Midnight's Song (47 page)

“What are you doing?” I
screamed through the door.

“Get to the balcony and
climb down!” She yelled. “The officers are already in the house.
They’ll have to go through me, first. That should give you enough
time to get to the carriage!”

“They’ll kill you!” I
protested.

“Elissa, it’s okay,” she
told me softly. I could tell that she was at peace. “We will meet
again.”

The tears streaming down
my face, I did as she said. There was no way to describe what kind
of peril I was feeling at that moment. My friend was sacrificing
herself for me, and I knew that she wasn’t going to give up. She
was letting herself be the hero this time, and I wasn’t going to
let this be in vain. So, I turned and started toward the balcony as
she said.

I grabbed me sheets and
began tying them together, but my shaky hands made it nearly
impossible. I threw the sheets on the ground and went over to the
balcony myself, deciding I was going to take my chances and scale
it alone. I took off my shoes, placed the hood on my head and
looked down. It was definitely more than a little drop. It had to
be twenty, maybe thirty feet to the bottom.

I gulped, getting ready to
start over the edge. Then, I stopped. There was thumping and
shouting on the other side of the door. The officers were here now,
and they were demanding that Emily get out of the way and give them
the key.

“Over my dead body!” She shouted back
at them.

“Move aside or it will be!” One of the
men barked in response.

Emily mustered up so much
strength that even the strongest man couldn’t move her by force.
So, they knocked her out of the way. She fought them once more, but
the thunderous clang of rifle resulted in silence. The last thing I
could hear was a man kicking her to the side.

“NO!” I cried, falling onto my knees
and forgetting what I had been instructed to do.

That was when they began
kicking in the door. Even their strongest jolts couldn’t bring it
down at first. It was as if something stronger than human will –
something miraculous – was delaying their entry. I felt something
grab me from behind. It pulled me up and spun me around, and within
seconds I could see the face of someone I had thought was lost
forever. It was Aurelian.

“I thought you were gone,” I
cried.

“I promised you that I
would never be far,” he darkly replied. “If you want to live, take
my hand.”

“There’s no way out, I’ve looked,” I
heaved in tears.

“There is a
way.”

Aurelian grabbed my hand
and ran to the balcony. It was filling with the pale pink hue of
the sunrise, giving me a strange sense of peace. Then, there was a
revelation:

“Elissa, do you trust
me?”

At first I was silent. Our
eyes locked for what felt like an eternity. Then, against the
rising sun and above the tumult of my emotions, I became
certain.

“Yes.”

When I uttered the word,
Aurelian swept me up into his arms. Aurelian stepped onto the edge
of the balcony, stepping atop guard rails while he held me in his
arms. The door burst open. A flood of men rushed through the other
side, stopping in astonishment of their senses. One moment, we were
standing on the edge of the balcony, our faces lit against the glow
of the eastern sun.

Then, in the blink of an
eye we were gone.

After we escaped,
the world fell silent
.
My pursuers had been outwitted. After all that had been done
to obtain my soul, the conspirators were left speechless. The tools
that the Dark used to carry out its plans were infallibly human.
Their imperfection had caused failure. For that, the Darkness was
angered beyond belief.

“
You have failed me, Julius!”
It
growled that day, sending a jolt of pain through the Magistrate’s
body.

“I am sorry, Great One!”
The man begged.

“
Your apologies are useless. I must seek after a greater power
to destroy them now. Do as I say and I may spare you from this
pain,”
The Darkness groaned.
“
Do not fail to obey my word! There is
something that I must show you…”

“Tell me what it is!” The
Magistrate begged again.

“
Open the window to the Night Kingdom.”

Julius did exactly
as the Curse told him. He went into the dark room, recited the dark
words of a spell, and opened up the window to communicate with The
Other World –
the Night Kingdom.
Doing as his master had instructed, he opened it
and begged communication from the King of the Night Kingdom. In no
more than a few seconds time, he was met with the smirk of the
cruel King Faolan.

“It seems that the humans have
failed,” Faolan wickedly grinned.

“Your allies seem to have
failed also.”

“Don’t underestimate my power simply
because my servants have proven useless,” Faolan remarked in
annoyance. “They will be dealt with more harshly than your subjects
ever have or will be.”

“Underestimate your
power?” The Magistrate remarked in reply, his pride suddenly
rattled by this seemingly arrogant youth. “You’re much younger than
I am. You’re what – 19 in human years? 20? I’ve been ruling this
Empire for far longer than you’ve dreamed of ruling
yours.”

Now Faolan was seething.
He didn’t like his pride rattled with. His power challenged, Faolan
decided that it was time he made an example of it. The cruel force
gave its approval, and Faolan confidently smirked.

“Considering the
difference between our worlds, I believe that
I
am your elder. One moment in your
world is at least three days in mine…so you should take care in
holding your tongue,” Faolan glared. “My age is of no importance at
the moment. The important matter of the moment is that you were
tasked with something of great importance and failed. Now the
Darkness calls upon
me
to accomplish its work instead.”

“Upon
you?”

A sudden, choking
feeling overcame the man. Now the Magistrate understood what this
was. The Darkness was not taking him here to simply communicate
with another realm. It was taking him here for punishment. Then –
just as Julius had done to many others himself – this power might
actually decide
dispose
of him.

“Julius…” Faolan maliciously trailed
off. “The power with which you have dealt is no curse. The fact
that you would consider it one simply indicates that you have never
been qualified to bear it! That is why it brought you here. It
brought you here to give your authority in this all back to me…and
to do justice after your failure. Now, let me teach you something
about the power of my youth!”

