Dark Requiem (The Darkling Trilogy, Book 3) (37 page)

“
Avery, she’s
awake!”

I could make out two
distinct forms, the smaller of the two with flame-coloured hair
cascading about her.

“
Dallas?” His hand, the
exquisite touch, was at my cheek again.

And then images shot
through my brain as his thoughts assailed me. I groaned.

I saw his memory of
regaining consciousness at the clearing to see a mound of rubble
where the chapel used to be. Shadrach was amongst the ruin using
his telekinetic power to throw the rubble to one side in an effort
to get to something beneath.

Shadrach’s actions could
only mean one thing. Avery leapt to his feet and ran to the
ruin.

“
Dallas!” he screamed,
clambering over to Shadrach.

Shadrach faced him, his
expression grim, compassion in his eyes when Avery began tearing at
the ruin, a crazed howl escaping him.

Overwhelmed by the images,
the sharp teeth of fear that had bit into him in that moment, I
withdrew into comforting nothingness.

The memory of his lips
against my cheek remained, along with the knowledge that I had an
eternity more of such tender mercies to look forward to.

The next time I returned
to the land of the living, he was sitting at the side of the bed,
holding my hand. This time his thoughts were completely shielded
from me and I only saw his face, relief in his eyes, and love, the
love he had hidden so well from me. He kissed my hand, and although
I wanted to remain and gaze upon his face, I was still so weak. I
lost consciousness again.

Summer gave way to autumn,
autumn surrendered to winter. Spring took back the land from a
desolate winter before my strength returned to me. Throughout that
time Avery never left my side. Although I could not remember some
of what occurred once I was impaled by the golden staff, most of it
remained, along with a peace I had never felt in all my mortal and
immortal life. I was here with him, nothing could part
us.

Summer had blossomed and I
stood outside in the field of flowers watching the sun set. I had
seen so many sunsets in this field, each one magnificent, all the
more so because with the surrender of the sun, I would be with my
beloved.

The past few months had
been sheer bliss and I was rarely away from Avery for more than a
few minutes. His thoughts were completely open to me now, but there
was one thing he had tried, unsuccessfully, to keep hidden from me.
A question he wanted to ask but which made anxiety flare within
whenever he thought about uttering it.

Is it too soon?

Will she think I only want
to marry her because she looks so much like Luna?

Will she say
yes?

It had been on the tip of
my tongue on more than one occasion to tell him to stop dithering
and just ask me.

But I remembered far too
many arguments in the past that started because I snapped at him.
So I kept quiet and instead suggested a road trip, one which would
see us travelling around the world. Perhaps somewhere along the way
he would find a way to ask me.

I sighed when I thought
about the past and the many wasted years Avery had spent searching
the world for me whilst I followed him, my rage, pain and
self-hatred making it impossible for me to just go to him. I would
never repeat the mistakes of my past, especially now I knew just
how much I had given up to live an earthly life with the man who
had captured the heart of a goddess.

It was a moment or two
before I became aware of Shadrach behind me.

I turned around to find
him standing at the foot of the stairs, watching me, that curiosity
gleaming in his eyes. I smiled and moved to stand before
him.

“
How long have you been
standing there, Shadrach?”

“
Not long, Dallas. Or
should I call you Luna?”

“
How long have you known?”
I asked.

“
I knew you were not what
you seemed to be when I first tasted your blood. But I didn’t know
fully until Mallory told me about Avery’s lost love.”

I nodded and saw an image
of what he had seen the first time he drank my blood. A smile
spread across my lips.

“
Does Avery know?”
Shadrach asked.

“
I think a small part of
him does. But whether or not I will tell him everything? I don’t
know. Our past relationship wasn’t always a smooth one. He was
wracked with guilt over the things that happened to me when I was a
slave. I also don’t know how to tell him his actions may have made
it easier for one of my descendants to kill me.”

He stared at me,
fascination in his eyes.

“
Will you be here when we
get back?” I asked, already knowing the answer to my
question.

He tensed and his eyes
once more resembled the windows looking inward on darkness I
recalled so vividly before Mallory came into his life. He stared
ahead at the field of flowers.

“
I have to leave. Avery
may have forgiven me for turning you into a vampire. But he would
never forgive me if I did it to Mallory. Neither would she,
although I doubt she’ll forgive me for going away,
either.”

“
She probably already
has.”

He allowed his gaze to
meet mine once more and nodded, taking some comfort from my words.
He smiled then.

“
Who could have known when
I awoke that night and heard you outside my shack that it was the
beginning of something that would completely change me? I have a
degree of peace now whenever I think about my mother, and something
I never thought I would find again: love, although I will have to
love her from afar.”

I smiled. “I’m going to
miss you.”

He pulled me to him and
kissed me on the head.

We moved away from each
other when Avery pulled up on our left in one of his convertibles.
He hopped out of the car and moved to us. He was wearing one of the
shirts I had tried to throw away on my first night at the mansion.
When he noticed my gaze on it, I smiled.

“
You look great,
Avery.”

“
Really?” His eyes
twinkled with amusement.

“
Of course. You always
look great.”

He smiled and pulled me to
him. In his arms I could hear his soul, what sounded aeons ago in
the wasteland that had been my home, like the caress of a violin
calling to my soul. It answered his call for our souls were in tune
with one another in a lullaby that would endure for all
eternity.

“
I still don’t know why
you guys are travelling by car when you can get to your destination
so much quicker without it,” Shadrach said.

