Chapter 103
They were dead.
All of them.
I floated in the darkness, spreading over the thick shroud. I was inside the horror, and the horror was inside me. It invaded my being.
I floated through the heavy thickness of it and felt its hungry malevolence and its writhing, loathing wretchedness of being. It hated that it existed. It hated the taste of itself. It hated its darkness, and it hated all light, because light was what showed the darkness all of its hideousness.
It had lived in its prison for so long that it only knew the deep, dark, horrific sound of its own hatred. It had been devouring itself for centuries, succored on its cannibalistic diet of deceit.
In the prison, there had been no light. There was only light if it crept through the tiny, porous cracks in the walls. When it found light, it attacked. There was nothing more hateful than light.
What was light?
Light was the thing that burned its eyes and showed it the perverse twist of its own being; the hated ooze of its horror; the vileness of its nature.
It hated light more than it hated anything in all creation.
It wanted to destroy it. It wanted to make the whole world dark. It wanted to taste pain and create horror and let the world sink into the wretchedness of despair.
The darkness wanted to spread so far and so wide it would swallow every flicker, every pulse of light in the entire universe.
I knew the darkness.
I recognized it.
It had devoured me when I was a child, and it had fed me its fear and its terror ever since.
There’d always been darkness in me. We come into this world and are corrupted with its seeds.
They may stay dormant, roots stretching deep, seeking the depths of hell, so they can spring up full-grown and terrifying.
Or they might crop up as weeds, only to be mowed down again and again.
Or they could grow and be scorched by our own blazing summer sun.
Because we all have light too.
It’s a battle.
People forget.
They only think about the great wars of history or the heroic mythical battles between good and evil. They don’t think this same battle is taking place every day, every second of every person’s life. The battle started at the beginning of time, and it’s been raging ever since.
One of the greatest feats the horrors, the leggerocks, and even the conjurers accomplished was convincing humans evil doesn’t exist. That right and wrong are relative. That truth is subjective. That there is no evil, only varying shades of gray.
It is very easy to win a war when you’ve convinced your enemy you aren’t real and that cavorting with you is all in good fun. They will dance with you all the way to the grave, and only when it’s too late will they see that they were dancing in the dark, with evil masked as a harmless companion.
I’ve never had that illusion.
Growing up in Hell Gate meant I saw the face of evil every day. But with the knowledge that absolute evil existed came the conviction that absolute good existed as well.
And then, just as quickly, I realized that while darkness might swallow an entire world, it only took a tiny candle to set the entire thing alight.
The darker the night became, the brighter a candle would glow.
So I held onto my light and hoped.
I had faith in good.
I held onto love.
I held onto Finn. To Luvic. To Justice and Griff. To myself.
But now, they were floating beneath me, smothered in darkness.
They were all dead.
All of them.
Celia too. Ragnor. The Smiths. Last and Primus. Every one of them was gone. The horror had consumed us all, and I couldn’t do anything to stop it.
In the past, when I was a nine, I’d always flown into a new body. Now, I wasn’t flying anywhere. I was smothered by the darkness.
Then another being stepped close and looked down at me.
“Mari,” it said.
I peered up, trying to see through the darkness.
I recognized his voice.
It was Jagger, but it was also the horror. His rocklike growl was deeper, and the sound of it filled me with an atavistic dread.
I had no body, but I still felt my stomach clenching and my limbs trembling.
I couldn’t see, but I knew he was smiling. I whimpered, terrified. I wanted to run. To hide. But there was nowhere to go. The darkness was everywhere. It pressed on me. It was inside me. It was inescapable, and I knew I would be locked with the horror of it for eternity.
“No,” I whispered.
Jagger and the horror laughed. “Give yourself to me.”
I shook my head. “No.”
“You already have. You’ve already done it. Give yourself to me.”
I gasped. Pain scorched me, and the torture of Jagger’s blood rolled through me.
Anguish gripped my chest. There was a small pulse of light there. A tiny, flickering, weeping flame. It hid behind my lock. The fragile flame wavered and struggled beneath the smothering darkness.
The horror rattled at the locked walls and then rushed them, roaring as it beat against my heart.
“You think this light will save you,” Jagger said, his deep voice a horrible, tormenting thing.
“It won’t. You can’t be saved. You are going to die in darkness and remain in darkness forever.
The things you have done are unforgiveable.
You’ve lied. You’ve killed. Worse—who is the lowest level of hell reserved for?
People who betray the ones who love them.
You’re a betrayer. You’ve betrayed. Do you think your little light will protect you?
No. It will shove you down. It will reject you.
It will send you to your grave. The light doesn’t want you.
Good will not have you. Don’t you see? Come here, Mari.
Come here. Give me that light. I want it. I know what to do. Give it to me.”
While Jagger spoke, the horror attacked my heart.
It raked its claws across my being. It grappled with my locked heart and sent a barrage of hate over me.
It soaked me with fear and pulled free all the horrible things I’d ever done, all the hateful thoughts I’d ever had.
It steeped me in terror, and shame, and despair.
And as Jagger spoke, I began to believe him. And then the anguish deepened and the beginning ended, and I did believe him.
What was I?
I wasn’t good.
I was a monster.
Finn had claimed I was free, yet I was still betraying and hurting everyone I loved.
How could I be free and still be bound by Jagger’s chains?
The lock on my heart shook. The horror had nearly wrenched it open. The good locked in my heart flickered, guttering under the assault.
If it went out—
If I was doomed—
If this was the end—
I couldn’t cry. I had no body. But I trembled, and I felt the spirit of a tear slipping down my cheek.
Then I heard a tiny, gentle whisper. “Mari.”
It was so faint it may not have been real.
But I heard it again.
“Mari.”
And then, even softer, “I’m here.”
And though it wasn’t spoken, I felt it.
I love you.
I trembled beneath the weight of it.
It was almost impossible to believe that anyone or anything could love me when I’d become a horror myself.
Another tear slipped free.
The horror, sensing it, raged against the walls of my heart.
I knew without a doubt, if it breached the walls and grabbed my light, I’d be extinguished, and I would be trapped in darkness forever.
I felt Jagger lunge across the darkness. “Give it to me!”
I wasn’t strong enough to hold out. I wasn’t strong enough to hold free against both the horror and Jagger’s hold.
I had too much darkness within myself. I couldn’t fight them and win. I knew this.
Darkness can’t fight darkness and hope to win.
So I did the only thing I could.
I did the only thing left to me.
I stopped struggling.
I stopped fighting.
I gave up.
I flung open the walls of my heart. I unlocked the door.
I dove toward the tiny, flickering, guttering light.