Dark as the Grave

by Peter Dawes

  Allen furrowed his brow. While his expression had read of fear and surprise, the longer we regarded each other, the more I saw a staggering form of hate take root behind his gaze. I lifted both gloved hands, expecting him to yell and keeping them near his face in case I needed to silence him more abruptly. When he did not, I lowered them to my sides. His chest rose and fell, taking in gulps of air while he stared at me in silence. After a moment, I began to realize neither of us were doing what the other expected.

  “Why the hell are you here?” he finally asked. “Haven’t you sated your bloodlust enough for one lifetime?”

  I winced. “Allen, I know you are going to find this hard to believe, but I am not here on Sabrina’s behest,” I said. “Quite the opposite, in fact. I plan on stopping her and I need your help.”

  “What?” While I did not fault the question, the way his expression shifted caused me some alarm. His eyes narrowed and focused on me as if I had insulted him somehow. “You… have the audacity to come to me for help after what you did to my maker, you son of a bitch?”

  With both hands, he touched my chest and shoved me away from him. I stumbled back a few paces and stopped while he pushed off from the wall and dusted himself off. When he looked at me again, he shook his head. “You are Flynn, right?” he asked. “I’m assuming, considering you match every description I’ve ever heard of him.”

  “You are not wrong. I am Flynn.” I adjusted my coat. “A lot has happened over the past week. The past few weeks, if I am going to be honest. I do not know how to assure you I am not the same person who killed your maker, but it is true.”

  “Convenient that you’ve chosen now to develop a conscience.” He laughed, the sound laden with bitterness. “Do you have any idea the amount of pain you’ve caused us these past four years? How many people we loved – that he loved – you sent to their second deaths. We had to mourn the passing of half our coven and you – you – think claiming that you’ve had some sort of epiphany is going to gloss over any of that?”

  “Not gloss over it. Merely build whatever bridge it takes to beg your assistance. If you want to burn it behind us, I will understand, but help me put an end to the person at the root of it all.”

  “You are the root of it.” Allen scoffed. “Kill me or let me go, Flynn. Just stop this charade.”

  “This is not a charade,” I said. When he turned to walk away, I placed a hand on his shoulder, gripping onto him only tight enough to turn him to face me again. He resisted, and as he turned, he swung his fist at me and only barely missed. I recoiled and moved to thrust him against the wall once more, but he charged as if to direct all his hate at me.

  An outside force stopped him, however. As he sprang forward, he stopped, and when he could not cross the distance between us, he eyed me with confusion, as if I had the solution to what had just happened to him. He lurched once more, this time to test the restraint, and when he found himself frozen, he opened his mouth to speak. “Whoa there,” Monica said, cutting him off. She emerged from the street, joining us in the alley with her hand raised and pointed at him. “Granted, he’s got that effect on people, but I’m not recommending you strangle him just yet.”

  “Who the hell are you?” he asked, but as Allen studied her, I watched as confusion shifted to understanding and relaxed the moment he did. “You’re a sorceress,” he finally added. “In that case, what are you doing with him?”

  “There is an answer to that,” I said, interjecting, “but not one I can give to you out here. As much as you might think the glasses are a façade, I assure you they are not.”

  “What do your glasses have to do with it?”

  “Come with us and we’ll explain everything. I promise,” Monica said.

  Allen looked between us and for the first time, I saw something hidden behind the vitriol he harbored for me. A profound amount of fatigue glistened in his eyes, the kind which ran soul-deep, fueled by grief. What little energy he could summon to loathe me, he had expended and now, with intrigue to cut through the ice between us, he had been left bare. “If a sorceress has befriended the Black Rose Terror, then I doubt I have any say in the matter.” He gestured forward with his hand. “Take me wherever we’re going.”

  Monica nodded. Glancing in my direction, she gave me a look which suggested that we had underestimated how difficult of a task awaited us. I nodded as well and walked with her as she touched Allen’s arm and led him toward the opposite end of the alley. As I lowered my guard, I felt some sympathy for Allen while trying not to linger on the thought, even if it rapidly joined several others threatening to crowd in on me. Shutting the door on it became difficult, but I managed it anyway.

