Darkness Fades (Darkness Falls Series, Book 3) (22 page)

I wonder what’s happening to him. If he’s
hurt. If he’ll die. Although Aiden did terrible things, I know it
wasn’t by his own choice. He’s connected to the Highers, broken by
Monarch. He’s still my friend and I don’t want to see him die.

I don’t know how to help him, though, and my
arms are giving out as I lose more and more blood while it also
feels like I’m losing something else. My arm gives out on me and I
fall flat onto my stomach, listening to my heart beat as glass
pokes at my skin from beneath me. Something feels different about
me. I almost feel… human. Not just physically, but… well,
emotionally. I don’t know how to process this; all the stuff
flooding my body at once. Pain. Ache. Hurt. Sadness for Aiden and
what he’s going through. Love. Not for Aiden, but maybe for
another. Sylas. I don’t know if he’s still alive and it stings.

It starts to grow quiet as I sift through my
emotions and then realize Aiden has stilled. When I push myself up
enough to look around, I see that Gabrielle and Monarch are
standing over him as he lies lifelessly on the ground.

“Is he dead?” Gabrielle asks Monarch.

“Does it really matter?” Monarch
replies.

Gabrielle shrugs then shakes his head and
starts to turn away when suddenly Aiden’s eyes pop open. I catch my
breath, feeling… happy as I take in the honey brown color of his
eyes. The way he was before. He’s cured. I can tell by the emotion
flooding in his eyes. It’s evidence of the old Aiden… the one that
cared about the world, humanity; that cared about everything.

He turns his head and scans the room. “What
happened?” he asks in a stupor, gripping his head. His hair has
glass in it and his skin has cuts, yet he seems so much happier
than before. “Where am I, Kayla?”

“You’re back,” I say, choking on my
happiness, but then I gasp as Gabrielle’s pale eyes slide to me.
They almost look red.

His fangs slip out from his veins as he
snarls. “I’ve had enough of this!” he cries, enraged. Underneath
the anger, I see a hint of fear when he looks at me. He no longer
can see his cure to perfection.

I try to scurry to my feet as he races
towards me, fueled by his anger, shoving the table out of the way.
My human legs feel rubbery and unnatural, and I can barely get my
knees to bend as I lose more blood from my neck. I start to shut my
eyes and hold my breath when I see Aiden get to his feet and runs
for me.

“No!” I cry as he collides with Gabrielle’s
body and they both tumble to the ground. I force my legs to move
and manage to stumble unsteadily to my feet. I stagger towards
them, moving slower than I ever thought was possible. It doesn’t
matter how fast I move, though. I’m too late.

Gabrielle already has Aiden pinned under him
with his fangs deep in his throat. My knees knock together as I
stumble over to them, grabbing ahold of Gabrielle’s robe, trying to
pull him off Aiden, but I’m jerked back and tossed aside by
Monarch.

My head slams against the hard ground. The
room spins as I sit up, clutching my bleeding neck. I feel like I’m
dying inside as I watch Gabrielle and Monarch feed off Aiden,
devouring his blood and tearing at his flesh. I remember how Mathew
said they’d once drank human blood. The taste of Aiden’s seems to
be driving them to want more.

My heart starts to ache as wet droplets slip
from my eyes and burn at my skin while I crawl towards them,
wanting to help, although I’m helpless. I feel hatred. Anger. Rage.
The need to get revenge. I feel out of control. Feel the desire for
my strength back.

I hate this.

I hate being human.

Blood soaks their white robes, and when they
finally stop feeding, they turn their heads to look at me. Their
faces, lips and hair are dripping with Aiden’s blood as an
uncontrolled look encompasses their eyes. My initial reaction is to
rush forward and claw their eyes out, but I’m not strong enough for
that. So, even though I don’t want to, I back away.

They follow my movement, coming at me with
their backs hunched over, looking more and more like the vampire
breed. I pick up a piece of glass and throw it at them, but it
barely flies two feet.

Mathew starts to step forward to help me
when Monarch lunges at him and lets out a cry. Gabrielle smiles at
me then he zips forward, jumping at me. He ends up tripping over
his feet, however, and lets out a wail as he falls on his face. I’m
not sure I’ve ever seen a Higher make a mistake like that. When he
starts to vibrate and spasm, I suddenly understand why.

