Fire In The Darkness (Darkness Series #2)

by Stacey Marie Brown

  “Like yours do . . .” I had become such a freak, even for the Otherworld, which was saying something.

  “You wanted to kill Vek. I could see the Dark Dweller taking over.”

  “I didn’t merely want to kill him. I wanted to hunt him down and tear him into little pieces.” The bloodlust and desire to hunt him down and kill him had coursed through me, twitching my muscles. “It made me giddy; I wanted it so much. Is that what you guys feel?”

  He smiled, but there was no feeling behind it.

  “Jesus, Eli. So I'm a killer now?”

  “You’ll have to learn how to control it, and I'll help you.”

  “Or you’ll have to command me to stop every time.” I looked down at my feet. “I would have killed him if you hadn’t stopped me. So . . . you can control me?”

  “I wish,” he huffed. “It looks like I can only command you when you get into Dark Dweller state, which listens to its Alpha. Any other time, I can’t seem to influence you at all.”

  Panic rushed through me. The thought of anyone controlling me in any way made me feel antsy and uncomfortable. The power was in his hands, and I didn’t like it one bit. I wanted to trust he wouldn’t use it for his own good, but I didn’t have the luxury. There wasn’t anybody from the Otherworld I could truly trust, who didn’t want to use me for something. Except Torin. Torin seemed to be the one person who only wanted to safeguard me. He could have turned me over to the Queen dozens of times; instead he went against her to keep me safe. But his being her lover made my stomach twist. It felt wrong on so many levels.

  And yet Eli had not turned me over to the Unseelie King. Was it only a matter of time?

  Needing to escape my thoughts and the panic rushing up my throat, I took off at a sprint, jumping, leaping, and throwing myself through the rock obstacle with speed, grace, and agility. All qualities I never knew I had.

  Eli wrenched off his hoodie and came tearing after me. “Don’t you think you need a few lessons first on how to be a Dark Dweller?”

  “No.” I smiled and vaulted for the next boulder. The instinct was in me, teaching me what I needed to do better than anything.

  For the next hour we bounded and leaped across the terrain until my overconfidence came and bit me in the ass, or in this case, my hand.

  “Got a little cocky, huh?” Eli arched an eyebrow at me. Glaring at him, I picked the pebbles out of my palm. “Let me see.” Blood dripped onto his palm as he grabbed for my hand.

  “It’s no more than a cut, I’ll be fine.” I grimaced. Pain shot through my hand as Eli touched the gash. It was more than a cut as blood gushed out of my wound. Pride kept my teeth gritted together.

  “The cut is pretty deep. Let’s have Owen look at it. Don’t want it to get infected.” He pulled off his t-shirt; his muscular torso glinted with sweat under the moonlight. He tore at his shirt, ripped it into strips and wrapped them around my hand into a tight bandage. This boy had lost a lot of t-shirts because of me. Or maybe he wanted an excuse to take off his shirt. Either way, I was not complaining.

  “Looks like you’ve done this before.” My breath hitched, stiffening my words as he knotted the bandage. I drew my eyes away from the closeness of his bare chest and onto anything that didn’t make me think of sex. Being around him always made me feel exposed and stripped.

  “Owen taught us the basics, so when he wasn’t around, we could get by. Comes in handy.”

  “Yeah, I bet.” Our eyes caught and locked onto each other. I could feel the tension rise, sucking the air from my lungs. His eyes grew more intense, both of us leaning into each other. His eyes shifted for a second, going cat-like, before he snapped his head back, stepping away from me. When he looked at me again, they had returned to normal.

  I needed a distraction, any distraction. “Was Owen always the medic in your clan? Or was it something he became in the Earth realm?”

  “Owen has always been our medical practitioner, both here and in the Otherworld. But being here compelled him to learn about human medicine. He’s the analytical one—a healer instead of a killer, preferring to patch us up than going on a job. He has never been as comfortable with what we are as the rest of us.” Eli grabbed his hoodie off the ground and pulled it back on.

  Damn.

  I shifted my weight onto the other leg. “What happened to Jared’s mother?”

