Dark Requiem (The Darkling Trilogy, Book 3) (8 page)

“
I never would have done
anything to her, Avery. I swear.”

“
What you intend and what
you are able to control are two separate things, Dallas. The sun
will be coming up in a little while. You’re to stay in your room
and away from Mallory throughout your stay here, do you understand?
If I hear you take one step outside your bedroom door today...” He
leaned closer, his eyes cold, sapphire fires. “I will kill
you.”

“
Oh don’t be so
melodramatic, Uncle Avery,” Mallory said from the doorway. “You
said yourself Dallas showed extraordinary self-control earlier on,
so it’s unlikely she’ll attack me.”

He took a deep breath
before turning to glare at Mallory. His gaze returned to mine
moments later.

“
Thankfully it isn’t
anything we’ll have to worry about as Dallas will be gone this
evening.”

I placed a hand on my hip
and glared at him.

“
I’m not going
anywhere!”

Blind panic passed over
his features. He quickly hid it, his voice low and controlled when
he spoke.

“
Dallas, we agreed you
would only—”

“
You
agreed.
I
didn’t agree to anything. You can try and make me, but I’ll
just materialise here every night and you won’t be able to stop
me.”

“
You may as well let
Dallas stay,” Mallory said, moving farther into the room. “She can
enter the mansion whenever she wants, so sending her away won’t
keep me safe. If she stays you can keep an eye on her, make sure
she doesn’t kill anyone. Besides...” She looked up at him, her eyes
now like chunks of jasper. “This is my home too, and I want Dallas
to stay.”

He stared at her, aghast,
pleading with her with his eyes. She looked away, but her mouth was
set in a determined line. He sighed, his lips tightening into a
little pout that reminded me of a petulant schoolboy.

“
Fine,” he
said.

I smiled, sat back on his
lap and kissed him on the cheek. I wanted to hug Mallory, but the
reaction I’d had at the door of the mansion earlier on made me
reach for her hand instead. I squeezed it briefly before I let it
go.

“
Thank you,
Mallory.”

“
It’s a pleasure. I’ll see
you both this evening. ”

She left the room and I
was left staring at Avery, wondering why Luna used to find that
expression of his so adorable. It was irritating to say the least,
and was an expression one of my English friends would describe as
having a face like a slapped arse. I suppose Luna could see it as
adorable because it was likely she hardly saw it. Whereas every
time he looked at me, his mouth was set that way.

The slapped arse
expression deepened in reaction to my thoughts.

Aww. It
is
kinda
cute.

He sighed in
exasperation.

“
You should go to bed,
Dallas. I’ll wake you at dusk and take you out to feed. Drinking
from someone for the first time—”

“
Eww! I am not drinking
anyone’s blood. That is so gross!”

“
Don’t be silly, Dallas.
You have to drink human blood to survive.”

“
No, I don’t. I’ll just be
a vegetarian vampire like the Cullens.”

“
The Cullens?”

“
You know. From
Twilight
.”

He gazed blankly at
me.

“
The movie.”

He stared at me for a long
moment, fury of an intensity I had never seen before in his eyes. I
found it so disconcerting I stood up off his lap and took a step
back.

Almost immediately the
anger melted away and he just stared at me, something about that
little step back I had taken making pain flit behind his eyes
although I also saw yearning peering back at me. He quickly glanced
away and it was a few moments before he spoke again.

“
I was sorry to hear about
your Aunt’s...accident. I was away at the time or I would have at
least tried to...to...”

“
There wasn’t anything you
could have done, Avery.”

Although he was still
looking away from me, he coloured at those words and his mouth
turned down.

“
I was in a really bad way
for a while,” I continued. “But I know being here with you will
make everything all right again.”

He glanced up at me then
and I saw guilt along with that anguish in his eyes. He looked away
again. “Goodnight, Dallas.”

“
Goodnight,
Avery.”

I turned to leave, but
then caught sight of a flash of blue in a penholder on his desk. I
reached for it and then faced him.

“
You kept this?” I
said.

“
Kept what?”

His gaze fell on the
child’s hairband with blue baubles I held in my hand. It was the
same one I had used to tie his hair back all those years ago in
Central Park. He appeared embarrassed for a second and then stood,
quickly assuming his aloof demeanour.

“
Go to bed, Dallas. I’ll
speak to you this evening.”

I was still staring at the
hairband. I glanced at the sketch I had made of Luna kneeling by
the stream and then faced Avery again.

“
Okay, but I’m keeping
this.” I tied it around my wrist, then wrapped my arms around his
neck, planting a kiss on his cheek. “You don’t need it to remember
me by because I’m here to stay.”

His arms remained at his
sides as I embraced him, his body as unwelcoming as stone. I
released him.

I could feel his gaze on
me as I walked out of the room, and although his thoughts were
still tightly shielded, I sensed a deep flush of emotion from him
that was too intense for me to accurately interpret.

Outside in the corridor, I
gazed down at the hairband around my wrist. Capturing Avery’s heart
wasn’t going to be easy, but whenever I felt discouraged I would
look down at this and remember he had kept it. So I must mean
something to him no matter how he behaved toward me.

Down the hall in one of
the guest bedrooms, one with dusky, pink walls, dark wood flooring,
beige furnishings and mahogany furniture, I stood at the window
looking out on the field of flowers. Dawn would be here soon and I
was still marvelling at the fact that I was at the mansion with
Avery.

Mallory poked her head
around the door a few moments later.

