Darkness Brutal (The Dark Cycle Book 1) (5 page)

FIVE

I used to have a bike, but it got stolen. I miss it. Now it’s all skateboarding, buses, or my own two feet. No way I’m taking that monster they pretend is a subway, in earthquake central. From Rebecca’s, it takes me more than a half hour to get to Ava’s neighborhood by bus—worst possible way to travel. The thing stops every eight feet even on a good day, not to mention all the traffic heading through downtown. It’s not like Ava’s place is that far. Probably would’ve been faster to walk.

I’m in a pissy mood all around. Leaving Rebecca like that makes me feel like a bastard, and the idea of a demon that close to her turns my stomach inside out. It wasn’t even an underling staking territory. By the smell and the look of the marks, the thing was at least midlevel, if not higher. Maybe even a body-hopper.

My skin goes cold. How the hell didn’t I feel it when it was there? How the
hell
could I leave her open and vulnerable like that?

I can’t save the whole world, I know this. But the realization never stops the ache. What else is this curse good for if I don’t use it to help people?

Ava’s newest foster house is the nicest one she’s ever lived in. It’s breathtaking, actually. Like a museum. She calls it the Taj Mahal. But it’s more like a Spanish-style hotel, if you ask me. It’s a sprawling single-story home, with cream stucco walls and a red tile roof, wrapped in pink and yellow climbing roses and night jasmine.

I sneak around to the back and find our tree—an old willow at the far corner of the property, down a little ravine, out of view from the house. Demons and monsters don’t like trees. They like metal and jagged edges and death. So Ava and I stick to the grass and the trees as much as we can when we meet. The longer it’s been in the ground, the better—fifty-year-old trees work perfectly. Not always easy to find in LA.

I close my eyes and picture Ava, her strange, knowing smile, her liquid blue eyes. Then I picture where I am and push out,
I’m here
. We recently figured out we can do this, connect to each other without words, but it only seems to work if we’re close enough, maybe a block or two away.

The morning sun is warming the air, so I pull off my newly acquired hoodie. Maybe I should ditch it. It reminds me of Rebecca, of the way her hair felt against my palm. And I can’t let people in, I can’t let myself care. I have to stay focused.

As I start to toss the thing over a nearby branch, something catches my eye—a name along the inside of the neck.

CHARLIE M.

In bold block letters.

I run my finger over the name and get a flash of the woman who wrote it: Hispanic, wearing a maid’s uniform. She smiles and folds the jacket up, putting it back in the drawer. There’s someone sitting on the bed behind her, a young man. He says something, joking, and she smiles, rattling off words in Spanish to him. I recognize him from the snapshots in Rebecca’s room.

Charlie
, I hear Rebecca say again, just like she did when she snuggled into my chest on the ride to her house.

Charlie with his arm around her while she looks up at him in admiration.

Charlie, her brother.

But something happened. And Rebecca’s alone. Something—

Ava appears in a small cluster of orange trees that rim the west side of the yard, stopping my thoughts. She pauses and plucks one of the oranges from a branch and puts it to her nose. “You can smell the sunshine,” she says.

I shake off the revelation of Rebecca’s
Charlie
and give my sister a smile. “Oh, yeah? How’s it taste?” There’s nothing I can do to fix whatever happened to the boy now.

Ava tosses me the fruit, then sits at my feet, looking up at me with her wide grey-blue eyes. “You look tired.”

“I am.”

Her shoulders sag. “Me too.” The eagerness she had in her voice last night is gone.

A weight settles in my chest. “I’m working on a solution. I swear,” I say, sitting beside her on the ground.

“It’s getting harder again. To stop stuff.”

My pulse speeds up with her worried tone. “Did something happen last night, after we talked?”

She shrugs. “I just don’t want to mess up again, you know . . .” Her voice catches a little and fades to silence.

“The Marshalls’ deaths weren’t your fault, Ava.”
They were mine
. I wasn’t watching her. It was too easy to ignore stuff back then—to feel like I deserved a normal life.

The night
it
happened I was making out with Lindsey Sawyer from chem lab on that leopard-print beanbag, trying to decide which of my foster brothers to ask for a condom. I was so sure that I’d finally found my chance to join the World of Real Men, when the Man of the House banged on the bedroom door.

I had a phone call.

It was Ava, babbling that she’d had a vision. She’d seen blood on the picture of us with the Marshalls and thought I might be in trouble. But it wasn’t my blood she saw.

