Page 15 of Dark Stars

"Let's start with you,"

Bobby decided, pulling up a chair and flipping it around to straddle it with his arms across the back. He stared at Eclipse, regarding him pensively. Messing with someone this corrupted was always a challenge. He was immersed enough in the primordial dark that all of Bobby's usual tricks would not faze him. But if he pushed too hard, he could still break them, and broken humans did not provide useful information.

So he started with something they'd be familiar with—one of his kind wanting to hear more about themselves.

"Lord of the Flickering Lights, was it?"

Wholly of their own volition, without him asking or even pondering them, fireflies began to trickle inside.

"What else do they say about me?"

Well-trained to obey and please, Eclipse replied, "That the dark loves you and dreads you in equal measure."

The same could be said for all his relatives, but he supposed it was rather strange that he drew fireflies. Stranger still that in all his many centuries of life, he'd never once pondered the oddity of that. They seemed so natural to him, were so natural to him, he'd never given the peculiarity of it all a single thought.

It was Moon who added, "Offerings to the Lord of the Flickering Lights promise light that can cut through any darkness, wisdom that can answer any question, sharpness that can cut through any flesh."

"No one has ever offered me anything,"

Bobby said.

"I'm not really into the whole worshippers thing."

They frowned in eerie unison, same furrowed brows, lines around the eyes, cutting down on either side of their lips. Your face will freeze that way.

"You have an altar, though, Lord."

Bobby hissed. "Where?"

How had he never known of it? He should have felt it.

Unless the dark was hiding things from him. Keeping its little secrets, plotting and conniving in its own way.

This was a deeply unexpected development for sure.

When they remained silent, he let a trickle of power into his voice and asked again, "Where is the altar?"

It was Eclipse who flinched and said, "In the woods, Lord, south of our home. Nine miles into the woods, down in a hollow of blackened trees. Only those who seek your guidance can find it. All others who try will find themselves lost in the woods until they give up and go home."

Curiouser and curiouser. That was something a worshipper would do, a high priest or some rot. But Bobby knew with certainty that he had no such thing. He would feel it if he had worshippers—ignoring them would be like trying to ignore flies buzzing around his head.

Jones stirred, dropping his arms where they were folded across his chest as he said, "Even leaving aside you don't really go in for that, it's one of the conditions of your living here: no cults."

"I'd forgotten all about that,"

Bobby said.

"You're right. Even if I wanted, I couldn't."

He'd agreed to the restriction easily because he'd been relieved about it. One less thing to worry about. Because if worshippers were like buzzing flies, the primordial dark was the honey that drew them.

He really should have expected the flies to come buzzing sooner. He'd just been so happy tucked away in his little corner of this world that he'd let the matter fall to the wayside.

Jerking his head at the others, he threw a spell of silence at the cultists and headed for the main part of his house. When the others had joined him, he said, "I need to go find that altar. I didn't make it. I didn't order it made. Nobody came to me about making it. Whatever is going on, I like it even less than the demon problem, and Leviathan is always a very serious, capital letter Problem."

"Who are you telling,"

Alejo muttered.

"How can you have worshippers and stuff without realizing it?"

"The dark, always the dark,"

Bobby murmured.

"But did the dark itself get a little brazen—"

"It can do that?"

Alejo blurted.

"Yes, but rarely does. Much like angels and other beings of perfect power, the dark must be moved to do so, and there is very little in all of existence that bestirs a presence like that. The ocean does not bestir itself for an ant, and that is very much what I am to the ocean known as the primordial dark. The part I communicate with, that loves me and helps me, is more like a bit of the dark caught in a tidepool. No, I am not my mother, or my grandfather, or any of my other relatives. Something strange is afoot—stranger than cultists and your shithead friend showing up at the same time."

He worried his bottom lip.

"I'm starting to wonder what exactly engineered that. Too much coincidence is involved, even for me, and I know how capricious coincidence can be."

He shook himself from his thoughts.

"I'm going back to Marsh."

"I'm coming with you,"

Alejo said, a hard set to his mouth that said he was clearly braced for an argument.

Bobby grinned. "I know."

Alejo matched the grin with a smile of his own. "Good."

"What should we do with the little witch?"

Jones asked.

"Lock him up somewhere secure until I can come back and deal with him. Get more out of the cultists if you can."

He looked at Jones, then Harold.

"Be careful, both of you. This isn't a twist I was expecting, and where my kind go, there's never just one twist."

"As you command, Lord of the Flickering Lights,"

Harold drawled.

