Darkness Descends (The Silver Legacy Book 1) Read online

  Darkness Descends

  The Silver Legacy, Book 1

  Alex Westmore

  © 2015, Broad Winged Books

  All rights reserved. Except as permitted under the U.S. Copyright Act of 1976, no part of this publication may be reproduced, distributed or transmitted in any form or by any means, or stored in a database or retrieval system without the prior written permission of the publisher.

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  Disclaimer:

  This is a work of fiction. Names, characters, places and incidents are products of the author's imagination, or the author has used them fictitiously.

  Editor: Stevie Mikayne

  Cover & Graphics Designer: Mallory Rock

  Proofreader: Falcon Storm

  Broad Winged Books

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  Union Lake, MI 48387

  A Free Book for You

  So you’ve just scored your very own copy of Darkness Descends. Awesome! Hey, you know what’s even more awesome? I want to give you a present as my way of saying thanks for checking me out. Yes, indeed, I’ve written a free short story just for my newsletter subscribers. You can grab your free copy by signing up at www.AlexWestmore.net/Newsletter.

  Happy travels,

  Alex

  Table of Contents

  Title Page

  Copyright

  A Free Gift for You

  Darkness Descends

  More from Alex Westmore

  About the Author

  Get Inside Access to Alex’s Brain

  Darkness Descends

  Demons are nothing at all like we imagine.

  They seldom sport horns or spiked tails, no cloven hooves or red skin.

  They come in all shapes and sizes, and aren’t anything like Hollywood portrays them. Hollywood casting agents erroneously cast demons as some sort of evil specters or dark spirits lurking in the shadows seeking retribution or revenge. They connect them to Satan or some other demonic leader as if they were the antitheses to angels.

  But Hollywood seldom gets the supernatural world correct when it insists on offering up a set of fangs or a pair of claws. For added spookiness, there’s often a trench coat or dark glasses added.

  Of late, Hollywood demons are Japanese girls with wet, stringy hair who hide in the dark to creep us out with their open mouths and scary sounds. They are frequently characterized as men wearing masks or mysterious revenants who need to feed in order to survive.

  Outside of the Hollywood caricature of the evil spawns, demons can be either spiritual or corporeal. They can be violent or just plain annoying. They may be after a certain individual, or trailing anyone who walks into their path. Demons are young and old, adept and clumsy, smart and stupid. They can be many things and take on different forms. The only aspect of these insidious creatures Hollywood got right is that all demons have one thing in common:

  They are evil.

  Pure evil.

  Evil personified means evil walking and talking as a human being. Hitler, Manson, Jeffrey Dahmer, and Jim Jones held the kind of evil in their hands that only a true demon possesses. People who shoot at school children or hold young girls hostage for ten years are the worst kinds of demons.

  And they are everywhere.

  I know.

  I’m a demon hunter.

  Part of my therapy for my relatively new job involves journaling about my experiences, though I’m pretty certain my therapist believes I’m a insane. We are conditioned in this Christian society to believe in angels but not their counterparts. It’s okay if we believe in miracles, but not magic. It’s fine to get your past lives read as long as you don’t walk around telling everyone around about it. Some guy walking on water, or a chick chatting with a snake is acceptable, but anything else is blasphemy?

  Hardly.

  I’ve seen them. I’ve hunted them. I know what they look like and where they hang out.

  My therapist probably believes I have delusions of grandeur at the very least, and have possibly broken with reality. At this point in my short life, anything is possible, I suppose.

  Who knows? Maybe I have. I mean, given my life lately, it’s entirely possible.

  I used to be a normal––wait, make that a semi-normal––college student. Semi-normal because I was raised by two oddballs whose last name was Silver.

  My parents loved to laugh and were always doing the word jumbles together in the morning. They loved words. They loved pubs. They were goofy and silly together and one night after a party of some sort, they decided their children would be so much more interesting if they had thought-provoking names. So, they named my older sister Sterling, my younger sister Pure, and my brother Quick.

  Me?

  My name is Golden. Golden Silver. Get it? Oh, I’m sure they had lots of laughs over that one. Parents who give their kids crazy names set them up for all sorts of battles, and we’ve all had our fair share. I mean really. Quick? The girls in high school used to have a field day with that one. Poor guy.

  I go by Denny for obvious reasons, though my mother and older sister prefer Golden. Any idea how mean kids can be with different names? Denny was just safer at school, but seldom used at home. Mom and Sterling believed calling me that would somehow bring a light into my world, but they were wrong. So very wrong.

  Denny Silver is my name and I’m a demon hunter.

  This is my story.

  ***

  The demon strutted across the darkened streets of downtown Savannah, his ears keen to the myriad sounds around him. Cars clattered down the street, people huddled in hushed conversations, dogs barked in the distance, and he heard it all. The rubber soles of his motorcycle boots were soundless as he turned into an even darker alley in search of his quarry.

  He was here.

  The demon smiled to himself. How incredibly easy this was going to be. He grinned malevolently as he cracked his knuckles and made his way down the urine-soaked alley.

