Dark Corner (17 page)

Holding his father's hand, he leaned closer.

"Please hear me, my father," Kyle said. "I am your son.
You are safe. Awaken. Open your eyes and look upon me ""

Kyle repeated the words again and again, in a soft, fervent chant.

He suddenly noticed a change: his father's eyes, rotating
back and forth underneath his leathery eyelids.

Diallo was dreaming.

Diallo dreamed of a world drenched in blood.

The sun was a blood blister. The sky was a raw membrane. The mountains on the horizon were giant hunks of
bleeding flesh, the trees had been dipped in gore, and the
grass did not crunch underfoot; it oozed, as though he tread
across a vast carpet woven from threads of dripping skin.

He had created this place. He was at peace, at long last.
All of the men who had once overrun the land had perished
at his hands, and he had fashioned this world from their
steaming corpses.

He walked through a gleaming red meadow, the sun
warm on his dark skin. Ahead, there was a huge lake of
bright, cool blood. It lapped at the sandy red banks.

He strolled to the shore, bent, and cupped blood in his
large hands. He drank, deeply.

It was so sweet, so invigorating.

He was about to turn, to pluck a juicy, blood-filled fruit
from a nearby tree, when he saw something shimmering on
the lake's surface.

They were visions of his prior life, before he had conquered the world. The images had a clarity reminiscent of
how his face had once looked when regarded in a pool of silver water.

He watched the memories, as a spectator views a sport ...

He was a young man, the village prince, highly esteemed by his peers and family. Always, he had been bigger, taller, and
stronger than others. And more cunning, too. For his natural
gifts, he had been richly rewarded.

He took several wives but loved none of them, enjoying only
the feel of their bodies and their subservience to his will.

He grew into a feared warrior. Rival villages fell. One of the
villages, to ward off an attack and ensure peace, offered him
their loveliest woman as a wife: Mariama.

Oh, Mariama.

He fell in love with her, cherished her as he had never cherished a woman before. Their souls bonded, and they became as
one. She smoothed the edges of his hard heart, and calmed his
desire to dominate. Unknowingly, by coaxing him to become a
gentle man, she caused the erosion of his skills in battle, too.

An upstart village attached them, and both he and
Mariama were captured. They were sold to the pale men, the
European slave traders.

He and Mariama were separated, savagely. As if they were
only cattle.

He was shattered. He vowed that, one day, he would see her
again, no matter how long it took to find her.

He survived an overseas voyage on a stinking, rat-infested
ship, packed so tightly with other slaves that even another
man's wastes would seep down his legs and back. As he lay in
the cramped space, his body sore and filthy, his stomach aching
with hunger, he made another vow: he would not live his life as
anyone's slave, and they would not kill him, either. He would
kill them first. It was not his destiny to serve as a slave. It was
his destiny to be served by slaves.

When the ship arrived at its port, he was sold to a wealthy
planter in the state of Virginia. It was a strange new world. No
one knew who he was. No one knew his greatness, his prowess
in battle. They did not fear him, as they should. They treated
him as if he were a common mule.

He did not see Mariama at his new home.

He submitted to the harsh life of a slave, biding his time. Many times, his rage overwhelmed him, and he lashed out
against the overseers. Always, they beat him with merciless glee.

Sometimes, his fellow slaves spoke in hushed tones about escaping. Usually, when they tried, they were captured and
brought back to the plantation-or they were killed. He understood that there would be a better way for him. He was a great
man, with a destiny to fulfill. Running fearfully through the
night was not his path.

Freedom came once he finally killed.

He saw an overseer whipping a young female slave. He
seized the man and broke him over his knee, like a plank of
wood.

The act demanded that he be put to death, immediately. But
he was saved, by the destiny for which he'd awaited: Lisha.

The mysterious black female, feared even by the white men, arrived on the plantation, and intervened to purchase him at a
high price. She took him away.

She said that she had been watching him. She offered him a
life free from death, a life of timeless power. The life of a vampire.

He accepted without hesitation, recognizing that the power
of which she spoke was his destiny. He became Lisha's companion.

They moved to the colorful, vibrant city of New Orleans.
There, they lived in a mansion, with servants eager to fulfill
their every whim. At night, they left the confines of the estate to
satisfy their bloodthirst on the humans.

On one of their hunts, he found Mariama.

He had known that he would find her again. She was as
beautiful as he had remembered, in spite of the hardships she'd
endured since their separation.

She was a slave for a rich white man. He'd invaded the
house, to feed on the inhabitants, and found her asleep.
Stunned, he promised to take her away from the place, so she
could live with him. Although Lisha had saved him, he would
have freely left Lisha to be with Mariama again.

But Mariama barely recognized him. She thought he was a
demon. As he tried to convince her that he was indeed her husband, men broke inside, bearing rifles. They fired. He avoided
the gunfire. Mariama did not.

Believing that she was dead and lost to him forever, he fled,
weeping, to Lisha.

She comforted him, though he wept for a woman. She understood that he loved Mariama more than he could ever love
her. She did not seem to care. She only wanted his companionship.

But he wanted more.

He wanted to destroy these men who had caused such pain
and torment. He wanted to destroy those who submissively accepted pain. He wanted to wipe all of them clean from the earth.
He wanted to drench the world in their blood.

He did not join Lisha on the next night's hunt. He left her.

He began to build his army, to help him fulfill his mission,
his true destiny.

