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

One of the maids entered
the room minutes later, clearly having been sent by my mother to
“see to Dallas.” Her face was tight with tension, her eyes alight
with the fear that none of the staff were able to hide.

Alessandra returned later
that day.

She took me to the park
that afternoon and was probably unaware of how tight the grip on my
hand was throughout the walk. She didn’t release my hand, or loosen
her grip on it, even when she bought me ice cream and then led us
to a bench overlooking the fountain.

Again, I did not know why,
but that misery overwhelmed me again. The ice cream in my hand,
rather than abating it, brought forth fresh despair. Tears filled
my eyes and slid down my cheeks.

Alessandra glanced at me
carefully for a few moments.

“
You don’t want it, do
you?” she said, her tone gentle.

For some reason her words
sparked some unknown reminiscence from a well too deep and murky
for me to see through. The tears flowed faster. She took the ice
cream out of my hand and rose, pulling me with her. She deposited
the ice cream in a waste bin as we moved away from the bench. As we
walked away from the fountain, the anguish clutching at my chest
eased.

We wandered aimlessly
through the park. It was a long while before she spoke
again.

“
Look at you. You are so
scary with your tantrums. But behind it all, you are just a lonely
little girl.”

The too-tight grip on my
hand increased as we turned to go back the way we had
come.

She took a deep breath
before she spoke again.

“
You were right. He was
only using me. He is not married, but he may as well be. I do not
know how you knew, but you have saved me a lot of money, not to
mention heartache.” She seemed to be talking to herself now.
“Yesterday I asked myself why I ever agreed to take this job. When
your mother offered it to me along with so much money, I was happy.
Things have been difficult in America and I know nobody here. And
so I thought this job would mean I would have a little friend. How
could I know you would be such a little... How headstrong you would
be.”

She stopped and knelt
before me, watching me wipe away tears with my arm.

“
To you, I’m just another
nanny—well, I’m not even a real nanny, just someone your mother saw
handing out leaflets and hired because you scared the last one
away. This job is the only good thing that’s happened to me since I
came to America. I don’t know how long I’ll work for your parents,
but I’ll be your friend if you let me. And neither of us has to be
lonely; at least for a little while.”

I merely stared at her,
confused at this approach from a woman I had hated since she came
and whom I had been determined to be rid of. I was unsure how to
respond when, out of the blue, like a memory rising to the surface
unbidden, I saw an image in my mind’s eye: A brief glimpse of a
woman’s face. Her skin was like warm honey, her eyes golden brown,
her smile a soft caress.

The image stunned me and I
was lost for a few minutes in the beauty of that face and the
kindness I could feel behind the woman’s eyes and smile. It brought
an odd comfort along with a strange, bittersweet
yearning.

I had never seen this
woman before, but I knew it was my sixth sense letting me know I
could trust Alessandra. And that my loneliness would be eased if
only for a little while.

“
Okay,” I said.

Alessandra’s gaze snapped
back to me in surprise. Then genuine joy warmed her face. She wiped
away my tears before she rose and we moved on.

“
What should we do
tomorrow? Should we come back here or go somewhere
else?”

Although misery still sat
heavily against me, I smiled up at her. “You can
choose.”

As we made our way to the
entrance, my gaze was drawn to the fountain. The anguish spiked
once more and the tears threatened, but I did my best not to
succumb to them.

Alessandra was true to her
word and the antagonism that marked her first week was soon
forgotten. In fact she soon began to dote on and spoil me to such
an extent that even my grandmother, who herself spoiled me
shamelessly, thought excessive.

But even with Alessandra
around, I found myself experiencing moments of crippling misery.
That loneliness, although pushed to the background, never really
left me. Every once in a while I would wake up to see a dress
hanging by the window. For some reason it always made my heart
clench and tears spring to my eyes. The gifts ceased a few years
later when I was too old for such little girl dresses. I kept them
all, although even looking at them made my heart fill with
longing.

It was many years before I
saw him again, the mysterious being whose pain was like a living
thing growing steadily wider and deeper with every year that
passed. On each occasion he sent me away, not allowing me to have
even the blessing of the memory of his face. And I was cast adrift
once more in a world of the ordinary—the existence of so many—with
only an inkling of the other world of supernatural beings moving
amongst us like shadows behind a veil. All while those monstrous
footsteps drew steadily closer.

And then everything
changed for me.

Shortly after I turned
twenty-one my aunt, Rose, was found dead. It was unclear exactly
what killed her, but like frightened, wide-eyed things clambering
to get away from what they feared, my family eagerly accepted what
they were told. Her death had been an unfortunate accident. Not
suicide or the grisly murders we all lived in fear of. An
Accident.

I couldn’t accept her
death had been an accident. Every inch of me screamed in protest at
the thought of it and I vowed I would find out the truth and bring
whoever was responsible to justice. Yet even as I made that vow,
helplessness swooped in on me like a large, pitiless bird of prey.
Because, like everyone else in my family, I already had a sense of
what had killed my aunt. I had always been aware of its presence
hovering in darkness and had heard the echo of its footsteps in the
emptiness from which it sought to escape.

Frightened, drowning in
grief, my days and nights lost all meaning. Night after night I
took to the clubs in the hope that the shocking, crude music would
banish the haunting silence that had descended on my world. And
that the countless glasses of alcohol, which made everything sway
and tip before fading to a nondescript blur, could numb the pain
and loneliness.

Months later and the
aching loneliness was still there, pain tightening its screw a
little more each day.