By the time I got there, it was too late. Ava was in the middle of the room with her adopted parents’ dismembered bodies around her, their blood in her hair and on her cheeks.

“I sent them away,” she said, her voice sounding far off.

I looked over the carnage in horror. For a split second, I thought the darkness had gotten her. I thought Ava, my baby sister, had done it. Cut her loved ones to ribbons. Then she whispered, “The dogs were so big, Aidan. They came with a man who had black eyes.”

Hellhounds.
Thank God.
Relief flooded me. It hadn’t been her. I hadn’t lost her yet. The beasts must’ve come with the killer. I still don’t know how she got rid of the hellhounds before I showed up. But I know she protected herself with a circle of the Marshalls’ blood.

I look at her now as she stares into the orange trees, the slim line of her neck and shoulders, her pale skin, so unlike mine. My half sister. Her hair is white fire in the afternoon sunlight. She looks so much like our mom, Fiona. So not like me.

“Ava, don’t listen to that darkness,” I say. “You know the truth.”

She takes the orange back from me and tears into the skin, spraying the sweet juice on her legs. “The truth. Even
you
can’t say what that is for sure when it comes to me.” She rips more skin off in a huge chunk and then tosses the orange into the dirt, like it’s upset her. “Before it happened, I was trying to see how long I could levitate my pencil instead of doing my homework. Then I saw the blood on the picture . . .”

My muscles tense, but I try to stay calm on the outside.

“You shouldn’t use your . . . talents,” I say. “But we don’t know if that’s the reason they found you.” We’re still not sure how the demons find her. Maybe it’s her energy, maybe it’s something else—something our mom did. But I want to be careful. I need
her
to be more careful.

The year the Marshalls died, Ava had more visions and
incidents
than ever. She burned up a rosebush after its thorns tore her favorite sweater. She found her rabbit dead in its cage and shattered all the windows in her room with her grief. Her powers were never as out of control as they were that week, before her ninth birthday. I should’ve known something was coming.

I scoot toward her, taking her fingers in mine. “I love you, Peep.” I kiss her hand and pull her closer, until she’s snuggled against my chest. “I’ll protect you. I will.”

“I don’t like hiding from what I can do. It feels wrong.”

Helplessness presses in. “I know.” Ava’s never run from her abilities like I have. She sees them as a part of her, like her nose or her fingers. She just doesn’t seem to believe as strongly as me that using them might put her in danger—or bring her to the same end as our mom.

“Things are happening again,” she says. “And it’s a million times stronger.”

“What things?”

“Two days ago I broke the TV in social studies because a girl was making fun of my shoes.” She wiggles the oxfords on her feet, looking for all the world like she’s telling me about how she skinned her knee. “I have control now, more than last time, but it’s like I don’t
want
to control it.”

“You should’ve called me. You know what this means.” There’s no more time. If she’s manifesting like that, unwilling to control herself, then things are going south again. I have to hide her. But
how
?

She nods and picks at a fingernail. “I know. I just wish I knew why the demons want me so bad.”

So do I. Mom told me again and again that I’d eventually need to protect my sister, but she never said why.

On Ava’s third birthday, the demons came for her. But it was my mother who was taken from us instead, her heart clawed from her chest. I watched her blood pool underneath her dead body in the shape of the demon’s sigil. And as the wolflike demon hunched in the circle, like it was waiting for something, a mark appeared on Fiona’s forehead.

Sacrifice
, it said.
One for another
. My mother’s life for Ava’s.

Three years later, on her sixth birthday, Ava told me that a man stood beside her bed while the dark of the moon passed. If I had to guess, I’d say he was an angel, protecting her; no one close to her died that night.

On her ninth birthday, no angel came, and the Marshalls got ripped to bits in front of her.

This is year twelve, and the dark of the moon falls on her birthday again. I can’t count on an angel showing up to guard her. I see more and more demons every day in the shadows, but I haven’t seen an angel in years. Ava’s going to have to depend on me this time.

And I’m useless right now. A clueless idiot who gets mixed up with strange girls and knows nothing about the source of his own abilities, let alone how to help his little sister with hers.

“I had a dream last night about Mom,” Ava says, knocking me back to the present. She wipes her hands on her academy uniform skirt.

My skin turns cold, and I want to say,
so did I
—and the night before, and the night before, and the night before—but instead I say, “Oh.” I’ve never told her that I dream of Mom, too. I only dream memories. Ava dreams new moments with her, like she’s making memories even after death.

