Darkness Brutal (The Dark Cycle Book 1)

by Rachel A. Marks

  And we only have days left before her birthday . . . before the demons come.

  Maybe if I knew more about myself, understood more about my abilities. Maybe I could help her then. Actually save her. We might be safe in these warded walls for now, but I know if the darkness wants her it’ll find a way in. Past whatever protections that Sid or I set up.

  Ava’s book bag is hanging on a hook by the closet, my mom’s grimoire taunting me from inside.

  Yes, the darkness is already finding a way in.

  A knock sounds on the door. “Hey, newb! You’re on phones, so get your ass up!” Jax again.

  I roll out of bed, run a hand through my hair, and pull on my pants. Ava groans and curls tighter around her violin. She’s going to break it if she isn’t careful. And it’s not like I can afford to buy her a new one.

  There’s a velvet ear sticking out of her book bag: Mr. Ribbons, the stuffed rabbit that Mr. Marshall got her for her fourth birthday. I pull it out and trade it for the violin, setting the instrument safely back in its case. Ava only rolls over and mumbles something into the cheek of Mr. Ribbons, who’s now wrapped in her arms.

  I wish it was as simple as that to trade danger for safety in real life.

  Jax is waiting on the stairs. He waves me over, pointing down to the first floor. “In the den. You’ve got work to do.”

  I follow him to the bottom of the stairs and to the back corner of the house, into a small den beside the family room. Lester is the only one in there, wearing large headphones on his head and sitting in front of a row of five different computer screens, looking like a digital spy.

  It’s a dark, bare space. The windows are covered with what looks like a black sheet pinned to the wall. The light from the five screens is the only illumination in the room. Two large tables line the far wall with several rolling chairs to sit on. “Wires” seems to be the decorative theme of the room, with thick bundles of black and yellow and red and orange cords running along the walls, duct-taped across the floor, or curled like sleeping snakes under the tables.

  “The phone and the machine are there.” Jax points to the corner on our right where a small table and chair rest. The table is covered in stacks of paper with a postage stamp of space available for actual use. “Holly was going to be filing today, but since she has summer classes and you’re here and have nothing better to do, it’s your privilege. So pull up your pantyhose and get to work.” He pats me on the back, shoves me toward the corner, and then leaves the room without a single word of further instruction.

  I sit myself in the wooden chair and stare at the stacks of paper. There’s a red blinking light on what looks like an old answering machine from the nineties.

  Lester spins his chair, taking off his headphones, and rolls himself closer. “Jax starts out as a dick, but once you get used to him, he becomes only a minor jackass.”

  I nod.

  “Sid asked us to toss you in the mix right away,” he adds, like he’s apologizing. “Just let me know if you have any questions.”

  “And where is our illustrious leader this morning?” I ask.

  “His shed. He’ll be out around noon.”

  My brow goes up in question, but Lester just acts like the idea of a guy sleeping all night and half the day away in a rusty old shed is perfectly normal. Makes me wonder even more about that grounding lock he’s painted on the door of the place.

  “And what’re you doing?” I motion to the many computer screens, all of them showing what looks like security footage. “Spying on LA? Is this place a front for the NSA?”

  He grins. “I’m watching footage for our next case. The couple’s been a bit of a neurotic mess, thinking their house is being broken into every night. They say there’s proof of what they’re calling a banshee on the footage, but I’m not findin’ it. Just looks like two hundred hours of two guys who live together and who like to get kinky when they clean.”

  “A banshee, huh?” No such thing, but I don’t want to sound like a know-it-all. “And there’s no clues?”

  “Well, technically, there’s no such thing as banshees—”

  Hmm.

  “—but Sid was thinking maybe they were experiencing what he called a time slip, told me to look for outlines of white light figures or orbs. I still have about a hundred hours to go. We’ll see what I find.”

