Nikolai: A Dark Light Novella (Dark Light #2.5) (17 page)

Except in every way that matters.

Chapter One

The incessant howling to the east kept me awake yet exhaustion, both emotional and physical, forced me to remain where I was. I lay on the thick tree branch of a yew tree, senses on high alert, wishing for sleep I knew wasn’t going to come. Rubbing my temples, I sat up slowly and began easing my body down through the tangled branches of the tree. When my feet touched the ground, my lower back screamed at me for the past hours of discomfort I had forced it to endure.

In the process of retying the buttery-soft buckskin I’d long ago fashioned as a loincloth, I sensed motion from directly behind me and whirled around, ducking just before two swooping wood sprites could hit me square in the face. Swatting at the air around them, I bared my teeth in their direction and growled.

The tiny demons, essentially minute females of Fae origin, were green in color with iridescent wings and tiny pin-sized fangs. They didn’t speak, at least not any language I was familiar with, and only communicated by using a series of squeaks and growls. They were also incredibly annoying creatures without a care in the world aside from playing.

Sensing that I wasn’t in a playful mood, they spat a series of noises in my direction and immediately took to the sky.

Alone again, I sighed softly. The howling was far enough away that I wasn’t concerned with encountering any sort of threat. Before I’d settled for the night, I’d sniffed the area thoroughly. There had been no trace of weres around this area for quite a while, but I was close enough to the Shadowlands—dark places where neither the sun nor the moon dared to shine—and my hearing sensitive enough that I could hear them as plain as day.

Stretching slowly, I looked up into the full moon that rode in a dark sky riddled with endless stars, and sighed again. Why I kept coming back here, I wasn’t sure anymore. Even as I let out a humorless laugh, my chest tightened painfully. Scratch that. I knew why.

I was effectively emotionally tied to another living being and he was out there, living and breathing apart from me. I could sense his spirit, feel his blood rushing, throbbing hot through his veins in time to the beating of my own heart…and the breath expanding in his lungs, releasing, the same as my own. Even though nearly a century had passed since I’d last beheld his beauty, I could still sense his spirit; yet no matter how hard I looked, he remained as lost to me as the day he left me.

Everyone left me.

I was fourteen when the world around me had begun to change and continued changing until everything I’d ever known was gone. My family and I, my parents and my little brother, had hidden in our home during the initial fallout after the sun had left us. Only my father would ever venture out into the cold, dark new world so that we could survive. Sometimes it took days, but he always returned to us with as much food and supplies as he could carry. Because of his efforts, our family stayed alive for three long years.

But it was during the first set of earthquakes, after the sun had returned and split apart, that I’d lost them all. We’d been running through the streets as fire fell from the sky, the ground beneath us quaking violently and splitting apart, causing houses and buildings surrounding us to crack down the middle and fall to pieces before they disappeared into the earth.

Attempting to guide us to safety, my father had been in front of me, holding my six-year-old brother in his arms, and my mother had been behind me. Even over the ear-splitting destruction that boomed all around us, I could hear screaming from behind me, my mother screaming for me to keep running, and then the screaming stopped. When I realized she was gone, I stopped running and began to wail. And as I stood there, calling at the top of my lungs for my mother, the pavement under my feet shifted and I lost my footing and began to slip, but my father was suddenly there, his large hand wrapped around my arm, pulling me out of harm’s way.

One second my father was standing there, frantically surveying the destruction around us, and the next, the ground opened up beneath his feet. With my brother still in his arms, he fell screaming into the earth.

In shock, I’d continued to stand there, remaining frozen in place. Even as flames poured down around me, even as the earth continued to roll and disintegrate, I stood there staring at the spot where all I’d had left in the world had just been taken from me. If it hadn’t been for the kindness of a stranger grabbing my arm as he ran past me, I would have died as well.

Sometimes, I wish he would have left me. If he would have left me there, I would have never have met…
him
.

The memories assaulted me as I stood there staring at the moon, sweeping over me as I thought back to that time long ago. I was only eighteen years old and dying from disease when he’d found me, shaking and shivering by a low fire, where my companions had left me to die.

