Free Darkness Brutal (The Dark Cycle Book 1) by Rachel A. Marks Page A

fingers and toes with my accomplishment.
    “If you can’t do it, it’s fine,” I say, “but at least admit it.”
    “I’m leaning toward Asshat . Am I close?”
    I laugh. “You’ve got the first letter right.”
    “Points for me.”
    I see she’s not going to ask, so I say, “It’s Aidan. Aidan O’Linn.”
    “I was feeling a lion, actually,” she says. “Well, several of them. For your name. I was gonna say Daniel.” She glances sideways at me again. “Like Daniel in the lions’ den.”
    My skin tingles. “Daniel,” I repeat under my breath. My mom painted that scene on my bedroom wall when I was little. She painted me in the den, lions surrounding me, Daniel a shadowy figure off in the distance. I always wondered why she drew him like that.
    Mom runs her hand over the lion’s image, like she’s pretending its mane is trailing through her fingers. “The lions won’t touch you, Aidan. They can’t hurt you. God’s closed their mouths.”
    When Mom drew her dream images, she drew a lot of ocean scenes with caves etched out of the side of a cliff, but the only time she mentioned God in relation to it all was the day she painted those lions on my wall. She was a witch, after all. God didn’t really come into the picture much.
    The familiar weight of the memory presses down on me. I wonder if she was trying to tell me something, to show me my future as she saw it in her fractured mind: danger always surrounding me. Danger only I seem to see.
    “Daniel’s okay in the end, though,” Kara says, like she’s sensing my troubled thoughts.
    “What?”
    “Daniel, in the story. He doesn’t get eaten by the lions.” She shrugs. “And the king—Dairy Queen or whoever—was so stoked that Daniel was unmarked by the lions that he made the people start worshiping Daniel’s god. I guess you could say Daniel was a rock star.”
    “Is that right?” I know the story—it’s ingrained in my soul with all the other sacred texts—but her version is very entertaining. “And it’s Darius, not Dairy Queen . King Darius.”
    “Yeah, sure. But did you know that Daniel was the head magician? Who knew they had Harry Potter people in the Bible ?”
    “He was a prophet,” I say, correcting her again.
    “Whatever you call it, he kicked ass. The guy went into the palace a slave and ended up a Babylonian bigwig. Very inspiring.”
    It’s odd hearing the prophet Daniel talked about like he was some Middle East version of Steve Jobs. “Bigwig, huh?”
    “Yep.”
    “Inspiring?”
    “Something like that.”
    She goes quiet as we merge onto the 101 freeway. I let my mind wander through the ancient worlds and legends in my head as I watch the scenery of the city, the buildings, the funny mismatched moods of art and culture everywhere. Life meets death in the paintings that adorn the concrete walls on either side of the freeway—the artwork of famous people, long dead; some images colorful and new; some overlaid with chaotic graffiti; the names of gang members as big as buses, painted alongside images of children jumping rope.
    “So, Aidan O’Linn,” Kara says as we pull off the freeway, “what’s your sister’s name?”
    I rest my head on the back of the seat. “Ava.”
    “And she doesn’t have your talents ?”
    “Ava’s nothing like me.”
    Kara seems to know where the school is without me telling her, and after a few more lights we’re pulling into the busy parking lot.
    “Which side?” she asks. The campus is large, at least two city blocks of buildings and grassy areas.
    I scan the faces in the crowd, try to get a feeling for the emotions and energy I’m about to dive into, and point at the back corner of the lot where there aren’t as many cars. “Just park back there, under the trees.”
    “Are we about to kidnap this girl?”
    “She’s my sister.”
    “Maybe I should leave the motor running.” She parks the car and turns off the engine.
    We get out, but I don’t move far. Kara’s