The Coming Dark, page 7
It must be nice to be so confident. So optimistic and sure that you knew where you were going in life. My future was a cavernous black pit. There might be snakes in it or flowers but most likely neither one. Just a tunnel that I had to keep walking through until I reached the end.
“I can’t think about the future,” I told him honestly.
“Can I see your work?”
I handed the book to him silently.
He studied it, flipping through the pages. “Liana, this is cool. How did you sketch yourself so accurately?”
I wasn’t sure. I had just known that I needed to sketch the scene of me in the hallway at Bay High, those words coming out of my mouth, hair whipping around my face, arms extended out towards Wyatt. I hadn’t sketched him, just his feet on the floor in front of me. My intention had been to purge the scene from me and instead of doing it from my point of view, I had thought maybe if I drew as an observation of myself, it would distance me somehow, make me feel powerful.
Instead, it had made it worse. Seeing myself like that, how I imagined I must have looked, was worse. It just drove it home that I had no idea what I was doing.
“I’m easy to sketch. My nose and face are narrow and I have a ton of hair. And profile is always easier than head on,” I told him, my throat tight. As I stared at the image, I wondered if this was how my mother had looked, when she was an exorcist.
“Was this your first exorcism?” He was looking at the page again.
Of course he would know what it was. Or what they were telling me it was. I still wasn’t convinced that I wasn’t just hallucinating or something. But that would mean everyone here was hallucinating and that was totally illogical. At some point I had to believe the illogical could be the truth and given what I knew, it seemed that demons actually existing were more believable than a mass delusion.
“Yes.”
“It must have scared you.”
He didn’t ask it as a question, he merely stated it. My answer was the same, a simple, “Yes.”
“Once you get used to it, you’ll realize how lucky you are. It’s an awesome thing you can do.”
I envied him his conviction that he was doing the right thing in the battle of good and evil. I didn’t know anything anymore, about what was real or imagined or honest or deceptive. So what I clung to were the truths I couldn’t dispute—the cold night air, the hard stone of the gargoyle beneath me, and the flirtatious smile of an attractive guy. My bodyguard.
I stood up. “I’m cold. Let’s go back in.”
“Sure.” He scrambled to follow me.
When we got to the bottom of the stairs, Chase caught me by the elbow suddenly and pulled me behind him, his arm protectively holding me back.
I stopped, immediately scared.
“Who’s there?” he asked, listening carefully in the darkened hallway.
“Put your shiv down. I’m just going for a Ho-Ho pack out of the vending machine, not plotting my escape.” The voice was male, somewhere to the right, and didn’t sound particularly threatening.
I glanced at Chase’s hands. Was he holding a knife? He was. And his hand wasn’t relaxing.
The flashlight clicked on and focused on a guy in front of the snack machine.
He turned and I gasped.
It was Darius, from Bay High. My indie-rocker-type crush.
“Hey,” he said to me, with a smile, hands casually jammed into his front pockets, his hair flopping in his eyes.
“What are you doing here?” I asked, stunned. Was he a hunter in training too?
Chase lifted his hand to hold me back, like he thought I was going to bum rush him and snuggle with Darius. Which I would have liked to under other circumstances. But confusion took precedence over hormones.
“He’s a demon and he’s being held for your trial.”
Darius was a demon?
“You’re going to destroy him,” Chase added.
The corner of Darius’s mouth lifted up in a smirk. “Be gentle with me,” he said.
Then before I could think of a single thing to say, a strong grip from behind grabbed me around the waist and pulled me up the stairwell.
Even in the dark, I could see his red eyes and I knew who it was.
It was Axel.
And he had picked me up before, when I was two, and my mother’s blood had soaked the carpet.
Chapter Ten
The Roof
I wanted to scream, but it was like my dreams. I opened my mouth but no sound came out, and while I squirmed I was too much in shock to really fight him. I remembered his eyes. I knew he was my mother’s murderer. He had killed her in front of me, and now he was here to kill me as well.
