Dark as the Grave

by Peter Dawes

“Because the universe has other plans for you.” Monica settled beside me on the bed, this time closer to my chest. “Besides, I kind of like you. I’d only heard about this vampire egotistical bullshit beforehand. You’re giving me a backstage pass to it right now.”

  “Then humor me with your answers, or let me go.” I glared. “While I tired of the topic years ago, I am hungry and especially not in the mood to entertain it.”

  “Yeah, the last snack didn’t agree with you, did it?” Monica lifted one arm and reached for the end of her glove, giving it a tug. After doing that to the opposite side as well, she cracked her knuckles and took a deep breath. Something about the actions caused a pit of dread to form in my stomach, anticipation mounting when something about the way she regarded me shifted. “Regardless of whether you want to believe in magic – even after all of this –” she said, “– you should believe me when I say I am the scholar here. You’ve been trapped in the dark for five years, convinced you’re nothing more than Satan’s right hand and Sabrina only fuels that. If anyone’s been keeping you from knowing your true self, it’s her.”

  I perked an eyebrow when she turned to more directly face me. Catching sight of her ethereal, green eyes, I recalled Anthony’s story and felt my stomach sink. “We could make a good team,” she said, “but first, we need to teach you how to see.”

  Lydia’s words echoed in my thoughts – about possessing sight, but no vision. An idle notion, originating from somewhere outside of me, dared me to pull back the veil; to reveal the truth behind the mystery, as if I was the one who had possessed this talent all along. Monica nodded like she could read my mind and placed a hand on my forehead. This time, I did not flinch away from her.

  “Do you know why Sabrina never tells you what this second sight is?” she asked. “It’s because she wants you completely wrapped around her finger before your abilities have a chance to surface.”

  “Abilities?” I asked the question on impulse, captivated despite myself.

  “Special gifts. To tell you the truth, I don’t even know what it’ll all look like when you get them, but we’re about to find out.” A flicker of nervousness crossed her eyes, her gaze remaining set on me, still in that same unnerving manner. “The important thing I want you to remember is that there’s a game of chess being played around you that shouldn’t have started in the first place. Sabrina snatched you before we could. She taught you how to be a killer…” She settled her other hand on my shoulder. “I’m going to teach you how to do it right.”

  What began as the sensation of ants crawling around inside my head evolved into a swarm of angry bees within seconds. When a flash of light blinded me, I cried out on impulse, feeling Monica’s grip on my shoulder tighten while her other palm tried to hold me still. The sensation of synapses being redirected – files being reorganized within my mind – shifted from painful to uncomfortable before it became inexplicably exhausting. Calm washed over me, luring me toward slumber, with the warning that I could do nothing to fight.

  As such, I tumbled into submission.

  Monica lifted her hands. I heard her crack her knuckles again, her voice dissonant when she spoke. “Rest for a bit, Flynn,” she said. “You’re going to need it. Life as you know it has just gotten flipped upside-down.”

  Chapter 14

  The sound of someone knocking startled me awake.

  I shot to a seated position, surprised to find myself surrounded by the pitch black of my room. Blinking away sleep, I lifted a hand to scrub at my face and struggled to regain my bearings. What the hell had happened, I asked myself. Had I dreamed what I thought I had experienced and was it still the same night, or some night afterward? Whoever stood on the other side of the door was not about to afford me the time to sort myself out, however. Another knock, this one more persistent, caused me to wince.

  “Flynn?” the muffled voice of my brother, Robin, called toward me. “Are you in yet? I swear I heard your door close.”

  “Yes…” I choked on the word, forced to clear my throat before I could attempt responding again. “Yes, I am here. Wait a minute.” Running my fingers through my hair, I smoothed back any locks which had become disheveled, taking a deep breath while doing so. Flashes of my captivity ran through my mind, from Monica touching my forehead to the sensation of everything shifting around inside my brain. When I realized I had fallen asleep, I lifted my hands, deciding to start my self-examination there.

