Darkness Brutal (The Dark Cycle Book 1) (15 page)

Her voice shakes as she says, “He tried, but he couldn’t stay.”

“Where did he go?” Maybe I can go find him.

She shakes her head, biting her lips together.

And something comes to me, something a girl said to me yesterday at school. She kissed me on the cheek and said she loved me because I told Mark to stop pulling her hair. So I ask, “Did you love him?”

She goes so still I feel like even the people outside are frozen. And then she stops crying. She sits up and moves to kneel in front of me, biting back the pain.

“I loved your father like a fire, Aidan. He was a part of me, and I was a part of him. It will always be that way. He would protect me if he could. I promise.” She kisses my cheek with her swelling lip. “And he gave me you. You’re just like your father. Brave and good. Never forget that.”

She stands on shaky legs and wipes the tears from her face. “And those men won’t be coming anymore. Mommy’s going to have another baby.”

I stand back and gape at her thin tummy where I know babies usually grow. “Really?”

She nods and begins pulling the rugs off the wood floor and tossing them in the corner. Then she goes into the closet and pulls a large box from the darkness with a symbol on the curved top.

Hidden
is what my insides tell me it means.

Out of the box she takes candles and chalk. A bowl and some bottles and a fist of dried plants. Then she moves to the center of the room and begins to draw on the floor. A wide circle, large enough to hold two of me lying down. Then she goes back to the box and takes out a tattered book.

Placing it open on the floor beside her, she begins to write inside the circle, copying the book’s secrets onto the wood.

“Things will be different now,” she says, “I promise. Mommy’s going to protect us all.”

NINETEEN

I open my eyes as voices from the hall filter into my consciousness. Kara’s still curled up against me, her hand resting over my heart. Her dark hair spills over my bare chest in a tangled mass. I want to get a look at her bruised face, but she’s turned away from me.

Someone knocks on the door. My body tenses as I think of who it might be and what they’ll see if they come in. I lift my arm from her back and glance at my shirt on the floor and then at her, her form still as death. If I’m quiet, maybe whoever it is will go away.

No such luck; the door opens.

Connor peeks in. “Kara, time to—” He stops, and his eyes go wide.

I’m frozen, caught, and he stands there, looking at Kara’s face, her bruised skin, her half-naked form. His shock shifts to anger, then rage. His lips tighten and his nostrils flare.

And he charges.

I barely have time to move Kara off me before I’m being swung at.

He misses as I duck my head and roll off the bed, but I’m unbalanced and he’s pissed. His knee catches me in the gut as I try to slip out of the way.

Kara grips her head and starts to sit up, holding onto the wall. “Connor, stop,” she says.

But he lunges again, pushing me into the dresser. “What the fuck did you do to her?” He swings.

I dodge, and half the stuff on the dresser gets knocked to the floor by Connor’s arm. Something shatters, and Kara groans.

I shove back while Connor’s unguarded from the swing and yell, “Calm down! Let me explain.”

But his rage bubbles like thick oil. He comes at me again, and I punch at an opening, hitting him square on the side of the face, sending jarring pain through my hand and up my arm, reminding me of where my knuckles have been.

He stumbles back, stunned.

“What the hell, Connor?” Kara rises from the bed on shaky legs to shut the door and almost trips on my discarded shirt. I reach out, catching her as I shake the impact of the hit from my hand. That kid’s got a steel skull.

I kick the door shut as Connor growls, “Get your hands off her or I’ll slit your fucking throat.” His eyes are full of crazy, and I totally believe him. He’d happily slice me in half to protect Kara.

“It’s all right, Connor,” she says, moving away from me as much as she can without letting go of my arm for balance. “It wasn’t Aidan that kicked my ass; he just brought me home.”

Connor sneers. “Sure he did.”

“What the hell?” I say, exasperation spilling over. “I get it. I do. But I just brought her home and that’s all.”
Sort of
.

We glare, daring each other to make the next move. I can see he’s not buying any of it.

His jaw jerks after a few seconds, and he folds his arms over his chest, looking resolved. “She gets hurt on your watch, that’s on you. Doesn’t matter if it was your fists that did the pounding. Your ass is mine.”

“Just go, Connor,” Kara says, grabbing his arm and pulling his large form closer to the door.

“I don’t trust this asshole, Kara,” he says through his teeth.

