God In The Darkness

by S T Branton

  I let go of poor, half-dead Manny and regained my feet in a single smooth motion, showing off the golden blade as I did so.

  “You want to try?” I asked. “Come on. It’ll be fun.”

  The third vamp’s jaw dropped when he laid eyes on the sword. “I thought he was kidding about the sword.” He looked at his one remaining functional cohort. “Forget about Manny. It’s all about that sword now. That’s the one the boss wants.”

  “The Gladius Solis?” His accent twisted the Latin so strongly I resisted the urge to wince. “Guess it could be. Better safe than sorry, right?” He came at me suddenly, swiping at the blade of the sword, and ended up with a deep gash across his palm. “Ah, you lowdown bitch!” he snarled. Fangs filled his mouth to bursting, jutting out over his bottom lip. His eyes turned jaundiced and bulbous.

  “That transition gets more disgusting every time,” I remarked. “Is there a version of you guys that doesn’t turn out looking like a late stage meth head?”

  He hissed like a feral cat. “Shut up and hand it over!”

  I raised the hilt like a baseball bat poised for a home run. “Not on your life. Or mine, for that matter. You want it, you’re gonna have to come take it.”

  Now he laughed. “You want to fight me? You broads are even dumber than you look. But…” He wiped a glistening thread of saliva out of the corner of his mouth. “Who am I to deny a woman what she wants, huh?”

  I smirked back at him. “Who, indeed?”

  CHAPTER TWENTY-TWO

  The vamp’s long, ragged nails tore into the front of my shirt, leaving us awkwardly entangled from the get-go. I wedged the sword hilt between my chest and his arm and shoved backward with all my might. The motion dislodged him pretty effectively, but it also ripped a giant gap across my collarbone, exposing my throat.

  He chuckled lecherously. “I wish everyone who tried to kill me was as sweet a piece of work as you, honey.”

  “And I wish you died as fast as all the other vampires I’ve killed.”

  He guffawed. “She’s funny, too! It’s almost a shame I’m gonna have to bleed you dry.” He glanced at his buddy. “You think Lorcan would take her alive? He’s still looking for hosts, ain’t he?”

  The buddy shrugged. “He only ever talked about the sword. Didn’t say nothin’ about the girl who had it.”

  “Well, maybe we oughta keep her for ourselves, then.” The vamp’s sickly yellow eyes raked over my body. “Come closer so I can do some more work on that shirt.”

  Ugh. The bile rose in the back of my throat. I was more resolved than ever to find a way into the slaughterhouse, if only to interact with anyone other than these creeps. Behind me, Manny still lay prone on the pavement, flopping and gasping like a fish out of water. The other two didn’t even seem to register his presence anymore.

  “Here’s a Plan B.” I squared myself up into fighting stance. “You get the fuck out of my way.”

  “No can do,” said the vamp. He shot out a hand and seized my sword wrist, attempting to wrench it sideways. “You walk, or we drag. Alive or dead. It’s your call.”

  I jerked my hand upward, tossing the sword into the air. My other arm swung up, caught it, and lashed out hard, slicing across the vamp just above his shoulders. Thin trails of smoke spiraled upward from the wound. His head wobbled for a few seconds before falling with a distastefully soft thud to the ground. There was blood for about half a second before it all turned to crumbly stone.

  It figured. The young ones always said the grossest shit.

  “Whore!” His friend, the only one still standing, squeezed off a shot that went wide as his gun jumped, pinging a chunk out of the wall on my right. He growled and tried again, but his cheap-ass gun jammed on him. I arced the blade around and cut the weapon, and his hand, from his arm. He cradled the stump, screeching. “You fucking bitch! Lorcan’s going to kill you, and I hope he makes it last!”

  “I could kill you just to shut you up,” I said. Forget an alarm system; this guy and his big mouth were on track to wake up the whole damn block on their own.

  Sure enough, lights began to flicker in the upper windows of the slaughterhouse. I saw a pair of the flimsy blinds move just enough to let me know someone had been behind them. The timer had officially started on my race to gain entry before the whole crew came down to fight.

