Darkness Brutal (The Dark Cycle Book 1) Read online

  It’s silent for a second, and I don’t like the tension. It’s been growing between us for a few months now, like a spring coiling tighter. “Love you, Peep,” I say.

  “’Night, demon dork.”

  Even as I hang up I feel like it’s not enough. I hate it when things are imbalanced. And I know a lot of this new tension is my own fault. I’m having trouble figuring out her moods lately and what all the emotions mean for her growing abilities. And I admit I can be an ass sometimes. But I love the girl to death. She’s all I have left.

  And I made a promise to my mom before she died. To protect Ava. With everything in me. There’s no way I’m going to let myself fail.

  I take a deep breath and walk across the street toward the club, deciding I need to focus on one thing at a time. Demon bite, then sister drama.

  I move through the crowd outside, putting up my internal walls against the press of emotions as I pass, and make it into the alley and down the stairs to the back entrance without sensing anything too horrible. One of the bouncers—Frank or Biff, they all look alike—stops me.

  “I need to talk to Eric,” I say.

  He notices my wounded hand and makes a face of disgust.

  “I’m on the list,” I add. “Aidan O’Linn.”

  He glances at his clipboard, finds my name, and opens the door, waving me past.

  In the darkness of the club the black walls glow purple from the lights on the floor, and the beat of the music throbs in my chest. There’s a scattering of people standing in line for the bathroom. I keep my eyes on the floor, seeing only shoes as I head down a side hall and up a staircase to the office door.

  I knock and try to ignore the growing pain in my hand. It burns like hell. The flames spread through my body with my pulse. Must be the damn demon spit. I swallow the sting, wondering what’ll happen next.

  Another bouncer opens the office door. His wide shoulders fill the doorway.

  Behind him, Hanna stands in front of a wall of glass, looking down at the mass of bodies writhing on the dance floor. She turns to me and frowns. “Aidan, what happened?”

  “I was stupid.” I walk past the large guard and collapse onto the couch facing the window. My stomach growls.

  “Get Eric,” she tells the bouncer, then goes to her desk, pulling an apple from the drawer. She holds it out to me, and I only hesitate from pride for a second before taking it.

  I make myself eat it slow, even though I want to scarf it down in three bites. She sits and lets me chew in silence, which I’m thankful for.

  Hanna’s sort of mom-ish. Her eyes are kind, and she seems strong, like life doesn’t affect her the same way it affects others. She’s seen too much of it, maybe. She’s in her midthirties and has smooth skin the color of rich soil. Her features are model perfect and never seem to age. I’m sure men want her, but by the way she looks at Eric, I think she’s already taken. She helps him run the club so he can do his side work without too much notice.

  Side work. More like an obsession. He trades in ancient artifacts and is an expert in demon lore and all things biblical and Bronze Age. His collection of spirit bowls and amulets, not to mention his many yellowed scrolls, puts the Smithsonian to shame.

  “Eric got more phones for the staff. Do you need a new one yet?” she asks.

  “No, this one’s good.” A perk of working for Eric. Homeless boy gets a cell.

  “I’ve got something for you,” she says, bringing a small stone box across the desk toward her. “We found it at an estate sale. Eric wanted me to give it to you.” She lifts the lid off and pulls a thin chain from inside. A small charm dangles on the end.

  I hold out my hand, and she places it on my palm. The charm on the necklace is a hamsa, an amulet in the shape of a hand—silver inlaid with colored glass. It’s a ward against the evil eye and sometimes an object of luck. It creates a sort of bubble around the keeper, muffling any negative activity around them. Mom gave me one for my sixth birthday, but it got lost in all the moving around we did back then. It feels good to have one against my skin again. I’d like to pass it on to Ava. She needs it more than me right now.

  “I can’t pay for this,” I say. They’re worth a good seventy bucks brand new.

  “Eric said if you want to trade for it, you can, but he insisted you need it.”

  “I don’t have anything to trade,” I say, rolling the charm in my palm. Unless you count a Stephen King paperback as collateral.

