CHAPTER NINE

CHAPTER NINE

In the warehouse, shamans chanted and priests prayed. Scented smoke filled her lungs and somewhere someone was splashing Holy Water. In the shadows, Father and the Uncles stood.

They were trying to take her shadow from her.

It was working.

She couldn’t breathe. She couldn’t move. She couldn’t think clearly enough or quickly enough to fight. Every word they said lifted the dark. Every prayer they prayed peeled the shadow from her flesh. Every mutter and murmur and sigh stripped the shade from her soul.

And it was agony. Her insides clenched. Her skin shrank to the bone. She fell forward, her arms wobbling as they supported her. Her face tensed. As if her eyes were being pulled from their sockets. Her tongue was swelling and her mouth tasted of blood. Her teeth felt like they were being pried from the safety of their homes. Her head was filled with the sound of a great wind, or a great ocean. A keening cry from the earth and the sky as she felt her flesh drawn inward and down and her bones grow cold with an unbearable chill.

“You are nothing now,” Father was saying. He stood, cigarette in hand. Safely tucked outside the circle where the priests kneeled and the shamans bowed and those anonymous men who bent low, their faces to the ground, clutched burning sticks of incense in their fists, he watched.

She tried to move again. She failed.

“You believed it was ancient and all-powerful?” Father said. “You thought it would have no weakness? That it could destroy without doubt or pain?”

Lifting her head, she blinked, searching for him.

All she saw were robed silhouettes surrounding her.

Fight, she silently said to her dark. We can’t lose.

It gathered strength, clinging to her. Wrapping so tightly around her skin, it turned her bones to ice.

The prayers increased, the water splashed, and the shadow lost its hold again, slipping further away.

She wanted to weep, but didn’t have the strength.

“You have much to answer for,” Father said.

I will give you anything, she silently said. If you can fight, if we can win, if we can leave and escape, I will give you anything. Anything for as long as you want.

It returned, swooshing in, gathering strength as it burrowed into her center.

Yes, she thought. Take from me what you will.

Her insides lurched. She was sure she was going to die then. The pain was too immense. It was too much. She could feel the end coming. It felt light. Like the most gentle of breezes could simply lift her away into the sky, into the air, into the night.

She couldn’t swallow. Her throat was too tight. She couldn’t breathe.

They’d come closer, the shamans and priests and strangers. Seeing their success in her struggle, they’d grown confident her end was near.

They were wrong.

It moved up her spine, the dark. Stripped from her what it needed as it rummaged through her body and dug into her flesh and stomped on her bones.

She fell, her arms giving out.

They stood above her. Holy water splashed and incense smoked and useless words from stupid men did nothing to quiet the anger her shadow was now feeling.

She rose, lifting on her elbows.

They drew back.

A moment later, it began.

Thrown and tossed, the shamans landed against the wall with a sickening crunch. The priests, those who ran, were tripped, their legs shattering with a crack before their skulls were crushed, the blood shooting from their noses and bursting from their ears and splashing from their mouths.

“Not Father,” she said, her voice a hoarse whisper.

The other priests, those who prayed, knowing they’d failed and their ends were near, fell forward, the backs of their heads sinking under the weight of unseen footsteps that stomped and crushed.

The doors had locked, so the Uncles could not escape. This was who she looked for now. The callous men who would rather enrage an ancient evil than see a woman with power.

Let them die.

And make it hurt.

Jaws were stretched until they popped and split. Eyes were plucked from skulls and necks twisted until they snapped. Bodies fell and blood ran and Father stood, untouched, in the middle of the carnage.

Lucky could breathe again. She flexed her fingers. The tightness had eased. The pain had ebbed. She rose to her knees. The agony of her shifting insides had lessened. She put the heels of her hands to her eyes and took another breath. All around, men cried and screamed and begged as they fell. The most powerful leaders of The Triad being slaughtered in the space of an evening.

This would make her infamous. And untouchable.

Taking her hands from her eyes, she scanned the room for Father.

He stood weeping.

She rose and stumbled toward him. Found her feet heavy and her steps slow and thick. A living skeleton lurching its way toward the pitiful man who waited in a sea of steaming red.

Seeing her, he fell to his knees.

The Father on his knees, she thought. She allowed herself a smile.

She’d won.

“Beg.” Her voice was almost too quiet and no longer her own.

“Please,” he said, his hands clasped to his face. “It was to save you. It was only to save you. You don’t know—”

“Save me?” She felt weak, her head too light. She couldn’t catch her breath. She feared she’d faint.

His hand was on her, helping her. She sank to her knees. His palms, gentle and soft, held her face. “Lucky, there is much about this you don’t know. We only wanted to take it from you.”

“But you said—”

“What was said was to it, not you.”

She looked at him. Looked into his eyes.

There was no malice there.

I’ve made a mistake, she thought. A horrible mistake. And not just here, with this. She looked around at the flat skulls leaking red and grey. The chunks of flesh and bits of bone. The fathers and sons and husbands and lovers who lay twisted and torn, their eyes open, their mouths silenced mid-scream. But a mistake with the Madame, as well. The tea. Those seven sips. Welcoming this unknown dark in exchange for strength.

It was wrong.

“I’m sorry,” she said. “I didn’t . . . ” She stopped, the enormity of this massacre too great for mere words. She grabbed Father’s hand. “It can’t be taken from me. You know that, yes? It needs to, I know, but . . . ” She fell quiet as a silent fist punched through her chest, grabbed her guts and twisted, taking her breath away.

Father was speaking, but she couldn’t catch the words. The ocean was in her ears again and a great wind rushed through her head.

“Father,” she tried to say, but her tongue was too thick, her teeth pulling, her throat swelling. “I’m sorry. Please—”

“Lucky,” he all but shouted. He was gripping her face. Shaking her. “Lucky.”

She lifted her head and looked at him.

A shadow fell over his face.

His eyes turned red and blood bubbled from his mouth to run down his chin.

“What have you done?” were the last words he said as the dark tore her away from him.

And as Father fell, she was dragged back across the floor, pulled across the room, through the shattering glass of a window, down the street and up, up, up into the sky, into the air, into the night, sleep coming as the world grew cold and the black of the ocean spread beneath her, Father’s worry echoing in her mind, again and again.

What have I done?