Page 5 of The Rising Dark
“So you’re a night owl then?”
“I guess so.Late nights have always been fine.It’s the early mornings that get to me.”There was nothing worse than an early shift after a string of late ones.It always took her several hours to feel even remotely human on those.
“You’ll fit right in at our house then,” Lavinia said, a smile tugging at the corners of her mouth.
“How come?”
“All of us are night owls too.”
“They’re not really big on sunshine,” Zachary added.His and Lavinia’s eyes met in the rear-view mirror, and they laughed.Michelle didn’t understand the joke.Then again, her brain was hardly firing on all cylinders at this point.
“What do you do?”Michelle asked Lavinia.She realised she didn’t know a single thing about her except her first name, and that she was apparently loaded enough to have a personal driver.
Lavinia’s facial expression was inscrutable.“I work in law enforcement.”
“So, like the police?”
Lavinia didn’t look like any police officer Michelle had ever met.And none of them conducted their business alone at night in the city’s back streets.
“A lot like that, actually.”
“Was that what you were doing tonight?”Sneaking around alleyways with a knife looking for demons certainly wasn’t the kind of job you’d find in any career prospectus.Part of Michelle still didn’t trust her own eyes, her own ears, couldn’t parse the explanation Lavinia had given her.It was as if she had decided to play along for now, but that at some point the curtain would be pulled back and it would all be one gigantic joke.Perhaps they’d all laugh about it someday.
Lavinia nodded.“Part of my job is keeping the public safe from…bad people.I was looking for one when I found a demon instead.”
“What kind of bad people?”Despite the toasty interior of the car, a cold shiver ran down Michelle’s spine.
“Serial killers, mostly,” Lavinia said without a trace of humour.
“So not only is there a demon appearing right in front of my home, there are also serial killers hanging out in my neighbourhood?”Michelle said.There was a note of hysteria in her voice.She swallowed, trying to suppress the panic.
“Many things exist in the shadows of the world, some of them good, some of them bad.A lot of us work every day to keep the bad away, as much as we can.”
A wave of nausea rose in Michelle’s stomach.This was all too much, and somehow she had gotten entangled in it all.She missed the ignorance of yesterday.
“Let’s talk about anything else,” she said.“I’ve got enough nightmare fuel to last me a lifetime.”
“Of course.”Lavinia leaned back into her seat.She was the epitome of ease, yet there was a hint of watchfulness to her even in this relaxed state.“Tell me about your job.What is it like to be a nurse?”
Within minutes, Lavinia had drawn Michelle into telling various stories of nursing school and the latest gossip among hospital staff.Lavinia was surprisingly easy to talk to—attentive, always ready with a follow-up question or an appreciative laugh.Michelle noticed she didn’t share much about herself, always turning the conversation back to Michelle, but she was an excellent listener.Despite everything, Michelle found herself longing to make her laugh and felt a stab of satisfaction whenever she succeeded.
Within half an hour, they left the motorway for an unlit country road, winding through the hills and valleys of the Peak District National Park.Soon the asphalt disappeared completely, and Zachary slowed down to accommodate the ruts in the dirt road.Trees loomed overhead, the light from the headlights swallowed up by a deep darkness.A tight turn, and the engine stilled.Zachary took the key from the ignition, the headlights extinguished, and opened the door.
“Come on,” Lavinia said.A tendril of anxiety rose within Michelle.There was nothing here, no sign of habitation whatsoever, no light.Her hands were clammy as she grabbed her bag from the floor and stepped outside into the cool night air.She closed the door of the car and the dome light snuffed out, leaving her in a suffocating darkness unlike anything she’d ever experienced.
Michelle had lived in London all her life, its diffuse blanket of light pollution always keeping true darkness at bay.This, this was the real night.This was the kind of night they used to tell stories about in the safety of the fire of the hearth, the kind of night that stole children from their cradles and made unsuspecting villagers lose their way.It was a cloudy night, so not even the beacon of the moon or the comfort of stars could provide any guidance.
“This way,” Lavinia’s voice sounded from a couple of paces away.Michelle couldn’t make out her shape in the textured shadows that surrounded her.
“I can’t see you, I—”
Lavinia’s and Zachary’s voices murmured, a click sounded, and Michelle’s world came back to life in the beam of a torch.It was a relief to be anchored by the pool of light, to not feel the weightlessness of not being able to see anything, to not know completely for sure if this was reality.
Lavinia took Michelle’s bag and guided her down a narrow path between the trees.Michelle was about to ask where they were going, to demand some sort of explanation, when they went around another bend and a house appeared.Lavinia led her up the stone steps, the brickwork stretching into the darkness outside of their narrow beam of the flashlight.The building, with its solid stone façade, was a welcome relief to Michelle, although no light leaked from the windows.If anything, the house seemed abandoned.Without a word, Zachary trod down a path leading into the darkness, his footsteps confident as he was swallowed by the dark.
Before Michelle could ask where he’d gone, Lavinia knocked on the door, three short taps on the varnished wood.The knocks echoed, and Michelle half expected no one to show up.
With a soft click, however, the door opened, and an abundance of light and sound burst out into the night.A tall, muscular woman in sweatpants and a sports bra stood framed in the doorway.Curly black hair framed her face, forming a dark halo around her head.Intricate tattoos whirled around her biceps and one side of her stomach.
