Darkness Brutal (The Dark Cycle Book 1)

by Rachel A. Marks

  Lester follows, giggling. Jax walks past smiling and flipping the bird in my direction.

  Finger disappears like magic. For such a large guy, he’s silent as a ghost.

  Connor comes up to me, looks me over, and then says, “We meet at the van, in the back. Six thirty. A minute late, and you stay home.” He stares at me for a tick longer than is normal—like an alpha dog—and then turns and walks away.

  Kara’s the only one left. She doesn’t move off her perch on the counter, looking down at her boots. There’s a skull painted in what looks like Wite-Out on the toe of the left shoe.

  “Hey,” I begin, hoping I don’t regret trying to explain this, but knowing I need to get it out of the way, “I could tell Ava kind of freaked you out. She can be—”

  Kara hops down off the counter, stopping the words in my throat with her sharp glare. “Just stay away from me,” she says. “Both of you.” There’s no trace of fear in her words or on her face, but I feel it, like a razor against my skin. It’s the only thing I’ve felt in this house since I got here yesterday.

  She walks past me, putting the earbuds back in, and a strange foreboding fills me as I watch her go.

  Not a good way to start my new life.

  ELEVEN

  It’s nearly seven thirty at night by the time we get to the apartment. I leave Ava at the house with Holly—reluctantly. There’s no way she could have come with me. I know I can’t watch her every second, but I feel like I need to. Ava pushed me out the bedroom door, saying I was being ridiculous, that I’d only be gone for a few hours and she’d be fine.

  But I’m not sure I trust that house yet. I’m not sure if I trust Sid’s protective measures. And I’ve only just gotten her back.

  When I talked to Holly about keeping a close eye on things, she frowned at me and asked, “Isn’t your sister, like, eleven?”

  “She’s almost twelve.”

  Holly laughed and shrugged. “Sure. I’ll watch out for her,” and then she walked away mumbling, “Hyperprotective much?”

  But I didn’t feel any bad vibes from her, so I decided to loosen my grip a bit and trust Sid that the house was protected. Plus, it won’t be until Ava’s actual birthday that the demons come.

  We reach the apartment complex off Balboa. The van pulls into the alley, parking in the rear garage. I try to make myself stop worrying—I need to focus on getting this right. Don’t let them see too much, but let them see enough to win their favor. Sid seems to have pretty high expectations from the sound of it.

  The boys all start piling out and unloading the equipment, obviously having done this hundreds of times. Connor and Kara disappear through the gate, entering the building’s poorly lit courtyard.

  The apartment complex is small, old. Most likely built in the sixties, but obviously rebuilt, probably after the Northridge quake in ’94. It’s surrounded by wrought iron and fir trees.

  “Hey!” Connor yells from the van. “Make yourself useful.” He tosses me an orange extension cord and points for me to follow Lester, who’s walking next to Jax through the back iron gate.

  I trail behind and follow directions as the boys set up video and audio in the courtyard. I don’t ask any questions as the lights are positioned and a small area is cleared for a table and computers. I just do what I’m told and keep my mouth shut.

  Connor talks to the camera crew when they get there, three guys who look more like hipster coffeehouse rejects than a serious crew, but what do I know about Hollywood? After he gives them some instructions on how small the apartment is, a timeline for the night, and descriptions of what kind of “frames” and “moods” he’s looking for, he waves for me to follow him.

  Kara’s standing in a tiny alcove patio, which is really just a slab of concrete decorated with a cracked pot spilling over with wilted pansies. She’s got her back to me, facing a blond woman, and they’re passing a cigarette back and forth like they’ve bonded already. The orange tip glows in the dark.

  The blond woman looks like she’s in her midthirties, but as I get closer, something tells me she’s more like midtwenties. Her hair is dull and brittle, her skin is leathery, and her shadowed eyes are full of confusion, like she’s not sure how she got here.

  Kara spots Connor and me. She takes one last drag from the cigarette and grinds it into the pot of drooping pansies.

