Darkness | Chapter Three: The First Traitor (Natalie)
It was a Thursday, a few weeks later, when we set out. It was almost anticlimactic to get into his Kia Soul—monster green—with my backpack in the hatch next to his more travel-ready and travel-worn black one. We rode in silence through Brooklyn towards Manhattan, and I watched the trees fade as the buildings grew taller.
“So how does this work?” I asked quietly. We rode closer to Alexei with every moment, and my worries were creating a giant ulcer deep in my stomach. As we hit the bridge, I gagged, almost retching, grasping for the car door handle as I felt sweat bead on my forehead.
He deftly handed me a plastic cereal container masquerading as a trash can. I closed my eyes and took a steadying breath. “Is this normal, or are you the Boy Scout, always-be-prepared type?”
“Normal,” he replied softly. “It’s about now that people realize that I meant it when they said that they’ll be coming with me into Darkness. I’m not sure why that’s so hard to believe.”
“Because the Fae kill people? Because the body count when they came to America rivaled a fucking war? Because even when they took over a city, we were damn thankful that they picked one and stuck with it instead of killing all of us?”
He shrugged softly, averting his gaze. “Cancer kills people too, but you probably didn’t throw up for that one.”
“Cancer can be cured,” I snapped. Alexei could beat it if anyone could; I had to believe it, no matter what the doctors said.
Devon glanced at me from behind his dark shades. “Okay,” he said after a long moment. We drove in silence over the bridge and through the busy streets, a lone green blob in a sea of yellow taxis. No matter what else was happening, what Darkness came to the city, you couldn’t stop New York. It was humbling to think of the resilience of Manhattan—the Fae had taken the Upper East & West sides, Central Park, and Harlem. The Bronx had been holding out alone for a year and a half.
I’d felt safe in Brooklyn, so far away from the “action,” yet they’d walked into Mount Sinai like it was nothing. What the hell had they been doing this far south?
It was bothering me; it was more than bothering me. “Why were they this far south?” I demanded. “How did they get past the fences and guards?”
“You know that they mostly look like humans with great makeup and hair dye, right?” He signaled to turn and went about the Herculean effort to turn left in Manhattan. “Like, oh, everyone in New Broadway.”
In Greenwich Village. Because Broadway was now a series of over-glorified throne rooms and our bodies hung in Times Square. I wondered if Alexei’s would be next, a corpse slit from throat to the top of her jeans, bled out and hanging as she…
That time I did throw up. Pulling over did not exist in Manhattan, but traffic was slowing as we got closer to the fence. Devon used the lull to grab my hair for me, rubbing my back in the same motion. “It’ll be okay,” he said matter-of-factly.
“How do you know?” I wiped my mouth on a leftover napkin from a fast food restaurant and leaned back into the seat, closing my eyes. There was nothing about this trip that was okay so far—and we hadn’t even gotten to Darkness yet.
“Because you’re going to be paying a bill from me for finding her for a very long time.” He let my hair go and smiled.
I snorted and immediately regretted that decision, considering the taste in my mouth. “But how did they get down here?” I persisted.
Devon sighed and ran his fingers through his black hair. “It’s been happening for a while. I don’t really know why, but I have a feeling that they’re going to push us out of New York sooner rather than later. They’re looking for something, and I don’t know what it is.”
“I just don’t get it. How has this been happening right under our noses?” There had to be something wrong here. I knew that they looked human, but waltzing into the biggest city in the world and stealing citizens, and no one was doing anything about it?
He shrugged. “Because it was easier to drink blood and eat people before smartphones and ID checks everywhere? Who would believe you back then, anyway? They were obviously waiting until there were too many of them to hide before they sprang it on us with the EMP.”
I sighed and leaned back, closing my eyes again. “This is a nightmare.”
“Yup,” he replied calmly. “But soon it’ll be one nightmare less. We’ll find her, and then all you have to worry about is the cancer. Compared to Darkness, that should be a breeze.”
“Great,” I said quietly and sat for a long moment. “What’s your brilliant plan here, anyway?”
This time, he didn’t look at me. “I have contacts inside Darkness. Other wizards. Fae who don’t agree with taking over a small country, really. There are traitors everywhere if you know where to look.”
“There are wizards who stay in Darkness?”
His jaw clenched. “Yes,” he said shortly. A pause. “Some.”
I’d hit a nerve. Good, so had he. “Tell me about being a wizard.”
A breath hissed between his teeth. “All right. You’re born to it. It runs in families; my aunt is a sorceress. We have tutors come in to teach us our whole lives. I’ve met my parents twice, once when I was born and once when I finished my tutoring. I went to boarding school, too, so that was fun.” He paused again, glancing over at me.
“I became a private investigator right out of school since I’m good at using magic to… well, let’s not give away too many trade secrets, right?” He eyed me as we pulled up to an empty parking lot at the public library. “We walk from here.”
