Darkness Brutal (The Dark Cycle Book 1) (8 page)

I need to get Ava.

I point down the hall and start to say, “I’ve gotta—”

Girl #2 (Samantha, I guess) cuts me off, squealing: “Invite him to the party on Friday, Emery!”

“Oh, yes!” the other girl adds. “We need more boys!”

“Never enough boys,” another girl who I hadn’t noticed before says as she nods.

Rebecca looks reluctant, but she says, “Sure. I mean, yeah, you should come.”

“Oh, please,” iPhone Girl groans. “Charity invites will only cause problems with the group, Emery—”

I interrupt, “I can’t—I mean, I’m supposed to be . . .”
Shit
. My brain’s completely blank as they all surround me. I search the hall for Kara, but she’s nowhere in sight.

Samantha grabs the waist of my pants and slides a card in my back pocket. “Text me, and I’ll have all the deets, yeah? It’ll be epic, I swear.” She tucks a piece of dark hair behind her ear, then licks her lollypop again.

iPhone Girl rolls her eyes. “Ohpleasegod, can we go now? I’m supposed to be at Lenox for my appointment at four. It took me six months to get it, and I won’t be late because you’re all mooning over a ratty Valley reject.” She flips her perfectly straight blond hair and walks off.

Her entourage appears to not know what to do.

“We’d better go,” one of them says, looking at Rebecca.

“You go ahead,” she says.

The rest of the girls whisper and smile at each other, hugging their books to their chests as they walk away. Samantha looks over her shoulder at me as they slip outside and gives me a wink.

I look around the hall for a hole to climb in. “I really have to go,” I nearly whine as I start to walk toward the music room. I don’t see Kara anywhere.

“Wait.” Rebecca steps in front of me.

I try not to notice how touchable she looks in that fuzzy pink sweater.

“How will I find you again?”

“You won’t.” I force the words, wishing I didn’t care about this girl, wishing the smell of her loneliness wasn’t making me feel like a shmuck for abandoning her again.

She blinks once. Twice. “Oh.”

I want to say,
I’m sorry about your brother
, or ask,
Why was there a demon in your doorway?
but there’s nothing more important now than keeping Ava safe.

I can’t save everyone.

“Good-bye, Rebecca,” I say for the second time.

As her shoulders slump and she turns from me, I see
it
—or, more accurately, its silhouette—through the double doors, standing at the entrance, its horns nearly scraping the wooden beams over its head: a seven-foot demon.

I’m frozen in terror watching Rebecca walk away from me toward the dark beast, unaware. I open my mouth to yell for her to stop, but Kara appears and grabs my arm, freezing the words in my throat.

“Be still,” she hisses.

Rebecca walks past the demon.

The beast nods to me in recognition and turns to follow her as crystal fissures of ice spread through my chest.

The demon knows. It knows I can see it.

NINE

“You’re freaking me out, Aidan. Snap out of it!” Kara pulls on my arm, trying to get me to move.

“I have to stop her!” I say.

She grips my bicep tighter. “No way. I felt that—whatever that was. And there’s no way I’m letting you run after it.”

I jerk free, my body in a panic, my feet desperate to chase after Rebecca, to warn her. “But I—”

“We’re not here for this,” Kara hisses into my ear.

There are footsteps behind us, and we go still as a man passes, looking at us with a frown. He stares more than long enough to get a vivid image for the cops. “There’s no fraternizing allowed on campus,” he says, studying Kara more closely. “Are you in the art or music program?”

She lets go of my arm and mouths at me, like a secret,
don’t move
. Then she turns to the teacher, and, with a slinky smile, she starts to move a little closer. Not much, but enough that a nervous twitch by the man’s nose reveals discomfort. She’s got an intense look in her eyes that I’m pretty sure isn’t good. The air around him begins to shimmer.

What the hell’s she doing? She shouldn’t be confronting him. Then he’ll definitely remember us.

The teacher clears his throat and messes with his collar, like he’s looking for a tie to loosen.

“Oh, I’m sorry,” she says. “Is this the art building?”

