40. Darker Shades of Dark
40
DARKER SHADES OF DARK
SAYAH
“ O nce we get the artifact ready,” Adaline says, “I think you two will have to fight again.”
“No problem there,” Bash retorts, brushing off his black jeans.
Dom’s right eye squints in the projectile glare he whips at Bash.
“When will you two be okay with being brothers?” Hattie asks, the annoyance in her voice rising friction in the room.
“Never, apparently,” Bash answers.
“All right,” Adaline interjects, “let’s get somewhere where we can be ready for the grimspawns bound to come along.”
“I didn’t think of that part,” I say, remembering the dread when they entered the room.
“We’ll be ready this time,” Everett responds, arising from the couch.
“How will we be ready?” Dom asks, crossing his arms.
“Let’s pick a room we control,” Everett says, his wavy hair clumping in parts from the blood. “Have weapons ready. Attack on the offense.”
“The spell room?” Jasantha asks, rising from the couch as well .
“I don’t know,” Adaline says, no doubt picturing all her jars and things breaking from the throes of war.
“The dungeon,” Everett offers, his hard eyes growing like stone.
“There’s a dungeon?” I ask, chills trickling down my spine, my ass puckering a smidge.
“Yes, well,” Hattie answers, shooting me a devilish grin, “when you’re a family of monsters, sometimes monsters come knocking at your door. When that happens, you need a place to put them.”
I can only imagine what this dungeon looks like, complete with barred cages and torture devices and things of agony and pain.
A darker shade of dark.
“Well, let’s get down there then,” Bash replies, grabbing the bottle of bourbon. “Grab your witchy device and let the murder and mayhem commence.”
“I need to grab the artifact,” Adaline utters, “and some salt and candles.”
We enter the spell room where Adaline gathers her things, and then we follow her to the far corner, where she quickly pushes aside her large bookcase and reveals a dark, damp-smelling staircase.
Descending, my mind is all but a wander, wondering what I will see in this dungeon.
Arriving at the landing, the stairway leads to a narrow hall crafted entirely of dark and weighty stone, reminiscent of a castle interior. The extensive hallway stretches across what appears to be the entire house, bars beholden to cells beyond them on either side. Walking the length of the corridor, I glance into each cell, seeing if there’s anyone—or anything—inside. All cells are vacant, holding only lonely cots with metal toilets and no windows, mirrors, or furnishings of any sort. Reaching the end of the hallway, a spacious room opens up, maintaining the stone motif with a large fireplace featuring a black cauldron. The walls of this room are adorned with double and triple arrays of every conceivable type of weapon. Among them are modern weapons, such as guns of every kind, and then medieval weaponry—axes, scythes, maces, crossbows, swords, flails, halberds, spears, caltrops, and battle axes—all neatly arranged on the walls within their pegs.
On the wall with the cauldron are the weapons for the monsters.
Stakes of every size and wood laced with silver, crossbows and bows and arrows laden with silver heads, bronze and silver daggers, dried herbs which can only be Nightshade . . . this list goes on and on.
I find it odd that they have weapons that could kill their own kind within the walls of their house. But, when dealing with monsters, one could only be so prepared.
Adaline walks around the room with the salt and spreads a circle around the boundaries, laying the candles out. And with one swoosh of her hand, all the candles and the fire beneath the cauldron come alight.
“I love it when she does that,” Bash says, picking out a few silver stakes from the wall. He tosses one to me. “Here, arm yourself. Just in case.”
I hold the stake in my hand, and suddenly that nervous danger catches at me and makes me a little nervous. That fire in my blood tries to singe back the doubt.
But what if I can’t kill this one?
Where’s that power I’d felt the first time the white warlock came? I feel it buzzing, but how do I turn into that glowing, fire fissure being I was before? Will it just happen, or do I have to do it now?
Maybe the panic is suppressing the strenuous zap I felt ten minutes ago.
Holding the artifact in her hand, Adaline takes her place in the middle of the room. Hattie, with the vials of blood in hand, meets her there.
“Since we don’t have Scarlet,” Adaline says, “Sayah, we’re gonna need you to chant with us. We must act like we’re trying to break the curse.”
I nod and meet them in the middle.
Everett pulls down a mace, handing Dom a silver stake, and Ollie takes up an axe.
They stand ready .
“All right. Make each other mad,” spits Jasantha. An evil look twists within her eyes which flash purple.
“Maybe, don’t use the weapons on each other, huh?” Adaline quips.
Dom stows his stake in the front of his pants, and Bash puts his in the back.
“Who’s gonna provoke who?” Bash asks in contravention, squaring his shoulders.
“Doesn’t take much for you to piss me off,” Dom glowers, spreading out his stance.
“Awe, come on, brother, I think we’ve come a long way today.” His voice is sharp with contempt.
“That does not make up for the last two-hundred years that you’ve been a complete dick. Why don’t you have another dream about my girlfriend?”
“With pleasure,” he answers with disdain, “as she will probably be dreaming of me, too!”
And this is enough to sear the anger in Dom to pounce on Bash. He flies up into the air and lands with a vicious blow to Bash’s head. Bash falls back and cracks his head on the stone floor, blood spewing forth out of his wound.
Dom’s eyes go white with the green rim, his teeth protract, and his skin turns pearly white.