  The predictability of human nature made people such easy targets. Humans could see a person do or say something right in front of their impudent faces and still, they would manage to find some way of convincing themselves it never happened. Worse yet, they would explain it away brandishing words like magic wands. They were foolish, fallible, and fucked up, which was why there were so many more demons running around the planet now than ever before.

  There was so much more bait now—it was like shooting fish in a barrel, and he had just hooked one.

  The demon’s target was rousting a homeless man, kicking him and flinging his things across the alley. The man was so engrossed in his bullying of the homeless guy, he didn’t hear the demon coming.

  They seldom did.

  “Did this poor man do something to incur your wrath?” the demon asked, his voice slicing through the night air. There was a hint of British accent, but the prey would never have noticed.

  They seldom did.

  “Fuck off, dude, before you get some of the same.” The target continued pawing through the homeless man’s belongings as if his idle threat carried any weight.

  The demon crossed his arms and leaned against a brick wall. A shaft of moonlight shone down, lighting the filthy street like a theater spotlight. “Oh, would that I were as weak and as helpless as that poor gentleman. But I am not. I believe I am going to prove to be a much more formidable opponent.”

  “Opponent?” The man stopped rummaging and pulled himself up to his full height of five foot eleven
. “Dude, if you don’t move on––”

  The demon quickly closed the gap. “Then what? What would you do to someone who can actually fight back? How would you act knowing the chances of getting out of here alive were slim to none? Hmmm? Would you be so bold then?”

  The thug turned his head from side to side as he weighed his options. He stood an inch or two taller than his adversary, who wore biker boots, a leather jacket, and a look of fearlessness in his eyes. There was something about the way he stood, the intensity of his eyes that made the man reach into his waistband for his stolen Beretta.

  As the hoodlum raised the weapon toward the only threat in the alley, the demon stopped the gun in mid-air.

  “What the fuck? How...how did you do that?” The thug stared at his gun as it slowly turned toward his own chest. He grabbed the weapon with his free hand and tried to force it back away from himself, but to no avail. The weapon remained pointed directly at the thug’s chest.

  “Just let go,” the demon said smugly. “Surely it can’t be so difficult to let go of a gun.”

  The target’s eyes widened as he held onto the butt of the gun with both hands and continued to struggle, without success, to turn the weapon around. “This isn’t happening, man. This can’t be happening.”

  The demon walked casually over to him, his hands beginning to shake. “Oh, but it is. Empathy is one of those rare human emotions capable of changing the world, yet you all are so incredibly lame, none of you ever really uses it to its full potential. Like right now, for example. You have the chance to feel what that poor homeless man was feeling when you were tormenting him. Would those feelings, this experience, be enough to change how you treat people in the future?”

  The demon shook his head.

  “We both know the sad truth. It wouldn’t. You see, that’s the problem with the human race. You never learn from your mistakes. You are your own worst enemy.” The demon knelt down in front of the homeless man. “Just the simple fact that you can’t even fix this problem shows how incredibly self-centered and stupid you all are.”

  The demon helped the homeless man sit up. He was bleeding from his nose and mouth, and his eyebrow was split.

  “These poor people would be better off if you treated them the way you do your pets—putting them down when they no longer serve a purpose.” In one swift motion, the demon broke the homeless man’s neck. “That would be the humane thing to do.” Rising, the demon turned back to the thug. “Funny how one little vowel changes a word so much.”

  “What...what do you want from me?”

  The demon laughed. “Want? From you? Oh, that’s rich. That’s rich, indeed. You have just one thing I require and you’re holding it.” The demon pulled a knife from an inner jacket pocket. “You see, there is going to be a murder committed by you in a neighborhood not far from here. Prior to that unfortunate event, however, you’ll be sliced a few times by this kitchen knife.”

  “You’re...you’re fucking insane.” The Beretta rattled as it pressed against the thug’s chest bone.

  The demon shook his head and made a tsking sound. “And that’s another thing. Why are you all so quick to call something crazy simply because your teeny, tiny minds do not understand it? Everyone from the Wright brothers to Columbus were called that, but look at all they accomplished.”

  The demon glanced down at his Rolex. “As much fun as this has been, I must be off. Duty calls.”

  “No. Wait. Please.”

  The demon slashed the man’s upper thigh. He fell to one knee. “And why is it you all always beg as a last resort? Has that ever worked for anyone? Ever?” He ripped another slash across the man’s cheek, causing it to bleed down his face.

  Setting the knife down, the demon grabbed him by the hair. Holding his palm out, he caught the warm blood as it dripped off the man’s chin. “It’s a foregone conclusion, my friend.” Taking the gun with his clean hand, the demon grinned. “But putting up a good fight does tend to make it more interesting.”

  “It? What are you?”

  The demon pushed the thug back against the wall, picked up the knife, and started out of the alley.

  “I am your worst nightmare.”

  ***

  “Hello?”

  “Goldy, it’s me.”

  Only two people in her life called her Goldy––her late father and her trouble-making brother.