  I saw no evidence of the shackles which had been on my wrists. My ankles lacked any burn marks as well – including the one which had directly contacted silver – and when I glanced toward the windows, the slight amount of moonlight filtering through the shades hurt my eyes. I still wore the same clothing, but did not feel any different than I had beforehand. “Perhaps it was a dream,” I murmured, both disbelieving the notion and desperate to take hold of it. Lowering my hand back onto the bed, however, my fingers grazed something hard, which shattered the makeshift illusion.

  My katana had been placed beside me, as well as my wool coat. Draped over them was a crimson red scarf littered with bloodstains. Swallowing back a flurry of nerves, I reached under my shirt and touched the necklace still dangling from my neck. “What the bloody hell did you do to me, witch?” I asked, clutching onto the heart-shaped pendant.

  “Flynn? What is taking you so long?” Robin asked, drawing my attention back to him.

  “Of all the nights for you to be impatient.” Sighing, I hid the necklace again and swung my legs over the side of the bed. Dizziness made an unwelcome visit, but I fought against it, plucking my sunglasses from the nightstand where they had been placed and grumbling the entire trek from bedroom to entryway. Opening the door, I leaned against the frame while adjusting the frames over my eyes. “This had better be good,” I said, heedless of my tone. “I was asleep.”

  Robin furrowed his brow, stealing a few, interminable moments to examine me. “Flynn, where have you been?” he asked. “We nearly thought the worst when you disappeared last night. Did something detain you? You said you’d come find me when you concluded your business with Sabrina, but nobody saw you arrive home. Not even the Mistress.”

  I winced at the reminder of Sabrina, pushing aside my irritation when I saw the look of concern in my brother’s eyes. “Yes, I did get waylaid. Apologies, Robin.” Standing straight, I moved aside and gestured for him to enter. “I take it that I slept the whole day away, then, if it is the next evening.”

  “Yes, it is. Late into it, too.” Robin strode toward the center of the room, weighing his surroundings while doing so. A strange promotion followed in his wake, making me feel uneasy without any clear reason why. I closed the door while he spoke, his voice subdued and his focus not yet returning to me. “One wonders what sort of mischief you discovered if you don’t know what time it is,” he said.

  “Perhaps you could humor me and tell me.”

  “Eleven-thirty, last I checked. Might be closer to midnight by now.” Finally, he turned to face me. “You mean that wasn’t your door I heard shut?”

  “It could have been. I mean… I do not know.” Walking past Robin, I headed for the sitting area and fell into one of the high-back, leather chairs. Robin followed the implied request to make himself comfortable, lowering onto the couch opposite me. “Truthfully, I do not know when I returned or how I arrived back at the coven. I only know I am here now.”

  “Well, you had us worried. Sabrina sent Timothy looking for you and ordered the rest of us to inform her the moment you returned.”

  “Just bloody wonderful.” Reclining against the back of the chair, I rested my head so that my face pointed toward the ceiling. It brought back unpleasant recollections of the night before. “What the fuck am I going to tell her?”

  “Language, Flynn.”

  I lifted my head and scowled at him.

  He sighed. “Never going to break you of that, am I?” When I did not answer, he folded his hands on his lap. The way he relaxed suggested he had decid
ed to settle in. “What happened? Do you feel like discussing it?”

  “Right now, there is nothing to discuss. I am still trying to figure it out, to tell you the truth.”

  “Then tell me what you remember.”

  Gathering my thoughts, I cycled through both what I had already revisited and what else I could recall, if anything. While I could still taste the poisoned blood, and remembered the burning and pain it had evoked, before I could open my mouth to answer, an unnerving idea took root in my mind. How did I know I could trust Robin? Or anyone else, for that matter? He stared expectantly and I weighed him with a heavy amount of dread creeping through me, whispering paranoia in my ear. “It…” I attempted not to show my uncertainty. “It is a blur. I ventured out to fulfill a duty for Sabrina and cannot remember the rest.”

  Robin frowned. “If you were going to lie to me, I wish you wouldn’t treat me like I am an idiot,” he said.

  “It is the truth, though. The rest of what I recall is unreliable, at best. I pursued a target for Sabrina and she proved more than I bargained for.”