The teacher nods. “If you—”

“I love your shirt. Is it new?” She moves closer.

He makes a slight choking sound, and my skin jolts with his reaction to her. It’s not a proper teacher reaction. The air around me feels sticky and wrong. “Kara, what the
hell
?” I say, backing away.

She ignores me, focusing all her energy on him. He doesn’t seem to hear me either now. His gaze is fixed firmly on Kara. On her eyes. Like he’s hypnotized.

And then I recall the way she made me feel so strange back at Sid’s house, and how, when I danced with her in the club, I felt drawn to her and that strange icy-blue energy curling around me.

The mark on her neck—I see it there, pulsing against her skin. And I realize: Kara has a very unhealthy soul talent that she apparently doesn’t mind using for her own devices.

“You’re a bad man, Mr. Teacher,” she whispers. “A very bad man.”

He nods, never letting his eyes leave hers. Her intent is pulsing from her in slowly vibrating waves that I can feel the effects of now.

It’s suddenly very hard to breathe. Dark urges circle around us. Urges best left under rugs and kept in closets.

I’m about to grab Kara and drag her ass around the corner like a possessive older brother when she leans into the man, touching his chin with her fingertip. “You’re going to do what I say, yes?”

He nods again.

“It’s time to go home to your wife now. No more lingering in the halls and drooling over English lit girls or touching their sleeves hoping to get a glimpse down their shirts. Got that?”

Again he nods, slow, the dark urges shifting, morphing into a heavy weight. A crease appears in his brow, as if he’s remorseful.

“Good,” Kara says, moving a little away. “’Cause if you don’t, something even worse than me is going to come after your ass.”

He swallows, believing her, and the air begins to lift a little.

“One more thing.” She points at the room around us. “This hall is empty right now. You never saw a boy here. Okay?”

He shakes his head this time. “Never saw a boy . . .”

“Perfect. Time to head home, Bob.” She waves him off.

He blinks and wavers for a second, then walks away, looking a little lost as he heads through the double doors.

“Let’s go,” Kara says to me, her voice trembling, “before someone else shows up.”

“What in God’s name did you just do to that guy?” My feet don’t want to follow this girl anywhere.

She won’t look at me. “Not now, Aidan. Not here.” Her skin is sallow. The smell of guilt and sour embarrassment curls into the space between us.

“Are you okay?” I ask.

She blinks up at me, her eyes glassy.

I shift my feet, uncomfortable with the way she’s staring at me—like I just handed her something she’s never seen before. She starts to speak, but then shuts her mouth tight. I realize that she’s warring with herself, too.

After a few seconds she says, “I’ll explain. I will. Just not now.”

I decide that’s the most I’ll get from her at the moment and accept what my instincts are telling me: Kara’s messed up, but she’s not evil.

“Okay,” I say. I’m not so sure she’ll really tell me, but I’m sure I’ll find out the truth eventually—it always has a way of clawing to the surface. And I have secrets of my own, so I get it.

We walk to the end of the wide hall and turn the corner. A door that says
Janitor’s Closet
opens.

Ava peeks her head out, and a tiny smile fills her eyes when she spots us. She looks down the hall and then comes out, shutting the door behind her. She slips her hand in mine, and we make our way back to the car as quick as we can without running full throttle.

As Kara pulls out of the parking lot, she keeps looking in the rearview mirror, studying Ava, who’s sitting in the center of the backseat, black-and-white oxford shoes bopping up and down, hair in messy white-blond braids, smiling like she just snuck a piece of Halloween candy.

Ava hasn’t said anything, but she keeps smiling at me with knowing eyes. Seeing her happy, having her safe with me—all of it makes my chest lighter.

“How old is she?” Kara asks me out of the corner of her mouth as we pull back onto the main street. She’s barely watching the road.

“Twelve in a little less than two weeks.” Something about Ava is clearly freaking Kara out.

“She doesn’t look anything like you,” Kara says, sounding annoyed.

“She can hear you, you know.”

Kara rolls her eyes.

“She’s my half sister.”

“So you don’t share fathers?” she asks, like it means something.

“No.” I frown. “Why?”

