Лорел Гамильтон - Cerulean Sins

"Yeah," I said, "I'm sure of that."

"Why?" he asked, eyes wide.

I blinked at him as the soft, white luminosity grew brighter in the tree shadows, almost invisible in full sunlight, over and over again. "Because I believe," I said, voice soft as the glow around my neck, and as sure. I'd seen crosses burst into a white-hot light so bright it was blinding, but that was when I'd been face-to-face with a vamp that meant me harm. Belle was far away, and the glow showed that.

I kept waiting for the scent of roses to grow stronger again, but it never did. It stayed faint, definitely there, but didn't grow on the air.

I waited for Belle's voice in my head, but it didn't come. Every time she had spoken directly in my mind, the smell of roses had been thick. The sweet perfume stayed faint, and Belle's voice was gone from me. I squeezed the cross with my hand, feeling the heat, the power of it, skin prickling up my arm, thrumming like a continuous heartbeat against my hand. Caleb asked how could I believe. What I always wanted to ask, is, how can you not believe?

I felt Belle's anger like warmth on the air. Power filled the Jeep, in a neck-ruffling, breath-stealing tide, so much effort and all she could send was an image of herself sitting in front of her dressing table. Her long, black hair was unbound, like a cloak around a dressing gown of gold and black. She watched herself in the mirror with eyes full of honey-fire, like the eyes of the blind, empty except for the color of her power.

I whispered out loud, "You cannot touch me, not now."

She looked into the mirror as if I were standing behind her, and she could see me. Rage changed her beauty into something frightening, a mere mask of pale beauty that looked as false as any Halloween mask. Then she turned and looked past me, beyond me, and the look of fear on her face was so real, so unexpected that I turned, too, and I saw… something.

Darkness. Darkness like a wave, rising up, up over me, over us, like a liquid mountain towering to the impossibly tall sky. The room that Belle had constructed of dreams and power collapsed, shredded like the dream it was, and what ate at the corners of that bright candlelit room was darkness. Darkness absolute, darkness so black that it held shines of other colors, like an oil slick, or a trick of the eye. As if this blackness was a darkness made up of every color that had ever existed, every sight that had ever been seen, every sigh, every scream, since time began. I had heard the term primordialdarkness, but until this moment I had never understood what it meant. Now I understood, I truly understood, and I despaired.

I stared up, up at an ocean of darkness that rose above me as if the earth and sky had never existed. This was darkness before the light, before the word of God. It was like a breath of an older creation. But if this was creation, it was nothing I could understand, nothing I wanted to understand.

Belle screamed first. I think I was too awestruck to scream, or even to be afraid. I looked into the primordial abyss, the first darkness, and knew despair, but not fear.

My mind kept trying to find words to describe what it was. It did loom over me like a mountain, because it had weight and that claustrophobic feel of a mountain poised to come crashing down, but it was not a mountain. It was more like an ocean, if an ocean could have risen up taller than the tallest mountain and stood before you, waiting, defying gravity and every other known law of physics. Like with an ocean, I knew—could sense—that I only saw that wide glimpse from shore, that I could only begin to guess at the depth and width, the unthinkable fathoms of darkness that lay before me.

Did strange creatures swim inside it? Were there things within the dark that only nightmares or dreams could reveal? I watched the flickering, liquid dark and felt the numbness of despair begin to wear away. It was as if the despair had been a shield to protect me, to numb me, so that my mind wouldn't break. For a few moments I had been intellect, thinking, What is it? How can I make sense of it? The numbness began to recede as if that huge blackness sucked it away, fed on it. I was left standing before her, her… trembling, shaking, my skin running cold, and I felt that darkness sucking at me, feeding off my warmth. In that moment I knew what I faced. It was a vampire. Maybe the very first vampire, something so ancient, that to think of human bodies or flesh to contain this darkness was laughable. She was the primordial dark made real. She was why humans feared the dark, just the darkness, not what lies in the dark, not what hides there, but why we fear the darkness itself. There was a time when she walked among us, fed on us, and when darkness falls, somewhere in the back of our skulls, we remember the hungry dark.

That shining ocean of blackness reached out towards me, and I knew that if it touched me, I would die. I couldn't turn away, couldn't run, because you can't run from the dark, not really. The light does not last. That last thought wasn't mine. Wasn't Belle's.

I stared up at the darkness as it began to bend over me, and knew it lied. It's the dark that doesn't last. Dawn comes and slays the darkness, not the other way around. If I could have found enough air, I would have screamed, but I was left with only a whisper. The darkness bent towards me, and I couldn't shoot it, or hit it, and I didn't have enough personal psychic power to keep her at bay. I did the only thing I could think of, I prayed.

I whispered, "Hail Mary, full of Grace, the Lord is with thee…" the darkness hesitated, "Blessed are you among women, and Blessed is the fruit of thy womb," the faintest of shivers ran through the liquid dark, "Holy Mary, Mother of God, pray for us…" There was suddenly light in the darkness. My cross was around my neck in the dreamscape. The metal shone like a captive star, shining and white, and unlike in real life, I could see beyond the brilliance of it. I watched that pure, white light chase back the dark.

I was suddenly aware of the car seat, the seat belt across my chest, Nathaniel's body wrapped around my legs. The cross around my neck was glowing hot white even in sunlight, so that I had to look away from it, and still the white, white light blurred my vision. The cross wouldn't have still been burning if the danger had past. I waited for the Mother of all Darkness to make her next move.

The air in the Jeep was suddenly soft, sweet, like the perfect summer night, when you can smell every blade of grass, every leaf, every flower, like a scented blanket that wraps you in air softer than cashmere, lighter than silk, a sweet blanket of air.

My throat suddenly felt cooler, as if I'd taken a sip of cold water. I could feel it coating my throat, and there was a faint under-taste, like jasmine.

Nathaniel buried his face in my lap to protect his eyes from the light. It was like wearing a white sun around my neck.

"Shit," Jason said, "I'm having trouble seeing the road. Can you tone it down?"

The world was full of white halos, and I didn't dare turn my head to look at him. The scent of night was all I could smell as if everything else had vanished. I could almost redrink the cool, perfumed water that coated my throat. So real, so overwhelmingly real. I managed to whisper, "No."

I kept waiting for words in my head, but there was nothing but silence, and the smell of a summer night, the taste of cool water, and the growing sense that something large was drawing nearer. It was like standing on the train tracks, when you feel that first vibration down the metal lines, and you know you should get off, but you can't see anything. As far as you can look, the tracks are clear, there's only that metallic vibration, like a pulse beat against your feet, to let you know that several tons of steel are hurtling towards you. People die every year on train tracks, and often their dying words are I didn't see the train. I've always thought that trains must be magical that way, or otherwise people would see them, and get the fuck off the tracks. I could feel the vibration of her rushing towards me, and I would gladly have gotten off the tracks, but the tracks were inside my head, nailed across my body, and I couldn't figure out how to run from that.