She sounds defensive when she adds, “I know you don’t like it, but I had to ask her about what happened to you last night. And she answered me. Sort of. I think.” In addition to being able to move things with her mind, Ava also has Mom’s gifts—she has visions and
sees
things. Things to come, things in the past. Especially about our mom.

I don’t say anything, I don’t scold her, so she continues, “She was on the beach this time. A really lovely beach with white flowers. And there was this cave. She kept looking back at it like she belonged there or something. But it made her sad.”

The scene sounds like one of Fiona’s drawings.

“She told me you’d take me with you now,” Ava says. “That last night was a warning, and it’s time to stop hiding.”

That’s new. “She did?”

“She also said . . .” Ava scrunches up her face.

“What?”

“It was strange. She said—” She pulls away and studies me. “Well, I think part of it was about your dad.”

I go still, and everything slows around me.

Ava squeezes my hand, urgency filling her voice. “Do you think she was good, Aidan?”

I don’t know what she means. I’m stuck on the word
dad
.

“If our mom was evil, maybe we shouldn’t listen to her,” she says.

“What’d she say about my dad, Ava?” If I’ve learned anything in this life, it’s this: listen to Ava’s dreams.

She looks at our clasped hands.

“Her exact words were:
Your brother is growing in his gift of the in-between, but he doesn’t know which way to walk 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
.”

Damn riddles. “What about my dad?” I ask.

“That’s the hidden blood, I think, because next she said:
The father’s place is another time, the son is becoming Fire Bringer
. I guess that’s you. Fire Bringer—whatever that means. And your gift is something called the in-between? I dunno.” She shrugs, looking as lost as I feel.

I rub her shoulder in comfort, resisting the urge to shake sense from her. She’s just a kid. Only the messenger. She doesn’t understand it any more than I do.

Ava and I are different. She has Fiona’s gifts. I don’t. Not even one.

Which makes me assume that my own shit—knowing all those weird languages, seeing people’s souls on their skin, seeing demons and angels and ghosts, the ability to feel certain energies—must come from my dad.

I want to know who my dad is—or
was
?—but I’m terrified at the same time. What if he was something wicked? Something
wrong
? The truth might be worse than not knowing anything at all.

“I wish this stuff came with instructions like that TiVo thing that Mr. Marshall bought me,” Ava says.

“Yeah.”

We sit in silence for a few minutes, until she leans into me and says, “You’ll find him, Aidan. I know you will.”

That’s exactly what I’m worried about.

SIX

I’ve been trying to deny it. I told myself we’d have time, that maybe nothing would happen this year, or maybe the angel would come, but deep inside I know. Someone else will die. The demons will get their claws into her one way or another. Unless I do something.

As I leave Ava’s neighborhood, I finger the paper in my pocket, the one with the number that Hanna gave me. I could check it out. Some steady cash, maybe? Just enough to get us on our feet before the bomb drops.

I have to try.

The area code is in LA. I punch the number into my phone, and the line rings once, then a voice mail picks up. A female voice comes through the speaker: “You’ve reached the Los Angeles Paranormal Investigative Agency. Are your troubles falling into the ‘strange’ or ‘unexplained’ category? Don’t be afraid to reach out. We can help. Please leave your name and number and a short summary of your case. We’ll get back to you as soon as we can. Peace be with you.”

Paranormal investigating?
What?
I punch the number in again and listen to the message a second time. That’s what it says. And it doesn’t
sound
like a joke by the tone.

It has to be a front for some con or something.

But I’m sort of out of options at this point. I need help, and Hanna seems to trust this guy, Sid. He must be the head of the . . . ghostbusters, or whatever. I could leave a message on the voice mail and hope I get a call back. But I’m not sure I have time for formalities. Plus, I won’t know if I can trust the guy unless I get a look at him, a feel for his energy.

I do a reverse search on the cell number and get a recent address. I catch the bus into downtown, passing under the 101, where these old buildings from the forties and fifties are nestled farther back. I get off at a stop on Hollywood Boulevard near Prospect and start my walk farther into the neighborhood. The buildings come in all shapes and sizes—apartments, old hotels, restaurants, and some houses. There’s a library and a place that looks like an art gallery. After several more blocks I come to the address I’m looking for, on the corner of two tree-lined streets.