  Something told me that by the end of the evening, it might burst open again.

  For the time being, however, I focused more on the talk Monica and I had engaged in before leaving for the night. As I drank down a meager glass of blood – much less than my normal amount – I had repeated the warning I first posited when discussing the idea. “He is going to hate the mere sight of me,” I said, “But with Matthew and his second dead, he would be the next person in charge of their coven.”

  “It’s a ballsy maneuver, but yeah…” she had laughed. “If anyone’s going to help us search around the city for a needle in a haystack, it’s going to be the people she pissed off the most.”

  “What do we do if they cannot be reasoned with?”

  “Try a few different layers of reason.” Monica shrugged. “We can pressure him into a conversation and figure out what to do from there. I’m not going to coerce the guy, not after all he’s been through, but if he has the chance to hear the truth, we might have a leg to stand on.”

  I had nodded, and in the present, the reminder of ‘all he had been through’ was enough to nearly open that door again. The sound of shoes scuffing against pavement brought me out from my thoughts, dragging me back to the sight of a South Philadelphia neighborhood and the real presence of Allen Hughes. Monica continued holding his arm, both a threat and reassurance, and he did not fight against it. Within another block, we stopped in front of the closed storefront we had spotted earlier in the night. Monica let go of Allen’s arm. “In here,” she said. “We already have it unlocked.”

  Allen raised an eyebrow at her, but followed through with the implied command, pulling the glass door open and holding it for Monica while forcing me to catch it before it shut. Empty, abandoned shelves that had once contained items for purchase remained bolted to the wall, with chipped paint and dust on the tiled floors upon which we trod. Monica had shut the blinds, leaving the room dark, and while it left her partly blinded, it enabled me to remove my glasses once the door closed.

  He had not been facing me when I first removed them. As Allen turned, however, he drew a sharp breath inward, his eyes wide again, the shock lingering longer than it had the time before. I nodded and folded the glasses up, slipping them into my pocket. “You are the second person to have that reaction in two days,” I said. “I underestimated how much impact this sort of revelation might have.”

  “If you underestimated it, then your maker did a poor job of teaching you,” he said. “Not that it surprises me. I suspect she didn’t want you to know if she made the foolish mistake of turning a seer.” While Allen refused to relax, I found the absence of hatred in his eyes comforting. “What happened?”

  “In general, or recently?”

  “Recently. Though this begs the question of how long you’ve had your gifts.”

  “Only for a few weeks, though I have been told this explains a lot about how gifted of an assassin I have been.” Strolling over to an abandoned chair, I picked it up off the floor and righted it so I could sit on it. “I never knew. Only had it said to me that someday, I would be able to harness unspeakable power. Robin would even reference the second sight and not fully explain it. It became maddening until Monica drew out my powers.”

  Allen glanced at Monica, who lifted a hand and waved at him. As he looked ba
ck at me, he nodded and walked to retrieve another chair. “You have the stomach to reference your brother after killing him?” he asked. “You must have a heart of stone.”

  I bristled, but saw Monica frown in my periphery and bit back the urge to retort. “No, I am not unaffected by his death,” I said. “Only trying to focus harder on putting right what I have done. I was on his side until she got ahold of me again. I still do not know what enchantment she put me under, but I did not wake until it was already too late.”

  After he sat, we beheld each other in silence again, his gaze stern, but still lacking in hatred. At least, for the time being. I feared speaking first, so I waited until he nodded and glanced away. “It wasn’t that we completely trusted it when Michael said he had swayed you to his side,” he said. “Matthew had enough thought to send us elsewhere. My only regret is that we trusted him at all.”

  Tears welled in his eyes. I watched him try to gather his composure, breathing in and out and clearing his throat as he looked back toward me. “You said Sabrina did this?” he asked. “When you say enchantment, do you mean literally?”

  “Yes,” I said, feeling awkward, as if witnessing something I had no right to see. “I went from clarity and conviction to utter servitude and did not wake again until my brother died before me. And now, a sorceress cannot find her with a simple location spell. We all suspect she can use dark magic.”