Faolan reached forth and
began taking his lifeblood. He didn’t take enough to render him
dead; just enough to disfigure him. When he stopped draining life
from the man, the Magistrate’s skin was like that of a 120 year old
man. Julius’s strength nearly gone, the man collapsed onto the
ground as a dead man.

“See, Julius? I am
the more powerful one, the one that the Darkness favors. Why?
Because I see it as a gift to embody. My youth isn’t of the matter
here, nor is your age,” Faolan venomously gloated through the
mirror. “Now you have a new curse. Your power is
mine
. Live out the rest
of your rule withering in body and mind. The Darkness and its power
remain in your family no longer.”

Faolan closed the portal.
He paced around his throne, confident but dissatisfied. His veins
surged with this vampiric power. Faolan summoned the one he had
sent to my world. The creature’s wife was called with
him.

“Luca,” he started
once they had arrived. “The tools of the Darkness have failed the
humans. Their ruler scoffs at its power. He scoffs at
me.”
His eyes narrowed
at the two. “For that, his power is now mine. The nightmares I
created didn’t fail, but you have. You’ve failed me, and for that
you must pay.”

Faolan stepped down from
his throne for a moment and eyed the two. Then, he began the
execution. He grabbed Luca by the neck and forced him onto the
ground.

“I will not be made a fool
any longer,” Faolan spat to his court. “I have more power now than
I have ever had. The humans have failed – but I will not!” He spoke
in a tone that was deceptively soft. It was low and intense, a near
whisper. “My brother is close now. Closer to this place than he has
been since the moment he fled! His shelter has been lost, his
safety run dry. It is time for me to take care of this myself once
and for all.”

Faolan suddenly
twisted his arm.
Crack!
In a single motion, Luca was dead. The shock of
her husband’s death caused the woman’s stomach to churn. She knelt
sorrowfully, tears in her eyes. It didn’t quite occur to her at
that moment that she was next.

“Woman…” Faolan moved over
a step, stroking the widow’s face. It could only display disgust.
“Is there anything you’d like to say before joining
him?”

“Why must you do
things this way?” She shook in a raspy voice. “He only did as he
was told. You live as if you don’t serve the darkness, but as if it
serves you
.
” The
tears in her eyes suddenly disappeared and gave birth to honesty.
“You know that’s not true.
You know
that this power is greater than anything you
could conjure!”

Faolan knocked the woman to the ground
in a fury. Soon he would do the same thing to her that was done to
Luca. Though, before the silence of death would fall on the
Kingdom, Faolan sinisterly glared at his victim.

“You don’t seem to
understand…” He venomously whispered. “
I
am the Darkness.”

Part Four:

◊

Lives Anew

Flying with Aurelian was
like nothing I’d ever imagined before. At first I closed my eyes,
clinging to him tightly the whole way. Then I felt the cool wind
brushing against my face and hair and opened them just to get a
peek. What I saw astounded me. We weren’t flying like the birds or
a human flying machine. No, we were moving through the sky in an
entirely different motion. It was as if we were walking upright –
perhaps even skating on the clouds. Could you even call this
flying?

The brilliant orange glow of the
rising sun brought a short wave of calm into my soul. The glowing
sunrise lit our faces, changing color and reflecting an aurora of
at least ten different shades as we danced across the atmosphere.
It was as if we were walking on a sky of stained glass until the
day came and paled the rainbow back to its usual
bluish-grey.

It was magnificent but short. It felt
like our time in the clouds had lasted just a few seconds, though
we’d really been up there long enough for the day to become night.
As soon as the stars were visible, we landed. It was like the end
of a magnificent dream. As soon as Aurelian put my feet onto the
ground – having changed from brown earth to a cushion of sand – I
felt as if I was waking up to my life’s worst nightmare.

“The evening has fallen upon us,”
Aurelian softly told me. “We should spend the night
here.”

We were standing in front of an
abandoned chapel on the border of the Desert Country. It was small
and dilapidated, its stained glass windows shattered and even
absent in some places. It stood alone, the only building in this
sandy existence as far as our eyes could see. Aurelian opened up
the doors, overwhelmed by a cloud of dust that engulfed us both
upon entry. We searched the entire building to be sure, but we knew
that we had to be alone. No one would dare think of making their
home here.

Without anything else to do, we
retracted to separate sides of the chapel. The pleasant flight here
was of no comfort next to the events we had just escaped. Now was
when it would all set in. The shock. The horror. The loss. The
shame. Of course we were in this mess together – but this was a
bigger mess than either of us could’ve expected. I curled up on the
ground in the far corner of the room, hugged my knees and
cried.

For a moment I looked up and averted
my gaze to the front of the chapel, where the pale moonlight shone
through a stained glass window. There was a picture in its
near-broken detail, a picture of a lamb dwelling next to a cross.
Obviously, the lamb was supposed to represent Jesus. With all of my
parochial education, I couldn’t overlook that. The thought of the
pure sacrifice that Christ gave caused me to think of Emily’s brave
sacrifice as well.

I thought of those last
few moments in my room, hearing the sounds over and over again yet
still finding myself unable to truly know her fate. The tears began
to come down my face, and no later than the first tear fell, I
remembered the page. The one I’d taken with me before I fled – the
one hidden in my moments of hopelessness. I pulled it out in
complete anguish and uncrumpled it in my hands.