Dark Matters

Vicki Pettersson

Prologue

It was a normal moment, and barely worth note. Which, of course, was what made it so noteworthy. But after weeks, and a barrage of demands and pleas, JJ would finally be allowed to wave sparklers and an American flag and cheer until his throat burned. And when darkness blanketed the sky, fountains of color so amazing and loud and powerful would rip it open, dulling even the Las Vegas Strip visible in the distance. For a child born, reared, and hidden in an underground lair, it was an absolute dream come true.

So that was why a family of superheroes were having a simple picnic on a grassy hillside, blanket-edge to blanket-edge with the mortals they’d been born to defend.

“Born and sworn to deflect and protect” his father would say, in a booming baritone that made his mother throw back her head and laugh. JJ would steal glances at them—at the giant man with honey-colored eyes identical to his own, and his mother with her quiet strength and noble lineage—and wonder if he had what it took to do that, to make them proud. He didn’t know. In a world that honored women, he was not yet a grown man, but he was the strongest five-year-old he knew. And all the kids in the sanctuary said his high jump—already ten feet—was better than most of the girls’.

A born leader, he’d overheard the new soothsayer, Tekla, claim of him, and while he wasn’t sure what he was supposed to be leading—a parade like the one they’d seen earlier today? Maybe a band like the one with the drums that’d rumbled down the street? — he’d liked the sound of it.

So while his parents sipped from plastic cups, making small talk with the mortals gathered on the highest green of the SandStone golf course, JJ waved a rope he’d found lying in the asphalt parking lot, and pretended it was his mother’s barbed whip. He would inherit the conduit when it was time, and he’d wield it as deftly as she did, unfurling it in the air to strike at fleeing Shadows and their vicious canine wardens.

JJ became so entrenched in these imaginary battles that he had threaded two bunkers and a green by the time the first rocket shot into the sky. Amid the distant laughter and clapping of the hillside audience, he froze under that pulsing sky, the rope slipping from his palms. He felt the same sort of wonder as when his father blocked a thirty-foot dunk in skyball, or when his mother made a concrete wall appear out of nowhere with the mere flick of her wrist. Who knew mortals were capable of something both beautiful and explosive? Each detonated flare thrummed inside his chest like a second, irregular heartbeat.

He jolted when his father’s hand dropped to his shoulder. At some point, as light had carved whorls into the sky, they’d found him. “This is what we’re preserving for everyone else,” his father told him, his characteristic passion making each word sharp. “Every person has a right to the small things, you see? The little happinesses. After all, those are the ones that make life most worth living. It’s what we’re fighting for.”

He touched his wife’s hand as he said it.

And JJ saw that it was good. Cotton candy and popcorn and sticky fingers, and a slightly sick stomach when it was all over. JJ only realized he’d fallen asleep when he felt himself being lifted, then settled again in the car they’d borrowed for the occasion. Outside of their troop’s sanctuary, his parents were believed to be too hard-strapped to afford their own vehicle. They took the bus when posing as mortals, but most often, they ran with a speed that would make a cheetah envious.

And this was JJ’s dream as they drove back to the hotel where they’d spend the night before returning to their subterranean lair at dawn—he was outrunning a big cat, legs wheeling so fast that the beast eventually slowed, and bowed to him as the superior athlete. JJ climbed atop the animal, his right as the competition’s victor, and was carried at breakneck speed along the neon-slicked streets, whizzing past the giant hotels his parents had pointed out to him hours before.

He startled awake when the cat reared suddenly, though they would tell him later that the animal’s awful cry was really the screeching of brakes. He opened his eyes to see his mother’s face, eyes fierce and burning into his. But it was her lighted chest that riveted him. Normally dormant beneath her skin, her glyph was fired, warning of danger, and her right hand curled tightly around her whip.

“Stay,” she said, and then she was gone.

“On the floor,” his father snapped, and like the sparklers JJ had waved only hours before, he, too, was only a bright trail for the eye to follow in the night.

JJ’s heart thrummed inside his small frame, chest tight, as if his Arien glyph wished to burst to life as well. Danger! screamed some primal voice inside him. Flee!

But his father had said to stay on the floor.

It will be even safer beneath the car.

He didn’t know why he’d listen to some unfamiliar voice over his own father’s, but if he was outside he could see his parents, and as long as he could see them, he’d be okay.

Of course, even as he clambered over the front seat, even before the first battle cry ripped the hot, velvet sky—probably even before he’d been tossed from the back of the dream cheetah—he knew they were at war. These were Shadows. Rotted sulphur and smoke pooled in the night sky, stinging his eyes just as in his ward mother’s bedtime stories.

Still, he blinked away the burn, searching for his parents along the rocky desert vista, every outcropping a bumpy threat. Inching forward beneath the car’s chassis, he settled in time to see his mother’s whip unfurl, barbed tips sparking off the light from her chest, which also threw her drawn porcelain features into stark relief. She was feral.

The Shadow she fought was a charred skeleton.

“Mama!” The word squeaked from him. His strong mother, his laughing and vibrant mother, couldn’t be injured by that demon! Tears welled and he blinked them away—keep them in sight! — so he saw when the Shadow’s head swiveled his way.

“No!”

His mother screamed, and she ignored the extended arc of her whip as she reversed, flipping her wrist to shove the metal grip into the living skeleton’s teeth. Bone shattered beneath the force, and JJ—and his cry—was forgotten.

Another light appeared, zigzagging like an overgrown firefly. Defying bulk to outmaneuver his opponent, his father’s limbs whirled, breaking skin and bone with studded gloves, sending more noxious fumes spilling into the air. The two Shadows fell at nearly the same time, and JJ’s parents sidestepped, back-to-back, breathing hard, studying their surroundings.

“How?” his mother asked, voice low.

“Later.” His father reached behind with one bloodied fist to squeeze her free hand. “Let’s get Jay to safety.”

JJ nearly opened his mouth to cheer—his brave parents, his strong parents, had done it again! — but his mother jerked her head, her reply a near growl. “We need to know now.”

“Why?”

“Because there might be…”

Others.

Suddenly there were. So many circling so fast, the smoke became a black tornado, and JJ quickly lost count. Though outnumbered, his parents continued to guard each other, backs and fingertips touching, searching for a way out. Just before the first cry sounded, his mother shot a look back at the car. A smile touched her lips, briefly, before she let it fall.

Then she fought.

And then she died.

And somewhere, more mortals set the sky alight, burning the heavens for pleasure even as his parents’ death cries carved whorls into the air.