“No kidding,” she says, giving him another shove.

He points at me as he opens the door and then walks out, slamming it behind him like an exclamation point.

“He didn’t mean it,” she says, moving back to the bed. “He’s just pissed.”

I release a tight laugh. “Really. I barely noticed.” I rub my stomach where his knee met my gut. “Look, I’m sorry. You two obviously have something going on.”

She shakes her head. “No, it’s not like that.”

“Then what is it like?” I ask, as if I have a vested interest. Which I don’t. But I can’t keep my stupid mouth shut when it comes to this girl.

She sits down on the bed. “He just . . . I . . .” She covers her face with her hands and grumbles through her fingers, “I don’t know. It’s a long story.”

I pick up my shirt and pull it over my head. “I get it. It’s complicated. Friends with benefits, or whatever.”

She laughs. “Hardly. No, Connor and I . . . we never . . .” She motions, like I know the rest. And I do. “We’re really just friends. He’s like a brother to me.”

“A very protective brother.”

She looks up at me. Her left eye is rimmed in purple, her cheek swollen and pink. Looking at it makes my chest ache. I kicked a guy’s ass to protect her last night, so I can’t really blame Connor—he’s known Kara a lot longer than me.

“Can you hand me that tank top?” she asks, pointing to the pile of dark grey on the floor.

I pick it up and hand it to her. As she slips it over her head, I can see that she’s obviously stiff and uncomfortable. “Thanks.” She looks at me through her hair, subdued and embarrassed. I’m not sure why since we slept all night with nothing but skin between us.

“How’s your face feel?” I ask.

She touches her cheek gingerly. “This isn’t anything new. I’ll be fine.”

“You keep saying that. I don’t get it. Why would you let guys do that to you?” My words come out a little too forcefully, childhood memories sharpening my feelings. “You seem stronger than that.”

“I’m anything but strong. More like cursed.”

“I seriously doubt that . . .” But the words fade from my tongue as I notice the mark on her neck through her hair. The mark on her soul.

“Trust me. I’m cursed—thanks to the man who spawned me.”

Chills work over me. I know about parents and curses. “What happened?”

“Dad wasn’t much of a nurturer. He figured out I was more useful to him as a tool than a daughter. So he sold me off.”

My God. “He . . . sold you?”

“Not at first. At first I was a good piece of his game—it was always about what was good for the con. For a while, I was tiny and cute and made him seem sympathetic—a single father and all, just trying to get by.” She laughs bitterly. “But after a while it got thicker and darker, and soon he was in it too deep. I was just a good girl who thought it was a fun game—until my eleventh birthday when he took me to a medicine room in Chinatown and asked the man there to
bless
me with the spirit of attraction.

“It burned. I’ve never felt anything like it. With all the smoke and chanting—you haven’t heard a spell till you’ve heard it in Chinese—very creepy. And after that, nothing was ever the same. Men would offer hundreds of dollars just to pet my head for a minute. I was a gold mine. And eventually the world became his as I was passed from rich man to rich man.”

My stomach rises, and I have to lean on the dresser. “Kara . . .” But there’s nothing to say; no words can fill that darkness.

She acts like I didn’t speak, her chin high, determination set in her shoulders. “For three years, there were so many faces. So many nameless, soulless faces. But Daddy wasn’t very good with keeping money. It slipped through his fingers like sand. The man had no self-control at all.

“And the
blessing
that medicine man put on me had a bit of a side effect. Attraction is a funny thing, apparently. I didn’t just draw in men. I could feel energy. In everything. Pulsing. Pushing at me.” She shivers and hugs herself.

Then she glances at me, a pleading look in her eyes. “You know, don’t you? That smothering feeling from so much coming at you?”

I nod. Boy, do I ever.

“One night when I was fourteen,” she continues, “my dad was especially down on his luck. I think he owed some bookie fifty grand—or maybe that was just the first payment. They were threatening to cut a few pounds of flesh from his oversized midsection as a down payment if he didn’t pony up.

“So when a man came into the club and offered him six hundred grand for me outright—no questions, no names, no strings attached—he jumped at it. He didn’t care that he’d never see me again.”

She laughs, sounding a little off kilter.

“I should’ve been relieved, I guess. I mean Dad treated me like shit. But it crushed me when he passed me off like that, because I couldn’t even pretend that he cared anymore.”

