Heart of Darkness - A Standalone Bad Boy Romance Novel Read online

  There were plenty of other strange things that happened in the neighborhood over the past few years, such as the professor of chemistry who was busted for making illegal pharmaceutics in his basement. The man later turned out to be deeply in debt to mobsters.

  “I wondered why he always was on the pay phone at the grocery store,” Lilly’s mother had said to her when the arrest hit the news.

  Since the fountain stood between her and the entrance to the mall, Dion would be directly in her path if Lilly wanted to go back in it for her shoes. This would allow her to see what he was up to by the fountain and retrieve her shoes at the same time. You weren’t supposed to enter the mall if you didn’t have shoes on, but she didn’t worry about it, as Lilly knew some of the mall security guards. They were constantly flirting with her.

  She checked to make sure her car was locked before she picked up her leather purse and headed back into the mall.

  The day was bright and sunny with birds circling in the sky. She looked up and realized the birds were vultures. It was an unnerving sight; what interest would vultures have in a mall? She decided they were riding the air currents drifting up from the ground. People believed vultures circled in the air to signal each other when there was something dead on the ground. But Lilly learned years ago it had to do with the way they used the updraft from warm air on the ground to glide. There might be places on the roof where the vultures nested. They weren’t all that far from Hinckley, Ohio where they returned every year to mate and nest. Perhaps the vultures were thinking about moving their nesting grounds to the mall?

  The mall was dominated by a huge clock, which sat in the middle and towered over everything below it. Although the mall was an indoor shopping center, someone had decided it needed a clock tower rising up from the center of the complex so everyone in the parking lot could see what time it was. Access to the clock tower was almost impossible to find, or so she’d been told by a few friends whose parents worked in the mall. Even the plans approved by the local building committee were vague on this part of the mall construction.

  Lilly walked past the fountain where Dion sat on the ledge. Something compelled her to stop and watch what he did with his hand. She froze when she saw a small column of water rise into the air close to his hand and fall. She stood there in amazement as he brought an entire wave of water up to his level and watched as it fell down into the pool. No one else was around the fountain at this time of the day.

  As she stood there, Dion slowly turned around and aimed his piercing eyes into her own. Lilly felt as if her entire soul was bared to him. It seemed Dion could see into her very mind and knew everything about her. But she wasn’t scared. She didn’t feel any sort of animosity from Dion… just curiosity.

  As he looked at her, two more columns of water rose into the air and slowly fell back down into the fountain. They were followed by a wave, which rose up to his height and sent a shower of coins into the air. The coins splashed back into the water as he continued to watch her. Dion kept one hand in the air over the fountain, but never once did the water come near him. She could see no dampness or watermarks on his clothes.

  “How did you do that?” she asked him.

  “Do what?” Dion said, withdrew his hand to one side of his body and rested it on the ledge of the fountain.

  “The water… you had it moving and forming shapes in the air. I’ve never seen anyone do that. Are you some kind of magician?”

  Dion smiled back at her. “You mean an illusionist, like Houdini or Copperfield? No, not like that. Not at all.”

  He moved his hand over the water and a mist rose over it. As Lilly froze in place, she saw the mist form into a cloud over the fountain. The clouds turned into fantastic shapes. One became the figure of a dancer before it broke apart in the air. Another one turned from a boat into a dragon before a breeze blew it apart.

  Dion lowered his hand and the mist over the fountain dissolved.

  “Can I sit by you?” Lilly asked him. She trembled. This was the sort of thing that never happened. At least not to people like her.

  “Of course, you can sit right here.” He indicated the space to his right.

  Lilly’s feet took her to the fountain and her body sat itself down next to the strange man. Now that she was close, Lilly could see how handsome he was. She always felt Dion was cute, but this close she could sense the heat radiating from him and really felt his presence. Her heartbeat increased and she tried to avoid showing the sweat forming on her brow.

  “Can I see your lighter?” he asked her.

  How did Dion know she had a lighter in her purse? People didn’t smoke as they had in her parents’ day. Then it hit her: if he knew she had a lighter in her purse, he might know what else she had in it. With shaking hands, she opened the clasp on her leather purse and took out the cigarette lighter.

  Her hand still trembling, Lilly handed it to Dion and placed her purse down. She hadn’t felt so vulnerable since an old boyfriend told her over the phone one night his parents had installed a hot tub in their backyard and they would be gone for the weekend.

  Dion flicked the flint on the lighter and a flame popped out of one end. He held it up for a few seconds and watched the flame burn.

  “I don’t think they want you to smoke out here,” she told him.

  “Who said anything about smoking,” he said and held out the burning lighter in front of her.

  Lilly watched as the flame grew to a height of what must’ve been about six inches. She didn’t believe it was possible for this to happen. The lighter couldn’t have that much fuel in it. The flames changed shapes, turned blue and became a human form. As her eyes grew wide, she watched the shape detach from the ground and run circles on the concrete. She saw the little figure made from fire run a figure eight in front of them for a few seconds. Then it stopped and seemed to look up at them. Two seconds later, it was gone in a puff of smoke.

