Brightest Kind of Darkness (26 page)

He backhanded me, his boney knuckles cracking against my cheekbone. “Felt real as shit, didn’t it?” he mocked, evil laughter echoing.

I glared, trying hard not to shake in front of him. He was enjoying my fear. Feeding off it.

Nodding toward the ceiling fan, he smiled. “Go ahead. If you do it, I’ll leave you alone.” He shoved his face close to mine and promised with a whisper, “Forever.”

His rancid smell gagged me. Salt suddenly burned my cracked lips.
Tears
. I was crying. The creature grinned then, and with a flick of his hand, the head-banging music on my stereo upped a notch, pumping to the rapid beat of my heart.

“I just want it to stop,” I whispered.

“Poof and that’s it.” He snapped his fingers and leered. “For….ev….er.”

I wanted to throw up, but exhaustion and hysteria conspired, demanding relief from the constant din barraging my mind. Peace sounded so good. My foot hit the back of the chair, knocking it away.

The room tilted, then jerked and my throat burned as if it were on fire. The need to breathe, to suck in air overwhelmed. I clawed at the tight extension cord, but the skulled beast yanked at my hands, pulling them down. “Don’t fight it.” He sounded pleased, almost serene. Releasing my hands, he folded his bone fingers slowly inward, the long claws curling toward his fist. With each bend of his knuckles, the room blacked in and out, my throat crushing bit by bit.

Someone grabbed my legs and screamed my name.

Blood rushed back to my brain and I vaguely heard, “No, Ethan! Oh, God please, no!”

The demon beast was gone and Samson had his arms wrapped around my hips. “Help me! I believe you, little brother. I believe you.” He pressed his face against my waist. “I’m so sorry. I should’ve come home sooner. Please, I can’t do this without your help. Lift the cord off.”

He believed me?
My arms felt like ten-pound weights had been tied to them, but I clumsily managed to pull the cord off my neck.

We fell to the carpet and Samson yanked me close with rough, unsteady movements. Tears streaked down his cheeks and his trembling hands felt like a vise on my face as he forced me to look at him. “We’re leaving tonight! You’re coming to live with me.”

When the soft darkness started to surround me once more, this time I fought it. “I want to stay!” I croaked. My throat burned and my face felt bloated and puffy with tears, but I wanted to see more of Ethan and Samson. “I’m so sorry, Ethan!” I whispered as the wash of silky darkness swept over me, bathing me in instant quietude. Folded in its warmth and assurance of peace, it occurred to me that this darkness was the opposite of white light, yet it held strong positive qualities. It was the brightest kind of darkness. A calming safety net, like my dreams were for Ethan.

A faint flutter reached my ears, and then a pale light began to bleed into the darkness. The peacefulness was about to leave me again. I grabbed at the invisible dark folds of safety, and for a split second, an image rippled across them, distorting with the movement. Was it round? I strained to see, but gasped when it disintegrated in my grasp. I could’ve sworn my fingers brushed against feathers.

I stood in the sunlight in my kitchen, watching my mom turn a charred hamburger over in the frying pan. As I scrubbed the tears from my face, a distinct pinging sounded from the island beside me.

Mom called out, “Inara! Phone.”

“What?” I heard myself reply from upstairs.

Mom leaned away from the pan, speaking louder. “A message on your phone—” she started to say, then sighed and moved the pan to another burner.

When I realized she was going to pick up my cell phone, I remembered my dad was supposed to contact me. I heard myself coming down the stairs, but I’d be too late to stop her. Before my mom could glance at the display, the dream me stepped in front of her, thinking I could somehow block her view. Her hand went right through my body to pick up the phone. Dream me shuddered at the strange sensation just as I walked into the kitchen.

Mom turned the cell phone toward me. Shock and hurt flickered in her gaze.

The text message from Aunt Sage read,
Am still trying to find your dad.

Chapter Twenty-Four

“What does that mean?” Mom asked, pointing to my cell.

Dream me stepped inside my body. I took the phone and as I tried to think of an excuse, the screen saver popped up; a picture I’d snapped of Bo, Luke and Duke. “Picture!” I blurted.

