Dark World (Book I in the Dark World Trilogy) (11 page)

His thoughts drifted once again to his
last days with Seren. Only a short time before she was murdered by
shades, they were holding one another and dreaming of the future.
He swore he’d never forget the look in her eyes when he told her
what he’d found hidden beneath Dark World.

“
Are you going to tell me
what the big secret is?” Seren’s amber eyes overflowed with playful
impatience as she wrapped her arms around Kane’s waist. “What have
you been up to for the last few days?”

Even though a freshly killed hellhound
carcass hung on a hook outside the habitat, she somehow knew he’d
had another agenda during this excursion. While they’d spent many
hunting trips secretly searching for it—they’d finally found
it.

With a mischievous grin on his face,
Kane replied, “Hmm, I’m not sure I should tell you. I may need
some—persuasion.”

“
Persuasion, huh?” she said,
adding a hint of seduction to her voice and kissing his
chest.

He fought the groan building in his
throat. With their newborn daughter napping in the next room, he
silenced himself.

Seren giggled. “Tell me
then.”

Kane looked down at his wife, love
warming his heart. He adored the way her black bangs feathered
above her ocher eyes and how she always had a smile upon her
face—especially since she’d given birth to Ever. Gently wiping away
an ebony lock of hair that had trespassed across the slope of her
jaw, he ran his fingers down her neck and over her shoulder. She
visibly shivered at his touch and tilted her head to the side,
resting her cheek upon his arm.

“
Tell me,” Seren
whispered.

“
We found it, Seren!” Kane
said excitedly. “We found the lost city!”

Disbelief crossed her eyes, quickly
replaced by joy. “Are you sure?”

“
It’s big enough for
everyone.” He paced the tiny room, then turned to her and added
with a hushed voice, “We’ll be free from the shades. From
Malus.”

Seren visibly winced at the mention of
the fiends that had enslaved them. The clandestine demon
rebellions, known as Legion, had gone to unfathomable lengths to
conceal Seren’s pregnancy, which included faking both Kane’s and
Seren’s deaths.

She glanced toward the room that held
their new infant daughter. Tears welled in her eyes, her voice
thick with emotion. “She’ll be safe. Malus will never know of her
existence.”

Kane’s expression turned serious. “She
will be safe,” he reaffirmed. “Ever will not be possessed by that
monster, I promise you.”

His wife’s eyes brightened. “When do we
move?”

He held his head high, pulled her into
his arms and said, “Soon. A month, maybe two. Then, we’ll be
free.”

After waiting hours for Deme to return
from her hunt, Kane realized he and Fate were going to have to
continue without her. The two sphinxes may have left defeated, but
Kane feared the beasts may have gone to recruit reinforcements and
return to finish what they had started. While he and Fate made
their way out of the forest, Kane kept a vigilant eye out for his
potentially wounded, or dead, tracker.

Fate had fallen silent after the
battle, seemingly locked within her thoughts. Even tiny Ick could
not break the spell of sadness lurking behind her eyes. Kane
noticed she’d voluntarily placed the mask back on her face. While
it would certainly diminish the intoxicating scents that likely
bombarded her, he couldn’t help but wonder if she was simply
attempting to hide behind it.

Awkwardness owned the air between them
as they walked side by side amongst the glassy shards of the
Crystalline Forest. Thankfully, Ick broke the tension when he began
leaping back and forth from Kane’s shoulder to Fate’s. Like an
agile monkey, he bounced between them, repeating his name each time
he landed, “Ick…Ick…Ick.”

Eyes lighting up for the first time
since the encounter with the sphinxes, Fate met Kane’s concerned
gaze.

“
Are you alright?” he asked,
his brow creasing.

She shook her head and quietly asked,
“What happened to me? Why am I here?”

Sighing, Kane responded with another
question, “What do you remember about the Surface?”

Frowning, she replied, “The
Surface?”

“
When you were
human.”

Staring out at the quartz wilderness,
she searched her memories.

“
I remember almost
everything—except who I am.” Her eyes lowered. “Who I
was
.”

Kane tried his best to explain. “This
is Dark World,” he began, sweeping his arm over the landscape. “The
humans call it by many names. The Underworld, Tartarus,
Gehenna…Hell.”

She visibly shuddered with the last
reference. “How did I get here?”

“
You were sent
here.”

“
Sent?”

He weighed his words carefully, then
replied, “Damned.”

Hurt and fear crossed her eyes as she
hugged her torso. “I don’t understand.”

His large black chest rose and fell,
contemplating how much he should divulge. If he were to say too
much, he could inadvertently awaken her primal urges again, driving
her into the arms of the enemy.

“
Many centuries ago, a great
demon king reigned over this land,” Kane started. “We were a strong
and powerful people. Magic ran thick through our veins.”

He paused as they came to the
edge of the forest and pointed to a dark monolith in the distance.
“The Crystal Pyramid, the source of our power…well,
was
the source, until it
was disabled by…”

Obviously intrigued, Fate turned to
meet his gaze. “Disabled by whom?”

“
The king.” Kane tried to
keep his voice steady, the scars of his father’s actions still
stinging.

With a perplexed look, she asked, “Why
would he disable the source of your power?”

“
I…don’t know,” he lied,
regretting he’d started the conversation. He wanted to tell her
everything. Tell her about his mother. The scrolls. Something about
her made him trust her, but he knew there was an inherent evil
burrowed within her, an evil that hadn’t awakened yet. Despite her
willingness to heal and protect him, her gentleness with Ick, and
her resistance to act on her predatory instincts, she was still
created for destruction. She was still a servant of Malus. If he
told her too much—if he spoke the name of her master—would her dark
nature rise to the surface?

All she needed was a shred of her
former self to resist the darkness—just a sliver of her soul left
within. But was it still there?

