Darkness Brutal (The Dark Cycle Book 1)

by Rachel A. Marks

  I take it and fill the pockets of my hoodie until they overflow with dirt and shove the remainder of the sack into the backpack. I hold the stone box under my arm and take a deep breath before making my feet move forward. We walk toward the gaping mouth of the void.

  FORTY-NINE

  We skim our backs along the cliff wall, me in front of Kara, as we try to keep out of sight. I only hope the Darkness won’t sense us like we can sense it. I grip the stone box with one hand and take a fistful of dirt out of my pocket with the other as we approach the edge of the opening.

  A voice comes from the cave.

  The demon inside Lester.

  He’s speaking to someone—or something. He’s saying it’s nearly time.

  Fiona’s spirit is a blur against the black, so close I can almost touch her. She’s outlined in a swirling green light, her hands reaching out, fingers grasping like she’s trying to pull me in, urging me to hurry. I try to breathe slow and attempt a glance into the mouth of the tunnel. I can’t see anything except pitch-black nothing, but the force I felt earlier hits me hard, nearly knocking me backward. I cling to the rock and press against the energy, trying to block it out as much as I can. I have to keep my head straight.

  But just as I tense my leg muscles and get ready to face what’s around those rocks, the crunch of approaching footsteps comes from behind us, breaking through the thunder of my heartbeat.

  Kara screams.

  I spin around. She’s kicking and fighting against the hold of a guy—twentysomething, light skin, muscular—as he drags her by the hair, yelling into the cave, “We have visitors!”

  He socks her in the face as she comes at him with her blade, the amulet still gripped tight in her fist. She goes limp from the blow, and he pulls her to her feet, twisting her arm behind her back, trying to hold her still.

  I move to act, but he slips Kara’s switchblade against her throat, his arm tight across her middle.

  I freeze.

  The guy’s eyes are blacked out with possession and rimmed with red. He licks his cracked lips and takes a whiff of Kara’s hair. And that’s when I recognize him.

  It’s the guy who attacked Rebecca in the alley. The ringleader.

  Kara jerks in his arms, and the blade digs into her skin.

  “Kara, don’t move!” I scream as a thin line of blood trails down her chest from her neck. “Don’t hurt her,” I say desperately to the demon boy, as if he’d listen to me. He wouldn’t hesitate to slice her open.

  Demon Lester comes from the darkness of the cave, the wound I gave him on his neck now puffy and red. A bit of skin is peeling beneath his eye, like he’s already begun to rot. “Dinner’s here,” he yells into the void behind him.

  Ringleader hugs Kara closer, his eyes hungry. “And it brought dessert.”

  “Screw you,” Kara growls.

  Ringleader’s mouth twists into a horrifying grin. His eyes turn to me. “This body I’m in remembers you, boy, and it wants to rip your head off. Right after it makes you watch as I rape and kill this delicious girl.”

  My horror is swallowed by rage. I clench every muscle in my body to keep from tearing into him. Not yet.

  Demon Lester steps closer. He’s only a few feet away from me now. “You’re not going to save your sister. You’re too late,” he says, but there’s a spark of doubt in his voice.

  It’s enough to give me a window of hope.

  I don’t think. I just drop the stone box and lunge, tossing a handful of sacred dirt in Demon Lester’s eyes and shoving into him with my shoulder. The dirt doesn’t singe him like it would a demon, but it blinds him for a second so I can pull out my pocketknife. He snarls in rage and grabs for my neck.

  I duck and sock him in the kidney; it doesn’t even faze him. He grabs my head and slams it into the cliff wall.

  Color flashes across my vision and pain sears through my skull.

  Ringleader hesitates, loosening his grip on Kara as he tries to back away from the fight.

  She shifts in his arms, coming up with her fist and striking his jaw with the chain still wrapped around her knuckles. He stumbles back, and the switchblade slips from his hand.