Panic was choking me, my breath a loud, frantic pulse in the dark, ringing in my ears. Chase didn’t seem to realize I was gone for a few seconds, his focus still on Darius, and by the time he gave a shout of alarm, it sounded far away, like I had been dragged out of his reach, up the stairs faster than I could have even run up them.
When Axel pushed open the door and moonlight flooded the hallway, I realized he was taking me out onto the roof and I started to struggle, my survival instinct finally kicking in.
“Prohibere. Resisto. Stop, little girl, I just want to talk.”
That sounded like a murderer’s line to me. I just need some help with my car. I lost my puppy. I just want your purse. If you’re quiet, I’ll let you go.
I tried to kick back at his knee, but I missed. I tried to turn and scratch his face, dig at his eyes, but his grip was too solid. I was pinned against him. Desperate, I raised my head straight up into his chin, hearing a satisfying crack. He swore, but at the same time, kicked the door to the roof closed behind us.
“You made me bite my tongue. That pisses me off.” He shoved me across the roof, and I stumbled, falling against a gargoyle.
“If you’re a demon, I doubt it hurts,” I said, finally finding my voice as I clung to the stone figure, eyes adjusting to the night. He was in front of the door and he was touching the doorknob. It immediately glowed red, like his eyes.
“That will give us some privacy.” He refocused on me and smiled. “And you’re right, nothing really hurts me, not in the way humans hurt.”
He looked different than the last time I’d seen him, chasing after me as I ran towards the school. His body was leaner, his face younger. I realized with a sick feeling that he was in a different body altogether. It was the eyes I recognized. He was either inside of a human or he had just chosen to manifest in a different form. I didn’t know the difference but I did know it was unnerving.
“I can’t say the same for my host though. Somewhere buried in here—” he gestured to his chest, “—this gentleman feels everything. So remember that if you are considering pulling a knife out of your pajama pants.”
So that was his tactic. Playing on my sympathy for a human host. Though I found it ironic that he thought I was capable of wielding a knife. I wasn’t. Not even close.
I shook my head, amazed at how casual he sounded, familiar, like we were old acquaintances. Which I guess, we were. “That’s not my job. I don’t carry a weapon.”
“No, of course not. You are an exorcist. Any second now you’ll be blurting Latin at me I suppose, so let’s get to the point, shall we?”
There were so many thoughts, so many questions, I didn’t know where to begin. I tried to remember my Latin lessons, I tried to recall the exorcisms my mentor had taught me, but my mind was blank, thoughts scattered. I hadn’t controlled my first exorcism, and I didn’t know how to start now. The doorknob rattled and I heard Chase calling for me.
Axel rolled his eyes as he walked towards me. “That’s going to get old. But the big lug has all sorts of gushy feelings for you, it’s quite the high for me to suck it all in.” He breathed deeply, his eyes closed, like a savory dish was in front of him. “You didn’t know that he’s in love with you, did you?”
I moved to the right, behind the statue as he stepped towards me, hoping to circle around to the door. “He’s not in love with me. We’ve barely spoken.”
“Since when does that stop teenagers from falling head over ass? He may not be saying it, but he’s definitely feeling it. But I’m sorry I brought it up. I don’t want to talk about him. I want to talk about me.” He laughed. “All demons want to talk about themselves. I have big plans and they include you.”
I moved another foot, clearing the gargoyle, knowing my plan was not a real plan, but unwilling to die without at least an attempt to escape. But my thoughts were too scattered, too frantic. I couldn’t see any way out. I hoped that if I was going to die, he would just throw me off the roof, and not stab me, not let me bleed out slowly and painfully, full of regrets.
“I’ve spent your whole life watching over you, and I have to say, I’m proud of who you’ve become.” His smile was so normal, friendly, yet his eyes…
He’d been watching me. He’d always been watching me.
I lost it and screamed, “Chase! Help me!”
“Liana! I can’t open the door! You have to exorcise him.”