***

The massive, beautifully sculpted Siberian tiger had circled me, sniffing and chuffing before pressing his warm, wet nose against my limp hand, nudging me. I had stared, hypnotized by the stark black stripes against his thick white fur and the thought that as far as last sights go, this was far better than the desolate darkness of the neverending stretch of barren land surrounding me.

Letting out a low growl, the animal then flicked his rough tongue across my wrist. My mouth parted as I drew in a raspy breath. He was readying to bite me, eat me; why, I didn’t know. I couldn’t be a more unappealing meal, covered as I was in bloody sores and pustules, lying in my own waste. As ill as I was, even I could detect the stench of decay and disease that hung heavy around me.

But I wasn’t afraid; I was grateful. It had been a year since I’d lost my family, a year of running from monsters, for lack of a better word. A year of running and hiding, desperate for food, desperate for sanctuary from the chaos around us, and always coming up empty.

As for my companions, I didn’t blame them for leaving me here. We’d never formed any solid connections, and I was just one of many in a long line of humans who had died along the way. A life in hiding and being hunted meant you could never get too comfortable in one place. Being able to pack up and go was a necessity, and I’d become deadweight.

This beautiful beast would end my suffering much quicker than the disease inside me. It hurt to breathe, to move, to continue living. If I could have ended it myself, I would have.

His sharp, thick teeth sank easily into the rotting flesh on my wrist, his canines so long, they pierced the entire width of my wrist and came out the other side. Surprisingly, I felt very little pain from his bite. The longer he held his grip on me, the more numb I grew until finally, I blissfully felt nothing at all.

I tried to thank him but barely managed to move my tongue, unable to force anything past my throat but tiny exhalations of air and gurgles of blood.

The beast released me and lapped at the seeping wounds. Finished, he stretched out on his belly beside me, his head on his paws as he watched me die through ice-blue eyes, so light in places they looked white. I lay beside him, my lifeblood seeping from me, and looked up into his wide face, marveling at the beauty of his features, and wondering at the three thick lines that bracketed each of his icy eyes.

Peaceful and comfortable for the first time in ages, I filled my heart with gratitude and closed my eyes, then willed the darkness to take me.

When I awoke, the suns shone bright and hot above me. The fire at my side had long since died out and grown cold, and I was alone.

More surprising was that I’d woken up at all, that I was, in fact, not dead. Quite the opposite, actually. I felt fine…strong…stronger. I sat up, staring with confusion at my pale, unmarked skin, devoid of any markings except for the slightly raised scars of a tiger bite on my wrist. No sign of disease remained, not even the freckles that I knew for certain had once been scattered across my body.

My clothes, what little remained of them, were disgusting, still covered in blood and excrement. I jumped to my feet—although leapt would be a more appropriate description of the swift, lithe, singular movement that had me on my feet in no time—and quickly removed the offending garments.

As I stripped, my hair fell forward and I froze, reaching out my hand to finger long locks of my hair that was now snow white. It felt soft and silky against my bare skin, nothing like my unremarkable brown hair that just yesterday had been dirty, tangled, and matted.

My heart in my throat, I dove for my backpack, digging through the only belongings I had left in the world. The contents amounted to nothing much, just a pair of jeans as filthy as the ones I’d just taken off, a large hunting knife, two dirty and empty plastic bottles, and a small plastic bag that had held my toiletries: a dirty toothbrush, an empty tube of toothpaste, an empty tube of deodorant, and a small mirror wrapped in cloth.

Fingers trembling, I unwrapped the mirror and stared dumbly at my reflection. Whoever this was in the mirror wasn’t me. This girl was…beautiful. I had always been pale, annoyingly so, but this girl wasn’t pale.

She was a flawless, colorless canvas, a goddess carved from ivory with blue eyes so light they looked like an ocean coated in ice. Over each delicate white eyebrow was a series of three thin black stripes that followed the arch before curling downward and ending in a beautiful swirl next to the corner of each eye.

