Embrace of Darkness

by Bilinda Sheehan

  The Sheriff wasted no time getting on the radio and barking out his orders. Sliding my gun from its holster, I headed for the house.

  “Where are you going?” The Sheriff called after me.

  “I’m going to make sure your men get out,” I said, pushing the sliding glass door open before I stepped into the kitchen.

  I could hear the Sheriff’s voice echoing somewhere deeper in the house and the muffled voice of one of the deputies as he responded.

  “Deputy,” I called out, waiting for his response as my voice bounced off the walls.

  “My name is Amber Morgan and I’m with the Elite,” I said, “I need you to say nothing but move as quickly as you can toward my voice.”

  The sun was already beginning to beam in through the kitchen windows and I proceeded to pull the blinds up, flooding the room with warm puddles of the warm yellow light.

  “It’s fine,” the disembodied voice of the deputy floated up to me from somewhere below my feet and I swore under my breath. “I’m just going to finish clearing the basement, I’m already down here and—“

  His voice cut off and my heart sank into my boots. Silence was never a good sign.

  Victoria was right outside the door and I gestured for her to follow me. She crept into the house, her steel-toe-capped boots never making a sound as she crossed the tile floor. Pausing in the hallway, I held my breath, straining to hear even the slightest noise. Something to tell me we were on the right path but there was nothing at all.

  Signalling with my hand, I headed out into the gloom of the hall and found a door beneath the stairs ajar. With a two handed grip on my gun, I swung around the doorway and aimed downwards into the dark.

  Cool damp air, swirled up the steps that sank into the floor, leading into the gloom below. The one paltry light bulb that swung above my head wasn’t enough to cast light down the stairs into the dark.

  “It’s not safe to go down there,” Victoria said. “The space is small and if we get caught...”

  It wasn’t like her to turn away from the possibility of a fight but in this case I could understand her reticence.

  “We have no choice,” I said muttered, “the deputy was down here and we can’t—“ A scream cut my words off before I could finish speaking.

  I started down into the dark, clicking on my flashlight. The light cut a beam through the dark as I swept it back and forth across the cellar’s contents.

  Another scream and the hairs on the back of my neck stood to attention.

  “Please, God,” scrabbling noises filtered up from the darkness. “No, please!” There was a deafening crunch and the voice was reduced to wet sobs that tore at my soul.

  Victoria’s hand on my arm halted my downward flight. “It’s too dangerous, Amber,” she said.

  Shrugging free of her hand, I glared back up at her. “We can’t leave him to be eaten alive by them.”

  I didn’t wait for her answer, diving down the steps as quickly as my legs would carry me. My booted feet hit a compacted dirt floor, the shock of the sudden end to my descent sending a shock up my spine.

  There was a wet gurgling noise and I followed it, using the beam of my flashlight to pick through the mouldy cardboard boxes stacked around the floor.

  The air next to my face shivered and I drove toward the ground, turning my body into a forward roll as a roar reverberated through the confined space. The troll’s fist smashed through the pillar, cracking the concrete as it sent a puff of dust into the air where my head was just seconds before.

  I brought the gun up and fired into the creature’s chest point blank as his emaciated form towered above me. He screamed again as the light hit his eyes and reflected off the surface making them glow with a brilliant white light.

  Scrambling back to my feet, I pressed my back against the wall, and crab walked sideways, keeping the flashlight’s beam directly in front of me as I step the light over and back across the room. As thin as he was, there was no doubt in my mind that if he got his hands on me I would suffer much the same fate as the owner of the arm in the garden.

  My foot hit something solid on the floor and I swung the beam around to find the deputy I’d been looking for sprawled out on the ground. His chest had been cracked open, the broken shards of his ribs glistened wetly in the light from my torch. His organs were spilled out onto the dirt floor around him as though something had taken a giant spoon and scooped his innards out. In a way something had, if the size of the trolls hands were anything to go by.