  She lunges at him, screaming “Immanu’El!” as she shoves the medallion against his chest. Both of them fall to the sand. “Get out, dammit!” she yells again, her face strained as she straddles him, smoke coming from where her fist grips the medallion.

  Demon Lester scuttles back at the sight of the talisman. Ringleader starts to shriek and squeal.

  I use the distraction to ram Lester in the gut as I lift him up off his feet and take us both down with a thud against the ground. I pound his face as he bites and scratches. We roll, closer to the water, sand flying around us.

  He spits blood in my face and hisses at me in demon tongue. The thunder of the waves drowns him out, but I hear his meaning: what he’ll do to my sister once I’m dead and then what he’ll do to Kara. My mind goes blank as fury takes over. I drag him to the water, hitting him again and again when he tries to stand, my rage making me stronger. I’m tugging him closer and closer to the tide, the wet sand sticking to my clothes.

  “I’m already dead!” he yells at me. “You killed me. You killed me! I can’t drown! I can’t!”

  “Let’s try it anyway,” I say, gasping for air as I fight against him, splashing into the shallows. I have to get where I can immerse him so I can yank the demon out—a little incantation, determination, and water is all I need.

  He flails and slips from my grip.

  Then he punches out, hitting me in the chest, a sudden impact against the seal over my heart, knocking the air from my lungs with a rush of breath.

  I stumble back, hearing a crack as something knocks free inside, and I lose my balance, falling with a splash into the waves. The cold bites at me. Lester takes the opening, falling on me, pressing my back into the sand as the sea water comes at us, washing over my head. I spit and gasp, twisting to get free, but something has stopped working. It’s like I have no control. My body won’t listen to my brain, leaving me helpless as another wave rolls over my face, the salt water choking me.

  The tide pulls back, and I gulp in a mouthful of air, trying to get out from under my attacker. Lester releases a maniacal laugh and grabs me by the arm, pulling me farther into the waves.

  “You reap what you sow,” he says in a singsong voice. Then he drops my limp body into an approaching wave with a splash, and the freezing, brine-thickened water swallows me. My head strikes a rock. I try to fight the tide, but I can’t. Something happened when Lester hit my seal; he broke something—

  Sand and salt fill my throat, my nose. Black splotches flash across my vision. And just as I’m being pulled under, the pressure too much, not able to fight against my body taking the water into my lungs, it comes to me in a flash of awareness. I’m standing in the hotel room again, and Eric’s reminding me: The demon’s energy will be what flips the switch. You’ll feel the breaking, and then you merely have to relax and let it do what it wants to do.

  Everything in me goes still as realization courses through me. But I can’t hold my breath any longer.

  I take in a gulp of the sea even as my mind screams no! The water rushes in, filling my lungs like hungry fire. Everything in me turns to stone. The painful weight in my chest sinks me deeper. The tide drags my body farther into the ocean as my muscles twitch.

  I blow out the sea. Then take a second gulp into my lungs. As if I’m breathing underwater. I blink as I resurface and find myself on my feet, the waves now wrapping themselves around my waist. I cough out a lungful of ocean. One spasm and then another.

  Lester is walking out of the water. He’s almost at the dry sand. He turns, hearing me, and his facial expression changes from satisfaction to shock.

  I stumble my way through the waves toward him.

  He can’t see
m to move; his feet are stuck to the sand. I glance up the beach, but I can’t see Kara or the possessed ringleader through the darkness.

  “What are you?” Lester asks, black eyes wide.

  “The guy who’s going to send your ass back to hell.”

  “It won’t matter,” he says. “I’ll just come back and find a new game to play.”

  Standing there, it’s all suddenly clear. I can see both human and demon. Lester’s soul is weakened, nearly flickering out, and the demon is woven into the human spark, wrapped around it like a python strangling its prey.

  “Let go of him and leave,” I say, the tide wrapping around my ankles. “Now.”

  Demon Lester hisses at me and steps back.

  I know what I have to do. I see it like a blur of movement around us, as if I’m sensing the future. I lunge and grip him by the throat as the same burst of energy that came to me at Griffith Park surges in my bones. I begin muttering the same strange words that I didn’t understand before.

