Surrender the Dark Read online

  Surrender the Dark is a work of fiction. Names, places, and incidents either are products of the author’s imagination or are used fictitiously. Any resemblance to actual events, locales, or persons, living or dead, is entirely coincidental.

  A Loveswept Ebook Original

  Copyright © 2017 by Tibby Armstrong

  All rights reserved.

  Published in the United States by Loveswept, an imprint of Random House, a division of Penguin Random House LLC, New York.

  LOVESWEPT is a registered trademark and the LOVESWEPT colophon is a trademark of Penguin Random House LLC.

  Ebook ISBN 9780399593352

  Cover design: Lynn Andreozzi

  Cover photograph: Ingram Publishing/Agefotostock

  randomhousebooks.com

  v4.1

  ep

  Contents

  Cover

  Title Page

  Copyright

  Epigraph

  Prologue

  Chapter 1

  Chapter 2

  Chapter 3

  Chapter 4

  Chapter 5

  Chapter 6

  Chapter 7

  Chapter 8

  Chapter 9

  Chapter 10

  Chapter 11

  Chapter 12

  Chapter 13

  Chapter 14

  Chapter 15

  Chapter 16

  Chapter 17

  Chapter 18

  Chapter 19

  Chapter 20

  Chapter 21

  Chapter 22

  Chapter 23

  Chapter 24

  Chapter 25

  Chapter 26

  Chapter 27

  Chapter 28

  Chapter 29

  Epilogue

  Author’s Note

  Acknowledgments

  By Tibby Armstrong

  About the Author

  He who fights with monsters should be careful lest he thereby become a monster. And if thou gaze long into an abyss, the abyss will also gaze into thee.

  —Friedrich Nietzsche, Beyond Good and Evil

  Prologue

  1997

  Sunlight bundled itself into shafts that streamed into the tiny Beacon Hill courtyard. Benjamin’s uncle’s house was one of the only homes in the fashionable Boston neighborhood that had a yard, and he was glad to play in it. Skin heated from exertion, he fled up and down the sidewalk from the gate to the portico’s Grecian columns, kicking a red and yellow beach ball. His sneakered footfalls echoed against the surrounding brownstones, making it sound as if he shared the game with someone other than an imaginary soccer team.

  Aiming for the portico, he kicked hard. The ball arced through the columns and thwapped smartly against the screen door’s sagging middle. The ball bounced sideways and rolled around the rim of an empty flowerpot before falling inside. He blinked once, and then laughed at the unexpected follow-up shot.

  “Ladies and gentlemen, I give you the soccer-basketball champion of Beacon Hill,” he mock-shouted.

  Hands held above his head for a victory lap, he trotted to retrieve the ball. Cool air hit his arms in the portico’s shady confines, and he stopped for a moment to rest. Sliding his back down the exterior wall, he faced the street. The house was quiet behind him, and he remembered his parents would be back soon. He was eight and a half, so why he needed Uncle to babysit him he didn’t know. He could take care of himself, especially in broad daylight. There was nothing outside to be afraid of.

  He pictured the cool darkness and ancient artifacts inside the house—items Uncle had collected during his life as a hunter. They were interesting enough to look at, but they were boring too, because he wasn’t allowed to touch them. Not unless he was training. Sitting forward, he draped his arms over his knees. His mind traveled over rooms stuffed with Chinese vases and glass marbles, lethal iron spears, and jars of unidentifiable remains floating in brownish liquid. As the last of his line, everything in the house would someday be his.

  “Benjamin!”

  Heart ricocheting like his ball on a bad bank shot, he turned his head to see his uncle framed in the screen door. “Yes, Uncle?”

  “Inside. Lesson time.”

  “But it’s Sunday,” Benjamin complained, thinking of the near-criminal waste of sunshine. Who wanted to sit in the musty library reciting vampire history and recounting the hunters’ role in the Trojan War on such a perfect day?

