Dark Descent: The Arondight Codex - Book One by R Nicole (best books to read all time TXT) 📗

The other night? He must mean the spider demon. I stared after him as he spun on his heel and stalked away, his boots thumping against the carpet.

“Scarlett.”

I turned back to Greer, who was holding the door open for me. “Why isn’t he allowed to come?”

“Wilder’s involvement at the Sanctum is governed under a strict set of guidelines. They do not extend here.”

“Oh…” Looking back down the corridor, I saw that he’d already disappeared.

Stepping inside the room, I swallowed hard when I saw a scary-looking chair in the middle of what looked like one of those Victorian-era operating theatres I saw at a museum once. The restraints were bad enough on their own, but the bench seating? Whatever happened here was a spectator sport.

“I understand you’ve already met Brax and Ramona,” Greer said, gesturing to the other people waiting. “This is Aldrich. Along with Brax and myself, we make up the governing council for the London Sanctum. Ramona is the head of our medical team.”

“There’s more than one Sanctum?”

She smiled, gesturing for me to sit on the scary-looking chair. “Many more. Demons know no bounds, and neither do we.”

I eased onto the chair, eyeing the restraints, but no one made a move to put them on me. It alleviated my stress slightly to know there might not be any agonised thrashing in my near future.

“How are you feeling?” the man Greer had introduced as Aldrich asked. He had kind eyes and a fatherly presence about him that made me ease back into the scary chair.

“Tired. Overwhelmed. Pick your adjective,” I replied.

He smiled, his eyes crinkling with thready crow’s feet. I wondered how old he was, though he certainly looked older than anyone else I’d seen around here.

“Discovering another world existing alongside the one you already know is much to take in,” he agreed. “Not to mention the adventures you’ve had.”

“I’m not sure adventure is the right word.”

Brax snorted and leaned back in his chair. I decided I didn’t like him, and it wasn’t all about the way he’d greeted Wilder and I when we’d first arrived. No, Brax had a look on his face that said it all—old-school way of thinking, disapproval at having humans in their secret Natural hidey-hole, possible dislike of women who have any hint of a backbone. The list went on.

“What we want to do today,” Greer began as she folded gracefully onto her chair, “is to determine the source of your apparent ability, and why the Infernal was so interested in you.”

I nodded, already knowing the overlying reason I was sitting in the scary chair. Though I was wary of the underlying motives for the poking and prodding. I didn’t know this world, which made the three people in front of me dangerous and unpredictable. I felt like I owed a little to Ramona since she had saved Jackson’s soul and all.

“The scar on your face,” Brax began, cutting right to the chase.

“I don’t know how I got it,” I replied before the question could go any further. “It’s something I’ve always had.”

“There’s no way of discerning what made the mark,” Ramona verified. “It’s too old to scry.”

“Scry?” I asked. “What’s that?”

“It’s a technique used to determine how a wound was made,” the doctor explained. “In some cases, the information can be invaluable for treatment.”

I wasn’t keen to learn about what nasty demon-like creatures required specialised medicines, so I let it slide. They couldn’t tell me anything about my scar anyway.

“You mentioned that you don’t remember your parents,” Greer said. “How old were you when they died?”

“What do they have to do with this?” I asked, squirming in the chair.

“In most cases, Light is inherited, but as you know—”

“I wasn’t made,” I declared. “I haven’t been experimented on or whatever. I’m just normal.” My whine sounded lame, even to me.

“Your abilities have come from somewhere,” Aldrich said. “We’re merely attempting to find the cause. We’re not trying to harm or humiliate, but to help you, Scarlett.” He knelt before me and smiled, his eyes warm. “Anything you could tell us could help determine why the Infernal targeted you.”

The line between trust and answers was so fine that I was having trouble keeping on one side or the other.

“I… I have dreams,” I began, my throat constricting, “of my parents.”

“What are in these dreams?”

“I… I must be three or four years old. My mother asked me to hide…” I glanced at Greer, who nodded. “I was in a box, and it was dark… so dark.”

“Then what happened?”

I shook my head, the image of my dead parents too confronting. My eyes began to fill with tears and all I wanted to do was crawl back into that box. It was dark, safe, and nothing could get in. The recollection always brought me to my knees, like their death was my defining moment. My breath caught and my throat twisted and burned, my eyes filled with tears.

“Scarlett…” Aldrich soothed, “can you tell us what happened next?”

“There were sounds,” I said haltingly. “Thumps, cries… Then the lid opened. There was a man I’d never seen before. His eyes were white and his teeth… they seemed to go on forever. Sets of razor-sharp points over sets of more razor-sharp points. He lifted me out…” I glanced at them, hesitating. What happened next was a purple flash of light. What it did, I didn’t know, but I knew it was linked to the colour Wilder’s arondight blade had ignited with when I’d activated it. He hadn’t seemed to mention it to anyone, and I was loathed to as well.

“And?” Aldrich prodded.

“Nothing,” I replied. “Then nothing.”

“Scarlett, I believe you just described what we call a Balan,” Brax said.

“I don’t know what that is.”

“A Balan is a greater demon with the power to take on a human form without the aid of possession,” Greer said looking thoughtful.

“But I…” I swallowed hard, then tried again. “But I’ve never seen a demon or anything until the other night. Wilder tried to