"Shut up."

Bobby rolled his eyes and headed off to his bedroom to get dressed in clothes more suited to hiking in the woods.

"I hate camping."

Alejo snickered.

"The only camping I ever do is the kind where you bring so much civilization with you that it can't even be called camping. We have a camper and everything. My dad claims he learned to camp that way from white people, but my mom's family has been doing it forever, so I dunno if it's really a white people thing. Never investigated though."

"That's still more camping than I tend to do."

"I mean, I definitely have roughed it hunting down things in the woods, but it's not a preference. I don't think it's anyone's preference unless you're one of those survivalist dudes I see on YouTube sometimes. They call themselves…"

Alejo's brow furrowed.

"Bush something. I'm blanking."

Bobby snorted. "Indeed."

He shrugged into a corduroy jacket and shoved various and sundry things into various and sundry pockets.

"Shall we get going?"

"What about our vehicles?"

"I'll deal with those when we're done with this whole adventure."

"Okay."

In the kitchen, he filled a bookbag with various essentials, thinking carefully on all the things a human might need if they got lost or trapped in the woods. Lost wasn't really a concern, though it paid not to get cocky, but trapped was very much in the realm of possibility.

When he was done, he turned to Jones and Harold.

"Behave while I'm gone. Don't let the fish off their hooks."

"I think they're more in the cooler than on the hook at this point, but I take your meaning,"

Jones replied.

Bobby laughed.

"See you when I see you, Sheriff. Witch."

Harold lifted a hand in farewell.

"Be careful."

"Always."

Bobby pulled Alejo in close and vanished them away.

Barely a breath later, they re-emerged at the edge of the woods south of Marsh. Given it was about four in the morning or so, everything was still dark and ominous—normally, he'd call that perfect, especially with a lover by his side.

He offered his hand, a thrill running through it at how immediately and unthinkingly Alejo took it. Lifting their joined hands, Bobby kissed the back of Alejo's.

"You're a good human. I like you."

Alejo laughed, cheeks flushing.

"Never thought I'd have a demigod of the primordial dark as a boyfriend, but I gotta admit, you're pretty okay yourself, Lord of the Flickering Lights."

Bobby groaned.

"Shut up. That's so stupid."

"Honestly, you should be grateful you got off so lightly, because I totally would have guessed something more along the lines of Lord of the Dancing Lights in the Eternal Dark. Or maybe Mistress of the Fractured Sun or, or how about They Who Walks Eternally Between Light and Dark."

"Shut up, shut up, shut up,"

Bobby said, smothering both their laughing with a messy kiss that didn't really smother anything at all.

The way Alejo's eyes shone with amusement and affection was the most beautiful thing he'd ever seen.

"Come on, Flick. Let's get to work."

Bobby sighed in resignation, but didn't otherwise protest what was clearly his new nickname. As long as nobody but Alejo used it.

As they got well into the woods, he reluctantly let go of Alejo's hand, focusing on navigating the dense woods in the dark. Alejo followed close behind, until the sun began to rise and light slowly began to fill the forest.

He called for a break once the sun was fully risen, digging snacks out of the bookbag before sitting down on a boulder that was the perfect height. Pulling out a water bottle, some forty-dollar thing he'd gotten in a giveaway at the bookstore that didn't seem to work any differently from the five dollar one he'd gotten at some dollar store or another, he took periodic sips of cool water while he kept an eye on the woods while also watching Alejo eat.

"Where did you get this trail mix?"

Alejo asked.

"This stuff is usually bland as hell, or relies way too much on things like honey to carry the burden of flavor. But someone made this with tajin."

"I don't know what tajin is, but it was a Mexican lady who made it. She and her family moved here after crossing in Texas. She has a little shop where she makes all kinds of stuff, including the trail mix. Also some sort of like…triple milk cake?"

"Tres Leche?"

Alejo asked with a snicker.

"That's it. She does whole cakes on order, and makes a batch of these cute little single serve ones every morning. They're usually all gone by lunch."

"I love tres leche cake. I wheedle my mother to make it as often as I can get away with. Wonder if she'll make me one if I bring home my nice new boyfriend."

Bobby snorted.

"I'm pretty sure I'm the kind of boy you're supposed to steer clear of."

"Well, Michael should have been the nice boy, so…"

Alejo shrugged.

"I'll take the bad boy, thanks."

He finished his snack and brushed off his hands, then returned the remaining trail mix to Bobby.

"He said it was nine miles in? How far have we gone?"

"About halfway. Couple more hours and we should be there."

