Chapter Twenty Darkness Falls
?
Brie gave her statement to the police three times. Repeating it didn’t help it make any sense. No matter how hard anyone tried, they simply didn’t understand how she knew Kylie had been poisoned. She didn’t think telling them that her magical necklace had somehow clued her in would be in any way helpful. She was seated in an abandoned conference room across from two detectives who stared at her like she was mentally disturbed. She did exactly what Denise had told her to do and stated only what she knew, which wasn’t much at all.
“But, how did you know it was a toxin?”
“I have no idea. I just knew.”
“You can understand why that’s a woefully insufficient explanation, right, Miss Weldon?”
“Yes.”
“Can you help me straighten that out?”
“If I could, I would, but I truly cannot.”
Three times she relived the story. Three times she remembered how it felt to hold Kylie’s hand as death tried to get a better grip on her little body.
By the time they were done, she was utterly spent. She walked out of the room and straight into Rashida, who had kindly come to wait for her to finish up with the police in her cocktail dress and heels. Together, they walked to the lowest tier of the parking lot in silence.
It was nearly eight, and the sun had dipped low on the horizon by the time they got to the pub, an Irish place called Tartarus. Rashida ushered Brie up to the bar and ordered two double shots of tequila. They licked the salt from their hands, tossed back the shots, and promptly ordered two more. As they bit into their lime wedges, they surveyed the scene.
Mike and Cameron were sitting together at a table, laughing as Sherry regaled them with a story that involved some grandiose hand gestures. The angel had two columns of bloodstained tissue jammed up his nose. The rest of the soccer team was crammed into booths and perched around tables surrounding them, laughing and chatting away.
It was a happy scene. One that Brie felt very much separate from.
“There he is.” Rashida had caught sight of her goalie. She smoothed her hair and dress, casting a discreet glance over her shoulder. “How do I look?”
Brie looked at her and said honestly, “You’re a vision. Go have some fun, okay?”
With a girlish grin, the woman sauntered over to the tables, pausing a moment to speak with her friends. Cameron glanced up when she approached, then automatically scanned the rest of the room for Brie. He pushed to his feet the second he saw her, but Rashida caught him by the arm.
“Give her a minute,” she murmured.
Brie startled, then looked around at the general clamor.
How did I just hear that?
Sherry got up and suavely introduced Rashida to the handsome soccer player sitting nearby. He played the moment well, kissing her hand lightly while maintaining eye contact and delivering what was surely an effective compliment before offering to buy her a drink.
The lovely woman graciously accepted, and the two headed to the opposite end of the bar to get to know one another better under the pretense of ordering cocktails.
Brie watched in silence, feeling like something had stolen her breath.
They would probably hit it off beautifully. Maybe they’d get a couple of drinks and watch the sunset together before finding an excuse to meet up again. Maybe they’d spend the night together straight away. Maybe they’d end up getting married and living in a house with a white picket fence and an ancient oak in the front yard with a tire swing for their two-point-five beautiful children. They’d probably get a dog to teach the kids about responsibility when the time felt right.
The blush of a new romance, the comfortable glow of the bar lights, the laughter of friends and comrades, the general air of merriment and unconcern… Brie didn’t feel like she had a place in any of it. She reached up and touched her necklace.
I’ll never have it. Not if I keep wearing this. It’ll just be danger and darkness.
And there’s nothing I can do.
A dark mix of emotions rose in her throat. She bit her lip, reopening a cut, and tasted copper. She gritted her teeth, squared her shoulders, and clamped down her jaw, trying to push the feelings back down. It wouldn’t do anyone any good for her to feel them, so what was the point?
Just ignore it, right? Even her thoughts were tinged with bitter sarcasm. Her face twitched as she tightened her eyes and thinned the edges of her lips. It’s fine, right? Everything’s friggin’ perfect.
The bartender placed two shots on the counter next to her. She threw hers back with abandon without bothering with the salt or citrus. She drank Rashida’s too.