  Eli’s face grew serious. “Jared’s mother was human. She never knew what Owen was or what their baby would be. We were not kidding when we told you no one learns about us.”

  “Was she killed?” Horror filled my chest. They were capable of murder, but this felt different. Killing an innocent woman because you got her pregnant and you had to keep a secret from her?

  Eli looked down. “Owen met Rebecca when he first started medical school in Seattle. She was a fellow student, and they instantly fell in love. A year after they met, Rebecca got pregnant. She died in childbirth . . . .” he paused, recalling the memories. “She died never having known about us or the fact she was carrying one of us. Her death nearly destroyed Owen. He was able to save the baby, but not Rebecca. Our kind had never coupled or reproduced with humans before. But we knew the rumors. Humans don’t usually fair well when giving birth to an Otherworlder. Even now Owen blames himself for her death. After she died, he quit the hospital and came back here to live with us. We all helped raise Jared.”

  “Oh, God, how awful for Owen, to save your child only to watch the woman you love die because of it.” My heart wrenched for Owen, but I couldn’t deny the relief I felt knowing they hadn’t done anything to her.

  “Jared is our family, but he’s different. He’s half human, which makes him vulnerable. We try to keep him safe, but he thinks we baby him. He’s probably right, but none of us could handle it if something happened to him. He’s a great kid, unbelievably smart, a computer whiz. I’m talking this kid could probably break into the computers at NASA if he wanted. And he’s so easy going and happy, nothing like us.”

  “You sound like a proud uncle.”

  Eli chucked. “Yeah, but I’m afraid Cooper and I are very bad influences on him.”

  “Yeah, the kid has no hope.” I smiled.

  “I would do anything for my family. They’re all I have,” Eli declared. I knew he meant his plans for me. I couldn’t find the resolve to be mad at him for it; if anything I understood. There was nothing I wouldn’t do to get Mark back.

  “Why haven’t you turned me over yet?” My lashes briefly lowered before fastening on him. His focus bowed away from mine, and his hand flew up to his hair. Mid motion my hand caught his, forcing him to look at me.

  “We should get back,” he stated.

  “No, Eli. You are going to tell me—why haven’t you traded me to the Unseelie King yet?” His head went down, watching the ground. “Eli?”

  A tiny growl rocketed out of his chest. “Because.” Waiting for him to continue, my silence seemed to only aggravate him. He did not pull away from my grasp, but let my fingers stay wrapped around his arm. “I couldn't do it . . .” He mumbled so softly I barely heard him. With that he pulled away from my hold and walked towards the house.

  THIRTEEN

  As we walked back in silence, I trailed a little behind him. He needed space, as I did. My brain was trying to understand him.

  We had barely reached the porch when we heard the rumble of motorbikes and the distinct clicks of guns cocking. I froze in terror, but instinct took over Eli as he pushed me down. My head whacked painfully against the wood of the porch as Eli’s weight came down on me, covering my body with his. In that instant, a spray of bullets tore through the air around us, hitting the house. Glass and slivers of wood showered down on us.

  “When I say go, you crawl to the wood pile behind us and hide there,” Eli spoke into my ear. I twisted my head a little to see the outline of the stack of wood only a few yards away.

  “What are you going to do?”

  “I’ll be right behind. Now GO!” Eli rolled
off of me. I scrambled across the porch stooping as low as I could. He moved alongside me, covering me from another round of bullets. Skirting around the logs, I dropped to the ground behind the wood pile. Eli crawled in behind. His face looked stern. In the darkness it took me a moment to notice the spots of dark liquid seeping through his hoodie.

  “Eli, you’ve been shot.” I screeched, fingering the holes in his sweatshirt now soaked with blood.

  “Don’t worry about it.”

  “ELI?” Cooper’s voice shouted from the inside the house.

  “Yeah, we're okay,” Eli yelled back, but winced in pain as he did.

  “Jesus, Eli, you're bleeding badly.” Panic rose in my voice.

  There was a lull in the shooting before the guys came out of the house, guns blazing. When they stopped shooting, all you could hear was the roar of the assailants' motorcycles speeding into the distance.

