Rising Dark (The Darkling Trilogy, Book 2) (17 page)

When I returned my gaze to Luna, I saw
with dismay that she was slowly edging away from me, her face
contorted in fear.

Heart-wrenching sorrow and panic
seized me again as she backed away to the trees. She stared at me
for a long moment. Then she turned and fled.

I was left alone in the clearing
beneath the bronze light of the dying sun. The light that had
briefly illuminated my world when I saw her for the first time
disappeared along with her fleeing form, and I was left shrouded in
darkness.

The loss I felt was the death of all
my hopes and dreams and my very reason for existing. I could not
move, I could only listen to her footsteps, which appeared to keep
time with my thundering heart as she ran away from me.

I was startled out of my grief when I
heard her scream, the noise like a sharp crack against my head. But
she had nothing to fear for she had only run into the African,
Jupiter. The only thing she had to fear was...me.

How could this be? How could she not
know me, and, even worse, reject me?

They started to walk away, making
their way to the slave quarters.

Desolation along with the darkness
that had been a part of my soul for so long began to overwhelm me
and tears pricked my eyes. She wasn’t the one I had been searching
for. There was nothing left for me to do but disappear back into
the wilderness.

But I could not leave her and return
to the emptiness.

Perhaps if I spoke to her, told her
that...that...

I did not know what I could say to
her, but I could perhaps show her I only wanted to protect her.
Master John and his vile thoughts came to me and I knew now what I
could do. He intended to be at her cabin as soon as the sun went
down. He was probably there already. I may not be able to tell her
of my devotion, but I intended to show her.

I disappeared into the trees. I would
reach the slave quarters before Luna did.

***

John Holbert.

The handsome,
blond-haired, blue-eyed man that had caused Luna so much pain and
misery. He had made his way to Luna’s cabin as soon as he was able
and stood there for a few moments surveying her home, as smug and
content as he always was. He had his riding whip in his hand and
kept stroking it, imagining the ways in which he would use it when
Luna arrived. As usual, he stared at the pallet she slept on,
trying to decide whether he should let her have a proper bed, which
would make
him
that much more comfortable whenever he was at her cabin. But,
once again, he decided he would continue to make her sleep on a
pallet like the other slaves until she learned some manners. Her
fiery, haughty manner was one of the things that excited him about
her, but it was becoming quite tedious after so many years. So she
would sleep on that pallet for a while longer, or until
he
tired of bedding her
on it.

He lit a candle and was in the process
of taking off his coat when he got the shock of his life. He cried
out like a child when I materialised before him in her tiny cabin.
I struck him, sending him stumbling backward and subdued any more
cries with a command that left him unable to speak or move. He was
still clutching the riding whip and struggled in vain to lift it
against me to defend himself.

I plucked it out of his hand and broke
it into two, wanting desperately to snap his neck in the same
manner. I threw the broken riding whip down by the door. He was
like a lifeless mannequin but for the fear working at his features.
His throat moved as he tried to speak and his thoughts reached me,
mainly cries for help. I ignored them. Luna, Jupiter, and Jupiter’s
master, Father Geoffrey, had reached the slave quarters.

They spoke for a few moments and then
Luna moved away from them and began walking toward her
cabin.

I grasped Master John roughly by the
neck and swung him around so he was standing with his back to me,
facing the doorway.

She was almost by her cabin door. When
she opened the door and entered the cabin, I used my telekinetic
power to pull her inside and slammed the door shut behind
her.

Sparing him no pain, I tore into his
neck and the blood filled my mouth, making me swoon as the crimson
bliss overcame me.

It was a few moments before I became
aware of Luna, of an insistent tugging at the periphery of my
mind.

I opened my eyes. Luna was standing by
the cabin door, her beautiful eyes wide and lit with fear, her face
etched in horror and...and...revulsion. I was immediately bombarded
by her thoughts, and they were like a shower of thorns raining down
on me. Overcome by her distress and disgust, I did something I had
never done before. I pulled away from Master John’s neck—and the
blood—the very act as painful as the flesh being torn from my
bones. I released Master John and he collapsed at my feet in a dead
faint.

Luna’s scream tore through the cabin.
She started to back away and then her eyes glazed over. