Darkness Fair (The Dark Cycle Book 2)

by Marks, Rachel A.

  “Can we take a look?” Connor asks. “And maybe get some video footage?”

  “Yes, yes please, do whatever you need. I can’t take this anymore.” She sighs and the child on her hip seems to quiet a bit, hiccuping and puffing her chubby cheeks. Her big glassy eyes watch Connor and me, like she’s wary of us, as she grips her mom’s shirt and curls against her chest.

  Connor already knows where the attic access is from when he placed the cameras. I follow him to a back bedroom of the house, which looks like the nursery, with a crib, dresser, and rocking chair. But it’s dusty, like it hasn’t been used in a while. And it smells like sewage and rot. I recheck my inner walls, making sure nothing can get through, as Connor switches apps on his cell phone and begins filming, getting some rough footage of the room, focusing longest on the creepy image of the dusty crib. Then he motions with a free hand to the attic access door, so I take the string and pull it down, unfolding a ladder, the camera on me now.

  “You wanna go first?” he asks, like he doesn’t want to go up at all.

  I bark out a laugh. “Be my guest, Guillermo del Toro.” I motion to the ascent.

  He smirks at me from the other side of the camera and begins the climb with one hand, narrating what he’s doing as he goes. Half his body is in the attic, half in the room, when he pauses, muttering, “Shit.” He looks down at me. “The door’s open.”

  My gut churns.

  “This just got a lot more complicated if your whole wraith prediction was on the mark,” he says.

  Sometimes I hate being right.

  We head back out to the car to collect some supplies from the trunk.

  Connor puts on a crucifix and grabs a bag of salt and a bag of what look like crackers. “So, I’m thinking we trap it like we do with the demons,” he says. “This thing seems to dislike anything Catholic, so we sic the sacrament on its ass.” He points into the trunk at a metallic container that looks like a flask. “Wanna grab the holy water?”

  “Wraiths aren’t like demons.” And we’re not even sure it’s a wraith. We’re not sure about anything. I pick up the bottle of holy water and slide it in my jacket pocket. I’m pretty sure it won’t help, but whatever. “It may not be something we can easily trap.”

  He sighs. “Well, then what’s your plan? If we only cast it out it’ll just go wreak havoc somewhere else.”

  I don’t have a plan for this. I came along to get help from Connor with the protections for the beach cave, and now my head is starting to pound. My plan was to not get involved in any more drama if it doesn’t have something to do with waking up Ava or helping Kara.

  “That’s what I thought,” Connor says when I don’t answer. He shuts the trunk. “So a trap it is.”

  “I just hope it sticks.”

  “But you can kill demons now, right?” he asks, like he’s clarifying.

  I rub my fingers together and think about the crusted demon blood that was caked on them like mud. “Yeah.”

  “Don’t you think your talent could work for other . . . things?”

  I consider it. “I guess that I could try and see.” But we’ll definitely need a backup plan.

  “Okay. Just try to have a little faith, dude.”

  We ask Mrs. Foster if she can step outside or go to a neighbor’s house for a little while. The last thing we need is for her or her kid to get attacked if the wraith fights back. She grabs a few things for the baby and then leaves, saying she’ll be next door, thanking us until it becomes a little embarrassing.

  Connor follows me to the back room and then sets up his phone on the tall dresser beside the bedroom door, clicking for the camera to start recording again. I get ready to open myself up to read the place so I can figure out where this thing is hanging around. I think about all the demons I’ve trapped over the years and tell myself that this spirit can’t be worse than one of them; it certainly can’t be that strong.

  “You ready?” Connor asks, like we’re going to battle.

  The way I’m feeling right now, I’m not ready for a knock-down, drag-out fight. “Not really, but we can’t exactly come back later.” Well, we could, but we’d likely return to find a woman possessed by a wraith, who murdered her own kids.

  Connor steps back like he doesn’t want to be too close to me when I open myself up fully.

  I take a deep breath and close my eyes to fixate on the space around me, what’s close, not letting my insides take in too much right away. Death is palpable in the air, but I see now it’s from a long time ago, it’s not recent.