“Picture?”

“Um, yeah. We’re doing a project in Biology about…genetics. We’re supposed to bring in pictures of our parents.”

Tension eased from her face. “Well, there are plenty of pictures of your father and me.” She slowly walked over to the built-in cabinets in our living room, where photo albums were entombed with a film of decade-old dust.

Out of the corner of my eye, I saw a faint shadow appear to my right and felt its oppressive coldness pushing against me. The last thing I wanted was for Mom to look at old family pictures and dwell on the past. Before she could pull out an album, I said, “Actually, I needed a picture of Dad when he was a kid, not an adult. That’s why I asked Aunt Sage if she might have some.” Holding up my phone, I continued, “Guess she’s not having much luck. Do you have any of you when you were little?”

Mom looked disappointed, then her eyes lit up. “Wait. I think I might have a couple pictures of me when I was in elementary school up in my room. I’ll go look.”

As soon as she disappeared upstairs, I straightened my spine, turned to the shadow beside me, and spoke in a forceful tone. “I see you hovering around me like a cranky old man with nothing better to do than butt into people’s lives. My fate is my own, not yours to swat around at your whim!”

The shadow quickly moved away from me, but then the room began to spin and I was suddenly in the middle of a forest. Sun streaked through the trees, while birds chirped and other forest sounds echoed in the dense woods.

The fog grew darker and a little more solid until he resembled the outline of a human form. It was an odd experience to watch dark smoke morph into a face with a menacing expression and empty, soulless space where eyes should be. The shadow glided close. “You’re messing in
my
domain, little girl,” he said in a cold, hard tone, then spread his arms wide, as if the world were his to command. “
Fate
is my power to wield, not yours!”

The outrage radiating from Fate made my stomach twist, but if I didn’t stand up to him, he’d continue to haunt me or worse, kill me.

Narrowing my gaze on the shadow, I glanced upward to the trees where the birds were chirping, then stared into his bottomless eye sockets. “Ravens warned me each time you tried to harm me. Could that be because they knew what you were doing went against nature? That it fell outside the natural order?”

The shadow curled his hands into fists and blipped in and out. He was moving at such a high frequency, I could barely track him. Finally his form settled and solidified again. Staring over my shoulder, he snarled. “You mean those ravens?”

The moment I turned, deep grocks and reverberating croaks flooded my ears. Twenty-five feet away, a huge swarm of ravens had formed a fast-moving cyclone and Ethan was standing in the middle of it with his eyes closed. “Ethan!” I called out, but the birds’ cacophony grew even louder. Their swarm spread until the wall of shiny black wings blocked Ethan from my view. I had no idea what the ravens’ presence or their odd behavior meant, nor did I understand why Ethan had finally shown up in my dream. Panic welled. I wanted to run toward him, but my feet wouldn’t move, no matter how hard I tried.

“Now I understand how you’re able to see me,” Fate said, sounding irritated.

When I saw Fate staring at the cyclone of birds, his eye sockets focused in thin slits, I knew he’d prevented me from going to Ethan. He was toying with my emotions and I was sick of it. “You’re playing with my fate, defying the laws of nature to suit your need for vengeance.”

“And you’re not?” he roared, snapping his soulless attention back to me.

“I have this ability for a reason. It
is
my nature!”

Fate shot forward, thrusting his misty face directly in front of me. His arctic disdain washed over my features as he narrowed his pitted eyes, sneering, “Ask your father how ‘using his nature’ worked out for him. Oh, wait…” Leaning back, he crossed his arms, his expression chillingly smug. “You can’t, since he didn’t care enough to stick around.”

“He cares!” I wanted to believe saying the words made them true.

“You probably remember this…oh, wait, you should dress for this ‘special’ occasion,” Fate said haughtily as he lifted a shadowy hand and suddenly I was wearing a billowy red formal dress and heels. When I glared at Fate, he pointed to my right as a scene materialized in the air.

A dark-haired man laid a book on the nightstand, then leaned over a young blonde-headed girl and pulled her covers up around her.