  “Is that how she’s kept you doing her bidding this whole time?”

  Reflexively, I frowned. “No, she simply took a lost soul and brought out the darkness within him. The loyalty I gave to her was genuine. I did not see the evil in her ways until I met Monica. Undoubtedly why she sent me first to kill her.”

  Allen nodded and while I still saw judgment for my actions, I recognized acceptance as well. “And after all of that, you expect me to help you?” he finally asked. “Why?”

  I glanced at Monica, who recognized the silent plea for her to enter the discussion again. She hustled to liberate another chair and bring it over. “We’ve got one large obstacle in the way of us fixing all of this,” she said as she sat. “To be blunt, I have no way of finding her. Not with magic, at least.”

  “Wherever she is, she’s sunk into the shadows,” Allen affirmed, crossing one leg over the other while relaxing by the slimmest of margins. “What makes you think any of us would be able to help you out with that?”

  “There’s more of you than there are of us. And I know for a fact you guys are hiding out of fear for your lives.” Monica raised an eyebrow. “How does she have you guys pinned to the city?”

  He remained silent for several seconds, leading me to wonder if she had offended him with the question. Monica refused to waver, though, presenting the theory as fact and challenging him with the weight of her stare to disprove it. When he tilted his chin upward, she gestured hers to the side, prompting him to finally sigh. “We’re not sure,” he said, “though you stating she’s been using dark magic goes a long way in explaining it. Anytime we attempt leaving, we run into difficulties.”

  “What kinds?”

  “Bad traffic. Other vampires who almost seem to be waiting for us. We’ve had to run a few times and my sister, Constance, got injured, so we’ve holed up while she’s rested. Our misfortune’s been uncanny.”

  “Lots of spells that can do that. Which means Sabrina’s stepping up her game.” Monica pivoted enough to rest her elbow on the back of her chair. “Allen, she has the other covens either falling in line or agreeing not to rock the boat. Whatever witchcraft isn’t handling for her, they are. We encountered a group of vampires who decided to use a hospital as a recruitment station and that sort of thing’s only going to get worse the more power she amasses. At some point, the neutral people aren’t going to be allowed to stay neutral.”

  “And it falls on us to make up for their shortcomings?”

  Monica frowned. “Plainly put? I wouldn’t trust any of them not to turn in Flynn to save their own necks. And if she enthralls him again, this whole city will go to hell.”

  I reflexively mirrored her frown, but remained silent, unable to argue against her point. As Allen glanced back at me, I met his gaze and when his expression shifted to match the mood of the room, he nodded. “I guess our necks are on the line regardless,” he said. As he looked back at Monica, he gestured at me. “What does the Supernatural Order have in store for him after this? Will he answer for what happened to my maker?”

  As her eyes shot to me, our exchanged look bore an ill omen until she took a deep breath and looked back at Allen, I felt my stomach sink. She quirked a small smile of chagrin. “They’ll put him to work,” Monica said.

  “I guess that’s as good of a punishment as any. Seers aren’t known for having long life spans.” Allen rose to his feet. As he straightened out his coat, he peered down at us, waiting for us to stand before speaking again. “So, how do we relay a message to you if we find out where she’s hiding?”

  “Slip it to us here. We’ll come back and look periodically.”

  Allen nodded. Glancing toward the door, I watched him hone on the sight of the mail slot before looking back at us. “Does this mean I’m free to go?”

  Monica nodded. I continued maintaining my silence, exchanging one last glance with Allen before he turned to leave. As I stared at his back, ignoring the sorceress by my side, I relived the pain in his eyes and felt the door holding in my sentiments buckle. It held long enough for him to finish his departure, cracking open as the physical one before us swung shut.

  Whatever Monica began to say in the background fell on deaf ears. My hand dug into my pocket and my heart sank to my feet as I recognized the temerity of what I had just done. Gripping onto the timepiece, I took a deep breath and, for the first time in years, I heard the echo of my victims resonate through my head, hurtling accusations at me.

