A Nameless Dark

Chapter 6

We stole a car.

Which was crazy to me, but for Aaron it just seemed like Thursday.

"How did you know how to do that?" Samuel asked him. "Hotwire a car."

    At first, Aaron didn't respond. Then the gravel tremor of his voice rumbled through the car.

    "Our life used to be very different," he said. "Me, your dad... and Miriam."

    I'd rarely heard my father my mention his sister, our Aunt Miriam, and Aaron had never said her name before that could remember. I knew she died before I was born, but that was about it. Samuel opened his mouth to ask another question, but Lara tapped his shoulder and shook her head. Aaron stared at she road in front of him like a man facing the approaching ghost of something long dead and forgotten. Clearly he did not want to talk anymore.

    Samuel shut up.

The drive to Pennsylvania was shrouded in silence, all of us reeling from the loss of our home and the attack at the motel. I sat beside Lara in the back seat of a stolen Malibu and tried to keep myself from questioning Aaron, searching for answers. He looked away from the road only once, both hands on the steering wheel, and met my eyes in the rearview mirror. Sorrow haunted his gaze like the ghosts of whatever past had risen from the ground to terrorize our family. That look kept me silent. There would be a time to demand answers, but this was not it.

    Outside our car, the rolling, wooded landscape of the Ohio River Valley was a blur of hollow motion. I turned from my uncle, resigning myself to the ache of unanswered questions, and stared out the window with unseeing eyes. There was so much that I didn't know. A realm of secrets had been opened up to me, teeming with monsters and shadows and whispered half-truths. I'd always known that my family had secrets, but I thought I knew what they were. I'd bought every line my Father fed me about our sacred duty to each other — to keep the family safe and stay hidden from the horrors of the world. Now it seemed as though our family was connected to those horrors in some way. Nothing was certain anymore, and as I began to question what I knew of my family, I couldn't help but question myself.

    My father had always been hesitant to talk about our family history. He told us about our place in the world as one of seven Families of Light: ancient bloodlines who possessed an incredible power. Some said that power was connected to the creation of the universe we live in; that a piece of the spark that created our world resided in every person, and that we alone were able to tap into that spark and use it to effect the world around us. We called that power Light, and those who could wield it were the Holders of Light. Dad talked about the other Families, and about our own ancestors, as if they were some mythical beings long extinct. He spoke as if our lives were only connected to theirs in the loosest of ways, treating them like fairy tales and bedtime stories. But the power that rose up inside me when I called it was very real. Real enough to kill a man. And I was beginning to suspect that our power had a reason for existing beyond just hiding us away from the world and protecting us from the bad-guys who want to destroy our family.

    I still believed my family had a purpose as Holders of Light, but I was no longer convinced that we were fulfilling it. Somewhere along the way, something had gone wrong. As I settled into my seat, feeling the miles bump away beneath me, I determined that I would find out what that purpose was at all costs. We'd been lied to and cheated out of the opportunity to do what we were born to do. But that ended the moment the sky was scorched by the fires of my failure. I'd done something terrible to bring these dark secrets into the light. Now, to atone for it, I would discover our true mission in this world or die trying. I stared out the window, unblinking as I felt the fire of determination spark to life inside me. I had not asked to be set on this new path, but I was resolved to see it through to its end.