  “Then you can do something for me instead.” She hands me a piece of paper. “Call this guy. Eric won’t have work for you until the next shipment of relics comes in, and this guy can help find you work.”

  “I don’t need charity.” I study the paper. There’s a phone number on it.

  “I know, but this guy . . . he works in odd stuff, like Eric. He helps kids like you. With similar . . . gifts. Kind of like a mentor.”

  I hand the paper back to her. “No thanks.” This isn’t the first time she’s tried to push me at some mission, or church, or do-gooder cause. It always ends up the same—with me tossed into the system.

  She shakes her head, refusing to take it. “Call him; his name’s Sid. And he can get you steady work—the kind you’re best at. You owe me, remember.”

  “I won’t go on the grid, Hanna, you know that. It’ll be foster care before I can even finish reading this guy’s pamphlet. I won’t do that again. I can’t.” Foster care means crowded, filthy houses with drugs and gangs and heavy air, being at the mercy of pissed off men with big fists or women with weird fetishes, and trying to keep my abilities hidden from the demons lurking in every corner. When I’m under the thumb of strangers, I have no way to keep the other stuff out of my space without looking like an OCD freak. I’m not going back to that.

  Hanna folds her graceful arms across her chest. “You’re being stubborn, Aidan. This man can get you what you need. No grid. No social services. And he can help you with your gifts.”

  I pause and look at the phone number again, wondering if I’m pushing away a miracle. No one can help me with my “gifts,” or whatever they are, but Hanna doesn’t understand that. Still, with more steady money, maybe I could take care of Ava for real, get myself off the street.

  “I’ll think about it,” I say and slip the piece of paper and my newly acquired hamsa into my pocket.

  “He’s helped a few boys like you get back on their feet. I think he could use someone with your talents.” She smiles. “You’ll fit right in there. You’ll see.”

  Eric comes in the office. He’s dressed in his usual five-thousand-dollar Italian suit and five-hundred-dollar shoes. His golden hair is slicked back, and dark-rimmed glasses frame his cool hazel eyes. No one would guess by looking at him that he spends his days poring over crumbling manuscripts and digging through piles of ancient bones. But Eric likes to fool people, pretend he’s all about the green. It helps him fit right in—this is LA, after all. It also helps him find the really rare stuff no one in brainy circles even knows about. Black market is where the meat is, he always says. If it’s legal, it’s probably not worth his time. I’ve helped him sniff out some of these goodies, detecting the energy they carry—or letting him know when something’s authentic. It’s why he lets me come around without trouble. Why he helps me sometimes.

  I met him outside my last foster house. He came by a garage sale my foster mom, Theresa, was having. Eric came up and asked if we had any old vases or urns available. I thought it was such an odd question. And he was so shiny and slick looking; he really didn’t fit in with the neighborhood at all. I told him Theresa didn’t own anything made before 1980, and he laughed and then asked if I wanted to work for him.

  I wasn’t quick to say yes, but once I realized I wouldn’t be selling my body or my soul, I jumped into Eric’s world with both feet, running away from foster care and living wherever I could find a place to set up
wards—protections against darkness—and crash. The money isn’t great, but the freedom is heaven. And Eric seems to get it. He knows I’m different and accepts it without question. The first and only guy I’ve met like that.

  He listens as I tell him what happened tonight, then goes to a cupboard and gets out some first aid stuff, setting it on the table beside the couch.

  “A demon bite. That’s a first, Mr. O’Linn.” He seems confused as he studies my face, looking for something, but I don’t have any answers. I assumed he’d be more freaked out. He’s calm as always, though.

  “Clean it well,” he says to Hanna. “I need to get something out of the safe. I’ll be back.”

  I unwrap the mess of my left hand, and Hanna helps me clean the wound with alcohol. Needlelike teeth holes pepper my wrist and hand, the bright red welts warping my tattoo. Or birthmark. Whatever. I’m not sure what the design on my hand is. I don’t recall getting the mark—I could’ve been born with it for all I know, though that feels impossible.

  Who am I kidding? I live impossible.