  “Cooper, you and Gabby run the perimeter, but check on Jared first. Go,” Cole commanded. The two took off toward the infirmary.

  I looked over at Eli, his eyes were closed, his face in agony. “Cole!” I screamed, rolling forward onto my knees, hanging over Eli. Footsteps pounded towards us as Cole rounded the wood pile.

  “Mac an donais!” Cole swore and crouched down.

  “Don’t fuss, Mom. I’ll be fine,” Eli's voice was strained as he spoke.

  “How many times were you shot?” Cole was upset, but nothing like the frantic state I was in.

  “Hello? He’s going to bleed to death if we don’t do something.”

  “Em, calm down. Eli will heal. As you know, Otherworlders heal quickly, though he's going to hurt like hell for a while. His body has to work out the bullets.” He grinned, but then his voice turned soft. “I’ll have Owen look at him and give him some blood later.”

  “Seriously, stop fussing.” Eli pushed himself into a sitting position. “I’ll be fine. Now go track down who did this. By their awful smell and the sound of the bikes, there’s no doubt it was the SOG.”

  “Retaliation,” Cole responded. “I guess that’s better than the other reason. But how did they find us? It shouldn’t be possible.”

  “Retaliation for what?” A falling sensation tumbled my stomach.

  “For you.” Eli coughed and leaned his head back with a pant.

  “Well, that’s not entirely true.” Cole frowned at Eli. “Remember those guys who attacked you and West a while ago?”

  “The Hell’s Angels?” Of course I remembered them. I ended up in jail that night because Sheriff Weiss was dying for a reason to put me there, even if I was simply defending myself. Pock and McNamm had tried to fight West for me, turning it quickly into a full bar brawl. The night ended with me breaking a cue-stick over Pock’s head and knocking him unconscious. Both McNamm and Pock had assaulted me and had wanted to do more. The memories even now made nausea snake through my gut, but Eli’s reaction to it had been chilling. He never told me the story and I didn’t want to know, but the two men were now dead and I knew Eli had something to do with it. I wasn’t sorry they were gone, but it probably should have made me dread the Dark Dwellers more. They were ruthless killers, and now I was one of them.

  “Well, those guys are in a chapter of the Hell’s Angels called the Sons of Glory, a small chapter that has designated this area as their turf,” Cole clarified.

  “They are avenging the deaths of McNamm and Pock.” I murmured. “So this does have to do with me.”

  “Yes, but not in the way we had thought. This is an act of purely human retaliation, for one of their own. It’s the law of the gangs. I can’t fathom how they found us. Our property has a spell on it keeping humans from finding it.” Cole shook his head as he stood up. “Now, if you’ll excuse me, Owen and I must go reciprocate with our own laws.” He nodded goodbye to both Eli and me.

  “I don’t want to know, do I?”

  “No.” Eli's emotions were strong enough. I could feel he was tempted to get up and follow Cole. It was his job to defend and fight for his family. He hated sitting on the sidelines.

  “Don’t even think about leaving.” I shook my head. I frowned and sat back down on my rear. “You guys should scare me.”

  “But here you sit.”

  “Yes. Why is that?” I demanded. “Is it because I’m a Demon? Why don’t I care those two men are dead? Don't I have a conscience or soul or something?”

  Eli laughed but immediately cringed, freezing until the stabs of pain subsided a bit. “Em, you have more of a conscience and soul than anyone I’ve ever met, but you’re not righteous or judgmental. You don’t look at things in black and white. You understand people live in grey areas and make hard choices, not because they’re evil, but because of circumstances. And you know you could, too.” He sucked in a deep breath. “Anyone can. You take the most nonviolent person and if someone is hurting their child or someone they love, they can kill too.”

  I nodded. He was right. I would be capable of killing. If I ever found the person who had murdered my mom or if someone was hurting Mark or my friends—yeah, I could kill. “I really should fear and hate you.”

  “Yeah, but that would be for other reasons.” He shut his eyes again, his force was draining.