  I reach out a little more, looking for something, a memory in the air, in the energy, but all I feel is death. Weighty, sticky death. And then I sense something zip across the hall, out of range. The sudden movement makes me open wider as if my power is chasing it, seeking it out. My feet itch to move but I stay still, just trying to get a fix on the thing before walking toward it in the physical realm.

  “What’re you feeling?” Connor says.

  I shake my head, not wanting to break focus to answer.

  “You’re lit up, you know.”

  I didn’t know, but it’s a good sign that my power thinks it can destroy this thing—

  There! I open my eyes to see a shadow speed across the hall again. It seems to be centering its focus on the bedrooms, going from one to another. And a thought emerges: a spider weaving its web to claim its home. But it doesn’t feel like the thing has totally succeeded yet. The house hasn’t been claimed fully, some of the energy still feels warm and alive.

  I move into the hall and Connor starts laying out the crackers on the floor—they’re wafers for communion, I think. I’m not sure how something like that would work, but Connor seems to know what he’s doing, placing them in the corners of the room in threes.

  A black mass of tattered shadow zips past, within three feet of me, entering the room to my right. In its wake is a silver string, glistening in the golden light now spilling from my mark. Then I see more metallic threads weaving a criss-cross pattern from room to room. They coat the hall in a shimmering chaos of lines.

  It’s claimed the hallway. I turn and look around the nursery where Connor is standing and see even more threads. So many more. They cocoon the crib, the rocking chair, and even cover the window, dimming the light. This room is obviously its favorite space.

  “Can you see anything peculiar?” I ask Connor. “Like webs?”

  He lifts his head from placing salt and looks around, caution tensing his muscles. “No.”

  I have to be sure which side I’m seeing, the physical or the spiritual one. I turn back to the hall just as the wraith disappears into the farthest bedroom to my left.

  My power pulses brighter along my arm and my insides push me to act. When the wraith is about to cross my path again, I lunge.

  And I catch it by its billowy cloak.

  It jerks back with an air-rending screech and a bony claw scrapes across my chest. The heat sears through me as my shirt rips in four long tatters, my blood now speckling the doorjamb.

  Rage bursts to life inside me to replace the pain, and I swing, my fist hitting the shadow where its head should be. It feels like I’ve plunged my hand into a bucket of ice, just as tangible, and just as cold. The black shadow shifts, flickering into human form, legs, arms, head appearing like a hologram with a bad signal.

  Let go, it says without sound. Its ghost lips move but the words come to me through my chest, instead of my ears.

  It is a he. A man with thick-rimmed glasses and oily hair slicked to the side. From the 1940s, I’d say, by the style of his clothes. I try to feel his story, sense the energy of how he became this thing, but it’s as if he’s blocking me, keeping it a closely held secret, even in death.

  Release me, he mouths, or I will tear your lungs from your chest. His form grows wispy again, features sinking in, becoming a hollow emptiness, hands morphing into claws.

  Behind me, Connor begins saying a benediction about light breaking through and about Go
d’s promise to protect.

  I ignore the wraith’s threats and yank on the dark cloak, tugging it into the room where Connor has the trap set up.

  It screeches again, a sharp-edged sound that cuts at the inside of my skull. The form flies up, over my head, the shadow fabric wrapping around me. I keep my grip, even as it tries to get into the attic. It scrapes at the air, yanking, desperate to escape me, to escape before I imprison it again, like it was before.

  As I feel its fear billow out, my own fear fades. My power surges, my mark coming fully to life. Flames flicker over my skin, and whatever confusion I had earlier about my life washes away. “HaShem Eloheiynu,” I say, scripture flashing into my mind. “HaShem Eloheiynu will go before me as a consuming eish.” I yank as a rush of energy courses through me with the word fire—eish—and force the shadow down into the salt circle with a whoosh of air. “He will consume you, dybbuk. He will destroy you, He will drive you out.” And as it hits the ground, my fire travels to the tattered edges of the wraith’s cloak, beginning to consume the darkness. But before more than a few inches can be devoured, the flames are snuffed out by the creature’s movement. It writhes, pushing at the salt boundary with its bony, clawed fingers.

