DAUGHTER OF DARKNESS

3

My stomach turned as I remember the blood, the gore, the darkness. A dark trail was left behind me wherever I went.

“How can you rest when you know we’ll be attacked soon?” I asked, venom lacing my words.

I half expected Cecilia to lash out at me, but she was too sweet for that, too calm. I could count on my fingers how many times she had lost her composure, and those had been during the most horrible moments of our lives.

Instead, Cecilia let out a long breath and crossed the room to stand in front of me. She rested her hands on my shoulders and looked at me. “Please, have a little faith.” Faith. That was such an odd concept coming from her. How could she believe in faith? Her warm brown eyes twinkled. “We’ve been on the road for a long time. We haven’t slept in almost forty-eight hours. We need to sleep.”

Again. She forgot to say again. When we first ran away, we had wrecked the second car we stole. Now, we knew two things: One, we had to take breaks, even if it was for power naps of one or two hours under a shady tree, and two, we couldn’t keep a stolen car more than half a day.

Since we didn’t have any documents, and barely any cash, we couldn’t buy a car. So we stole them—borrowed them, as Cecilia liked to say. We grabbed cars, used them for a few hours, then left them where they would be found by the police and returned to their owners.

“Fine,” I snapped, though we both knew I wouldn’t relax, not until exhaustion won and I passed out in the bed.

“Good.” She patted my cheek, and for some reason, the gesture reminded me of a mother. Sometimes, I thought of her as a mother. She wasn’t just my friend. Cecilia was, in some ways, the mother I didn’t remember. “I’m going to take a quick shower.”

I only grumbled as she walked away and grabbed the duffel bag with the only things we owned: a few changes of clothes and toiletries.

Once more, I thought about the kind of life we were living, about the kind of life we would have in the future. Would we ever escape him? I hoped we would, but I didn’t have faith that we would.

I glanced back. Cecilia stood in front of the mirror in the bathroom, the door half opened, and from where I was, I could see as she took off her shirt. I flinched upon seeing the scars covering her back and shoulders. Several long marks etched forever in her skin. She had been abducted years before I had, but I had watched him inflict most of those scars. I had cried as she bled in her bed later, her ragged breath making me fear she would die.

But despite her kind heart and her calm demeanor, Cecilia was a fighter. If it hadn’t been for her meticulous planning and waiting, we would have never escaped. At least, not alive.

Even if my freedom was another kind of prison, I owed it all to her.

I lowered my gaze.

And that was when I felt it.

The tendrils of darkness reaching out like claws, grasping the earth, and advancing and desecrating everything in their path.

I froze. Closing my eyes, I opened my senses and felt for the darkness—thick and slow. It wasn’t the darkness from demons, unfortunately.

It was his darkness.

Slater hadn’t come personally. I was sure of it, but the darkness now surrounding the motel had been sent by him along with his men.

It spurred me into action. “Cecilia!” I cried as I picked up my jacket, my wallet, and my phone from the bed.

Holding her shirt over her chest, Cecilia stuck her head out the bathroom door, her long brown hair falling like a curtain around her shoulders. “What?”

“They're here.”

Her face paled. “Shit.” She put her shirt back on, zipped up her pants, and shoved her feet in her boots. “How many minutes do we have?”

The darkness was closing in faster now. “Two, three at the most.”

Her hands trembled as she tied her hair in a ponytail. “No time to run.”

I wasn’t much better than Cecilia, but I pretended better. Somehow, I was able to conceal the tremors running through my body.

I grabbed the duffel bag and slung it over my shoulders. “We can run, after we stun a few of them.”

“We.” She snorted. “As if I can do much against them.”

I knew she hated when we confronted Slater’s men or demons, because she couldn’t do more than a few self-defense moves she had learned a long time ago.

I pushed those thoughts away and focused. “Ready?”

Eyes shining with determination, Cecilia nodded. “Ready.”

The power hummed in my veins, as if awoken by the darkness encircling us. I extended my hands to my sides and pushed my power to the lights of the motel room. The lights flickered and extinguished. I held on to the darkness, creating a shroud over us. Cecilia and I pressed our backs to the wall right beside the door and waited.

The door burst open and a handful of men—all dressed in black, with a silver pendant with a coiled snake hanging from their necks—exploded into the room. I sent the darkness, thick and palpable, to them. Like fog, the black surrounded them, keeping them lost in a cloud of confusion.

Cecilia and I ran.

Two men waited outside the room. One lunged at Cecilia. She grabbed his wrist, twisted, and bent it outward. The man yelped and leaned forward to take the pressure off his wrist. Cecilia slammed her knee into his face and let go. The man dropped to the ground.

The other man came at me but didn’t touch me. He knew what I was capable of.

As if that would stop me.

I commanded the darkness from the corner of the wall, from the space under the stairs, from the night sky to surround him. The darkness spun until it created a tornado that twisted around the man.

“Run!” I cried, releasing my hold on my power.

The tornado spun the man face-first into the wall, and he dropped to the ground, unconscious.

Cecilia and I descended the outer staircase three steps at a time.

We paused in the parking lot. We had ditched our previous car a few blocks away, and had plans of securing another one as soon as we were ready to leave.

As usual, our stop didn’t go according to plan and now we were car-less.

Unless …