A Toiling Darkness

by Jaliza Burwell

  After a few moments of an intense staring competition, he looked away, making me the victor. Kay laughed, clapping his hands excitedly. “Ah, Darkness, you still haven’t lost your touch.” Frey scowled, apparently not happy to be the butt of the joke. Kay chuckled again. “Enough, Frey. Not many can scare her, not anymore.”

  I laughed and shook my head. “No, not many can scare me, especially a slauve.”

  “Why are you really interested in the slauve?” Kay asked, trying to get us back on topic. I gave him a small sheepish smile. I almost forgot why I was here.

  “I told you, I’m just interested in who had the balls and juice to create a slauve.”

  Frey went to say something, but Kay lifted his hand as a warning. The look in his eyes told me he wasn’t fooled with my reasoning. If his lackeys weren’t around, he would try to force me to tell him everything. He was powerful enough to do it too, and it would end in only pain and misery for the both of us—if neither of us died.

  What was the new term humans used these days, frenemies? Yeah, me and Kay were frenemies. Sometimes we loved to hate each other and it made for good competition. Way back when, we were both real competitive asshats.

  Instead of trying to push the topic further, he said, “I wonder if Death is going to come. Having a slauve around is sure to attract him.”

  “Do you know who his master is?” I tried asking again, not wanting to go down that route either. I have no intention of ever talking to Death again. He was a pompous know-it-all.

  “No. This is the first I’m hearing about him. Seems my informants are starting to slack.” He glared at the shy loc who pressed himself into the chair and tried to disappear.

  “Kay, if there was a slauve around, we would know. Making one is no small feat.” Frey jumped in.

  “Enough, Frey. Darkness isn’t dumb, she knows a slauve when she sees one,” Kay snapped at him, his patience at a wits end. The temperature in the room increased with Kay’s anger. Frey closed his mouth into a thin line, and looked down at the ground, sweat forming on his forehead.

  Ah, Kay cared, he really cared. I mentally rolled my eyes. Kay’s only real concern was power, anything else was disposable. “Did you go see Seeker?”

  “I did. He went into a coma before I could finish talking to him.”

  He nodded and tapped his fingers thoughtfully against the table for a few seconds.

  “Since it’s you asking, I’ll point you to a very special woman. Not many know about her talents and I know you will continue to keep that number low.”

  I nodded, understanding the threat.

  “There is a seer you can go visit, living on the east side of the city. She likes to keep her life normal, but for some, she is willing to use her gift. I’ll send word to her. She’ll do it if I call. Don’t bother visiting until after the sun goes down, she’s a graduate student.”

  “You her pimp?”

  He smirked and shrugged. “Who knows?” He wrote down an address on a napkin and handed it to me.

  “If you speak of her to anyone else, I’ll know.”

  “Yes, sir,” I mockingly said with military flare.

  Chapter Seven:

  Not wasting any time, I headed to Kay’s precious seer’s home right after leaving his. The address Kay coughed up led me to a middle-high class area where all the street lights worked, and cop cars were passing by every fifteen minutes. Even the streets were clean, lacking the smell of old garbage and unwashed bodies. The neighborhood felt safe enough that women walked the streets alone, a jogger even passed by while listening to music and kids played in a small parking lot with a basketball net. The lot was well lit with more lights since the sun was down.

  I strolled by the kids and turned into an alley that cut through the block to the other side, where the seer lived. The alley was spotless too. Lights everywhere and not a single piece of trash on the ground. The area had some very garbage-conscious tenants. An old fire escape came down the side of the building and when I passed it, a hooded figure dropped down.

  The man grunted as he stayed kneeling on a leg, his hand holding his side.

  “How the hell did you find me?” I asked, recognizing the hunched figure as Kalen. I did not need this right now, not when I was only a block away from the seer’s home. I glanced to the end of the alley wishing he wasn’t here. Not right now. “Can’t I have a night without you ruining it?”

