Dark Requiem (The Darkling Trilogy, Book 3) (16 page)

I lay stunned on the
ground, pain breaking over me; and for a brief moment the bluish
light of the moon disappeared and I was in a grove surrounded by a
tight cluster of trees bathed in the peach light of dawn, strips of
fire streaking across my back.

I blinked and the moonlit
woodland reappeared.

Auria was standing over me
with Avery’s sword in her hand. I made to move, but was slammed
back onto the ground by a hot telekinetic blast. I was pinned
there, unable to move. She brought the sword down, aiming for my
heart.

The queer feeling I’d
experienced in the car park overcame me again and everything seemed
to still as I watched the sword come down toward my chest. Again it
felt as if I was in tune with everything and all I had to do was
press my will on this moment, and make time cease for long enough
to fight my way out of Auria’s telekinetic hold.

My attention was snapped
away from the sword, and the feeling fled from me when Avery
materialised by my side, his hands clasped around the blade of the
sword as Auria brought it down. He cried out as it sliced through
the flesh of his palms, but I doubt he felt the pain, his face
twisted with fear. He pulled on the blade, drawing it away from my
heart so it sliced through my chest beneath my left
breast.

Pain flared and my vision
swam before my eyes as Auria drove the sword down into the ground
almost to the hilt. She knocked Avery away. He fell onto his
back.

She was upon him moments
later, pinning him to the ground. I gasped in pain, tears springing
to my eyes.

“
What is she?” she said,
staring at me with that fear still flooding her eyes.

She turned to Avery again.
His gaze was fixed on mine and full of abject misery.

“
No matter,” Auria
continued. “Whatever she is, she will soon be dead, taking her
secrets with her. As for you, I have searched for you for a long
time to repay you in kind for the pain you caused me.”

Avery forced his gaze away
from me and to Auria.

“
Auria. It doesn’t have to
be like this. I’ve been searching for you, too. I...I need your
help. I need
you
.”

She was silent and just
stared at him, the hatred momentarily gone from her eyes and I
could see that despite her anger, she was stirred by his words. He
reached out a blood covered hand and brought it to her face whilst
his other hand inched toward the dagger at his hip. Before he could
reach it, she grabbed that arm, and with a quick, spiteful twist,
snapped his wrist.

He cried out and his face
flamed with pain. She removed the dagger from his hip.

Still pinning him down by
the neck with one hand, she brought the dagger to hover above his
face, an icy smile on her lips, her eyes gleaming with a black
light.

“
Who would have guessed
you could be so devious? Even after what you did to me and the pain
you caused, I still find myself enchanted by this face of
yours.”

She brought the tip of the
dagger to his cheek and pressed against it, drawing a glistening
trail of blood.

“
How I wish I could scar
that face permanently.” She smiled. “Let us see if it is possible
for a vampire to grow back a new face once it has been cut from his
skull.”

“
No
!” I screamed.

She brought the dagger to
the top of his head.

Anger coursed through me.
I could feel the Other, always at the edge of my consciousness,
looking for a way in. As I lay there I realised why I did not get a
warning before Auria appeared. Despite the fact that she was so old
and strong, she was no match for me. I knew this instinctively. I
could defeat her, just as I could have easily outrun her. I just
couldn’t remember how. But the Other I could feel clambering for a
way in could focus the powers I had not learned to use yet and kill
Auria.

I let it take over and it
surged in like a soulless black wave. I was shunted to the
background where I could only watch.

Auria came to a complete
stop, frozen in time, her features locked in a gleeful snarl, the
dagger still held to Avery’s head. Avery gasped and just stared at
the sight before him for a few seconds. Then he knocked the dagger
out of her hand and scuttled out from under her. Still on his back,
he continued to scuttle away from her until he backed into a tree.
Then he sat up, turning his gaze to me. His eyes widened and all
the colour drained from his face when he stared into my eyes and no
doubt saw something else peering back at him.

I used my telekinetic
power to extract the sword from my chest. I let it hover above me
for a few moments before I flung it away. I sat up, my hand against
the wound in my chest, blood seeping through my fingers.

I released Auria and she
shuddered into motion. She reared back in shock when she saw Avery
was no longer beneath her. She turned her gaze to me and once more
fear flooded her eyes. The air around her wavered. I snared her
telekinetically and she was torn out of the void before she could
fully disappear.

She just stared at me,
trembling, her face frozen in terror. I lifted her into the air
with my telekinetic power. She began to scream.

I laughed.

Avery was before me. He
held my face in his hands, forcing me to look at him.

“
Dallas! I know you can
hear me. You can’t kill Auria, we need her. Fight it!”

The Other’s rage flared.
It had waited for so long to kill Avery. It saw its chance and
lashed out in a spike of telekinetic energy.

Avery was thrown from me,
but I battled against the Other and brought him to a stop in
mid-air. I lowered him to the ground against a tree and kept him
pinned there, his eyes wide in his pale face as he stared at me. I
turned my gaze to Auria whose screams still rang out in the moonlit
woodlands.

“
You served me so
faithfully over the centuries,” I said, my voice unnaturally high
as before. “But you failed me. At the last moment, you failed me. I
won’t let it go unpunished.”

Auria’s screams were cut
off when I clawed at her with my mind, tearing her throat out.
Blood poured from the wound as the flesh plopped to the ground
beneath her. I bit at her cheek with my telekinetic power and the
flesh was ripped from it in bloody ribbons. I wrenched one of her
fingers from her hand next, all while she was still alive, her face
a mask of unadulterated pain and terror. I held her mutilated body
in the air, continuing to tear chunks out of her long after she was
dead.

