DARK SOULS (Dark Souls Series) (4 page)

“Need help choosing?”

I startled at the sound of the voice, but recovered quickly. Even though the music continued to pulse, I heard him, crystal clear.

I turned, wondering who was the source of the voice I could hear so brilliantly, but relaxed as I saw it was just Macy’s boyfriend, Rob Morrow.

“Oh, hey,” I greeted him, as if nothing were wrong and my body wasn’t tense and vibrating like a thousand violin strings tangled up in knots. And my stomach... my stomach had begun clenching and retracting painfully.

His pale green eyes softened when I looked at him. He reached up and brushed a hand through his sandy, unkempt hair, looking through the open doorway to where Macy stood, still determined to implement her plans for me. He smiled before he asked, “So, Macy’s on the prowl for you again, huh?”

Despite my physical discomfort, it occurred to me just how perfect such a nice guy was for Macy’s antics. They were complete opposites, yet their traits balanced each other out. His patience coupled with her liveliness, well, it meant he tolerated and trusted everything about her, something that was probably needed when dating such an unpredictable firecracker. Rob’s patience also translated into an understanding of her. Like right now, when he just assumed his girlfriend was chatting up a hot guy for her best friend’s benefit. Who knew guys like this even existed anymore?

“Of course,” I said, cringing a little at the fake enthusiasm in my voice. “She won’t stop until she’s succeeded in conquering me.” I leaned my right arm on the counter, hoping to quell my shaking.

“Right, so her hopes and dreams of double dating can finally come true.” He smiled again, his gaze finally settling on me. “Let me make you a drink, and we can maybe grab some air. You look like you might need it.”

“That’d be great,” I said, with huge relief.

“Nick’s got an amazing rooftop. You want to go up there for a bit?”

“Yep. Sure.”

I watched him pour the drinks, my silence making both of us uncomfortable, but all I freaking wanted to do was escape this place. My knees were shaking, my legs wobbling. If I lifted my fingers, I knew I’d see them trembling. Instead, I kept them pressed to my side, silently begging Rob to hurry the hell up. As soon as he finished, I swooped in behind him, following him through the crowd and ditching my heels as soon as we hit the stairs.

We weaved and hopped around splayed bodies as we walked up three flights, but it ended up being so incredibly worth it when I reached the blessed coolness of the night. The rain had stopped, leaving only freshly saturated air, and I breathed in deep, pressing a hand to my racing heart.

Panic attack?
I thought, staring up into the night sky, the city lights obscuring the stars above me.

I breathed easier as my heart rate slowed, my body sagging gratefully against the cold stone barricade. I closed my eyes, finally relaxing as whatever had grabbed hold of me in the living room quietly abated.

“It’s closed for renovations, so you don’t have to worry about anyone else coming up. The family’s building a roof deck or something.”

I hadn’t even noticed the dark tarps that were drifting in the wind, or the metal beams splayed haphazardly across the stone floor. Nor did I even register that we were alone.

 “Here you are,” Rob said behind me, handing me a drink.

“Thanks,” I said, truly grateful as I took the drink from him and lifted it to my lips, allowing the cold liquid to slide down my suddenly parched throat. I was even more grateful when I realized it was just lemon-lime soda. “I really needed this.”

Rob smiled, and I caught his eye as I lowered my cup. I couldn’t help but smile back at his sincerity, my thoughts shifting to how lucky Macy was to have such a sweet, thoughtful guy, one who even went out of his way to make sure your friend was feeling okay.

“Guess you’re not liking the match-up too much,” he said, breaking eye contact and resting his forearms against the stone balustrade overlooking the rooftops.

I shifted with him and faced the view, the overcast sky blanketing the row of brownstones in front of us. I watched as lighted windows were flicked into darkness. The quiet neighborhood of Fort Greene was slowly drifting off to sleep, and I was ready to follow suit.

“Not really,” I said. “I’ve been feeling a little weird lately.”

“Yeah, I could tell. You’re even quieter than usual,” he said, glancing over at me, then flushed when he realized he tried to make a joke.

