Hearts of Darkness

by Kira Brady

  “We have to stop him!” Kayla shouted, but already she could see a thickening of the air above the stone basin.

  Rudrick reached over the girl’s prone form and sliced the inside of her right thigh. She cried out. Lucia was alive! Kayla swallowed her choked sob. The rise and fall of Lucia’s chest was shallow and uneven. She was weak with blood loss. They had interrupted the human sacrifice part of the ritual.

  Rudrick still hadn’t noticed them. He raised the necklace-knife again and flicked blood at the condensing air. The blood hit it and was absorbed. A shimmering curtain of Aether drew up from the blood-slicked stone, like a sheet of bubble liquid drawn from a vat of soapy water. Swirls of light danced over it. Who knew the Gate would be so beautiful? Kayla had imagined something gruesome, a rotting shroud holding back the Dead. The Gate spread up and out, stretching to the shaking ceiling and crumbling walls. Falling rocks encountered its glittering edge and were sliced in two.

  She didn’t need her gifted sight to see the terror that lurked behind that filmy screen. The translucent curtain bulged as claws and tentacles pressed on it. Dead faces leered at her. Dead hands scratched, trying to dig their way to freedom.

  Was Desi one of them? Was her sister there, just out of reach, or was her soul free to pass into the land beyond?

  The altar stood between them and the Gate. She pointed to Lucia and yelled—over the roar of the earthquake—in Hart’s ear. “We have to rescue her.”

  He shook his head and yelled back, something that sounded like “Too late.”

  Kayla refused to take no for an answer. She struggled against his embrace, trying to break free like those damned souls. He set his jaw—hesitant to leave Kayla unprotected—but she gave him a push.

  Relenting, he dodged out and sprinted across the open floor. The Gate was so thick that Rudrick—trapped on the other side—was obscured. Hart snapped the chains that held Lucia to the altar, lifted her carefully, and shielded her with his body. He dodged falling debris to return to their alcove, and laid Lucia gently on the ground with her head cushioned in Kayla’s lap. Sweat beaded on his brow with the effort to hold back his Wolf around so much blood. He crouched, blocking them from the Gate with his body.

  Kayla quickly checked Lucia’s vitals. Her skin was white and clammy. Her lips were almost blue. Deep black gashes marred each wrist. The blood flowed down her limp hands and stained the virgin white of her gown. She whimpered. Shadows flickered behind her closed eyelids. Her hands and feet were icy as her body pulled blood away from the extremities to power her weakly beating heart.

  “I need something to staunch it,” Kayla yelled over the rumble.

  Hart pulled something from her hair and shoulders. “Use this.” It was the spider silk. The thick webs clung to her fingers as she took the handful from him. Strong, stretchy and absorbent, it was nature’s perfect gauze.

  “But what about the magic? The sleepiness? Is it safe?”

  “It’ll ease her pain.”

  Kayla didn’t have anything to clean the wound. She twisted the spider silk together in a long rope and wrapped it around the girl’s wrists. It took five wraps before the blood stopped soaking through. She used every piece she had, pulling it off Hart’s back and shoulders as well as her own.

  “I’ll get more.” Hart stood and, keeping to the walls, crept back to the mouth of the tunnel where they had entered the underground cavern.

  Kayla thought he left partly to give Lucia some privacy. She swallowed and reached down to part the robe again.

  “No!” Lucia muttered. Her head thrashed back and forth. Her hands clenched weakly at her sides.

  “You’re safe. You’re safe. No one is going to hurt you anymore. It’s me, Kayla. I’m a nurse. Please let me help you.” Kayla repeated calming words, reiterating that Lucia was safe even as the Gate bulged outward twenty feet away. There were worse things than death, she thought. Worse monsters than the ghosts that haunted the living.

  Carefully, she pulled back the blood-soaked robe, hoping desperately that Rudrick hadn’t completed the Sacred Marriage part of the ritual. The flecks of blood and semen between the poor girl’s legs crushed that hope. Rudrick had cut the femoral arteries in each thigh. Kayla pressed the robe against the freely bleeding gashes and held them tightly while she waited for Hart to return. She murmured soothing words. Lucia was losing far too much blood. Even if the spider silk succeeded in staunching the bleeding, the injuries to Lucia’s fragile spirit might still kill her. Sometimes, even if the body was whole, a soul gave up interest in living. She’d seen it in the ER.