Settling into our backpacks, we began to walk through empty streets that I’d last seen full of life. It had been an almost immeasurable amount of time since I’d set foot in Manhattan.
The streets were bare. Not a single piece of trash stained the concrete. There was Midtown East, Grand Central, St Patrick’s Cathedral, the way that we were headed—it was stunning to see such landmarks without dozens, if not hundreds, of tourists. The streets were quiet and empty, except for the faint sound of music that I couldn’t quite place.
As we walked, a chill ran down my spine. The windows were dark. I’d never seen the windows of New York City dark. The sky was dusky instead of hazy, with no light pollution. It even smelled like metal instead of a million people and their refuse. The noises were entirely absent except for the sound of the breeze whistling through the steel. The tall buildings dwarfed me as usual, but the lack of people in them was palpable, the way that you could feel the lack of a limb. Even living in Brooklyn, I knew what this should feel like—and this felt like a nightmare.
“I can’t do this,” I gasped, staring up into the empty sky. I fell to my knees, staring up into the darkened windows, and imagined the Fae behind them, staring down at me as we walked through the empty streets. “God, why is this so fucking terrifying?”
“You can’t see them,” he said. “But you know you’re there. The danger is here, and you can’t see it. We don’t know where they are or if they’re looking at us. It gets everyone their first time in.”
I leaned against a concrete sign as I sat on the curb, hyperventilating. “I hate this,” I admitted, almost in tears.
“Me, too,” he said softly. His eyes were shifting everywhere; I could see him tracking something, but for the life of me, I couldn’t see what it was. A strange feeling started to crawl up my spine, and I winced at the sensation, my own vision jumping from window to window. “Can we, um, please not stop? At least, not stop here? Stopping in a relatively safe area is pretty stupid. This is slightly closer to ‘look who we’re electing to have the code to the nuclear weapons’ stupid.”
“Shit,” I muttered, glaring up at the silent buildings, and I got up quickly, starting to walk a little faster.
We took a detour on Madison Avenue and peered down the street. I stared at what had once been Central Park, and tears sprang to my eyes.
I let myself be dragged away as I held back a sob. The trees stood stoically as skeletons, their leaves burned and gone for good. I could see the buildings and a carriage, ashes coating them thickly. The refuge from the city was gone. My heart sank as I imagined the carousel—and what had they done to the Zoo? We were heading east toward the Meadow; we hadn’t stopped to see the Zoo.
Anger threaded through my veins, and Devon and I snaked down the street. An apartment building that looked like every other apartment building loomed in front of us, and Devon led me down the alley. We worked ourselves and our backpacks up the fire escape in the darkness between the two bland concrete buildings and through an unlocked window on the third floor. He held a blue, flower-petal print sheet that blocked what little light we had out of the way as I climbed through.
It looked fairly normal, except for the dark, and only the faded brightness that peeked out from the sides of the sheet-curtain and a lonely lantern showed our way. A plain brown sectional divided the room; a small, bare table here and there. Devon settled on the chaise and sighed.
“That’s it?” I said finally, clenching my fists. “We walk-run down 5th and end up in an apartment? This is the great climactic scene of figuring out how to save my sister?”
“For now,” he acknowledged quietly, closing his eyes. “We made it into Darkness. There’s not much that we can do in broad daylight, as ironic as that is. They’ve probably already figured out that we’re here, and there’s very little that I can do about that right now.”
“Isn’t this just… kind of crappy?” My blood was boiling with eagerness; we were here, in Darkness...in a shitty apartment in the dark. I wanted blood. I wanted Alexei back.
“This used to be my apartment,” he said softly, opening one eye. “With more furniture. My roommate still lives here. We’re waiting for him to come back.”
“From where?” I slid to the ground against the wall, closing my eyes. Evidently, Devon didn’t plan on moving from here for a while, at least until true dark. I didn’t know what the hell he planned on doing when it got dark, but he had to have some kind of plan… right?
Devon looked frustrated. “Hell? I don’t know. I don’t keep tabs on him.”
“You’re a wizard masquerading as a private investigator, and you don’t even bother to keep track of your friends? Am I really supposed to have any faith in you whatsoever?”
“Would you appreciate it if I tailed you all day for the fun of it?” he said mildly.
“Point taken,” I sighed. “I guess what I mean is, how is any of this helping me find Alexei? What are we doing here? I don’t understand. We snuck through the city; I almost had a nervous breakdown over Central Park, and now we’re sitting in some guy’s apartment.”
It was Devon’s turn to sigh. “He’s one of… them,” he said carefully. “I told you that not all of them agreed with taking over the city, right?”
“Was there a backup plan?” I replied acidly. “Was there some other way that they were going to radically fuck us up if they decided not to take over New York?”
A short, thin man with roped muscles and long, auburn hair slid easily past the “curtain.” “Yeah. Keep haunting the world like vampires and holding court in Britain,” he said, his musical voice quiet and serene. “Then again, Britain likes vampires.”
