Dark Requiem (The Darkling Trilogy, Book 3) (41 page)

“
Forgive me, Mother.
Forgive me.”

I rolled my eyes as he
became overwhelmed with emotion. When Luna put a comforting arm
around him, I got to my feet in disgust and moved to the door. I
glanced back briefly to see his head against her shoulder, a little
smile on his lips, nothing but trouble lighting his eyes as he
watched me.

I sighed and entered the
ether into the field of flowers, comforted by the fact that I only
had to pick another fight with him and he would be gone once
more.

Picking fights with
Arnaldo, which I always lost, worked for a few years.

That was until he began to
let me win.

We were in the drawing
room and Luna was upstairs. By that stage I had discarded the whole
theatrics with the gloves and I grabbed him, my fist raised to hit
him, sure he would easily dodge the blow and strike me
instead.

He didn’t dodge the blow.
My knuckles just about grazed his jaw when he tore himself out of
my grasp.

I watched in stunned
silence as he threw himself into the fireplace. It gave way and
toppled upon him.

Luna was in the room
before I could even blink. She gasped. Her raven eyes widened and
her lip trembled when she saw Arnaldo on the floor, his eyes wide
pools brimming with pain as I watched in bewilderment.

She faced me, her eyes
narrowed to glittering obsidian slits, her mouth pursed in
anger.

She was at Arnaldo’s side
moments later, his face in her hands. He got to his knees, placed
his head against her shoulder and wept.

“
What did you do to him,
Avery?”

“
Nothing. He’s faking. I
didn’t hit him hard enough to—”

“
You shouldn’t have hit
him at all!”

“
But of course I hit him!
He—” I took a step forward only for Arnaldo to flinch away,
uttering wordless cries like a kitten mewing in terror.

“
Stay where you are,
Avery,” Luna cried.

“
Stay where I am? This is
my house and I’ll do as I please in it. He’s faking. Any imbecile
can see—”

“
Did you just call me an
imbecile?”

“
Yes. Only an imbecile
would fall for his act...
Dallas
.”
Yes, I called you Dallas. Only a fool like Dallas can be
hoodwinked by a little brat like Arnaldo. I mean, do you
know
you’re the goddess
of the moon? And just so you know, I always thought Dallas was a
stupid name!

Her body went rigid, her
eyes narrowed and her face became as hard as black ice.

She shot to her feet,
causing Arnaldo, who had been leaning against her, to fall to the
ground.

I felt a quiver of anxiety
at that look in her eye which held not a hint of sweet Dallas or
the benevolent goddess. Only Luna in the worst possible
rage.

Arnaldo got into a sitting
position, all traces of his tears and distress gone, his eyes round
with trepidation along with curiosity as Luna advanced on
me.

She yanked me out of the
room and into the ether with her.

She threw me out of the
ether and it was a moment or two before I realised I was soaring
through the air. Too late I saw what used to be the swamp. After
over two centuries and three world wars, it had become a toxic
sludge empty of all wildlife.

I landed in the thick,
green, tar-like substance. I gasped and leapt out of it to scamper
up a tree, dismayed at the smelly goo on my clothes and in my
hair.

My gaze fell on Luna
standing on the edge of the swamp. She was trying to hold back a
smile. Realising how undignified I must look, I stopped, my eyes
narrowed and my mouth became a tight line. I let the ether fold
itself around me.

She was already at the
mansion when I materialised in the foyer. I went straight to our
bedroom. A short while later I materialised in the drawing room, a
small carry case in my hand.

Luna lay on the sofa, her
eyes on her reading device. Her face was tight with tension, her
eyebrows almost drawn into a single line, her lips pressed together
in unified bullheadedness. Arnaldo sat in a corner in the shadows.
That look was still in his eyes. It deepened when he saw the small
case I was carrying. He got to his feet and opened his mouth as if
to speak. Luna shot him a look that made his face turn ashen before
he quickly sat back down again.

I stood there for a few
moments, and when she did not glance at me, I turned and left the
drawing room. I slammed the front door shut on my way
out.

I doubted it would take
longer than a day or two before she came looking for me, suitably
contrite and begging me to return to the mansion.

Weeks passed and it was
not Luna who came looking for me.

I was in a little eating
establishment that was a pitiful recreation of one of those diners
that had been prolific in that area back in the twentieth century.
The only thing it had managed to accurately copy was the grime I
remembered. I was sitting in a corner with a book—a real book, not
one of those handheld reading devices—when a shadow fell across
me.

“
Avery. Imagine bumping
into you here.”

I glanced up to see
Arnaldo standing before me. I doubted he had happened upon me by
chance.

What do you want,
Arnaldo?”

He seated himself.
“Nothing, bro. I just happened to be in the area.”

I went back to my book,
but could still feel his gaze on me. He spoke again after a few
moments.

“
Guess what?”

I glowered at
him.

“
I’ve decided to travel
for a while. I hate to leave Luna up there all on her own, but you
know me. I’m a rolling stone. I can’t stay in one place for too
long.”

He was staring at me
imploringly. He wore the loose, formless clothes of that age and
looked so much younger than the age he had been when he was turned
into a vampire it was hard to believe that centuries of experience
separated him and me. I leaned back in my seat.

“
How long is too
long?”

“
Around five years or
so.”

I glared at
him.

“
Maybe closer to a decade.
I hate the thought of Luna being up there all on her
own.”

“
Okay. I’ll go back to the
mansion.”

I hoped the relief I felt
didn’t show. Judging by the little smile on his lips, I can assume
it did.