  Connor and Kara trade looks, and I can see the silent conversation in their faces:

  Seriously, Kara?

  Lay off, Connor.

  Connor nods to the blond woman. “Miss Reese, thank you for being so flexible with the schedule. We’ll try to make this session simpler than when we did the day shoot. We just need to get a few more questions on film and do our dead circle so Kara can be sure about her reading before giving it to you. Mr. Siddhapati will be here in the next ten minutes or so, and he can finish off the interview with you as soon as you’re ready.” He motions to me. “This is our new trainee. Is it okay if he follows Kara on her walk-through?”

  Miss Reese barely looks at me. “Sure, whatever. Will it cost me more?” She gives a weak—but still somehow flirtatious—smile to the crew behind me.

  “No,” Connor says. “The price Mr. Siddhapati quoted you is what it’ll be. Not a penny more.”

  She nods and pulls out another cigarette with shaky fingers. “I need sleep.”

  Connor gives her an understanding look. “We’ll try to finish this up tonight and get you the peace you need, Miss Reese.”

  “Or your money back,” comes from behind us. Sid’s voice. He waves to the camera crew, and they scramble across the now perfectly lit courtyard to obey. They place the cameras firmly on their shoulders, and one guy follows Sid with a boom mic raised high overhead.

  “Ah, Miranda,” Sid says, “you poor thing. You didn’t get any sleep again last night?” He takes Miss Reese’s fingers in his, and her face loses its tension immediately. “I’m so sorry,” he says as he pats her hand. “We’ll fix this mess up by the morning, I promise.”

  Tears fill her eyes, and she nods again.

  He pulls her in for a fatherly hug. “You’ll be fine.” Then he motions at the camera crew, and they lower their aim.

  Watching him is fascinating. His words and actions feel so close to the truth that I almost buy his sincerity. Stunning.

  I try and get a better bead on him, his soul, away from the muted fog of the house, but Connor taps my arm and motions for me to follow Kara as she slips away.

  So I turn from my curiosity and comply, figuring there’ll be plenty of time for reading Sid. I follow Kara to the door of the downstairs apartment on the end. The smell of dryer sheets fills the air; it mingles with stale cigarette smoke and mildew as she reaches for the doorknob.

  A buzz of lingering violence reaches my skin. I really don’t want to feel this. I hate knowing people’s business, especially the dark kind—which is all I ever seem to see lately.

  Kara stops before she opens the door. She glances behind me, maybe checking to see if we’re alone, and then she says, “Just so we’re clear: I don’t like you.”

  There’s a fierce look in her eyes.

  “I mean I really don’t like you.”

  “You mentioned that.”

  “But we have to work together. So I’ll suck it up. But you should know where you stand.”

  Her hostility is taking me off guard. I’m fairly certain she’s not the kind of girl you want on your bad side.

  I raise my hands in surrender. “I’m reading you. Loud and clear. For some mysterious reason, you now hate me.” Even though I’m pretty sure it has something to do with Ava. Kara’s barely said two words to me since meeting my sister.

  She looks to the side like she’s searching for something and chews at the corner of her lip.

  “Shouldn’t we start the torment of working together now?” I ask.


  “What’s your deal?”

  “You’re the one with the deal, Kara. You’ve given me the ice treatment since I moved in. Apparently the kiss at the club the other night was a mistake. I get it. Apparently you’re freaked out about my sister. Whatever. Can we just move on?”

  She opens her mouth to speak and then closes it. After a second she says, “Fine. We have to work together, so we’ll call a truce. Just keep yourself out of my space.”

  I have no idea how those two things are mutually possible, but I nod in response anyway. “Sure. Got it.”

  “And if this is gonna work, you need to tell me everything you see. Everything.”

  “Sure.” Not. I study her, trying to figure out how to balance this, trying to find something trustworthy about her that I can connect with. “I’ll tell you what I see,” I say more gently, shoving away my frustration. She revealed parts of herself at the school to save me, so maybe I can peel back a layer or two of my own for her in return—an olive branch of sorts.

