Grave Intentions (Darkling Mage 3)

Something scraped against the ground. The thing was behind me, its leer grotesque, its teeth a sickly green in the light of the peach still clutched in its hand. I spun on my heel and swung the board with all my might. Other-Dustin raised its other hand to intercept the board, making a fist – and punched clear through the wood.

Fuck.

Broken splinters of wood clattered to the ground. Other-Dustin shook its fist back into an open hand, knuckles specked with blood, then aimed another blow at my face. I dodged, scampering backwards into the darkness, my eyes glued to the creature even as it trundled and bore down on me.

No way. There was no chance in hell that it could have been Thea. She was prone to speeches, the big damn villain that she was, and to shows of bravado. Brilliant spears of light, spells meant to destroy. But this thing was coming at me with everything its body could give, every swipe and surge of its extremities another attempt to kill and to maim.

Other-Dustin rushed me agai

n, reaching for my collar, tugging at me with an infernal strength. I wasn’t that strong. Shit, no human should be that strong. My eyes darted around the darkness of the warehouse, scoping out Sterling’s position.

Where the fuck was he? I wasn’t going to out him. If there was one tactic we stuck to at the Boneyard, it was never letting the enemy know how many of us were present. It made them overconfident, and ultimately, easier to overwhelm and subdue. But if Sterling didn’t come soon –

Stall. That was the best I could do. If shit got real, I could slip away into the Dark Room. That would work, wouldn’t it? It only had me by my collar. Fuck, why didn’t I test this with someone from the Boneyard?

I already knew the answer, though: they liked me well enough, but not enough to risk getting dragged to an alternate dimension full of shadows and blades that would rip them to pieces, with or without my command.

“What do you want?” I croaked, the gathered fabric of my shirt and jacket cutting into my throat.

“What do you want?” the thing said, in my voice, with my mouth. But its eyes, God, its eyes were all wrong.

“Who are you?”

The thing’s grin dropped, and it tilted its head. Its hair fell away from its eyes, gleaming and black.

“Who are you?” it said, the words cold, and coarse. Could it only repeat things? It brought its face closer to mine. Other-Dustin was panting, as if the contact was exhilarating, as if excited by the imminent promise of violence. Its breath misted on my cheek. It was colder than the night air. My skin prickled.

Fuck. Fuck. “What are you?”

The thing grimaced. Evidently, that was the wrong thing to say.

“What are you?” it parroted, its voice high and short as it grabbed my clothing tighter, beginning to shake me. “What are you?” it demanded, its voice – my voice – shrill and breaking, spittle forming at the corner of its mouth. “What are you?”

I didn’t know. On some level I understood that the creature could only repeat what I said, but it cut me to hear those same horrible words from my own mouth. What was I? Hecate said so: I was an abomination. A beautiful monster. And what was it that monsters did?

I lifted my hand to the thing’s shirt, to the tattered assortment of clothes it had put on its body, searching for a spot of material that wasn’t drenched in its ice-cold sweat. It followed my hands with wild, black eyes. The fire I lit with my hands reflected in those eyes, turning them into coals, black and orange and smoldering.

Other-Dustin shrieked, beating at its clothes, doing a horrible dance as it stamped and flailed, one hand thrashing at the flames licking at its body, the other still cradling the Leung family’s artifact.

It flailed and screamed, body ablaze, slamming itself against the walls to smother the fire. For whatever reason its desperate bid to survive was working. Maybe it was the sweat soaked through its clothing that helped, or maybe it was some bizarre, inhuman instinct to live on.

It came at me again, burnt skin exposed through incinerated patches of its shirt, no more dead, but a whole lot angrier. I thought I had time to shadowstep, but it lunged, leaping for my throat. The two of us crashed to the ground, my back slamming painfully across the concrete. It straddled me, thighs locking around my chest and my ribcage. The thing clasped one too-strong hand around my throat, then started to press.

“What are you?” it croaked, pushing down on my neck so hard that my head ground into the cement. I groaned in pain, except that there wasn’t much air left to groan with. Wheezing, choking, I grabbed at Other-Dustin’s wrist, but nothing. It was far too strong.

Nothing for it, then. I had to shadowstep, whether or not it meant taking the thing with me. I willed myself to melt into the earth, to pass through my own shadow into the Dark Room, and my heart thumped ever faster when I realized I couldn’t.

I simply fucking couldn’t. The lining between that reality and this one held fast, the first time since I’d awakened to my talent that the membrane between worlds was impenetrable. I couldn’t take Other-Dustin with me. I couldn’t shadowstep, and with cold, stark dread, I realized what was worse – I was going to die.

Then a crack, and a faint exhalation of air. Other-Dustin grunted, the gleam in its eyes fading, the strength in its grip fading even faster as it wavered, then collapsed backward. I gasped, sucking at the world for air, relishing its sweetness as it came rushing back into my lungs. I clutched at my throat, breathing deeply, deeper still. I was alive. At least one of us was.

Sterling stood over the both of us, dusting his hands off, already reaching into his pocket for a cigarette. I stared down at Other-Dustin’s corpse, at how its neck was positioned at a completely unnatural angle.

“You killed it. You snapped its neck.”

Sterling took a long draw of his cigarette, then exhaled a stream that vanished into the high ceiling of the warehouse. “Thank you, Captain Obvious.”

Death wasn’t the result I had wanted. I had no intention of killing the thing. It might have known something. But even as I watched its limp body, studied the grim lifelessness of its black eyes, I knew that this creature wasn’t anything normal, not some human mage in disguise, not a magical thing hiding under a glamour. Then what was it? Had an entity sent it to cause trouble for me via impersonation? Worse, had the entity sent it to kill me?