Embrace of Darkness

by Bilinda Sheehan

  “Stop that,” I snapped and Alastor grinned.

  “Sorry, force of habit.”

  “You were about to tell me why my power has changed?”

  “It’s obvious really, you’ve locked it down tight. You’re pretty much sealed up like a drum and nothing is going to change that until you come to terms with whatever is holding you back.” He sighed. “My guess would be you’re feeling guilty over the death of your mentor.”

  “And how would you know what I’m feeling?” I said, feeling suddenly defensive about the entire situation. How could he possibly know what I was feeling? Especially when I didn’t even know what I was feeling myself.

  “Sometimes you can be dense,” he said not unkindly. “We’re connected, remember? I feel what you feel.”

  “Wait, how can that be?”

  “Simple,” he said, “I’m your demon now, when I marked you, I pledged myself to you, to your power. What you feel, I feel. What you suffer, I too suffer...” Noting the confused look on my face he grinned. “Look, have you ever heard of mirror spells?”

  I shook my head. My mother had tried to teach me the craft when I was young but I’d shown no aptitude for it and she had given up after I’d nearly burned down half the house when a spell went astray. We hadn’t even gotten close to looking at something as advanced as mirror spells.

  “Well, the demon mark works a little like a mirror spell but it’s more like a two-way mirror,” he said. “I can feel your emotions, your power. I can feel when you get hurt... In fact, I absorb most of the injury which allows you a greater chance at survival.”

  “Is that why when Graham tried to choke me out, I didn’t die?” Even talking about what had happened was painful and I swallowed hard around the lump in my throat. I kept my gaze trained on the floor, it was easier that way. At least when I stared at the floor, I didn’t have to meet Alastor’s eyes, it made the sudden vulnerability I felt easier to handle.

  “It was a close thing,” Alastor said, “lucky for you I’m a tough bastard to kill.”

  “Without my power, I’m vulnerable,” I said, more to myself than to him.

  “Extremely. And the one hunting us, is counting on it.”

  “Did he kill Graham in the hopes I would lose my power?”

  Alastor shrugged. “Who knows. All I do know is so long as your power is out of commission, we’re both at risk.”

  “Then tell me what to do to change it,” I said. “I don’t want to be like this, I want everything to go back to how it was before...”

  He shook his head and leaned back on the bed once more. “Amber, I’m a demon, not a grief counsellor. This whole human emotions and feelings thing is all new to me.”

  “I thought you said you felt what I felt, doesn’t that mean you feel Graham’s loss just as much as I do?”

  “It hurts. But my empathy, my very humanity was burned out of me a long time ago. Experiencing your emotions is more like having a toothache...”

  “So what, you think I should just get over it?”

  Alastor shrugged. “It’s not for me to say, but you cannot go back to how things were. Only forward... That would suggest you have no choice but to ‘get over it,’ as you so aptly described it.”

  “Thanks,” I said, “that makes a lot of sense.” Despite the sarcasm in my voice, Alastor merely smiled.

  “You’re welcome. You know, maybe I should look into this whole counsellor thing. Perhaps, it’s a strength I never knew I had.”

  “Still don’t have,” I said. “Anyway, I need to sleep, so thanks for dropping by but...” I gestured to the door.

  Alastor cocked an eyebrow at me. “I’m perfectly comfortable here, thank you.”

  “I want you out.”

  “No.” He closed his eyes and his breathing became deeper, more even.

  “You are not going to sleep here,” I said, pushing onto my feet and grabbing a pillow. I threw it, but Alastor’s hand shot up and caught it before it could even get close to his face. “That’s no way to treat your guest, Amber.”

  “You’re a not my guest, you’re an unwanted visitor. Like a spider, or a snake...”

  “I could be very wanted if you’d only let me show you,” he said suggestively.

  “Oh, my god, do you ever quit?”

  He waggled his eyebrows at me in the most ridiculous expression I’d ever seen. “Quitting is for losers. I on the other hand, never lose.”

  “At least give me the bed,” I said.

  He smirked at me and spread his arms across the mattress. “There’s more than enough room here for us both. Unless you’re worried you’ll be unable to resist my charms in the middle of the night?”

  “I’m not worried about what I might do,” I said, leaving the rest of the sentence unspoken.

  “I am many things, Amber, but I am not a rapist.” He actually managed to sound offended. “I have never needed to force a woman into my arms, in my very long existence. They’ve all been willing participants and all thoroughly enjoyed everything I gave them.”

  “Fine, you’re a noble demon,” I said with a snort of laughter.

  “Laugh it up, little witch,” he said darkly, “but I’m not moving from this bed. Not unless you can move me, which considering the pathetic state your powers appear to be in, I would very much enjoy watching.”

  With a growl of frustration, I grabbed two pillows from the bed and snatched the blanket from the foot of the bed. I tramped over to the armchair in the corner of the room, all the while feeling Alastor’s humour filled gaze boring into my back.

  I flopped into the chair and pushed the pillow beneath my head, struggling to get into a position that would at least allow me a few hours sleep.