  “They just don’t last very long,” he explained as Dion returned the lighter back to her.

  In front of the fountain was a small strip of grass that encircled it. At one time, the landscapers intended to plant flowers there, but the mall management decided against it. They reasoned it would deter people from enjoying the fountain and the flowers would be trampled. They left the strip where a few feet of grass grew and needed to be trimmed every year.

  Dion reached down and picked up some dirt. It was moist from the recent rains and he kneaded it into the shape of a heart. He placed the dirt heart down on the ledge of the fountain between them and washed his hands in the fountain. The heart turned red and then formed into a crystalline pattern. Seconds later, it became a brilliant and shiny piece of onyx.

  “Wow. Can I pick it up?”

  “Go ahead.”

  Lilly reached down and picked up the onyx heart. It was solid when her fingers made contact, but by the time it was up to the level of her face, the onyx was dirt again. As she looked at it, the glossy black became brown and crumbled in her hands.

  “Doesn’t last very long either,” he told her. “I’m working on it.”

  “How does this happen?” she asked.

  “What do you mean?” He looked at her with an intensity she’d seldom seen before.

  “I mean, you have to have some tricks to make those things appear to move, don’t you? My sister told me about a man at a bar who pulled all kinds of coins out of her nose and ears. She told me he showed her how he did it later.”

  “Oh, that,” he laughed. “You mean this sort of trick?” Dion held out a quarter and waved his hand in front of her. “Give me your hand,” he commanded.

  Lilly held hers out and felt his strong fingers hold it from the other side.

  He took the hand with the quarter in it and dropped two quarters into her palm. She looked up at him, her lip-gloss shining in the sunlight. Lilly was glad she hadn’t worked the green eye shadow today.

  “This is what I did,” he explained to her. Dion proceeded to show Lilly the met
hod by which he’d hidden the first quarter behind the second and only held up one to her face. When he opened his hand, two had fallen into her palm because she’d been deceived and only saw one.

  “It appears so simple,” Lilly told him. “But I still can’t figure out how you made the water rise, or the fire dance.”

  “Different kinds of talent,” he told her. “One is based on deception; the other comes from the elements. One fools you; the other is from destiny. It just so happens my destiny was to shape the genius of the elementals.”

  “Are you saying it’s something you’re born with?”

  “We all have our talents. Some of us have to work a lot harder at them than others. At least that is what my dad told me. My aunt can’t make it happen, but my uncle can. What you see here…” he waved a hand over the fountain and another column of water rose up to it. He shook his hand and the column fell back, “…is talent, but not much. I was supposed to learn the rest of it from my father, but he’s gone.”

  “I’m so sorry to hear that,” Lilly said. She felt her heart race. If he reached out for her now, Lilly didn’t know what she’d do. Damn the talk her mother gave her last month and the one she’d had with her former boyfriend. Her eyes were starting to cloud over.

  “They are both alive,” he told her. “I know everyone at school think they’re dead. But they’re very much alive.”

  “Then why do you stay with your aunt and uncle?”

  “Protection,” he explained. “The same person who kidnapped them wants me as well. My aunt and uncle can stand up to that person. Alone, I can’t. I’m not strong enough… yet. But when I am, I’ll get them back. But not until I’ve reached my full strength.”

  Lilly looked up at Dion again. She wanted to help him, but what was she getting herself into today? She didn’t know this guy. In a few months, she’d be off to college and a whole new life awaited her. Enough with the petty smart kids and the cheerleaders. The hell with the officer’s wives and the daughters whose names were kept out of the paper.

  She remembered a girl carried to the car, high as a kite, by her boyfriend. The same girl was featured in the local community paper when she received a scholarship from an air force service organization. Good and fine, she could snort some real quality drugs in college before she returned to be married off to some corpsman.

  And how much of what Dion told her had truth to it? Sure, it had seemed strange and wondrous to see fire run in circles on the floor, but if he knew the secrets of illusions, couldn’t Dion fool her with his assumed powers? How much was a trick and how much was what she wanted to believe? What kind of game was he playing? Was she in the process of being set up for something?

  “You don’t understand,” Dion told her. “Most people can’t. There aren’t too many of us around who have this ability. My dad once said that most people can do some of it, but people in our family who can manipulate the elementals are very rare. I was taught not to use it. But I’m on the verge of something and I have to figure out what the best way is to get it.

  “And this has taken you here?” she asked. “Can’t your aunt and uncle help you?”

  “They could, but I don’t want to put them into harm’s way. My uncle has some of my ability, but not much. He has more than most people and this might attract the wrong sort of attention to him. All kinds of people would like to take what we can do and use it for bad things. It’s happened in the past, which is why we don’t talk about it.”

  “So why are you telling me this?”

  A few moments passed in silence.

  “I need help… and I like you, Lilly. You have a good head and a better heart. I don’t see that very often.”

  “This is crazy,” she said and started to rise up from the ledge around the fountain. “All you want to do is get into my pants. Sorry, Dion, I am no woman’s fool and everything you just did can be explained.”

  Lilly felt anger overtake her senses.