My heart pounded as I gobbled each movement, taking in every nuance between my dad and me. It must’ve been soon after the accident, because I had the butterfly bandage on my forehead.

“That’s the last story,” Dad said.

I looked at him with adoring eyes. “Night, Daddy. Thank you for taking me to get ice cream today.”

He pressed a kiss to the top of my head, then straightened. “You’re welcome. I love you, Nari.”

I snuggled under my covers, answering without hesitation, “I love you, too, Daddy. See you in the morning.”

As the picture faded away, a lump knotted my throat. I didn’t remember this particular night between my father and me. I must’ve blocked it out, because it was too painful. That was the last time I’d seen my dad.

“So touching, I think I feel tears coming on,” Fate said with a snicker.

As Fate’s solid shape morphed into a patch of rain, creating puddles at my feet, I lifted the dress’s hem to keep it from getting wet. At least I knew why I hated ice cream and why I had such a hard time saying ‘I love you’. Both were the last memories I had with my dad.

Solidifying once more, Fate’s tone hardened. “Here’s a dose of reality, Nara,”

A flick of his hand and a new scene materialized. My father stood in the doorway of our house. As he glanced back inside, I half-expected to see my younger-self run up and hug his leg. Instead, my father took a step to the right, lifted a suitcase and then walked out with an impassive look on his face. Loading the suitcase in his car, he drove off and never once looked back.

As the scene dissolved, I lowered the dress to the damp ground, searing hurt knifing through me. I wanted to punch Fate for obliterating the sweet memory between my father and me. Fate wanted me to witness how easy it was for him to desert us. I ached, but I wasn’t going to let Fate’s twisted mental games distract me from my goal—forcing him to back off.

Clenching my fists, I stepped forward and shoved my face into his shadowy features, disturbing the solid shape. I felt perverse pleasure in wiping the condescension off his face as I spoke into his dark, misty form. “You might be Fate—”

“Might be?” he snarled, cinching tight around me.

My breath whooshed out like a sponge being squeezed dry, but I’d had plenty of practice with Fate’s tactics. Gritting my teeth, I wheezed, “I know what you’re doing is wrong. You can’t—”

Cold hands snaked around my neck, cutting off my words as he dug deep into my windpipe. “I
am
Fate!” he snarled and pressed harder.

As my vision blurred, I tried to pull his shadowy hands off my throat, but my fingers went right through him. Somehow I knew that if I died in this dream, I wouldn’t wake up.

“Want to know the beauty of this scenario?” Fate whispered in my ear as I tried to hold onto consciousness.

His eye sockets moved to look at me. “What? No response? You’ll have a crushed larynx and bruises around your throat, and yet there’ll be only one person who could’ve done it.”

God, no!
He intended to kill me in my sleep and for Ethan to take the blame for my death. My heart pounded and my chest burned. I tried to struggle harder, but I was losing the ability to stand on my own.

A sudden blur of black drew across my vision right before the pressure on my throat stopped. Coughing in a lungful of air, I stumbled back and rubbed my throat as an invisible force shoved Fate away.

Snarling, Fate rushed toward me once more, but a wall of ravens swooped between us. Fate bounced off them like they were an electrified force field.

My hair blew wildly as the birds turned to circle around me like they’d done Ethan. This time they were completely silent. Only the flapping of their wings sounded in the woods.

An arrogant smirk registered on Fate’s face right before he disintegrated into mist, then moved through the wall of birds.

I blinked in shock as he began to reform in front of me.

Effugio!
A commanding voice shot through my mind. I didn’t understand the word, but I felt the urgency.

The order spurred me into action. Just as Fate finished reanimating, I grabbed the voluminous skirt’s hem and shot away.

The hair on the back of my neck rose and my breath escaped in frantic pants as I ran through the dense woods, the heels dragging at the thick leaves coating the forest floor. Everywhere I looked, the forest seemed to go on forever; nothing but long lines of trees and endless darkness. I gulped in more air. I wouldn’t be able to keep up this pace forever.