  A time slip. I know all of zero people who are aware of that—the echo of an event crossing over through time. Kind of like an instant replay in a place where a scar was left from old trauma. Happens a lot in a place where a building was burned down or if there was a battlefield nearby. We see a piece of it, like a replay of history crossing over. Most people get it mixed up with ghosts.

  If Sid really understands his shit about this stuff, maybe living here and working with these people for a little while will actually be interesting. “All that footage and you haven’t seen anything?” I ask.

  He shakes his head. “Nada. So I better get back to work.” He rolls away again toward the desk.

  “I can help,” I say, more interested in looking for a real paranormal event on video than answering phones or filing papers.

  “Not a good idea. Sid wants you grunting it for now. You’re supposed to earn your keep. Be thankful it’s summer, though. If school was in session, we’d have to work around Sid’s idea of homeschool where he teaches us about embalming and how plastic was invented. A real snooze-fest. Holly’s the only one allowed to go to real school since she’s a freaking genius.”

  “Lovely,” I say, kind of glad I won’t be here long enough to see the lessons on embalming. As soon as we get through Ava’s birthday, we won’t need to be tied down anymore.

  “All you have to do for now is take that pad of paper and make a detailed note for each message on the machine. Easy as samurai pie.”

  I find the paper and start searching for a pen in the chaos of the small table. “How long have you been with Sid?”

  He doesn’t answer right away, and after several seconds go by, I decide he’s not going to. But as I find a pen and open my mouth to say “Bingo!” I hear his quiet voice. “Since my brother died.”

  “I’m sorry,” I say. “I shouldn’t butt in.”

  “No, it’s fine. I get it. You’re just curious about us all. I was never on the street like Connor or Jax, like you were, but I figure it must be lonely. I always had my brother. He was more like a dad, maybe. He brought me here from India when I was three and he was seventeen. Then he died last year. And Sid found me really quick after that.”

  “I’m so sorry, man.”

  “It was a demon, I think. Or my brother just went nuts or something. He’d been having nightmares for weeks, and he started sleeping in my room with me. He kept talking about a huge snake waking him up, biting him in the arms and legs. Pretty soon after that he shot himself in the head.”

  “My God.” Suicide. Sounds like a demon was trying to possess him. Maybe he thought a bullet was the only way to stop it.

  Lester swipes at his cheek like he’s wiping away a tear, but I can’t tell in the dark. Then he rubs his nose and sniffs. “Yeah, it was bad. But I know Jax had it worse. And Connor. That guy saw some pretty crazy stuff.”

  “My mom was killed by this shit, too,” I say, wanting him to realize he’s not alone. “There’s nothing about death that isn’t horrifying and wrong. You don’t have to make excuses to me, man. I get it.”

  He nods and wipes his nose again. Then he puts his headphones back on and returns to the light of the screens. I slide the pad of paper in front of me and press “Play” on the prehistoric answering machine. Seems like this is a house full of horror stories. Time to figure out how and if I fit in here.

  A few hours later, I walk back up the stairs to the bedroom to check on Ava. I’ve heard the sounds of her violin trailing through the house over the morning hours, but that s
topped a while ago, and she still hasn’t come down. When I walk through the door she shoves something into her shoulder bag like she’s trying to hide it. My body freezes.

  I know it’s Mom’s grimoire. My gut clenches at the thought, but I decide to let it go. I’ve had enough drama and tension the last few days to last me a lifetime.

  “You okay up here?” I ask, not mentioning what we both know she’s hiding. “I think it’s past time for lunch. Holly made sandwiches. They have jelly happy faces on them.”

  “No thanks, I’m not hungry.” Her voice shakes, and I know instantly something’s gone wrong. She stands up from the bed and comes at me, hugging me tight.

  “I was just downstairs, Ava, not in Kuwait.”

  But she squeezes me tighter, shivering.

  I lean back to see her face. “Are you okay? What happened?”