Bash’s eyes turn white with a dark blue rim around them, his teeth protruding from the gums, and he hisses ferally at Dom. He lurches up and runs at Dom with that speed, knocking him to one of the stone pillars. The whole house rumbles, causing loose stones to fall from the ceiling.
Adaline looks up worriedly. Everett sends her a quelling glance.
Dom rounds on Bash and pushes him to the ground with a thundering boom, savagely punching him in the face time after time, punch after punch.
Blood runs thick from Bash’s nose and cut lip, he finally gets his teeth into Dom’s arm, ripping a chunk of flesh from it and spitting it out to the side .
I feel lightheaded at the gore and try to look away, but I know it’s essential to keep a steady eye on all that’s happening.
The wound heals as fast as it came on and suddenly Dom’s eyes go black, and he stops fighting Bash. His head goes still as though he’s listening to something. His head turns toward me, and I feel that terror again that I’m about to die. He rises from straddling Bash and walks toward me, Bash getting up and holding him by the arms.
Adaline and Hattie pour the blood over the artifact, chanting magickal words, and I chant with them, the hieroglyphics taking on a somber glow.
Another shock wave emits out of the artifact, and right as that happens, a hissing sound engulfs us, and the candles flicker in the breeze it causes.
As the hooded figures find their way down to the dungeon, Everett and Ollie are ready with their weapons and flash after them. Everett ferociously swings his mace to one’s head, making the most sickening crack as his skull caves in. Ollie takes his axe to another one, decapitating him with one swing.
The air changes again. The candles blow out, and a red glow secretes from the fireplace where this wraith of a warlock comes through, this time a man with diabolical red eyes.
His skin is as dark as the blackest night; his red and black dreadlocks hang around his fearsome and loathing face, framed by a dark goatee. He wears a black suit with red accents; the lapel and pocket square are that bright blood red. Atop his head is a black top hat rimmed with red, the skulls of small animals lining it, other bones in spikes reaching the top.
All along, we thought this warlock was a woman. But as it turns out, it is her male counterpart.
Adaline bends her gaze to me, and I summon my phoenix power. It becomes activated immediately when the warlock makes eye contact with me.
My skin cracks and fissures of gold emerge and glow. The fangs pierce through my gums, and the throbbing power within me propels me forward to the warlock .
Unable to tear my focus away from the man, the unequivocal fatality that rests within his aura staggers me.
Before I arrive at him to end him, his voice pours out of him, though his lips don’t move.
“You!” he admonishes, his voice echoing with such asperity in the dungeon that it almost stings. “You are the one that killed my sister!”
“That’s right,” I announce vehemently in a warrior rogue, trying to hide the terror within me. “I did. And now I will kill you.”
I make a move toward him. He holds up his hand; a long, spindly, dark, and terrifying hand.
“Before you kill me, Mederio, phoenix, know this,” he hisses petulantly. “I have Scarlet, and you will never know where she is or how to get her back if you kill me right now. The only way that I will reveal Scarlet’s location is if you give me the artifact.”
Looking behind me for reassurance, everyone is unmoving. Ollie and Everett are covered in blood, the gristly head of the grimspawn still dangling from Ollie’s hands. Bash is holding Dom back still, his eyes that black hue fixed on me. Adaline is poised with the artifact in hand, gazing from it to the warlock back to me.
“And if you think that by giving me the artifact and getting back Scarlet, you will be able to summon me again and kill me, it is there that you would be wrong as well. I have a hundred warlocks under the orders to mark your son should you be responsible for my demise.”
Thinking of my child’s sweet face wrapped up in this mess of a world I got myself into stills my heart and nearly drops me to my knees, feeling diminished. Nothing in the world can break me faster than threatening my son’s life.
“On his twenty-first birthday,” the warlock continues mutinously in his horrifyingly deadened voice, “should I reach my demise at your hands, he will succumb to his fate for a lifetime of darkness.”
There’s no way out of this. The warlock has won. There isn’t a chance in hell I would give Gauge over to the darkness. My life’s purpose is to ensure that he lives a long, happy life in the light.
“To safeguard that this continues past his twenty-first birthday, I will leave both brothers, Sebastian and Dominic, marked. One will remain inactivated to assure you kill no more warlocks. Should you choose to partake in any warlock killing, I will activate that mark and bring him over to the darkness, too. The other one will be activated, but he will not become a grimspawn. He will keep his mind for the most part and live his life, but he will belong to me, doing my bidding when and how I say. One mark is to ensure you do not kill more warlocks; the other is to have a marked immortal to do my bidding, killing when I say to kill, damning his soul with every murder. It is up to you to choose which brother gets which mark.” The smile he gives me is pestiferous, his black teeth glistening in the candlelight. “I will give you twenty minutes to decide.”
Panic sets my soul on fire.
What do I do?
There is not a single route around what he’s asking for.
To get Scarlet back, I need to let him live. Handing over the artifact makes it impossible to break either mark on Dom, Bash, or anyone else with one. What’s more, going beyond the artifact, this warlock secured his safety and a hundred others by threatening to mark my son on his twenty-first birthday. Even further, I now have to choose which brother gets which mark, saving one soul while condemning the other.
This is a fathomless choice with profound consequences beyond anything I’ve comprehended.