But I couldn’t and he knew it. Axel knew it, Chase knew it. We all knew it. I started crying, silent tears rolling down my face, nose running from the wind, my fear.
Axel reached out and wiped the liquid off my cheek, and I jerked out of his touch. I could move and he would always follow, always be right there. The horror of that was paralyzing.
“Don’t cry…it’s beneath you. This is an invitation, not a threat. I want you to join me.”
My teeth started to chatter from the wind and I was mortified that I was so terrified, I was doing nothing to save myself. The pounding on the door only emphasized that I was frozen in place and there was nothing Chase could do to help me. The sound that came out of my mouth in response to his words was nothing but a frantic sob.
A flicker of annoyance crossed his face and I tried to look anywhere but his burning eyes, but he held my chin firmly in his grip. “Your mother never cried and she didn’t even have your potential.”
“Did you kill my mother?” I whispered, so close to him that I could see the faint outline of a moustache and smell the musky cologne he was wearing. I knew the answer already, but I had to hear it.
Chase was pounding on the door still, rattling the knob, screaming my name. It was like white noise in the background, my focus on the yellow moisture of Axel’s teeth, the feel of his hot breath as he spoke, the fear that consumed me, made me utterly powerless.
“Yes. She forgot to play by the rules. So she was punished.”
Stunned at his casual tone, I pictured my mother enduring thirty-two stab wounds at his hand and for what? Because it amused him? I didn’t understand why, and bile rose in my throat.
“Liana!” Chase pounded on the wood more frantically.
“Damn it, that kid is annoying!” Axel turned and raised his hand towards the door. “Let’s deal with this problem.”
The red of the doorknob cooled and a second later, Chase came hurtling onto the roof, eyes roving frantically to assess the situation, his knife raised.
“Chase!”
“Liana, are you okay?”
I shook my head no, but Chase never even saw it, because even as I rushed towards the door, Axel was there, in front of Chase. Before I could even comprehend what was happening, Chase was on the ground.
Not moving.
I took a step towards him and then stopped cold, my hand flying up to my mouth. Chase was on his back, his eyes staring blankly up at the sky, a dark pool forming behind his head, flooding along the rooftop to reach me.
His throat was slit from one end to the other.
His blood lapped at my Converse, my shoes an obstacle to it racing straight down the slope of the roof to the drain in the corner. But it didn’t let the interruption stop it. It merely skirted the obstacle and continued to rush across the floor, thick and faster than I could have imagined possible.
The river of blood that meant Chase was dead.
A high-pitched whine erupted from my mouth and I said, “No, no, no…”
Axel shrugged his slender shoulder. “Sorry, he was annoying me. But I’ll prove to you that I’m right about his feelings for you.”
He grabbed my hand and yanked me forward, so I fell on my knees. Fell onto the ground, right in that stream of rushing blood. So much blood, more than one person could ever lose and live. I gagged, fought, but there was no strain on Axel’s part, no hesitation. He stood over me and pressed my palms down into the warm sticky liquid while I cried, eyes blurry from tears, stomach heaving up into my throat.
I felt it immediately, the connection to Chase when I touched his blood. I felt the rush of heat up my fingers to my wrists and on up to my arms. I felt his masculinity, his strength, his hopes, his dreams, his sure vision of a future where he kicked demon ass and won praise. As my eyes took in his still, lifeless body, his shape so familiar to me, his scent so part of my daily existence, his blood trickled over my flesh and all his thoughts and feelings that I had never bothered to ask about, never attempted to unearth from the guy who was watching me and protecting me, came crashing over me.
The love he felt for his mother, his friendships at St. Michaels, his passion for football and wrestling, his desire to impress his teacher in combat class, and me. His quiet and growing admiration for me, the girl who had never noticed. The girl who had been so determined to pretend everything was normal, I had convinced myself that he didn’t exist. Until tonight I had never even really spoken to him and he’d been funny and entertaining and thoughtful.