  “Darkness?” He stood up slowly, and the hood fell back to reveal a battered face. A breath escaped through my teeth, making a hissing noise. He looked horrible. His nose was broken, covering his lower face with blood. His left eye was swollen shut and a cut near his eyebrow was still bleeding. He looked like hell and from his slightly bent posture and rasping breath, hurt even more.

  “Hell hounds, what the hell?” I basically swore.

  “Hell hounds? Are those real?”

  “Yes, and if you see one, then you’re already dead,” I responded. I reached up and touched his cool face. Images flashed through my mind. “I see,” I mumbled, my blood boiling. Someone was going to die.

  “Huh?”

  “That damn necromancer. I told you they were bad news. You should have stayed away.”

  “It wasn’t his fault.”

  “If that were true, he wouldn’t have left you surrounded by more of them.”

  Kalen shook his head. “He was helping me. We got Tracy to a hotel and then we went to speak to some beings. On my way to see another necromancer, Tracy called Chris and he went to her. Apparently, without a necromancer, other necromancers are more inclined to redecorate your face,” he said and winced when something in him hurt.

  “No duh. And didn’t I warn you that necromancers are no good. Stay the hell away from them!”

  His eyebrows furrowed. “No, you never said anything.”

  “Well, I thought it and that is what really matters. For future reference, necromancers are bad news.”

  “Funny. They said the same thing about you.”

  “Heh.”

  His voice grew even more serious. “They know the woman I need to find. I know they do.”

  “Whatever.” As long as he wasn’t dead, I guess. Side note: Talk with Chris. I take my threats seriously and Kalen was hurt. “Do you even know where you are?”

  “No.” He looked around, completely dazed and confused. His pupils were dilated, the ring of brown nearly gone. The man was really pushing himself. He should be passed out somewhere. He really had no clue to how he got here. His body went into autopilot and went where it wanted to be most—in front of the being he wanted to kill the most.

  “The east end of the city, a place someone looking like you shouldn’t be. If you were spotted, you would have been locked up just on principal.” If his face wasn’t so eff’d up, I would think he was blushing—always so quick to be embarrassed.

  Kalen stayed silent and I grew impatient. I could just leave him here, in an area where he would only end up arrested in a matter of minutes. If only I could. The last place I needed him to be was in jail. It didn’t help he was appealing to my nicer instincts. I didn’t even know what to call these feelings.

  Motherly? Sisterly?

  Naw.

  I didn’t do any kind of relationship like that. Not since Eithna and looked where that ended.

  Empathy?

  I smiled, thinking about the word. El would finally be proud of me if I was empathizing with anyone. He would probably get a kick out it being with someone who wanted me dead.

  His unfocused eyes turned to mine and blinked a couple of times.

  “Who are you really? You have to be more than what you appear.”

  My heart skipped a beat and I couldn’t really figure out why. Why did the idea of this man figuring me out scare me? I could take him. I knew I could. And yet looking at him, I was…comfortable. I didn’t want to lose that. There weren’t even a handful of beings I could say I’m ‘comfortable’ being around. Which brought me to the bigger questio
n.

  Who here could possible know the version of me he was looking for? I haven’t been in that form for nearly two hundred years and I’ve only been in town for a few months. Lord Kay was the only one to know my real form and he was a little more face-to-face when it came down to revenge. Lord Kay would want to make sure his target was dead. He would want to feel their life force leave, revel in their blood, laugh at their fate. Not Kalen’s master. He was a schemer, hiding in the background pulling on strings.

  “I’ll figure you out, it’s only a matter of time.”

  I gave him a wicked smile. “Go for it. I know beings who have wasted their entire lives trying to figure me out. So is all this excess pain worth it? Did you find your child-killer?”

  He shook his head. “I’m close, Darkness. I know I can find him.” His teeth clenched. “I’m close. A being is behind that girl’s death. I know it. The necromancers I managed to talk to said there were other children missing too. But just like you, they are staying out of it. Why is that? I’m so close.”

  Why was he repeating that. Yeah, okay, he was close. I got that.

