Darkness Within

by Carli Castle

  You know what to do, Lucas.

  The voice came from nowhere. He didn’t look around to see who had talked, because he had heard this voice before.

  The heat in his stomach became more intense, just like really intense heartburn after a particularly greasy dinner, and it began to spread. He thought he would throw up, because the heat went up his esophagus, and spread all the way around him, his chest, down his arms, into his fingers. Then, right as a knife-claw came toward him, a gigantic ball of fire erupted from his hands. He screamed, the skin of his hands burning as the fire kept coming in spurts. The fire hit one of the creatures on the face. It shrieked as it became completely engulfed in flames, and it continued to scream until the body was nothing more than a pile of ashes.

  Lucas’s stomach gave a great spasm at the great stench it left behind, making him double over, his body trying to expel something that refused to come out. His eyes watered as his knees finally gave way under him and he fell hard on them. But he wasn’t screaming in pain, because he wasn’t feeling pain anymore.

  He fought it for a moment, but it began to overpower him, a dark hunger he couldn’t explain, something that made him want to do terrible things. It had always happened when his fire power surfaced and he wanted to revel in it.

  Do it. You want it. Do it, Lucas.

  He got back on his feet, blinded to anything other than the other two shadows. His hands moved in front of him as if they had life of their own, and several balls of fire erupted from them, hitting the one that still stood. The other one, the one he had taken down before, wasn’t moving, but still, he shot his hands toward it and burned it as well. Both screeched as they burned, and disappeared with a black cloud of smoke.

  And he felt glee. He rejoiced in the stench of their burned bodies, and wanted more. The hunger threatened to swallow him whole. He would do anything to satisfy it, to give it what it wanted. Chaos, more smoke, more burning.

  It was the hysterical crying that snapped him back into himself. It filled his subconscious like an echo, and slowly, his eyes focused on the young woman by his feet, curled in a fetal position on the ground. The darkness stirred in him still, but hearing her cries helped clear his head. Then he felt the burn in his hands. He looked down at them in confusion, because for a moment, he couldn’t remember how it had happened. He didn’t know why they were burned, and why they hurt so much he just wanted to throw himself off the tallest cliff just to make it go away.

  “Are you okay,” he heard himself say, though his voice sounded muffled to his own ears. The girl’s face lifted to him, pale and streaked with tears. Her eyes were wild as she looked around, as if to make sure they were alone. It wasn’t fear what he saw in her eyes, but he didn’t stop to think of it much, because that was when the burning in his hands intensified. “Blood,” he mumbled, remembering all the blood at her feet. She didn’t seem to be injured.

  “Your hands,” she whispered, her eyes taking a deranged gleam. “We need to get you help.”

  Knees knocking together, he watched her stand and he let her pull him by the elbow when she began to walk.

  “We have to get you to a healer,” she whispered.

  “The blood,” he repeated, feeling hot and cold at the same time, stomach churning dangerously.

  “That doesn’t matter right now,” she snapped. “We need a healer.”

  To him, it seemed like they walked for a mile, but it must not have been too long. She teleported with him to the front of the healing house. A young woman with a shock of red hair teleported right next to him, probably a nurse coming in for her shift. Her eyes scanned him up and down, widening when she saw his hands, and she called into the building. He couldn’t understand what she was saying over the ringing in his ears.

  Two nurses, a man and a woman, came out immediately. The woman took the girl’s arm, while the man and the redhead helped him into the building.

  “Please, I need my father.” To his own ears, he sounded like a child, but he didn’t care. He wanted his dad. The only one in the building who would be able to understand what was happening would be him. No one else could.

  “Who do we need to call, sir,” the redhead asked, holding on to his arm and looking ahead.

  “My father. Please, he’s a healer here.” His knees gave from under him, but the big man, held on to him, helping him avoid the floor.