  “Goddamn it,” I muttered as the flashlight caught the dead staring eyes of the deputy in their beam.

  “Hungry...” The voice came out of the darkness, followed by a high-pitched keening sound that made me want to slap my hands over my ears to block it out.

  I jerked the flashlight beam up once more and scanned the boxes, catching the edge of something tall and dark that ducked behind a tall stack of boxes in the back corner.

  Taking a chance, I sucked in a deep breath. “Is there anyone else in here?” There was still one victim unaccounted for and I just couldn’t leave the basement without knowing all hope was lost. If I left and found out later that the other victim had been alive... I wasn’t sure I could live with the knowledge.

  Silence swept in around me and still I kept the flashlight beam moving, back and forth across the space.

  “Hungry....” the voice moaned again and this time it sounded closer. Jerking the light around, I caught sight of the troll as he tried to slink back out of sight. Where the torch light touched him, his skin turned dark grey and a scream tore from his lips.

  It seemed hunger had the ability to drive them to desperate measures.

  “Why are you doing this?” I called out into the darkness. “It isn’t like your kind. to randomly attack people in their gardens.”

  “Hungry...” The voice came again, the word like gravel in my head.

  “Tell me what’s happening and maybe I can help you,” I said, “but you need to talk to me.”

  “I’m so hungry,” it said again, making me think it was the only thing it knew how to express.

  There was a noise from the left corner of the cellar and I swept the beam across the wall, searching for something, anything that would tell me just where he was hiding. The thundering sound of footsteps pounding on the dirt floor alerted me to my mistake and I tried to swing the flashlight back in the direction the troll was coming from. But it was already too late.

  His body slammed into me, knocking me into the middle of the room. I lost my grip on the flashlight and it went skittering across the ground, the beam bouncing around dizzyingly until it came to rest pointing away from where I lay.

  The troll landed on me and even in the darkness I could see the crazed reflection of his eyes above me as his face dipped toward mine. The gun was gone, knocked from my hands the moment the troll had barrelled into me. My fingers closed around the knife on my belt and I ripped it free, driving the pointed tip up into the troll’s stomach. He roared, that sound blotting out everything else and when he stopped, there was still a ringing in my ears.

  Warm blood dripped down over my hands, making the leather grip on the knife slippery but I held on. The stomach wound wouldn’t kill him, wouldn’t even really slow him down. He raised himself up above me, preparing to bring his fists crashing down on my body in a crushing blow that would see me mashed into paste.

  Without wasting a second, I wriggled out from beneath him. My body ached but I pushed it aside, hopping to my feet, I swiped my knife at the hand that shot of the darkness to grab me once more . My angle was all wrong, and there wasn’t enough force behind my attack, the blade failing to even pierce his thick hide. I lunged out of reach, grabbing a tarp from the pile of boxes next to me. I faced the creature once more as he clumsily reached for me. I flung the tarp in his face, the momentary blindness giving me the only chance I was going to get. Diving toward him, I grabbed his flailing arm and swung myself onto his back.

  Com
e on Amber, it’s just like climbing a tree… Right?

  Trees were easier to climb, especially as they didn’t move and attempt to shake you loose as you climbed them. I dug my booted heels into his back, drawing another deafening roar from him.

  The troll lumbered to his feet and I grabbed the tarp, tightening it over his face. He stumbled backwards, slamming me into a pile of boxes, winding me and sending the boxes crashing to the ground around us. With a firm hold on the tarp, I shimmied up his back. Ignoring the ache in my spine, and the shake in my legs as I clung to him for dear life.

  There was only one way to successfully kill a troll, sever the spinal column where it entered the base of the skull.

  Definitely easier said than done.

  The troll shook himself, a deep shuddering movement that saw his loose skin slip and slide over his body as though it was only draped over his bones and not actually attached to anything. I held, clinging to him as he fought to shake me free.