It has a white picket fence—that’s the first thing I notice. A thin house with two stories and what looks like an attic room for a third floor. The style is Victorian, and it’s recently been fixed up with new windows and new paint: canary-yellow for the siding, white for the trim, and red for the door. The small grassy area out front is actually green, even in a drought, growing in emerald patches on either side of a new brick pathway that winds up to the wraparound porch. The whole look is topped off with a white bench swing, creaking in the early Santa Ana winds, beside a pot of pink geraniums.

It’s like I’m looking at an old TV set from a fifties show or something. It’s so normal. Too normal.

I’m torn for a second, thinking I must have the wrong place. I glance up and down the street. Weeds are growing in the cracks on the patchwork sidewalk, a rusty tricycle is tipped over in the gutter. Not exactly high-end living. But whoever this guy is, he must take care of his stuff. And I don’t hear gunshots, so that’s a bonus.

I pull the
hamsa
Hanna gave me out of the old jeans in my backpack and slip the chain over my head, feeling a little better when the charm settles against my chest. I watch the house for a few more minutes and then decide to take my shot and see what I can get out of this.

A job. Money. A place for Ava and me to stay. Together. That’s what I need to focus on.

I hover on the porch for a second, feeling around for spirits, but it’s all just emotions on the wind. So I knock.

The door swings open, and a black guy about the same age as me is there in the doorway.

“What?” he asks, looking me up and down. I do the same to him. He’s got to be about sixteen, wearing skinny jeans that exaggerate his height and lankiness, with well-trimmed hair, thick-rimmed glasses, and spiked gauges in his ears. A young Lenny Kravitz without the dreads.

Before I can say anything, he’s shoved out of the way.

“What kind of way is that to answer the door?” A second kid is standing in the doorway now. He can’t be more than fourteen, dark hair, wide chocolate eyes—Indian, maybe—and feet too big for his short body. He gives me a wide grin. “How might we help you?”

The first boy snorts and peeks back around the door. “You’ve really gotta stop reading all that Charles Dick crap, Lester. You sound like a freak show.”

Lester’s smile vanishes, and he turns to the older boy. “Just ’cause you can’t read anything but
Playboy
—”

“Which is very educational, by the way. You could learn a thing or two from me about life, Lester the lezzy-boy, who can’t get a girl to save his—”

The taller boy is silenced with a sock to the gut by Lester. The two collide, shoving, stumbling back with
umph
s and grunts and a little laughter on the taller boy’s part.

“Seriously,” a girl’s voice says from the shadows. “Grow up.” A small hand shoos the two tussling boys back into the shadows of the house.

Her full form appears in the doorway.

I step back in reaction, a sudden jolt of recognition coursing through me. But then it fades as quick as it came. If I do feel something familiar, I can’t place it.

Her hair is long, dark, and wild. Her large eyes are rimmed in black eyeliner; there’s no other makeup on her heart-shaped face. She’s small, only five three maybe. A thin reed of a thing. Not exactly goth, but not really punk either, with tall boots over tight black jeans and a Nirvana tank top.

“Hey.” She looks me over, her light eyes curious. But I feel an undercurrent, a buzzing around her, like she’s anxious about me, the same as I seem to be about her. “Sid isn’t home. But you can come in, or whatever.”

“What in God’s name is going on down there?” Another female voice comes from inside the house. “It sounds like
Bonkey
Kong in stereo. I’m trying to study!”

Boots Girl rolls her eyes and calls, “Earbuds, Holly. Remember?” Then she turns back to me. “You comin’ in or what?”

I hesitate. I don’t sense anything horrid.

Actually, I don’t sense much of anything at all—which in itself is weird. I usually sense
something
. Even if it’s just a memory or an emotion. And this place certainly looks like it’s not lacking in either of those things. But it’s almost like the air is muffled or fogged up here. Not sure if that’s a good or bad thing.

I decide to throw caution to the wind. I nod at Boots Girl and step into the house.

“I’m Kara,” she says as I follow her into the main room. She waves at the back hall where the two boys went. “That was Lester and Jax. They’ll say hi later.”

We pass a couch, and she points at a mound on the end. “Finger doesn’t talk much, but there he is.” Not a mound. A very round boy, hunched over an Xbox remote. His eyes are trained on the flat-screen TV on the other side of the room. A tangle of greasy brown hair tops his head. His focused features are badly pockmarked. A bag of Funyuns is spilling out onto the floor next to him.