  “But you killed her.” Robin raised an eyebrow. “Correct?”

  I glanced toward my bedroom, thinking of the scarf draped across my katana. “Yes, I bit her,” I said, nodding. My gaze returned to my brother. “Drained her and left her for dead. Something was off about her blood, though. It sat with me the wrong way and left me in a weakened state for the rest of the night. I crawled into the girl’s house to sleep it off and must have just returned. Honestly, I still feel dizzy.”

  “What about the girl’s blood do you think was tainted?”

  Silently, I weighed whether Robin would believe me if I called her a sorceress, deciding it best if I did not complicate matters. “Not certain. If you know anything about that, perhaps you could enlighten me.”

  “If we can have a poor reaction to someone else’s blood?” Robin pursed his lips in thought, lifting a hand to scratch at the back of his neck. “I have some ideas, but none that…” He trailed off. While his gaze had shifted away, the way he glanced back at me suggested he had suddenly produced a card he did not feel apt to share. Our eyes met and the irony of us both holding secrets lingered over us, palpable.

  “You know of something,” I said.

  “Perhaps.” The way he tensed made his silence even more conspicuous. He lowered his arm again, tilting his head while weighing me. I perked an eyebrow in response to the perusal. “Was there anything else remarkable about your encounter with this girl?”

  “As I said my memory is –”

  “Unreliable. Yes, I know. Humor me, brother.”

  The knot forming in my stomach tightened even further. I struggled for words, realizing I had gotten in over my head, while unable to determine how to rise above the surface again. “I think I recall her trying to restrain me,” I said. “I must have managed to escape.”

  “And I doubt she wanted you to remember the encounter,” Robin said. Something about his acceptance of the partial truth relieved me. He frowned, nodding. “You’ll have to be more careful. If you think the Mistress values you, then believe me when I say there are others who do just as much.”

  “Who are these others?” I frowned. “Or are you going to be as obscure as usual on the topic?”

  “I know you never accept that your ignorance has a good reason for existing, but it does. I think those days are waning to an end, though, as I expected that they would.” Robin folded his hands on his lap, inching further to the edge of his seat. The shift in his expression unnerved me with its sobriety. “If Sabrina sent you to end this girl, and you were at all compromised by her, then the Mistress is going to view you with a large amount of skepticism. I don’t know what you need to do to convince her your mental faculties are intact, but do it.”

  Scoffing, I rose to a stand. “What, does she fear that I might become unhinged or something?”

  “You have to confess, the thought of you being unhinged is daunting.”

  “Well, I should settle her fears, then.” Dismissing the heaviness which had settled in the air, as much to assuage Robin as to calm myself. “Regardless of what happened last night, I am perfectly in control.” Removing my suit jacket, I walked toward my bedroom and tossed it onto my bed. As I plucked my shoulder holster from the nightstand, I heard Robin approach and entertained the notion – only for a moment – that I had been wearing this the night before as well. Suppressing a shiver, I put it on and secured my weapons into place.

  “I have something to give her,” I continued once I heard Robin lurking within earshot again. Reaching for the crimson-colored scarf, I stuffed it into my pocket and picked up my suit jacket again, to thread my arms back through its sleeves. While dressing again, I turned to face my brother and gave the ends of the jacket a tug to smooth them out. “Is she in an ill mood? Aside from worrying about my mental faculties?”

  Robin shook his head. “No, otherwise she is her same chipper self.”

  I chuckled, in defiance of my lingering anxiety. “Sarcasm does not become you. While I am thinking about it, though, did you finish the favor I asked?”

  “Your rose?” When I nodded, he sighed. “Yes, it was finished. I had some other business to attend to –”

  ‘…More like conspiring…’

  “– So, it wasn’t a problem whatsoever.”

  The unspoken words echoed in my head, played back when my mind realized they had come from a source outside myself. As I stared at Robin, he met my gaze, both of us locked in a stalemate as I tried to figure out what had just happened. Robin seemed to have added the caveat, but at no point did I see him say the words. “I beg your pardon, but what did you just say?” I asked.