And then an awakening
brought a glimmer of light into the ceaseless night my life had
become.

The night the awakening
occurred I returned from a club sometime after five a.m. in the
morning. I stumbled into my room and collapsed on the bed, my head
spinning and nausea threatening.

I lay there in the dark,
the apartment as silent as a grave, my thoughts on my grandmother
and aunt, the only two people on this Earth who I felt had ever
truly loved me.

Tears filled my eyes as
misery overwhelmed me. They were dead now and all that was left was
emptiness. At that moment my loneliness completely smothered me and
I wept silently, my stomach seeming to twist and turn so it felt as
though there was a pull emanating from my abdomen.

I must have fallen asleep
because the next thing I knew, I was standing in woodlands on the
Holbert plantation, the trees looming over me like benevolent,
gnarled giants blocking out almost all of the sky. But the trees
could not fully block out the sun which cut through the canopy
above to splash against the woodland floor. In what must have been
a dream, I appeared as I was in the waking world, my mahogany
complexion sunned to a smooth, liquid brown, my straightened dark
hair falling to my shoulders. My feline features were the same
along with my full, plum-coloured lips. I was exactly the same but
different in so many ways. And in this place—this
dreamscape—knowing was returned to me.

Before me was a
hazelnut-coloured mare. It stood in a beam of sunlight, its ears
pricked, its eyes as dark and mysterious as night. Recognition,
along with a heavy knot of emotion, suffused me as I stared at
it.

Abruptly it turned and
moved away from me only to come to a stop. It turned its head
towards me, as if waiting. After a few seconds it moved on again. I
stood there in the deep silence of the woods for a few moments.
Then I followed.

It led me to the clearing
at the farthest edges of the Holbert plantation and came to a stop
at the edge of the trees. The daylight cutting its way into the
woodlands abruptly turned to dusk, and the chapel loomed before me
beneath a searing sunset, washing the clearing in sultry reds. The
malevolence I had sensed when I first entered the clearing a year
ago in search of Luna and Avery was alive and prowling like a
restless tiger.

Mama Akosua was sitting in
the clearing with her legs crossed. Her delicate feline features
were similar to my own and the thin rows of scars on her cheeks and
forehead were stark against her mahogany skin. She didn’t look up
when I walked over and stood in front of her. Before her was an
earthen pot along with a small cloth bag. The blade of a knife
glinted in the emerald grass. Like the brown mare, she had been
waiting for me.

She looked up, her gaze as
shrewd as it had been in life.

You forgot
him
.

There was no need for her
to utter speech in this place. She reached into the cloth bag,
pulled out a handful of salt and sprinkled it in a circle around
her.

Yes,
I replied
. Thank you—for summoning
me. I can remember nearly everything.

She inclined her head
forward in a bow, a small mark of reverence. She looked up again,
her gaze intense.

Good. Then you know what
you must do.

She now placed a mixture
of things in an earthen bowl, some herbs, what looked like
crystals, cowie beads and more salt from the bag
.

Yes. But how?

She looked away from the
earthen pot and pointed to the trees. I followed the line of her
thin brown arm and saw that the woodland around us had been swept
away. Instead I saw a tumbled-down shack that was almost swallowed
by the surrounding foliage. I knew it was somewhere in Mississippi
and that one of its occupants was what appeared to be a
sixteen-year-old girl. She had braids and was wearing a yellow
summer dress the last time I saw her, the night I found that
journal.

Find them,
Mama Akosua commanded
.

Maryse? She won’t do
it.

No, she will not.
But
he
will.

She went back to the task
before her and the woodland slowly ebbed into view again as she lit
a match and threw it in the earthen pot. Its contents burst into
strange lilac flames.

How do I know you really
are Mama Akosua? How do I know you’re not...?

I couldn’t finish, only
look toward the chapel. The light was almost gone, giving the old,
hulking building an air of smouldering evil and of something that
whispered of death and decay.

A hint of a smile passed
over her lips.

You don’t. But you know
you must be with him, don’t you?

I nodded.

This is the only
way.

She picked up the knife
and slit a line down her palm, releasing a thin stream of blood
into the earthen pot. The flames leapt up again, seeming to lick at
the blood trickling into the pot.

This is where it began and
this is where it must end. You cannot fail.

I won’t...Mama.

The chapel, the
clearing—along with the knowing that was returned to me in this
dreamscape—began to melt away, leaving behind only one
thing.

Avery.

New York 2012

I was wide awake in the
dark bedroom. I sat up with a start.

I’d forgotten
Avery.

A torrent of emotion
overcame me. My throbbing head and nausea paled in comparison to
the wrenching pull I could feel in my stomach as memories of Avery
flooded my mind.

Tears filled my
eyes.

I remembered Avery’s cool
hand loosely holding onto mine as we moved through Central Park,
his face pale in the bright sunshine as I stared up at him, his
expression distant, his eyes dark and mournful.

And the time he found me
in a nightclub when I was fourteen, his arm around my waist in a
firm but distant hold as we stood outside. His jaw was set in an
angry line, his eyes blazing with a blue fire as he searched the
dark street for a cab.

I also remembered the last
time I saw him in the clearing at the Holbert plantation. His
intense gaze was on me as I stood with my hands pressed against the
sides of his head, his eyes reflecting the anguish he must have
seen in mine. I remembered the way he held onto my hands a moment
too long when he pulled them away from his head and let them fall,
the sorrow in his eyes seeming to consume him for a few seconds
before he was able to push it back.