That’s when I realized Darroch had used the distraction to slip away from the fighting and head up the stairs. Shit, he was going after the amulet. If he got away with it we were screwed.
“Morgan!” It was Jack, shouting from the other room. A quick peek told me he’d gotten free and had Clive in a headlock. “Don’t let him get his hands on it!”
I was way ahead of him. I slashed at a couple goons as I fought my way to the stairs. I made it up a few steps before one of them grabbed my ankle and tried to haul me back down, so I kicked him in the face. I felt something crunch under my shoe and blood spurted up my jeans leg as he howled in pain. Ew, gross. I probably had blood all over my shoe now, too.
I scrambled up the stairs, ignoring the fighting behind me. Kabita, Inigo and Jack seemed to have things well in hand. Stopping Darroch was paramount. I couldn’t let him get away with the amulet.
I popped my head into the first bedroom. Nothing. Master bedroom. Not a thing. In the third bedroom the closet door was open and light spilled out onto the wine colored carpet that matched his ground floor office. He kept the amulet in a closet?
I crept in quietly and peered around the closet door. Doh! False wall, of course. The amulet wasn’t in the closet, it was in a tiny safe room behind the closet and Darroch was inches away from it.
Without so much as a thought, I gathered the darkness in the room all around me. I gathered the darkness of the house and of the night outside and pulled it into me. Everything took on edges of purple and silver like looking through some weirdo night vision goggles. My breathing slowed, my heart calmed, everything grew still. And the Darkness roared …
Chapter Twenty-One
I don’t know how I did it, but one minute I was at the closet door too far away to stop Darroch from grabbing the amulet. The next I was across the room with my hands at his throat, his feet dangling a good foot off the floor as I lifted him toward the ceiling. Then he was clear across the room, smashing into the wall and then sliding down into a motionless heap. It had been so easy I wasn’t even breathing heavily.
“Holy hell, Morgan!” It was Jack. My weird night vision picked him out in rich blues and sparkling silvers. His eyes glittered in the darkness with an eerie greenish hue, more like a cat’s eyes than human. I wasn’t sure if that was a Sunwalker thing or a side effect of my vision.
The Darkness didn’t care. The Darkness wanted blood. I started for Darroch.
Jack reached out and grabbed my hand and I blinked. It was like waking up from a dream. I could feel the Darkness ebbing away, slowly, like a tidal wave while reality crept in to take its place, returning my vision to normal.
“Um, I think we better take Darroch downstairs and see if Kabita needs any help.” It was lame even to my ears, but it was all I could think of. I was starting to scare myself with this whole crazy Kissing the Darkness thing. I couldn’t imagine what Jack was thinking. Eddie was right. I needed to get this thing under control or figure out a way to stop using it. Each time I used it, it was increasingly reluctant to leave.
Darroch was out cold, so Jack grabbed his shoulders, I grabbed his feet and we hauled him downstairs where Kabita and Inigo had pretty much cut a swath of destruction through the goon squad. There was blood everywhere and the rich copper tang made my stomach turn over.
“Oh, good, you got him.” Kabita was an oasis of calm in the middle of the wreckage. She didn’t sound any more ruffled than if she’d just had afternoon tea with her grandmother. If she’d have had afternoon tea with my grandmother, she wouldn’t have been anything close to calm.
“Uh, yeah. How are we going to explain this one to the cops? These aren’t vampires or demon spawn or anything. These are humans.” I didn’t have a whole lot of experience fighting humans, strangely enough, but I knew the cops wouldn’t be terribly thrilled with us. Somehow I didn’t think they’d be impressed if we told them we were trying to save the world. Getting locked up for murder was a distinct possibility. The government didn’t give us that much leeway.
Kabita shrugged. “That’s what our government liaison is for. He’s not happy either, let me tell you.” She seemed ridiculously gleeful over that fact. I guess I was wrong. The government did give us that much leeway, which was disturbing.
She gave me a look. “The amulet?”
I pointed. “Upstairs, safe and sound.”
“Better make it disappear or it may become a little more safe and sound.” She pulled out a travel pack of wet wipes and started cleaning the blood off her hands. That was Kabita for you, always prepared.