  The screen door creaked, and Uncle’s hand came out like a five-necked serpent. My hair needs to be cut, Benjamin thought absurdly as he was lifted by the mass of curls. Uncle let go and Benjamin rubbed at his burning scalp. Inside, it took his eyes a moment to adjust. When they did, he noticed the trail of black drops leading from the basement door. Uncle had his leather apron on.

  Benjamin retreated a step.

  “Get into your wetwork clothes and join me.” Uncle tossed the order over his shoulder, already retreating toward the basement stairs. Hand on the door, he pinned Benjamin with his stare. “Don’t make me come for you.”

  Swallowing hard, Benjamin looked over his shoulder. Outside beckoned. He could run. Be down the street and in Boston Common in less than a minute. He would get a beating for sure when he returned, but that seemed preferable to what lay in wait for him in the basement. Something he’d need wetwork clothes for.

  “You’re a hunter born. A hunter bred.” Uncle closed the distance between them and took Benjamin by the shoulders. “But you’re not a hunter true until you’ve had your first kill.”

  “Kill?” The word dropped from Benjamin’s lips. He’d thought he was meant to clean the mess made from the interrogation, and that was bad enough. But this? He barely refrained from shaking his head.

  “It’s time,” Uncle said. “The vampire has told me the location of their stronghold. We’ll see the entire clan burned, and their ashes scattered by sunrise.” Uncle’s eyes glistened with wild jubilation as he clasped Benjamin’s shoulders. “The riches will be unbelievable.”

  As if to belie its fate, the creature bellowed.

  Benjamin’s stomach turned over. “I—I—My parents will be here soon and…”

  Uncle cuffed the side of Benjamin’s head, and his ear rang. “Your parents are out risking their lives to slay the mora’s Justice Giver and King Ruler. As is their duty. You will do yours in executing its War King.”

  The creature in the basement was the vampire clan’s, or mora’s, War King. The vampire’s brothers, Benjamin knew from long hours of study, ruled with the War King as a triumvirate. As the most powerful and magically gifted of the three rulers, the War King’s word was law to his people, unless overruled by his brothers. Break the triumvirate and you’d break the mora.

  Benjamin hesitated too long and received another blow to his head. He reflexively cowered, and Uncle shook him by the scruff until he straightened. “Hunter born. Hunter bred. Kill the vampires or you’ll be dead. Do you want to end up as food for the monsters?”

  Benjamin shook his smarting head, mute at the vision of ending up as a vampire-style roast with an apple in his mouth.

  Releasing him, Uncle swept Benjamin with his narrow-eyed gaze. “Then do as I say.”

  “Yes, Uncle.” Benjamin said the words so obediently that even he believed he meant them. Apparently Uncle did too, because with a nod and a warning to be downstairs in five minutes, he retreated to the basement.

  On endless repeat, the nursery rhyme sing-songed through Benjamin’s head as he trod the wide, carpeted stairway to the second floor. He could learn to do his duty or he could die at the hands of the heinous, blood-sucking creatures his family had fought throughout the ages.

  “Hunter born, hunter bred…” Benjamin whispered, his hands going to
his shirt buttons.

  In the corner, a steamer trunk lurked. He walked over to it and, as if standing outside himself, watched his pale hands undo the latch.

  “Hunter born, hunter bred…” He lifted a white linen shirt spotted with rusty brown stains—a mixture of iron and vampire blood. The shirt had been Uncle’s as a boy, or so he’d been told. Even so, when Benjamin pulled the shirt over his head the sleeves came down past his hands. He rolled them, fingers shaking.

  “Kill the…” He stumbled over the words to the song that had been chanted at him for as long as he could remember, usually accompanied by a smack to the head.

  Next came the black leather apron. It also seemed too large, flapping against the tops of his sneakers. A shaft of sunlight peeked through the wooden slats shuttering the window, illuminating a pair of boots that even without trying on he could tell were too large. Benjamin glanced at his sneakers. Brand-new and bright red. Would blood show?

  Bile rose in his throat, and he ran to the waste bin in the corner.

  “Hunter born…Hunter bred…Kill the…Kill the…” He gasped between each heave until his stomach was empty.

