Kelly Gay - The Better Part of Darkness

“Where am I?”

He glanced over his shoulder, his look fierce, like a grizzly giving a big-ass warning. “You’re in the med hold.”

The med hold was a cell in our precinct reserved for wounded criminals. It was outfitted with everything needed to see to the survival of a felon until they could be extradited or transferred to the hospital, depending on their condition.

I didn’t understand. I frowned. Pain shot through my head. I tried to sit up, but couldn’t even make it an inch off the pillow. My wrists were strapped to the bed.

“Relax, Detective.”

“What time is it?”

“About ten-thirty.”

“Emma.” I let my head sink into the pillow. “They have Emma.”

The chief frowned and leaned closer. “Who?”

“Mynogan.”

A voice erupted into laughter behind the chief. He straightened as Otorius stepped next to the bed. Satisfaction dripped from every pore. “She’s obviously delusional,” he said, giving me a menacing smirk. His right arm was in a sling, the wrist covered in thick bandages.

I struggled to sit up again. The heart monitor began to beep faster. A nurse on the other side pushed me back to the mattress. “You need to be still, Detective,” she said.

She leapt back when I kicked at her. I ignored the pain and pushed my stiff body to a sitting position, braced by my palms on the mattress. The effort made me pant, but Otorius was in my crosshairs, and I wished I’d killed him when I had the chance. “You lying sonofabitch,” I ground out and then turned to the chief, wishing my voice would work properly and not come out so slow and slurred. “He’s lying. They took her. Mynogan took her.”

“Do you have any evidence, Charlie?” the chief asked, ignoring the laugh from Otorius.

But I couldn’t ignore it. “How’s your hand, Otorius?”

He lunged for the bed, his face blood-red and seething with anger, but the chief held him back. “You bitch!” He lifted his arm. “I lost my hand! You little fucking whore!”

“That’s enough!” the chief commanded.

My arms shook, too weak to support my weight. I fell back to the bed. Trying to think clearly amid the heavy clouds in my mind was like trying to run up a cliff backward. “Will,” I forced out, “they took her from Will. Killed him. Go to his apartment. You’ll see.” The chief glanced over his shoulder and nodded to an officer standing guard. “A Revenant took over his body. The others. Bryn, Hank … Are they alive?”

“Charlie,” the chief asked more gently than before. “What are you talking about?” I could tell by the softening of his hard expression that the more I tried to explain the more ridiculous it all sounded.

“Didn’t you find them? In the spa. All of them, drugged.”

“We didn’t find anyone except for the victims.”

I frowned. No, that didn’t make sense. They were there. I’d seen them. If only my head would clear! Sluggish, I shook my head and swallowed. “No … Where are they?”

“It may be the pain meds talking,” Doctor Berk said, coming to stand at the foot of the bed.

“It’s not the fucking meds!” Bright rainbow stars of pain flashed behind my eyelids. I jerked against the restraints, grabbing at the chief’s wrist. My vision swam so badly, his features blended to a lump of flesh. “Please help me. I’m not lying.” The chief was like a father to me. And he’d betrayed me. He’d allowed me to be Titus Mott’s lab rat. “How could you, how could you agree to do that to me? You and Titus …”

He gave me a gentle pat on my hand and a reassuring squeeze. “We’ll talk about that later, Charlie. You need to rest now.”

“She will stand trial as soon as we can set a date,” Otorius said tightly.

“The only place she’s going is to the hospital as soon as I can arrange it. You never should have brought her here like some criminal.”

“She is a criminal!”

“And I say she’s not. Not until my investigation is complete.” The chief stepped toward the Abaddon representative, standing toe-to-toe with him. “Let me get one thing straight, this is my detective and my precinct. I don’t take orders from you. We do this by the book. You get me?”

“If we did this by the book, she would have been brought in days ago, before more of my countrymen died, and I lost my hand!”

The chief’s voice was low and deadly. “And I didn’t have a warrant a few days ago.”

The room grew silent, and I imagined the chief was using his infamous stare down. I smiled slightly as I heard a low curse and the door open. “You have no idea who or what you’re dealing with,” Otorius said in a serious, even tone. “There’s more than one monster in this city.” The door closed.

“I need a moment alone,” the chief said tiredly, his steps growing louder as he approached the bed. A chair scraped across the floor as two sets of footsteps, Doc Berk’s and the nurse’s, faded away behind the click of the door.

My heavy eyelids opened again as he sat down and regarded me with a mixture of annoyance and caring. He shook his head. “You’ve got this entire department into one hell of a mess.” I opened my mouth, but he cut me off. “I know, I know. It wasn’t you, right? Doesn’t matter, Charlie. We’re under a microscope right now.” He sat back, letting out a huge sigh. “Did you have to go and massacre eight Charbydons and an Elysian mage?” He rubbed his face. “This isn’t like you.”

“He was a black mage,” I mumbled and then took a deep breath. “Go to Mynogan’s bath house, and you’ll see. It’s grown there. Then it goes to the Lion’s Den. Tennin, he has a bunch of it. You’ll see. You’ll find the ash . We need those flowers for an antidote or all of them … they won’t wake up.”

He pinched the bridge of his nose. “Mynogan is running for city council, Charlie. And Grigori Tennin …”

“Is a murderer and a drug dealer,” I slurred, growing tired. I closed my eyes. “You scared of him?”

“Hell, no, I ain’t scared of him. Goddammit,” he sighed. “Look, I’ll check into it. And if Hank and the others have gone off the radar like you say … well, the fuck if I know, but we’ll figure something out.”

“Just get me out of here, Chief.”

He eyed me for a hard second. “Can’t do that. You don’t think I’m under the gun? I’m already up shit’s creek for pulling strings at Deer Isle because of your asinine bargain with Tennin. If you go free now, it’ll be the end of my career, and I sure as shit won’t be able to help you then.”

“I don’t care about your damn job right now,” I spat.

The chief walked to the door and stopped. “You’re the biggest piece of trouble I’ve ever known, Madigan.”

“Yeah, I know,” I whispered on a faint breath.

When he was gone, I relaxed back into the thin mattress, body limp and out of breath. I needed to heal, but my wounds were much worse this time around, and all I wanted was to slip back into unconsciousness. My body and mind begged me to. Maybe just a little nap.

No!

God, no. I couldn’t. There wasn’t time.

I let my eyelids close and remembered my conversation with Aaron. Be calm. Both Charbydons and Elysians had the power to heal. It was inside of me somewhere. The dark power and the light. I realized at that moment, I’d relied mostly on the dark, had used every ounce in me. But the Elysian power, I’d barely tapped. And I knew just how to do it.

Emma.

All I had to do was imagine her in my mind and she was there. Drawing on our bond, I freed my emotions, all the warmth and love. Her smile lit the darkest part of my soul. The sound of her laughter filled me with joy and peace. And her love for me was absolute, and so damn humbling. I’d sacrifice the world and more for her.