River’s eyes shrank to dark spots but his visage still wavered.
I grabbed him by the arm, then yanked him back into the shadows. “I don’t need these humans to feast, you know. I could siphon the dreams right out of you. I could slow down all those children with a Veil and take my time bleeding you dry—”
“You wouldn’t do that, I’m your blood brother, sure enough—”
“Wouldn’t I? You almost cost me everything yesterday, brother.” I held him with a strong hand, pressed him against a wall, then watched him for a long, dreadful moment. Finally, I gave River one last warning, “Hold your shape steady and do it quick or I’ll drag you off someplace private and feast on your dreams.”
“That’s sacrilege,” he answered, a whining tone in his voice.
“You think I care about Darkling law now that I’ve had a taste of freedom? Do you? Either hold your skin straight or go off into the shadows and stay there until the moon sets—”
My brother closed his eyes, then gave his skin a fierce shake. For a second he was no more than a blur of color. I glanced over my shoulder at the humans, a mere wingspan away. Fortunately, they were distracted, chattering and laughing amongst themselves. None of them even looked in our direction.
“I’ve got it, I do,” River said.
I checked him over, from head to toe. He was an innocent six-year-old boy again, no wavering or distortion or blasts of bright light.
“See that you keep it, then,” I said as I gave him one last toss against the wall, knocking the wind out of him.
Meanwhile, the company of adolescents rumbled past, all sparks and glitter and squeals of laughter. I turned with a grin and fell into step behind the last child, listening now to their confident boasts of winning a prize, all the while focusing on the dark-haired beauty that led them like the Pied Piper away from the village.
Hunter. That was his name. I could smell fire and smoke wafting from his clothes. Danger thudded through the crowd.
And fortunately, I was the only one who could hear it.
Chapter 61
Dark Magic
Joe:
I peeked out a side window, watched another group of trick-or-treaters drift down the street like wanton revelers, shouting, laughing, occasionally tossing a rock at a parked car, lacing windshields with spiderweb cracks. They were heading toward the outskirts of town, to the old junkyard for their traditional Halloween bonfire. But there was something different about this year. I could feel it charging through the air, electric and sharp.
I almost thought about stepping outside and calling out a warning.
But three things stopped me. One, they wouldn’t care what I said, nobody listened to me in this town; Two, I didn’t want to take a chance on accidentally inviting a Darkling inside; and Three, a woman, a boy and a dog had just scrambled up my front steps.
They hadn’t knocked on the door yet. But they would. Soon.
Meanwhile, the Legend whirled overhead, a tornado of words, tumultuous and quicksilver. It was changing. All legends change as time passes, as the story gets passed from one person to the next, but for the first time I heard a chorus of new voices and names.
And the ending was wrong. Dreadfully wrong.
Ash was outside, somewhere nearby. He always stopped by on Halloween, it had become a ritual. I would nurse another beer, fire raging, Ash would come inside—all the doors and windows opened for him, this was his village, his flock, it all belonged to him—and we would spend an hour or two together, me retelling the Legend, while Ash leaned back in a chair, nodding at all the right places, raising an eyebrow if any detail was missed. He sheltered us from the wild Darklings that prowled Big Bear and Lake Arrowhead and all the other little towns in between.
The curse had been our protection, though neither Driscoll nor Ash saw it that way.
From Blueridge Mount to the Ticonderoga Waterfall, from Castle Rock to Cedarpine Peak, an invisible hedge of protection wrapped around Ticonderoga Falls and it had from the day Lily died. The curse had protected us as well as the fluorescent lights protected the inhabitants of L.A.
Here, in the mountain crevices, there was room for dark magic and moonlit nights. Here, the Darklings practiced the fine art of harvest and interpretation and inspiration. And as a result, Ticonderoga Falls was brimming with artists, musicians, writers, craftsmen and inventors. From the turn-of-the-century plein air painters to the twenty-first-century rapper who lived in the hills to that war-poet who had just sold a screenplay, artists were drawn here like slivers of steel to a magnet.
Kismet. Destiny.
I took another slug of beer, finished off the bottle and set the empty on a nearby table. I didn’t want the Legend to change, but I had learned long ago that I was just a cog in the Darkling machinery.
Like the rest of the town.