Dark Prince
Dark Prince
Russell Moon
Contents
CHAPTER 1
CHAPTER 2
CHAPTER 3
CHAPTER 4
CHAPTER 5
CHAPTER 6
CHAPTER 7
CHAPTER 8
Copyright
About the Publisher
CHAPTER
1
It is so ungodly hot. It is hot enough that, while I am most certainly awake, opening my eyes seems like too much effort. I feel the trickles of sweat running from my hairline along the sides of my face, under my ears, to the hard ground beneath my head.
I reach fingers to my temples, reading myself like braille, keeping my eyes closed still, because yes, it is too hot. But more than that, I don’t want to see anything.
I’m not in the hospital. I think I was in the hospital last I checked, but I am not there now.
I smell pine. There was no pine smell in the hospital. There was antiseptic smell in the hospital, but no pine. And there was a pillow under my head.
I know, and I know I know. My head is supported by a thin and unhelpful bed of pine needles and ancient dead leaves. I know this smell, I know this feeling, I know this place.
Finally I open my eyes and stare up through the green rocket skyscraper view of tall trees growing away from me toward the white sky just as fast as they can.
I’m in the woods. In my Port Caledonia woods, at the foot of my tree. Goddamn these woods. There is no natural reason for me to have wound up here, but always, at the best and worst of times, it happens. All roads lead here. I will almost surely die here.
But this time I have no idea how I got here.
“You moved yourself.”
A tremor—unexpected, violent—runs up and down my body. I know the voice. It is not far off. High up somewhere, he’s looking down on me, but I cannot see him. And, not more than a minute into consciousness, I wish I were asleep again. Forever, if it would only keep me away from this particular man. This man who I just met, but who is not a stranger and never has been.
“Christ, it was a rhetorical question!” I scream. Will I never be rid of you? Will I never again have a private moment? Will I never again have a thought in my head that is not simultaneously in somebody else’s?
Nothing. The air is so still and sticky I could be underwater or wrapped in ten inches of Cling Wrap. Now he doesn’t want to answer.
“Fine. Don’t say anything. I don’t care.”
I do care, of course. I moved myself here—though I don’t remember doing it—and it’s the why I want him to answer. Why did I move myself here, of all places? Why am I lying here in my woods? The closest I get to an explanation is when I put my nose to the wind.
I can smell her. This, as odd as anything that has happened to me, I am sure of. One of the gifts, the powers—the curses—coming to me now—in addition to the “moving,” which has been with me longer—is that I can scent, probably as well as any bloodhound. And right now, my senses are filled with my Jules, my late and lovely Jules. My Jules, who was at the bottom of the river last time I saw her, before the darkness and the waking up in the hospital. That she is dead I can no longer doubt.
I don’t even get back up to human posture. I keep low to the ground. I crawl, I watch, and I snuffle the twenty, thirty yards that take me to the spot where only so long ago we were here, me and Jules, on the rightest night ever—the night that went so completely, insanely wrong.
This is the epicenter of the dark universe that was born that night. And the smell, with its potent Jules essence, is so powerful it almost overwhelms me. It triggers magic and memory, obliterating my fear and unearthing the anguish and confusion of the very moment where good turned to bad; passion turned to rage; perfect, undeniable Tightness and ecstasy turned to menace; and I did what I did.
The cusp of wonder and evil is this spot. Where I brought the world’s loveliest, finest creature, where I loved her, where I lost it but good, and maybe worse.
It’s Jules’s hair that has led me here—her gorgeous, thick, dark-goddess mane. Here on the ground, at the tip of my rotten nose, is the finest shank, two score of hairs at best, fallen on this very spot on that very night.
This is all of her, all I have. Her body, now probably well out to sea, is far beyond my reach, beyond where I can ever properly pay my respects or lay her to rest.
This will have to do. It is the best I can do, the most I can do. It is, I realize, why I’m here.
I get to my feet at last, and I hold the hairs to my nose as I walk slowly back to the tree. My tree. Where Chuck and I took those first sorry steps that led us into this thing. Where the whole screwy journey began, leaving everything comprehensible behind, leaving Jules underwater, leaving me in the hospital, leaving me, once again, right here.
It is no mistake that I landed back here, flat on my ass and dripping with sweat.
I am sorry, Jules. I will say it as many ways as I can, as many times as I can, for as long as I am unlucky enough to live.
I will say it, starting with this.
I drop to my knees. Carefully I lay aside the lock of Jules’s hair, and I begin to dig like a dog. Madly, wildly, I churn away, flinging up dirt, letting the earth cake under my fingernails. I feel one nail tear away, see the speckles of blood fly with everything else, but I do not stop, do not care to stop. The hole, as it opens up before me, is big, now gaping, larger than it possibly should be, growing as if my hands were steel claws at the ends of diesel-digger arms. The sweat is pouring off me now, cascading off me. I hear myself breathing heavily, unhealthily, panting, wheezing, a dog’s wheezing, as the hole grows, deepens, widens with frightening speed. The wheezing doubles and Chuck suddenly appears beside me, acting like a dog, which he is, and we dig and we dig and we move earth and we send it flying, disappearing somewhere behind us, and we dig and we pant and I sweat and by Christ I sweat.