With a horde of vampire warriors behind him, he went on a
bloody rampage across the land. Plantations fell, much like the
rival villages had in his days as a man. He squashed them
under his heels and washed himself in their blood.

And incredibly, he found Mariama again.

She walked with a limp, from the gunshot wound, but she
was no less beautiful to him. She had been placed on another
plantation, and worked inside the master's house.

She recognized him with the same glimmer of fear in her
eyes. She said he was not a man. He said she was correct. He
was better than a man. And he was going to make her better
than a woman, too.

He destroyed the plantation and took her with him. He
planned to make her a vampire, once he had the opportunity to
complete the secret rituals that Lisha had taught him.

But the very next day, tragedy struck.

This time, Mariama did not survive ...

Roaring, Diallo punched the lake's shimmering red sur face. The blood splashed, and the haunting memories rippled
away.

He ran away from the banks, into the crimson forest. He
ran and ran.

Then, the woods thinned. He ventured out of the shadows, and into a gleaming red meadow.

He looked up. The sun was a blood blister. The sky was a
raw membrane. The mountains on the horizon were giant
hunks of bleeding flesh, the trees had been dipped in gore,
and the grass did not crunch underfoot; it oozed, as though
he tread across a vast carpet woven from threads of dripping
skin.

He had created this place ...

-uesday afternoon, David visited one of his father's lesser- known properties: a log cabin located in the forested hills
on the edge of the town. Earvin Williams, his dad's estate attorney, had told him about the place. "Your father used to go
there when he wanted complete privacy," Earvin had said,
then added with a smile, "By the way, it now belongs to you,
too"

He hoped he would learn more about his father by visiting the cabin. Since Sunday's revelations, he had not discovered anything noteworthy. His father kept thousands of books,
hundreds of photos, and boxes full of papers dispersed
throughout the house, in no discernible order. It would take
time and energy to dig through everything and piece together the puzzle of Richard Hunter's life.

He followed the directions the lawyer had given him to
reach the hideaway. He drove on a quiet, tree-shaded road,
away from the residential areas. Ahead, the route hit a dead
end, but there was a driveway on the right, between a row of
shrubs. He turned onto the winding lane, and into the forest. King perched on the passenger seat, looking curiously at the
dense woods.

"You won't ever roam out there, pal," David said, stroking
the dog's neck. "You'd never find your way home"

The dog chuffed, as if he disagreed.

The cabin stood in a clearing, perhaps a quarter of a mile
down the road. King, always eager to explore new places,
beat him to the door.

Inside, the air was warm and stale. It was a spacious, oneroom house with a high ceiling. A kitchenette occupied one
side, a bedroom area, the other, and the living space was in
front. The bathroom was barely larger than a closet. A desk
stood along the far wall. It held a lamp, a jar of pencils, and
an old typewriter.

As King sniffed his way through the cabin, David looked
around, too. After fifteen minutes of searching, and finding
nothing whatsoever of interest, he was ready to leave.

His cell phone chirped. It was his mother.

"How are things in Mississippi?" Mom asked. "I haven't
heard from you lately, boy. You've moved there and forgotten
about me"

"Hey, Mom. I've been fine, still getting settled, mainly."

Although he normally shared almost everything with his
mother, he decided to keep quiet about his investigation.
Mom didn't want him there to begin with, and the last thing
he wanted to do was upset her with the few discoveries and
theories he'd learned so far. She would only insist on him
coming back to Atlanta.

Instead, he told her about Nia. He gushed about Nia, actually. He hadn't told anyone in his family about her yet, and
the praises flooded out of him. Mom, of course, was glad to
hear about her. David knew that she privately nursed a wish
that he would settle down soon and start a family. "You'll be
thirty next year," she'd begun saying lately. "I don't want to
rush you into anything, but you want to have your own kids while you're young enough to enjoy them. You don't want to
be a sixty-year-old man out there getting winded trying to
play ball with your teenage son" Whenever David countered
by telling her that meeting the right woman was hardly a
simple task, she accused him of being a workaholic who didn't socialize enough. He could never win.

"Well, it's so nice to hear that you've finally met a nice
young lady," Mom said, and he could hear the smile in her
voice. "Treat that girl right. A good woman's hard to find."

"You know I'll treat her right, Mom. I had a good teacher
in you, didn't I?"

"You sure did." Mom laughed. "I love you"

"Love you, too. Bye"

Hands on his waist, David looked around the cabin one
last time. He hadn't found anything useful, but at least he
could come there if he wanted some privacy. In fact, it might
make a nice weekend getaway with Nia, he thought with a
smile.

Outside, he found a gigantic black bird standing atop the
Pathfinder's hood. It looked like a crow, though an unusually
large one.

"Shoo, birdie," he said. He waved his hand.

The bird did not move. It stared at him with beady, inkblack eyes. It looked directly at him without faltering.

It was not a crow, he realized; it was much too big for
that. It was a raven.

"Hey, fly away now," he said.

Behind David, King growled deep in his throat.

The raven ignored the dog. Still watching David, it ruffled
its wings.

David took a step backward. Crazily, memories of that
Alfred Hitchcock flick, The Birds, came to mind.

The bird cawed. It launched itself into the air, swooping
right above David he felt a wave of cool wind as it flapped
its broad wings. The creature soared away into the blue sky.

David frowned. Weird. He'd never seen a bird behave so
boldly.

King watched the raven vanish into the sky, and then
looked at David.

David shrugged. "Nope, pal. I don't know what that was
all about, either."