Last Rites (Darkling Mage 6)

Chapter 1

“Asher, please, stop,” I cried out, tugging on the back of his jacket. “That’s enough.”

Asher bucked and twitched, fighting me with all his strength. And he was almost winning, too. He was smaller than me, scrawnier. Where was all his energy coming from?

“It’ll never be enough,” he shouted, clutching his wrist. “I have to do it, Dustin. You can’t stop me. None of you can.”

I groaned and slapped my forehead, pressing the pads of my fingers into my temples. “Right,” I said. “Fine! One last game.”

He spun on his heels and I heard the tiny, belated “Yay” under his breath as he dashed off, yet again, to play another round of balloon darts.

Hi, yes, hello. My name is Dustin Graves, and I’m at a carnival.

One of those things that sweeps through town, picks a nice vacant spot somewhere, and sets down its roots. Almost literally, in this case. Asher had found out about Madam Babbage’s Bazaar of Wonders somewhere online, and since then he’d been bugging me and the other guys at the Boneyard to come with him and have a look.

And by that I mean he wrangled us to accompany him to the carnival grounds the very day they arrived in Valero. You should have seen his face light up as the Bazaar’s employees pitched their tents and hammered huge stakes into the earth. Actually, you should have seen Sterling’s, the way he twitched and flinched each time a strongman brought a mallet down on a stake. Okay, sorry, bad joke.

So knowing how much Asher had missed out on growing up in the real world, we came on the very first night to check things out. And Madam Babbage’s was exactly what it said on the package: a veritable bazaar of wonders. Bright lights, a barker with a handlebar mustache, so many colors that you’d think you’d stepped into a kaleidoscope, and omnipresent calliope music that walked the exact fine line between cheerful and creepy. The whole shebang, thanks very much, and we weren’t going to begrudge Asher wanting to get in on the whole experience.

He deserved to have fun, and hell, so did I. It was hard not to smile at the sight of him skittering back to the balloon stall. Kind of cute seeing Asher just be a kid, because that’s what he was. Just because you’re eighteen doesn’t mean you have to stop playing games. Sorry, I misspoke. You shouldn’t ever stop playing games. Life is short. If you’re having fun and you aren’t hurting anyone, then nothing else matters. Just enjoy yourself.

But the man at the balloon stall seemed to think otherwise. He sighed heavily as he watched Asher approach, his mustache almost drooping. Asher had won twice already, mostly just these silly bags stuffed with different kinds of candy. Actually, that might have explained why he was so wired in the first place. The man at the stall leaned on his counter and tipped his hat miserably.

“You’re going to clean me out, kid,” he said.

Before Asher could protest, I cut in smoothly, giving the man my best smile. “I made him promise, sir,” I said. “It’ll be his last game for the night. Right, buddy?”

Asher nodded eagerly.

The man sighed again, taking Asher’s money and handing him three darts. Not like Asher needed them, to be honest. The man clucked his tongue, put on a defeated smile, and wagged one playful finger at me.

“One last game and you make sure to take your little brother far away from my stall, young man.”

I was ready with a smile before he’d even said anything, but – Asher? My little brother? I could live with that. I grinned even harder.

The first balloon popped, then the next, then the next. Three successive pops, and behind us passing spectators clapped and murmured approvingly. Good thing too, because that meant the man running the stall couldn’t quite hear how the darts were making two “thunk” noises with every impact.

Asher’s necromantic abilities were developing, and he had found a way of ejecting tiny shards of bone from his body, launching them with enough velocity and sharpness to pierce balloons. He was firing a tiny fragment of bone right out of his wrist with every dart he threw, which guaranteed three balloon pops with every game. The man with the mustache sighed again as he handed Asher yet another bag of candy.

“Thanks, Mister,” Asher said, beaming.

The man grumbled and waved us away. It was why I insisted that Asher stop playing. Someone was going to notice that something was off. Still, the little crowd we attracted was now eager to get into the darts themselves, probably thinking that the stall was easy pickings. I nodded to myself, glad that we’d at least brought Mister Mustache a little bit of business in exchange for taking his candy.

“Gummy bear?” Asher offered.

“Sure, why not.” I popped it into my mouth without looking. Ooh. Lime. Nice and tart. “Okay, Asher. You can play the other stalls, but no more cheating with your powers.”

He scoffed. “Okay, Dad. Geez.”

“I’m just saying, it’s not fair to the normals. Plus I don’t want anyone sniffing us out here, you know?”

Asher crammed a handful of colorful little bears in his mouth, chewing glumly and making a squelching noise that sounded something like the word “Fine.”

“Don’t go pouty on me now,” I said, clapping him on the shoulder. He grunted, then relented with a chuckle when I wrestled him into a quick squeeze. “We can still have fun. We should go find the others, see what they’re up to. Do you see anyone? Gil? Or Sterling?”

“Oh, Sterling’s over there,” Asher said. “Cheating with his powers.”

I slapped my forehead. “Damn it.” I sighed. Sterling was showing off again. “We should have left him at home,” I grumbled.

Madam Babbage’s had set up a fair way outside of Valero, far enough out that we’d decided it was better to rent a car for the day. Gil was our designated driver, and Prudence had come along for the fun of it. Carver declined to join us, but pushed a small leather bag of something into Asher’s hands as we prepared to leave.

“Some pocket money,” Carver said warmly. “You all have a wonderful time.”

I should have known there

was something fishy about that from the start. In the backseat of our rented car, Asher tugged the drawstring pouch open and tipped out a small handful of bizarre currency: a rainbow of gemstones, a few of them cut, some tumbled to a smooth polish, as well as an assortment of coinage from cultures long dead and gone.

“It’s like pirate money,” I said, reaching for one of the coins and nipping its edge with my teeth. I wasn’t sure what that was supposed to accomplish. “Doubloons? Is that what they’re called?”

Sterling reached out from the passenger seat, snatching the coin from me. “Gimme that,” he grumbled. “And Asher, hand over the rest. I’ll take care of it.”

He slipped it all into one of his leather jacket’s inside pockets, and that was that. We didn’t fight Sterling when it came to money. He was actually incredibly efficient about handling finances, and pretty generous about paying for stuff when the occasion arose.

Sterling would pay upfront for everyone at the Happy Cow, for example, or there was that one time he bought everyone ice cream cones at the pier. I wondered sometimes if that was some sort of clue to his name, which I’d always been convinced was fake. I never did ask, though. Like Carver, Sterling could just be so touchy about his past sometimes.

But as responsible as Sterling could be with stuff like taking care of friends and money, the same really couldn’t be said for how much he deeply, truly loved to draw attention to himself. Sterling dressed like a rockstar, and I’d known him long enough to understand that he pretty much behaved like one, too.

He was over by the high striker, one of those games where you smash a target with a big old hammer to test your strength, and a bunch of lights come up on the machine’s display to show exactly how macho you are.

I didn’t have to look very hard to spot him in the crowd that had gathered around the machine. You just had to find the slender, exceedingly fair-skinned man wearing a leather jacket and the smuggest smile in existence.

The high striker’s lights had come on completely – Sterling had maxed out the machine. The man operating it looked utterly baffled, scratching his head and tapping the side of the contraption, like he was sure it was broken.