Isle Of Midnight: Darkness Rising (Isle Of Midnight Series, Book 3): Isle Of Midnight, #3

Copyright © 2018 by Lola StVil

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Formatting by Dallas Hodge, Everything But The Book

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Who hasn't asked himself, am I a monster or is this what it means to be human?

― Clarice Lispector

As I walk across the island, away from Iris and her temptations and back to my team, I am paying no mind to anyone or anything around me. Staying alert is the first rule of survival here, the first thing anyone who wants to survive a stretch here learns.

But it’s different for me. It’s not like any of them would dare cross me anyway. My team has a certain reputation among neighboring buildings, and word spreads fast here. The other prisoners know to give us a wide berth. It’s the second thing anyone unlucky enough to get put into a building near ours learns. Either by staying out of the way and being left alone or by crossing us and finding out what happens to them.

I can’t say I’m overly pleased about the unofficial arrangement brought about by the team and their barbaric ways, but it does mean that we don’t get bothered as some buildings do. See, Jazz and her team got put in the nice section of the island. No, scratch that. There is no nice section. The whole place is brutal and unforgiving. But they did get put in the part where the so-called least dangerous prisoners are.

My team got the short straw, and we ended up in the island’s equivalent of maximum security. There is no security whatsoever, just an abundance of prisoners who are vile, twisted, and utterly psychopathic. Honestly, taking a few of them out isn’t a crime against humanity. It’s doing humanity a favor.

When I think about my team, I can understand why. They fit in with the bastards around them. But so did I when I first came here. I guess if you get told often enough that you’re bad, you start to believe it. But Iris has raised some interesting points. Both Jazz and I are neither good nor bad inherently, it’s just a matter of what choices we make.

So maybe, just maybe, there’s more to it than the team being bad. Don’t get me wrong, they do some stuff that would make even the most hardened criminal wince, but there’s another side to them too. A side that makes them loyal, to me and to each other.

Take Levi, for example. He was the one picked to have a special power: the power to make a person feel like everything good in their life is gone, so they end up in a deep, dark despair. Levi uses his power for fun, and he fights dirty. He has no limits, or if he does, I’ve yet to see them.

And yet, when it comes to his twin sister, Lacey, he’s a big softie. I remember when we first came here, Lacey got involved with someone and long story short, he broke her heart. Levi found her in her room crying and got the story out of her. Of course, he went and used his power on the guy and then tore him limb from limb. But not before he’d fixed Lacey a cup of cocoa and sat up half the night consoling her.

Maybe if I could tap into that side of him and the others, then we wouldn’t have to be the villains. But then I think of Iris and everything she’s given me. She treated me as an equal, explaining the truth to me. And she gave me a ring: a ring that will make it possible to avenge my brother.

Because I don’t care what anyone says—wanting to get revenge on Spider for killing Jake for no better reason than to gain some sort of respect from Kaiden isn’t a dark act. I challenge anyone who says it is to live through watching your little brother, the person you love most in the world, be killed in cold blood, and you’ll soon change your mind.

It’s such a mess in my head. When I was with Iris, what she said made sense, and I liked the idea of working towards a greater goal. Taking Jazz out and becoming Iris’s right-hand man does have a certain appeal. Jazz got everything I didn’t. A happy childhood.

Okay, so that’s not strictly true. Jazz was happy until her mom went away and left her with a deadbeat dad thinking her mom was dead. And then it all went to shit. I was happy for longer I suppose—until the moment Jake died. But you know what? Losing Jake trumps all of her shit. So yeah. That’s what I really mean.

Why did I have to suffer the ultimate torture while she didn’t? Maybe it’s about time she felt some of the pain I felt.

If that was all there was to it, I’d kill Spider and then convince Jazz that following Iris is the only way. I know I could do it. I wouldn’t even need to use any of Iris’s dark magic. See, when I spent time with her and her team, I could sense some of that darkness in her. She wants to do the right thing, but she struggles with it.