  She nods, looking more lost than nervous now. “We need to focus—I need to focus.” She turns and opens the door.

  I let my internal walls down reluctantly, step into the apartment after her, and hold my breath, waiting for the first blow.

  A wave of nausea hits me, then there’s prickling against my skin, like something pulling on my arm hairs.

  “It’s Kara, Marcus,” she calls into the apartment. “Are you here?” She whispers to me, “Marcus is the kid. He’s the one stuff keeps happening to, his mom says. Nightmares, night terrors, shadows. Typical stuff.”

  “What do you think it is?” I whisper back.

  She shrugs. “Negative energy for sure.”

  All I can do is pray it’s not a demon. I don’t have anything but some salt and sacred dirt in my pocket, the hamsa I got from Hanna—which isn’t much good in a fight—and my old Star of David amulet that my mom gave me. The last thing I need is another demon figuring out I can see it and trying to make me its lunch.

  Looking at the Other realm, opening myself up wide in front of strangers, isn’t on the top of my to-do list. It’s like being naked in a pit of snakes. But it’s too late to turn back now.

  I look around, collecting my thoughts. There’s a maroon vinyl couch with cigarette burns on its left arm. The walls and ceiling are yellow from smoke. The carpet is shag—green and ratty. A weak light shines in the corner, and the muted TV plays Nick at Nite. A crucifix hangs over the doorway to the hall, and there’s a dent in the drywall to my right that looks suspiciously like a fist. Echoes of past anger tinge the air.

  My own memories of bruises and punctured drywall swirl through my head.

  Mom grabs the man’s arm. “Stop, Frank, please. Leave Aidan be.”

  The man turns, like a spring being released, his fist colliding with her delicate features in a meaty thud. “Shut up, bitch!”

  I shake it off and bury the memories as far down as they can go, not wanting to attract whatever’s in this place.

  Kara pauses as we come to the hall and says, “Marcus, I have a friend with me. Can we come in?”

  I wait behind Kara, watching the dark hallway.

  “You shouldn’t have come back,” someone says from the other side of the farthest door, a little boy.

  My heart stutters at the sound of the small voice, at the fear in it.

  The door opens and a brown-haired head peeks out. “I think it’s angry from the last time. When you guys left the other night it got real bad.”

  Kara ignores the comment. “Marcus, so good to see you. Can you come chat with us on the couch, buddy?”

  Marcus steps out farther. There’s a Superman comic book gripped in his fist. “Yeah, sure.” He sighs and pauses to glance up at me through thick-lensed glasses. “Who’s that?” He’s wide open as can be, his colorful energy reaching out in curiosity—no trepidation, no fear, just innocent vulnerability. He’s got no walls at all.

  No wonder the stuff is touching him. It sees his soul like an invitation to connect. It might even be using his energy to manifest.

  “This is Aidan,” Kara says.

  We move to the couch, and Marcus and Kara sit down. I turn off the TV and settle in a chair across from them.

  Marcus studies me for a second before turning to Kara. “Isn’t the camera stuff done yet?”

  “Sorry, bud, just one more run-through. We shouldn’t be long. And you already did your talking with Sid, so we’re good. In a few days you can tell the camera if we did our job or not, okay?”

  He kicks at the shag carpet with his shoe. “Yeah. Okay. But I’m not sure the ghost is gonna leave now.” He starts chewing on his bottom lip and rolling the comic book tighter.

  “What’d it do?” I ask quietly.

  Kara gives me a look; obviously she wasn’t expecting me to talk.

  “It was throwing stuff around. My mom’s mirror broke.”

  “Does it scare you?” I ask. He doesn’t seem terrified like most kids would be. Mostly just annoyed at Kara and everyone being here again.

  “Why do you think it got mad?” Kara asks, which is what I was wondering.

  Marcus shrugs, looking evasive. “It’s just that you’re not helping none. And it makes my mom real mad when stuff happens. She yells at me and makes me sleep in her room on the floor.”