Then she plastered a smile on her face and walked over to join her friends.
“The woman of the hour!” Sherry raised her glass in greeting. “Ida just told us. How did you know? How could you possibly have known? Brie, that’s amazing! Did you brush up on your toxicology studies this past year or something?”
Cameron got up from his seat under the pretext of taking her coat. “What happened?” he whispered in her ear.
She just shook her head.
“Brianna, if you want to leave, we can.”
“I don’t want to leave,” she answered with a strangely flat affectation. “This is where I belong. Right here. With my friends. In this bar.”
He nodded cautiously and took a seat, still eyeing her with concern. She ignored him. “How did the rest of the afternoon go?” she asked the group.
“Nowhere near as exciting as yours,” Sherry exclaimed. “Mike’s been off his phone all day, trying to rein in the screen time, so we only just heard. Do you really think there was a poisoner in the hospital? I mean, that’s just insane. Do they have any idea who it might be?”
Brie finished whoever’s whiskey happened to be in front of her. She answered a little too loud. “Yeah, it was super crazy. Tell me all about soccer. What happened?”
There was a split second of silence, then Sherry pushed them quickly past it. “Well, you know how Cam got hit in the face?” she began. “It happened again. Somebody had the bright idea of making him the goalie—”
Mike threw up his hands with a grin. “In my defense, I thought there was no way he’d be a worse goalie than a midfielder.”
“But somehow failed to teach him how to, you know, stop the ball . So instead of catching it like most people, he decided to use his whole face,” Sherry finished.
Of course he did.
The guy shoots lightning from his hands, but heaven forbid he catch a soccer ball.
“It turns out you’re allowed to use your hands when you play goalie,” Cameron piped up.
“Is that why you’re sporting that stuff up your nose?” Brie eyed him sarcastically. “Don’t you think you should take those out? You look ridiculous.”
“This is a wound , Brianna. I’ve been wounded .”
It looked like he wanted to say more about it. It looked as though, at some point during the afternoon, he’d probably transcribed the entire experience into song. But he took a single look at her face, and the words died on his tongue. A second later, he pulled out the tissues.
For the next fifteen minutes, Brie drank steadily through the banter. She let out a hard laugh when the others laughed. She smiled cheerlessly when the others did. She didn’t contribute, didn’t speak. What she did was throw back shot after shot until the room swayed unsteadily beneath her. Cameron monitored her with increasing worry, but she refused to look his way.
“Yeah, we should totally go. It’s by this great director, a real visionary in the horror genre.”
Brie clicked back into the conversation at precisely the wrong time.
“Well, there are these monsters—”
“I think they’re zombies.”
“Right, zombies. Well, they’re trying to get away, and for a minute, it looks like they can, but then these beasts crash right through the roof of the car—”
Brie stood up suddenly. Too suddenly. She tilted precariously before grabbing the back of a chair to right herself. “I need to get out of here,” she muttered.
Sherry stopped mid-sentence, half-rising to her feet. “No problem, sweetie. Let’s just get you to the bathroom—”
“No!” Brie interrupted, too forcefully. “I mean, no. You stay here. I just… I need some air.”
In all her life, Brie had never snapped at Sherry. Not once. Not even when they were kids. A horrible silence fell between them before she took off suddenly, lurching for the exit.
Cameron grabbed her coat and quickly followed her outside.
She burst through the doors into a welcome rush of cool air that shivered over her body and flowed through her hair. There was a second of respite, but it wasn’t enough. Before she was even off the patio, she flew to the side and started retching into the flowerbeds.
Cameron was there in an instant, holding back her hair.
“Don’t touch me,” she snapped.
He backed away, stung, before trying to approach again. “Brianna, let me help. Let me take this away for you. It’ll only take a second.”
“I don’t want any more of your help!”