And we stop. We pant and pant and stare into the hole we have made.
“This is it, Chuck,” I say to the hole, because I can’t at the moment look him in his face. “We have to put her away. We have to put her to rest, put it … well, right.”
Even Chuck’s droopy, magnificent face can’t hide the absurdity of that.
“I know,” I say “You think I don’t know?” It will never be right. Nothing will ever be right again. From this moment on, we are only talking about bits of tightness, degrees of Tightness, because nothing better than that is within reach.
I turn away, reach down, and gently scoop up Jules’s hair. I lean way over the hole once more.” ‘Bye, love,” I say, reaching down, down further. I could have let go by now. I could have simply dropped the hairs, scattered the hairs, and been done with it. Instead I am holding on. I am flat now, down on my belly, reaching over as far as I can, down into the hole, wanting to keep the beautiful hairs one more, two more milliseconds.
Until finally I let go, with my feeble benediction. “I am so sorry, Jules. Sorrier than ever. But less sorry than I will yet be.”
“Acceptance,” the voice says right in my ear. I whip to the side, but there is nobody next to me. Not even Chuck, anymore. “This is good,” the voice says. “This is progress.”
So much for a decent period of mourning.
I pull back from the hole and sit. Chuck has left me. I don’t know where he’s gone; I don’t know when he left; I don’t know how long I’ve been here staring, after the release, after the letting go and letting be. But with nothing to grasp at, no tangible reason for my fear but a floating voice, there’s nothing left but to get back to work.
I start filling the hole back in.
“You needed to return here, to be shown things in their proper light. To come to terms, Marcus,” the voice s
ays.
“I have a few terms for you, bastard,” I spit, furiously going about my work. I suddenly feel, right or wrong, like he is responsible for everything, like my magic connection is all down to him and that it is that very connection that is wholly responsible for all the bad in my life, all the bad in the goddamn world. I want to be left alone, and more than anybody anywhere ever, this son of a bitch will not leave me alone. Now I am starting to feel pain. The middle finger on my right hand, I notice, holding it up like I’m testing the wind and flipping it the bird at the same time, is pretty well shredded from when I tore the nail. But the bleeding, at least, has stopped.
Little wonder. There would seem to be no blood left in my hand—and half my arm, it is so white. Alabaster in color and texture.
“You’ve been bleeding,” he says.
“Care to join me?”
It’s a game, I’m learning, that he and I play. He pretends he has some sort of twisted compassion for me, and I pretend I’m not scared shitless of him. I still cannot see him.
“Nasty injury.”
“Listen,” I say, keeping the finger aloft so he can be sure to see it, wherever he is, “my blood is not your concern. Now get out of here before I turn you into a toad or something.”
I am just beginning to laugh at myself and at the irony of my situation—I fear I may be going mad—when I get a response, but not one I’d ever have asked for.
The ground beneath me begins to rumble. My knees bounce off the hard earth as though it were a tribal drum. I lean on my hands, but they begin to buzz with motion and I have to pull them up. I jump to my feet and stagger with the rumbling and with my own dizziness, because I am up too fast; I am out too far; I am lost and untethered and once again out of my senses. As much as I understand senses.
I cling to a tree. It shakes me off.
Hold on, Marcus, I think, hold on or go down. Hold on.
Hold on. Wait a minute. Hold on.
If I am lucid and this crazy business is really still happening, then I am still It, right? The Prince, the Boss, the King or Chairman of the Board or whatever, and by all accounts on the subject, this forest is mine.
“Stop this now!” I scream, as loud as I can.
It stops. Momentarily. As if to get my attention, and then point out that I am not, as I’d thought, in charge of anything.
The ground is mad, crazy again, shaking under my feet. There is a low, primeval roar going along with it, and I drop to the ground, no longer willing to fight, willing only now to watch as Chuck darts like an arrow across my field of vision, in the distance, through the woods—clearly in fear for his life.
And not quite at his heels is the man. Fast, yet cool, floating, sizzling in my sights. He is gone, and then back, over there, then gone again, giving me flashes of himself all over my woods.
Bastard. Bastard man, go away, bastard man.
“I can’t,” he says. “All I want is what any father wants.”
“I’ll send you a bottle of Old Spice. Go to hell,” I say.
“I’m not going to hell, nor anywhere else,” he says calmly. “I am here to be with my son.”
What do I do with him?
“Do what you will, do what you can, whatever you can. If you wish to challenge me …”
“I wish.”
“You do, I know.”
“When I figure out exactly what I’m capable of …”
The earth rumbles harder and roars louder, as if to compete with the words. But nothing can compete with the words, his or mine.
“You are capable of anything. You are a killer.” He says it with strength but without satisfaction.
“Shut your mouth!” I scream.
“You are a monster,” he says evenly.
“Shut up!” I scream, and the woods and waters and sky scream back. My ears are ringing with all of it. My dog is staggering back toward me, banging into trees, cowering. The hole I have dug for my beloved is now closing in on itself as I watch, horrified, not wanting it to close up at all now, or at least not without me in it.