  Wait. Wasn’t that a sign of a concussion? Shit. He had a concussion, didn’t he?

  I sighed and answered at least one of his questions. “We are in a large city. People go missing all the time.”

  He shook his head. “But it’s the same as at the park! An older sibling taken, the younger one dead. And my gut is telling me it’s a being. I know I’m right on this.” His eyes unfocused once again. “I’m so close.”

  “No, you don’t know anything. You just want it to be one of us because you can’t accept a human killing a child.” I grabbed onto his arm and tugged him deeper into the shadows and out of sight of any potential onlookers. “I told you, stay alive. Just don’t get yourself killed. And look what happens in the same day. You’re nearly dead.”

  He yanked out of my grip. The movement almost gave him a personal meeting with the ground. He steadied himself. “I’ll be fine. I just need some sleep, and then I’ll be as good as new.”

  “So you can...what exactly? Charge off into the unknown again? Go get killed?”

  “Why do you care so much?” he asked, staring right at me again.

  “Like I said, you have information I want.”

  “Bullshit, there is something else.”

  He was right, but I wasn’t going to admit it. Kalen wasn’t human anymore, but he held on to his humanity with a stubborn fist and he wasn’t willing to let go. Being with him made me want to help him hold on to it.

  “It doesn’t matter. We both have our own agendas, let us just leave it at that. Do you want a place to rest?”

  He looked around briefly. “No, it’s fine. I’ll just find some place to bunk in.”

  “So that while you heal, someone can kill you? I don’t think so.” I grabbed onto him and he stilled, looking down at me with those depthless brown eyes. I blinked up at him and waited until he finally nodded, so I transported us to my apartment, using the shadows.

  When we landed, he stumbled a bit, almost bringing me down with him.

  “Sorry,” he mumbled.

  I steadied him as best as I could. It was awkward, him being around six feet tall and me a measly four and a half. I helped him gracelessly to the couch in my apartment. I shoved the couch into one of the corners of the room. The other corner held my twin-size bed. I would put him in the bed, but truthfully, it was my bed. And it was small, maybe less room than the couch. He flopped down and leaned back, his eyes closed.

  My apartment was small, really small with my living room and bedroom sharing the same space. The lack of material possessions gave the place the impression of being bigger. There was nothing here but a twin size bed, a small couch and one shelf filled with photography books. The books were the only hint into my life; it was the only part of me I allowed to exist. Each book was filled with photos taken from all over the world, ranging from nature to families to famine and war.

  They acted as a reminder about life, a reminder I always used when I started to fall apart. El suggested it and the collection grew. The older photos were paintings and drawings, but after technology advanced enough, my collection of photos started. Once in a while, I get a package from El with more to add. I have yet to figure out how he always knows where I am. I like to move around just as much as he does.

  Next to the stack was a small kit of medical supplies. Kay left it here the last time he dragged one of his buddies to my apartment to fix him up. Apparently my apartment was closer than his place from wherever they were.

  I grabbed it and stood in front of Kalen. His head was tilted back with an arm draping over his face. Bruising grew on his neck, revealing imprints of a rather large hand. I gently put my hand against the imprint to measure the size. He went up against a giant, not a necromancer. What magical human had hands that big? I gently grabbed his arm and lowered it so I could see the damage.

  We may be really hard to kill, even next to impossible for some of us, but we can still hurt, get infections, diseases, and colds. Though colds only amount to a couple of sneezes and then all done. Our chances of recovering from them ranged from seconds to only a matter of days, depending on the being and the extent of damage. And some exceptions can take years to heal, like fifty years. Or more. HIV and AIDS, psh, no problem. Gone in only a couple of weeks. I didn’t know how it worked for a slauve, if he could get infections or how quickly he healed, so I cleaned up his wounds. I was methodical and careful—hell, I even apologized when I accidentally bumped his nose while cleaning the cut near his eyebrow. His nose bled again so I shoved a cloth up it so he didn’t bleed all over. He didn’t heal nearly as fast as I did or he had a whole lot of internal damage if his nose was a faucet. We healed the worse wounds first.