“
It’s the journey that
matters, not the destination. I want to savour every second of it.”
I turned to Avery. “I’ve also found lots of clubs along the way we
can go to. So I can teach you how to dance.”

“
Who told you I can’t
dance?” he said with a smile.

“
There’s dancing, and then
there’s
dancing
,
Avery.”

“
We’ll see.” He placed a
kiss on my lips and stroked my hair. “I might even teach you a
thing or two.”

I laughed, moved out of
his embrace and got into the car. As Avery got in, Shadrach came
around to the passenger side and gave me a kiss on the
cheek.

As we pulled away and
drove out of the grounds, I turned to wave at Shadrach standing
alone outside the mansion. I stared at him until he disappeared
from sight.

Soon we were out on the
open road whilst night wreathed the sky with velvet and diamonds. A
full moon hung above turning its radiant face on us as we drove
into the night. I stared up at it, in awe of its majesty and its
many secrets, remembering a time when I walked upon its
surface.

I had survived the last
few months on small amounts of Avery’s blood, which was enough to
keep me alive and strong. I no longer craved human blood.
Remembering what I used to be, the knowledge of the divine, meant I
could not drink human blood for I would not be able to stop before
the kill. For a goddess, birth and death were the same. So no, I
would never drink human blood again. Especially since I remembered
Akan’s memories of all those men, women and children the Enwa
sacrificed to the goddess of the moon. There were countless others
like the Enwa who had shed blood in the goddess’s name. So I would
never willingly take the life of another.

I turned to Avery and
placed a kiss on his cheek. He faced me and sought my lips in a
kiss that ended far too soon, but I had many more of such sweet
gifts to look forward to.

I thought back to what
Shadrach had seen when he first tasted my blood. He had seen me as
I was when I was a slave. I had been standing with my back to him
in the field of flowers at dusk gazing upon a sunset that had
turned the sky a blistering ochre. I had turned to face him and
smiled before returning to gaze out into the distance, waiting for
my beloved to return whilst night crept in all around me as tender
as a lover.

Hidden in my bag was the
journal I had written towards the end of my first mortal life.
Sitting by the light of a lamp whilst the empty house slumbered, I
had felt compelled to write that journal and document the month I
had spent at the mansion with the unique being who had captured my
heart. I thought I had been writing that journal for my daughter,
Lina, to explain why I was choosing to abandon her a second time. I
realise now I had been writing it for myself.

My entire mortal and
immortal life had been coloured by my self-hatred. When I found
that journal two years ago and read it, I fell in love with Avery
all over again. I had also, through the pages of that journal,
learned to love myself as I had been in the past. A flawed, deeply
splintered slave who had dared to fall in love, and in doing so,
reclaimed her stolen humanity.

I sighed as we drove on
into the night with no particular destination in mind. Our days of
waiting were now at an end. We could be together forever now and
nothing would ever part us.

THE END

And so we’ve come to the
end of The Darkling Trilogy and I want to thank you all for coming
this far with me.

I also want to talk a
little bit about what inspired some of the female villains in the
trilogy. The name Alayai is a combination of two names. One of
these is the name of the late great Aaliyah.

I watched Aaliyah
in
The Queen of the Damned
and was mesmerised by her performance. There was
a scene in which she set a vampire alight and then laughed. I
thought her expression (her eyes lit with mirth, her mouth covered
in blood) was like that of a gleeful child. This inspired elements
of Alayai’s character. Aaliyah’s performance in that film is also
one of the reasons for Luna’s descent into evil in
Rising Dark
. I watched
that film again about halfway through writing
Dark Genesis
and I knew I had to
have a powerful, evil female character who had a strong emotional
hold over Avery. I created Auria and Onyx but neither of them fit
that role. I considered giving Henriette a more prominent role and
have Avery turn her into a vampire, only for her to succumb to
evil, forcing him to kill her. But Henriette just didn’t have a
strong enough hold on Avery’s heart. So I decided it had to be Luna
and so the chase across the rooftops of London and the fight that
follows, was born.

I also wanted to name a
character in this novel after someone I met recently called Alaya.
Alayai’s name was originally Alayi and since Alaya and Alayi are
similar, I decided to tweak it slightly to Alayai—though the person
I named her after, Alaya, seems like such a sweet person and I
doubt she could ever be as spiteful as my Alayai.

I knew a lot of my readers
really, really hate Dallas so I was really nervous about this book
and considered having Luna return in a different way. If I had it
would have been at the point when Dallas kills Auria and it would
have been Luna, and not Maryse, who snaps Dallas out of her trance.
In the end I had to stick with what I planned originally although I
know some of my readers won’t like it.

The goddess theme came
about because one of my readers jokingly referring to me as a
goddess. This idea was consolidated by one of my reviews on Amazon
in which the reviewer said
Dark
Genesis
reminded her of the Greek tale of
a god who rescues a beautiful maiden. When picking names and
settings for the novel, the name has to fit and I spent quite a
while looking for the right name for my heroine until I came across
the name Luna. At the time I thought it was just a name, but now I
can see it was the muse leading me to the goddess theme.

When I started the
trilogy, I intended for it to go in a completely different
direction and when I introduced Julia, the horse, I intended for
her to feature a great deal in the sequel to
Dark Genesis
. When I made the
decision that the series would be three books instead of two, the
plot I had for the horse kind of fizzled out. One of my reviewers
picked up on the fact that it appeared as if the horse was going to
be a bigger part of the novel when it was introduced, but then
nothing came of it. This made me think about a way to resurrect the
original plot I had in mind for the horse and that is when I came
up with Akan and the walled village.