  But now I do.

  My strength and my shield is Elyon.

  Hear what the servant says, dever.

  Your spark is weak.

  Your life is mine.

  Into stone and ash I cast you.

  Over and over it comes from my lips until it takes on a life of its own, burning in my gut so intensely it nearly doubles me over. Every ounce of my will pushes into the shell of Lester. “Let. Him. Go.”

  Light bursts to life inside me. I see it this time, the glowing molten colors on my skin, running along my marks like a river of lava, radiating golden shards of light over Lester’s terrified face. And the demon obeys; the snake uncurls from the soul of its host, rising up. Its black form emerges from Lester’s forehead, bursting its energy from the body in a surge of power.

  The demon flops to the sand, writhing and convulsing on the shore for a second before it stops. Going perfectly still. Like stone. The same way the cat-demon did.

  I release my hold on Lester. His lifeless body sinks to the wet sand like a rag doll. His mouth gapes, his eyes stare up at the stars, clear of corruption. His weakened soul flickers out, and his spirit rises, hovering above his chest—a small white orb.

  And Lester, the boy, is gone.

  When I look up, Kara’s standing a few feet away, blood staining her face, her neck. She steps into the water, breath coming hard like she ran to help.

  I reach for her, taking her in my arms and clutching her to my chest, relief and sorrow like the rush of the tide washing over me.

  “I did it,” she says, gasping. “It’s gone.”

  “My God, Kara,” I say, not sure words can express what I’m feeling.

  We hold each other, catching our breath for a minute. But we have no time. As I pull away, she slips her hand in mine. We stumble from the water, both weak from the surge of adrenaline. The dark cave rises up to meet us, almost as if it’s opening wider to swallow us whole. After a second of walking toward it I realize we’re not on sand anymore; we’re treading on the swath of thimbleweed, following the path that my mother laid out for me.

  I pick up the alabaster box from the sand, somehow sure I can open it now. I pull on the lid, and it unseals with a chink, revealing a white feather inside.

  Confusion fills me. And anger. This is what I have to work with? A feather.

  I almost toss it away in frustration, but then I see something written on the quill. A line of Hebrew: He shall cover you in His feathers; and under His wings you will find refuge. Psalm 91.

  I pick the feather up, trying to see the writing more clearly.

  “I don’t get it,” Kara says.

  I shake my head.

  Suddenly my arm jolts with a spasm, and my skin stings like I’ve been stung by a hundred bees at once. Then the pain is gone, and I’m not holding a feather anymore.

  It’s a dagger: polished iron blade, curved a little at the tip, with a hilt of etched gold.

  “Oh, wow.” Kara steps back.

  I drop the empty stone box onto the sand and take her hand again, readying the dagger at my side.

  FIFTY

  The cave is deeper than it appears, the ceiling higher—twelve feet or more above our heads. The damp walls glisten as if reflecting starlight.

  The dark presence inside is a force, a live thing, sadistic and hungry, pressing at our skin. It is mutilation, agony, a rending of flesh, and it overpowers any sense of my mother’s pain as we move farther inside.

  After about fifty feet, the tunnel opens up into a large circular room with dark rock walls. The sound of the far-off tide echoes around us, and when I look up, I notice an opening in the roof of the cave, framing the stars. On the wall opposite us there’s a white stone archway, inset in the black rock like a doorway. I sense the pull of it and I know: that’s where my father, Daniel, came through.

  Kara grips my hand, keeping me grounded.

  The shadows around us lift as my eyes adjust to the darkness, and my worst nightmare is revealed in the center of the room: an altar carved from the same stone as the floor and walls, and laid out on it like a waiting sacrifice, my sister.

  Her thin form is small and white on the dark slab, her delicate hands folded over her chest, her white hair almost giving off a light of its own. A delicate sleeping beauty.