  The vamp, on his knees, still holding his amputated stump in increasingly blood-soaked clothes, surged to his feet and shoved the open wound in my face. He was aiming for my mouth or eyes. Trying to infect me. “Die!” he screamed. “I hope you die!”

  Startled, I lopped off more of his arm on reflex, and he hurled his torso in my direction in a chaotic effort to pin me down. “You think you can just come in here and choke us out, cut our heads off with your fancy fire-sword? Not me, bitch! They’re heading down to get you right now. I can feel it. And I’m gonna keep you here if it kills me.”

  “I admire your dedication,” I told him. “And you’re right. It will kill you.”

  He bared his teeth, stumbled backward, and ran at me again, swinging wildly with the fist of the hand he still had. I blocked the punch with the searing heat of the sword, and then I ran it clean through his side. He fell back to his knees.

  “Lorcan… is waiting for… you,” he managed, pointing at me with a shaky index finger. “I’m nothing… compared to him.”

  “Well, yeah. I would hope not.”

  He was nothing more than dust and debris before he even fell over onto the ground. I jumped over him, left Manny behind, and ran full tilt for the doors. They opened from the inside as I approached, pushed by a pair of vamps wielding two huge handguns each. They fired; I charged. Their heads made a gross but satisfying crack when I smashed them together.

  Marcus would have loved that.

  Once inside, the noise of others echoed through the vast, high-ceilinged hall. It was better lit now, and the inside had been straightened up some. No massive cage full of captured women sat in the middle of the floor, only an abandoned rack of something, covered. I paused just long enough to lift the sheet and saw vials and vials of blood. Lorcan’s, probably.

  They made an incredibly satisfying smash on the hard, stone floor of the slaughterhouse. The blood splattered in dark crimson sunbursts accented by shards of broken glass. I made sure to shatter every single one of those little containers. No doubt they were being prepped for injection just before I showed up to crash the blood party.

  A shout rang from the other side of the room, from someone emerging out of the stairwell. He broke into a flat sprint, and as he pulled close enough to register the bloody mess on the floor, his face contorted with rage. He was huge, almost twice my size, and when he lunged toward me, his shadow sunk me into darkness for a split second.

  But his strength didn’t make him immune to the Gladius Solis. His weight, however, presented a problem. On its way past me, sword embedded soundly in the heart region, the body almost ripped the weapon from my hands, causing my shoulder to protest with a jolt of burning pain.

  The door to the stairwell kept flapping regularly, ejecting yet more vamps toward me in a steady malignant stream. I met them like I was at target practice, slicing and dicing my way toward the stairs. The closer I got, the more I sensed a deeply-rooted darkness lingering on the floor above, so dense that it was nearly palpable.

  There was only one being that it could be.

  Tracking vampire dust from my clothes, my shoes, and the edge of my sword, I ran up the harshly lit steps and through into the second floor. The gigantic double doors that had once led to the transformation pit stood bolted open, and through them, I spotted another doorway I hadn’t noticed before. It was both closed and opaque, but there was no mistaking the source of the darkness within.

  “Why does he always need an office?” I mumbled to myself. “Makes him way too easy to find.”

  Then again, that was probably the point. It would’ve been naïve for me to think he hadn’t masterminded this wh
ole encounter, that he didn’t know I was there. Most likely, he wasn’t even doing anything in there except waiting for me to burst in.

  I slowed down, took a breath, made myself aware of the rhythmic beat of my heart. The insane rush of adrenaline I’d expected wasn’t there yet; in its place was a strange but not unpleasant, determined calm. Unlike all the times before, I wasn’t really winging it. I knew exactly what I was here to do.

  We both did.

  The doorway to Lorcan grew slowly larger with every step, as if it was a mirage gradually becoming real. This door did not have a window of any kind, which was both comforting and worrying. He couldn’t physically see me coming, but he didn’t need to. Meanwhile, I’d be going in completely blind. The thought of it raised the hairs on the back of my neck. Was I just being foolhardy, walking into certain death? Would there even be a fight at all?