“
I just came to say
goodnight, Dallas.” She paused when Avery called her name, having
no doubt heard her enter my room. “I want you to know I’m really
glad you’re here.”

“
Me too. Thank you, for
what you did earlier.”

Her voice dropped to
little more than a whisper. “He’s been unhappy for a very long
time, Dallas. You being here will be good for him, I just know
it.”

She smiled before she
disappeared back down the corridor.

I closed the shutters on
the windows and the room became as dark as a crypt. I got into bed.
I thought it would take me a while to sleep as my mind was still
whirling with all that had occurred throughout the night, but I
found myself slipping into a heavy sleep the moment my eyes
closed.

I awoke from a hazy, fear
filled dream in which I was at my aunt’s funeral. But instead of my
aunt, I saw myself lying in that coffin. All life having drained
from my face so it was an empty carcass as inanimate as
earth.

I sat up, my thoughts
taken away from the dream by an ache in my bones and a hunger that
made my head swim with lust. I closed my eyes for a few moments and
tried to quell that hunger, but it rose up like a savage, crimson
swarm, and I knew that despite what I had said to Avery the night
before, there was no way I would be able to deny it.

I got out of bed only to
jump back in alarm when the room disappeared right before my eyes,
shoved away with savage sweeps. A wild, brutal night sky loomed
above me, its indigo face pitted with countless stars, the bitter
half-moon a waxy scar which time could never erase. I should have
been shocked at what my eyes told me I was seeing, but the scene
before me was somehow familiar, as if I had merely turned into a
street I had ventured down the day before.

What sent shock charging
through me was that my mouth was saturated with fresh, sweet blood
which thrilled through me, making me sway in time to a visceral
rhythm that was as old as time itself. There was blood on my mouth,
my hands and my clothes. Blood warming, quickening and soothing me.
And at its heart was the lust for the kill, the two entwined with
barbs of pain and rapture. Even as I swayed in thrall to the sweet
blood making my very flesh sing, I wanted—no, ached—for more of
it.

Then I saw what lay before
me. Bodies splattered with the same blood that had shackled me to
its virulent call.

I cried out and backed
away from the bodies, but the call was still there, still
reverberating in my ears, my mind, every inch of me, the shackles
it had placed upon my flesh tightening as surely as if it were a
noose around my neck.

As suddenly as that
hostile night had descended on me, it was replaced by sunlight
trickling through emerald trees. The brown mare was standing a few
feet away from me. It gazed at me for a few moments and then turned
and moved away. I was about to follow it when the sunlight melted
away and I was back in the guest room at the mansion.

I stepped back, colliding
with the bed.

What just
happened?

Did I
hallucinate?

As maddening as the thirst
for blood was, those bodies and that awful feeling of being bound
in that never ending lust for blood and death, made my stomach
twist painfully at the thought of drinking human blood. My thirst
began to ease. It took a few minutes, but I finally felt in control
and made my way to the bathroom.

I told myself that
whatever it was that just happened was nothing to worry about. I
had obviously been caught in a dream and it had only felt as if I
had been in an entirely different place because all my senses were
heightened.

I kept repeating that to
myself, but unease continued to press against me, that feral,
hateful night like a whisper hovering at the edges of my mind,
enticing me to draw nearer in order to hear all it had to reveal to
me.

I ignored it, turning my
thoughts to Avery, needing the sight of his handsome face to draw
my mind away from what must have been a waking
nightmare.

***

An hour later I entered
Avery’s room with a cup of coffee. He was fast asleep, wearing the
same clothes he had been wearing the night before, his arm on an
open book that had something to do with spirit possession. I sat
down on the side of the bed and stared at him. His face was
completely free of the sorrow that usually lay on him like a second
skin and he looked like an angel, his dark hair curling gently
about his face, his mouth parted slightly.

Still unsettled by the
waking dream and that feeling of being completely out of control, I
just sat on the bed and watched him. Thankfully just the sight of
him helped ease some of my anxiety. It was a while before he
stirred and his eyelids fluttered open to thin slits, his gaze
unfocused, still caught somewhere in a land of dreams. They
gradually focussed and his eyes flew fully open, his entire body
becoming rigid with alarm when he saw me leaning over him with a
besotted smile.

“
Good evening, Ave. I made
you some coffee.”

The coffee had gone cold
whilst I sat staring at him, but I held it out to him anyway. He
eyed me, and then the coffee, with suspicion. Then he accepted it
and drank without complaining, his sapphire eyes guarded every time
he looked my way.

When he finished, he
placed the empty cup on the nightstand and gave me a tight
smile.

“
Thank you, Dallas. That
was very thoughtful of you. If you don’t mind waiting in your room,
I’ll just get showered and dressed.”

His words immediately took
me to a bathroom filled with steam, Avery naked with water running
down his muscular chest. I stared at him, wide eyed and
speechless.

“
Dallas?”

“
Um, yeah, sure. Let me
know when you’re done.”

I smiled and reluctantly
left his room. In the corridor away from Avery, my anxiety
concerning the waking dream returned and my stomach clenched when I
recalled the bodies that had lain beneath that heartless night sky.
I wrapped my arms around myself before I moved on to my room to
wait for Avery.

When we ventured
downstairs a short while later, it was to find that Mallory had
prepared a welcome dinner for me. She was supposed to be
vacationing with friends that week, but had cancelled the trip when
Avery agreed to let me stay at the mansion.

“
It’s just a little
something to let you know,” she had given Avery a hard glance at
this point, “that we’re both so happy to have you here with
us.”