  The sound of Alastor’s even breathing once more filled the room and I found myself sneaking a look in his direction. By all appearances he was asleep but I couldn’t quite bring myself to believe it. He was a demon after all, maybe he was simply waiting for me to go asleep and then he would...

  I cut my train of thought off and ran back over the day’s events. Tomorrow we would visit Jessie in the hospital and then we were going to visit a few of the other places where people had disappeared.

  My eyelids were leaden and despite my discomfort, I found myself slipping into the oblivion that sleep offered.

  14

  “Amber.” Victoria shook my shoulder, jolting me awake.

  “What’s wrong?” I asked, narrowly avoiding sliding off the chair as I shot upright. Gripping the edge of the blanket, I stared at the rumpled but empty double bed on the other side of the room. Alastor was nowhere to be seen, which wasn’t a bad thing.

  “Two more people have gone missing,” she said, her words slowly filtering through my brain.

  “What? There’s a curfew, how is that even possible?”

  “I don’t know, I received the call from the Sheriff about five minutes ago, these two went missing from their own backyard...”

  Stifling a yawn, I climbed to my feet and dumped the blanket back on the bed. My back ached and my neck refused to operate the full range of motion it should have been capable of but I had slept and at least that was something.

  “Why didn’t you use the bed?” Victoria asked, glancing curiously at the bed.

  “Mattress was too uncomfortable,” I said quickly. The less she knew about Alastor the better.

  She eyed me suspiciously but said nothing as I made my way to the bathroom.

  Switching on the taps, I called back over my shoulder to her. “How did they find out about these two?”

  “Their daughter came downstairs for breakfast and found her parents missing...”

  “And they know they were taken from the backyard how?”

  “There’s blood,” she said. “A lot of blood. The Sheriff actually sounded quite ill on the phone.”

  “How old is the daughter?”

  “Nine.”

  “Shit,” I mumbled around the toothbrush I’d jammed in my mouth. I’d see
n my father get ripped apart by a demon I’d summoned when I was twelve. And there was some trauma you just never fully recovered from. There were still some nights I woke up screaming, the image of his tortured expression seared onto the inside of my mind.

  Rinsing my mouth out, I stepped out of the bathroom to see Victoria lifting the gear bag onto the bed.

  “I take it we’re going straight to hunting,” I said, fixing my holster on over my shoulders. Despite the discomfort of wearing it, I hadn’t felt safe enough with Alastor around to take it off while I slept. Tugging the Glock free, I gave the gun a once over before returning it to its place.

  “I think it’s only right,” Victoria said, “I’m hoping we won’t have to use the guns, we don’t have enough ammo for reloads but I’ve always been a bigger fan of swords anyway.”

  She swung the bag onto her shoulder as I checked my cell phone for messages.

  “Was there someone here with you last night?” she asked, the question taking me so much by surprise that I tripped out the door after her. I caught myself on the door frame before I fell and made a complete fool of myself.

  “Why would you ask that?”

  “I heard voices.”

  “I was on the phone.” I wasn’t sure why I lied. It wasn’t as though Alastor was some big secret I was trying to keep and I certainly wasn’t ashamed of anything that had happened. But the voice in the back of my head told me to keep his presence to myself. Victoria had a tendency to see the world in black and white, expecting her to understand the complex situation with Alastor wasn’t fair. And I already had a pretty good idea how she would react to the fact that he was a demon.

  She was after all, the kill first, ask questions later type and if she killed him, then I was in big trouble.

  “To Nic?”

  “Yeah...”

  She didn’t answer and I chose not to add anything else to my lie. The less said, soonest mended.

  It took us only a few minutes to drive to the address given to us by the Sheriff. The red and blue lights cast an eerie glow over the houses on the tree lined street, mingling with the early morning glow as the sun rose into the sky. It was cool enough for me to slip my Elite jacket on as I climbed from the SUV.

  Pausing on the sidewalk, I stared up at the white slat built house. It was like deja-vu all over again. The house reminding me of the very first case I’d worked with Graham. The memory was a painful one. I hadn’t trusted Graham then and he’d tricked me into working with him. Not that I would change any of it, not now, not after everything we’d been through together.

  “You all right?”

  I turned to find Victoria assessing me as though she expected me to go off the deep end any moment.

  “Yeah,” I said, “I’m fine, just reminds me of the first case I worked with Graham is all. Even down the bicycle on the lawn.”

  Victoria’s gaze scanned over the perfectly manicured grass to where the bike lay discarded on its side.

  “I heard about that case,” she said, “children are never easy.”

  “You work many in New York?”

  She shook her head. “No.” It was the kind of answer that begged for an explanation.

  “Oh, it’s just you seemed to understand.”

  “I do,” she said, “I’m a changeling after all and I didn’t always work for the Elite.”

  It took me a few moments to register her words.

  “You mean, you took children for the Faerie Court?”

  She nodded and started up the steps that led to the front door.

  “Wait just a second,” I said, following her. Catching up to her, I grabbed her arm, drawing her to a halt.

  “You’ve just admitted to abducting children for the Faerie Court, Victoria, that’s not something I can just overlook.”

  “I was young,” she said, “I didn’t fully understand the implications of my actions. And anyway, when I took them away it was to a better life.”

