Dark Hunt

by Richardson, Kim

  A vampire couple walked past us, their hands clasped and cups filled with red liquid that I knew wasn’t wine. A young witch with bright orange hair pulled a cart behind her as she traded charms, sang fortunes, and whispered hexes.

  More vampires in various forms of dress meandered by—some sporting modern fashions like me and Jax and some decked out vintage mortal fashions with layers of skirts and lace. Not one of them bothered to look at us as we crossed paths. They didn’t seem concerned or care that two angel-born waltzed among them.

  I felt eyes on me. A leprechaun with more piercings than tattoos was leaning against the wall of a building, watching us. The moonlight reflected off his bald head. I stared back at him until he looked away. I didn’t have to look to know there were probably four or five more leprechauns watching us.

  The street sloped down, revealing more jumbled buildings all squished together as though from lack of space. Haphazard shops lined the street with bottles and boxes of poisons, potions, and charms sitting in the windows. Most witches set up shop here in the Quarter. Anyone looking for a dark spell, or even a demon spell, could find it here.

  I stared at the window for a moment wondering if a dark spell could help me. What if I could find some potion or ointment to counter the archangel mark?

  Before I realized what I’d done, my legs stopped moving and I planted myself before a witch’s shop with a sign that said SEARCHING FOR LOVE OR FORTUNE? LOOKING FOR THAT REMEDY TO CURE THAT ITCH THAT JUST WON’T GO AWAY? YOU’RE IN LUCK. STEP INTO THE SHOP OF WONDERS!

  “Are you okay?” Jax was next to me, looking at me as though I might faint.

  A smile tugged on his lips.

  “My offer of carrying you still stands, if you’re interested.”

  God. Why did he have to be so damn good looking?

  I breathed in deeply. Part of me wanted to lean on him for just a moment and feel his strong arms around me to drink in their warmth. How long had it been since I’d let a man touch me?

  “I’m fine,” I muttered, careful to keep my face blank. “It’s just… maybe…”

  “Don’t even think about it,” said Tyrius as he doubled back, his eyes narrowed into slits. “Forget it, Rowyn. Just forget it.”

  I shrugged. “I didn’t even say anything.”

  “You didn’t have to.” Tyrius eyed me like a parent about to scold a child. “I know you better than you think. I know exactly what’s in that head of yours, and let me tell you that a dark spell can only worsen your infliction.”

  “But maybe it can help me?” I breathed through my nose. “What if you’re wrong and all I need is in that shop?” I hated how desperate my voice sounded. This wasn’t me. I was the strong one; I was a Hunter. But I’d never felt so weak like this before either.

  Jax looked from me to Tyrius to the shop, and understanding etched across his features. “Maybe she’s right. Maybe this is all we need to heal her. A dark spell could counter the mark—”

  “It can’t.” Tyrius’s voice was final. “We don’t even know what that damn thing is. How do you know adding a dark spell won’t just make it worse? You don’t. Half of what they sell here doesn’t even work. Don’t ask.” Tyrius shifted his weight, his beige fur seemingly gleaming in the moonlight. “What the archangel did wasn’t dark magic. It was celestial magic—whatever that is. I don’t know about you, but I don’t know much about it. Are you willing to take that chance? Are you willing to risk your life on a guess?”

  I closed my eyes as another wave of dizziness shook me. “You’re right. I’m just… so tired, Tyrius. I don’t know how much more I can take.” I cursed silently as I felt my eyes burn with moisture. I would not let them see me cry.

  “I know, Rowyn.”

  I snapped my eyes open at the concern in Tyrius’s voice.

  “Help is close,” said the cat. “Let’s see what my friends have to say first. I trust them. They’ll know what to do. Who knows. They might tell us a dark spell can help. But until I know for sure, I can’t let you risk it.”

  “How much farther, Tyrius?” asked Jax, though he was looking at me.

  “Not far,” said the tiny cat. “Just at the end of this block.”