I wished I could reply to him with ease, but I was seriously
un
easy, my confusion only adding to my strain. Rob seemed to catch onto my discomfort and rested his hand lightly on my shoulder.

“You can talk to me, you know.” He said it so quietly that I could barely hear his words. I saw a slight blush creep up on his cheeks, and he swallowed hard before continuing, “I mean—I, uh, I know you have other people to talk to and everything, but I’m here for you. Friendly here. As in friends.” He stopped talking, his face reddening even more as he tried to make himself clear. “I mean, I’m here as your friend.”

He smiled sheepishly, and I stared back at him in a confused sort of shock.
 

That was when it happened.

CHAPTER FOUR

My eyes narrowed, unsure if I possibly could have seen what I thought I had seen.

Again.

It was only for a millisecond, but his eyes had shifted strangely. One minute they were his normal soft green, and then suddenly and inexplicably, they flashed yellow, his pupils shrinking into slits. I blinked, and his eyes were back to normal as they studied me quizzically.

“Something wrong?” he asked. His eyes flitted back and forth between mine, scrutinizing me. “You okay?”

“I really don’t know,” I said, concerned over this potential mental break from reality. “Are
you
okay?”

I searched his eyes, my mind not quite catching up to what my eyes were seeing.

“What do you mean?”

“You’re…” I didn’t even want to say it. I just saw snake eyes on him, for god’s sake. My thoughts weren’t exactly credible at the moment. “You’re not hitting on me, are you?”

His very normal-looking eyes widened for a moment. “Oh—no. Shit, right. No.”

I jerked my chin back, appalled by everything that was happening right now.

“How about we go back downstairs?” He asked, running a hand through his hair.

 Rob continued to look at me with concern, his eyes still normal as they rested on my face, and I immediately felt stupid.  This was
Rob
, for crying out loud. He walked around like a doe-eyed deer half the time and could barely kill a spider without his eyes welling up. Subconscious manifestation or not, imagining snake eyes on Rob was like imagining Macy wearing plaid flannel pajamas to class.  Not to mention the absurdity of the thought that he was actually hitting
on me. No way. Not nice, endearing Rob, a guy who only had eyes for one girl.

That settled, I nodded to Rob. “Definitely. Let’s go find Macy.”

On cue, my phone buzzed in my purse. I pulled it out, already knowing what it would say.

Danger or Dastardly?
Macy’s text read.

Macy and I had a code that we used whenever we got separated at parties: either we were involved in something that wasn’t good and needed rescuing, or we were up to no good and didn’t need any help at all. Macy was usually the latter.

Neither
, I texted back, horrified at the thought of actually doing anything dastardly with Rob, especially considering our current circumstances.
Coming to find you.

“Okay, let’s go,” I said to Rob, shoving the phone back in my purse. I began to walk, but immediately stumbled on the cracked, uneven rooftop. Even in bare feet, I was a klutz in a dress. “God, how did I even get over here without tripping?” I asked, mostly to myself.

Rob came up beside me and cupped my elbow to lead me through the dark, but as soon as he laid his fingers on my skin, a searing pain like nothing I had ever felt before spiked through me. Before my brain could even process the pain and tell my body to flinch away, Rob moved with such superhuman speed that my eyes could barely track him as he flew to the other side of the rooftop, his body curving against the stone barrier. At the same time that my mind screamed at me that
this could not be happening
, he actually peeled back his lips and hissed at me.

My mouth dropped open in surprise, and I remained frozen, unsure of what to do or how to move or if this was even real.

“
You were supposed to be just a simple, stupid girl
,” Rob hissed at me again, but his voice no longer sounded like Rob. It was low, menacing, and frightful and so unlike Rob that I instinctively took a step back.

I watched in horror as his eyes shifted back to yellow and there they remained, black-rimmed and snake-like, glowing preternaturally in the bright moonlight. Loosened construction tarps billowed and snapped around him, opening like a macabre theatre curtain to reveal this…this
thing
.

“Wh-what is going on, Rob?” I asked stupidly, completely unable to form an intelligible thought. 