And now he was dead.
It was my fault.
He had been falling in love with me and I had been covering my head with the blanket so I couldn’t see the closet monsters. I tried to pull away, tried to yank my hands off the ground, away from the blood, away from Chase’s private life, but an invisible force held me down.
“You will join me,” Axel said, his voice in my ear. “It’s what you were born to do.”
Then he was no longer in my space and I fell backwards, the resistance as I tried to pull away from the blood gone.
Axel was cursing in irritation and I looked around, confused, scared, scrambling on my knees to Chase, like I could somehow fix him, make him okay. “I’m sorry,” I told him, “I’m so sorry.” I reached my hand to stroke his cheek, but when I saw the smear of his own blood on his still cheek from my hand, I turned and threw up, most of it landing in my lap and on my legs, a hot smelly expulsion of my horror.
“Hey, come away from there.” Gentle hands touched my arm and I jerked away, crying and panting.
But it wasn’t Axel. It was Darius, his hands bound together in handcuffs, his hair in his eyes.
“He killed Chase,” I said stupidly, weeping. “He was just seventeen and now he’s dead, because of me.”
“Not because of you. Because of Axel.” Darius tugged me up to a standing position, his strength obvious despite the limitation of his tied wrists. “Now come inside before he comes back.”
“He’s coming back?” I looked around at the still sky, stars shining, trees swaying slowly, the smell of blood clogging my nostrils. “Where did he go?”
“I caught him off guard, sent him on a little trip. Demons can do that to each other, but I don’t want to have to try it again. He’s stronger than me.” Darius herded me to the door. “Especially since I’m wrapped in iron at the moment.”
I realized he was shuffling, his walk unnatural, and I saw he was wearing cuffs around his ankles too. But he managed to move down the stairwell fairly quickly, guiding me the whole time. He took me down the hall to my room and stopped in front of the door, while I just stood, staring at him, stunned. Chase was dead. Axel had come for me and Chase was dead.
“I’m sorry about your friend,” he said, his hands reaching up as one to push the hair out of my eyes.
I couldn’t reconcile the fact that Darius from Bay was this Darius in front of me, a demon. But he looked the same, his features familiar from all the times I’d stared at him in study hall and chemistry and lunch, wishing he would notice me. His eyes were an inky black and they looked compassionate, not demonic, not the fiery flames of Axel.
“Go wake up your roommate,” he told me. “And the two of you together need to go for help from the principal, okay? Together. Not just you.”
I nodded. I was in so much shock, I wasn’t sure I could even find Ms. Saradunn’s on-site apartment through all the twisting turns of the huge building. “Why did you help me?”
It would be idiotic to trust him, but I needed the comfort he was offering as he pulled my hand between his and rubbed it softly with the pad of his thumb.
“Because the humans weren’t the only ones who thought you needed a bodyguard. Your father sent me to watch over you.”
“My father?” I said stupidly, caught off guard. What did my father have to do with anything? He was missing and no one had seen him in fifteen years.
But Darius opened the door to my room and pushed me through it. “Go. And you never saw me, do you understand? I wasn’t here.”
He was gone before I could respond and I stood there in the dark, Jessica’s breathing even and steady as I blinked, my hands sticky and shaking. I had left this room an hour ago, wanting to sketch, upset that Mr. Bradford had known my mother.
Now Chase was dead and I was wearing his blood.
“Jessica?” I said, my voice loud to me in the quiet, wavering and uncertain.
She didn’t move.
“Jessica!” I wanted to shake her but I didn’t want to touch anything, so instead I nudged the edge of her mattress with my knee.
“What?” She rolled over to face me, her eyes half-closed.
“You have to help me. Something bad has happened.”
Jessica pulled herself to a sitting position. “What?” She flicked on her night light. “What…oh, my God, Liana, are you okay? What happened?”
“We were on the roof…and a demon grabbed me…and Chase…” I stalled helplessly, not wanting to say the word dead out loud.