  The air rumbles around us, and a thin red mist appears. Everything surrounding us twists and writhes. The darkness divides itself, and two separate entities grow from the shadow: a wolflike demon and a man.

  They stand on the other side of the altar. The demon is in front, a hunched thing, familiar. I nearly fall to my knees as I recognize it, and the past comes up to meet me once more: Mom in her circle; Mom rocking and crying as she pleads with a creature in the shadows; Mom’s chest clawed open.

  It’s not corporeal, not like when it came that last night to my mother. Now its form shimmers like a reflection, but it’s still more terrifying than anything I’ve ever seen before or since. Its body is hunched and lanky, a hairless creature, thin muscles visible through pink and violet flesh, ears pointed, snout long, and canines sharp over its gums.

  My fist tightens around the hilt of the dagger. I’m so focused on the creature that I barely notice the man until he speaks.

  “She said you would come.” The voice is not human. It’s the sound of scratching wood and cracking bone. “She’s lovely, isn’t she?”

  He’s dressed in a pair of jeans and a black wool coat. The normality of him, his model-like features and dark brown hair, is such a sharp contrast to his energy and voice that it’s unsettling—a predator in sheep’s clothing. But it’s his eyes that give him away as something . . . more. They’re a glowing midnight blue. A demon in corporeal form. And somehow I know: this is the Heart-Keeper.

  “She’s mine,” I say, trying to put all my will into the words.

  The man gives me a sad smile. “No, son of Adam. She cannot be claimed by you now. It’s too late. I have already done so. She is a daughter of angels and Eve and can only be claimed as a child.”

  My skin shivers. “She’s Nephilim.”

  “She’s the key,” he says. “And I’ve brought her here with my will. She is mine by right.” He moves closer and sets something at Ava’s side: an open wooden box.

  I glance inside it. And my knees turn liquid.

  A human heart.

  My mother’s heart.

  I grip the wall of rock beside me.

  The demon man motions to the wolf creature. “Because he is under my rule, everything my servant touches I have power over. He marked your sister as his, and so she is now mine.”

  The memory of the demon scratching my sister on her tiny shoulder that night flashes across my vision.

  “She isn’t yours,” I say through clenched teeth.

  “Saying it again won’t make it so. She was a ne
cessity after the imbalance your existence created. It seemed only fitting that both master of Light and master of Darkness would come from the same womb. And soon this child will rise up against you. And kill you.” He smiles in satisfaction.

  “No,” I say, shaking my head, unable to even fathom his words. They have to be lies. “That’s not going to happen.”

  He laughs. “Perhaps you should ask the sorcerer what the prophecies are—why he was sent to kill you. Then you’ll see the necessity. She is the key to your destruction and my triumph.” He sighs. “Your sorcerer was weak. He did not do what should have been done. If he had, the Marshalls wouldn’t have needed to die. But something had to spark the seed of inhumanity within your sister. Senseless, really. Merely because your sorcerer couldn’t commit his duty and dispose of his mentor’s mistake. You.”

  He reaches into his coat pocket and slides a shiny object from it. A small, four-inch blade. “When your sister’s loved ones were torn to pieces in front of her, everything was set in motion. The remainder of the process is simple. I take her heart. And from that moment she’ll live forever without remorse or concern. The perfect counterbalance to you.”

  My own heart thunders in my chest.

  “Oh, she will not die as a normal human—not like your mother,” he says. “Her blood provides her with the ability to continue on. She’s a true immortal.”

  She’ll live forever. Without a heart.

  She lies on the altar, unaware, the vision of innocence, bathed in starlight. She made this choice for me, thinking she’d save me. But I’m supposed to save her. I made a promise. A promise to give my heart, my life, to keep her safe.

  I lunge.

  The Heart-Keeper’s blade rises over Ava’s chest as I leap onto the altar and go for his neck with my own dagger.

  Right before I reach him, he jerks back in a flash, swatting the weapon from my hand.

  It flies to the side, hitting the wall with a chink. His thin silver blade comes at my head.

  I grip his arm, stopping it.