  The mark is a kind of knot made of letters all woven together, not that I know what it says. It reaches from the base of my middle finger across the back of my hand and then curves around the outside of my left wrist. It’s dark brown in color, a few shades darker than my skin, like faded henna.

  I’m fairly tan, unlike my pale mom and sister. Maybe my dad was from India.

  Or maybe he was from Mars.

  I’ll probably never know. It’s not like I’ll ever be able to ask my mom.

  Eric comes back with some herbs and an amulet. He lights the cluster of herbs—called a smudge—and sets the amulet on the back of my hand where the wounds are deepest. It’s made of pure gold, a cleansing metal. Engraved on the piece is what looks like a leaf and a sword, and Greek lettering around the edge that reads earth or, more accurately, soil.

  “Now, it says to clean a spiritual wound, you’re supposed to say Psalm 91.” He waves the smudge over my hand, letting the smoke billow over my skin in grey puffs, then he offers me a slip of paper with the verse on it.

  But I don’t need it. I hear it in my head: He who dwells in the secret place of Elyon shall abide under the shadow of the Almighty. I will say of HaShem . . .

  I start reciting the scripture from memory. “Yoshëv B’šëter el’yôn B’tzël shaDay yit’lônän. Omar l’Adonai—”

  Hanna stops me. “What’s that?”

  “The verse. In Hebrew,” I say, and continue the recitation. Hanna glances at Eric with a strange look on her face. I forgot she’s still more clueless about me than Eric.

  Eric just listens, his features still. When I’m done, he takes the amulet and wraps my hand in some clean bandages. “How did you learn Hebrew?” he asks.

  I shrug. “I don’t remember. Maybe I’m secretly Jewish.” Despite my last name, I’ve had a lot of people assume I’m Jewish—Israeli, that is, or Middle Eastern of some kind—from my coloring. But hell if I know.

  “You also know Latin,” he says. “I’ve heard you speak that. You even translated that Anglo-Saxon engraving I picked up in Paris last July.” By the tone of his voice he seems to be trying to make a point. It’s not as if he doesn’t know these things about me.

  “So what?”

  “For a seventeen-year-old who knows so many languages, you could be doing much more than helping a club owner make money on the side. You could be using your talents for something truly amazing and profitable. Why don’t you?” When I don’t answer, he adds, “Do you want to tell us any other languages rolling around in that mysterious head of yours?”

  He’s thrown me off guard by asking such direct questions, which makes me open my mouth and nearly reveal to him that I speak Ancient Greek and something else that I think might be Assyrian—plus maybe two or three more languages—but I catch myself and shake my head instead.

  Mom made me say it over and over: Keep it hidden, keep it safe. If anyone truly knew everything, it would freak them out in a large way. It freaks the shit out of me too, so I get it. I have no clue how I know this stuff, I just do. Like how I know the orders of angels and demons, or can tell on sight if an apparition is a ghost or a time slip, or if someone’s a virgin, or if they’ve ever killed anyone.

  Why can’t I just know how to play Xbox or baseball?

  It’s like I fell from the fucking sky.

  THREE

  I let the pulse of the music coat me and mute my surroundings. A mass of people crowd the dance floor of the club, and I sit on an abandoned couch in the corner. The lights beat at the air in blues and greens, and bodies twist and merge to the thunder. I lean back, close my eyes, and try to get lost in it, the smells and sounds of people and their collective high.

  Something moves next to me. I look over to find a girl sprawled on the seat beside me, trying to catch her breath. She’s not dressed in the usual club gear, more like a girl who got lost on her way to a beach party: Hurley T-shirt, jean skirt, and red Converse. Her cheeks are flushed pink. Her throat and forehead glitter with sweat. She glances at me like she didn’t know I was there. She licks her upper lip, her eyes not leaving mine. Then she says something I can’t hear.

  I point to my ear and shake my head.

  She smiles and laughs, lighting up the space around her. She rests her hand on my arm, like we’re friends and I just told her the most hilarious joke, and then she gets up and disappears into the mass of bodies again.

