The Better Part of Darkness

paused, and I heard a small sigh. “I won’t lie to you, Charlie, it’s been hell trying to calm the fear and panic once it reached the city. The ITF has managed to keep your name out of the media so far, but you should know … some people in the department blame you. Others think you’re a hero.”

Joy. “And you?”

“I think you’re out of your mind, as usual.”

I laughed even though my hands clenched and unclenched the armrests. “Thanks.” And then he turned the corner.

My heart hammered quick and hard against my rib cage.

I could see it through the main lobby’s wall of glass. My mouth went dry, too dry even to swallow. The front doors slid open, and we glided past a florist, through another set of glass doors, and then we were out.

Outside. In the dark. At 11A.M.

The blue sky and sunlight had been replaced by an undulating, churning mass of gray. It was not the complete darkness of night, more like the darkness of a total eclipse or a very nasty thunderstorm with the darkest damn thunderclouds you ever saw. Occasionally a bright flash, similar to heat lightning, would illuminate the darkness, but it was the only light from above. It moved and seethed like a living entity, an entity built on my blood. My gut twisted.

“Excuse me,” a voice interrupted my horror. I glanced over my shoulder as the florist we’d passed approached. “The lady at the front pointed you out,” he said to both of us and then switched his gaze to me. “You’re Charlie Madigan, right?”

“Yeah?”

“These are for you.”

He stuck them out, but Hank snagged the flowers with an unamused glare that made the guy dip his head and then hurry to his van.

Once he was driving away, Hank handed me the flowers. They were lilies. Bloodred. I secured the vase between my thighs and picked out the note card, feeling a sudden pang of apprehension.

Charlie,

I like what you’ve done with the place.

My vision distorted. Hank’s voice drifted away as he asked me who the flowers were from, but I couldn’t answer because I couldn’t breathe.

Panic blasted through me like an arctic wind, then doubled back to blanket me. It was the panic of the trapped, of that precise moment when you realize that you can’t move, can’t breathe, can’t do anything physical at all. You can only think and feel the drumming of your heart and the intense surge of adrenaline as it races through your system.

Then, just as suddenly as the feeling came, it was gone.

The world blinked back into focus—sharp, gray, slithering focus that lay like a living shroud over the city. A dark city. Electric goose bumps snaked down my arms and thighs. A Charbydon paradise. Hell on Earth.

There’s more than one monster in this city. The last words Otorius had spoken to me echoed through my mind.

I knew who had engineered me and made me call the darkness, and that monster was dead. But why the hell did I get the feeling this was only the beginning, like I’d just been played big time, like I’d fallen into something way bigger and far more complex than darkness and ash?

As I sat there in the wheelchair, hospital traffic going by, people walking in and out, the earthy scent of lilies invading the air, I knew one thing. Grigori Tennin might like what I’ve done with the place, but I had created the darkness. It was my blood that had called it, and it was my blood that would fix things. I was the lone wolf, the only one of my kind in existence, and I had the power inside me to change everything.

Grigori Tennin was about to learn a valuable lesson: there was one thing more dangerous than making a deal with the devil, and that thing was me.