  Straightening, he snatched up a pair of thick gloves and somehow he made his red-sneakered feet take him downstairs. Everything seemed hushed. Even the hall clock that kept Benjamin awake when he stayed the night thudded dully. Or maybe he just couldn’t hear it over the noise of his heartbeat and the rushing in his ears. His fingertips found the latch to the basement’s carved-oak panel and pressed. The door sprung outward on well-oiled hinges.

  Expecting screams, moans, or the hissing of the vampire, Benjamin stopped to listen. A single bulb hung from the ceiling to illuminate the narrow passage. There were plenty of shadows and the damp smell of the subterranean dirt floor, but nothing leaped out at him as unusual. He squared his shoulders and closed the door behind him.

  “Hunter born…” He tugged on one overly large glove.

  Something growled, low and muffled, and he shut his mouth. He knew Uncle and the vampire were behind the iron door with its sturdy rivets at the bottom of the stairs. The sound shouldn’t have been so loud. Or had it only been Benjamin’s empty stomach?

  “Hunter bred…”

  He paused, tugging on the other glove. Nothing this time.

  “Benjamin!” He nearly jumped out of his own skin, but it was only Uncle coming out of his basement office with a metal object in his hand. “Now!”

  Benjamin let gravity and momentum propel him down the stairs and into the dungeon room as Uncle held the door open. Inside, Benjamin stopped short. While he knew what the room was used for, had been tutored in the implements laid out on the table, he had never seen their use or the result.

  A vampire slumped forward in a wooden chair, his wrists tied behind him. A knife in Uncle’s hand dripped pitter-pat onto the dirt. Understanding dawned. The monster was almost dead.

  “Before we dispatch it, you can use its carcass as a practicum,” Uncle said, turning away. “Let me show you how to use the acid and iron mixture.”

  With his back to Benjamin, Uncle dipped a knife into something wet, then pressed the flat of the blade to the vampire’s face. Blue eyes rolled back and pale skin peeled away. The vampire opened its mouth in a silent yell. Body bowing, feet and hands still bound to the chair, the vampire toppled backward and hit the dirt floor with jarring force.

  Breath coming in shallow gasps to avoid the nauseatingly sweet stench of burning flesh, Benjamin forced himself not to look away.

  “You use the knife in shallow cuts,” Uncle instructed, straddling the creature. “So there is pain, but not so much blood it won’t survive for questioning. The iron, which I’ve already injected, will slow the creature’s healing, turning its blood black, as it binds with and nullifies the magic it carries.”

  Benjamin had a vision of magic like a magnet, attracting a pile of iron shavings until the metal weighed it down. They’d done experiments with magnets in science class last year…Black blood arced, hitting the basement’s fieldstone wall like a solid shadow that never faded, startling Benjamin back to the less-pleasant present. Uncle had once told him a vampire’s blood was as red as a man’s but evaporated and disappeared along with the creature’s body upon its death. Once tainted with iron, however, a vampire’s blood turned black and became a permanent stain on anything inorganic it touched. It would never disappear.

  “That’s what happens if you get too close to an artery. Mind your anatomy.” Uncle held out the knife to Benjamin, who still stood with his back pressed against the door. “Take it.”

  Benjamin stepped forward and awkwardly grasped the handle of the wickedly curved blade in his gloved hand. The vampire’s blood spread over the leather in a dark stain. Benjamin hovered in indecision, unable to retreat yet loath to remain too close. Uncle lifted a jagged saw, and Benjamin’s gaze skipped over the table where other implements lay. White bone, spotted with black, gleamed from between a pair of discarded tooth extractors—the vampire’s fangs.

  Uncle’s knife, in Benjamin’s hand, carved a new line in the vampire’s chest. The vampire breathed hard, nostrils flaring, but did not scream this time. Benjamin shut his eyes tight. He knew he should keep them open, but he couldn’t, not against that pitiful creature. It seemed almost human, and Benjamin felt a pang that spoke of remorse. When he was grown he’d be expected to wring information from vampires—to take their hoards and use the money from the ancient treasures to hunt more of their kind, until every last one was exterminated from the earth.

