In the Dark
I couldn’t recall the last time I’d seen the world so utterly...dark.
Maybe in the country as a child. My mother and stepfather enjoyed the English countryside; her raising her daughter, him writing. I hated it, though—hated the completeness of the dark, hated the silence, the isolation. Hated being blind to the world around me.
The Jericho was a comforting weight in my right hand, not totally familiar but similar enough to what I was used to. The air snapped and crackled with magic everywhere, seeping from the shadows and dancing in the night. I had no vampire night vision and was forced into a quick walk, keeping near the curb so I could step out and feel with the side of my foot. Water sloshed unpleasantly in my shoes and soaked down my neck, plastered my jeans to my legs.
Through the hard beat of rain, I heard shuffling feet, voices whispering. Nearing. I tensed, ready to lash out. Could be humans, scared and confused. Could be anything.
Lightning split the sky overhead and thunder cracked, like a god dropped a plate. For an instant the world around me lit up and I had but a flash to commit to memory before darkness wrapped her arms around the city again. I didn’t know the area well, but if I kept moving forward, I’d have to reach it—the vacant lot where Mishka Thiering’s building used to be.
Where a ritual was started already. Where Nic would be killed soon.
Shit.
My steps quickened, even though it wasn’t wise of me, and I paid for it a minute later when I smacked straight into something. My free hand shot out, folding on the cold, wet exterior of a car left lying in the street. If I let my eyes relax, I could make out the gleam of rain pattering on it.
Gleam. Light?
I held my hand up against my forehead, over my eyes, and glanced around. Visibility was almost nil except for the faint glow up ahead, bouncing on the brick walls of an alley between two buildings.
It didn’t mean anything—it could be anyone, anything. Could be...local residents out with gas lanterns, and if that was the case, I’d knock them out, steal their light sources, and keep moving.
I moved toward the light, left hand thrust out in case I ran into anything else. My fingers fumbled around brick, the rough bite of the wall scraping their tips. The barrel of the Jericho was tipped down, my finger loose on the trigger. I could raise it and fire pretty quick, but in this visibility, it would be better to wait. Generally I would shoot first and ask questions later but I possibly had an ally following and super healing or not, shooting her wouldn’t be a good idea.
The faux-leather jacket creaked as I crept forward. Rain slowed as I slipped between buildings, the walls providing enough cover that I wasn’t being pelted as badly. Icy water dripped down my back. Temperatures were dropping—fast—and if I made it ’til early morning, I expected to see ice and snow.
Yeah. If.
There was a definite yellow glow now, stronger the farther I went, highlighting the crevices and breaks in the brick. My steps quickened, tapping lightly on cement and no louder than the rain. An expanse of street was beyond the skinny mouth of the alley, and farther still—past empty cars gleaming with fat droplets of water sliding down their surfaces—was the graffitied, tall boards blocking off the lot. The chipboard was pale even in the low light, white, orange, and blue writing all blurring into dark shapes I couldn’t decipher. Tall, human shaped figures stood out, spaced by a few feet between them. Sentries were my guess, which meant my exorcising them before hadn’t done fuck all because there were more to come. Wonderful. On top of that, I couldn’t see the break in the boards from when Ryann and I had been there last, so either they boarded it up or I was on the wrong side of the lot.
I could take the sentries out. Swiftly, brutally. Sure, there were innocents in there. But a couple dozen innocents versus whoever would die if Mishka was raised and some prophecy came about? Yeah, no question.
But it wasn’t the promise of an apocalypse and destruction of the Earth that drove me forward, that flicked my gun up, ready to fire. It was the girl in the middle of it all, the girl who never would’ve been taken—wouldn’t have even been in danger—if not for me.
I pushed off the ground and broke into a jog—
Strong fingers wrapped around my wrist and jerked me. Hard. Pain shot through my shoulder, the joint coming dangerously close to popping out of place, as my feet skidded to a halt. I blinked in the rain and a figure took shape beside me, her long dark hair a cloak over her shoulders.
“What the fuck?” I hissed.
“You start firing, you alert whoever is in that lot that we can’t see. Put your fucking head on and listen to me.”
I ground my teeth but said nothing.
The whites of her eyes gleamed. “I’ll run distraction with the sentries. When there’s a gap in their ranks, you slip through and take stock. Don’t go in guns blazing or they could kill Nic. Peter says the ritual, once started, goes on awhile but they could get trigger happy and kill her early. Blood needs to be spilled and while most will tell you it’s best to wait ’til the end, if they get interrupted, they’ll rush.”
