Kissed by Darkness (26 page)

Well, shit.

***

“Are you crazy? Never mind. I already know the answer to that. Seriously, me? A key? You’ve got to be kidding.” I gave Jack a sideways look. He just shrugged. He didn’t know what Darroch was going on about either. We both knew the amulet was called the Key, but Darroch wasn’t talking about the amulet.

Darroch gave me a toothy smile. “Not
a
key, my dear.
The
Key. I need the blood of a descendent of Atlantis as part of the ritual.

“In order to ensure that only a member of the Royal Bloodline could access the amulet, the last High Priest built in a safe clause,” he continued. “If anyone of Atlantean blood who was not either of the Bloodline or of the Warrior Priest Line tried to access the amulet, they’d need the blood sacrifice of another descendent in order to do it.”

Of course, it made perfect sense. The blood was the key, it had to be.

“How did
you
know about the amulet?” I asked. It wasn’t like they taught Ancient Atlantean history in school.

He gave me a pleased smile as though I’d done something really smart. “Why, the knowledge has been passed down through my family for generations, of course. From father to son since the beginning.”

It hit me. “You are a descendent of Atlantis, too. Except your bloodline was Common which was why you needed someone from the right Bloodline.”

Anger slid through his eyes before he caught himself and gave me a smile. “Very good. Unfortunately, the amulet was designed to wake latent genetic knowledge in
all
descendents of Atlantis with whom it came into contact, so the likelihood of a descendent of Atlantis being captured and used was low. Even if they did get captured, it was an even playing field. It was a most annoying quandary.”

He didn’t look annoyed. He looked smug, flushed with victory at outsmarting a long dead priest. Unfortunately for Jack and me, the Atlanteans hadn’t planned on guns. Goons, maybe, but definitely not guns. Guns leveled all playing fields.

What Darroch didn’t know was we had our own leveler. Two, actually if they managed to get their asses here before Darroch chopped me into little pieces or whatever it was the ritual required. Apparently the peace-loving Atlanteans had a barbaric side.

Darroch waved to his goons and they hustled across the floor toward me. I guess I was going to find out sooner rather than later. They stripped me of my weapons then dragged me back to Darroch. The only ones they missed were the knives in my wrist sheaths. Not too bright.

“Stop!” Jack bellowed, playing hero again. “You need Atlantean blood, fine. But take me instead. I will be your blood sacrifice.” In that moment I could see in him the Templar Knight he’d once been so long ago. It kind of choked me up, actually.

Sounded like a good plan to me. Except for the whole part where Jack would probably die. Jack could survive pretty much everything from what he’d told me earlier, but I wasn’t sure massive blood loss coupled with the activation of the amulet was one of them. And I really didn’t like the thought of Jack dying. But I shouldn’t have worried because rather than taking him seriously, Darroch roared with laughter.

“Oh, you stupid, pathetic man. How weak you’ve become since I saw you last. No longer the proud warrior of legend.” He leaned forward right into Jack’s face. I wondered how Jack managed not to head butt the man. I would have found it an irresistible temptation.

Then I felt something cold and hard pressing against my temple. Oh, yeah, goon with gun threatening to kill me. That would put a damper on things. Jack might be willing to risk himself, he was immortal, after all, but I knew without a shadow of a doubt he wouldn’t risk them hurting me.

Darroch tilted Jack’s head up as Clive yanked my arms back and tied them behind me. “Yes it’s true, isn’t it, Jackson? You’re in love with her.”

Say what?

Darroch shook his head in mock pity. “I almost feel sorry for you. Almost.” He let go of Jack and surrounded by his goons, headed toward the hall with me in tow.

“Darroch!” Jack roared, yanking against the rope, “Don’t you dare harm her. Take me!”

Darroch turned around. “Don’t you understand, Jack? I don’t want you. Your blood isn’t strong enough, either. Otherwise I would have killed you years ago. Instead you led me to exactly what I needed. You led me to her.” He stroked my face and it took all I had not to throw up on his shoes. “Blood calls to blood, after all.”

“What does that mean? Darroch! What does that mean?” But Darroch didn’t answer him. Instead, he swept out of the room with his entourage and me behind him.