She took a second to revel in his shell-shocked expression, then started pacing dizzily away from the restaurant — not caring whether he happened to follow or not. She didn’t look back as she continued yelling. “When have you ever really helped, anyway? You didn’t save my mother. You told me to keep this awful thing around my neck for years, and the whole time, it’s been turning me into some freakish mutant. I have abs now, Cameron. I can hear squirrels. Squirrels ! I broke my house in half, and now I’m diagnosing patients with no information because my jewelry told me to.”
She whipped around and jabbed her finger at him through the air. “I thought I was crazy for five long, lonely years, and now, you know what? I wish I were. It would be easier to be crazy, than to try to make sense of any of this.”
Her fingers closed around the pendant, making a tight fist. “All I want is to be normal. I want a normal, boring life. I want to be with my friends and not feel like a freak. I want my life back. I want my scar back. I don’t want this anymore.”
He approached cautiously, like she was something wild. “Brianna, don’t—”
“Don’t tell me what to do!” she screamed. “This is my life, Cameron. I’m taking it back.”
It was over before it started, before she could really think it through. In a single drunken motion, she ripped the pendant off over her head and flung it to the ground in front of her, watching as it clattered on the pavement before going abruptly still. The sound echoed impossibly between them as the last rays of the golden sunset glinted off the shimmering chain.
She stood in perfect silence, trying to catch her breath. Then all at once, she started laughing. Hysterically laughing. She threw back her head and flung her arms wide.
“You see?” she gasped, oblivious to the look of horror on Cameron’s face. “Nothing happened. And nothing’s going to happen. This was all just—”
It came out of nowhere, a roiling grey cloud, as though dozens of shadowy, terrifying creatures had slipped through cracks in the air itself to appear as an impenetrable horde.
She barely had time to scream before they were upon her. Beneath her. Around her.
It was like watching an incoming wave you couldn’t possibly hope to outrun — one that was destined to sweep you into a rough and merciless sea. It was every bit as hopeless and even more terrifying, because this sea had teeth. There was a hunger in the way the creatures came at her. A ripping, howling sound that spoke of famished, barbarian emptiness tore through the air. All she could hear was the sick, thwacking sound of leathery wings and the gnashing of faces made entirely of long, thin, inward-curving teeth. It overwhelmed her. Everywhere she looked was a nightmare. Everything she saw had come straight from Hell.
And then he was there.
He tackled her to the ground, cupping one hand behind her head to absorb the crack on the pavement. With his other arm, he sliced through the air and hit the ground, letting out a deep cry. “Abu-nan, d-b-s’myaa!”
All at once, the darkness shifted. The image brightened as they were surrounded by a glowing sphere orbited by intricate runes. Ancient words swirled around them in rings of protection. From the sphere’s equator, an enormous scythe made of golden light and heavenly heat shot out like a blade made from a sliver of the sun, carving and burning its way through the entire horde, spinning and attacking from every direction at once. The monsters’ revolting bodies froze in place for an instant before sliding apart in perfect halves. The smell that was released turned Brie’s stomach before the blade of light itself splintered apart into shards. These turned of their own accord as though aimed by Heaven’s archers and shot from a thousand perfect bows. They drove themselves into all that remained of the wraiths and dissolved them into nothing until not a trace remained.
Cameron pulled his hand from under her head, revealing the pendant. He stared at it a moment, then placed it firmly around her neck. Her eyes were wild, and her heart was racing. She wrapped her arms around his neck, clinging like a child as he touched their foreheads together.
They held on for a long moment. Then he spoke in a voice that left no room for discussion. “You have to keep it on.”
The telephone pole on the opposite side of the parking lot made a strange, moaning sound and cracked in half where the heavenly scythe had touched it. It crashed neatly onto an entire row of cars.
Broken glass showered around them like rain as a dozen car alarms went off, filling the air with sirens of protest and a dizzying explosion of flashing lights.
