A Latent Dark Read Online Free Page A

etching with his thumb and noticed a subtle grain beneath the gloss finish that gleamed in the light.  
    “That’s some remarkable craftsmanship,” he said, leaning in to get a closer look.
    “Thank you sir,” the soldier said. He puffed his chest a bit and looked at nothing in particular. “We make them here. Bollingbrook’s finest.”
    “I can see that,” said Lyle. “Surprised your city doesn’t sell more of these to the local municipalities.”
    “There is less of a market during peace-time. Ever since the Maka-Sichu crusades, there hasn’t been much need for armor.”
    Lyle laughed. “Sounds like what you folks need is more wars. Nothing better for a man’s soul than a crusade.” He slapped the boy on the side of his pauldron.
    “Yes sir.”
    Lyle turned back to the shattered wood that lay all around him.
    “Now,” he said. “The reason you never saw anyone living here”—he reached up and tore a piece of wood away from the bristled frame—“is because you weren’t allowed to see.”
    “Sir?” The boy frowned.
    Lyle turned to him, holding the splinter out. “Birch. Witches. It’s all witchcraft and trickery, my boy. The mind sees what it wants. It picks and chooses sometimes. Some know how to take advantage of this. I bet you never guessed that you had such summoners living right in your midst.”
    And yet you yourself let one of them get away , he thought to himself.
    Charlie blinked. “No sir. Bollingbrook is the center for the archdiocese. We would have known about this. The archbishop would have exorcised the premises.”
    The young soldier shivered as he looked around, looking as if he felt the house would collapse in on him.
    “You would have to have been invited in order to see it, much the way a vampire can only enter your house if you invite them. Evil has to be invited into the heart, just as the heart sometimes has to be invited to do evil.”
    Charlie laughed in spite of himself. “ Sir . Vampires? There’s no such thing.”
    Lyle did not laugh. “Awfully sure of yourself, aren’t you boy?”
    The soldier looked as though he had been slapped. All that remained of the old man’s jovial nature poured from his face like water from a pitcher. What remained pierced Charlie’s soul with chill blue eyes as the Reverend spoke slowly, cold and serious.
    “I’ve seen things that neither you nor this dirt clod of a town could possibly imagine, boy.” His voice was as rough as dried leaves.
    Charlie shrank under his gaze. “I… I’m sorry sir.”
    As if a switch was flipped, The Reverend Summers smiled at the boy, slapping him again on the shoulder. He continued his inspection in silence as Charlie watched.
    They traveled up the stairwell and young Charles Wilcox swore he had never seen anything quite like it. A pool of blood was congealed at the base of the stairs, black in the dim light. A deep gash ran ragged from the living room up to the attic where the daughter had lived.
    Everyone knew about them of course, the way they do of the town drunk or the local haunted house. It was something that was never spoken of aloud or on purpose. Ghost stories were told about the mother who saw demons and the girl who could read people’s souls like a book. When they walked down the street people diverted their gaze for fear of catching an evil eye and being turned to stone. The mother could wish people dead and have it become so. Or so the stories went, anyway.
    Charlie believed maybe half of them. He didn’t know the woman or her daughter, but what was rumor was as good as fact when invoked by the fearful and superstitious.
    Being here, seeing the house in person was anticlimactic to say the least. He had been expecting rooms full of bones and cauldrons, chicken carcasses dangling from the ceiling and decorated with strange herbs; skulls of children with glass eyes. He wanted to see a magic wand on the bookshelf and a closet full of flying broomsticks.
    He had expected, well…