  In silence, we followed the cat down the street. A few witches glanced our way, their faces cold and hard. I sensed their demon magic, the familiar scent of earth and vinegar wafting toward me. I was barely aware of my own body. Head down, I concentrated on putting one foot beyond the other. It was all I could do. The fever was pulling at me from everywhere inside my body at once. Sounds became muffled, and my vision blurred again. I felt like I was walking in a perpetual dream state, not really in control of my body.

  “That witch over there is looking at you,” came Jax’s voice next to my ear.

  I looked up, surprised that he’d hooked his arm in mine, and I’d never even felt it.

  “Hmmm?” I followed his gaze, and my body stiffened. If he wasn’t holding me up, I might have fallen. My knees buckled, but Jax didn’t seem to notice.

  A witch with long wisps of white and gray hair and wearing a shapeless, weathered forest-green gown stood in the shadows across the street. Her small eyes were lost in the heavy wrinkles, but I could make out that one, milky-white eye staring at me. I’d have recognized that face anywhere.

  It was the dark witch I’d stolen the grimoire from. Ah, hell.

  It could have been the fever, but I’d swear she was looking at me with a winning smile that seemed to say I’d gotten what I deserved. She lifted a thin, white hand and pointed at me, her lips mumbling as though in a curse. Shit.

  “Do you know her? She seems to know you.” Jax’s face was so close to mine his chin rubbed against my face, his day-old stubble tickling my skin. His scent was musky and pleasant, and his deep voice sent tiny prickles over my skin. Or was that the fever?

  I shook my head, careful not to bump my face into his, or accidentally brush my lips against his. He was that close—with such kissable lips. It would be a shame not to lean in and give them a try.

  What was I thinking? I pulled my gaze from his lips before they got me into trouble. I was delirious, and I didn’t have the energy to open my mouth. Breathing became difficult.

  I didn’t want anyone to know that the witch had found me. Was this simply the case of a strange coincidence? No. I didn’t think so.

  The old witch wanted her book, but I wasn’t ready to give it back yet.

  I would never have made it to the end of the block without Jax’s help, without falling flat on my face. Tyrius bounded down the steps of a semibasement apartment from a brown stone building. A sign above the stairs read THE LONE FAMILIARS.

  Tyrius disappeared through the flap of a small cat door, left off the main door. I tried to smile but nothing moved. My facial muscles were numb like after a visit to the dentist.

  Jax yanked the front door open and hauled me inside with him. There was the soft click of a latch as Jax closed the door behind him. I blinked at the sudden light coming from everywhere at once. As my vision adjusted, I realized the light was coming from dozens of computer screens.

  The ceiling was low, and I set my gaze on the open space. It was lined with tables topped with computers, computer parts, yellow and red wires, black and white wires, and all manner of electronic devices that were alien to me. Books were cramped into the far wall and into teetering columns that grazed the ceiling. Bottles with orange and green and blue liquids sat on shelves along the walls. The room smelled of metal and mildew, with a faint rotten-egg smell. It was one open room, no kitchen or bathroom, and it had the feel of a local geek shop that doubled as a lab.

  Sitting on an antique Persian rug and looking up at us were two cats.

  22

  “Bemus. Mani. This is my friend Rowyn I’ve been telling you about,” said Tyrius as he came around and stood by my legs. “And this here is her friend Jax.”

  The two cats eyed us. One was a Russian blue with yellow eyes, the spitting image of the cat in
Pet Sematary. The other was an orange Persian with the signature squished face.

  Baal demons. Their demon energy ran through my skin like a tiny electric current, just like Tyrius. They were large, too large and thick to be females, and the shape of their skulls told me they were males. I tried to say hello, but my lips were glued together.

  “She needs your help.” Tyrius moved around my legs, agitated. For the first time I saw how really concerned he was for me, and my chest knotted together in a tight ball. “She’s been infected with something and it’s making her sick. I didn’t know where else to bring her.”

  The Russian blue raised one of its paws. “Say no more, my friend,” he said, his voice deeper than Tyrius’s. I detected a very faint accent that I couldn’t place. “Bring her over to the chair here and we’ll take a look at her.”