  They were suddenly upstairs, having been teleported by the man and woman at his side. Next thing he knew, he was staring at the ceiling as it circled around. The man, who had dark skin and dark eyes, was holding his hand in front of his face, but it was all blurry to Lucas. He could almost hear him talking, but the sounds were muffled. Lucas couldn’t figure out why he couldn’t understand anything.

  “My father, please,” he mumbled. “Paul. Paul Ferrin. Please.”

  The man straightened. Lucas lifted his head off the table to see what was going on. The redhead had stopped what she’d been doing and was staring at him like he’d suddenly sprouted horns out of his nose.

  Elle was completely frozen.

  She tried to move, she really did, but her legs weren’t listening to her brain. She knew she was staring, but she couldn’t stop herself.

  Lucas.

  Fifteen minutes before, she’d been dazed from that fantastic kiss they’d shared, going to the healing house thinking she wouldn’t be able to work at all because her head was swimming with him.

  Now here he was, lying on a bed, his hands charred.

  She wanted to go to him, comfort him. He was her friend, or maybe more. She didn’t know for sure yet.

  The problem was he didn’t know Parker, and she wasn’t about to talk to him about it. It wasn’t the time or place for any of that.

  “Parker!” Her head snapped back to Julius, the gigantic male nurse who was currently holding Lucas’s arms down so he didn’t try to use his hands. “He’s Healer Ferrin’s son. Go find him.”

  She felt herself nod as her legs started moving forward of their own accord.

  She was blind as she walked through the halls, and found Paul in his office, filling out paperwork, his glasses perched on his nose. He looked up when she entered without knocking.

  When he saw the look of fear on her face, his expression changed, and he stood.

  “What’s wrong?”

  “P-Paul…” she stammered and cursed herself. “Lucas is here.” It was all she said before Paul was pushing past her and running down the hall.

  She followed him, stopping right by his side when he reached Lucas.

  “Son,” Paul whispered, his eyes roaming all over his son, assessing the damage.

  Lucas’s face was red and beaded with sweat, and his eyes kept crossing and uncrossing. He muttered something over and over, but it was hard to tell what he wanted to say.

  “Julius, move him to room thirty-five,” Paul ordered and turned to Elle. “Parker, get me essence of dandelions, and poppy and mint potion.”

  She ran toward the potions room, half blind with fear. She tried searching for the potions Paul asked for, her eyes roaming over all the labels, unseeing. Then she snapped closed the cabinet door and leaned her forehead on the cool glass, taking a deep breath.

  “Get a hold of yourself,” she whispered.

  She would never have a successful career in healing if she couldn’t handle helping someone she knew. She needed to stay cool, professional, collected. She couldn’t help if she was the one in need of help.

  She took another cleansing breath, in through the nose, out through the mouth, and opened the cabinet once more. She saw the two potions she needed immediately, grabbed them and ran to the room where they’d taken Lucas.

  Paul was by Lucas’s head, his hand over his forehead, hovering inches away from the clammy skin.

  “He has a high temperature,” Paul said, his voice calm, hands steady. “Parker, administer the poppy seed and mint potion, for the fever and pain.”

  Lucas’s eyes were closed, but he was b
reathing raggedly, and they opened the minute she stood above him.

  “Heeeeeey, Red,” he drawled, almost making her smile before she caught herself. “Are you here to put me out of my misery?”

  She bit back her smile. “This won’t be pleasant,” she said as she brought the potion to his lips and poured. He almost threw up. She wasn’t surprised, because the potion was absolutely disgusting. It was bitter, minty, and sour all at the same time, which was not a combination of flavors that should ever meet.

  “And here I thought you were a guardian angel or something,” he gagged.

  “Definitely not an angel,” she responded, wishing she wasn’t enjoying his flirty attitude.

  She smoothed back the hair from his forehead, his blue eyes glazing over like a river in the dead of winter as the potion began taking effect. A dazed smiled stretched his lips, and her gaze was drawn to his lips for a moment before she caught herself. This was not the time. She was working, and he was her patient.

