Rising Dark (The Darkling Trilogy, Book 2) (14 page)

I ran through the woods, the trees
around me a dark blur, sensing the woodland creatures and the fear
my presence elicited. I ran, but the thing I had been unconsciously
running from found me anyway. A faint, horror-filled cry reached me
over the distance I had placed between myself and that farm. I
stopped immediately, materialising in the damp darkness on my
knees. There wasn’t a repeat of that sound and I couldn’t even be
sure I had heard her cry from that distance, but in my soul I knew
it had been Cassie, who had probably been startled out of sleep by
some sixth sense and ventured outside to find her beloved
Mandy.

It felt as if my mind was going to
break, the horror of that senseless killing, all of those deaths
over the years and the pain I had caused to so many. It felt as if
I was drowning in it. The faces of the dead overwhelmed me, those
of the fleeing slaves I had slaughtered in that cotton field all
but drove me to the brink of insanity. I had to end this. I had to
bring an end to this life and with it would come an end to the
murders, the pain and destruction. I had to end...

...Then I was standing in the chapel.
For a brief moment I felt elation and euphoria. She had come to me
again after so long. But then shame descended for she would surely
know. But I couldn’t stop myself from facing her, as I had to
glance at that beautiful face or be driven insane.

She was staring at me as if she, too,
were savouring the luxury of laying eyes on me, but there was a
subtle change in her expression. She was looking at me
reproachfully and some old anger lingered in her eyes.

She knew. Of course she knew what I
had done. Shame and self-loathing filled me again. That she would
see me like this, see such lowly depths as the one I had been cast
into that night they turned me into a vampire.

But then another miracle unfolded
before me. The reproach I saw wasn’t for the reason I had assumed
it to be. How she communicated this to me I do not know, for she
uttered not a word. But I knew the anger was for those thoughts I’d
had before I found myself transported here. The desire to end my
life along with my suffering. As understanding, along with sweet
relief, flooded me, I knew if there was even the smallest hope she
was real, then I would wait for her until the world ceased to
exist. Some of the anger in her eyes seeped away then and
compassion came in its stead along with...love. I felt it there in
that moment.

Love.

Her smile was laced with sorrow and I
again heard those words which were now tethered to my
soul.

Wait for me, I’m coming.
Wait for me.

She was gone and I was anguished, but
I moved on through the darkness with hope in my heart lighting a
way forward.

A strange thing happened whenever I
had a vision of Luna. Time seemed to shift, or quicken. That
morning after killing the little girl, I went to ground and left
behind the golden haze of a ripe summer morning. When I awoke that
evening, the world was silent and empty; winter its sullen guest.
Thin, naked trees cut a stark silhouette across the landscape. I
knew I had not slept through that entire summer and autumn, because
on my coat lapel was a lone pink petal from a redbud tree, fresh
and bright as if it had just fallen.

I let it float to the ground where it
remained, the only speck of colour in this grim, grey winter
landscape. I moved on into the bleakness, searching for signs of
life and the blood that was my keeper.

Was I aware of what was happening at
the time? It was hard not to be, but somehow, my mind turned away
from the fact that something extraordinary was happening. But what
did it mean? Did she have the power to make me skip over the years,
bringing me closer to the day when I would come across her? Did
anything on this Earth have the power to do that? Or was it merely
my mind that had skipped over that empty period of time, like
anaesthesia, to numb me to those long, desolate years? I do not
know. Not even she knows what or how she was able to do what she
did. I only know that somehow she protected me during those years
and caused me to skip through large amounts of time, bringing me
closer to the day when I would see her face in the
flesh.

***

For many years, I did not gaze upon my
reflection. But one night, after having attacked a young man,
bringing him down off his horse and dragging him into the woodland
to a small pond whilst he screamed and struggled in vain, I came
upon the wretched sight I had become.

I drank my fill from him and was alone
once more, with not even his screams for mercy to remind me of the
living here in the dense woodland. I shoved the corpse away from me
and it fell into the pond, scattering the perfect image of the moon
and the ghostly fingers of branches that seemed to stretch toward
it. When the water settled, I was left staring at my
reflection.

To human eyes, the image would have
just been a dark silhouette, but my enhanced vision concealed
nothing and I stood aghast as I stared at what had become of me. My
hair was well past my shoulders now and tangled, but it was the
state of my clothing that caused the angst I felt now. The white
necktie was now black, stained with dirt and blood and it was
literally rotted. It disintegrated in my hand when I pulled it away
from my neck. A large tear along the shoulder of my coat and the
shirt beneath exposed most of the top half of my chest. It was also
caked with soil and, of course, blood.

I kept myself hidden and my appearance
did not matter to anyone who laid eyes on me, for it was likely to
be the last thing they saw. But I was aghast. It was the physical
manifestation of the unfathomable moral decay into which I had
fallen.

With something akin to the grief that
had consumed me when I left Julia in the earth and leapt into the
wilderness, I slowly peeled off what was left of my clothes. What
lay at my feet were little more than rags, but they symbolised so
much more. It was as if I were giving up the last vestiges of my
soul along with any hope I held regarding my fate.

I was naked in the moonlight, and only
the gold chain and cross Minny had urged me to take hung around my
neck. I took it off and stared at it as it glinted in the
moonlight. I wanted to throw it away, but in the end I couldn’t,
the faded memory of her conviction as she urged me to take it
staying my hand. The only option left to me was to either remain
naked, or strip the corpse. Resigned to all that I now was—the
wretchedness of my condition and whatever remained of the man I
once was—I removed his trousers and coat. I had long ago discarded
shoes so I left his, my indestructible body needing no protection
from the hard terrain. I carefully placed the crucifix in the coat
pocket. Perhaps I could touch it, but it no longer gave the comfort
I had derived from it during my mortal years.

