Chapter 35 Place Is Dark
Place Is Dark
Her head bounced against Erik so hard she almost saw stars. At least he wasn’t carrying her over his shoulder like a caveman, but the jolting, bouncing ride with snow spattering a hard invisible shield a few inches in front of them was bad enough.
It was almost like being on horseback, an elastic bunching and leaping, but the world was doing funny things under his feet, sliding away like oil on a hot griddle and turning into a patchwork of bright snow and twisted, shadowed landscape that made her abused stomach consider emptying itself through whatever upward route was handy.
It was better when she closed her eyes and pushed her face against him; Erik was warm, comforting, and safe.
Just when he’d become so she had no idea, unless it was the exact moment the window shivered into pieces and the blackened, frostbitten, terribly wrong creature with its nest of writhing things near the far-too-large mouth had leered at her.
Or maybe it was when Erik moved his chin slightly, rubbing against her hair, his stubble scratching. He didn’t have to offer any comfort, but he did and Liv shut her eyes, wishing—not for the first time—that she’d never gone on that stupid date with Neal Whatever-His-Last-Name-Was.
It bothered her that she couldn’t remember. Why it did when there was so much else to be worried about, she had no idea.
“Almost there,” Erik muttered, and relief made her a limp noodle. He wouldn’t say so unless things were going to be all right—and at the moment, she couldn’t care less if it was Stockholm syndrome or not, all she cared about was the monsters going away. “Almost… huh.”
They landed with a wrenching jolt; Liv’s cheek mashed so hard against muscle and what felt like an armor plate under his jacket she barely felt the impact.
She was clinging to him like a piece of arm candy holding onto an action movie hero, she realized, and couldn’t make herself loosen up even a little bit.
The sudden stillness was a blessing. Her heart thundered in her ears; her breath came in short, jagged little chunks suspiciously like moans.
The shaking was back, filtering through her bones, and the idea that she could simply refuse to lift her head, that she could stay there and breathe in the smell of a man used to hard workouts and not a lot of cleaning up, a blessed, healthy, human tang under a screen of fresh air, snow, and the faintest hint of nauseating monster blood, was all but overwhelming.
It sounded like a great plan.
He went utterly still, his arms steel bars—one under her knees, the other cradling her torso. “Son of a bitch,” he muttered, and the venom in his tone made her feel a little faint.
Or maybe a whole lot faint.
Another silence. Which probably felt a lot longer than it actually was, mostly because Liv was quite content to just huddle in his arms. There was something to be said for a guy who could pick up a regular girl and carry her without huffing and puffing.
Maybe it was all the monster hunting that did it. Helluva workout, and all that.
Liv, you’re not doing very well.
She knew. Oh, God, she knew.
“Liv.” His chin touched her hair again, stubble scratching snow-damp curls. “Liv, beautiful, we’ve got a small problem.”
I don’t like the sound of that. She gulped at cold air, shook her head slightly. It was cowardice, she was what Mom would have called a piker; she had, in Gramps’s pungent parlance, a yaller strip down ’er back.
Liv didn’t care one single bit as long as she could stay right where she was, her face pressed against Erik’s torn coat and her body trembling like a toy trapped in the mouth of a small, vicious animal that killed its prey by shaking.
“Oh, hey.” His tone softened. “It’s all right, beautiful. I’m not about to let anything happen to you, you can count on that. Just… the situation’s gotten a little complex.”
What, like it was simple before? But she couldn’t spend forever hiding.
Well, she could try. She’d been hiding all her damn life, one way or another—from the dreams, from the creeping dread, from the déjà vu, from her mother’s murder, from everything else.
She couldn’t very well continue. That bus, as Mika might drawl, had done passed the stop.
So Liv dragged in the deepest, shakiest breath she was capable of and lifted her head an inch. Two inches. “What?” Her voice was a harsh croak. “What now?” she amended.
“Well, we’re here.” He didn’t move; his arms were still steel bars, the frigid wind beginning to raise its voice and get really serious. “But nobody’s home.”
That doesn’t sound good. “You can put me down now,” she lied.
