Last Rites (Darkling Mage 6)

Something like a crimson star hung menacingly in the night sky. I had no way of confirming, but I could tell that it was heading straight towards my father’s house.

“Dustin?” Royce yelled into my ear. “Are you still there?”

“Asher, get them away from here,” I said.

“But – ”

“Now,” I bellowed. “Get them to safety. Run as fast and as far as you can, and don’t stop.”

“Dustin,” Dad said. “Dust, you’re not staying here to fight whatever that thing is. It’s not worth your life.”

I watched as the Heart’s orbital beam streaked its way towards the earth, a blood-red comet. It could strike the house, and much worse, it could flatten the entire neighborhood. There were too many people out here, too many innocents. I had to do something to protect them.

“I’ll be okay, Dad,” I said. “Mom. You two go with Asher. He’ll keep you safe.”

“Dustin,” Dad begged, tugging on my jacket. “Please.”

“No,” I said. “Go. Now.”

Asher was as good as a brother, corralling my parents and dragging them away from the house, disappearing behind the neighbor’s fence and running off into the night. My phone dropped from my hand, Royce’s voice still issuing from it like the drone of some huge, annoying insect. I drew Vanitas out of my backpack, and he flew out of my hands.

“What’s going on?” he said. “Oh.”

Either he saw through my eyes, or perceived in that odd, unexplained way that he could. Didn’t matter, same result: he knew that the Heart was coming.

“Stab me,” I said. “Cut me open. Anywhere you want. Just make sure I bleed. A lot.”

“You’re insane.”

“Do it,” I said. “I know I always treat you as a friend, V, but right now I am commanding you to do it.” I glared at him, his garnets glaring defiantly back. “I order you to stab me!”

He hesitated, but it was in his nature, as both a sentient artifact and a soldier: he had to obey.

“I hope you know what you’re doing, Dust.”

In a flash so quick and precise, Vanitas separated from his scabbard and sliced a line up my body, cutting my chest, my chin, and my cheek open with only the point of his sword. I gasped. Any further and he could have slashed my eye instead. I grimaced from the pain, but I needed blood.

As much as I could manage. I reached for my wounds as blood dribbled down my skin, hot and thick, smearing both my hands in as much red as I could muster. The Heart’s beam was coming hard, and fast. Once both my palms were slick with blood, I thrust them upward, and screamed.

The Dark Room emanated in massive threads and tendrils from my blood, from every gore-slicked surface, from every shadow in the neighborhood. Around me I heard normals shouting, though if it was because of the beam or the horrible manifestation of my magic, I’ll never know.

I roared, louder and louder, my body straining, my breath draining as I forced the shadows to rise in huge waves, to form as large a dome as I could muster. I had blocked out the moon once, to stop feeding Tsukuyomi his power. I had to hope that I was strong enough to block out the Heart itself.

A sphere, I told the Dark Room, as I bled, and bled. Make a sphere, big enough to protect these people. Big enough to save their lives.

“Dustin, stop,” said a tinny, buzzing voice. It was my cellphone. Royce was still talking. I couldn’t stop, not for him, not for the Lorica and its fucking whims.

Then a hand cuffed me by the scruff, pulling, distracting me enough to break my concentration. The shadows wavered. Closer to my ear, I heard the same voice, this time clearer, and with it came the smell of whiskey and cigarettes.

“I said stop.”

I watched the sky. Like a meteor entering the atmosphere, the Heart’s beam was disintegrating, fading, vanishing into a slim shaft of nothing. I fell to my knees, and as I collapsed, the shadows receded.

Royce dropped to the grass, sitting cross-legged, panting. “I came as soon as I called it off. Wanted to check on you.” He slapped me on the back, which only made me cough and sputter. I felt so drained, so weak.

Around us the normals were screaming, at each other, into cellphones, no doubt wondering if the enormous beam of light and the accompanying dance of shadows had been some mass hallucination.

“It was a mistake,” Royce said. “Something about the star-metal triggered a warning back at HQ. The assumption was a new cult, more priests using the star-metal to open more rifts.”