Dark Redemption

by Angie Sandro

  “Yeah, man. We have common ground. Neither of us is ready to die today. I can put up with his smug attitude a little longer.” Energy flows in a wave across my arms, setting the hairs on end, and I straighten. I press my fingertips against the door and then bring my hand back with a gasp. “Do you feel it?”

  “Magic,” Ferdinand says, drawing in a deep breath. “Let the taste flow over your lips. Drink it in.”

  “You sound like a drunk savoring a glass of the finest whisky.”

  His eyes gleam. “No matter how much you drink, you always crave more.”

  Can’t say I agree with him. Magic grows thicker. My gums ache and a bitter twinge hits my tongue. Squiggly lines flow in front of my eye, and I close it. Ferdinand’s warm hand settles on my shoulder again, and I stagger beneath the weight, unable to remain standing against the pressure building in the air.

  “What’s happening?”

  “Stay grounded. Focus on the here and now. Don’t let it drag you in.”

  It’s not affecting my body. At first I thought so, but it’s more internal. Not physical but spiritual. My body fights to hold itself together, struggling against the overwhelming force tugging on my soul. I clench my teeth and grab onto Ferdinand’s arm. He’s solid and real.

  “Hold on, Landry. Just a little longer.”

  A piercing scream comes from within the room. Mala…Her voice stabs my eardrums, and I lurch upright. The sound echoes in my head, pulsing with the rapid beats of my heart. I grab the doorknob, twisting it, and when it doesn’t open, I throw my shoulder against it. Once, twice, the third time it breaks. I fall into the room. Ferdinand grabs for me, trying to hold me back, but I shove him aside. My mind is completely on the mother of my child and the need to kill anything that’s causing her to scream like that.

  A multitude of candles circle the hospital bed. Shadows dance in the flickering light, their flames painting the walls. Monstrous shapes…I can’t even describe the nebulous forms. Dark magic thickens the air. The stench, like a mix of curdled milk and rotten eggs, burns my eye. I tear my watery gaze from the walls to search the room for Mala. A shudder wracks my body when I see her. She’s kneeling on the bed, naked, with Dena between her legs. Her tangled hair wraps around her waist, writhing around her back with the energy flowing through the room like living snakes.

  Magnolia stands beside the bed. Only it’s not her. She appears the same as she did the night she ran our truck off the road. A top hat sits on her silver hair. Smoke rises from the cigarette in her mouth. Her eyes imitate the candles in the room, glowing with an otherworldly yellow light. In one hand, she holds her cane and waves it over Mala’s body. With the other, she sprinkles a fine black powder over Mala’s upturned face. It drifts over her forehead, sticking to the sweat coating her skin. A deep-throated howl rips from Mala’s throat. Her arms fly outward, and her eyes roll back as her hips rock, shaking Dena with each convulsion.

  “Stop!” I stagger forward. Ferdinand grabs for me again, but I wheel around. My punch lands beneath his high cheekbone. He falls backward, and his head slams into the doorframe. He catches himself before his legs slide out from under him.

  A body darkens the doorway. I meet Pepper’s shocked gaze but rip free. I dimly hear her screaming and Ferdinand’s answer behind me as I sprint across the room.

  Sophia steps from a corner to block my path. She doesn’t stop chanting, despite the fear widening her eyes. She’s silently screaming at me. I can’t hear her, but I sense it. I must stop this. Whatever’s happening, it’s wrong. A corruption. Evil.

  “Help me, Sophia. Please.”

  She closes her eyes. Her voice rises. Each sound from her lips sets off a cascade of colors—a visual fireworks display erupts in my head. My equilibrium’s shot, and my stomach rolls at the sensation of freefalling. With my depth perception skewed, I stagger toward the bed, unable to judge the distance.

  Desperate, I reach for the creature watching silently from behind my eye, but it slithers out of my grasp, hiding. It hisses, “This is not the time. It’s too soon. Fight, host.”

  The energy filling the room pulses, pushing me backward with every step. I shove through it, like I’m breaching a force field. My nerve endings burn until soon my whole body feels raw, like it’s on fire.

  Magnolia rubs a paste onto Mala’s belly in a clockwise circle. Something other than raising Dena’s going on. What is she doing to the baby?

