

A stranger. He leaned closer to her. “Did she create this injury?”

“I can't tell.”

“Tell me more about her.”

“She's tall, thin with shoulder-length blond hair.” Lanna's face screwed up. “Wait. I sense Callorian, but I can’t be sure it’s her. There’s such a tangle of energies. It’s hard to discern. Hmm. I see another man. A big, muscular one.” Her mouth tilted up a little at whatever image she was seeing.

“What about him?” 

Her smile disappeared at his harsh question. “He was in the area, but I can't be sure he was here when this happened.” Her eyebrows furrowed. “Hmm, that’s odd.”

“What? What else?”

Her eyebrows furrowed beneath her wispy bangs. “It's probably the leak interfering, but I'm picking up a lot of Callorian essence.” She opened her eyes, heavy as always when she came out of the trance.

He gripped her arm. “Come, let’s find them.”

CHAPTER 4

Erica slogged through the sand and searing sun. Her hands ached, her body ached, and her mind ached every time she thought about what had happened twenty minutes ago. She thought she was heading back to the trail, but she'd obviously lost her way.