  Deciding to focus on the right things, she opened herself to him. His fever was high still, one hundred and five, but his heart rate was slowing down. The pain in his hands was still strong, but she could already feel the poppy seed potion taking effect.

  How in the world had that happened? Did he put his hands into a fireplace?

  His eyes rolled back and his lids finally closed. She turned to look at Paul, who was smearing the thick, yellow dandelion potion all over the burned skin. Lucas’s fingers twitched every time Paul touched his hands, but his eyes remained closed.

  “Did anyone else get hurt,” Paul inquired, his voice so low she almost didn’t hear him.

  She thought about that for a moment and remembered the girl who’d walked in with Lucas.

  “There was a woman with him, someone young. She didn’t seem physically harmed at first sight, but she was upset, and was taken into another wing.”

  Paul nodded, his hands now hovering over Lucas’s, a hum of power rising in the air between them.

  Elle took the time to stand back and think. What could have happened in the few minutes after she’d gone home to get ready for the healing house? She’d never seen a burn that bad before. It made her skin crawl into goose bumps and her stomach roll. And she wasn’t the kind of girl who was squeamish at all, she had seen plenty of disgusting things. However, this was not one of those disgusting things, this was shocking to her senses.

  For a moment, when she was helping him and he’d looked into her eyes, she was sure he was going to figure out it was her under the charms. It was one thing being confident about changing your appearance in front of people you didn’t know, and a completely different thing to act normal in front of someone who knew the real you. Not that he knew the real her, but he had told her he noticed things about people.

  And there was the small fact that he’d just kissed every sane thought out of her head. She also had to wonder who the girl was and why they had appeared there together. Was she a girlfriend of some sort? The stab of jealously that came over her, also gave way to a wave of annoyance. He wasn’t her boyfriend. One kiss didn’t leave him owing her anything at all. It was just a kiss, she had to stop jumping the gun here.

  Paul finished healing what he could and put his hand on his son’s forehead.

  “He’s still warm, we will have to keep an eye on him, but the burns should heal fairly quickly,” Paul said, snapping her mind to the present.

  “Where would he have gotten burned like that?” She voiced the question without thinking. Paul turned and looked at her with a strange expression on his face for a split second, then he smiled.

  “I wouldn’t know. Maybe an experiment gone wrong.” He walked to the door. “My son’s an alchemist.”

  Elle nodded, following him to visit their next patient, trying not to be bothered by the fact that she knew Paul had just lied to her.

  Chapter Seven

  Lucas’s eyes flew open and he found himself staring at a stark white ceiling. The smells were familiar, if only a little vaguely. In his head, there were images of heavy fog, shadowy figures gliding to him with knives, and kissing Elle under her balcony. It was all a jumble, like someone had dropped his brain into a box and shook it.

  “Glad to see you awake, brother.”

  Lucas turned his head to see Caleb sitting on a cushioned chair, his two counselors standing by him. Aali was sulking as always, and Jaleil nodded at him once in greeting.

  “What are you doing here,” he asked, then looked around the room, realizing he didn’t recognize his surroundings. There wasn’t a lot of furniture, just the bed, the chair Caleb was on, and a small table with an empty tray on it. There was one window, which let in a fair amount of light, although he couldn’t see outside. “Where am I?”

  “You’re in the healing house, Lucas,” Caleb said as he stood and walked to the side of the bed.

  Lucas shook his head, brought his hands to his face, but stopped when he saw the yellowed bandages. That’s when things started to come back to him. The fire shooting out of his hands, a girl screaming. And with the images came, like clockwork, the guilt.

  “How long have I been here?” He cleared his throat because he was sure he sounded as guilt-ridden as he felt, and he tried to relax his face. Had he done something wrong last night by defending himself, or had he done something crazy?

  “Since last night,” Caleb said. “We already interviewed the girl you saved.”

  “Saved?” Lucas shook his head again. “Are you sure?”

  “I know, I had a hard time believing it too,” Caleb said, but neither of them laughed as they would have in a different situation. “Why don’t you tell me your version of the story?”