Vague memories flashed through her mind
with his words, it all sounded so familiar, yet she felt as if she
were trying to capture a butterfly by its wings. What had happened
to her? Who damned her to this place? The girl in her dream, the
one with brown hair, she was the key.

Fate wanted to ask more questions, but
saw a glint of anguish behind the demon’s blazing blue eyes. She
decided not to press it—for now. Besides, there were far more
important matters to attend to as she recognized a familiar figure
lying motionless on the ground ahead of them.

“
Deme!” Kane shouted,
bolting across the parched, red landscape.

Face down with a stream of blood
trickling from between her lips, Deme moaned in response to Kane’s
call. He knelt down as he reached her and tried to determine how
badly she was wounded. An angry laceration wept blood from her
right shoulder and a wound gaped on her waist.

“
Deme, what happened?” he
asked, examining her body from head to toe. “Sphinxes?”

She nodded and mumbled incoherently,
trying to push herself up, managing to bend her elbows an inch or
so before losing consciousness and flopping onto the
dirt.

Kane exhaled, then turned and eyed the
shade intently. “Can you heal her…like you healed me?”

“
I…don’t know,” Fate began.
“I’m not even sure how I did it the first time, but I can
try.”

She folded her legs beneath her and sat
near Deme’s torso. Fate laid her hands upon the she-demon’s hot
back, careful not to bump her shackled wings. She closed her eyes
and concentrated, trying to conjure the same feelings she’d felt
when she mended Kane. While a warm sensation stirred within, she
couldn’t replicate the process. The wounds ceased to bleed, but she
wasn’t able seal them.

“
I’m sorry,” Fate said,
taking her hands away from Deme’s back and staring at her palms
like they were broken. “That’s all I can do.”

Kane nodded. “Thank you for trying.
Let’s get moving, we have to get her to the city as soon as
possible, the shaman can help her.”

He grunted as he lifted the female
warrior and slung her gently over his shoulder. “Come, we can make
it to the demon city in a day or two.”

Demon city?

She swallowed hard and glanced at Kane,
recalling their first meeting.

We’re going to a city filled
with demons that hate shades. Great.

Cryptica

Deme weighed heavily on his shoulder,
but not any more than the game he usually acquired on hunting
excursions. He set her lifeless body down every hour or so to
stretch and switch shoulders. To Kane’s relief, she would groan
occasionally, reminding him she was alive.

While they trekked ever closer to the
demon city, he had to admit it was a bit strange strolling along
the dark shores of the Nephthys River with a shade. The black,
oozing tar of the river gurgled and burped as it meandered through
the desert terrain.

As Fate’s hands swung by her side, he
again wondered if he should have set her free. Sure, she’d helped
him fight the sphinxes and she’d shown considerable restraint with
Deme, Ick and him—but what if she got hungry again? And she would.
It was inevitable.

He observed her long silver hair as it
cascaded over her shoulders, her slender physique and female curves
hidden beneath Deme’s pitch cloak. Light on her feet and sleek with
her walk, he marveled at her natural elegance. She was as graceful
as a cat traversing thin ice. Was she simply created to be so
statuesque or did she possess some inhuman charm he didn’t
comprehend?

I wonder what she was like
as a human?

The thought startled him. He’d never
considered shades anything but monsters. Abominations of a dark
magic gone terribly wrong. They hadn’t existed until they sold
their souls to Malus. The day they all transformed, exchanging
their humanity for an evil immortality, was a day Kane would never
forget. The apocalypse. The last day of demon freedom. The day he
and his father had flown from the mines. One of the last times he’d
seen the loyal illumination of the Crystal Pyramid.

The screaming. So much
panic.

Kane closed his eyes, trying to block
the memory of the culling. His family, his friends—everyone. The
demons hadn’t known death until then, their immortal bodies loyal,
steadfast.

The humans morphed into the creatures of
darkness in the blink of an eye, souls ripped from their chests.
Thousands of glimmering blue spheres raced through the sky,
summoned by the new Devil, Malus.

Then the terror began.

Thousands of newborn shades,
slaughtering demons young and old, keeping only enough for slaves.
Kane was but a child. Wings shackled and tossed into the mines, his
mother denied his existence.

Now, before him—a shade. Mere feet from
him, the offspring of those who’d destroyed his world.

He watched her tickle Ick under his
chin and feed him a strip of meat she’d torn from the sphinx’s
hide. How had he never noticed the human behind the monster before?
The shades that had executed his family, friends and comrades had
worn sick smiles of pleasure while they’d slain his loved
ones.

Why is she so
different?

As if sensing his eyes upon her, she
glanced in his direction. Though he looked away quickly, he was
certain he blushed. He continued walking with apprehension
burdening his thoughts. Could he really be so wrong about the dark
race? At present, she didn’t resemble a killer. She’d spent most of
the journey with her eyes wide and head moving from left to right,
then up and down. Like a child, she was enchanted by the new world
around her, absorbing her surroundings like a sponge. She bombarded
Kane with questions, most of which he responded to with a simple
yes, no, or I don’t know.

He was just so unsure. How could he
befriend the enemy?

We need her.

His father’s voice of reason echoed from
within. The demons needed her—badly. With Malus out to obtain all
six hidden pages of Devil’s Bible, Kane knew he had to find them
first. Only, he couldn’t touch them, nor could any other demon or
original race within Dark World. Only a shade could lay their hands
upon the scrolls.

It was an oversight on his father’s part.
The day he died, he enchanted the scrolls, cursing them so even if
Malus found them, she couldn’t touch them. If she did, she’d age
one thousand years in the blink of an eye. King Lucifer then spread
the six pages of his Bible over Dark World, five among the races
and one, to a secret location. Every region was assigned a
protector for the scroll—a guardian.