  My arm tingles, my body reacting to the moment of contact in a sudden and disconcerting way. I think I’ve had my fill of watching people indulge their baser instincts. I need to get out of here.

  The beat of the music speeds up, vibrating faster as I move through the crowd. I try not to touch anyone, which is nearly impossible. All the emotions and appetites are overwhelming, as if the rising rhythm of the music makes their yearnings rise, too. Lust buzzes in the air. A hunger stirs in me, a gaping hole, needing to be filled. With touch.

  The touch of female fingers. A hand on my arm, taking my wrist, pulling me into the fray, into the pressing bodies. And I don’t try to escape. I let her take me.

  Because I’m tired.

  Because I’m a dumbass.

  A girl moves in front of me—not the Hurley girl, not the one I was hoping for. She presses closer, so close I can almost taste the salty perspiration on her skin. She has thin, birdlike shoulders, a swan neck, a heart-shaped face, and black hair, long and tangled, turning blue and green with the light. Her hands slide up my chest. She wraps her arms around my neck and tilts her head to look up at me.

  Her lips are full and painted dark purple. There’s a dimple in her left cheek that gets deeper with her growing smile. And her eyes . . .

  Fog fills my head for a second, interrupting my thoughts.

  “Hi,” she mouths, calling attention to her lips again.

  And then she’s rising up on her toes, pulling me down to her, twisting her fingers in my hair, her lips smashing against mine.

  My body buzzes from her touch, and my hands react, drawing her into me. I drink her in. She tastes like the air around me, hunger and urgency, and—

  Green apple Jolly Ranchers?

  I grip her sides, her ribs so delicate beneath my fingers. The sweet tang of her teases me, the hunger becoming a monster deep inside. I have to press her closer, tighter, try to feed it, as I feel the fire of her need link with mine.

  She pulls back a little and looks at me with wide eyes, like she’s shocked. That’s when I see the mark, a glowing, blue-inked line of what looks like Chinese symbols, trailing down the nape of her neck to her shoulder blade. Symbols that I’m suddenly sure mean touch this girl at your own risk.

  It’s the only thing I see for a second: Beware. Beware.

  Until her energy reaches for me, wispy tendrils of blue light wrapping their way around my wrists and
snaking up my chest.

  I jerk away, into the guy behind me, stepping on his girlfriend’s toes. I get shoved—thankfully farther from the hypnotic girl—through a space in the crowd, saying a hundred excuse-me’s even though I know no one can hear them. I find my way out of the press of bodies to the edge of the room again where it’s safe.

  It’s time to leave. I should’ve left an hour ago.

  I grab my backpack from behind the bar on the way out. In the hall I stop to use the bathroom, splash handfuls of cold water on my face, then make my way out the back door.

  The bouncer nods goodnight, but I can’t do much more than grunt as I head past him, up the alley stairs. My hands are shaky. I feel like I got dosed with some sort of paranoia drug. As I move toward the back of the building, I try to get control of the shivering. No taking the bus tonight. I need to walk this mess off. It’s a nice night, and the abandoned building I’ve been crashing in lately is only a mile or two away. Less human contact that way, too.

  I start making my way through a small parking lot that’s reserved for club workers. When I pass the last car, air tingles at the base of my neck. My pulse speeds up, the paranoia growing. Something—

  A crash and a laugh. Something bangs against a Dumpster to my left, about ten yards away.

  I move behind the car, trying to see through the darkness.

  There’s three of them. Young men surrounding a body on the ground.

  A small demon about the size of a cat crouches in the shadows nearby, watching with beady white eyes. It’s got a bulbous head and a curved spine and is wearing a necklace made of tiny skulls and what look like baby bones. Its claws clench and unclench as it whispers something into the night air, words slow and feather soft.

  You’ve got to be shitting me. I know it’s the full moon, but dammit—could this night get any screwier?

  One of the guys says, “Prop her up against the Dumpster.”

  “Dude, we shouldn’t be doing this here. It’s nasty-ass sick.”

  “We could take her to the car.”