  “You stole them from their families,” I whispered furiously. “You have to know how wrong that was?”

  “I gave them the chance to live, Amber. If I hadn’t taken them, they would have starved, or died of exposure. What does it matter anyway, it happened long before you were ever born and I haven’t stolen a child for the Court since I bought my freedom.”

  Her words stunned me into silence and she shrugged free of my hold. “You know, at least I told you the truth. You keep secrets from me and lie to my face like I don’t really matter to you.”

  “That’s not true, I—“

  She shook her head. “We have a job to do, this is not the time nor place for this discussion.” And then she was gone, her long stride eating up the steps between her and the porch.

  I let her go, watching as she disappeared into the house and I couldn’t help but wonder, if I really knew her at all?

  15

  I followed the small gravel path that led around the house to the back garden. An iron gate stood between me and the crime scene beyond. The trolls hadn’t entered through the gate anyway. Like most fae, iron had a terrible affect on their bodies, burning them upon impact. The gate was too high for them to have jumped it, trolls were not the most agile of creatures and I doubted their gymnastic ability.

  No, they would have looked for an easier way in. Something that wouldn’t result in them impaled on an iron spike. Pushing the gate open, I stepped into the garden.

  Back here, the garden backed onto some open fields, the remaining stumps of trees that had been recently cut down dotted the landscape like the splintered bones of buried giants that split the surface of the earth.

  “It’s not pretty but the work it brings to the area is needed,” the Sheriff said from directly behind me. I’d heard him approach, his heavy gait a dead giveaway for his identity.

  “Excuse me?”

  “The trees,” he said, “I saw you looking at the stumps left behind. Ugly, but necessary.”

  I nodded and turned my attention back to the lawn.

  There was a dark stain in the centre of the garden, judging by the arm that lay next to it, I was guessing the puddle was blood that hadn’t yet fully soaked into the ground.

  “There are no witnesses?” I asked, moving closer to the scene, careful not to step in something that might later prove important. Crouching next to the dark stain, I pulled a pair if black crime scene gloves from my back pocket and slipped my hands into them.

  “Have forensics been through here yet?” I asked, noting the look of surprise on the Sheriff’s face.

  “We don’t have a dedicated forensics team out this far,” he said. “The coroner usually takes care of this type of thing.”

  I kept my thoughts to myself. It wasn’t my place to interfere but I knew no matter how good the coroner might be, they wouldn’t pick up on everything a dedicated forensics crew would. It just wasn’t the same.

  “We don’t usually get a lot of crime like this,” he said, as though that explained everything and in a way it did. “No matter how much the mayor lobbies for facilities for Fortune, the Governor just isn’t willing to send the funds our way.”

  I bit my tongue and studied the arm. It had been ripped from the torso at the shoulder, the edges ragged and sloppy, telling me that no blade had been responsible for the damage. It was at least consistent with the kind of damage a troll could inflict on its victim.

  From the corner of my eye, I caught sight of one of the deputies eyeing me speculatively. His gaze roaming over my as I was crouched over the arm. It made me uncomfortable, making me feel like I was some sort of specimen under a microscope to be studied. Just what had the Sheriff told them about Victoria and me?

  “It seems likely it was the same trolls,” I said, pushing up onto my feet, “although, without walking the scene, I can’t be sure.”

  “Isn’t there some magic mumbo-jumbo you could do to tell what created this mess?” The Deputy standing off to the side asked as he sauntered across the grass to where I stood wit
h the Sheriff.

  “Until the coroner gets here and goes over this place for evidence, I wouldn’t even attempt to try magic,” I said.

  “Why afraid of what might happen?” he asked, his tone openly hostile.

  “We’ve got more blood over here,” Victoria called from near the backdoor.

  Ignoring the Deputy, I stalked over to where she stood.

  “It’s human, arterial spray.” She glanced up at me. “It’s still warm...”

  “Shit,” I swore vehemently under my breath and scanned the area. “Do you think they’re still here?”

  “It seems possible,” she said, “the sun is just coming up and they don’t do so well in daylight, stands to reason they might try and take cover somewhere nearby...”

  Turning back to the Sheriff, I crossed the grass to where he stood having a heated argument with his Deputy.

  “Sheriff,” I said, not caring that I was interrupting them. “We’ve got a potential problem on our hands.”

  “What is it?” He turned, his expression utterly bland except for the two-spots of colour high on his cheeks letting me know just how upset he was.

  “The blood is still warm,” I said.

  “And?”

  “And, if these are trolls we’re dealing with they’ll have gone to ground somewhere near here to escape the sun.”

  “You think they’re still here?”

  I shrugged. “It’s entirely possible, have your men searched the entire property yet?”

  “They’re still checking things out,” he said, concern colouring his words. “If they can do this,” he said gesturing to the arm and the blood on the ground, how much danger are my men in?”

  I wanted to be honest with him but it would only create panic and right now we didn’t have time for panic. If the trolls were still here, then we needed to clear the humans off the scene so we could do a proper sweep of the area.

  “I need you to call all your men back,” I said, “I want everyone out front where we can do a headcount and we’ll go from there.”