With my hunger sated, the night lay
ahead with nothing now to distract me from the endless loneliness
and sorrow. I moved away from the corpse and the pool, darting
through the trees swiftly and silently, the only constant in these
endless nights the moon and my all-encompassing sorrow.

***

It was a cold, dark, frosty night in
Louisiana. I do not know how long I had been in the wilderness by
that time, a decade maybe. Time had lost all meaning. I skipped in
and out of the ether through a small town. Its streets were empty,
completely deserted as people kept to the warmth and light their
homes afforded. But for me the night, as every other night, was
awash with eerie light my preternatural sight took from the
elements, but everything remained bleak. The natural exuberant
flora of the south had been decimated by the winter and the dark
trees were naked and silent, defenceless against the harsh weather,
the vegetation withdrawn in alarm at the unrelenting
cold.

I did not feel the cold I dipped in
and out of as I travelled through the night on my endless journey
to nowhere. The lack of feeling—numbness and immunity to the whims
of nature—elicited a deeper chill within my soul and I yearned
deeply for the world and a life that was forever out of my
reach.

It was in this state of numbness that
I came across a lone mansion on the outskirts of the town. I paused
outside it, its neglected forlorn appearance appealing to my soul
and the inner decay that had long overcome me. Two large oaks on
either side of the mansion leaned menacingly over it. Its aged
rooms were empty bar the master bedroom on the top floor, its walls
illuminated by a large fire before which sat an old white
woman.

I was kept from leaving the mansion by
the profusion of her thoughts, which were like tiny darts spitting
at me along with a deep-seated rage.

Rage.

This was something that had long ago
died within me and I drifted closer to the mansion, stepping over a
dead field of Queen Anne’s lace, longing to feel that anger, to
feel something—anything—aside from the numbness, that emptiness
which was only ever kept at bay when I fed the frenzied blood lust
holding me prisoner.

She sat before the roaring fire, angry
at life and all it had stolen from her, leaving her a lonely old
spinster.

Her name was Helena and
her life should have, and would have been, far different from the
pitiful existence that was now hers. Hers had been a charmed life
in the beginning, the birthright of someone born with wealth,
beauty, breeding, and, most importantly, the inherent superiority
of her race.

Her father was a lawyer
and when he made the decision to purchase slaves with the idea to
turn some of their land into cotton fields, life would only
continue to throw the best it had to offer at her. Instead,
becoming a slaveholder had ruined him because of one crucial
element. He chose to see and treat his slaves as human beings
instead of what they were: niggers. And he began to teach them how
to read, write, and sustain themselves with the intention to
eventually free all his slaves.

This had not been received
well by the rest of the town and people began to stop coming to his
practice. Then Pierre, along with the rest of Helena’s suitors,
stopped calling.

All the luxuries she had
taken for granted were gone as poverty replaced wealth. The
beautiful clothes, even something as essential as sugar, became a
scarcity. When her parents died she had been left with nothing,
only this mansion, which had already begun to fall into disrepair.
Of the slaves he had purchased, and then freed, only two remained
after the death of her father. And they had continued to care for
her all these long years out of pity for her and also loyalty to
her father, the man who had ruined her life.

She sighed, her anger diminishing for
a moment. The years had been so long and so bleak that she yearned
for death. She sighed once more.

Oh, to be in the past
dancing in Pierre’s arms once more.

She sat staring morosely at the fire,
her mind stuck in the past. Lulled by those images, she slowly
slipped into sleep.

I remained outside, at the door of the
mansion, feeling all the more lost now her anger no longer burned
brightly, entrancing me. Death was something I, too, had yearned
for, since the night I was thrown into this wilderness. And I could
give her that wish. It was a sincere wish, I knew, for the force
which should have forbidden me entrance to her home was
gone.

I moved into the ether and entered the
mansion, materialising in the bedroom. She awoke immediately when I
moved to stand before her. She peered up at me, her gaze foggy and
her mind clouded with sleep and the images of the past she had
clung to all these years. I caught the strongest and brought it to
life before her gaze.

She was no longer in this room lit by
the angry glow of the fire, but was in the drawing room downstairs
as it had been in her youth. But she took absolutely no notice of
the room around her and merely stared ahead in surprise.

“
Pierre?”

I held out my hand, but she saw Pierre
reach for her hand, looking exactly as he had the last time he had
been at the mansion.

A smile lit up her face, pushing back
decades from her features. She took my hand and got to her feet,
staring lovingly into my face but seeing only the man she had been
pining for all these years.

“
You’ve come back for that
dance I promised you,” she said.

A part of her knew what she was seeing
couldn’t be real, but she grasped the fantasy anyway, holding on to
it so ardently it took very little effort for me to maintain what
she saw.

When I held out my arms, she glided
into them.

It was a macabre dance, the old,
frail, desperate woman clinging on to a fantasy of her youth. I
waited for as long as she wanted the fantasy to play out. I had all
of eternity stretched out before me and there was no need for me to
rush this moment and its ultimate conclusion.

Toward the end of the dance, as the
fire burned low now, the deception wavered for a few seconds and
she saw me instead of Pierre. She came to a stop abruptly, but
there was no fear or anxiety in her mind, so I let it fall away
completely, bringing her gently back into the dark room. As the
brightly lit drawing room receded from before her gaze, she moved
out of the circle of my arms but kept her gaze on my face, her
expression one of complete rapture.