Turning her would be easy. It would just be a matter of convincing her the dark choice was the right choice. And after a couple of times, I know she would feel the power that comes from flaunting the rules, from being the one who takes what they want just because they can have it. I know because I’ve done it and I know how easy it is to go there and how hard it is to come back. And once that happened, I wouldn’t have to pretend anymore. I wouldn’t have to convince her the bad choice was the right one, because she wouldn’t care anymore.

But that’s not all there is to it, because every time I think of Jazz, I think of Flick. Flick wasn’t planned. I planned to hang out with Jazz’s team, get a feel for them, and end the game there and then. But Flick touched me in a way I didn’t think was possible.

She made me love her, and with loving her, I began to see a different side to myself. The side that wanted to do the right thing, the noble thing. The side that wanted to be a good person. If she were still alive, I have no doubt in my mind I’d have told Iris where to stick her offer and worked with Jazz and her team to end the game the right way.

I made a promise to Flick, a promise I would let go of the need for revenge and stay with her. And I did it. I began to let go of the anger and the hatred that twisted my insides up, and I had no intention of screwing up and showing her the dark side of me. She knew who I was, and she didn’t care. She loved me anyway.

But now she’s gone, and although it still hurts me to think I have broken my promise to her, it’s not like we can be together anyway. And now I can’t help but think it would be too late for us anyway. I opened the door to the dark side and broke my promise to Flick the second I killed Kaiden.

I should hate Iris for that, but I don’t. I made the choice to kill Kaiden; Iris didn’t force me to do it. And that’s how I find myself embracing Iris. She didn’t judge me for wanting revenge—she got it.

As I reach our building, building one hundred and ninety-five, I make my decision. We’re going after Spider.

I push the door open and step in, expecting the team to be hanging around the lounge area chatting or whatever to pass the time. I couldn’t be more wrong. What greets me is like a scene from a horror movie.

There’s blood everywhere and I can hear screams, crying, and pleas to be left alone. I don’t know how I didn’t hear the screaming from outside. I guess I was more wrapped up in my thoughts than I realized.

A girl sits in the corner of the lounge, her knees pulled up to her chest. She rocks back and forth, sobbing and begging to be left alone. Levi and Lacey loom over her, laughing at her pain and having a casual discussion about what they’re going to do to her that she’s clearly meant to hear.

Three kitchen chairs have been placed in the center of the room, the table pushed to one side. In each chair, a guy is tied up, his wrists bound behind his back, his ankles and waist tied to the chair. Dirty white rags are tied around their mouths. I can see the frantic look of panic in their eyes.

Ariel stands over the first one. She reaches out and slaps him hard enough that his head flies to the side. He turns back to look at her, and beneath his fear, I can see anger burning in his eyes. A deep red handprint marks his cheek.

Still think you’re the superior fucking gender? Ariel snaps.

I can’t help but roll my eyes. I wish Ariel would get over this boys versus girls thing. She calls herself a feminist, but to me, it’s just an excuse to be a standoffish bitch. I don’t care whether my team is male or female; I care about their abilities, and as such, I give them roles I think are best suited to them when we embark on any quests. Ariel always assumes her role is somehow related to her gender, and it always wastes so much time with me explaining to her that’s not the case. Maybe I should be more like Jazz in that way and just tell her it’s her role because I said so and leave it at that.

Cara comes in from the kitchen. I hadn’t even realized she was missing. She is dragging a girl by her hair. She grins when she sees me.

Hey, Cole. How did your meeting go?

She asks this casually like I haven’t just walked into a torture scene. I shouldn’t be surprised. This is the way we spend most of our days. Until I met Flick, I didn’t even consider that it might not be the best way to entertain ourselves.

Okay, I say. I found out something pretty interesting. Oh, and I killed Iris’s second-in-command, so there’s that.

Nice, she comments.

She pauses to pull the girl upright and punches her. She laughs when the girl’s nose explodes. She looks back up at me.

You know what this one is here for? she asks.

I shake my head.