  Kayla closed her eyes and shut out the noise from the earthquake. She banished her fear of the opening Gate. Behind her eyelids the world sparkled with a million threads of gold. Either they were stronger in this place of old magic, or she had shed the last of her self-made blinders and embraced the power that surrounded her.

  The sparkling light of Lucia’s soul pulsed dimly. It was no longer whole. Cracks rent the ethereal substance, as if claws had torn it apart. The pieces beat with great effort, slowly, erratically, as the body fought to pump too little blood.

  The gashes on her wrists and thighs were black in Kayla’s gifted sight, as if some malevolent substance had taken residence in her wounds and now sought to penetrate the body. Viscous, like molasses, it crept up Lucia’s arms. The soul-light fragments cringed away from it. Kayla tried not to shake in horror. She didn’t want Lucia to sense that anything was amiss. The poor girl needed every scrap of hope she had left.

  Chapter 22

  Nose full of the scent of blood, Hart stumbled at the entrance to the narrow tunnel. He hung on to his human self by a single claw, knowing if the beast took over they were all lost. How could one small body hold so much blood? He had known what to expect. He knew the ceremony of the old Babylonian kings to restore the Gate involved sacrificing a ram and a ritual mating of the goddess Ishtar and the king, but seeing it was something else. He’d thought he was immune to violence. He’d been wrong. Seeing that poor girl strapped down with her virgin blood staining her pale white thighs made the bile erupt from his gut and tore at his not-so-sensitive self-control. How could Rudrick justify it? How could the Lady allow it to happen?

  The Wolf usually rose at blood, wanting to dive into the fresh kill himself, but not this time. This time the Wolf wanted to hunt the bastard who had ravaged the poor pup and strip his skin from his muscle slice by slice.

  Hart felt blind without his sense of smell to guide him. The ground rolled beneath his feet. Steadying himself against the tunnel wall, he ran through the dark passage toward the Spider. The Wolf whined. It knew they’d been lucky to make it through her webs the first time. Would the earthquake be enough to distract the Spider a second time?

  He passed through the doorway into the Totem Hall and arrived at the beginning of the webbed walls. The spider silk was strong enough to keep the walls from crumbling. It dampened the roar of the earthquake. The air whistled and moaned through the dark webs like the cries of the dead.

  No, it was only his imagination. He couldn’t get the sight of the bulging Gate out of his head. He bent to tear spider silk off a rock. Years of webbing had accumulated into great tufts that whispered seductively to him.

  Sleep, it said. Rest a moment.

  He fought it off and gathered until he couldn’t carry any more. He prayed to the Lady that the Spider wouldn’t feel his vibrations wherever she hid in her secret lair. She had predicted the Crane would usher in a terrifying new future, but holy shit. She should have been clearer, because Corbette and his cronies had been way off. Where had they gotten the bright idea that the girl would be a spiritual leader of her people? That was true only if you counted leading a shit-ton of spirits through the Gate into the living world.

  The wailing grew in volume. Hart stood up and peered through the dimness. He thought he saw shadows flailing past the veils of web. A moment later, the tip of a sword sliced through the sticky strands. A magic blade, he reali
zed. The bearer came next, his black greatcoat covered in a white film, purple eyes blazing in the dim light of the cave. The Raven Lord cut a swath through the tangled webs with the sword he had removed from his silver-knobbed cane.

  Hart closed his eyes and could see the Aether swirling around the cane and its master, severing the matter that crossed its path. He had to moisten his parched lips before he could get the words out. “Lucia. Help.”

  Corbette didn’t seem to notice the ground rolling beneath his feet. The air sizzled with his anger. The Wolf inside Hart cringed.

  “Lead the way,” Corbette demanded. He didn’t raise his voice, but it rolled on the Aether directly into Hart’s ear.

  A handful of Corbette’s men climbed through the webs behind him. A moment later a burst of fire incinerated a large hole through the spider veils, and Norgard stepped through. Unlike the others, no silk stuck to his skin or clothes. His blond hair was perfectly coiffed. He smiled toothily. “Where is that bastard Fox? I’m going to tear out his entrails and feed them to him.”