  I can feel her panic in my skin, and her mind is spinning with frantic thoughts that press into mine in a tangle I can’t sort through to see clear. Her light hair is a silver halo around her face as I wait for her to say something, anything.

  “Something’s changed, Aidan. Something big.”

  I ask as gently as I can through the panic beginning to rise, “What did you see?”

  “I don’t know . . . I was playing the Brahms concerto, and in the middle of the second movement I saw . . .” There’s confusion and fear in her voice. “It’s coming for you. The dark shadow.”

  “Dark shadow? What do you mean—?”

  “It tried to take you, to swallow you up. It made you disappear. You were gone. Just gone. And I was all alone.” She shivers against me. “The evil dogs came back, like when the Marshalls . . . There were so many of them. They got me. They—” She chokes on her words, then starts moving her palm over her shoulder, like she’s trying to rub away the feeling of the teeth sinking into her flesh. “Something’s changed, Aidan. It found you.”

  My pulse accelerates. What found me?

  “My visions always come true,” she says in a hushed voice.

  “No, Ava.” I kiss her head. “I’ll never leave you. Not ever.”

  But I have no idea how to keep that promise when her birthday arrives and we have to face what may be coming for her.

  The rest of the day is tough. Ava seems to be almost in a trance. Only once does she make sense: when she’s telling me that she’s sorry, confessing that she had to look in Mom’s grimoire for answers. That she has to talk to Fiona; she has to know the truth. I’m not sure what truth she means, exactly. I’m beginning to think I should just tell her what I know and stop believing I’m protecting her from anything with my silence. It’s not as if her lack of knowledge about how Fiona was the cause of all this is keeping her heart safe.

  But I’m not sure I even know what really happened that night. It’s as if those last days are all condensed into that one horrifying moment when the ground shifted and everything changed forever.

  Now I’m the one, the only one standing between Ava and the demon who marked her. And worse than that, I don’t know how to stop this shadow growing inside of her, this obsession that took our mom captive and is now trying to claim her, too. That terrifies me more than any demon.

  I stay upstairs with her for a while before going back down to make excuses about not coming to dinner. I say she’s not feeling good and that I’ll be hanging out with her in the room if they need me. No one seems to care. Holly looks more worried about germs. All Jax says is that I better not get the pukes because we’ve got three investigations in the wings from those phone messages I took and there’s no time for being sick.

  By the time I get back to the room, Ava is shivering again. She climbs onto my bed beside me with Mr. Ribbons held tight to her like she’s two instead of twelve.

  “I’ve missed you so much these last few years, Aidan, and now we’re finally together again. I can’t let anything happen to you,” she says, gripping my arm and snuggling into my side.

  “Nothing is going to happen. I found a place where we can be safe for a while.” I brush the hair from her face. “Why don’t you just try to sleep for a bit. I’ll sleep, too. We won’t think about the darkness anymore.” A tear slips down her cheek, but she closes her eyes, so I say, “Remember when the Marshalls were alive and we’d go to the beach and make tunnels in the sand? You’d catch crabs and we’d give them all names. There must’ve been hundreds of them. You told me you were a mermaid and that they were your cousins and that you were all having a family reunion.” Her breathing is even now, settled, like she’s finally drifting off. “You were happy, remember?”

  I lie beside her and get lost in the memories, all the colors and light of those years. Ava was a child for a little while. The memories lull me to sleep, too, my limbs getting heavy. My eyes close, and just as I’m floating off, my head close to Ava’s, a scene rises through her mind to the surface of my own.

  I stand on a familiar beach, facing away from the churning waves behind me, staring at a cliff wall. The wind stings my cheeks, cold and salty. The ground seems to rumble, like when the tide crashes against the rocks, but then a dark shadow surges forward. It billows out of the cliff wall, becoming a cave opening, growing wider and wider, inviting me inside. The dark hole tugs at my clothes, pulling me closer, into it. And then I realize I’m not alone. A man stands beside me, his hand resting on my shoulder, firm, comforting. But I can’t see his face.