  Release me, it cries, its visage flickering back to human for a moment.

  “We have it trapped,” I say through my gasping breath. Fatigue falls on me as I watch it fight against the salt barrier. My power feels completely sapped from that simple struggle.

  Connor moves along the outer edge of the salt circle. “Holy water,” he says.

  I pull the flask from my pocket and hand it to him, still not sure it will have any effect.

  Connor unscrews the lid and flicks the bottle in the direction of the circle, water drops flying out and sprinkling the floor. The wraith hisses and lunges to the side, trying to get away.

  “A little more to the left,” I say, directing him to where the shadow is. “What’re you doing?”

  “Hoping.” He flicks more and it hits across the shadow’s legs. Steam rises up with a fiery sizzle. I can barely believe my eyes.

  “It’s doing something,” I say. But how? Holy water is just . . . well, water. But then I smell myrrh and frankincense with a tinge of cedar. “What is that stuff?”

  “Holy water. With a nice spike of altar oil mixture added for good measure.” He flicks it again and hits the wraith right in the face.

  The shadow writhes and wails, coughing up black tar, its form melting a little.

  “Do it again,” I say. “It’s working.”

  He tosses more and more of the mixture onto the circle, hitting the form again and again until it’s barely a shadow, malformed and crackling, like a piece of ice placed in the hot sun, sinking, sinking into the floor until it’s a small puddle of silver mercury. The webs puff into smoke around us, dissipating. Light beams brighter into the room, cutting across the circle to reveal what’s left of the wraith. And then that puddle bursts into smoke, threading up, up, up in grey strands, through the attic door.

  “It’s gone,” I whisper, amazed. I guess I don’t have to worry if I can kill it or not.

  “Gone?” Connor sounds unsure. “Like, it left?”

  “No, it melted.”

  “Holy shit.” He holds up the flask of holy water. “This stuff’s badass.” He laughs and slips it into his back pocket, then frowns in my direction. “You’re bleeding pretty bad there.”

  I glance down but can only see my tattered shirt stuck to my stomach. I pull it over my head and wipe the blood from my chest and abs with what’s left of the red cotton. More blood trickles out, trailing down my stomach in thin lines.

  I wait, watching the bleeding wounds. But nothing happens. They don’t heal. They bleed, they sting like a motherfucker, and they aren’t closing up like they should.

  EIGHTEEN

  Aidan

  There’s a first-aid kit in the trunk and a clean shirt. After Connor helps me bandage up, I slip on the spare white T-shirt and try not to think about why I needed first aid at all. At least everything at the Fosters’ is done now. I really wish I understood how some oils could destroy a wraith. It nags at me because it doesn’t fit with the knowledge in my DNA, but I watched it with my own eyes. So it must be possible.

  Connor gave Mrs. Foster two of the spirit pouches that Kara made, telling her to keep them wherever she and the baby slept. With the wraith gone, she should have the peace of mind she needs to settle her spirit, though.

  We pull up to my great-grandmother’s at six thirty, just as the sun is beginning to sink lower over the water. Before I do anything else I climb down the rocks to check on Ava. As I descend I have to grit my teeth and try to ignore the stinging in my muscles and this damn headache that won’t quit. Connor starts the rune placements around the house, working from the outside in. In the car, he explained that he’d write symbols on rocks and organize them in different patterns to create a muting, similar to the blocks at the LA Paranormal house, along with other patterns that will sting demons a little, like an invisible electric fence. Finally, he’ll place a couple rune stones that will create confusion spells. It’s going to make one hell of a cocktail when he’s done.

  When I get to the cave, the place feels quiet. There’s no change since yesterday. Ava’s pale silhouette appears silver grey as twilight settles within the stone walls, and her body remains locked in that strange sleep. The pieces of the dog carcass are gone. Hopefully Eric came in and cleaned it up, otherwise I’m not sure how it all disappeared.