The door to the bar burst open, and about twenty police officers from the soccer game flooded into the parking lot. Mike was among the first, followed quickly by Sherry.
“My Lord! What the heck happened?” he cried, surveying the damage. “Are you alright?”
Brie nodded in silence. Cameron got up and offered a hand. She took it but couldn’t seem to make it past a sitting position. His palm glowed discreetly, removing the nausea and clearing the alcohol from her blood.
“I think she’s in shock,” he said.
“I wouldn’t doubt it,” Sherry replied in a strangely flat tone. Brie locked eyes with her for a moment before turning away, cheeks burning in shame.
Did I yell at her before I came out here?
“Thank God we parked on the other side of the lot.” With that, Sherry knelt down and gave her a quick examination. “Follow my finger.” She held up her middle finger and moved it back and forth in front of Brie’s face, monitoring her pupil dilation and her ability to track it, while making her feelings known. “Are you okay?”
“I’m fine, Sher. It’s just… I got a little drunk. It’s been a long day.”
Satisfied that she didn’t have a concussion, Sherry sat back on her heels. “You’ve been having a lot of those lately.” Her eyes drifted over the wreckage strewn about the parking lot. “What happened here?”
“I don’t know.”
Sherry looked at her with an expression Brie had never received. Not from Sherry. Not ever.
Suspicion.
“I saw from the window, Brie. Cam tackled you before the pole fell.”
All the blood drained from Brie’s face. “The sound,” she said faintly. “He heard a sound, and I guess he just…” She trailed off, unable to think of a convincing lie in the moment.
Sherry stared a moment, then shook her head. “It’s like Rashida said earlier. You always seem to be in the middle of something these days.” She cocked her head and gazed intensely. “Is there anything you want to tell me?”
Yes. There is something that I very much want to tell you.
Then in a flash, she remembered Sherry’s face all those years ago, right after the accident, when Brie told her what had really happened to her mother. When she stretched her arms wide to show her the size of the shard of glass that had impaled her. When she uttered the word shadow-monster for the first time. When she told her about the angel. Sherry hadn’t said anything. She’d just tried to calm her down. She’d tried for days to be supportive, to nod and stroke her hair and affirm Brie’s feelings without confirming what she saw as the delusions of a traumatized mind. Brie could tell she didn’t believe her and couldn’t begin to blame her. She wouldn’t have believed such a thing herself. After the funeral, she broke down and moved into the bathtub. Sherry was there for her then, too.
She couldn’t put her through that again.
I want to tell you. But I can’t. It would break your heart.
“Yes.” Her heart caught in her throat. “I’m so sorry I snapped at you before. I don’t know why I did that. It’s been such a terrible day, Sherry. You should have seen that kid.”
Sherry’s face softened, and she sighed. “Oh, honey. What in the world am I going to do with you? You must be the unluckiest… Well, never mind all that. Let’s just get you home.”
The rest of the police force was jotting down license plate numbers and trying to match the customers with their ruined cars. Someone was already on the phone with the electric company to get the power to the felled line turned off. Rashida and her handsome goalie were staring out over the parking lot, thunderstruck.
That’s a hell of a first date.
Cameron quietly followed the girls to Sherry’s car and slipped into the back seat. He wouldn’t meet Brie’s eyes. He wouldn’t even look at her. He didn’t say a word the entire way home. He just opened the door for her when they arrived and stepped back, ever the gentleman.
The second the door shut behind them, Brie ran to her room and threw herself on the bed. She needed to cry, but she couldn’t. She heaved a dry, broken sob, and then another, praying that the tears would just fall already to give her some relief. But there was nothing. Nothing but that familiar ache behind her eyes. The feeling of being completely hollow and utterly alone.
For what felt like hours, she buried her face in her pillow, counting her breaths until she finally fell asleep. For what felt like hours, Cameron stood on the other side of the door, his face turned up to the heavens, dying with each passing second, counting those breaths himself.