I was actually bringing her boyfriend here. He was cute. Never hurts to have a bit of eye candy around the place, does it? Anyway, this dummy told me to take her instead. So here she is.

Why is that dumb? I ask. I know you have all these issues that love is a construct sent to destroy us or whatever, but come on. That’s pretty heroic.

Cara sighs.

For the hundredth time, I am not some crazy conspiracy theorist who thinks love is out to destroy the world. I just think it’s not actually real. It’s nothing but a chemical reaction that we convince ourselves is something more and then it makes us act all crazy. I just don’t need that kind of bullshit in my life.

So what you’re saying is she’s dumb for caring enough about someone else to want to save them? I ask.

No. I’m saying she’s dumb for doing it for someone who breathed a sigh of relief and let her. I know you’ve gone all soft and shit, but even you must see that’s fucked up.

Yeah. It is, I say.

Soft my ass. They won’t think I’m soft when this is over and we go after Spider.

Where’s Samuel? I ask Cara.

She shrugs.

No idea. Middle one is his.

She nods at the row of chairs.

He’s probably gone to get some props or something. He likes to think of himself as a bit of an artist.

I can’t help but laugh at the idea of Samuel, a brute of a guy, being a secret artist. But stranger things have happened.

Right, I’d love to stay and chat, but I have things to do, lessons to teach. Bitch on the end is yours, Cara says.

I turn back to the row of chairs. The last one holds a petite blonde girl. She isn’t like the others. She doesn’t have a look of fear on her face. She looks more curious than afraid, and suddenly I am the one who is afraid. Am I really going to torture this girl for no reason other than the fact that I can?

Why not? You’ve done it plenty of times before. And now that you’re in league with Iris, you had better stop questioning this side of yourself and just do it, a voice inside of me whispers. And it’s not like you’re going to kill her. None of them will die; they’ll just think they’re going to. And let’s be real, this keeps your reputation up and lets you live in relative peace here.

I sigh and turn it into a cough when Ariel looks at me with a frown. She turns back to her prisoner and I approach mine. I have the sudden urge to take her gag off. I really need to hear her screams. The screams have always spurred me on. And I reckon I need that right now.

I reach up and rip away the gag. Before I can do anything else, the girl speaks.

Please help me, she says.

She doesn’t sound like she’s panicking or pleading. She sounds like a human being appealing to another to just be cool. As doubt seizes me once more, I wish I’d never met Flick. And I hate Jazz more than ever.

Questioning myself this way, it’s all her fault. Why did she have to blur the lines? Why can’t she stick to being good and let me stick to being bad? It worked. It’s what we do, who we are. Well, fuck it. I’m in this now.

I’ve already crossed the line. Hundreds of lines. And it’s too late for me to be anyone but who they made me. I have two choices. Embrace it and work with the team and Iris, or resist it and be alone. And I have spent enough time alone since Jake died. I can’t do that anymore. So it’s time for me to suck it up and embrace who I am.

I take a step closer to the girl. She watches me with a solemn expression. I raise my fist. She knows what’s coming, but she doesn’t flinch. She doesn’t lose her composure or her dignity for even a second and that pisses me off more than it should. I want her to fear me. I need to smell her fear to convince me I’m the monster they want me to be.

I slam my fist into her mouth. Her lips burst open and a spurt of blood runs down from them, coating her chin and dripping down to her top. She winces, but she doesn’t say anything and she doesn’t cry.

I feel anger flood me. How dare she sit there mocking me with serenity in the face of what is coming to her? How dare she challenge me with her eyes?

I hit her again, enjoying watching her head snap back as her nose explodes. Tears do come to her eyes now, but they are tears of pain, not terror. She regards me coolly, judging me. I hate her.

Another punch and her head snaps back again and then rolls forward. I reach out and grab her hair, pulling her head back up. Her eyes roll in their sockets and she pants for breath. Each breath sounds like a gargle through her broken nose.

Had enough yet? I ask her menacingly.

