Midnight's Son (Darkling Mage 5)

A homunculu

s. No. It couldn’t be. One of Thea’s creations, made through blasphemy and profane alchemy from my own blood. One of them had survived.

“We killed all of you,” I said, the night suddenly so much colder. “None of you should have been left alive.”

Other Dustin raised his eyebrow. “Truly? None of us? Did you scour every inch of the city? Did you check every mausoleum in the graveyard?”

This one could speak, too, not just in parroted phrases the way Thea’s other homunculi had done, but perfectly, in my voice, conveying its own thoughts. My skin was crawling, knowing that this thing was better than the others, stronger. It even had access to my powers. The same body, the same voice, the same face. And it had its own soul, one that Nyx had claimed in exchange for the Crown. This wasn’t just another homunculus, but something almost human – a thing perfected. The only difference: its eyes, black as pits of night.

“You shouldn’t be wearing the Crown,” I said. “That belongs to me. I need it, to stop the Eldest.”

Other Dustin smiled. “Oh, but I need the Crown’s power too, brother. Some of our goals are not so different as you think.”

He held out one hand, and my heart leapt up my throat when something metal clanged against his palm. It was Vanitas, and Other Dustin had caught him cleanly by the hilt.

“What the hell is going on, Dust?” V thought into my mind.

“I wish I could tell you,” I said, noting that even my telepathic voice was trembling.

Another blur of green and gold streaked through the night – Vanitas’s scabbard – but Other Dustin was ready for it. He swung Vanitas’s blade in an arc, batting the scabbard away, then hurling the sword after it. Trees shuddered and shattered into splinters as both sword and scabbard sped through the forest, propelled by Other Dustin’s demonic strength. Was this the Crown’s gift?

Then he turned his attention on me. Instinctively I rushed to leap into my own shadow – but nothing. The Dark Room wasn’t budging. The homunculus smiled out of the corner of his mouth.

“Mine,” he said. “I need the Dark Room’s power. Lend it to me for a moment.”

“Never,” I said, triggering the ball of fire in my hand to encase my entire fist in flames, then bringing it down like a hammer on the homunculus’s face. His body wavered again, and he reappeared a foot away, unharmed, shadowstepping even faster than I ever could.

I bared my teeth at him, hoping that talking would buy time for the others to regain their bearings and launch another assault. “How did you know about the Crown of Stars? Who told you?”

Other Dustin chuckled, his soft laughter so awfully reminiscent of mine. “How I found out about the Crown’s power is irrelevant, brother.” He raised both his hands, fingers upturned like claws, and I watched as he rose above the canopy of the forest, lifted by a tide of shadows that formed into a geyser at his feet. “What matters is what I intend to do with it.”

Those shadows, the very same ones from the Dark Room, propelled him into the sky in a torrent – but more remained on the ground, lashing and whipping at us like swords.

“Control them, Dust,” Sterling shouted, fending off the blades with his sword, leaping back into the trees.

“I can’t,” I cried out. “He’s hijacked my power. I can’t.” We retreated as the pit of shadows widened, flailing and scything at everything within reach, ripping up trees and widening the glade into a meadow of splintered wood and crushed vegetation.

Roaring with fury, I threw another fireball at the homunculus, but it only tore through the shadow of his body. More flashes of arcane energy lit up the flattened clearing, spells from Carver, Herald, and Asher, but they too barely touched the homunculus.

Other Dustin gestured, and the Crown of Stars reappeared on his head, shrouding his face with its darkness and its light. “The worshippers of the Eldest don’t truly understand what they’re doing, expending the power of the Old Ones in little bursts, wasting it on opening little gaps. On tiny, worthless doorways.” Other Dustin raised his hands to the sky, his face turned up to the stars. “They must die. As many as I can slaughter. They must all die.”

As if in answer, just as Hecate and Nyx had described, the stars across the midnight sky shone harder, brighter. I watched as they seemed to swivel – like eyes, searching the earth for the homunculus’s victims. And I watched as they fell, as faint flickers of light trailed to earth from the heavens, like shooting stars.

But for each star that streaked from the sky, I knew that the homunculus was claiming one life. I thought that I’d been prepared to do the same, to use the Crown’s power in the same way, but I strained my neck and looked on in rapt, helpless horror as the stars fell slowly, at first – then in the dozens. The sky filled with horrible starlight, a spectacle of slaughter set to an awful, familiar alien music that played from somewhere in space, a distant, discordant flute.

Maybe this wasn’t so terrible after all. Other Dustin had destroyed the cultists, snuffed out anyone who had access to the prayers and black rituals that could open doorways for the Eldest. But he lifted his hands again, and shimmering little motes rushed at him from out of the darkness, from far across the forest, far across the city. They glistened, like tiny beetles, like little drops of black water. No. Not water.

Blood.

Chapter 31

The homunculus had initiated his own communion, cast his own circle in blood from the corpses of so many dead cultists, siphoning from far beyond the bounds of the city – hell, maybe the country. This was what he meant: the worshippers of the Eldest weren’t looking at the bigger picture.

The blood gathered into a globe, encasing Other Dustin’s body in an immense sphere of gleaming, living crimson. I gagged as I watched, as the blood stretched into a pillar that shot into the night sky, disappearing into the heavens – claimed as an offering by the Eldest.

As if to clarify my theory, a voice spoke out of the night itself, thundering across the earth with words I had never heard before, that had never been uttered by mortal tongue. A hand clutched at my arm, fingers digging into my skin. It was Carver.

“Something is coming,” he said, his voice trembling.