Dark Requiem (The Darkling Trilogy, Book 3) (19 page)

I sank to the ground
before it. It grew quiet and peered at me, its eyes luminous in the
dark. Rather than trying to retreat from me, it showed no fear, but
seemed to think I would not harm it.

I reached for it and
cupped its head in my hands, feeling the skin moving like oil over
its fragile skull as I rubbed its head. Then I reached for the tree
root that had it trapped and broke it away from its leg. I picked
it up and studied it. It did not appear wounded in any
way.

I set it on its feet and
rose. It scampered away, and I watched its passage through the
grass until the night and distance hid it from my supernatural
sight. Then I moved back to the stream and forced myself to stare
at what was before me.

Surrounding the stream
were bodies. I counted twenty. Some were missing their heads;
others had deep gouges blotting their abdomen. The rest had been
pummelled to such a degree they barely resembled anything that
could have been called human. The scent of blood hung heavy and
ghastly in the warm air.

I had snatched them from
far and wide and brought them here. They all shared four physical
characteristics. They were young and male with blond hair and blue
eyes.

As I stared at the bodies,
I felt tears prick my eyes and then anger thundered to the surface.
But the fear—that fear forever gnawing at me, eating away at my
soul—was still there.

I looked to the sky, my
hands held out in a wordless plea as weariness overwhelmed me. A
sob caught in my throat and I opened my mouth to set it
free.

What escaped into the
night was a scream. A sound of rage—rage along with strains of
soul-destroying pain threatening to shred my psyche into a million
fragments—shattered the stillness.

I screamed and screamed
into the indifferent sky.

***

Louisiana 1886

For an instant, there was
a flicker of revulsion at the white hand clutching my breast, the
lips nibbling at my neck, and the all-too-familiar sticky feel of
damp, Caucasian hair against my skin. He groaned deep in his throat
as I reached for his manhood—exactly the way Master John used to
do. I had to hold back the urge, as I had so often with Master
John, to push him away.

I didn’t have to push him
away because I was with Avery, not Master John, and when he
stiffened, my stomach twisted in anxiety because I knew I had
accidently let my thoughts slip through and he had seen
them.

He was completely still
for a few moments, his face still buried in my neck. Then his hand
fell away from my breast and he began to back away from me. I held
onto him, trying to ignore what he had seen, arching against him.
Although he was still painfully aroused, he took hold of my wrists
and gently pulled my arms away from him.

He rose off me. It felt as
if everything stopped for a moment as I stared at him, my chest
clutching in response to his extraordinary beauty, the taut muscles
of his stomach making me want to reach for him. His face and mind
were blank, but his eyes—he could never keep what he felt from his
eyes—sang of pain and bewilderment.

“
Avery...”

He was off the bed in the
blink of an eye. He vanished, lingering in the room only long
enough to grab his shirt and trousers.

Alone, I sat up and stared
down at the rumpled bed sheets and then at the closed door. I
thought about the look in his eyes as he stared down at me, and for
an instant I felt something I had never been able to feel in Master
John’s presence. Triumph. It was instantly drowned out by remorse
and tears pricked my eyes. I got off the bed and
dressed.

I found Avery by the lake,
but didn’t approach him. I watched him through the trees as he sat
on a stool we had left behind on one of our many visits to the
lake, his back to me as he looked out over the water. He had his
trousers and shirt on, but no shoes. The sight of his naked feet
cut deep, taking me to that evening I first saw him at the chapel.
He had been so beautiful with seemingly unlimited power, yet so
vulnerable. The many years he had spent alone stripping him of so
much. But he had still been able to save me from a life of endless
toil and degradation.

Shame crept over me again
about that moment of triumph in the bedroom. I loved Avery so much
it almost felt as if I couldn’t breathe. It was like being bound
again and that had made me lash out at him with that thought, which
I had on a subconscious level, let him see. It shamed me, but what
shamed me more was the unshakable love I felt for him which left me
bound, quivering in misery at just the sight of his naked
feet.

Angry at myself, and yet
overwhelmed by the strong emotions his bare feet elicited in me, I
turned away and returned to the mansion.

He didn’t move when I
materialised behind him a short time later. I placed his coat over
his shoulders, even though he had no real need for it. He kept his
gaze forward, the weight of his hurt in the set of his jaw, making
the shame descend again as I moved to stand in front of him. I
knelt and tried to place his feet into the shoes I had brought with
me.

“
There’s no need for you
to do that, Luna. You are not my slave.”

There was an edge of
resentment in his tone and his words had been meant to wound. It
was deserved. I glanced up to see him looking down at me, anger
still in the set of his jaw.

“
I know that,
Avery.”

I went to again try and
place his feet in the shoes, but he reached for my hand and stayed
it. Then he picked up the shoes and tossed them away.

Giving in, I sat on the
grass by his side, my gaze moving to his exposed feet and then the
discarded shoes lying a few yards away.

“
Avery, I’m sorry. I
didn’t mean—”

“
I know, Luna.” He turned
to me, anguish written across his features. “I know.”

He faced the water and it
was a long moment before he spoke again.

“
I just wish I had found
you sooner. All those times I returned to the chapel. If I had
known you were nearby, I could have spared you from so much. I
could have taken you away from the plantation and you would have
been raised by your mother, free from him and his son and what they
did to you for so long.”