  Hart turned and led the way back through the crumbling tunnels. Lady, please let them not be too late.

  He knew in his gut that they already were.

  The Spider attacked before the small troop was safely through her lair. Her swollen abdomen blocked half the tunnel, and her spindly, razor-sharp legs were each taller than a man. Serrated and dripping with venom, her pincers were the stuff of nightmares.

  Hart ran, Corbette at his heels, as screams filled the silken tomb. He had a brief glimpse of rock falling in front of Corbette’s men, blocking them off from following, and of Norgard partially Turning to fend off the Spider’s poisoned jaws.

  Hart realized he had expected the Raven Lord to fix it. All that power had to be good for something. Alpha, his Wolf whined. Protection. Safety. But even a half-mad Wolf could tell Corbette was off his game in a big way. It was a shock; he didn’t much like Corbette, but he’d counted on the Kivati leader to be a rock.

  Hart hoped Kayla pulled another surprise out of her sleeve, because he was all out of tricks. He wasn’t going down without a fight.

  Helpless was not a word familiar to Emory Corbette, but it summed up the sour feeling churning his gut. He could do nothing for his men, trapped on the other side of the Spider’s lair. Norgard could take care of himself.

  Aether poured through the tunnel, a Sparkling Path guiding Corbette’s footsteps to the other world. His anger shot out in short bursts, frying the spider silk that brushed against him. Deep inside, ice encased his heart. A frozen cube of sorrow and pain, trapped forever in a cage of guilt.

  His deepest fears had been realized. All his plans, his ambition to bring his people into a new Gilded Age, were for naught. Even his slug of a father hadn’t screwed up this royally. The Gate crashing down around his ears. The souls of the damned free to walk the earth on his watch. His fiancée slaughtered under his very nose.

  If only he had paid closer attention to dissent and whispers of broken protocol. If only he had taken decisive action to halt the digging of this tunnel into the forgotten lair of the Spider Woman. If only he had come here first instead of tearing off after a white rabbit down a false rabbit hole. If only . . .

  He burst through the narrow arch into the Sacred Cave. A wave of sulfur and twisted rage engulfed him. The Gate had solidified and thinned, so that only a faint smear of Aether separated the two worlds. A storm of unholy spirits brewed on the far side, pushing and clawing and battering against the Aether to break free. Their wrath had already passed through. It thickened the air of the cave with malevolence and hate. Demons—their solid black shadows distinguishable from the iridescent wraiths—waited with weapons ready. Scorpion men, storm demons, manticore, harpy, and the rest of Kingu’s banished horde.

  Behind them, Kingu himself rose up. Twice as big as any dragon and thrice as twisted. Steam curdled from between his steely jaws. Hellfire burned in his eye sockets.

  Corbette turned away. He let the heavy mantle of the Raven Lord slip from his weary shoulders and fall, tattered and soiled, to the quaking ground. All that was left was a heartbroken man to follow the trail of blood.

  He found her in an alcove in the cave wall.

  Oh, Lucia! The world faded. The light narrowed. His eyes only saw the poor mangled form of the girl who might have been his future. Her blond hair flowed like a river of gold over the crumbled earth. Her skin was pale as alabaster, her white gown smeared with blood. She lay unmoving on her back, her bandaged hands crossed over her bosom.

  A cry broke from his constricted throat. A terrible sound saturated with a lifetime worth of grief and regret. He fell to his knees by her side. Lights flashed in the corners of his vision. He saw only her still form and knew that he had failed.

  “Get him off her!” Kayla shouted to Hart. The Raven Lord was like a man possessed, his mind encased in dense spider silk, unreachable. She needed him to release her patient.

  Hart pulled him back. Corbette’s eyes were points of violet fire. She was afraid to touch him in case he turned that dangerous gaze in her direction. She gathered the webbing Hart had collected and dressed Lucia’s remaining wounds. The blood was staunching nicely. The girl wouldn’t bleed out. Unfortunately, her spiritual wounds weren’t so easily patched up.

  “Use him,” Hart yelled, jerking his thumb at Corbette. “He can manipulate the Aether.”

  “What?” She wrinkled her nose.