  “Quick? Are you okay?” It was hard to hear with all the noise in the background.

  “Look, I don’t have much time and what I have to say to you needs to be said in person. I know it’s a lot to ask, but can you...can you come to Atlanta tomorrow?”

  Denny looked at her calendar. She had two morning classes but if she was going to make it to the prison in time for visiting hours, she’d have to skip going to the nursing home to see her mother.

  Denny heaved a sigh and tried to block out the nagging voice of her conscience—Sister Sterling.

  A couple of years ago, the day Denny had turned eighteen, Sterling surprised everyone by joining a convent and becoming Sister Sterling. At the time, everyone was shocked (and often dismayed), that she would leave Denny to raise Pure alone in the huge historical home.

  At eighteen, Denny could barely raise herself, but Sterling had always been the kind of person who took the high road. Her moral compass had seldom wavered when they were children, and in the absence of their parents, Sterling had spent an inordinate amount of time teaching her three siblings how to comport themselves in the world. Whenever Denny got in trouble at school, Sterling would make her apologize to everyone even if she wasn’t the cause of the problem.

  She expected them to behave in a way that was worthy of their parents as well as God. It was as if Sterling had entered the world already an adult, which was fortunate since she was thrust into the role of one much too soon.

  When Denny was fifteen, her parents were in a car accident that killed their father and put their mother in a catatonic state from which she never recovered. Sterling stepped in to be parent and guardian to Quick, eighteen; Denny, fifteen; and Pure, eleven. Life insurance enabled them to keep their five thousand square foot historical home in Savannah’s historic North District, but no amount of money could prevent Sterling from joining God’s Army.

  It was her voice Denny had in the back of her head as she listened to her brother’s plea.

  “I don’t know, Q. You know I see Mom on Thursdays.”

  The line was quiet for a bit. Finally, his voice barely above a whisper, Quick said, “I wouldn’t ask if it wasn’t really important. I’ll never ask you to come see me again. I swear.”

  Something in Quick’s voice made Denny ignore Sterling’s voice telling her to run. “Fine. I’ll come out after class. I can probably be there around one.”

  “Thank you. Thank you.”

  Another long pause.

  “How’s prison life, anyway?” Denny picked at a piece of wallpaper that had come loose next to the refrigerator.

  “It’s hell. Every day is the same. If the gangs don’t kill you, the monotony will.”

  Movement caught Denny’s eye and she turned toward the grand staircase, but she saw no one. “I’m sorry, Q. I really am.”

  “Don’t feel sorry for me. Just come. I can explain everything then.”

  As she hung up, Denny glanced up at the staircase once again, and there she was, sitting in the middle of the step as she always had. Always. Denny couldn’t remember a time when Rush wasn’t there every time she needed her.

  The first time she’d seen Rush, Denny had been eight years old. Her dog had been ill and they’d had to put him down. When she came running into the house, she ran up the stairs and right through Rush, who turned and finger-waved, her face looking as sad as Denny felt.

  It was the first time Denny had ever seen a ghost. It took her another full year before she drew up the courage to talk to her—a year of watching the ghost sitting on her window seat, sitting on the stairs, sitting by the opulent fi
replace. For the longest time, she suspected the ghost was waiting for someone, the way she always looked out windows or watched the door.

  Truth was, Rush had been waiting. Waiting for Denny. It took several years, but eventually, they became confidantes. Even though Rush was in her twenties and Denny was a little girl, they built a bond, and became better friends the older Denny got.

  When Denny turned eighteen, Rushalyn Holbrook told Denny she was in love with her and had been waiting a decade to be able to tell her.

  It was the last time she showed restraint.

  Now, Rush sat on the steps shaking her head and rolling her eyes. “What on earth are you thinking, baby?” Her long hair rustled like tulle fabric. “You know what happens every time you get sucked in by him.”

  Denny walked out of the kitchen and into the family room. While her parents had kept the house’s decor in keeping with the era of the house, Sterling and her other siblings agreed on more modern comfort—a large, half-circular leather sectional and a coffee table made out of a trunk style suitcase with two dozen foreign country stickers all over it. The fireplace was gas and had a fire in it almost three hundred days a year––not because the house was cold, but because Rush liked it. It made her feel less...dead.

  Denny flopped onto the couch and waited for Rush to back up to the fireplace like she always did.

  “I’m thinking my brother needs to talk to me. It won’t kill me to go see him. I haven’t seen him since the verdict.”

  Rush sighed loudly. “Sister Serious was very clear with you and Pure. She told you to leave him be. I seldom agree with anything that Bible-thumper says, but this time, she’s spot on. He did the crime, let him do the time. Alone. Solo. The booked him, Dano. Let it be.”

  Denny leaned forward, her elbows on her knees. “You’ve been watching way too much television.”

  Rush shrugged. “What else is there to do? I suppose I could go around haunting people.” Rush laughed, her blond curls bouncing. “It’s so quiet around here now that Pure is busy with high school and Sister Sanctimonious moved out. You’re hardly ever home any more, Boo Boo.” Rush chuckled.