  I stand by the altar for a second and do what I always do—what I’ve been doing every day for weeks: I reach out with my mind, looking for her. I find nothing but stillness. She’s not dead, but she’s not here, either. It’s like staring into an empty room. I want to shake her, to scream, Come back! But I shove the torrent down and turn and walk up the beach to the house.

  I look around the yard, trying to figure out where to start. I might need to get into the house and hide some of these spirit pouches if this is going to work, but I don’t want to bother my grandma and Fa’auma unless I really have to, so I’ll leave that until later. The pattern I’m going to use out here is a sort of keep out sign. I’ll create a triangle north to south with the third point directing the energy west, toward the sunset.

  I try to ignore the burning of my sliced-up midsection as I grip my bag of pouches, feeling the weight of the spells inside the sack, each one filled with sacred dirt, rye, salt, and a small piece of rowan wood with a balancing number sequence written on it—333, most likely—wrapped in a hundred percent cotton fabric that’s stamped with a circled Star of David. If all that doesn’t do the trick to keep the demons away, I have no idea what will.

  Just as I get ready to place the first pouch, I feel something come up on my right, quick and silent.

  I spin, backing away in a defensive posture before I realize who it is.

  “Eric,” I say, pain sparking across my torso from the quick movement. “What the hell?”

  “I’ve come to help.”

  “I thought you were already here.”

  “I mean, I’ve crossed over.” He holds up a hand, showing me he’s flesh. I didn’t even notice he looked different because of the surprise of seeing him, plus the sun is turning to dusk over the water behind him, shining in my eyes.

  He’s wearing jeans and a white T-shirt, his hair a light brown instead of blinding gold. He’s Eric again.

  “Wow, so you’re really here.”

  “I am.”

  “Should I be worried?” What sort of bad development could’ve made him come back? He was so adamant that he’d be staying on the other side.

  “No, there are just some things I can only fix in this form. And I’ve decided to make myself available to you while I can.”

  “We can use all the help we can get.” I hold the bag open for him to take some of the pouches.

  He takes one and walks toward the rock ledge, then turns back to me. “Will this do
, to begin?”

  “Sure,” I say as I move to a spot beside him and bend down to tuck a pouch into a gopher hole beside his foot. I grit my teeth as I stand and he leans closer, like he’s curious.

  “Are you feeling unwell?” he asks, studying my face, my shaking hands. “You seem . . . depleted. And I smell blood.” He sniffs at the air like a hound. “Why do I smell blood?”

  Well, I did just destroy a wraith, and my wounds aren’t healing. But I felt exhausted before that, too, and this headache is making my vision blur. “I’m fine,” I say as I move to another spot a few feet away. “I just came from a job and didn’t get a chance to clean up good.”

  Eric seems to accept the answer. He looks over the cliff down to the water beating against the rocks far below.

  “Hanna’s worried about you,” I say. I probably shouldn’t butt into this whole thing between Eric and Hanna. It’s not like I understand cross-world romance. But I can’t seem to help myself. “You should let her know you’re okay.”

  He doesn’t react or speak. He just takes another pouch from the bag I’m holding and then bends down to tuck it inside a rock crevice, just under the lip of the ledge.

  “Do you even care that she’s wrecked?” I ask, wondering if he’s really as cold and indifferent to Hanna as he seems.

  His eyes snap to mine. “Of course.”

  “Then why are you hiding out here? Why aren’t you letting her know you’re okay? If you can be fleshy for me, you could at least call her.”

  “This isn’t a movie, Aidan. Flesh and infatuation are temporal. There are more vital things that need my attention right now. It is the end of the world, after all.”

  “Don’t be so dramatic,” I say, feeling like he’s making excuses. And nothing’s over until it’s over. “The woman loves you like crazy. And angel or not, you’re being an ass.”

  He just stares at me, blinking like I spoke Farsi.

  “Or not.” I sigh and walk to the next spot that needs a ward, closer to the path that leads down to the beach.