  “No!” I grab for her arm. My fingers sting before they make contact with her skin. It’s like the energy shield originates from her. The darkness licks my fingers, hungry. The false overlay twists, and I stare into a double set of eyes—Magnolia, and always underneath her skin, the man in a top hat and long coat.

  Fucker sees me staring and throws back his head and laughs. “You’re too late,” he whispers in a voice deeper than a sound boiling up from the darkest pit of hell. “It’s done.”

  “What’s done?” I ask hoarsely. “What did you do?”

  Mala collapses on the blanket. She stares up at the ceiling—nothing moves in the dark depths of her eyes. She doesn’t breathe. Then her lashes flicker and her chest rises. I cup her face with shaking hands. Her skin is ice cold. I lean forward to press my ear against her lips. A hand moves in from my blind side. I don’t see it, but the heat from Magnolia’s palm burns into my forehead. Everything goes dark, like I lost vision in my good eye. But it feels different.

  I’m no longer in the hospital room.

  “Where…” The word echoes, bouncing off invisible walls. I shiver from the damp chill in the air and wrap my arms around my naked chest.

  A slither of scales comes from my bare feet, and I dance back. A long, sinuous body of a snake twines around my ankles, and I shudder. “Where are we? How did I get here?”

  The snake’s muscles constrict, tightening its grip on me as it winds higher up my torso. I tense in preparation, jaw already loosening, but instead of shoving itself down my throat, the head rests on my shoulder. Its tongue flickers against my earlobe as it hisses, “The trap is set. Now we need the bait. Find Mala LaCroix, the last descendant of my line.”

  “What? Oh, hell no!” I cringe when the shout bounces back. I cover my ears, but even when I whisper, it sounds loud. “Don’t even think about using her for whatever you’ve got planned.”

  “As you wish. Leave her trapped in the void. It matters little to me.”

  “Liar.” Don’t let it trick you. My first priority is finding Mala. I’ll deal with the weirdness of that proclamation later. “Is she here in this place?”

  The head wraps around my neck like a shawl. “You recognize it, don’t you? The place you fell into after you passed over to the other side. Some call it purgatory. I think of it as jail.”

  “You were in jail?” Sympathy fills me. Nothing good comes from being imprisoned. Hell, I died while on lockdown. No wonder it didn’t want to come back.

  “I am the jailer.”

  Oh…Still, this place should be condemned as being inhumane, not that the creature perched on my shoulder’s human.

  I shove aside my confusion when it chuckles, asking, “What does the responsible jailer do when his prisoner escapes?”

  A yell echoes through the cave and distracts me from the question before I can shove my foot deeper in my mouth. It doesn’t sound like a cry of pain. Oh, damn. Someone pissed off my girl. Her voice grows louder and louder. Soon it’s so loud that I have to crouch down and cover my ears until it stops. Then I’m up and running in the direction I think it came from. The snake tightens around my chest, making it difficult to breathe.

  I use a burst of air to yell, “Mala, where are you?”

  “Landry?” Her shaky voice comes from the right.

  Luckily I have my hands outstretched or I would’ve slammed face-first into the wall. I pat the weeping stone. “There’s no entrance.”

  “Farther down,” the demon/angel directs, hissing the words.

  I slide my hand across the wall un
til I find the entrance to the tunnel and go through. Pain flares on the back of my head, and I fall forward. The snake drops from my neck, and I hear it slithering away. I touch the lump at the base of my skull. A whisper of sound jerks my hand down. I try to block the strike, but I can’t see it. I can only hear the snap in the air. Feel the pain of a foot jamming into my stomach. When I double over, a knee smashes into my face. I collapse and curl into a ball, trying to breathe, but all the air shot from my lungs when the foot smashed into my solar plexus. My nose begins to swell.

  A hand fists in my hair, yanking my head back. Rank breath blows into my face. “Welcome to my party, prick,” Redford Delahoussaye says, then presses a wet, lip-smacking kiss on my forehead.