He did, slowly, with exquisite care. She slid down his body, found out her legs would hold her up—barely, and only under protest, but good enough—and tipped her chin back, staring at him.
A stripe of drying blood painted one of his stubbled cheeks, and his eyes were hot coals—charcoal getting ready for grilling, before a protective coat of ash hid deep black burning.
No trace of monster goo remained, but she could get a faint whiff of that awful smell if she tried.
Much closer, and much nicer, was the heat-haze hanging on him, snow melting before it could reach his skin but touching his hair with frozen little caresses.
He was looking over her head. A muscle in his cheek flickered, and his jaw was set. Liv gathered every bit of her nonexistent courage and turned very carefully, very slowly, afraid her knees would fold if she moved the wrong way.
“Oh.” It was Saffron Hill instead of Cameron; it was impossible that they’d come so far from downtown Rochester in such a short while, especially on foot.
Before them, a paved driveway crumbling at the edges was already drifting with wet-packed, driving snow; at its end a stone bulk loomed, an honest-to-God round tower at its eastern edge.
It looked a little like the other stone “temple,” but this one was obviously bigger and the curtaining wall at the end of a long driveway was just visible, along with a pair of spike-topped wrought-iron gates.
She recognized those gates; Gramma Poe had often driven past them. Liv had always wondered where that long, barely glimpsed ribbon of paving went, but trees and the hill itself had screened the house from view. “It was here the whole time,” she said, wonderingly.
Erik shifted slightly, as if embarrassed. “Yeah, the walls have stuff on them to keep curious people out. But the trouble is, the place is dark, Liv.”
He was right. No smoke rose from the chimneys, and no golden electric light glowed through shuttered windows.
“So what does that mean?” The words shook a little; Liv was past caring. “And it’s daytime,” she realized, blankly. “I thought you said the monsters didn’t come out in daytime.”
“They don’t like to. Some of them can.” Erik shook his head. If he was tired from fighting off those things, a car accident, and carting her around, it didn’t show. “I don’t understand. Control said this place was active.”
“Control?” She had a better question, though, and hurried to add it. “Wait. Active?”
“Had a lirai. More than one. There’s bound to be access to the Flame. It’ll be blocked off, but I can…” He trailed off and finally looked down at her, his eyebrows drawing together. “Liv, look. Do you trust me?”
How the hell am I supposed to answer that? “I guess?” she hazarded. “Provisionally.”
He opened his mouth, but Liv never found out what he was about to say. A thin, cruel cry sounded behind him, piercing the wind’s screech like a sharp bone needle, and the snow thickened. It was so dark, it didn’t seem like daytime at all. Even the snow was greyish instead of white.
The scream sawed through her head, and now she understood why people in earlier centuries bolted their doors when dusk arrived. Living with electricity, you forgot just how terrifying it was to hear something in the darkness baying for your blood.
Something you couldn’t even see.
“Come on.” Erik offered his hand, palm up, a curiously old-fashioned movement. “We have one chance, Liv. I’m sorry about it, I’ll fight as long as I can, but I’m going to need your help.”
Oh, hell no. “What do I have to do?” she whispered.
“I think I can unblock access to the Flame, since this place was once active.” He didn’t move, snow gathering in his hair despite the invisible shimmer keeping it off his skin and shoulders. “We don’t have a lot of time. They’re on our trail.”
Oh, the Flame. That thing none of you would ever tell me about. Like sealing. “Fine.” She didn’t move. “Let’s go, then.”
Still, he stood motionless, his hand hanging in midair, until she reluctantly laid her fingers in his palm. His skin was so warm, and there was a traitorous little lurch in the pit of her stomach.
“I will fight as long as I can,” he repeated, staring down at her like it was a promise she should understand. He clasped her hand in both of his, oddly gentle for a man who could kill monsters. “They won’t get you while I’m alive.”
It was ridiculous, how much she believed him. How could she not? And yet, the unspoken codicil—so long as I’m alive, for however long that is—hung between them, heavy as the unnatural gloom.
He didn’t wait, just dropped her hand, scooped her into his arms again, and raced uphill for the massive, four-story stone block.