***

We were nearly to the stairs when the shadows shifted and a woman dressed all in black with midnight hair in a long plait behind her stood in front of us, a silver dagger in one hand. Her smirk was nothing if not sardonic. “Hey Morgan. Got yourself an interesting situation, I see.”

I grinned back. “Hey. Kabita. How’s it shakin’?”

Darroch snarled. “What the hell is this? Who are you and what are you doing in my house?” He waved his goons forward.

One of them raised his gun and fired. I was sure Kabita was a goner, but then the bullet stopped midair. We all stared at it in confusion as it dropped to the floor with a little thunk.

What followed was a barrage of bullets, the sound nearly deafening me. Not a one found its mark. Instead they all slammed up against some sort of invisible shield before falling harmlessly to the ground. I’d had no idea Kabita had such power. It was seriously cool.

Finally the shooting stopped. Either the bad guys were out of bullets, or they’d finally realized bullets weren’t going to work.

Kabita may not have been very tall, but her anger made her formidable. “Do you know what I hate, Darroch?” She twirled the dagger between long supple fingers. “I hate liars. I hate people who try to use me. And I
really
hate people who try to hurt my friends. I’m your worst nightmare, Brent Darroch. You do
not
mess with me or my friends and get away with it.”

Before the goon squad could grab her she’d whipped out a long knife and slashed one across the face while nearly taking a hand off the other one with her dagger. I wanted to jump up and down and clap my hands like a little kid, but my hands were still tied.

Instead, I kicked out behind me catching Darroch right in the family jewels.

He went down howling. I just laughed. Brent Darroch and his minions had one or two things to answer for.

Kabita paused long enough to slash the bindings from my wrists so I could use the knives in my wrist sheaths. With a quick backward thrust, I stabbed the guy coming up on me from behind so fast he was on the floor holding his stomach before he could even think about firing his gun, if he had any bullets left. I looked around and discovered Inigo had popped out of nowhere and started thrashing goon ass. Awesome.

That’s when I realized Darroch had used the distraction to slip away from the fighting and head up the stairs. Shit, he was going after the amulet. If he got away with it we were screwed.

“Morgan!” It was Jack, shouting from the other room. A quick peek told me he’d gotten free and had Clive in a headlock. “Don’t let him get his hands on it!”

I was way ahead of him. I slashed at a couple goons as I fought my way to the stairs. I made it up a few steps before one of them grabbed my ankle and tried to haul me back down, so I kicked him in the face. I felt something crunch under my shoe and blood spurted up my jeans leg as he howled in pain. Ew, gross. I probably had blood all over my shoe now, too.

I scrambled up the stairs, ignoring the fighting behind me. Kabita, Inigo and Jack seemed to have things well in hand. Stopping Darroch was paramount. I couldn’t let him get away with the amulet.

I popped my head into the first bedroom. Nothing. Master bedroom. Not a thing. In the third bedroom the closet door was open and light spilled out onto the wine colored carpet that matched his ground floor office. He kept the amulet in a closet?

I crept in quietly and peered around the closet door. Doh! False wall, of course. The amulet wasn’t
in
the closet, it was in a tiny safe room
behind
the closet and Darroch was inches away from it.

Without so much as a thought, I gathered the darkness in the room all around me. I gathered the darkness of the house and of the night outside and pulled it into me. Everything took on edges of purple and silver like looking through some weirdo night vision goggles. My breathing slowed, my heart calmed, everything grew still. And the Darkness roared …

Chapter Twenty-One

I don’t know how I did it, but one minute I was at the closet door too far away to stop Darroch from grabbing the amulet. The next I was across the room with my hands at his throat, his feet dangling a good foot off the floor as I lifted him toward the ceiling. Then he was clear across the room, smashing into the wall and then sliding down into a motionless heap. It had been so easy I wasn’t even breathing heavily.

“Holy hell, Morgan!” It was Jack. My weird night vision picked him out in rich blues and sparkling silvers. His eyes glittered in the darkness with an eerie greenish hue, more like a cat’s eyes than human. I wasn’t sure if that was a Sunwalker thing or a side effect of my vision.

The Darkness didn’t care. The Darkness wanted blood. I started for Darroch.