  His hand came down over his shoulder, fingers curling into my hair as I pressed the tip of the blade to the soft spot at the base of his skull.

  He jerked his hand up, almost ripping my head clean off my neck as I rammed the sharp tip of my knife into his body. The skin parted beneath my blade like water and the grip on my hair went suddenly slack. The troll moaned, the sound rumbling through his body as he sank to his knees and dropped onto his face.

  Breathing hard, I propped myself up and pulled the knife free of his neck with a sucking pop that made me cringe. Climbing to my feet once more, I crossed the floor and scooped up my flashlight from where it had landed during our fight. Every inch of my body ached as I made my way for the steps once more.

  With my foot on the bottom step, I cast the light from the torch around the room one last time. Avoiding the deputy’s dead body on the opposite side of the room. Something tucked beneath the steps I was standing on caught the corner of my eye and I turned the full beam of light on the pile of rags.

  My breath caught in the back of my throat as I realised the pile of rags was in fact a bloodied and battered woman.

  “We need a medic down here,” I called up the stairs as I moved around the steps and crouched next to the woman.

  “We’re going to get you out of here and fixed up,” I said, doing a quick assessment of her injuries.

  She had her right hand buried in against her abdomen, holding an old cloth over the lower half of her body.

  “Can I have a look?” I asked, meeting her glazed gaze head on. She was going into shock, the trembling in her body a dead giveaway. Brushing my fingers against her cheek, I tried to get her to focus on me.

  I lifted her hand and in the half light I knew there was something not quite right about it but it took me a couple of seconds to realise just what was wrong.

  “Oh Christ,” I whispered.

  Four of her fingers were gone. Chewed, or ripped off, I couldn’t tell which in this light.

  The cloth across her stomach was soaked with blood and when I lifted it up, I my heart climbed into my mouth. The gaping wound in her stomach brought bile racing up the back of my throat. He’d tried to eat her alive...

  She moaned and tried to clutch the cloth back to her abdomen once more. I let her, applying pressure of my own.

  Was she even going to make it? The wounds I could see were bad... Fatal even. Who knew what else was wrong with her.

  “My... my...” she mumbled, her teeth chattering in her head as she tried to speak.

  “Don’t,” I said, “it’s all right. Help is on the way.”

  The sound of feet on the floor above our heads gave me hope.

  “My... my daughter...”

  “She’s safe,” I said, “she’s perfectly fine. You don’t need to worry. You’ll see her soon enough.”

  Her eyes rolled in her head showing only the whites as the EMT’s arrived.

  “Shit,” I said, hastily climbing out of the way. “She’s got an abdominal wound and she’s lost a lot of blood.”

  The woman nearest to me nodded. “We need light in here,” she said, and I scrambled backwards out of the way. Making my way to the stairs. There was nothing else I could do. The troll was dead but there was another one out there and I would hunt that one down too.

  “I don’t have a pulse...” The EMT’s barked orders at one another, working quickly to try and stabilise the victim.

  Although, how you could stabilse those kinds of wounds... I wasn’t sure. It would take some sort of miracle.

  “Amber,” Victoria’s voice cut through my thoughts as she appeared at my elbow. “We should go. They need to work on her.”

  “Where were you?” I turned on her, my gaze searching hers.

  “I told you,” she said calmly. “It was too dangerous. The space was far too confined, the risk too great.”

  “So what, we should have left the troll down here to eat them? Or what?”

  “I would have burned him out,” she said stiffly. “It was the least amount of risk. The officer down here was already dead.”

  “But you didn’t know that for sure,” I spat the words at her. “You didn’t know any of it for sure. You’d have let the monster eat that woman alive and it wouldn’t even have bothered you, now would it?”

  “I do what I think is best for the majority,” she said.

  “And to hell with everyone else, is that it?”

  “I’m not like you, Amber, you know this. I see things more rationally than you do. I know if I had come down here, I would have gotten injured. I’d be impaired to do my job and for what?” She lowered her voice and glared at me.