  Harsh breathing filled the room. His own, he realized. Upstairs, the doorbell rang, and his eyes flew open.

  Uncle brushed his hands against his leather apron before hanging it on a wooden peg by the closed door. Benjamin made to follow, but Uncle shoved him back and shut the door. The key grated with finality in the rusty lock. Hand against the unforgiving portal, Benjamin stood for long minutes listening to his own shallow breaths and the vampire’s ragged gasps.

  “Help me,” the vampire whispered, so quiet Benjamin thought he might have imagined the words. “Benjamin?”

  At the sound of his name on the inhuman thing’s lips, Benjamin turned slowly, his grip tightening reflexively around the half-forgotten knife.

  The vampire licked cracked and bloodied lips. Benjamin looked toward a water pitcher on a thick oak plank.

  “Please?” the thing begged.

  “Y-you want water?” Benjamin hated the way his voice shook, but he managed a step toward the center of the room.

  “Please.” The word issued brokenly from the monster’s lips.

  Before the ordeal, that mouth had been so beautiful Benjamin had stared at the creature’s face with open curiosity, and not a little admiration. Alabaster skin and lips the color of Uncle’s claret contrasted with dark blue eyes so vivid they seemed to reflect moonlight and starlight from midnight depths. That had been only yesterday, when Uncle and Father had brought it home.

  The creature was going to die tonight. There could be no harm in showing more mercy than the vampire had likely ever shown its victims. With shaking hands Benjamin took off his gloves and poured water into a little paper cup, splashing some onto the floor where it trickled and mingled with rivulets of black blood. He took the knife in his other hand. Leaden feet carried him to his uncle’s prisoner. Hand shaking, water sloshing over the rim of the cup, Benjamin bent low. The vampire jerked upward. It all happened so fast, there was no time to react. No opportunity to recover. The water flew from Benjamin’s hand and the knife clattered to the dirt. The sole of his sneaker slipped in a thick puddle of blood, and he fell. He scrambled upright, but the vampire already had the knife in a hand Benjamin hadn’t realized it had freed.

  Benjamin grabbed for the pitcher of acid from the table, two years of training kicking in and making him act. Too late. Too slow. The vampire’s heavy body fell on his, knocking the acid mixture from his hands. Some sloshed across Benjamin’s face, in his eyes and down one chee
k. He tried to scream against the bright flash and burning lights, but the monster’s hand stole his air, clamping over both his nose and his mouth.

  Uncle’s footsteps sounded on the stairs, and Benjamin heard Mother’s voice and Father’s answering laughter. It sounded as if they dragged something heavy.

  “Not a sound,” the vampire whispered.

  Benjamin struggled for breath, his inhales whistling through the vampire’s fingers.

  “We got its brothers. Two shots, Leo,” Father said. “Then the machete on one of them.”

  At the sound of Father’s voice, Benjamin fought, using his hands like claws to rake over the vampire’s ruined flesh. He received a blow to his head for his efforts. His arms briefly sagged. Weakness equals death, he remembered, and mustered the strength to fight harder. Sight didn’t matter when your opponent was so close, and the pain in his eyes wouldn’t matter at all if he didn’t get out of the vampire’s grip.

  “I’ve no time for you now,” the vampire said, its ragged voice rising in a desperate plea for Benjamin to stop fighting.

  Ha! As if he’d lie there and let the thing take him. He was a hunter born. He was a hunter bred. He was a—

  Hand flailing for a weapon, he closed his fingers around the knife the vampire had discarded. In one violent motion he sank the blade into the monster’s shoulder. It felt surreal. Like slicing into Christmas ham the time Father had shown him how to carve, but the man’s living flesh was somehow less easy to manipulate. Benjamin tried to wrest the knife out of the wound to use it again, but there was too much blood. Hands slick, he lost his grip.

  “Be still,” the vampire spat, taking his hand away to grapple for the knife.