I move to her side, wanting to touch her, to comfort her, but I decide against it.

“I was handed over to a bald guy who looked like a carnival worker from the twenties—Sid. I was terrified of him at first, but in the end he was my savior. He brought me here with Connor. And soon we had Jax and Holly, then Lester and Finger. And now you.” She gives me a sad smile. “It’s been three years, and no one unwanted has touched me since. I’m safe.”

“So the thing you do . . . like with that man in the school . . .”
And me
. “That’s part of your curse?”

“Actually, it’s not. When Sid brought me here, he reversed the curse.” She lifts her shirt a little and motions to the tattoo on her side. “He did a spell and flipped the curse on its head. The next morning this tattoo appeared.”

My stomach rises again. “That thing just showed up after a spell?” That means it’s magic, and for some reason it affects me. Could my own mark be from a spell, too? In Ava’s dream, Mom said I should touch the violets and lilies to find my hidden blood. And the violets and lilies are there on Kara because of magic.

“It was faded at first,” she says, interrupting the questions rolling around in my head, “but with each session Sid did to bind the curse, it got brighter and brighter. He said it was some sort of lock to keep the curse held down but also to harness my own energy and turn the curse power on its head. So I’d never be used by any man ever again. I use them instead.”

“This is dangerous stuff, Kara,” I say.

“I know. I feel it. But it’s worth it. I’m free.”

I release a long breath. “I assume after the tattoo appeared your ability to feel things got stronger, too.”

“Not really
stronger
but clearer. More focused.”

“Oh,” I say, wondering what to think. “Can I see it again?”

Nervous vibrations muffle the air between us. “What? The tattoo?”

I nod.

After a second she turns her back to me and pulls up her shirt.

I follow the green vine and flower pattern down to her waist, where it disappears into her pants. I focus my energy, trying to really
see
what the tattoo is, not just what it looks like, trying to get a vision of it on her soul.

A pattern emerges, faint but there, in the curls of the vines, in the shape of the flowers coming together.

Three circular symbols.

The first I know means
Intimacy.
Or
Knowing
. Below it, the symbol for
Power
is overlaid with the symbol for
Awaken
.

Awaken the Power
.

The third symbol dips past her pants.

I swallow. “Can I see all of it?”

She gives me a pained look, like she’s almost embarrassed. I clarify by saying, “I see something, but I need to see all of it to be sure.”

She bites the corner of her lip and unbuttons her jeans, pulling them down past her hip.

The third symbol is one I’ve seen before, but I’m not sure where. It’s a double circle, overlapping. Inside one circle it says
Demon
, and inside the other it says
Seer
, and where they intersect the space is filled with the marks for the three types of death—
Mind
,
Body
,
Spirit
.

Demon
.
Seer
.
Complete
Death
.

And I suddenly realize where I’ve seen it.

I lift my marked hand and look at Kara’s mark. Then I look at mine. A section of my own mark rises from the rest, almost as if it’s calling out to me. Or showing itself for the very first time . . .

Demon
.
Seer
.
Complete
Death
.

It’s exactly the same.

TWENTY

Ava’s downstairs at the kitchen table. She’s eating Froot Loops and laughing at something Lester is saying. Jax sits beside Lester and flicks rainbow-colored
O
s into the sink one at a time. Holly’s frying eggs on the stove top and talking a mile a minute even though no one’s listening. There’s no sign of Connor.

I watch from the stairs, trying to gather my thoughts. I left Kara in her room. She said she needed to take a shower, get dressed, that we’d talk later. But I think she just wanted to be alone. After she zipped her pants back up she practically shoved me out the bedroom door.

I thought things were awkward
before
last night.

She didn’t ask why I was comparing our marks, so I didn’t mention that something hidden on her tattoo matched mine. Things are weird enough between us as it is, and she probably only sees flowers when she looks at hers.

Until I know what it means, I don’t want to let my imagination run rampant.

As I walk into the kitchen, everyone goes silent.

Jax grins wide. “How was she? Does she bite?”

My vision narrows. “Wipe that smirk off your face before I cut it off for you.”

“Ohhh . . . tough guy,” Lester says in a singsong voice.

“Calm down, man,” Jax says, holding up his hands. “Just admiring your work with getting the ungettable. That girl’s as frigid as Antarctica.”