  “I thought you understood how important what we do here is,” I said, “we’re not the monsters, the choices we make have to be better than that.”

  “I’m not the monster here,” she said, quietly, turning her head away and stalking for the stairs.

  I went after her, following her out of the house and into the garden. From the corner of my eye I could see the coroner examining the arm in the garden.

  “And what is that supposed to mean?” I asked, catching up to her just inside the gate that led to the front of the house.

  “I saw it in your eyes,” she said flatly.

  “Saw what in my eyes?”

  “What you truly are,” she said, “I trusted you with who I was. I told you how dangerous it was for a changeling to get close to death. Yet in the cemetery when we were fighting Kalfu and you grabbed me, I saw my death in your eyes.”

  “I said I was sorry about that... I didn’t mean to, it’s just...”

  “I know,” she said, “your power is greater than you are. Bigger than you but it’s causing you to make mistakes, Amber, and I’m concerned that one of these days I’ll end up being one of those mistakes you make.”

  “I would never hurt you,” I said.

  “You wouldn’t mean to,” she said, “but I think and deep down I think you know it too, that you can’t always tell the difference between friend and foe when your power is up. It’s hungry, Amber, I can feel it rolling off you in waves. There’s something different about it since you beat Kalfu and if I’m honest...” she glanced down at the ground, “it frightens me.”

  I stared at her. She had never admitted to being afraid of anything in her life and the idea that she was afraid of me seemed so utterly ridiculous that I fought the urge to laugh out loud. But searching her face, I could see she was telling me the truth.

  “I have never had a real friend,” she said, “until you. Changelings don’t bond well with others, it’s in our nature to push those closest to us away.” She sighed and met my gaze head on. “I’ve also never been afraid of anyone or anything in my long life... until you. Two firsts for someone who has lived as long as I have is a little much.”

  “I’m sorry,” I said, the words woefully inadequate for what she had just told me.

  “You said that already.”

  “But I mean it...”

  “That might be true
,” she said, “humans can lie as well as any changeling. But I don’t think I can trust you, not after everything that has happened.”

  “So what, you want a different partner?”

  She shook her head. “Anyone else wouldn’t keep up with me the way you do. As reckless as you are, you are still the strongest Elite officer there is. But I need you to know that from now on, I won’t have your back every time we head into a fight.”

  I stared at her dumbfounded. “That goes against everything I’ve ever trained for. Having each other’s backs is why we partner up in the first place. We may as well go solo.”

  “If that is your wish, when we return to the Elite I will put in for a transfer.”

  “Victoria, I...” I didn’t know how to tell her how sorry I was. I hadn’t realised just how much my behaviour had affected her.

  “Ms Morgan, Ms, Tellon,” the Sheriff’s interruption gave Victoria the chance she needed to escape and she took it willingly. Slipping out through the gate before he could catch up to us both.

  “Where’s she going?” the Sheriff asked, more than a little out of breath from hurrying to reach me.

  “She’s got a phone call she needs to make,” I said, plastering a smile on my face.

  “What I can do for you?”

  “I appreciate you going in there,” he said his eyes sorrowful. “Keller was a good man.”

  I assumed he was referring to the deputy who had died and nodded.

  “I’m just sorry I couldn’t get to him on time.”

  The Sheriff nodded. “You did your best and that’s all that matters...”

  Digging my fingers into the palms of my hand, I said nothing, he didn’t know how untrue that was. If I had my power, if they weren’t so screwed up I could have saved him. I could have put a stop to the troll without ever having to confront him in a head on fight.

  “Anyway,” he said, “the coroner has found an anomaly and he’d very much like your input.”

  “What kind of anomaly?”

  “The kind you’re going to understand,” he said, “me, I don’t do the whole monster thing so when he starts talking about them, I tend to tune out until he’s done. Course, it gets right up Miguel’s nose but he knows it’s not my thing.”