“You are not my father,” I yell into the quaking trees, “and you are not God and you are not Satan. You are not even a man. You are nothing.”
This, apparently, is enough. The storm does not stop—at least, not fully. But I can hear now, and I can see straight. The roar is now muted to a sort of giant’s murmur, and the trembling trees are merely being tossed by a moderate wind.
Chuck, however, is not convinced. With a doggy howl, he peels off into the distance behind me as, from far off, I see my bastard of a father walking, snaking toward me through the winding woods.
He is all sinew and menace with his graceful, effortless motions. It is as much the case that the trees adjust to avoid him as the other way around. From far away I am already locked and trapped within that gaze of his, as if his eyes are way ahead and will get here minutes before he does.
His eyes are like mine, only something more: awful, soul-searing, gray-green mismatched eyes.
Before I can move so much as a lash, he is up to me, on me, inside me. I reel backward, but I do not think it’s possible to reel away.
“Up till now,” he says, in a voice both oil and vinegar, crowding around and inside me, “it has all been introduction. Easing you in. Waking your sleepy head. You are awake now, and aware of the powers we are dealing with. Your boyhood is over. Everything will be different from now on. Everything gets serious now.”
He pauses. I don’t know if it is a courteous effort to let me respond or a more sinister move to terrify me further, but it doesn’t even matter. While my face is positively running with the sweat of a million billion wide-open pores, my mouth is dry enough to store gunpowder. Speech is not an option. He has me scared witless.
“Hate it if you must, but you are looking at your father. And it is because of this happy fact that you are alive at this moment. Because with this”—he holds up one long, thin index finger that needs more than a little trimming and cleaning—“I could and would end it all for you, for less than what you’ve already dared say to me.”
There is a point, obviously, where you become as frightened as it is possible to be. Then you either die right there, explode from the horrific tension of it all, or else …
Or else.
What?
Here I am, as scared as scared can be. There is no beyond this, there is no scareder, no sadder, no worse.
And right here, right now, bang in the center of it, I find out. I feel something rise up inside me. Something I had not known was there. Something different from the logical assurance I offered myself moments ago, of being Prince. The feeling defies logic. For a moment, it overtakes me.
“Eat me,” I hear myself say, mere inches from the terrifying face, from the threatening finger.
He continues to stare his mismatched stare.
“Eat me. Drink me, Alice,” I say, with a courage and recklessness that’s as foreign to me as Mandarin Chinese. And as I say it, I hold up my own long, pointed index finger near his face.
He stares at my hand as though it had twelve fingers.
Then he laughs.
This goes on for several seconds. I wait for it to stop. It does not stop. It’s not funny. What the hell is so funny?
I lower the finger. Now I have a fist.
Bang.
I crack him, right on the bridge of the nose. There is blood now, sprayed all over. His hand covers his nose and he stands there, frozen, as if contemplating the whole thing.
Serves him right. He made me do it. Serves him right.
“Serves you right,” I say, anxiously. “You made me do it. You don’t want to make me have to do that again, but I will.”
What I want—and I don’t care how I achieve it—is what I feel right now: to feel stronger than him. To be the aggressor, the hard man, the young buck. I don’t care if it comes from magic or a kick in the nuts or a game of chess.
I bask in this feeling. For a few seconds.
He drops his hand from his face.
Oh God. It is fine. He points at my hand, by my side.
Oh God. Absolutely spurting blood. It looks like I punched the sharp edge of a machete. Shredded, my knuckles are, straight across. He continues laughing, standing there with his fists on his hips. The bridge of his nose is a little reddened, as if he has a slight cold, nothing more.
“Shut up,” I say. I step toward him. He acts as if he doesn’t notice. I step again, again. My fists, the normal one and the hamburger one, are up and ready.
Just as I get in range and rear back, his hand flies off his hip the way a switchblade shoots from its case. That finger of his, that damned, damnable finger, is likewise up like a blade and at my throat. He has managed not only to jab deeply but to work that finger in and around the large, horsey muscle at the front of my neck without even breaking skin.
Pain like no other pain. I throw myself to my knees, first trying uselessly to break his grip, then trying more desperately to remain as motionless as humanly possible, to minimize the pain.
Which will in no way be minimized.
“Please?” I manage to gargle, “Please?”
He stands over me, feet spread wide, the expression on his face halfway between boredom and sadness. Then he leans almost imperceptibly, a fraction of an inch, down toward me. I have gone back to struggling, clutching, scratching, grabbing at the one hand he is bothering to use on me.
He holds me, in his hand, in his gaze, for a second more and gives me a good shake for good measure, sending a shock of pain up through my neck, my face, my scalp, my brain, before dumping me in the dirt at his feet.
He looks down at me, then at his hand, which is crisscrossed red, white, and pink from my clawing him, from my bleeding on him.
He licks his hand, cleaning it like a cat.
I don’t care what he does, as long as he leaves me alone.
“You’ll have to stop that,” he says.
“Stop what?”
“The bleeding. You can’t be bleeding like that. You’re going to need your blood, your strength. Going to need all you can get, in fact.”