“And there’s been others standing in the NTL, naked-time line, for years,” Holly pipes in, not turning around, still frying her eggs. “You show up and
poof
!” Her spatula waves in the air, sending a bit of egg flying. “It’s suddenly Kara-Aidan Fest 2015. Or Kaidan Fest, if you will.”

Ava’s watching the whole thing, her gaze moving from person to person, a look of open curiosity on her face.

Jax flicks another Froot Loop toward the sink. It bounces off the counter, joining a rainbow pile on the floor. “Connor looked like he was gonna cut you to ribbons. Is there about to be a little WWF shit?”

“Nothing happened, so he can calm down,” I say. “You all can.”

Ava frowns. “Did you have sex with Kara?” She doesn’t look mad, not exactly. Maybe irritated. “What about Rebecca?”

Lester grins. “Ooh . . . who’s Rebecca?”

Ava knows about Rebecca? Great.

“The boy’s a slut,” Holly says with a giggle. “Want some eggs, lover boyo?” She holds out a pan of overcooked yellow mush.

I can’t help scrunching up my nose. At both her words and offer.

Finger comes in, stealthy enough that I didn’t feel him behind me. He holds out a plate, and Holly fills it with eggs. Then he slips away again, heading into a doorway under the staircase.

“There’s bagels, too.” Holly says, pointing to the top of the fridge. “You must be hungry after a night in the bouncy house with our resident emo chick—”

I stop listening and say to Ava, “Can I talk to you?” I motion to the entryway, and she gets up and follows me out of the kitchen as Holly continues entertaining herself with the soap opera in her head.

Ava stops at the base of the stairs and turns to me. “This is about Kara.” She frowns again, obviously not a fan.

“That dream you told me about the other day, the one where Mom talked to you about me. What was it she said again about violets and lilies?” I fold my arms across my chest, feeling jittery just talking about it.

Ava steps back. “No way.”

“What did she say, Ava?”

“It’s not right. Something isn’t right.” I give her a look, and she continues with a sigh. “Fine. What she said was:
He doesn’t know which way to walk along the line. The Light he found will lead him. Its wings sit beneath the heart. But he must touch the violets and lilies to find surrender, to find his hidden blood
.” She watches me absorb the words for a second and then adds, “Now tell me what happened.”

I shake my head, not keen on talking to my little sister about my love life. But her words—my mom’s words—mean something. Kara has a tattoo with the same flowers in the dream, and for some reason it affects me. Could she be the “Light” who’ll lead me? Sid did call the kids in this house lights and beacons. Maybe that’s what it means.

But where does Rebecca fit—if she even fits at all?

“How did you know about Rebecca? I never mentioned her.” I’m used to Ava
knowing
things out of the blue. But there’s usually a reason.

She blinks at me and then walks past, heading up the stairs.

“Ava . . .” I turn and follow her.

“You’ll get angry,” she says as she slips into our room, trying to shut the door in my face.

I push into the room, shutting the door behind me. “Tell me. Now.”

“I’ll say if you tell me what happened with Kara. It’s only fair.”

“Seriously?” As much as she seems to have an ancient soul, in reality she’s just an eleven-year-old little girl. And by
little
I mean annoying. I breathe through my nose. “I promise not to get mad.”

If she thinks I won’t like it, then I know what this is about: she must’ve used her powers.

She squints at me, trying to see if I’m lying.

I raise my hands. “Swear.”

She chews on her lip for a few seconds, and then she says, “I may have done one of . . . of Mom’s spells.”

My jaw goes tight.

“I told you,” she says in a tiny voice. “You’re mad now.”

I try to reason past the red blocking my vision. “A spell.” I can’t even express how terrifying and inevitable this all feels. “From
her
grimoire. Why in the hell would you do that?”

“I wanted to see if I could.”

“Of course you can!” I wave my arms, exasperated. “You know what kind of shit you can do!”

Her chin goes up in defiance. “You swore you wouldn’t get mad.”

I cover my face with my hands and try to calm down. Getting pissed isn’t going to help. The shit’s already hitting the fan. No stopping it now. And Ava doesn’t remember the darkness Mom brought into our world with her casting. She doesn’t remember that horror.

Maybe it’s time to tell her what I know. I just have to say it:
Your mother’s spells cursed you and got her killed.
Easy.