  By the time I’d come within ten feet of the door, my pace had slowed to something like a tiptoe. Not because I was afraid; the fear had gone the way of my nerves. I was just trying to figure out what to expect. My mind spun a million different directions. It could all be an elaborate, heinous prank. The room behind that door could easily be empty.

  Or maybe I would see someone, but who?

  Frank? No, he was too stupid for this.

  Jules?

  The energy around the door practically flavored the air. I glanced at my surroundings, noting how dark it felt in a room full of windows. The thin blinds shouldn’t have done much to block out the light, but shadows still descended around me. The only reason I kept moving forward unabated was because I knew the door stood directly in front of me.

  “Hello, Vic.”

  Delano’s voice froze me in my tracks. My hearing had gotten way better post-nectar infusion, but I couldn’t tell for the life of me exactly where he was. His words bounced around me in surround sound. I waited, body tense, sword hand at the ready.

  “I must admit, I am impressed to see you here. Lord Lorcan had faith that you would accept his tacit challenge, but I’m afraid I thought less of you, if only for a moment. It was a moment of weakness, and it will not happen again.”

  “What do you want?” I asked carefully. Our last meeting still hovered just at the edge of my mind, though his offers of aid did nothing to disguise his true nature. His depthless eyes locked onto mine and held them in an icy grip. I felt like someone had physically seized my head.

  “To talk.” He stepped out of the shadows at last, hands clasped behind his back, the edge of the duster still brushing the floor. “I believe I have something that may interest you.”

  “Jules?” I asked. “Where is she?”

  A small, indulgent smile curved his lip. “Your devotion to human acquaintances is…fascinating, if misguided. Your focus belongs elsewhere, on those more deserving of your attention. Hence, my proposal.”

  “What proposal?” Instantly, I was on my guard. I didn’t want to make any more deals.

  “Are you not curious about becoming an Apprenti?” He arched his eyebrows. “A demigod, in layman’s terms. Don’t you see how a position of such power could serve someone like you?”

  I eyed him warily but kept my mouth shut. He gave me a beat, then continued. “Think of it as escaping the hellish turmoil that will undoubtedly befall humanity, without assuming the burdens of life and death that are inherent to being a god. All the power, little responsibility.” His smile widened. “Do you think a single soul dreams of my intentions when I am standing in Lord Lorcan’s glow? Of course, they don’t.”

  “Because Lorcan’s an asshole,” I said. “The sheer force of his assholery completely eclipses you. That’s not a perk of the job.”

  “Ah, my job.” His gaze sharpened. “Don’t tell me it’s failed to intrigue you on some level. Who am I? Why do I work unfailingly for a god who would burn the universe in pursuit of his own goals? If you joined me, you could have those answers. And you could have so much more.”

  “I’m a human,” I reminded him.

  “You are a fool, too, if you think that means anything. There have been human demigods before, perhaps even some you have known. Have you never wondered who it was that elevated Rome to its dizzying heights? Or how it could have been that such a glorious empire suffered a crushing fall? Perhaps its source of inspiration was carted off to Carcerum, blinded by the ideals espoused by a weak and fallible king.”

  “You can’t be serious,” I said. “He would have told me.”

  “What would you have said if he had?” Delano stared a hole straight through the back of my skull. “I suspect the implications of his truth would have been too much for your fragile mind to bear.”

  “And what exactly are those implications?”

  Delano frowned. “Don’t be dense, girl. You know them already. Doubtless your mentor told you of the chaos that reigned during the first war. But I ask you to look deep into your heart and tell me: how is that any different from the way things are now?”

  I was quiet, thinking.

  “Your wretched people still fight wars within their own species. Humans kill and die at an astounding rate without the assistance of the gods you so revile.” He shrugged. “The underlying truth is this: you are not capable of ruling yourselves. You never have been, and you never will be.”

