Page 100 of Darkness and Deceit
Behind us, the hallway ripples with black.
It’s closing in.
“No time,” I say, grimly.
I try the door again, this time with every ounce of power I can muster. Violet flares and pulses down my arm. The handle still doesn’t budge.
Tony grits his teeth. “Let me,” he mutters, and lays his palm next to mine. His power hums intuitively with mine. He closes his eyes, jaw clenched, veins standing out on his neck.
I feel something shift inside the mechanism, like a bone popping back into place. The lock snaps, metal shrieking as the door springs open and we stumble through it, breath ragged, lungs burning.
It slams shut behind us—but the darkness doesn’t care about doors. It seeps through the cracks. Squeezes under the hinges. Pours in like it belongs here.
“Go,” Tony says, whirling on me. His voice is firm and fierce. “Run, Lilith.”
“No.” My hands spark with barely controlled power. “Not without you.”
The tide is too close now, curling along the ceiling, rolling like a storm cloud ready to drop.
Tony doesn’t argue. He just moves.
He raises both hands, and pale lavender light explodes from his palms—brighter than I’ve ever seen it. It lights up the stairwell like dawn. Then I see his rabbit. It’s small, soft, glowing at the edges like a flame that refuses to go out.
It darts in front of me, shielding me as the black lunges.
And then?—
The darkness lashes out and for a moment the world goes silent, like the air’s been vacuumed out from around us.
Tony’s rabbit is caught mid-leap with a black tendril wrapped around its tiny, glowing chest, squeezing until the light fractures and falters. The rabbit flickers, a strobe of lavender before it’s snuffed out like a candle pinched between fingers.
Tony drops, knees buckling, fists digging into his temples. “No!” His scream rips through the stairwell.
Rage doesn’t even begin to describe what I’m feeling. Whatever force is inside of me ignites—something raw and animal and ancient, a fierceness that belongs to neither Predator nor Prey but to me alone.
Violet light surges down my arms, erupting from my fingertips and with it my Shadows flare—deer and fox both—charging toward the mass of black.
For a split-second, the oily darkness hesitates, as if startled by the boldness of the attack. The shadows ripple like a startled pool, retreating momentarily.
But then it gathers itself again, the inky blackness morphing into countless tiny eyes that flicker open, each one reflecting a sinister curiosity in the eerie violet light. It dawns on me that this is not a single entity but a multitude—an amalgamation of every haunting fear that has ever lurked beyond the reach of the sun.
My deer and fox charge without hesitation. My deer lowers its head, antlers thrusting forward with precision, battering the darkness. My fox snarls, its sharp teeth bared and snapping, as they dive fearlessly into the heart of the writhing mass.
I feel the collision of magic in my bones.
My Shadows and the darkness crash with a sound like tearing silk. The deer staggers, legs mired in tar that rises up to drag it down. The fox is more nimble, darting circles around the black, biting at anything it can reach, leaving sizzling streaks of violet that the darkness recoils from, even if only for a heartbeat.
The fox tries to circle back to me—but it’s too late.
One of the dark tendrils snaps forward like a whip and pierces straight through its chest. It jerks once, then flickers out of existence in a pulse of violet light.
“No—!” My voice breaks and my chest feels like it’s being cracked open.
My deer cries out and stumbles as the black coils around its legs, dragging it down. Its antlers flash one last time, flaring with defiance, before the mass swallows it whole. Gone. Both of them, gone.
I double over, breath choking on a sob. The loss sears through me, raw and intimate and shattering. Shadows can’t die—not exactly. But they can be broken. Shattered. Ripped apart by something stronger.
And when that happens, it feels like losing a limb. Like being flayed from the inside out. They’re part of me, tethered to my magic. My essence.