"I swear it doesn't normally take me this long to walk nine miles."

"I doubt you're usually hiking through dense, dangerous woods in the dead hours of the morning."

"Fair. Let's go, then. The sooner we finish, the sooner I can go back to sleeping in your awesomely comfortable bed."

Bobby laughed as he swung his bag onto his shoulders and headed off, leading the way through a forest that grew increasingly dense and treacherous. Severely uneven ground, thorny vines, strange little hollows where it was like entire boulders had simply been lifted out of the ground.

"Just me or has this forest gotten weird?"

"And weirder with every passing minute. Any of your relatives known for this?"

"Only about most of them,"

Bobby muttered.

"Those thorns with the red tips, the missing boulders, that moss that will glow in the dark… so many bits and pieces of my family here. I never sensed any of this, not once, and I should have."

He stopped talking as they climbed up and over a pile of river rocks, and wiped sweat from his brow as he crested the top. Unfortunately, the journey was going to get no easier from here.

"I thought we were supposed to be going down into a hollow,"

Alejo groused as he joined him.

"This sucks. I'd rather be back in the stupid creepy cave with gentle slopes and lighted paths."

Bobby snorted.

"I'll remind you of that the next time we wind up in a creepy cult's secret cave lair."

"I'd really rather you not repeat dates, thanks."

Laughing louder, Bobby bent and kissed him.

"How about the bottom of the ocean?"

"Hell to the fuck that."

They resumed walking, and Alejo grumbled, "I am really sick of walking up a sharp incline."

"Can't have a hollow without high edges, the whole mountain/valley thing. Highs and lows."

"Well the highs need to finish up, because this fucking sucks."

They climbed for another hour, which extended their journey quite a bit, because he hadn't been expecting such a steep rise. That didn't seem right to him. There weren't any foothills or mountains in this area.

He had the sinking feeling that if they tried to leave, they wouldn't be able to, even though they were headed explicitly for the altar.

"How do we even know where this stupid thing is, oh lord?"

"We seek it, we will come to it. I'm more concerned about all this mountain climbing in a place that doesn't have mountains."

Alejo drew to a stop at that, blinking slowly as he stared at Bobby.

"That's…concerning."

"It's the least of our concerns, sadly. But one problem at a time. Find the altar, go from there."

Finally, finally, they began to go down, which was almost more difficult than going up, way more likely to lead to slipping and falling. More than once, he had to lean on his primordial powers to keep something tragic from happening, especially when a drizzly rain began to fall. Not enough to get anything soaking wet, but enough to coat everything and make it a hundred times more treacherous.

"I can't wait to never be in this forest ever again."

"Same, my sweet, same."

Alejo sputtered and flushed at the endearment, but before Bobby could tease him further, they abruptly came to what they'd been seeking:

Down at the bottom of a hollow, as everything smoothed out and faded off, save for twisting black and green vines with vibrant yellowish-white thorns that spread all the way across the hollow, stopping short by a few paces to form a perfect circle around an altar.

"Black marble,"

Alejo said.

"Who the hell dragged slabs of marble all the way out here? Sorry, but I don't like you that much."

Bobby laughed so hard and loud he startled the few birds lingering in the creepy space.

"I don't like me that much, and I have arcana to make it easier if I wanted. Marble wouldn't be my choice, which just emphasizes that I didn't have anything to do with this."

He touched his fingertips to the very edge of the altar, shivering as the power in it zipped through him like a low-level current. So sweet. So alluring. Precious devotion, desperate pleading, all for him. They wanted his attention, his power, his—

"Bobby?"

He jerked his hand away, shaking his head as he stumbled back.

"Fuck, I forgot how bad it could be."

"Bad? You looked like you had found the best heroin on the market."

Laughing weakly, Bobby said, "You're not far off. Worship for us is a lot like drugs for humans. Always chasing sweet, delicious worship, all that desperate offering and pleading, so eager."

He shuddered and shook it off.

"Blech, I feel like I need a shower now."

"Who do you think built this? Why?"

"I don't know, and we really need to investigate the altar and the whole area thoroughly before we do anything else, but ultimately we'll have to decide if we leave the altar alone and use it as bait, or destroy it and see what happens."

"I think we should break it,"

Alejo said.

"Whatever's happening, the sooner it stops happening, the better. If we use it as bait, we might encounter something beyond even your capabilities."

That was a terrifying idea, but given the dark itself had been hiding things from him, it was also unfortunately a wholly reasonable idea. "Agreed."