  She was angrier than when her last boyfriend had tried to do some things she objected to in the back seat of his parent’s Ford at the local drive-in movie theater. She had to explain the bite mark on her neck to her mother, who seemed to find it funny. At least she didn’t have to explain anything else. Mark this one down as another guy who’d stolen his dad’s copy of The Sensuous Man.

  “Perhaps you need a better demonstration,” he said to her. “This will tire me out, but I think you will find it instructive.”

  Before she demanded Dion tell her what he was talking about, he leaned back away from the water and closed his eyes. He began to concentrate intensely and breathed deeply.

  Lilly cocked her head and looked at him again. If this was his attempt to impress her, it was not going to succeed. She turned and started to walk back to her car.

  The wind stopped her.

  It began as a steady breeze, which slowly reached its zenith as she turned and looked in the direction it came. The breeze began to pick up and emerged from the entrance to the mall. Both doors of the main entrance were blown open by a sudden rush of air from the inside of the building. It began to howl in her direction, threatening to blow her over. Lilly was certain, if anyone had been at the entrance, it would have blown them into the parking lot. Lilly felt her curly hair sent into a halo behind her as the wind picked up in intensity. It felt as if she was inside a tornado.

  She turned and looked in the direction of Dion.

  The young man continued to sit on the ledge in a state of concentrative meditation. His hands were on top of his knees with the palms facing up in the air. His hair also blew back from him, away from the force of the wind inside the mall. Lilly wanted him to make it stop; she was ready to tell him to bring this thing to an end because she believed him.

  She heard a whirling sound and something was spinning out of the doors in her direction. Stunned, Lilly watched her shoes fly out of the mall at her. They were the Earth Shoes she’d bought last year and still liked to wear, no matter how out of style they’d fallen in the past few months. The shoes spun around each other in a rapid circle, then struck not ten feet in front of her. When they hit the ground, the shoes slid in her direction and stopped moving the moment they bumped into her feet.

  The howling wind died down and turned into a breeze. With the force of the wind gone, the mall doors slowly closed shut. Soon the breeze was gone and Lilly stood there facing her shoes and the dust blown around her from the wind.

  She turned to look at Dion.

  He was bent over the ledge of the waterfall with an exhausted look on his face. Dion gagged and sat back up. Lilly, ignoring her shoes ran over to him and helped him sit back up.

  “Are you okay? You made the wind blow like that? That’s insane!”

  “I’m all right,” he told her, his eyes still having trouble focusing. “Just don’t ask me to do it again.”

  “I didn’t.”

  “Not by words, but by your actions. I could tell I would have to prove this to you. It’s worn me out and I can’t do it again today. Not until I have the power given to me by the Grandmaster of the Air. Don’t forget your shoes; I went to a lot of trouble to retrieve them for you.”

  Lilly ran over to her Earth Shoes and strapped them on her feet. How had he known where to find them? Of course, he’d realized barefoot senior girls didn’t wander around a mall and deduced she’d left her shoes inside. But how did he know where to locate them?

  “How did you find them?” Lilly asked as she walked back over to Dion. At least the rough concrete and asphalt no longer hurt her feet.

  “They called to you,” he explained. “You wear something long enough, it becomes part of you. It’s why I don’t change styles very often. I’ve had jackets plead with me for help.”

  Lilly felt her pulse race again. She might be able to discount what he’d done with the lighter and dirt as a parlor trick, but a windstorm? No, there was no way he could’ve blown her shoes out of the mall unless he knew of some technology far in advance of anyt
hing in the world.

  She sat down next to him. “Didn’t you say you needed my help? How?”

  “I have to go into the mall today,” he told her. “There are four Grandmasters of the Elements at any given time. All four of them are inside that mall for reasons I don’t understand. I can’t fully use my abilities unless they confirm them on me. I can only go inside when the mall is open and I can’t do it alone. I need someone I can trust who will watch my back and protect me from what is inside that mall.”

  “But it’s just a shopping mall,” Lilly blurted out. “What in the world could be inside it that would hold you back?”

  It’s not just an ordinary shopping mall,” he told her. “It looks that way from the outside. My parents knew one of them was about to spring up somewhere in the United States. But just as they located this one, someone kidnapped them. I need full use of my powers or they won’t be rescued.”

  Lilly turned around and starred at the entrance. She’d just been inside the mall. “Looks perfectly normal to me,” she said. “What makes this one so different?”

  “It’s not what is on the outside that makes it different,” he told her, “it’s what’s on the inside.”

  He stood up and walked over to the entrance and made sure he never ventured too close. Dion walked around the front, but kept a respectable distance away from the doors. Lilly noticed he stayed away from the area under the roof of the porch. It appeared he sensed something he didn’t like which came from its direction.

  “You might think it’s just a mall,” he said to her, “and for all practical purposes it is one. Most people who come here don’t think about how it showed up so suddenly. My aunt and uncle have watched over this place for years. It used to be a barren field, you know. Some farmer had it in his family for generations. Nothing of value would grow here. Before the settlers came, the Indians avoided this patch of land; they knew something wasn’t right with it. But it was right for one thing, and the mall hides it nicely.”