I could feel the current—the one that made them so vulnerable to static—licking across his skin as he walked by. The little hairs on my arms stood on end, and I shivered, averting my gaze.
Of course, he stood in front of me, crouching easily as he balanced on the tips of his toes. “I don’t bite,” he said, then paused. “That might not have been the right thing to say. Tact isn’t exactly my strong point.”
“Not really,” I mumbled, staring at the floor.
“I’m Samuel,” he offered quietly. “And I’ve been kicked out of court. Don’t worry, I only bite the willing.”
Oh, Lord. My mind flashed to an image of Alexei, chained to a steel beam, bloody, dripping, and helpless. My throat closed tight, and I let my eyes fall shut. “Please don’t,” I whispered hoarsely.
He sighed and slid into a cross-legged position. “See, this would be why I didn’t think this city was a good idea,” he said to Devon quietly.
Anger flared, boiling my blood again. “Not a good idea? Not a good idea? You killed half of Manhattan and it wasn’t a good idea?!”
Devon got off the couch and slid between us. “That’s not quite what happened,” he said softly, as Samuel backed away a little. “By ‘not a good idea,’ Samuel meant… well…” He gestured impotently, and Samuel sighed.
Samuel was wearing a long-sleeve band shirt that fell to his second knuckles. He sat silently across from me for a long while, staring into the lantern on the floor, then he rolled up both sleeves.
Thick, raised scars circled each wrist, at least half an inch thick. His fingers were whiter than his already pale skin above the scars. I stared politely, horrified by what looked like an awful injury. “Okay, that’s pretty bad, and I’m sorry, but I don’t understand.”
Samuel watched me for another moment. “The first punishment for treason is cutting off someone’s hands.”
I bit off an inappropriate exclamation.
“No, they don’t grow back. They kept the wounds open as long as it stayed fun for them and then sutured them back on. They kept my hands in a metal bucket full of human blood.” His voice was expressionless.
I swallowed nothing but air once, twice. “What did you do?”
“He set free a human,” Devon said softly.
I looked back at Samuel, at his dead, crystalline eyes and his wild, true-auburn hair. I felt the current nearly jumping off his skin. I could almost feel the hunger, the devastation he could have wrought, should he have made a different choice. “What happened?” I asked, even as Devon motioned for me not to.
Devon closed his eyes.
Samuel clenched his pale fists hard enough that I could see the faintly glimmering black veins. “They left us in a room together to see who would starve first.”
“They caught her?” I whispered softly.
“No. He stayed,” Samuel said quietly. “He wouldn’t leave without me.”
Devon was making an ‘I’m gonna cut your throat if you keep talking’ gesture, but I couldn’t help myself. I was fascinated by this Fae, this strange Fae that rescued a human.
Samuel seemed as lost to the tale as I was. “They caught him climbing through my window and threw us down into the cellar. My mother came down every few days to check our ‘progress.’ I almost won the prize,” he snarled.
This time, I sat silently with my hands folded in my lap. Pain radiated from the small man. I couldn’t imagine growing up somewhere where a mother would consider starving her son—or his… whatever—and it was okay.
“He sacrificed himself,” he said, his voice hoarse and gravelly. “He broke the zipper from his jeans and slit his wrists, sitting in my lap as I tried to die.”
My eyes shot up to Samuel’s in surprise.
“Yeah,” he said. “I am what I am. Humans are food, after all,” he said, voice laced with venom. “Once I saw what I’d done, I escaped.”
“And here we are,” Devon interrupted hastily before Samuel could finish. “Needless to say, Samuel knows where not to go and where they may have taken Alexei.”
Samuel’s eyes finally—finally!—lost the dead stare. A little life had returned to him. “I wondered why you were here,” he murmured softly. “I figured that you couldn’t get a date without a little bit of Fae danger.”
Devon punched him in the arm and winced. “You’d think I’d remember not to do that,” he said. “It’s her sister. She has leukemia.”
“Why do you—they—take sick people? Is this a feed on the weak thing?” I snapped, then instantly felt guilty. Samuel, no matter what he was born as, had helped a human, and that had to give him points in my book.
Samuel shook his head, rubbing at his left wrist. “The closer a human is to death, the sweeter is the blood and flesh,” he said in a sing-song voice, as if recalling a long-ago nursery rhyme.
If that was their version of a nursery rhyme, I really didn’t want to hear their pop music. “That’s awful!” I paused, rewinding his words. “Oh my God, you really do eat people?” I whispered.
“I don’t, now,” he said softly. “But it’s a lot more effective to regenerate magic than blood.”
“Aren’t Faeries supposed to be beautiful, enchanting and kind?”
“I don’t know if Faeries exist. But the Fae,” he said, with capital letters, “have never been kind. Even to each other.”
“Vampires,” I muttered.
“Vampires,” he agreed.
“Freezer pizza?” Devon said brightly.
It was a struggle to see which one of us hit him first.