“
Great. Now look at that
girl over there. Isn’t she—?”

“
Goodbye,
Arnaldo.”

“
Right.”

He got to his feet as I
buried my face in my book once more. He squeezed my shoulder
briefly before he walked away.

I waited for a while to be
sure he was gone before I left the diner and rushed to my hotel to
pack and return to my goddess.

Luna was reading when I
entered the drawing room, her expression exactly the same as it was
the last time I saw her. I regarded her in silence for a few
moments before I went upstairs to unpack.

We ignored each other for
the rest of that night.

At dawn I retired to the
bedroom and got into bed beside her, relieved to be near her in the
familiar comfort of our bed, breathing in her scent although she
seemed an age away. I lay back and closed my eyes.

A few minutes later I felt
her soft arms around me as she snuggled close to me. I pulled her
to me and placed a kiss on her forehead. I was happy to be home and
even a little bit smug.

It was as I’d said she’d
be, contrite and having missed me too much to ever take Arnaldo’s
side over mine ever again. Or so I allowed myself to believe,
anyway.

Arnaldo returned to the
mansion a week later, claiming to have missed us so much he just
had to cancel his travels and run back home.

I could only glare at
him.

***

Back in the domed city I
watched Arnaldo’s image a while longer as he spoke to those
gathered in eerie silence, and as much as he irritated me, it was
difficult to deny his magnetism. As I watched him, it was difficult
to escape what the others gathered chose to ignore. Arnaldo was
extremely skilled at hiding his emotions and was a virtual social
chameleon. He was the perfect immortal, for he was able to tailor
himself to whatever age he was in with ease, flowing through the
centuries with the effortlessness of a rushing stream. Yet on this
night—behind his silky smile, honeyed words, and tender gaze—there
was anger directed at those gathered. It was clear to see, but they
were too caught up in the entertainment.

I continued on my way, but
by now news had spread that a vampire was in the city. As I moved
through the city the new generation milled around, their eager eyes
taking me in, their minds empty whilst their mean mouths were quick
to spread into smug smiles. I moved, noticing there was one at my
elbow bleating some mindless drivel in a hope to make me glance her
way. Whenever I did gaze upon them I saw only hatred peering back
at me.

I turned in a narrow
stretch of road only to see another appear out of one of the hidden
doorways, grinning at the fact he got there before me. He shouted
something out as I passed by—the gibberish they were so proud of
and which they expected me to be impressed with—and that was when I
noticed something he did not.

All the hidden doorways
were marked by two small disks on the ground. One of the disks was
flashing amber, letting me know all the doorways out of the dome
were offline. This meant there was no way out of the
city.

It was time for me to
leave.

I was about to enter the
ether when I became aware of something I hadn’t noticed before
now.

Vampires.

The dome was full of
vampires, but they were remaining out of sight. I frowned,
wondering why so many vampires had congregated in this city,
choosing to remain hidden. It was as if they were waiting—in fact
it seemed they had been waiting for this night for a long
time.

Whenever a vampire entered
the city, their movements were monitored and forcefields prevented
them from shimmering, so they were forced to use the hidden
doorways. Everyone knew those forcefields couldn’t really stop
vampires from shimmering. Whatever happened this night, those
vampires would always have a way out of the city. They also had
enough influence and wealth to cushion themselves against what was
coming. The same could not be said of the city’s
inhabitants.

I called the ether to me
and let that dark power gather around me.

It felt as though shards
of glass were passing over my skin, but I found myself thrown out
of the ether some miles from the domed city.

I looked out on the
devastation that was the Earth I had once loved. There wasn’t a
living thing in sight. The sky above me was a bleak and dark grey.
Jaundice-coloured clouds completely obscured the stars above. The
ground beneath my feet was the colour and consistency of
ash.

I looked behind me to the
domed city, which sat like a broken egg shell in the barren
landscape. Dark, sinewy shapes gathered around the edges of the
dome.

We did not know what these
creatures were, but we had been aware of them for some time,
although I had never seen one up close. They were gathered in
larger numbers than usual but, as always, at the sight of me they
seemed to melt away into the night. I knew they were still there,
waiting.

I called the ether to me
and was away, eager to be back at the mansion and with my
beloved.

***

I reached the mansion to
find her standing outside on the ash-coloured remains of the field
of flowers, dressed in shorts. The mansion loomed behind her, a
mere husk of the beautiful home in which we had lived for so long,
most of the structure having long succumbed to the ravages of
time.

The sight of Luna after so
many weeks apart made my heart speed up. I came to a stop and
simply stared at her long, sleek limbs, her smooth mahogany skin
gleaming in the stale light filtering through the polluted sky
above. As always, the beauty of the face I had waited decades to
lay eyes on back in the seventeen hundreds cut to the core of my
being. She had cut her hair in the weeks I had been gone, and it
was now an ebony cap cropped close to her head, making those raven
eyes all the more beguiling when they came to rest on
me.

I was wearing clothing
similar to that which I had worn centuries ago on that winter’s
morning when I returned to the mansion to find Luna shivering in
the snow. Her eyes had shimmered with unshed tears as she took that
timid step forward whilst reaching a trembling hand for me. It was
a poor, cheap recreation of what I had worn that morning, much like
everything else on this dying world. But I had worn it in the hopes
she would remember that day and also remember that any time spent
away from her, whether it be decades or days, was always too long.
Before I could make a move toward her, she turned away toward the
gaping hole that was once the mansion door, disappearing in
mid-stride.