Page 2 of The Darkening (The Darkening)

Something shifts in the alley across the street, but nothing emerges. My heart pounds and moss squelches underfoot as I tread forward, meeting the hungry-flat eyes of a woman huddled against a pile of rubble. Her coarse, saffron-colored clothes are worn and torn, her overdress tattered, her shawl full of holes. Her arms tighten around a small figure—a little round-cheeked girl.

“Come on!” I wave, gesturing at the door.

She pulls her child closer. I grit my teeth. Maybe it’s fear paralyzing them, but my coin’s on prejudice. The superstitious don’t like waltzing into a home full of stormtouched.

An inhuman scream like a thunderclap cuts through the wind, over the peals of the stormbells. An unearthly chorus follows—the calls of the lion-stormbeast’s entourage, the smaller beasts that’ve followed it out of the Storm. The hairs on the back of my neck stand up.

“Hurry!” I shout. The child twists in her mother’s arms, peeling back her shawl and meeting my eyes.

A shadow passes over me, a spear-wielding, cloak-clad shadow. The Wardana lands on our street, some six houses down—that’s way too close, we have to get insidenow—but the mother just cowers against the wall. Does she want to die? Does she want to be dragged into the Storm?

Through her mother’s arms, the kid looks up at me with golden eyes. I glance over my shoulder at my footprints leading back to the door—just ten steps, and I’ll be safe inside.

But if I go inside and shut the door, any harm that comes to this girl might as well be my fault. Though, if I go after them and get killed in the process, Pa’ll spend the whole of the afterlife calling me mossbrained.

Well, I’m used to that.

Pushing off, I sprint toward the two of them as fast as my legs will take me. I track the Wardana out of the corner of my eye, catching flashes of blood-red leather and a pale blue glow from some kind of ikon.

The alley closes in around me, cutting off my view. The kid’s mother steps in front of her little girl as if protecting her from me. “Listen, there’s a safe place through that door,” I say in one breath. “You can’t stay out here, the beasts are too close.”

Her gaze flicks down to her kid, to the scales peeking from under her sleeves. Not prejudiced, then. Just stormtouched and scared.

I soften my tone. “I promise we won’t hurt you.”

The mother nods, and I grip her freezing hand in mine. The girl holds tight to her mother’s waist as I drag them at a run out of the alley.

I stumble to a stop at the alley’s mouth, my shoes skidding on mist-moistened moss, and throw out a hand to hold them back. Across the street, Pa stands in the open door, his face a mask of terror.

A spider-shaped stormbeast click-clacks across the street between me and Pa. It’s the closest I’ve ever been to one. Its bulbous body is made of the same substance as the Storm—black cloudsmoke that churns endlessly in whorls and loops—and its eight bulging eyes spark with violet lightning.

It stands a good two feet taller than me, making it probably the runt of the litter. But that’s little comfort as it snaps its pincers, tasting the air.

It turns to me, opening its maw.

My heartbeat quickens. There’s only one thing I can do. What Ma would’ve done.

“Go around it,” I tell the woman, shoving her forward when she hesitates. “I’ll distract it. Go!”

I sprint to the pile of rubble in the alley’s mouth and heave up a slab the size of my head, swinging it at the beast. It bats it away with one leg and click-clacks toward me with the other seven, clumsily, drunkenly, like a baby learning to walk. A terrifying baby with eight hairy legs.

Focus, Vesper. What was all your work stealing scraps of ikonomancy for, if not this? You’ve practiced. You must know an ikon for this. Anything.

Anything.

Thoughts dart through my mind as I back up. I shove my hand in my pocket, finding a stub of charcoal from the fire. With a shaking hand, I draw the first ikon that comes to mind, a basic ikon for light. A flare of light flashes the second I complete the ikon.

The beast falters for just a heartbeat.

My hand shakes. An elementary ikon for fire rises in my mind’s eye—but there’s too much moisture in the air for it to do anything but spark. I discard a half dozen more in the space of a breath. I have nothing.

The stormbeast fills my vision with its swirling-smoke body. Pa was right. I’m no hero. There’s nothing I can do. I should’ve stayed inside.

Its pincers snap at me, and my back hits a wall.

My knees buckle, and I slide down the wall, catching a glimpsefrom under the beast’s midsection of the street. I let out a breath, relief expanding in my chest, as the mother and her kid reach the safety of Amma’s.

But someone else steps out. Pa strides forth, armed with a pen in one hand and a kitchen knife in the other. A circular ikon glints on the blade. Everything slows.