  Shit! This must mean we’re in Dena’s head or the limbo she’s trapped in. His foot repeatedly stomping on my gut keeps me from pondering too long. I wrap my arms around his leg and twist. I hear his knee pop. He screams as he falls. I roll on top of him and then straddle his chest. I’m glad it’s too dark to see his ugly face, ’cause, yeah, plug-ugly. I grip his hair with my left hand and aim my punches for where I estimate his face to be. I count my punches at first. By twenty, my arm aches and his whimpers have stopped. The snake’s back, perched in its spot on my shoulder. I didn’t even feel it return.

  “Mala, Red’s down. Come out. You’re safe.”

  “I can’t let go of Dena. She’s trying to get away.”

  “Where? I can’t see.”

  Mala whimpers. “It’s too bright.”

  “What is she talking about?” I ask.

  “Magnolia cracked open the door to the other side, and Mala stands at the entranceway. If she gets too close she may be pulled in. Get her.”

  I don’t know what he expects me to do when I can’t even see this light Mala speaks of or figure out where in blue blazes she is. This place is like an underground maze, full of twists and turns. What a fucking mess.

  “Tell me what to do?”

  “We need a trade. A life for a life.”

  Red! I trade him for Dena. Simple as that. But that means getting him into the mouth of the vortex. I rub my hand across my chest, remembering the burning pain of the tentacles that latched on and tried to drag me into the vortex when I died. “Mala, hold on.”

  I feel on the ground until I touch Red’s arm and grab it. He’s heavy. But the slickness of the floor makes it easy to drag him. I follow Mala’s whimpers. Down around the corner, I sense her before I see her. Her spirit calls out to a primal part of me. My heart hammers, and a black fear rises within when I see the shining silver and blue vortex lighting up the room. I squint against the brightness.

  Tentacles stretch from the maw of the “door” and are wrapped around Dena’s waist, the same way it grabbed me when I died. And like she held me, Mala grips her cousin with both hands. They’re both on the ground and sliding inch by inch toward the opening.

  I lift Red beneath his arms and drag him forward. Mala sees me and cries, “What are you doing? Get away from there.”

  A tentacle whips in my direction, and I duck. If they latch onto me, I’ll be dragged in. Red stirs in my arms, and I lift him higher. He comes to, flailing his arms and screeching like a mad person. Which maybe he is, and was, even before getting trapped in limbo. I drop him. He staggers upright, swinging his fist. I dodge the punch and maneuver myself until he stands between me and the vortex. He throws another wild punch, too out of it to aim. I come up under his guard with an uppercut to his gut. He hunches in on himself, and I take a few steps back and then level a kick to the middle of his chest. He staggers away.

  A tentacle whips out and circles his chest, and he shrieks. I scramble beneath another snapping tentacle and do a commando-style run that turns into a slide across the slippery stone over to Mala. She’s struggling to hold on to Dena’s hands. I wish I had a knife, something to cut her loose. But I don’t.

  “What do you need to do to free her?” I ask, grabbing Mala around the waist. I heave backward, pulling her and Dena back a couple of inches. “What’s wrong with Dee?”

  “She passed out.” The panic in my love’s voice hits me down low. “I don’t know what to do. I can’t think. Why isn’t Magnolia helping me?”

  “She has her own agenda. I’m not sure this was a good idea.”

  “You tell me this now?” she says and sobs.

  Yeah, bad timing. I focus on holding them steady. We’re not making progress breaking free, but we’re also not moving forward. Red lets out a scream that raises goose bumps along my arms and sends a shiver down my spine and curls my toes with remembered pain. Those damn tentacles burn. Like fire ants crawling across your body, biting as they go.

  Lainey suddenly appears. My sis. She’s even more skeletal than the last time I saw her. She’d been fighting to put up a barrier between the demon and my mind for months. Keeping me sane for as long as possible. Her hand pulls at her tangled black hair, and she turns in a circle like a dog chasing its tail. “Why are you here, Landry? Why?”

  A hiss comes from my shoulder. I’d forgotten him. “Get her away from me.”

  “No.” She grabs the demon by the tail and yanks. His body tightens around my throat, cutting off my air. My hands slip from around Mala, and the pull on my body threatens to break my neck. Mala screams, sliding away from me. I lunge for her ankles, grabbing on. Stars swirl in front of my eye as I suck in tiny gasps of air. “Lainey, no!”