“
Dallas,
Dallas!”

It was Avery shouting my
name, and he had been for a while. I continued to tear chunks from
the corpse although all there now was to Auria was half a skull,
thin tendons of flesh keeping her head to her neck. Nearly her
entire torso had been ripped out, fragments of it littering the
woodland floor. The air was now heavy with the scent of
blood.

“
Dallas! I know you’re
still in there somewhere, you have to take back control!” Avery
cried.

I felt something slam into
the back of my head. Pain exploded through me and the Other
slithered away in response.

I crumpled to the ground,
releasing Auria’s corpse.

As if from a distant
place, I saw Maryse move into sight, a metal rod that looked like
it had been pried from the mansion gates in her hand. She turned to
Avery, who was still against the tree, his face as pale as a
bleached skull.

“
There. That’s how to get
things done,” she said.

She stared around at the
blood-splattered ground along with the chunks of bloodied flesh
littering the area. Then her gaze came to rest on what was left of
Auria.

“
What the
fuck!”

My eyes fluttered shut and
darkness overwhelmed me.

Akan

Hours after the ceremony
ended, Akan exited his home. Rutia was asleep on the large mat on
the floor of their sleeping quarters, Tanu tucked into the crook of
her arm as always. Akan sprinted toward the temple, keeping to the
wall surrounding the village to avoid the streets lit with burning
torches where the celebrations would continue long into the
night.

Akan entered the temple
through one of two hidden tunnels known only to a few, thereby
avoiding the guards stationed at the entrances. It would, however,
be impossible to enter the main temple chamber without being
detected by the attendants.

There were as many as
twenty of them in total and at least two of them remained with the
child at all times. Many of them were old women with no families of
their own. They cooked, cleaned, and did every conceivable thing
for the child. They were the only ones allowed to touch her, but
only when necessary, as their touch was seen to contaminate the
earthly vessel that was home to the divine being. So although they
were with the goddess at all times, they remained distant from her
whenever they were not needed.

Akan imagined it was a
lonely and isolated existence for a child.

He entered the main
chamber of the temple to screams. The temple was cloaked in
darkness and only the torches surrounding the altar were lit. The
child lay squirming in agony before the altar in the yellow,
choleric light. Her robes and the area around her were soiled with
vomit.

Four attendants were
sitting at the farthest corners of the temple when he entered. They
rose immediately, moving out of the shadows like wraiths and to the
altar, identical expressions of confusion on their
faces.

“
Don’t be afraid. I’m here
for the goddess,” Akan said.

“
You’re here for the
goddess? You desecrate this sacred time with your very
presence.”

This was said by Jow, the
oldest of the attendants. A thin, bent woman, the harsh lines on
her face made her appear to be much older than she actually was.
She was a perfect candidate for the role, a widow who had seen all
her children dead, most to sacrifices before they could reach
walking age.

“
Jow, you know a man would
not survive the ekniwa, much less a child. You have to let me break
her fast at least, or she will die.”

“
We cannot interfere,
Akan. You know what Mutata would do if—”

“
Yes, but don’t you want
the sacrifices to end? She is the only one keeping us from more
sacrifices. You have to let me help her.”

Jow turned to the youngest
of the attendants, Topa, a girl of sixteen with a large, red
birthmark across one side of her face.

“
Topa, go and summon the
guards.” Jow faced Akan again. “You should go now before they
come.”

Topa didn’t
move.

“
I told you to go and get
the guards,” Jow snapped at her.

“
She’s the goddess,” Topa
said. “Mutata has done this to her because she refused to allow
more sacrifices. We should help her.”

Jow glared at her and then
looked around at the other two attendants. They did not meet her
gaze. Akan moved past Jow to the child.

She was delirious, her
eyes glazed over. Oblivious to the vomit on her robes and the
platform she lay on. Glistening beads of sweat stood out on her
forehead, but when he touched her face, her skin was ice cold. The
child’s cries quietened at the sound of Akan’s voice and she spoke
then, speaking an unknown tongue, her eyes focused on a point past
him with a vivid intensity that made him go cold. He reached inside
his robe for the gourd of water he had brought with him and held it
to her lips. Then he forced her to eat some food in the hopes it
would absorb some of the potent herbs she had ingested.

He stayed with her for the
next few hours. Although it was forbidden, he held her as he had
sometimes held Tanu when Tanu was a baby and cried long into the
night. She remained delirious, her eyes wide and blank; staring
past him into the shadows huddled within the temple as if she could
see things moving within their depths. Throughout the night her
tiny frame would seize with tremors and then she would vomit.
Mostly the temple was rent with the child’s terrified screams at
whatever it was she saw in the netherworld, the vacoma whose
hideous visages were enough to drive grown men insane.

A few hours before dawn,
the child slipped into a fitful, agonised sleep. Akan’s heart was
almost torn in two when he laid her down before the altar and
departed, not failing to notice that through it all, she had been
clutching the little wooden toy.

He was in the tunnel
leading out of the temple when he heard her scream again, the cry
so much more agonising than before. His heart seemed to come to a
stop, so intense was the pain the sound wrought in him.

He forced himself to go
on.

He returned home and lay
beside his wife and son. Although fatigue pulled on him with
ghostly fingers, sleep would not bless him with its presence, the
child’s screams still alive in his mind.

It was a few days before I
regained consciousness and the first thing I saw was Avery sitting
in a chair with his elbows on his knees, his hands clasped beneath
his chin. His face was drawn and pale, his eyes sad but gentle as
he gazed at me.