  Robin furrowed his brow. “I said it wasn’t a problem.”

  “No, not that part.” I brushed away the words with a flick of my hand. “I mean after you mentioned having business to attend to.”

  “That was all I said, Flynn. I had business to attend to and completing your task proved not to be a hassle.” Robin closed the distance between us by a pace, but hesitated before motioning forward any further. “Are you sure you’re feeling alright?” he asked.

  “You have me beginning to wonder,” I said, frowning. Another flurry of nerves ran through me like quicksilver, making me realize that I had yet to determine what the witch had done to me the previous evening. And yet, there I stood, willing to swear on the altar of everything I held sacred that I had heard mention of conspiring float through my head, bearing Robin’s voice. Suddenly, my feet felt unsteady. “I think I should hunt after I speak to the Mistress.”

  “Are you sure you’re in the right condition to be addressing her? It might be better for you to hunt and lie down. Figure out what to say to her tomorrow.”

  “No, the longer this goes on, the harder it is going to be to convince her.” I flashed a small smile at Robin, attempting to reassure him. The gesture did nothing to erase the look of concern in his eyes and as I walked for the door, he joined me, lingering a little closer to me than normal. It almost felt comforting.

  Together, we strolled out to the corridor. Robin paused to shut my door before assuming his place by my side again, and more than once, he asked if I wanted him to join me in Sabrina’s room. “No, I should do this alone,” I said, even though a part of me wanted to beg for his assistance. He accepted my refusal, bidding me a good evening when we reached the stairs. I watched him begin his descent to the ground floor. Once he had disappeared, I focused upward and started my own ascent.

  My hand slid up the bannister for stability, clinging onto it until I reached the top of the stairs. On occasion, its grip tightened when my footing lost stability, but by the time I let go, I had convinced myself of what needed to happen. Gradually, I released my dread and anxiety, letting it slough off me with each step I took. Regardless of how I felt, I told myself, I needed to convey a convincing performance to the person with whom I had trouble lying. That this would be my second such attempt was a
fact not lost on me.

  Glancing at Paul, who stood in his customary place as sentry, I noticed some uncertainty in the way his gaze shifted toward me and pretended to be unaffected. Straightening my suit jacket again, I strode toward the door, drinking in the mantra I kept repeating to myself – that I was the Black Rose Assassin and nothing, not even a meddling witch, could get under my skin. Not exchanging a word with Paul the entire time, I kept my posture upright and only glanced at him when I reached the entrance to Sabrina’s penthouse. Paul peered up at me from his slightly shorter vantage point. As I perked an eyebrow, he opened the door and once I strode past the threshold, he shut it behind me.

  Once I found myself inside, I took a steadying breath. My gait slowed to a stop, caution returning as darkness enveloped me. Swallowing hard, I prepared myself for this next feat before calling out, “Mistress, are you here?”

  Silence responded.

  Walking further into the penthouse, I entered the sitting area and could not ignore the shiver which ran through me, a far different sensation than any I had ever experienced while in the familiar room. My eyes shifted from one feature to the next while I attempted to ascertain its source. “Sabrina?” I asked. “Robin said you wanted to speak with me.” As I spoke, a presence drew closer to me, the light sounds of steps directing my attention to the bedroom. I did not turn to face it, at first, though. As the unnerving sensation became more prominent, I shut my eyes, seeing a series of images play out in my head.

  I saw the room from my Mistress’s eyes, including my back pointed toward her for the conspicuous amount of time I remained standing still. I felt her piercing stare on me, but did not know true fear until I felt her reach behind her back, for a sheathed dagger she had tucked into the waistband of her pants.

  My eyes shot open, disrupting the strange mental image. I spun around to face her, catching her off-guard enough for her to tense, her eyes widening before resuming a more impassive expression. The way she kept her hand tucked out of sight lent credence to what I had just experienced, making it impossible for me to dissect what had come over me. Instead, I masked the hurt of betrayal, forcing an agreeable smile to blossom into life. “You look uneasy, my dark mother,” I said. “They told me you were concerned, but I hardly expected to see you so troubled.”