  “I’m surprised,” he finally spoke, his voice nasally because of the cloth over his nose. It was already soaked with blood. I smiled. Nasally voices are always funny to listen to. Coming from him, even more so. He was a big guy after all.

  “Why?” I asked carefully, trying to focus on bandaging his cut rather than the heat his body radiated. He gave off a comfortable heat. My smile faded away as words from Mother Moon came to mind.

  Find someone, Nyx. Someone to keep you warm and be there when you need them the most. You’ll know when it’s them because they will be the ones to always come back for you. And when you do, don’t let them go. I let mine go and I regret it every day.

  Mother Moon was a wise woman. I met her when I was known as Nyx, Greek goddess of the night. Yeah, they turned me into a goddess at one point. We met in my pre-Akhlys days. I was okay back then, still believed in humans and kindness and all those sappy emotions. She grounded me, kept me sane. I just couldn’t believe in what she told me half the time. Finding someone meant for me just wasn’t possible. There was no one out there meant for me. No one.

  Kalen tried to shrug and stopped himself. Instead, he raised his free hand and grabbed one of my blonde curls, rubbing it between his thumb and index finger. My heart jumped a couple of beats in response to his tender touch.

  “What do you really look like?” he asked, his words slurring. His body was going into a coma-like sleep to allow everything to heal. In a few more moments he was going to be out like a light for at least a couple of hours.

  “You’ll probably never find out,” I replied. Not if I could prevent it.

  When I went to step away, his arm shot out and he grabbed mine too tightly. It was going to leave a bruise against my pale skin. I yanked, but he held on firmly. I glanced at him, wondering what he was thinking about. His eyes were closed, but he whispered, “Who are you, Darkness?”

  “No one,” I replied simply and managed to get loose. I moved him carefully until he was on his back, stretched out as best as I could get him. It was a small couch after all. His long legs had to dangle off the edge and his head leaned against the armrest on the other side. It would have to do. I took the afghan off of my bed, and covere
d him.

  Look at me, tucking a slauve into bed. Made me wonder what El would say. He would definitely smile, maybe even pat me on the back, and then reward me by sending me out to do his damn errands.

  I stared down at Kalen. He was a mystery to me. Even without the orders of his master, he was filled with justice. In right and wrong. Too bad he didn’t understand how bad I was—what I’ve done in my past.

  Chapter Eight:

  A loud thump roused me from my sleep. I glanced over to find Kalen gone from the couch. Not bothering to move, I closed my eyes, wishing for just another hour of sleep and knowing it just wasn’t meant to be. Yesterday kicked my ass and I still haven’t fully recharged. My fault, I guess. I should have just went to bed when Kalen passed out.

  A soft swearing brought my attention to the doorway.

  So noisy.

  Kalen stood there, trying to put on his jacket and wincing at the movements. He looked a little tired, tense around the edges, but better. Determination was carved in the frown of his face and in every movement he made. He was a man on a mission. Probably had plans to get into more trouble.

  Speaking of trouble, what has he been doing?

  Especially if he was getting his face pounded in to the extent of last night. I could only hope he didn’t make it a habit, otherwise I was going to have to murder me some bitches.

  I smiled a little. I never thought I would use that phrase. I overheard it last week when a teen wanted to get revenge on some ‘gals’ that beat the shit out of her friend. It was a good phrase.

  Early morning light peeked through the blinds of my window. After Kalen passed out last night, I wandered the city, only returning a couple of hours ago after finding nothing of interest out on the streets. Usually I only needed a couple hours of sleep. Not today though. Just one more hour would be nice, maybe two.

  Damn it all for being a light sleeper.

  When Kalen managed to get his jacket on, he slipped out the door, closing it softly behind him and leaving me alone in my small home. At least he was kind enough to put away the medical kit and fold the afghan, leaving it folded on the couch.