  On the other side of me stands another figure, tall and inhuman, with red eyes and twisted horns growing from its skull. A demon. The same demon that was following Rebecca.

  It turns to grin down at me, like it’s satisfied. At last.

  And I step forward, letting the darkness take me.

  I emerge into the waking world, to air made of ice and sharp edges. I open my eyes slowly, carefully, afraid of the chill on my skin.

  Because that is the chill of a monster.

  A red glow pulses, back and forth, ticktocking under my bedroom door. Joined by the sound of a crackle far off.

  Fire.

  I grip my blanket and bring it to my chin, teeth chattering from the cold, from terror. I listen and wait, eyes locked on the flickering light.

  Mother called it again. She called the monster back to us, even when she promised me yesterday that it was going to be over. Why would she lie to me? Why would she do that when she knows . . .

  The crackle grows louder, and something crashes against the floor. My muscles jump in my skin, and Ava’s scream fills the walls.

  Ava. The idea of her small form in her playpen, there, beside the casting circle, shakes me from my terror enough to move. It lifts me to my feet and propels me to the bedroom door. And as I enter the hall, the glow brightens, casting blood-colored light over the wall opposite my mother’s room. I know I’m going to see the monster. I’m going to feel its darkness. But I’m going to save Ava.

  I step into the casting light, into the open doorway, the sound of fire hissing around me. The red and silver flames dancing around the room should be warm, but instead of sparks, they send ice crystals into the air. They run along the circle she painted in blood; they lick and crack the prison walls, like they too are alive, making the barrier peel away.

  When I see past the moving fire my insides turn to ash.

  My mother’s feet dangle over the floor. A massive claw grips her neck, lifting her higher and higher as her body remains still, allowing the creature to claim her.

  The beast is massive; a man, but a wolf, too. Its snout is long, dripping with long strings of saliva. The teeth glisten sliver in the flickering flames.

  It doesn’t feel me there. It doesn’t know my eyes watch as it shakes my mother, turns her into a doll made of rags, jerking her head, shouting a garbled word that I don’t understand.

  I am a statue of horror and confusion. My nightmare is taking her. It wants her, and I can’t sto
p it, even as it sneers, lip rising like it wants to tell a funny joke. Its tongue emerges, long and thin, catching a line of blood sliding down Mom’s shoulder.

  Then it punches its claw through her rib cage.

  A gasp of air and shock puffs from my mother’s lips, from mine. My whole body screams, but I have no voice. She’s tossed to the floor, a broken doll now. And the demon is left holding her dripping heart in its claws.

  The monster waits. Until its sigil, its signature, appears in the growing pool of blood. Until a mark surfaces on my mother’s still forehead, claiming her as a sacrifice.

  Then the monster turns to my weeping sister, reaches out to her shaking form, its talon pointed at her tear-stained face. Before it slices through her soft baby shoulder with a prick, releasing a drop of blood.

  Ava goes silent, the flames sink away, and it’s as if all the sound is sucked from the room. She stares wide-eyed at the wolf monster, fascination filling her tiny face.

  It grins down at her, pats her white hair with a blood-coated palm . . .

  pat

  pat

  pat

  . . . before it disappears in a suck of wind and ash with my mother’s heart still clutched in its fist. And I stand in the doorway, useless, having done nothing to stop any of it.

  FIFTEEN

  I wake with a start. Everything’s foggy in my mind, like I’ve lost something, like I’ve misplaced the one thing I was supposed to take care of, the most precious thing I’ve ever been entrusted with.

  “Ava?” I squint in the sunshine-filled room. She’s not sleeping beside me, and her bed’s empty.

  I sit up, heart racing. I dreamed . . . something. I can’t remember. But something’s wrong.

  My head throbs, but I ignore it and leap from the bed, bursting into the hall. “Ava?!” I yell—but it comes out muffled, coated in the remnants of sleep.