Darkness Brutal (The Dark Cycle Book 1) (24 page)

THIRTY-FOUR

We get a call from Connor as we’re pulling into the Gelson’s parking lot. Ava’s back at the house. He promises to lecture her as if he were channeling me. I’m too pissed off to talk to her right now anyway. I need to cool down.

Since Ava is safe, I ask Kara to take me somewhere to test the amulet. “Anywhere you’re sure there’ll be some demon action,” I say. It’s not until we pull onto a long drive and through a wrought iron gate that I realize we’re in a graveyard. A graveyard.
Seriously, Kara?
Graveyards are a sure bet for activity, but it’s not always
safe
activity.

We head up an incline, passing rows and rows of headstones in all shapes and sizes. Old trees speckle the grassy hills surrounding us, with clusters of flowers dotting the grass, but other than that it’s green as far as the normal eye can see. My eyes, however, spot hundreds of small lights hovering over the ground. The dead.

“We’re bound to find something here,” Kara says, pulling along the curb to park.

“No shit.”

She puts the emergency brake on and gets out. I follow her into a section farther back to the east, where the headstones are older. The orbs in this section seem stronger, brighter. They float around us, just off the ground.

The lights aren’t ghosts. They’re spirits. There’s a difference between the two. A person is made up of three parts: body, soul, and spirit. A ghost is a small fracture of a person’s soul, a mark left behind from a horrifying event or something left undone. The spirit is what waits to be merged with the soul—the mind, will, and emotions—and the body again, someday. A spirit is the truth of the person. The core of who they are. As far as I can tell, after death the spirit exists in a place beyond the reach of anyone or anything. Safe, in a sort of limbo.

“This place gives me the creeps,” Kara says, walking along a row of graves, “so can we hurry it up?”

“I don’t see any ghosts or demons to hide from,” I say, looking around.

“Not here. A little farther.” She points past a small family crypt.

“You know where they are?”

“I’m fairly sure.”

We walk for another few minutes in silence and soon come to a fenced-in section. Withered morning glories climb the chain link that’s hedged by dandelions and thistles. Patches of the weeds are dead, but they seem to be fighting to hold on. Several white sticks marked with numbers protrude from the ground on the other side of the fence. The orbs here hover in large clusters, with one or two small ones off to the side that flicker, like they’ve grown tired.

“What is this place?” I ask.

“Haven’t you ever heard of a mass grave?”

I shake my head. The last time I was in a graveyard was the day they buried my mother. Since then, I avoid them like the plague.

“It’s where they bury the forgotten,” she says. “People whose bodies were never claimed. There’s a demon here, I think.”

“Where?” I don’t see or sense anything.

She waves for me to follow her, and we walk along the overgrown fence. We go through a gate, entering the area set aside for the forgotten.

The smell hits me almost immediately. A sharp, pungent shot of sulfur that cuts the air.

Kara doesn’t say anything; she just walks over to one of the numbered markers and turns to look at me. As my eyes follow her movement, they catch on a creature on the other side of the grave. Medium size for a demon, hunched over, with gnarly tumorlike protrusions on its shoulder blades—where wings used to be, maybe? It digs at the ground with its claws, growling under its breath, something that sounds like a repeated phrase. Green pus oozes from its piglike nose. It seems like it’s almost in a trance, focused on something at its feet.

Then I realize I know what it’s saying. Something like,
Inside shell, back to shell
.

Shell
? Body.

It’s a body-hopper.

It doesn’t look like the other body-hoppers I’ve seen, though. Usually they’re more snakelike. This one is obviously missing its host.

Fear inches up my spine like a slow crack in the ice.

This is no weakling demon.

“I can feel it,” Kara whispers, even though it’s not paying any attention to her. “It’s usually right here.”

“You should step away,” I say. It’s only a foot from her. “Come back to me.” I hold out my hand to her, urgency tightening my muscles.

She seems a little surprised by my obvious concern, hesitating before she steps toward me, her foot treading on the grave.

The demon looks up at that. Its chant fades as it spots Kara, and it stares at her like it’s found lunch after a long famine. My worry morphs to terror.

A long black tongue emerges, licking its lips as the demon rises up from its hunched position, garbling under its breath, “Mine.”

It reaches full height, more than six feet, and I grab Kara by the arm, yelling, “Run!” even though in the back of my head I know it won’t do any good. It has her scent now—all that sweet sadness and pain, just waiting to be capitalized on.

We sprint back through the gate and down a small hill, but as I look up, the demon is waiting in our path, only three yards away.

I react without thinking, skidding to a stop and yanking Kara behind me. I begin yelling the first thing that pops in my head: a prayer a priest taught me at the Catholic hospital one night when I was in the ER, the prayer to the archangel Michael. I yell it at the top of my lungs in English, telling Kara to say it with me.
“Saint Michael the Archangel, defend us in battle, be our protection against the malice and snares of the devil . . .”

The demon flinches and looks around. It swats at the air like it’s shooing a fly, but then it keys back on Kara with a growl.

It’s obvious that the thing doesn’t see me. And also that the prayer’s useless.

“Tell it to leave you alone, Kara!”

She gasps for air and whimpers, “Leave me alone.”

“Like you mean it!”

“Leave me alone,” she says more forcefully.

But the demon only hesitates.

“You have to believe, Kara. Tell it to leave you alone in the name of El Yeshuati!”

She shivers against my back. I know she feels my terror. She yells at the top of her lungs, “Leave me the fuck alone in the name of El Yeshu
-
whatever, you goddamned bastard!”

The demon pauses, looking irritated.

“Tell it to go back,” I say, a small amount of relief trickling through me. “That it has no right to you.”