Gabrielle struggles to control his body,
flapping his arms around and pushing his feet against the floor. He
screams and shouts and flails just like Aiden did, fear filling his
reddened eyes. I watch, feeling this sick satisfaction rise within
me, as though him suffering somehow makes up for Aiden, when it
doesn’t. Aiden is gone and nothing will bring him back.

I’m about to start crying again when I hear
commotion at my right. I glance over and Monarch is doing the exact
same thing as Gabrielle, both of them at a loss of control of their
bodies. Mathew watches with me as we observe them slipping away
towards humanity. Their bodies slam into tables, knocking things
over, spilling the contents around the room. Vials break, shatter,
pooling the floor with liquid.

Then, just as quickly as it began, it stops.
Silence takes over as they still; their skin cut up by the glass
while their white robes remain stained with blood. Their eyes are
the dead giveaway of what’s happened, though. Monarch’s are no
longer pale, they’re dark grey like the sky, and Gabrielle’s are an
alarming shade of green.

They’re human again. Life and breath and
blood stream through their veins.

Gabrielle rolls over to his stomach, moaning
as he battles to stand to his feet. He gives up at sitting and then
scoots across the floor to the upturned silver table. He peers in
the reflective surface, examining his reflection closely. “This is
impossible!” he yells, looking over at Monarch who is still lying
on the ground, staring at his arms, his hands shaking. “How could
this cure us? Why!”

Mathew and I exchange a look and then Mathew
gives me a small smile. My blood not only still holds the cure, but
it replicates like the virus he injected into me earlier. It
worked. The risks we took worked, and now we can save the human
race.

Monarch turns over onto his stomach and uses
his arms to push himself up to sit. It takes him a moment to get
there and then I can see a new look in his eyes; one I’ve never
seen before. Happiness. “Because she’s perfection,” he answers
Gabrielle.

Gabrielle goes into a fury and begins to
throw everything within his reach—vials, flask, syringes—yet all
that ends up doing is making his arm tired. He kicks his foot at
the nearest chair and swears profusely, cursing me and what I’ve
done to him.

What
I’ve
done to him
.
This
sentence hits me harder than anything that I have ever felt before.
It’s over, yet it seems as if it’s only starting. The cure is
inside me and in Gabrielle and Monarch and Mathew, but there’s
still so much more to do.

“We have a cure,” I whisper in awe, glancing
down at my bloody arms. My blood.

“You did this to me,” Gabrielle says as he
staggers closer to me, barely able to stand. “You did this.” He
gasps for air. So weak. “You’ve undone all that we have worked for.
Everything I’ve done…” He lands on top of me as his hands go around
my neck and I gasp. He presses his weight down on me, his face
reddening as he shoves me down against the floor. “I’ll kill you!”
he growls. I can see in his eyes that he will.

I feel my breath leaving me as I try to
fight—try to kick, try to get away—but I don’t know how to work my
body. The feeling of the helplessness is frightening. Death.
Weakness. Is that what being human is?

I shut my eyes as I push on Gabrielle’s
chest, refusing to give up; using all the strength I have in me. I
feel him leave my body and I think that maybe, just maybe, I’ve
somehow gotten over my human weakness. When I open my eyes, though,
I find that Monarch and Mathew have pulled Gabrielle off me and
Monarch’s shoving him down to the floor.

“Go,” he says to Mathew and me as Gabrielle
fights to get away. Monarch picks up a piece of glass as he says,
“Go check on your people.”

Mathew hurries across the room, but I don’t
dare move as Monarch presses the tip of the glass to Gabrielle’s
throat. “You and I have some unfinished business.”

“Monarch, don’t,” I say, feeling something
ache deep inside my chest, knowing if he kills him, he might feel
the same ache. “It’s not… it’s not worth more blood on your
hands.”

Monarch turns around and looks at me, his
grey still a bit alarming. “Kayla, go. You’ve done your part, and
now I’ll do mine.”

I don’t want to leave and let Monarch do
what I think he’s going to do—kill Gabrielle—yet at the same time,
I see nothing except evil in Gabrielle’s eyes. So even though it’s
agonizing, I turn and walk away, hating myself a little bit.