  “The Aether is connected to the sparkling light of her soul.”

  Kayla took a deep breath. She tried to sift through the snippets she had heard over the last few days about Aether and souls, but it was so convoluted. She didn’t have time to study the problem or find answers to her questions. She had to rely on instinct to show her the way. But what if something went wrong? What if she made the problem worse? She wasn’t trained in paranormal healing. She hadn’t even believed in the supernatural until a few days ago. Doubt made her hands shake until she stuck them under her armpits and clamped down.

  Hart gave her a crooked smile. He believed in her. She’d managed to earn his trust and his admiration. She’d helped him during the moon madness. Could she do the same with Lucia? She didn’t have a strong emotional tie to Lucia, except perhaps guilt that she hadn’t been able to stop what had happened in time. But Corbette did.

  “Rouse him,” she yelled.

  Hart picked up the thin silver-knobbed sword and smacked the flat end across Corbette’s shoulder blades. Corbette released the air in his lungs with a whoosh.

  “Wanted to do that for a long time,” Hart said. He lifted the sword to do it again, but Corbette raised his hand and clenched it into a fist. A wave of sparkling air rushed out of nothing to surround the sword and snatch it from Hart. The sword floated down to Corbette’s now upturned fist.

  “Enough,” the Raven Lord snarled.

  “Lucia needs your help,” Kayla said. “Physically, she’ll live. But inside she’s a mess. I need you to concentrate on your feelings for her. Affection, respect, love. Anything positive. Picture her in your mind at her healthiest and happiest. Focus on who she is, on her best qualities, on her essence of self. Can you do that?”

  Corbette nodded roughly. A vein throbbed at his temple.

  Kayla pulled down the top of Lucia’s gown, careful not to expose her breasts. Corbette growled, but she ignored him. She picked up his hands and placed them on Lucia’s pale chest above her heart. Corbette broke out in a fine sweat.

  “You too, Hart,” Kayla ordered. “Put your arms around me. Envision yourself sharing your strength with me.”

  With Hart’s strength at her back, she put her hands over Corbette’s and closed her eyes. Immediately, light blinded her. Her first impression was prisms floating in the air, casting rainbows on everything they touched. The light was fluid. It spread across the universe in an infinitely more brilliant Milky Way. She understood, in a flash of clarity, that this was the Aether. It was the fabric of the universe, weaving thr
ough everything: the molecules of air and earth, light and sound, gravity and force. It was matter. It was energy. It pulsed to the beat of a phantom heart, ticking through the very fabric of time.

  Was this the way Corbette saw the Aether? A sense of wonder stole her breath away. She wanted to let her consciousness drift into the sparkling light, to lose herself in its warm embrace. She wanted to let the rainbows cocoon her, to be rocked to sleep to the sound of the heaven’s heartbeat.

  The rainbows thinned near the Gate, revealing a darkness that lurked behind. The clustering stars shied away from it. She had to heal Lucia before that darkness broke through. If she could pour enough Aether into her, it would overwhelm the shadows. Beneath her hands she felt the Aether gather. It felt like a fizzing liquid, bathing her arms to the elbows. She imagined herself pulling at that liquid and pouring it down through her fingers, through Corbette’s hands and into the chest of her patient. A waterfall of shimmering light to buoy Lucia’s own broken soul.

  A tingling sensation began where Hart’s hands wrapped around her forearms and flowed down her bones. Corbette chanted under his breath. She breathed deeply, letting the Aether fill her lungs. As she exhaled, she pushed. The sparkling water emptied into Lucia’s body in a flash of heat like a supernatural defibrillator. Lucia’s chest jerked up off the ground. Her eyelids flew open, so wide the whites showed. She opened her mouth in a silent scream. A wave of light poured from her lips. She gasped. Coughed. Breathed.

  “We did it,” Kayla said. The shadows inside the poor girl’s body had fled.

  Corbette scooped Lucia up in his trembling arms. He buried his head in her soft golden hair. “Oh, Lady,” he mumbled. “I thought I’d lost you.”

  Exhausted, Kayla sat back into the circle of Hart’s arms. She felt safe there, even if the ground still shook beneath her and the Gate stretched to breaking a few feet away.

  “You did good,” Hart whispered in her ear. “Real good.”