She pauses as if unsure, but then she yells, “Go back to my father! You have—” She nearly chokes on her words, a small sob escaping. “You have no right to me.”

Her dad. I turn from the demon to look at her. “Kara, what is it?”

She shakes her head, tears filling her eyes. And I realize she’s not strong enough to push it back.

So does the demon.

It huffs out a snarl, steam and saliva dribbling from its mouth. It bares its teeth at her and stomps its clawed foot on the ground. Then it lowers onto all fours, like it’s about to charge. It’s going to shove itself into her skin. Use her like a puppet as it torments her and feeds off her weakness until she does something to silence the pain.

Like take another razor to her wrists.

I reach down and pull the chain and amulet over my head, tossing the thing to the grass.

The demon blinks, doing a double take.

I step closer, still holding Kara behind me. “Pick on someone your own size, asshole.”

“No, Aidan,” she breathes, gripping my shoulder. “Put it back on!”

I put every ounce of determination I have into my words. “She. Is. Mine.” I growl. “You want her; you’ll have to come through me.”

It looks me over, bulbous eyes lingering on the marks on my arm. Then it returns its gaze to Kara, studying her as if seeing her for the first time, searching for weakness. It snarls and gurgles, then moves forward and back.

“Just try it,” I say. The thing could tear me to shreds with those teeth, but I remember what happened at Griffith Park, and something tells me I’d give this beast a run for its money. I feel it, a vibration in my hands, behind my eyes: there’s something in me wanting this bastard to lunge.

But after a few thundering heartbeats, it lifts its crooked chin and releases a low keen of annoyance.

It’s cowed. Somehow.

More strange noises continue to emerge from its chest, and I feel genuine disappointment as the demon crawls away, back to the spot on the small rise where the cluster of orbs are. Then it hunches back over and starts clawing at the ground again. Like we were never there.

I snatch my amulet up off the grass. Kara slips her shivering hand in mine, and we put more and more space between us and the demon, first walking quickly along the graves and then running.

We jump into the Camaro. It takes several tries for Kara to get the keys in the ignition because her hands are shaking so hard. The engine is the most beautiful sound in the world as it roars to life, and we speed off, heading back into the city.

We’re near Griffith Park when she pulls off the road. The gravel crunches under the tires as we park beneath a pine tree at a deserted vista point.

Kara sits for a second, taking in large breaths. Then suddenly she swings the car door open and runs to the brush at the edge of the cliff.

She heaves, her body convulsing.

I slip out of the car and walk over to her. I want to touch her, to reassure her, but I’m not sure how.

After a few minutes, she stands up straight again and wipes her forehead with her hand. “You shouldn’t have taken the amulet off. What were you thinking?”

I move a little closer. “Kara, we’re okay.”

She shakes her head violently. “You don’t try to save me, Aidan. You just don’t. Not you.”

I nod, not sure I understand, but not willing to argue with her right now. “We’re okay,” I say again.

She just breathes and stares at the ground.

I wait, letting her take her time. We are okay. The amulet worked. And for some reason, claiming her stopped the demon.

She must be thinking the same thing, because she says, “You said I belonged to you.”

I nod again.

“And it stopped, didn’t it?”

“Somehow.”

She says under her breath, “I may know how.”

I give her a questioning look.

She nods at my arm. “It’s your mark.” Then she motions to her side. “And mine.”

My hand flexes almost involuntarily. “What is it?”

She swallows. The smell of her fear shifts to a childlike sense of fright. “It’s why it had to be me. To do that, make it grow.” She points at my mark. “It’s waking up your power—your core energy.”

“Sid says that once it reaches my heart, it’s complete.”

“I’m sorry. I should’ve told you. Every time we . . . connect . . . that’s what makes it grow stronger.”

“But why would that change how the demon saw us?”

“Because.” She turns slightly away. “I do belong to you.”

“What do you mean?”

“When Sid marked me, when he turned my curse upside down, there was only one way to lock it in. It had to become a key to something—someone—else. To reverse the curse, the spell had to have a purpose. You.”

My pulse speeds up. “How does that mean you belong to me?”

“The spell made me into the second half of a whole. The other half of you. Like the legend of Adam and Eve: they were one person, but God separated them so they wouldn’t be alone anymore.”

“
The woman came out of a man’s rib
,” I recite. “
Not from his feet to be walked on. Not from his head to be superior, but from the side to be equal. Under the arm to be protected and next to the heart to be loved
.”

She looks at me, wide-eyed. “What’s that from?”

“The Talmud.” Things begin clicking into place in my mind. “So that’s why our markings match.”

“They do?”

“You can’t see it because it’s on your soul, not your skin, but your tattoo is overlaid with three symbols. The first one means
Intimacy,
or
Knowing
, and the second means
Awaken Power
. It makes sense now. Awaken my power—with, you know, intimacy. My mark seems to have only one symbol that I see, and it’s also on yours. It says:
Demon. Seer. Complete Death
.” I kneel down and draw it in the dirt with my finger to show her. “Like this.”

“That’s the symbol of your power,” she says, kneeling beside me. “Sid showed it to me when he was explaining what I might see when we touched.”

“What else did he tell you would happen?”

She glances at me, her body close. “He told me that your energy might feel warm, like sunlight on my insides. And that I’d be drawn to you. And when we kissed in the club, I felt a piece of it.” She pauses and says more softly, “I was so sure it was you.”

I stand, and she stands up with me. “So once I came to the house, you were supposed to keep me 
busy
? I still don’t see how that makes you my other half.”

“Finding you was only part of it—the next step was waking up your power.”

“By kissing me.”

“No.” She chews on her lip for a second. “
You
had to kiss
me
. Then the spell would start to work. And eventually we’d . . .” She makes a motion with her head that tells me I should be able to complete the puzzle on my own.