Jack reached out and grabbed my hand and I blinked. It was like waking up from a dream. I could feel the Darkness ebbing away, slowly, like a tidal wave while reality crept in to take its place, returning my vision to normal.

“Um, I think we better take Darroch downstairs and see if Kabita needs any help.” It was lame even to my ears, but it was all I could think of. I was starting to scare myself with this whole crazy Kissing the Darkness thing. I couldn’t imagine what Jack was thinking. Eddie was right. I needed to get this thing under control or figure out a way to stop using it. Each time I used it, it was increasingly reluctant to leave.

Darroch was out cold, so Jack grabbed his shoulders, I grabbed his feet and we hauled him downstairs where Kabita and Inigo had pretty much cut a swath of destruction through the goon squad. There was blood everywhere and the rich copper tang made my stomach turn over.

“Oh, good, you got him.” Kabita was an oasis of calm in the middle of the wreckage. She didn’t sound any more ruffled than if she’d just had afternoon tea with her grandmother. If she’d have had afternoon tea with
my
grandmother, she wouldn’t have been anything close to calm.

“Uh, yeah. How are we going to explain this one to the cops? These aren’t vampires or demon spawn or anything. These are humans.” I didn’t have a whole lot of experience fighting humans, strangely enough, but I knew the cops wouldn’t be terribly thrilled with us. Somehow I didn’t think they’d be impressed if we told them we were trying to save the world. Getting locked up for murder was a distinct possibility. The government didn’t give us
that
much leeway.

Kabita shrugged. “That’s what our government liaison is for. He’s not happy either, let me tell you.” She seemed ridiculously gleeful over that fact. I guess I was wrong. The government
did
give us that much leeway, which was disturbing.

She gave me a look. “The amulet?”

I pointed. “Upstairs, safe and sound.”

“Better make it disappear or it may become a little more safe and sound.” She pulled out a travel pack of wet wipes and started cleaning the blood off her hands. That was Kabita for you, always prepared.

She had a point, too. The government liked to make artifacts disappear permanently, especially if those artifacts were either of magical origin, or had the potential for weaponization.

“Sure thing. You take care of Darroch and we’ll meet you back at the office.” I grabbed Jack’s hand and hauled him up the stairs before he could argue, leaving her to it. I knew he wanted to deal with Darroch himself, but some things really were better left to the government. Jack would probably kill Darroch, but our little secret government agency? Oh, they’d make him wish he’d never been born.

The amulet lay nestled in a bed of black velvet. The walls, carpet, and even the ceiling were solid black, the amulet the only thing of color in the room. A single light shone overhead, bathing it in a golden glow.

“It’s beautiful,” I breathed. So this was what we’d fought for. Bled for. Nearly died for. The amulet was a wide, slightly convex gold disc about four or five inches across with strange symbols carved around a round, blue stone set in the center. The stone glowed softly in the low light, the color of deepest sapphire.

Jack picked it up and gazed at the amulet in his hands, turning it over as though to make sure Darroch hadn’t damaged it. “Yes. This is the Key to Atlantis. It carries all the knowledge and power the people of Atlantis gained over thousands of years of existence. So much power in so small a thing.” He cradled it to his chest, sorrow welling in his ocean eyes. “And it is useless.”

“Useless? Excuse me? We just went through hell to get that thing back and it’s useless? What about that whole blood sacrifice bullshit?” Seriously, I was going to kill the man. Strangle him with my bare hands.

He shrugged. “Unless I am willing to take the same measures Darroch was and murder someone in cold blood, I can only access fragments of the knowledge. Just enough to keep myself alive and it safe until the rightful owner comes to claim it. Even with blood sacrifice only a portion of it could be accessed. The rest would be lost forever. That was the other safeguard.”

“Well, obviously the rightful owner was not Brent Darroch.”

“Definitely not. He was not of the Bloodline, or he wouldn’t have needed to kill you.” He gave me a look. “Well, he might have still wanted to kill you, but for entirely different reasons.”

I punched him in the shoulder. He just smirked.

“So what now? Are we going to find someone from the Bloodline?” I asked. “Do we just keep protecting this thing until someone pops out of the woodwork? Because seriously, these dreams are going to drive me nuts if they don’t stop.”