  I think—really think—I’ve lost my fucking mind. Part of me wants to stop her and tell her it’s not a bad guy. That it’s been helping me. But that’s the crazy part. Why would I want this thing inside me? Especially when I have a chance to send it back where it came from.

  “You still need me.”

  “So says you,” I gasp out.

  “Don’t believe it. It’s the father of lies, Landry,” Lainey says, whimpering in frustration. She can’t pry it free without my consent. And I can’t say yes. What if it’s telling the truth? The coils release enough for me to speak. “Back off, Lainey. Please.”

  She stumbles back, realizing I’ve made my decision. The serpent nudges my mouth. I pause a moment, then unlatch my jaw. Mala’s too wrapped up in Dena to pay attention to what I’m doing, which is just as well since she’d probably freak out as much as my sister does.

  No matter how much I want to be free, I can’t be. If there is a murdering prisoner out there and the only way to stop it is through its jailer, then I need to keep him around. Of course, even if it’s good, it doesn’t mean it won’t suck me dry in the end. ’Cause now that I’m here, I feel it using me up. I’ll be the sacrifice if I have to. Maybe that will redeem all of my bad choices. Let me move on and not be trapped in this sort of purgatory like Red.

  Lainey whimpers again. Her fingers claw at her face and then her hair. Her voice comes out low and full of sorrow. “I’m tired…”

  Mala’s shaking in my arms. She’s holding on to Dena by her fingertips. Dena looks unconscious. Red is almost entirely covered by black ooze, but he’s not being drawn into the vortex. Something still ties him here.

  Mala closes her eyes. “It’s really up to me.” She leans forward until her forehead touches her cousin’s hands. The blue light in the room condenses, separating into two smoldering balls. One zips over to float above Dena’s body. The other drifts closer to the vortex. “Combine.”

  Dena’s wrapped from head to toe in the silvery blue aura. It’s so beautiful, yet darkness also spots it. I don’t know what this means.

  “Landry, get her out of here,” Lainey says, then turns.

  I figure out what she’s about to do too late. There’s no time to yell for her to stop or tell her good-bye. She runs for Red and launches herself at him. Her arms wrap around his neck, and her weight sends him flying backward. The vortex pulses, expanding to accommodate them, then collapses in on itself. And they’re gone.

  Chapter 23

  Mala

  Conflicted

  My eyes crack open,
and I squint against the overhead light. White spots flash across my blurry vision. My head’s fuzzy, and my mouth tastes like a toad died and dried out on my tongue. It takes a few seconds to process the fact that, for some reason, I’m lying on an examination table with my feet in stirrups. A cold draft blows across my stomach, and I shiver. Great. I’m wearing a paper shirt, and it opens to the front.

  What I can’t figure out due to my current scatterbrained state is how I hurt myself. Again. But I do know that I’m pretty damn tired of landing in the hospital every few months. It’s like the universe’s idea of a twisted joke to keep sticking me in the only place that terrifies me to the very marrow.

  With a sigh, I wipe away the gunk gluing my eyelashes together. My movement triggers an answering shuffle, and I focus in the direction it came from.

  Landry sits hunched over on a stool at my side. His hair stands on end, forming a black halo around his too-pale face, and his storm-filled eye studies me. “Dr. Mello, she’s awake,” he calls to someone, but doesn’t break eye contact.

  The intensity of his stare sends an echoing shiver through my body that has nothing to do with the cold air blowing through the vent overhead. He takes my hand.

  “Are you okay?” he asks, voice husky, like he overtaxed it. “You scared the hell out of me.”

  Okay? No, I’m tired and confused. “What happened?”

  He squints his eye, like he’s trying to send me a message, but my head’s too swimmy to read his mind. Not that I think I can replicate what happened during the standoff with Judd. I’m not even sure if the psychic connection between us was real or a figment of my panicked imagination. And I’m too afraid to mention it to Landry to find out.

  When he realizes I don’t know the answer to his question, he blurts out, “You fainted.”

  My head throbs, but I don’t recall falling down. Plus…“I’ve never fainted in my life…well, except the times that Lainey…” I trail off at the deepening groves etching around the corners of Landry’s eye and mouth. His sadness is raw and totally unfiltered. What happened while I was unconscious?