  Jax hauled me to the only chair in the space, next to a table that was covered in TV remote controls, but I couldn’t see one single television in the space. I slumped into the chair, my hands on my lap, shivering and feeling cold and hot all at once. Jax had his hand on the backrest of the chair, like an overbearing bodyguard.

  A flash of blue-gray moved in my line of sight, and the Russian blue cat leaped up on the table, followed by the Persian and Tyrius. The three cats faced me. My head swam as I tried to focus on at least one of them.

  “Can you tell us what happened exactly?” said the Persian. His voice was high and nasally.

  “Yes,” said the Russian blue. “What is the cause and nature of this infection?”

  Tyrius looked at me, and I gave a nod of my head. “It’s angel,” he answered, and I detected bitterness in his tone.

  “Angel?” mewed the two cats together.

  Tyrius sighed. “Archangel, actually.”

  “Let’s have a look.” The Russian blue leaned forward, his yellow eyes wide and curious.

  Tyrius turned his head and looked up at me. “Rowyn? Show them.”

  I blinked slowly and took a deep breath. Gathering some energy, I raised my right arm and let it fall with a thud on the table. I stifled a laugh at how dead my arm felt. With trembling fingers, I pulled back my sleeve and I retched. The skin around my wrist had opened, and yellow liquid seeped from my blistered skin. It smelled like death.

  The two baals hissed and spat and leaped back as though my arm was contagious. Their fur bristled on their backs, making them appear twice their size. I wondered if they were about to Hulk out into giant cats, and what their forms would be.

  “That is definitely very, very bad,” said the Persian.

  “Yup, definitely,” agreed the other cat.

  “Holy shit, Rowyn.” Jax gave no warning as he gripped my arm, cursing softly. His touch was surprisingly gentle. All I could do was stare at the lines of worry that creased around his eyes. He pressed his palm against my forehead, his rough, callused skin a welcomed feeling against the numbness I felt. “She’s burning up.” I felt a tinge of regret when he pulled his hand away. “Why didn’t you tell us it was this bad?”

  I didn’t know, I wanted to say but could only shrug as my gaze fell back to my wrist. God, that looked awful. The flesh looked as though it was burned and decaying all at the same time, like the flesh-eating disease.

  Tyrius slipped next to my wrist and sniffed. He drew back his head and then sneezed. “You know what this is, don’t you?” he asked the two baals, his face drawn in accusation. “What is this? And can you help her?” My bottom lip trembled, and my teeth chattered as another wave of the chills hit me, harder this time, and didn’t stop.

  “That’s an archangel curse, that is,” said the Persian cat. He sat and curled his tail around himself. “It’s a rare kind of celestial magic that only archangels can do.”

  “Mani’s right,” said the Russian blue. “I’ve only seen a mark like that once before and…” The cat clamped his mouth shut and looked up at Tyrius, his eyes wider than I’d seen them.

  “And what, Bemus?” growled Tyrius, his eyes darting between the two baals. “Tell me! If you know something, tell me! Tell me now, or you can forget the Dungeons & Dragons tournament.”

  Mani’s and Bemus’s little mouths dropped open, revealing tiny pointed teeth. Bemus cocked his head next to Mani and leaned closer and whispered, “Did he just…”

  Mani’s head nodded in quick successions. “He did.”

  After Bemus shot Tyrius a worried look, he straightened, looking regal. “It’s called the Seal of Adam,” he said calmly. His yellow eyes met mine for a moment, and then his gaze moved to my wrist. “It was entrusted to all archangels, once upon a millennium or two, revealing itself as the first curse. They used it on half-breed demons as a means to control them since they could roam the Earth freely as part human—unlike their demon cousins, which could never stay in the mortal world for very long.”

  “When a half-breed bears the Seal of Adam,” added Mani, “they must continually feed it, by submitting to the will of the archangel, otherwise they will succumb to the side effects of its immense power and—”

  “Kill the human in them,” interjected Bemus, “turning them slowly but steadily into a demon. It removes the humanity, and sometimes the half-breed doesn’t respond well to the curse… it kills them.”

  “Sometimes it can show up as a circle with the archangel’s name, or a hand print like that one,” informed Mani. “But the smell is always the same.” He jerked his chin toward my wrist. “It reeks of the bowels of Horizon.”