Kara adds, “That’s not his usual space. He camps out in the basement, but lately Sid wants him socializing more with the rest of the house, so . . . well, that’s Finger socializing.” She shrugs and heads up the stairs.

“Listen,” I say. It suddenly feels like she’s giving me a tour. “I’m not sure who you think I am, but—”

“That’s Holly’s room,” she says, ignoring me and pointing at a closed door across from the head of the stairs. “She’s high strung and very weird about her hair products, so it’s best if you just steer clear of any bottles in the bathroom. Mark your soap and keep it in your own room. Which is . . .” She pauses, scanning the doors. “That one.” She nods at the door at the far end of the hall. “You’re next to me.” She chews on her lip, looking nervous, and then she turns to head toward the door of
my room
.

I touch her shoulder, stopping her. “I just want to talk to Sid.”

She blinks up at me. “I know.” Her voice shakes a little, and a slight current runs up my arm from where my fingers grazed her skin.

I pull away, and we just stand there looking at each other.

She felt it, too.

“Do I know you?” I finally ask.

She licks her lips, and a dimple sinks into her cheek.

My memory flashes again, this time with details: lights and music and heat.

“You don’t remember me?” she whispers. Her head tilts a little, and she’s suddenly closer. “I’m hurt.” Her energy is thick in the air around me now, like she’s spread herself out, a cloud of energy and static, prickling against my skin. “I could remind you.”

And then I smell it: green apple Jolly Ranchers.

The club. The girl. The kiss.

I jerk back so hard I nearly fall down the stairs.

She raises her brow. “Curiouser and curiouser.”

The urge to run away vibrates through me . . . along with the urge to press her into the wall, kiss her, touch her, dive into her . . . or dive down the stairs headfirst to escape.

“What the hell
are
you?” she asks.

The exact same question is on my tongue.

Then she lets out a forced laugh and holds her hands up. “I should be insulted, but I’m more impressed than anything.” She waves for me to follow and heads down the hall. “I mean, the other boys, I have to pretty much threaten to cut their balls off if they touch me. I can see you won’t be a problem.” She laughs again.

She’s terrifying. I
cannot
live here with this girl.
What is she?
I’m suddenly sure she’s not a regular human.

“All in time, sweetie. All in time,” she says, like she can read my mind.

“I’m just here for Sid,” I say again.

I should go. Forget this. I’ll get help another way.

She leans on the doorjamb of
my room
. “You don’t need to bolt. Really. I promise to never kiss you again.” She waves her hand and adds, “Or whatever.”

And the air settles, like she flipped off a switch.

I shift my feet, unsure of the right move.

Her face grows serious. “I’m sorry if I freaked you out. I really didn’t mean to. It was just, well, you feel it, too; I know you do. And come on. Even you have to admit that kiss last night was pretty damn well off the charts.”

Something surfaces in my head, a knowledge about her: she doesn’t smile much. She doesn’t feel comfortable being happy.

She smiled last night, though. I remember it now. That grin that made her blue eyes lighten. And she had a thin blue energy and a glowing tattoo on the back of her neck. But I don’t see that now.

I let myself look at her, really look at her. Her hair’s dyed black, with a violet tint in the light. It’s in low, messy pigtails, resting in layers on her chest. She’s got earbuds hanging around her neck, and there’s an ever-so-faint beat coming out of them. She looks casual, bored at first glance, but there’s a tension under the surface; her jaw is clenched just a little too much.

And then I see the markings, not on her flesh, but on her soul. Her skin is covered. But not in Chinese symbols. In handprints. The darkest one is almost turning her skin red, firm around her throat.

My own throat goes tight with the knowledge of what that means.

Rape
.

Then there are scars. Real ones. Lots of them. Thick scars up the inside of her arms, wrist to elbow.

I’ve seen so many souls like hers in the street, wide eyes glazed, looking over their shoulders as they slip into a stranger’s car or down an alley. Demons cling to them, feeding on their sorrow and desperation, as if it’s ripe fruit ready to pluck.

“Kara,” I say, like saying her name might heal something. My fear of her has evaporated in an instant. Whatever she is, she didn’t choose it.

The sound of her name seems to affect her, or maybe it’s the look of knowledge on my face. She clears her throat, sticks an earbud in. “Sid’ll be home soon. You can wait downstairs.” Then she slips away into the next room, closing herself in.

I watch her shadow move under the door. I watch it pace back and forth for several seconds.

Then I go downstairs to wait for Sid.