Dark Requiem (The Darkling Trilogy, Book 3) (42 page)

I sighed, my heart still
fluttering at the mere sight of her after so long, anxiety churning
within.

She was still angry with
me when all I wanted was to pull her into my arms and run my
fingers over the short cap of her springy hair, letting my eyes
feast upon the face that still had the power to enchant me even
after so many centuries. I wanted to tell her I loved her and hear
those words echoed back to me, see it in her eyes and feel it wash
over me in warm waves of gold.

I was considering what to
do when she reappeared outside the mansion. A smile broke over my
face, my heart beating all the faster as I dipped into the ether,
materialising before her. I simply stared at her. She was wearing
the dress she had worn on our wedding day—the cause of our latest
argument. She had spent months searching for the perfect dress, and
had chosen something she hadn’t liked, but thought I would approve
of only to discover I barely remembered the dress. It was a modest
dress with a high neckline and long sleeves. That image of her
hovering above the surface of the moon, clad in what had appeared
to be metallic liquid, had had such an effect on me that she had
chosen a white dress with silver-coloured lace. I reached out and
touched it, realising it wasn’t a replica as I had expected. It was
the same dress, although I thought that dress had long succumbed to
the centuries.

“
How—?”

“
Does it matter, Avery?”
she asked, those plum-coloured lips spreading into the sweetest of
smiles.

I shook my head and held
her face in mine, marvelling at her beauty and the love that
showered me whenever I was in her presence. I kissed her on the
forehead and pulled her to me.

We sat outside and looked
up at the sky, barely able to see the moon above us. The domed city
I had just left was clearly visible in the distance. I stared at it
knowing it was unlikely I would ever see it—or the mansion—again,
for Luna and I would soon be leaving it behind us. I stared at it,
able to see the dense clusters of creatures just visible on the
dome’s outskirts. A reckoning was coming and I asked myself if we
should remain and fight for the city against what was
coming.

But who would want to
fight for a people who did not value anything worth fighting
for?

No, we would leave
them—and the generation they failed—as planned. And where would we
go?

The moon.

I remembered Luna’s
memories of shimmering shell-coloured dust and a mysterious, never
ending night pregnant with life. A thrill went through me. Tomorrow
would see us standing on the surface of the moon.
Together.

The world around us had
changed beyond all recognition, the field of flowers had long gone
and the mansion behind us was little more than a ruin. All that
remained was my love for her. Luna, my immortal beloved. The
goddess of the moon.

THE END

Also by A. D. Koboah

PEACE

Peace Osei is young,
beautiful—and addicted to heroin; the only thing that can keep
painful past memories at bay. But when Mohamed, a past love,
re-enters her life demanding answers to questions she is not ready
to face, it threatens to send Peace swimming deeper into
self-destructive waters. Having spent so long drifting away from
the real world, can Peace find the strength to face the past and
banish her demons?

Read on for an excerpt
of
Peace
, A. D.
Koboah’s Contemporary Urban novel.

I quickened my steps to
try and shake off the grinding pain in my stomach. But that only
made it worse, forcing me to slow down and come to a stop by the
side of the bridge whilst everyone else swept on past. It was rush
hour so nobody noticed me, a small figure dressed in black
trembling against the icy metal railing under dense grey clouds
that threatened to unleash rain on the city below. Unable to move
or think straight I let my eyes drift over the raging waters of the
River Thames, which stretched out like a rippling black sheet for
miles before me. And as I stared at the dark angry water, it seemed
to come alive, taking on the appearance of an enormous creature
stirring restlessly beneath me. The sound of the waves crashing
against the bank now sounded like an unearthly heart beating slow
and steady against the soft sigh of the January wind.

I wondered then what it
would feel like to plunge into the midst of the creature beneath
me. Would the seconds spent in the air before I hit the water feel
like an eternity, or would they disappear in a flash? Would any of
the people sweeping past me even notice or stop long enough to
care? And once the dark, icy water closed over my head, how long
would I spend struggling before I gave in to its eternal
embrace?

Thankfully, the icy wind
was all I felt against me, the biting cold eventually jolting me
out of my morbid reverie and back to reality. Noticing a bus roll
past and come to rest at the bus stop nearby, I released my death
grip on the railing and ran toward it, only just managing to board
it before it moved on.

Once aboard the packed
bus, I inched my way through the knot of people on the lower deck,
up the stairs onto the top deck, and chose a seat next to the
window as the bus lurched forward. Leaning back in my seat, I
delicately fingered three soft plastic packages in my right coat
pocket and letting myself relax – ever so slightly – I watched the
city streets dance by.

Dusk had crept up on us by
this time and the glow of the streetlights beating back the
invading darkness gave the bustling streets a festive air as office
blocks emptied of their daytime inhabitants. I sat enchanted by the
people that swept past, most of them in heavy winter coats walking
briskly in either ones or twos toward tube stations or to join the
larger groups that had gathered around bus stops in what was a mass
exodus away from the city streets. Some people I saw walked with a
grimace as the bitter cold whipped their faces. Their mouths were
drawn into thin hard lines and their vacant eyes told me that the
stresses of the day had followed them out of the office and would
be with them long into the evening. Others strode energetically
down the streets, jauntily ducking out of the way of their fellow
pedestrians as they fled to the comforts of home. They even managed
a smile as they waited for buses that were often too full to
welcome them aboard. I also saw groups of young men and women
around my age who appeared oblivious to the punishing cold as they
meandered down the streets, laughing carelessly about something or
other that had amused them. I kept my eyes on those groups of
blissfully young, untroubled types who were a representation of
something that had long ago ceased to exist for me, and watched
until they were either too far away to see or had disappeared into
one of the many pubs and bars that dotted the city
landscape.