  I clenched my teeth. I’d been expecting him to spout some crazy shit at me the same way Lupres had back in the caves in Washington, but Delano’s diatribe spoke to some of the cynicism lurking in my own heart. I didn’t want him to make sense. I didn’t want there to be common ground between us.

  But was there, after all?

  We stood in silence for a few long minutes, facing each other, neither one of us moving. He remained utterly calm, his face placid. I rolled his ideas over in my mind. Humans are not capable of ruling themselves.

  Humans weren’t capable of ruling themselves?

  “No.” I shook my head. “That’s…how can I accept that without completely discounting myself, my friends, everyone I’ve ever loved or admired? We rule ourselves in small ways every day, within the boundaries of our lives. And most of us get along just fine, thank you.” I shifted my stance. “The world doesn’t need more demigods.”

  He let out a long, slow sigh that was rife with real disappointment. “I had such high hopes for you.”

  My fingers tightened on my sword. I glanced down at the hilt in my hands. The first blush of adrenaline finally started to flow through my veins. Fighting Delano hadn’t necessarily been on my list of priorities, but I was about to make room.

  Then I looked up again, and he was gone. The light in the room had returned to normal, aside from the malevolent backbeat of Lorcan’s dark energy behind the still-closed door. I blinked, wondering if maybe I’d just dreamed up the whole thing.

  A sharp click brought me back to my senses—the door to Lorcan’s office unlocking.

  CHAPTER TWENTY-THREE

  Jules was the first thing I saw when I opened the door.

  She sat in the back corner, balanced on the edge of a chair, her hands tied tightly behind her. Tear trails marked her cheeks with makeup from days ago. There were snarls in her blonde hair. Her eyes, wide with fearful anticipation, changed as she recognized me, filling with tentative hope. “Vic?” she mouthed.

  I met her gaze but didn’t react.

  Someone else was watching me, too, his expression fixed into one that was calm but predatory. He had another desk, but he stood behind it, hands flat on the top. The slight hunch of his shoulders conveyed his subhuman nature better than actions or words ever could. Turning toward him made the blood in my veins run cold.

  “I’ve been waiting for you to arrive,” he said, curling back his upper lip in a baleful caricature of a smile. “I thought I would simply dispose of you once our parley went up in smoke, but then you did me the incredible service of eliminating that troublesome shapeshifter.” Lorcan scratched his narrow chin. “He could have proved something of a problem in the future, had y
ou not intervened.”

  “I didn’t do it for you,” I said.

  “No, but the end result benefited me nonetheless. So, I decided you were worth seeing one last time.” His teeth flashed. “You should be honored. It has been ages since I last killed someone personally.”

  “Other than the mayor?” The sword burned against my palm. My heart pounded in my chest. I felt like electric pulses had been wired under my skin.

  “Silly girl,” said the god dismissively. “You refused to do it, so Dorias killed him, not I. Those machinations were entirely his own. Not that I disagree with them, mind you.”

  “Why was he such a threat to you?”

  Lorcan watched me as if I were an idiot. “Inglewood stopped cooperating. It really is that simple. At some point, the siren song of unlimited power lost its hold on him and allowed him to grow back some semblance of a conscience. Or perhaps he realized just how easy humans are to rule and decided he had no need for what we offered. It is a pity, really.” Lorcan smoothed a hand over his hair. “We would have given him everything. Just like we would have given you.”

  Jules’s eyes passed silently between Lorcan and me with every exchange. She may have been terrified out of her mind, but she was still absorbing every little detail. A true public defender.

  I wanted to get her out of there more than anything.

  “You gave me one hell of an arrest warrant,” I told Lorcan. “Why’d you have to frame me? You’re a god, right? It’s hard for me to believe you couldn’t have obfuscated the whole affair just because you felt like it.”

  He grinned. “True. I suppose there are some redeeming human qualities, chief among them is the potential for entertainment. But it would be remiss for me not to admit that I am always looking to expand my network of capable devotees. Delano can’t be expected to do everything.”

  “You really thought I would work for you, no questions asked?” I made no effort to hide the raw disdain in my voice.