Speechless, I continued to gape at this stranger in the mirror…until I saw the sharp points of my canines denting the pale pink of my bottom lip.

Gasping, I opened my mouth and pulled back my lips. My bottom canines had also grown.

I knew then what had happened, what the tiger had done to me. And yet, despite everything I’d seen over the last four years, part of me still believed it impossible.

In my travels, I’d seen animal shifters, both men and women turned into wild beasts. I’d seen them killing humans, either for food or sport, but I’d never seen them save sick, dying girls lying alone and vulnerable in the middle of nowhere.

And I’d certainly never seen them turn a human into a… Into a what? What was I? Could I become a tiger now?

At that thought, I closed my eyes and concentrated hard, stupidly trying to transform into a tiger. But nothing happened.

Was I some sort of hybrid? A freak accident?

A slight breeze drifted in from the east and before I realized it, I was on my feet, crouched and sniffing the deliciously scented air. I cried out in both pain and horror as the nails on my fingers and toes erupted, growing into dangerously curved claws, only I didn’t have time to dwell on what was happening, I was already running across the barren landscape.

Moose. Somehow I just knew. The blood in my veins pulsed with excitement. My body trembled with the need to run. Sensations overwhelmed me; my heart was pounding in my ears, my elongated teeth throbbed, and before I knew it, I had dropped all my belongings except for my knife, stripped off my remaining clothing, and made a mad, naked charge for that moose.

It didn’t even turn toward me as I charged it, running, snarling, and shaking with a hunger I had never felt before. The beast inside me exploded, bloodlust for the hunt giving me strength I didn’t know I possessed. As my feet pounded through the forest toward my prey, the muscles in my body flexed and tightened, blood rushing through me with the pounding beat of my heart. 

Several feet before the beast, I landed in a crouched position before flinging myself on its back. Grabbing fur that felt curiously like a deer’s, I didn’t hesitate before plunging my knife into the side of the creature’s impossibly thick neck. The moose let out a deep baritone cry while I plunged the knife deeper, twisting it. It thrashed and fell to its knees, bucking and crying out. I swung my free arm around its neck and twisted free my knife, then reached around its neck and thrusting the blade deeply once again before ripping it across.

Blood spurted from the gaping wound, drenching the leaves on the forest floor, and the animal gasped before dropping heavily to the ground. A moment later the moose lay dead beneath me, and I held it tightly until my heart rate returned to normal. Straddling its body, arms covered in the lifeblood of my kill, I let out a full-belly cry of pure satisfaction.

The wood sprites buzzed about me excitedly, giggling shrilly, their eyes glowing with the excitement of death which would have bothered me if I were still human, but I wasn’t. The beast inside me pranced around its trophy, rejoicing in the thrill of the kill and the triumph of reigning gloriously supreme in the food chain.

Fevered with hunger, I took my knife and began to split the hide of the animal from the base of its skull to its tail, then peeled it down on both sides. At some point I had a passing thought that I should cook the meat, but it was fleeting as the beast continued to rage inside me. So I ripped into the carcass with fangs, claws, and mindless abandon.

I had become an animal.

Sated, feeling fuller and healthier than I could ever remember feeling, I sat back on my haunches with a bloody grin. I may not have known what I was or how I came to be that way, but I was alive and strong with one thing on my mind.

A loud chuffing rumble erupted from behind me. I whipped around into a crouch, ready to attack, a growl forming from deep within me. But the second I laid eyes on him, the aggression drained instantly from my body.

He was naked.

He was also incredibly tall, around seven feet, if I had to guess, and fearfully well-muscled, his arms and legs resembling bulky tree trunks. And as for his nakedness…well, that was intimidating all by itself. Framed with long, white-and-black-streaked hair, his face was every bit as strong and fierce as his body. His features were too rough, too harsh to be considered classically handsome, but he was beautiful, magnificent even, in a most terrifying way and I couldn’t seem to tear my gaze away from him. Standing before me was the definition of a warrior, with features reminiscent of both human and beast, but his human visage was one that had long expired.