The bus soon sped away
from those people and the city streets, away from the London Eye
which stood over the near-black river, holding up its glowing blue
capsules like an offering of jewels to the twilight sky. Away from
the grand office buildings with their lit windows looking like
Christmas tree lights in the distance. And as the bus drew further
and further away from the city streets and became emptier with each
stop, we were slowly taken away from one world and into
another.

No impressive-looking
office buildings were to be seen providing the background for an
opulent world in this new landscape. And whilst the world I had
left behind had statues and monuments as a tribute to their heroes
and significant events of their history, we saw no more of these as
the bus left behind the wealthy city streets and wound into the
urban jungle.

Neglect instead wove an
ugly thread along the littered streets of this new world, and the
only thing that distinguished each unremarkable building from its
neighbour was the graffiti that screamed at the passer-by from
every exposed concrete surface. It seemed as though every time the
bus turned a corner, it was met by a sprawling estate or a
high-rise block of flats that loomed menacingly on the horizon,
dominating the landscape and casting an oppressive shadow over the
world beneath. I was carried deep into this new world and got off
the bus to the familiar sight of a small group of drunks that had
congregated by that bus stop. They were always there, dishevelled,
noisy and oblivious to the unease or open contempt their presence
evoked in those around them. In my eyes they were an example of
people who had given up on life; kindred spirits that had taken
enough of life’s knocks, had handed in the towel and surrendered.
People who had made the conscious decision a long time ago to stop
striving for the better things in life such as that better job or
better relationship. They had instead chosen to find that something
better at the end of a bottle – or in their case, the many empty
cans of beer that littered the bus stop.

I left them behind and
made the short walk into the heart of the urban jungle, under a sky
that had already deepened to an inky black as night descended,
bringing with it a hive of activity as people either left the
streets or ventured from their homes to explore it. Cars roared
past and I heard the sound of a police siren, the piercing wail
sounding like a bird of prey shrieking in the distance before it
died away. I passed off-licences, corner shops, and takeaway shops
which were now beacons of light in the darkness, drawing people in.
I took comfort in the kaleidoscope of colourful faces that passed
mine; from white, Asian, Latin American, Chinese and every shade of
black; starting with soft golden browns and travelling down the
spectrum to the richest blue-black skin tones.

Some people I passed were
clearly not at ease in this world and they trod carefully through
it with their heads down, trying not to make eye contact with those
around them in an effort to get from A to B unnoticed. But for
others, the world around them had become a part of their identity
and was as much an essential part of them as the blood coursing
through their veins. Whether they were obvious predators or people
that had simply fallen in love with the urban jungle, the hold that
this world had on them was a powerful one and it kept them coming
back again and again to dance to the rhythms of its dangerous
beat.

I made it onto my road
without having to stop and give in to the pain which was clutching
and twisting my lower abdomen. I fled past rows of identical
Victorian houses towards the bright red door of a converted house
which had become a lighthouse, lighting the way home in the growing
storm of my need. Once I let myself into the house and stepped onto
the worn dark brown carpet in the gloomy hallway, I was able to
release a deep sigh before I closed the door shut quietly behind
me. I slunk past a door on my left, which led to a one-bedroom
flat, and up the stairs onto the first floor which had been
converted into two bed-sits with a shared kitchen and bathroom. The
tremor in my hand was more intense when I put the key into the lock
of my bed-sit and swung the door open to the glare of the
television set which I had left on in my haste to leave earlier on
in the day. Safely in my sanctuary, I wasted no time in shrugging
off my coat whilst fragments of news that nobody ever wanted to see
or hear accosted me from the television screen. It was a news
bulletin about another missing or dead child, and a photograph of
that child wearing a school uniform they would probably never have
the chance to wear again. I watched the television sadly, affected
by the sweet innocent smile that the child’s parents must have
longed to see again in the flesh. Then I snapped the television off
and plunged the room into an expectant silence.

Carefully taking out the
tiny bag from my coat pocket, I reached for the lighter and roll of
foil on my chest of drawers, catching sight of a tall, slim, pretty
young woman peering at me from the mirror against the
wall.

I avoided her as much as
was physically possible, but she still managed to sneak up on me
when I was least expecting it, and forced me to acknowledge her as
I did now.

I watched as she put a
hand up to her face which had a strong hint of Ghanaian lineage in
the mahogany brown skin, small, flat, broad nose, full sensuous
lips and thick, jet-black natural hair that had been pulled tightly
away from her face. Although this face had undergone minor changes
over the years, the eyes – my eyes – were the only feature that had
changed beyond recognition and looked as if they had seen far too
much in their twenty-three years on this earth. It was the clear,
deep anguish in those eyes that led me here and made me tear myself
away from the mirror back to the lighter and the two small pieces
of foil that I tore off the roll. Rolling up one of the pieces, I
put it in my mouth and let it hang off my lip like a cigarette then
tore open the bag and emptied the brown powder onto the other scrap
of foil. Using slow deliberate movements, which defied the urgency
that was speaking to me from my every pore, I used the lighter to
melt the powder into a golden-brown ball and tilted the foil to
make the brown ball run down to the other end whilst chasing it
with the foil roll in my mouth.