  “Uh, well, everything is a little blurry right now,” he admitted, wishing he could recall everything. Why did his head feel like it was stuffed with fluff?

  “Just tell us what you remember,” Jaleil said, standing by Caleb. Aali stayed back.

  “I was by the jeweled waterfalls last night, drawing,” he recalled. “When I was leaving, I heard screaming.” He left out a huge chunk of the happenings of the previous night, but he wasn’t about to tell any of them of his encounter with Elle.

  “That was Jamie Smith,” Jaleil said.

  “What,” Lucas asked him.

  “The young woman who was being attacked, her name is Jamie Smith,” Jaleil explained gently.

  “Is she all right,” he asked. He had to hear it out loud, because images of the young woman flooded his brain. Blond, she was blond, but he could not remember anything else about her.

  “She’s fine,” Caleb said. “She was released this morning.”

  Lucas nodded. “There was the scream,” he repeated it because he was having a hard time remembering the rest of it. What had happened after the scream? He remembered running forward, toward the screaming, so he told them that.

  “All right, and what did you see when you saw Miss Smith,” Jaleil inquired. There was a pen in his hands and he was making some notes.

  “Um, the girl… Miss Smith, was there, she was on the ground.” He closed his eyes, focusing hard on the scene. “Kneeling.”

  “She was kneeling. Why?”

  “Because someone was holding a knife over her,” he blurted out, then the torrent of memories took over him. “No, not a knife, claws.”

  “Claws?”

  “Claws that looked like knives. There were three of them.”

  “Three claws,” Jaleil asked.

  “No, three men. Creatures. Humans, or almost human.” He really had no idea how to describe them. “I can’t be sure of what they were exactly.”

  “What kind of creature has claws that look like knives?” Aali asked from where he stood by the chair.

  “I have no idea, but that’s what I saw,” he said, trying to not be annoyed that Aali was looking at him like he was making it all up.

  “Where are they then,” Aali asked, brows raised.

  “What?” Lucas swallowed.
>
  “Where are these creatures?”

  Lucas was stumped. He had no idea how to answer it, because there was a wall in his head. “I wouldn’t lie about that.”

  “Wouldn’t you, now,” the old man sneered.

  Lucas’s chest burned, but before he could respond, Caleb touched his arm.

  “You wouldn’t.” He looked back at Aali. “He wouldn’t.”

  Aali screwed up his face and turned away.

  “How are your hands,” Jaleil asked.

  “My father’s a great healer,” he offered as a way of explanation, because he wasn’t sure what was happening with them at all. He remembered the burns, but he could feel nothing. He didn’t mention his father, the great healer, had healed his burns more times than he could count.

  “Well, I guess our next move is to get the council together,” Caleb said.

  “For what? You think no one knows what happened already,” Aali sneered.

  “How about you go write to the council members and tell them I need to see them, and stop sulking in corners like a child,” Caleb growled.

  Aali turned and left.

  “Jaleil, please make sure he does what I said.”

  “Of course.” Jaleil put away his notepad, turned to leave, but stopped at the door. “I’m glad you’re all right, Lucas.”

  “Thanks, Jaleil.” Lucas smiled, though it felt stiff.

  Something flirted at the edges of his memory, and with a leap of his heart, he went to grab at Caleb’s arm. His hand bounced off his brother’s arm, because of the bandages, but it wasn’t as comical as it would have been in another situation.

  “Were there any others injured,” he asked with urgency.

  “What do you mean others?”

  “There was blood there when I ran into the creatures,” Lucas explained. “A lot of it, all over the place.”

  “We interviewed the girl you found, she never said anything about someone possibly being injured.” Caleb was already pulling out a pen and writing a quick note. He opened a window and whistled. A small white dove flew straight onto the windowsill, and Caleb strapped the letter to its leg. The dove flew away immediately, and Caleb turned to him. “That was a notice to King Patrick. Are you sure of what you saw?”