  Kara frowns at his words. “Why didn’t you tell us last time how your mom reacts?”

  “’Cause she wasn’t too bad off,” he whispers. “And . . . well . . .” He shrugs again.

  Kara and I share a look.

  “Does she hurt you, Marcus?” Kara asks, sounding a little like a social worker.

  The kid looks at her like he’s thinking the same thing, his energy closing off some. “She just gets mad is all. Like always.”

  Kara takes the hint and asks him about his comic book. He lights up immediately at that and begins telling her a million things in rapid succession about how the villain gave Superman red kryptonite. I motion to Kara that I’m going to walk around, and she nods, then goes back to listening to Marcus’s story of red kryptonite and fast cars as Superman goes rogue.

  I slip into the first room across the hall. There’s an ocean of laundry on the floor. The bed is nearly stripped, only a sheet and a pillow on it. Surfaces are mostly bare, and things are scattered on the floor—lotions, cheap jewelry, candles, nail polish—like they got swept off the dresser.

  I take a deep breath and place my hand on the wall as I try to look deeper.

  A flash of red and a scream. I stumble back a little but hold firm to the feeling coming at me, pull on it a little to maybe see more.

  A kitchen knife falling to the carpet, covered in blood.

  Screaming, screaming, screaming her throat raw.

  I close my eyes tight and try to get a better, clearer image, but all I can see is the red flashing over and over and the knife, the woman’s screams. It doesn’t feel recent. It must be something from another resident. Not this boy, not this woman. But whatever happened has left its mark. It’s still echoing. The red energy of death.

  Sid did say it was a kill site. That usually means there’s been more than one murder in the same spot over the years—again and again—caused by some dark energy that attached itself to the area a long time ago.

  Energy that attracts all kinds of things.

  I walk out and into Marcus’s room, slowly. The emotions hit me like a kick to the center of my chest, and I see the hint of a shape on the other side of the bed, sheer white energy swirling over the spot.

  The air’s sucked from my lungs; I have to grip the wall to hold myself up.

  The thing’s not happy to see me. A female spirit, young when she died. She tried so hard to please everyone, but Robert was never happy, not even after she quit her job. And then the night came when she let her g
uard down and burnt the dinner. Frank didn’t like the smell. He bared his teeth and called her vile names. Then he took hold of the steak knife and stabbed her with it. Fifteen times. Right in front of their son.

  It all comes at me as an onslaught of knowledge and anger, like watching a movie play out in a flickering rush.

  I don’t look at the spirit, not straight on. But I think she senses my awareness anyway, because her energy crackles at the air around me. She doesn’t like all the commotion that’s been going on. She doesn’t like what it’s doing to the boy.

  Of course.

  She’s protecting the boy.

  “We won’t let anything happen to him,” I whisper, and the crackling subsides a little.

  “Who are you talking to?”

  I turn to see Sid standing in the shadows of the hall, watching me.

  My pulse speeds up. I’m not used to people being aware of what I can do.

  Apparently I need to get over that now.

  I walk out of the room into the hall, thinking if Sid goes in there the female spirit will become agitated again.

  “I’m doing what you wanted me to,” I say under my breath. I can’t seem to keep the nerves from my voice, though. I feel myself shivering even as I look down at the carpet.

  “Don’t let it overwhelm you,” he says gently. Almost fatherly.

  I glance up at him, surprised.

  He leans closer. “You’re letting it in. Stay outside of it, Aidan. There’s a difference between seeing it and being in it.”

  I pause, thinking about what he just said. “How am I supposed to see it if I don’t open myself up?”

  “It’s all about balance. We’ll work on that later. I promise. But for now, just take a few deep breaths and focus your energy on relaxing. You keep so many guards up, always so tense. There’s a lot of energy expended on living that way. It’s easier to see things when you’re centered and calm.” He looks me over like he’s studying my clothes, but I have the feeling he’s seeing past that, straight into me. “You’re not balanced at all, kid. We need to work on that.”