  I would have blushed in embarrassment if I still had the will. Turns out I just sat there like a smelly, decomposing idiot.

  Tyrius shook his head and looked at me. “Wait a minute. Rowyn hasn’t experienced anything like that. Right, Rowyn?” I shook my head and he continued. “Are you sure it’s the Seal of Adam? Maybe it’s something else?”

  “No, it’s the Seal of Adam all right,” said Mani. “I’d recognize that mark and smell anywhere. It’s definitely the celestial curse. But she’s not a half-breed, which I’m guessing is the reason the curse is reacting differently. It’s very vexing.”

  “Agreed,” said Bemus in a puzzled tone, as if he couldn’t believe what he was seeing. “It’s not supposed to do that to someone like her,” said the cat, and I squirmed under his intense gaze. “You told us she was angel-born, a Sensitive like him”—the cat jerked his head to Jax—“but different.”

  Bemus closed his eyes for a moment, and when he opened them, his demon magic flashed in his eyes, making them glow like brilliant stars. “She has the same angel-born energy, but I sensed something distinctively separate the moment she entered. A different energy. Like a layer of something else—something other than the curse. But it’s so well interconnected, it’s hard to pinpoint what it is.”

  “I sensed it too,” agreed Mani. “A shade of another energy.”

  “Either way,” replied Bemus. “It’s not supposed to react like that for a mortal with an angel heritage.”

  “What are you trying to say?” Tyrius’s voice rose, and I could sense a little fear in his tone. “That you can’t help her?”

  “What? No,” exclaimed Jax, and I felt him shift next to me. “You have to help her. Look at her—it’s not like we can take her to a human hospital. They’d just fill her up with human antibiotics and end up making it worse.” Jax rubbed his face with his hands. “What about a spell? Can a witch help her? We just passed a few shops. Maybe they can brew a counter curse? A curse for a curse?”

  Bemus lowered his head. “A dark spell would only worsen her condition, perhaps even kill her.”

  A tiny bubble of hope burst within of me. I’d been holding on to the hope that a curse could counter another curse. A cancelation of sorts. A nauseating mix of dread and pain shook my knees, and I held my breath so I wouldn’t get sick.

  Jax noticed the shift in me and angled his face to mine. I saw the recognition in his eyes at my dismay. “Are you sure?” he asked the baals. “You’re absolutely sure?” I hated the despair in his
voice. It didn’t make me feel any better.

  “We’re sure,” said the two baals together. Then Bemus added, “We’ve been witches’ familiars for thousands of years before we gave it up. We know the effects a dark curse would have on a celestial curse—like adding fuel to a fire.”

  “Disastrous,” said the Persian cat. “Catastrophic. And really messy, actually.”

  I jerked as Jax pushed down hard on the chair. “Then what?” he said. “We can’t do nothing.”

  “No, we most certainly can’t.” Tyrius met my eyes, and I noticed that they were unusually moist. I looked away before I started my own waterworks.

  The baals looked at each other, and then Mani broke the silence. “We’ll do what we can, but first, you must tell us how she got the Seal of Adam. How did the archangel curse her?”

  Tyrius began to retell the story of how stupid I was to summon the archangel. I was grateful he left out the part where I’d stolen the dark witch’s grimoire.

  Silence. The kind I hated. The kind where only bad news was brewing just under the surface.

  “Can you help her?” Jax’s voice was strained, and I tried to look up at him, but my head lolled to the side and rested on his arm. Fighting back the nausea, my body trembled from the fever. The adrenaline had spent itself, and I was going to pay for it soon. The fear pulled my heat away, turning my sweat cold.

  “Can you?” Tyrius was practically yelling. I’d never seen him like this, so agitated. “Please tell us there’s something you can do.”

  “There’s no cure,” said Mani, and I felt nothing but an endless, hopeless darkness full of fear, pain, and defeat. “Once the curse has been laid, it can never be undone.” The cat took a breath. “The only way to remove the Seal of Adam is to kill the archangel that gave it to her.”