But the words won’t emerge. Instead I say, “I’m sorry.” My head aches from it all. It feels like I’ll never stop any of it. “You can tell me. What spell, Ava?”

She digs into the back of the closet, pulling out her bag and the grimoire.

I step back as she opens it and points to a drawing of swirls.

No, not a drawing, it’s a series of words written in a swirl shape.

“I wanted to do a small one, just see what it felt like,” she says, “to see if I could do it. So I did a protective-link spell.” She glances up from the page. “On you.”

I’m fairly sure my eyes are about to pop out of my head and roll across the floor. “Me? You did a spell on
me
?”

She shakes her head violently. “No, no! I did a spell
about
you. It’s different. It’s a looking spell, a spell that unveils hidden things. I just wanted to see a little of your future, that’s all.”

“Damn it, Ava. You shouldn’t have done that.”

“I know.”

“How did you do it, anyway? Don’t you need innocent blood and something from the subject for a spell like that?” I remember far too much of Mom’s casting habits.

She pulls a puff of fuzz from the folds of the grimoire and holds it out as an offering. It’s splotched with something brown and crusty. “I cut some of the fur stuff from inside your hoodie and used bird blood for the conduit.”

I take the blood-caked fuzz from her and sit on the bed. The weight on my shoulders just gained about a hundred pounds. “When was this?”

My little sister did one of my mom’s spells.

My little sister killed a bird.

“I did it after you left me the other day, in the orange trees,” she says. “I felt something was different when you showed up. You were distracted, and there was this thing in your eyes.”

“What
thing
?”

“A connection thing. Like you were suddenly worried, but not about me. I wanted to know who it was.”

“So you did something horrible that’ll only make me worry more?”

She fidgets with the edge of the grimoire, looking urgent. “Aidan, when I did the spell, I saw her. Rebecca. She was really strong in the object I was using. I saw her really clear.”

“That’s ’cause it was her brother’s hoodie you stole that fuzz from. And she loved her brother, but he drowned.”

Her eyes grow like something’s suddenly coming clear. “So she loved the boy who wore that hoodie?”

I nod.

“But now she loves you.”

“She doesn’t even know me, Ava. She can’t love me.”

“But what I saw was very real. And there was a bond between you guys. It totally felt like love.”

My ears perk up at that. And even though I shouldn’t be pushing, even though my curiosity will only encourage her, I ask anyway. “You saw
both
our futures? And we were together?”

“She wanted to stay by your side. No matter what. It was like she was somehow linked to you in a spirit way.”

“But there’s no way that can happen,” I say, more to myself than to Ava.

“Why?”

“It just can’t. I won’t be seeing her again. It’s not safe. For you or the others.”

“But you have to!” she whines, sounding as if her favorite TV couple just broke up. “You can’t let that Kara girl get in your head!”

“Kara is
not
in my head.”

She gives me a disbelieving look. “You kissed her, didn’t you?”

Twice. “It was just a moment. We were both tired.” And somehow fell into each other’s arms? I sound like an idiot.

She rolls her eyes. “Whatever you do, just be careful. I don’t like her.”

“Why do you keep saying that? There must be a reason. Did you see a bad thing in a vision about her or something? An image of darkness maybe?” I really would like to know this. I have complicated feelings about Kara myself, but mostly that’s because she seems so unhinged. So unpredictable. All I see with my own sight is wounds. Loads and loads of wounds.

“She’s broken.”

“So am I, Ava.”

She shakes her head. “No. She’s nothing like you, Aidan. Nothing.” She hugs the grimoire tighter.

I wish she would tell me what’s going on. I wish she hadn’t done that spell. And it’s probably not the first time she’s done one from that grimoire by the sound of it.

I shiver, thinking about it all, seeing the look on her face, the frantic widening of her eyes, like she’s reliving Mom’s descent . . . If this gets much worse, there’s no doubt in my mind that it’s going to kill her. I have to find a way to change the outcome—to find out if I even
can
change it. Maybe if I knew more about my own abilities . . .

But my abilities will lead to my dad. They’ll lead to the part of me I’ve been trying my whole life to bury. Maybe it’s time now to start facing it, though, to start seeing how far it goes. And if it does bring me to my dad, then I’ll face that too, when the time comes. But I have to use everything in me to save Ava. Even if it means confronting what I’m always running from.