Kara shakes her head. “No reason.”

But there is a reason—I can tell. “Sure,” I say, not really caring. I want to enjoy the relief of having Ava with me as long as I can. “Maybe you can tell me when you explain what happened in that hall with that teacher?”

Her jaw clenches.

That’s what I thought.

Ava starts humming “A-Hunting We Will Go,” still bopping her oxfords, as we head into our new life.

When we get back to the house, it’s nearly sunset. Ava and I close ourselves into the room Kara pointed out for us. The door beside ours shuts as Kara darts inside, obviously not yet recovered from her uneasiness about Ava.

“She seems nice,” Ava says. Then she giggles. “Skittish, though.”

I shake my head and toss my backpack on the bed closest to the window. “Just be nice to her, okay?” I dig into the bag, pull out a mezuzah, and rest it on the windowsill. I’ll place it in the doorway later; for now, it can guard this opening. I rest my hand over the Hebrew symbol for Shaddai and then bring my fingers to my lips.

Ava sets her violin case gently onto the opposite bed. “Do you have a crush on her or something?”

“No way.” I lie down on my new bed and study the ceiling. It looks like yellow cottage cheese. But it’s safe cottage cheese.

Ava is quiet. I glance across the room at her, not liking the way her silence feels like disapproval.

“Do you want me to have a crush on her?” I ask.

“No way!” she says in an overly forceful tone. She flips her shoes off and curls her legs under her. There’s a hole in her white stockings at the knee and a little scab on her skin there, like she fell. Or was pushed. “I wouldn’t want you anywhere near that girl if I could help it.”

“Wow,” I say. “Don’t hold back. Tell me how you really feel.”

She sighs and leans against the wall. “Never mind. Just be careful.”

“She’s fine. Not a great first-impressionist, but she’s harmless.”

“Hardly. You can’t trust her, Aidan.” She frowns as she picks a wool string from the hem of her skirt. “She could hurt you real bad.”

Here we go. “Thanks, but I can take care of myself, Peep. It’s not your job to protect me.”

“Yes, it is.” She starts wrapping the red string round and round the tip of her finger.

I take in a deep breath and let it out slow.

Ava pulls another string from her skirt and begins the process of winding it onto another finger. Then another. I find myself closing my eyes and drifting off. Suddenly she asks, “Can we paint the room purple?”

I roll over to stare out the window. I look down into the yard next door and watch a small dog play with a stuffed toy on the neighbor’s porch. I try not to think about how hiding Ava’s abilities might become impossible very soon, and I wonder what Kara will tell Sid about my strange sister. She obviously had some issue with her.

Not to mention that the demon haunting Rebecca knows I can see it.

I shove all that down and tell myself not to worry about it right now. We’re safe. It’s such a rare feeling—however short-lived it’ll be. I let myself revel in it for a few breaths.

I close my eyes, realizing there’s dangerous hope in feeling safe, like I’m almost a normal boy. Lies. Such lovely lies.

Rebecca’s soft features rise into my thoughts again, and I don’t stop them. I drink in the dream of her, the simple idea of boy meets girl. If she was here—if I was normal—I’d talk to her about the books she’s read, what she wants to study in college. I’d lose myself in the sound of her voice and ask if I could hold her hand.

And with that dream in my head, I drift off to sleep.

Mom’s kneeling in the sand, her skirt damp from the tide pools, her grimoire tucked under her arm. She’s always kept the tattered book close by since the day she told me I’d be a big brother. Everything is vibrant around us, colors bright and full of life: the blue of the sky, the green of the sea, the alabaster foam chasing up the shore.

Mom lifts a small starfish to show to me, the shadow of a smile on her lips. “She got lost. Can you put her back on the rocks over there?” She points to the black giants emerging from the tide behind us.

I stand and take the creature from her, feeling the bumpy surface against my fingers as the moist suckers tickle my palm. I watch the waves crash against the rocks. They sound like they’re trying to beat them back into the sea. The impact vibrates the soft ground under my feet. How can that be safer?

“Don’t worry, Aidan,” she says, sounding sad. “That’s where she belongs.”