  “Peter?” Monica asked, her voice faint and breaking through the madness enough to bring my gaze back to her. Whatever expression had taken over my face, it was enough to inspire worry in the way she regarded me. “Where the hell did your head just go?”

  “Nowhere,” I said reflexively, removing my hand from my pocket and turning around to face our small seating collection. Inspired by the need to do something, I walked my chair over to the edge of the room where others had been stacked and now collected dust. “What will we do until we receive further word?”

  “I don’t think it’s going to take long for Allen to give us something. You can tell he’s chomping at the bit to get out of here.” I felt Monica watch me while I placed my chair atop the others and settled it into place. “You could probably use a night of down time, to be honest.”

  “Quite the opposite.” Her chair found its way onto the stack. I paced back for the one Allen had used. “Another night will give Sabrina another chance to make things more difficult. We should search around the city for her.”

  “Well, alright.” Monica paced closer. “What were her regular haunts?”

  Pausing, I paged through my mental files, attempting to sort out where I knew Sabrina had taken company. Any of the potentials encompassed a litany of nightclubs and human establishments; hunting grounds and not shelters. “I do not know,” I said. “Not when it comes to places she would consider safe harbor.”

  “Yeah, and Christopher seemed to indicate it wasn’t with any of them. I’d already thought through that.” She continued to watch. When I ran out of chairs to stack, I stopped moving, which only worsened my agitation. “What is it, Peter?” she asked, breaking another extended pause.

  I shook my head. When she closed the remaining distance between us, I met her gaze again, allowing her to see whatever laid behind my eyes once more. Monica frowned, but I scoffed when she directed what looked like pity at me. “Strangely, our new informant is the second person to mention the Supernatural Order in a negative light,” I said, throwing the first notion I could conjure at her, not even recognizing it as a deflection. “Is there a reason why?”r />
  The same look which had preceded her assuring Allen I would be ‘put to work’ managed its way back. I raised an eyebrow and she lifted her arms to cross against her chest. “We don’t have the greatest PR when it comes to vampires, Peter,” she said. “While we might only hunt the bad guys, there’s times other people get caught as collateral damage.”

  “Is this why there seems some insistence that I will not be received favorably by them?”

  “Partly.” Her arms lowered to her sides. As she fidgeted with her hands, I saw an attempt to stall, punctuated by a weary sigh. “He’s not wrong that the work is tough on human seers. The Fates give them a huge battery of gifts, but, stacked against someone who’s practiced the dark arts for centuries, some of them end up hurt or worse. I learned how to bring out your powers by watching a seer get his taken away.”

  “Why did they take away his gifts?” I asked, struck by genuine intrigue.

  “The sorcerer that he fought fucked him up. Left him alive, but he couldn’t switch any of his powers off. The voices in his head alone nearly drove him insane.” Monica shrugged. As she looked at me, this time she appeared the lost one. “It’s a nine-century old institution. It’s inbred with misogyny, tradition, and superstition, and yeah, even finishing off Sabrina might not be enough to redeem you in their eyes. They’re going to be prejudiced against you from the start.”

  I nodded, hearing the truth in her words and accepting it. She reached to pat my shoulder and I attempted to look as unaffected as possible, flashing a quick, reassuring smile at her while reaching in my pocket for my sunglasses. Slipping them over my eyes, I took a deep breath and gestured at the door. “We should return home,” I said. “Perhaps, along the way, I can think of suitable places to search for her.”

  “If keeping busy in the meanwhile is better for you, then okay. We’ll go home and regroup first before we kick over a few rocks.”

  Monica walked ahead of me, opening the door and holding it until I exited the building. After she evoked a spell to engage the lock, I followed her to onto the sidewalk, grateful for the quiet stroll toward a subway entrance. I devoted no thought toward Sabrina; I had answered Monica truthfully and no amount of effort would call to mind a place where my maker would be hiding. Instead, I entertained dangerous notions, inspired by a guilt-laden heart. Perhaps the Order would never condone me, and perhaps a harsh punishment awaited. I could not help but to feel I deserved that, though. Sins as numerous as mine deserved some sort of recompense.