When I step outside, it’s still dark;
however, I can see a speck of sun on the horizon and I swear I can
feel it’s warmth. The streets are fairly quiet, the echoes of
battle continuing in the distances. The streets are covered with
bodies of abominations and people. For the most part, though, the
people and Day Takers—what’s left of them—have gotten the streets
under control from the beasts.

Near the corner of the building, Nichelle is
hugging Mathew, sobbing as torches burn in the street. “You’re
okay.” Tears stream down her face as she grips him tightly. I can
suddenly understand her emotion more than I’d like to admit.

He holds her firmly in return. “It was all
Kayla,” he says. “We owe it all to her, for risking her life to
save others.”

I stop when he says it and glance around at
the blood painted on the streets. Yes, there’s a cure now, but at
what cost? All these deaths… and Aiden’s death… and there’s still
so much left to change. How are we even going to get it to spread
quickly enough? How are we going to fight to cure the world? Yet,
as I glance around again at the streets, hope arises because we
survived.

I’m about to take off and see if I can find
Sylas when Nichelle rushes over to me and hugs me, tears spilling
from her eyes while I have to choke back my own. I wrap one arm
around her as she thanks me repeatedly. It doesn’t feel as strange
as it used to. When I let her go, she runs back to Mathew and
continues to hug him. They seem completely happy and so do I, yet
the death that surrounds us also makes me incredibly sad.

“Are you okay?” The voice takes me by
surprise and I spin around, almost falling to the ground as my weak
human legs try to give up on me.

Sylas catches me in his arms and pulls me
against his chest, holding my weight for me. The warmth of his
touch overflows me, along with my feelings for him, and what I have
to tell him. Tears start to fall from my eyes again, despite how
much I attempt to suck them back.

“I’m so sorry,” I say as I circle my arms
around him.

“Sorry for what?” he asks, kissing my
hair.

“Aiden,” I choke.

He tenses and holds me tighter. I know he
won’t cry. Not when he’s still a Day Walker, but deep beneath the
surface, he’ll hurt. I hate being the one to tell him the thing
that will make him feel that way.

“Kayla… why do you smell different?” he
asks, his face nestled against my neck.

“Because I’m human,” I whisper.

He jerks away and looks me in the eyes,
searching them, and then his expression falls. I wonder if he hates
me. If he’ll leave me here, standing in the streets, alone.

“What happened?" he asks, shocked.

“I took the fading.” I take a deep breath
then blow it out and it feels like I’m blowing out freedom. “And
now we found a cure.”

Epilogue

It all seems too good to be true, and for
the next few days, we’re all stuck in some strange, alternate
reality, but for once our hopes are high because we have a future
of our own.

The people of the colony spend a lot of time
burying their loved ones and cleaning up their city. There were a
lot of deaths, including humans and Day Takers. Maci and Greyson
managed to make it out okay, along with Mathew and Monarch, who are
making plans for the best way to spread the cure without killing
off the entire population of the world. They decide the best way is
to send the remaining Day Takers out there to inject the vampires
with my blood and allow them to spread the cure amongst them. I’m a
little wary of his plan since it follows his whole army theory he’s
had from the start. Still, it seems like the best plan going up
against the vampires and the remaining Highers. Plus, it’s the only
plan we have now, however Mathew and Monarch are trying to make the
cure airborne.

There’s one more reason why I’m not so keen
on the idea of the Day Takers being the ones who have to go. But
that’s based on the fact that the person I care for the most is a
Day Taker turned Day Walker. One who’s been pretending not to be
sad, yet I can see it in his eyes whenever he doesn’t think I’m
looking at him, and the fact that he doesn’t seem to want to bury
his brother, not wanting to accept yet.

However, on the third day of recovery, Sylas
and I decide to have a burial after he finally decides it’s time to
move on. Around daybreak, we go up to the top of the highest hill
and Sylas digs a large hole. Then we put Aiden’s body into it and
bury it with sand. By the time we’re finished, the sunlight is
breaking through the sky and, for some reason, it looks
brighter.

“Are you ready to go back to the town?” I
ask Sylas as he stares out at the land, wisps of his dark hair
shadowing his charcoal eyes.