Rising Dark (The Darkling Trilogy, Book 2)
Read Rising Dark (The Darkling Trilogy, Book 2) Online
Authors: A D Koboah
Tags: #vampires, #african american, #slavery, #lost love, #vampires blood magic witchcraft, #romance and fantasy, #twilight inspired, #vampires and witches, #romance and vampires, #romance and witches
RISING DARK
The Darkling
Trilogy
Book 2
Copyright
2014 A.D. Koboah
Smashwords Edition
Copyright © 2014 A. Addo
All rights reserved. No part
of this book may be used or reproduced in any manner without
written permission except in the case of brief quotations embodied
in critical articles and reviews. For permission, contact the
author at
www.adkoboah.com
This story is a work of fiction. Names,
characters, places and incidents are either products of the
author’s imagination or are used factiously. Any resemblance to
actual events, locales, organizations, or persons, living or dead,
is entirely coincidental.
Cover design:
http://idobookcovers.com
ISBN 13 (epub):
978-0-9573003-5-4
ISBN 13 (paperback):
978-0-9573003-6-1
DEDICATION
I first of all want to thank God as it
is truly a miracle that this book was written.
I would also like to thank
all of my readers and the wonderful people who have written reviews
of
Dark Genesis
.
You will never know how much those reviews mean to me. I’m just
sorry about the fact that you’ve had to wait nearly two years to
read the sequel!
Thank you also to the wonderful
Cynthia Boudreaux for her help in getting this manuscript in shape
and for trying to put an end to this addiction I have to adverbs,
along with a lot of other bad habits. And a huge thank you to
Evensong editing for doing a fantastic job on my
manuscript.
A special thank you also goes to my
family and friends for their continued support.
And last but not least,
thank you to
www.idobookcovers.com
for the
fantastic covers for my novels.
To “my precious” Mya.
TABLE OF
CONTENTS
What would have been Chapter
24
London 1922
I landed silently on the roof of the
cathedral in a crouch. The city stretched before me, the buildings
clustered together like broken tombstones beneath a night that sat
huddled over London like an assassin lying in wait.
Normally my near-indestructible body
did not feel the extremes of heat or cold, but tonight I felt
everything. I felt the bitter sting of the cruel wind lashing at my
face and hands. I also felt the phantom throb of the dagger wound
in my left shoulder, although it had healed long before I reached
the cathedral. Binding it all with a barbwire kiss was the pain of
my loss, which threatened to rend my mind and soul to
pieces.
At last I found what I was searching
for: a lithe figure on a rooftop in the distance, her profile stark
and forlorn against the indigo night sky. She stood with her back
to me, looking down on the street below her with an air of tense
expectation, a sword dangling casually from her right
hand.
Blinding hatred flared within me like
the heart of a shooting star as she turned and regarded me for a
brief moment. Then she fled, disappearing in midstride as she leapt
from one rooftop to the next. She soon melted into the
night.
She ran but knew I would follow, and
when I did, I would leave behind the Avery I had spent years
learning to become once more. That Avery had shunned the seductive
lure of death and destruction for the faint light of humanity that
had lain dormant for many years in a wilderness of desolation.
Tonight I would once more succumb to the demon within and could
only hope that, with her death, my humanity would not be lost
forever.
I straightened, the sword in my hand
glinting in the moonlight.
Visualising myself on a roof a few
streets away, I drew the dark energy to me until I was weightless
and everything around me dissolved. Seconds later, I burst out of
the nothingness, my feet striking the roof I had envisioned in my
mind. I was there for less than a second before I disappeared into
the ether again.
I was soon close enough to see her
ahead of me, leaping, sometimes somersaulting in mid-air before she
landed on one of the rooftops. If anyone chanced to glance upward,
all they would see would be shadows seeming to dip and dive, for we
were moving far too fast for the naked eye to perceive.
She disappeared once more and I
followed.
“
Run, Luna,” I hissed,
knowing she could hear me over the distance, the wind, and the
clamour of life from the streets below. “Run. I will follow, and
when I catch you, one of us will not live to see another
sunrise.”
I sped on, slowly closing
the distance between us and death
.
I once was lost but now am
found,
Was blind, but now I see.
–
John Newton,
Amazing Grace
I am a vampire.
I have lived, in one form or another,
for two hundred and eighty-two years.
When you have walked the Earth for so
long, time ceases to be the indomitable foe to whom you spend your
entire life bowing and scraping. Instead it becomes as
insignificant as that childhood bully you left behind at the school
gates. And a year can seem to linger only for as long as it takes
for you to turn a page in a book.
After so, so many years, it is
difficult to remember a time when I did not exist for Luna, the
woman I have loved since I was made into a being of darkness.
Nearly all the pages of my life are filled with Luna. There are
pages spent in a wilderness of despair, her face haunting me,
keeping me bound to the grim spectre of the life that was now mine.
Many more of those pages are ones of ceaseless joy in which,
united, we basked in the light of our love. But far too many pages
of my life are coloured a soulless sepia with faded words, her
absence a weeping wound which bleeds through to the many more blank
pages that are still left for me to fill.
But there was such a time in England,
in the 1700s, when I, Avery Wentworth, was a man and time was
something to be respected. I remember that life so well: the shy
boy who transitioned from awkward, stuttering youth to the pensive
man who joined the priesthood. I remember those days, but they lack
colour and vitality, and it is often like looking out of the window
to a view so unremarkable the eye slides across the entire panorama
without taking in a single detail of it until one must turn away
from the sheer pain of boredom.
They are there, nonetheless. Memories
of my mother, her sorrow the silent wraith haunting my childhood;
the philandering father—usually loud and boisterous—who was barely
present during my childhood, his charismatic personality lingering
in the rooms of our haunted house long after he
departed.
There was the pain of my mother’s
death when I was ten, along with the stark reality that I was alone
in a cold, harsh world which would never be softened by her gentle
words, her kindness, and the protection of her love.
From then on I lived with my father—a
man I barely knew—who soon became impatient with the young boy who
was overwhelmed by his booming voice, overbearing personality, and
extravagant ways. Then he became critical of the studious teenager
and eventually bored with the young man who did not share his
interests for women, drink, or hunting. Boarding school was a
sanctuary, and upon graduating from university I did what my father
has always seen as the worst insult to his name: I joined the
priesthood and dove into my duties with a feverish kind of
desperation.
But my story really begins on the
evening of April 14, 1757, the night before my fateful trip to the
Americas. I was twenty-seven years old, and on that evening, I was
in what I really saw as my first home, my church. I wore black
clothing: breeches, shirt, waistcoat, and a white necktie from
which hung two large flat vertical pieces of cloth—the simple
clothing the clergy wore to distinguish themselves in those days. I
was kneeling before the altar, deep in prayer, and had been for
some time. The church was still and quiet, the chaos of the outside
world far from me in the sanctuary. And all that remained was His
strength and peace, which had been my guiding light since the day I
made the decision to give my life to Him. When I eventually opened
my eyes, it was not a surprise to see the grey early evening light
in the church had given way to darkness. I saw that a few candles
had been lit and my coat was draped over my shoulders.