His words and the emotion
behind them tugged painfully at my heart, again leaving me feeling
weak as only he had the power to do. He didn’t keep much hidden
from me, but he had kept this from me: His guilt. Even after he let
me go to marry Jupiter, it had plagued him, those years I spent at
the hands of Master Henry and then Master John. It hurt because I
too wish he had found me then.

I clutched his arm and lay
my head against it.

“
How could you have done
anything when you didn’t even know what I was or even if I was
real?”

“
But I could
have—”

“
Don’t do this to me,
Avery,” I said, fighting back tears. “There was nothing either of
us could have done to stop that from happening. Not even Mama was
able to stop them.”

“
I know.” He faced me
again and I was forced to look up at him, at the tears in his eyes.
“I know. It’s just... I watched so many slaves suffer over the
years but was completely absorbed in my own pain. That is not an
easy thing to admit. And it’s just that I love you so much,
Luna.”

He paused then, as he had
done so often in the beginning, waiting for me to echo his words. I
wanted to, but I found myself choked by the words. It was as if his
soul sang to me when he uttered them and I was utterly consumed by
the depth of his feeling, the man himself and what he meant to me.
As the years passed, his pauses had grown shorter and then
disappeared altogether as he realised the words would never be
returned like a hollow echo.

My actions had told him
all that needed to be said—and so much more than empty words could
ever convey.

Yet even now, he still
waited to hear them. And when they failed to come something in his
eyes seemed to flutter helplessly, like a moth struggling at a
closed window. He looked away.

His lip quivered slightly
as he looked out over the water.

“
I love you, Luna. I don’t
ever want to lose you.”

“
Avery, I fought time and
death to be with you. Nothing and nobody will ever take me away
from you.”

Yet even as I said those
words, I was consumed by conflicting emotions. Whenever I saw him
this way—in pain, or even any mild discomfort of any kind—it made
whatever I felt completely disappear at the sight of his suffering.
The indescribably soul-destroying years suffering utter degradation
did not seem to matter when faced with his guilt, his pain. It was
irrational to compare the violent corruption of a child beside the
guilt of a powerful supernatural being. But the truth of the matter
is I would have laid myself down, walked across hot coals to spare
Avery even one moment of anguish and it angered me.

It was not normal to feel
this way about anyone. I had loved Jupiter deeply, but with Jupiter
I could breathe. Being loved by him was like basking in the rays of
the sun. It warmed, nurtured, and revitalised me. With Avery, it
was like being burned alive and I was utterly helpless in the face
of this overwhelming emotion. And despite his kindness, his
tenderness, I was fearful because if he had been a cruel man, a man
like Master John, I would have been lost. Completely.

He reached for me and
kissed me, a kiss that was hesitant and tender. He pulled away all
too soon, but I caught his lips once more and would not let him
go.

We made love by the lake
under the moonlight, slow, deep then urgent and completely without
restraint as if to douse the fire burning within that could never
be extinguished. And as always, I became completely lost in this
man. Even in the throes of passion, left whimpering, completely
consumed by him, unable to utter any other word but his name, I was
aware of his vulnerability, his uncertainty.

Afterward I stood by the
water looking out at the lake, the moonlight blazing a sterling
trail across its surface. It would be dawn in a few hours. He came
to stand behind me and I turned to him. There was a slight smile on
his lips, but I still saw some of the uncertainty in his eyes as he
took my hand. I brought it to my cheek. He relaxed and leaned in to
kiss me, our hands still clasped.

With all my immortal
strength and the power of my ancestors, I was still bound. I was a
slave to this man and my deep, unyielding love for him. It would
always be that way.

***

Louisiana 1887

Betrayal.

Even as my anger at his
betrayal thrilled through me, panic spurred my footsteps, eating
away at my self-control like acid. I ran after him like a
frightened child and flung the front door of the mansion open,
rushing outside into a night that seemed to hold only bitter
shadow. The pain in my heart and mind eased when I saw him standing
a few feet away, looking out at the darkness before him.

“
I said where are you
going? Answer me!” I cried.

He faced me, his eyes lit
with fiery anger even while hurt flowed behind them like a slow
moving river that ran deep. He was still, his voice charged with
the anger he was fighting to rein in.

“
I need to get as far away
from you as I can before I say something—before I say anything
else—we will both regret. I will be back in the morning when I have
calmed down. But first I need you to give your word you will not
kill anyone, this night, or any other. It is the only reason Lina
let you live. So promise me.”

“
She knows I won’t
kill!”

How could they have done
this to me? Lina, my precious Lina and Avery?

“
You didn’t need to do
that to me because I would have stopped. I would have stopped for
you, Avery.”

I would have laid down my
life—my soul—for this man. Why couldn’t he see it?

“
But if you think you can
just walk out of here after what you did—Avery?”

The air around him began
to waver, causing my heart to contract spitefully.

“
Avery!”

He was gone.

Pain broke over me like a
landslide and I was forced to my knees, the pull in my stomach
whenever he was far from me, making me cry out in anguish. I cried
aloud, my pride gone, only the moon above witness to my grief, the
silence and his absence.

I stayed there for a few
minutes, trying to fight the deluge of fear and irrational panic
like a flock of malignant crows engulfing me. It was the same fear
I experienced as a child standing at the edge of the woods, calling
for my lost mother to come back to me.

He was gone.

Where was he?

Would he return to
me?

Oh Lord, bring him back to
me.

But that word, the one I
had shied away from uttering, the one I had always feared would
manifest itself in my life with him in some form, came to me
again.