She shrugs. That single, couldn’t-care-less gesture pushes my temper over the edge and I go to town on her. My fists rain down on her, not hard enough to kill her, but hard enough to make her regret not playing the game.

The ring on my finger feels warm, and that warmth spreads up my arm and encompasses me and I feel more powerful than I’ve ever felt. I am in control here. I am the leader. And it is my destiny to rule beside Iris.

I am Cole, and I have the power.

Even in this moment of triumphant acceptance, there is a tiny part of me that knows this is wrong. That knows this ring is much more than Iris told me it was. I can feel the darkness coming off it in waves, enveloping me, and I know the ring is corrupting me.

The thing is, I don’t care. I embrace the darkness, pulling it into me, wrapping me in its comforting cocoon. Because when you’ve come this far, there’s no going back. I know I will never be seen as anything other than the villain now. So I might as well be good at it.

Watch your fucking back, Jazz. I’m coming for you, I think to myself as I smash my fist down into the girl’s face once more.

I feel a hand on my shoulder and I whirl to face my would-be attacker, my fist up and ready. I let it fly, and my attacker ducks.

Whoa there, Cole. What the fuck, man? Samuel says.

His voice breaks through the red mist of my anger and I shakily bring my fists back to my sides. I laugh. It too has a shaky quality to it.

Don’t sneak up on me like that, I say.

Samuel looks from the girl in the chair to me and back again.

Don’t you think she’s had enough? If you go much further, she’ll be dead.

I glance at her myself. Her face is a bloody pulp and she’s clearly unconscious. I did that.

You utter bastard, the tiny voice whispers.

Oh, shut the fuck up, I reply to the voice in my head.

There’s only one way to silence that voice and I know what it is. I reach into my back pocket and pull out my knife. I lift the girl’s head up by a handful of her hair again. I run the knife across her throat, watching the wound appear like a clown’s smile, watching her life pour out of her and pool at her feet. A pulse of warmth comes from my ring. A pat on the back from Iris.

I turn back to Samuel.

Now she’s had enough. I grin.

Samuel doesn’t react at first, and then his face breaks into a wide grin to match mine and he claps me on the shoulder.

That she has, he says.

The whole team has stopped what they’re doing now, and they all look at me. I think I see something like horror on Cara’s face, but the rest of them soak it up, whooping and cheering.

Listen up. I’m going to go shower and change. Clean this mess up and do the same. Meet me back here in an hour. We’re going to New York.

The hour I gave the team to clean the building and themselves up felt like two days. I can hardly wait to get to Spider and show him what happens when you mess with me. Demon, human, I don’t care. No one crosses me and gets away with it. Not anymore.

I do have a little longer to wait though because I think the team deserves an explanation. I purposely wait another couple of minutes to make sure I’ll be the last one there and then I walk out of my room and out into the lounge.

The coffee table is back in the center of the room, the chairs presumably back around the table in the kitchen. Everything is spotless, and no one would guess what had taken place here only an hour ago.

I walk to the center of the room, ready to address the team.

How do you think we’re going to New York? Ariel asks the second I’m in place.

I’m going to explain everything. I think you guys need to know what’s been going on over these last few weeks and why I haven’t been myself. So, you all know what happened when I went to infiltrate Jazz’s team.

Yeah. You went soft on us because of some girl you’d known for five minutes, Cara says.

I nod. I suppose I did. But that’s done with now. I see what she was trying to do, and I’m over it.

That’s not strictly true, but it’s the closest I’m going to get to telling the team my thoughts about Flick. I do want to be honest with them, but there are still some things that are private, and that’s one of them.

Good to know. It doesn’t explain how you think we can suddenly leave the island though, Levi says.

My meeting today was with Iris, I say.

This gets a few raised eyebrows, and I know I’ve got their attention now.

"You all know that Aurus had my brother killed, and I vowed to get my revenge on him for that. That isn’t what actually happened. The man who ordered my brother to be killed, who claimed to be my father, wasn’t actually Aurus. He was Kaiden, Iris’s second-in-command. Iris sent Kaiden to play the role of Aurus, to