Take stock. Don’t run in shooting. Well, I’d done stealthy before. No piano wire but I could kill someone silently hand-to-hand style about a dozen different ways.
“And your blood counts too, dumbass. Peter thinks they have to kill someone, but enough of yours, since you’re the right kind of demon, could jumpstart their efforts.”
“If I die, the ritual won’t work, right? They need both of us alive—”
“The ritual is separate from whatever prophecy they’re going from. You die, it’ll still mean a doorway open to your dad’s dimension and Peter thinks that’s a very, very bad thing. Remember your grandma? She apparently makes the biblical Satan look like a pussy. So don’t soak too much into the ground and don’t get your head blown off.”
“You either.”
“Well, duh. Remember, I distract. If you can take anyone out, go for it. But for fuck’s sake if it looks like a good idea to wait, then wait.”
I knew that was unlikely and she probably did too, but she just slapped my shoulder and raced ahead. Said shoulder fucking throbbed and I rolled it a few times to get the feeling back again.
I took a few quick steps along the curb and ducked behind a car, peered over the side. Zara strolled over with a bounce in her step and waved at the sentries.
Show off. It was like a fucking cartoon, Bugs Bunny dressed as a chick.
I didn’t let the thought squeeze too hard at my heart, or remember the twins glued in front of the TV even as I warned them to move a few feet back to the couch. They were gone. I was here. I still might try to join them soon but in the meantime, there was someone I could save.
Two of the sentries gave chase. Her laughter rang through the street, cutting over the heavy thump of rain. I eased up. Waited. There was a space of about six or seven feet between two of the remaining sentries but I wasn’t sure it would be enough for me to slip by without them noticing. Zara solved my problem when she jogged back around again, the other two trailing behind her, and got a couple more to follow.
Well. Now or never.
I slipped the gun back in its holster and bolted forward. Yellow light rose in the night, glowing in the air beyond the boards. Air crackled, hummed, magic rising as every second passed. The sigils flashed in the air, concentrated in the distance and spitting dark violet sparks I could see from a hundred feet away.
I darted through puddles, over the curb, onto the dead grass and mud by the sidewalk where the ground squelched beneath my feet, and I slowed as I reached the boarded perimeter. The board went up well over six feet and I had nothing to stand on, but I reached up, gave a little jump, and grabbed on. My feet scraped and I winced at the noise, but they gained purchase against the wood and helped to push me up to see over the top.
Ritual all right. The yellow glow came from lanterns of some sort set up in the corners; fire burned, capped off by some sort of globe, and the whole thing sat on a stake driven into the ground. They sat in all the corners and dispersed along the fence every several feet. Toward the middle I caught faint shapes of people, near where the hole in the ground was—the place I nearly fell into while with Ryann. And my guess? The weird rectangle of wood boards was a makeshift altar. Magic spun in the air, a rising vortex of those damn purple sigils.
The rough wood bit into the palms of my hands, getting worse as I scrambled upward, splinters pinching and stinging. I hauled myself up, got a foot onto the edge, and then dropped to the other side. Wet ground slipped underfoot, treads of my runners keeping me upright but not by much; my hand shot out to steady myself.
No one had seen me yet. Small miracle, right?
I crept forward. Swiped rain and wet hair from my eyes. It didn’t help, water beating down harder and harder. My knees were bent slightly as I walked, arms out to give me balance. If I couldn’t hear what the fuck they were saying out there, odds were they wouldn’t hear me. Hopefully.
One, two, three...only four or so people there. Not bad. I’d taken out more—a lot more. They were spread out, a pair in the middle of the vortex gazing into the hole in the ground, two others a ways back. Of the two, the nearest was a tall, broad guy, possibly the one I’d seen in the back of the van. I’d expected robes or something dramatic, but I saw a lot of jeans, jackets with the hoods raised—not out of a likely nefarious purpose, but because it was fucking pouring.
Lightning sparked again, alighting the sky in long threads of white. I froze as it pulsed, and thunder boomed. When the light died out, I started forward again. Pity I couldn’t time the gunfire with the thunder, but they’d still hear something. Stealthy kills for the first two, bullets for the others—
My foot struck a board I hadn’t seen, the ground growing dark near the middle of the lot; it toppled over onto another.
Heads swiveled to glance back at me.
Motherfucker.