Just when my legs started to tremble, something shoved me hard from behind. Flying through the air, I missed a thick tree by mere inches when I landed with a bone-jarring thump among the slippery leaves. Damp earth filled my nose and wet leaves stuck to my hands and arms as I painfully rolled to my back and tried to regain my breath.

Fate approached, menace emanating off him in a display of vivid red sparks surrounding his dense frame. “I will not be overridden anymore!”

I struggled to get up, but couldn’t move. An invisible weight held me pinned to the ground. The swarm of birds returned, this time diving straight for Fate, disintegrating his form. But as each bird passed through Fate, I heard screeches of pain, while the smell of burning feathers and flesh wafted in the wind.

As the ravens’ bodies hit the forest floor in burning clumps of ash and bone, tears brimmed my eyes. I sobbed, begging the birds to stop.

Nara!
The same strange voice drew my attention.

Ethan squatted beside me. His expression was calm, but his eyes weren’t Ethan’s deep blue—they shined black, like obsidian. He said something I couldn’t decipher. I blinked, trying to understand. When I realized he was speaking Latin, the words began to align in my mind.

Focus on me
, he’d commanded. His lips never moved, yet I heard his voice speaking in my head, full of authority. It sounded like Ethan, but different—it sounded ancient and slightly out of sync, as if the words entering my thoughts were a collection of many speaking at once.

Curved dark shapes on either side of Ethan’s head blocked out the forest, and as he glanced at the birds battling with Fate, the two shadowy arches flanking him seemed to flutter with repressed fury. His dark eyes cut to me.
They’re giving their lives for you. Listen to me
.

Choked with fear and confusion, I could only nod.

You must
speak
of free will. I cannot tell you more. Hurry!

Warm wind blew across my face and then Ethan was gone.

“Ethan,” I reached for him, grasping air. Fate was winning the battle with the ravens.
You must
speak
of free will
, Ethan had said. That was why Fate had tried to choke me earlier—to keep me from talking. My voice croaked, but I forced myself to speak as loud as I could.

“I exercise my
free will
. Stop screwing around with my fate!” As soon as the words “free will” left my mouth, the few remaining birds scattered among the trees.

An angry hiss reverberated throughout the woods and the heavy weight lifted off my chest. As I sat up, gasping for breath, Fate’s powerful energy began to fade. Before his form fully disintegrated, he shot close. I cringed when he bumped against me, sliding his cold breath along my cheekbone in an icy lick of disdain. “I might not know
his
Fate, but I know yours.”

He was talking about Ethan.
Why wouldn’t he know Ethan’s fate?

Fate continued, “I’m the least of your worries, Nara. You’ll come to me again one day.”

“Never!” I hissed.

Fate smirked. “And I will ask for something in return.” As the last remnants of his misty form faded away, assured laughter echoed eerily through the woods, sending a shiver rocking through me.

* * *

I awoke, calling Ethan’s name in a ragged whisper. He lay face down beside me, his hand locked around my wrist. Moving to wake him, I paused to stare at the tattoo on his back. My hand hovered over the image, fingers trembling.

Not only had the feather doubled in length, but it now decorated the shaft of a long steel sword. The hilt of the sword started at the top of Ethan’s right shoulder, then angled across his spine, its sharp tip ending just above his left hip. A black and silver circular symbol was etched near the hilt, while swaths of purple and green iridescence glimmered through the feather, standing vividly against the feather’s darkness and the backdrop of shiny metal.

I studied the black and silver insignia; two curved halves made a complete circle. The black half looked like a raven and the other half was its twin in silver.
Why did the symbol look so familiar?

“Hey,” Ethan said, releasing my wrist to move to his side.

I rolled to face him and smiled when I didn’t feel any crackly static in my covers. My triumph quickly faded as my line of sight caught on the red scarring along his neck. I couldn’t tear my eyes away.

“I rarely have my own dreams. I wish you hadn’t seen that,” he said quietly.

He looked so upset, I leaned over and kissed the marks. “I don’t know anyone who could’ve handled that kind of constant torture,” I rasped. Leaning back, I met his self-conscious gaze. “Samson is my new favorite person.”