  Seeing him in so much pain tore at my soul. I had to do something. “After Vek attacked me and tore a hole into my throat, it should have taken me awhile to heal. When I was in the dreamscape, Torin said he could help heal me faster and then kissed me.” I paused briefly, gauging Eli’s response. His eyes opened and a deep line scrunched up his forehead. “As you know, my wounds were healed when I woke up.”

  “Point to this story, Brycin?” Back to calling me by my last name. “Don’t need to reminisce about you and your boyfriend.”

  “Don’t be an ass. He was able to heal me, wasn’t he? By kissing me?”

  “I wish I could say no, but Fay have healing powers. Like Cole said, Otherworlders heal quickly, but Fay can also use their earth forces. By pulling energy from the earth they help heal even faster. The force they draw can then be transferred to another. It can be done in a few ways, but kissing is probably one of the best. It invokes the most emotion and passes energy to the person the fastest.”

  “So, I can do this too, right?” He nodded in response. “You didn’t tell me I could do that.”

  “Sorry, I keep forgetting my Fay handbook at home.”

  Eli . . . My eyes shot him a warning. He merely huffed, which made him wince in pain as he looked away. I bit my lip, afraid of what I was about to say. “I can help you.”

  “I’ll heal.”

  “Before you bleed out?”

  He was already starting to slump farther down from so much blood loss and as much as he tried to hide the pain from me, I could feel it in him. It was excruciating.

  “Let me help you.” I moved closer to him.

  He turned his head and looked up at me. “You lookin’ for an excuse to make out with me, Brycin?”

  Don’t cause me to regret being nice to you. My eyes held his.

  He turned away, conflicting emotions running across his face before he muttered, “Fine.”

  “Gee, don’t sound all grateful or anything,” I snipped. “You know what? Never mind. Bleed out for all I care.” I was about to stand up and walk away when he grabbed my arm, pulling me back down.

  "Hey . . ." he muttered. His smoldering, green eyes seemed to draw me back to him.

  I swallowed nervously and moved over his legs, straddling him. What was I getting myself into? Did I want him to agree or wish he would say no? Giddy butterflies twirled in my stomach. My feelings hit both happiness and pure fear. I couldn’t tell what I was really hoping for. But now I had committed myself.

  “Okay, I don’t really know what I’m doing . . .” I trailed off.

  “Think you’ll figure it out.” His cheeky smile twitched with pain, his eyes growing a little more distant.

  “You’re probably right.” I laughed nervously. “It’s probably i
nstinct or like riding a bike or—”

  “Brycin, shut up and kiss me.” He pulled me to him, our lips meeting with force. The feel of his lips on mine sent fire through my veins. My tongue quickly found his as the kiss deepened. His hands moved to the back of my head, pulling me closer to him. It still didn’t feel like it was close enough. Everything in me burned with life, and it took me a while to remember I was supposed to be doing something. Concentrating on the energy zinging in my veins, the light bubbling and dancing around in me, making me feel alive, I focused on it. Mentally pushing it towards him, I tried to give everything to Eli.

  His body jerked and twitched, gripping tighter to me. My skin tingled as his hands moved under my top and up my back. I could feel the shift happening—the bullets moving out of the wounds, plopping onto the ground, slick with blood. His pain was lessening, being replaced by strength. I continued to kiss him with abandon even when I felt my own vitality draining away. I would have to learn how to manage this. With practice. Lots and lots of practice.

  The iron bracelet attached to my wrist was limiting the force I needed to pull from the earth. The fact I was able to pull any at all was incredible. Eli’s blood was making me immune to the exact thing they wanted to use to control me. Every day I felt better, a little stronger, strengthening my immune system.

  When his body no longer needed my energy, I sensed it. He could feel it, too. But neither one of us stopped. Once again there was no doubt what I wanted. I had no reservations. It was the most sure I felt about anything. He was what I always wanted—heat, passion, and desire. His arms went around my back as he lifted me, shifting me onto my back. His body moved on top of mine. Eli’s fingers started pulling up my tank, as my hands tugged at the top button of his jeans.

  A voice came from out of the dark, a voice I knew.