I pressed my back against the stone barricade, my nails trying to dig into the concrete behind me. Panic was taking me over at the same time that my mind was telling me this could not possibly be real.

The creature, as even though he still looked like Rob, he could not possibly be Rob, opened its mouth to laugh. The laugh was harsh and short, but it felt like long, curved knives running down my body.

“Could this really be true? You do not know what you are?”
He hissed again, a black, forked tongue darting in and out between words.

He cocked his head to the right at an incredibly unnatural angle and regarded me sideways through the rippling tarps, the sounds of them smacking into the metal poles only serving to remind me that we were the only ones up here, that no one could hear us. Still, I didn’t make any moves. I flashed back to the one day at camp that my aunt had tried sending me to when I was ten, where we were lectured about going into the woods and encountering a predator.

 “Don’t run,” the camp counselor would remind us, over and over again, “Because that will clue them in to chase you and pounce. Stand your ground. Stare them down.”

I took that lecture to heart. I didn’t move. My camp counselor would have been proud—though I doubt he expected any of his charges would encounter a snake dressed up as your best friend’s boyfriend.

Before I could respond, before I could even lift my pinky finger, he flew in front of me again, his face dangerously close to mine. His breath smelled foul, like decaying, rotten potatoes that had been left in the pantry for too long, and I valiantly tried to control my gag reflex while I attempted to stare him down.

“Well, this is an unexpected treat
,” he whispered before his hands latched onto my waist and his fingernails, feeling like claws, dug through my dress and into my skin.

I tried to scream. I opened my mouth to let out a mother of a wail, but before I could, he pulled me into his sick embrace and shot backwards. Everything blurred, and bile once again built up into my mouth. We stopped suddenly, and in that instant he retracted his claws from my waist and I doubled over, heaving.

“Weakling,”
he seethed, “
You don’t deserve to be amongst our kind.”

My peripheral vision registered his inhuman leap towards me. I attempted to turn and duck out of the way, but I ended up catching his leap full-on, his body smacking into the front of mine and both of us smashing back into the protruding brick exit in the middle of the rooftop. The thing had hit me so hard that both our bodies cracked against the brick, causing a shower of construction dust to fall around us. My back was painfully molded against wall, and the construction beams were balanced precariously above us, loosened by our jarring crash. My muscles strained and screamed as my arms attempted to keep this thing’s mouth away from me by pressing my hands against his shoulders.

I knew I was weaker than him. I barely even had the strength to withstand his smashing into me, and my body was going dangerously numb. But I couldn’t give up. I couldn’t die without fighting.

I forced myself to keep my eyes open as I watched him detach his jaw, turning his blackened mouth into a gaping maw ringed with sharp, yellow teeth. His mouth was now almost as big as my head, and I looked into the black hole with dread. His front fangs were mere millimeters away from my eyes. As I blinked, my eyelashes fluttered across his sharp, pointed incisors.

I clamped down on the terror that was screaming bloody murder in my head, refusing to let my fear be the reason that I died. And I was certain, just as I was now certain that this thing was very, very real, that if I didn’t do something, I would die here, alone, weak, and afraid.

I knew that moving an arm would risk his jaws coming closer to me, but with the tip of his fangs beginning to pierce my temples, I knew it was the only choice I had. Quickly, I released my left hand from his right shoulder and clamped it under his chin in an attempt to twist his head away from me. 

He roared, loud and deafening, and this time I was able to scream as what felt like a thousand volts of electricity went jolting through my hand and straight into my heart. I had to fight to remain conscious, my vision wavering and blurring as I pressed my hand firmer into his skin, trying despite the searing pain to prevent his teeth from sinking into me.

His roaring abruptly stopped, and I had an instinctual feeling that he was calculating his next move despite the pain just as much as I was calculating mine. This was it. I couldn't do much else. I was bleeding, bruised and trembling, his foul, hot breath covering my entire body as he moved closer to me, the pain feeling like electrocution the longer I kept my skin on his. As much as I hated to do it, as much as I detested being that scared little girl, I gave in and scrunched my eyes shut, effectively blocking out everything that he could possibly do to me.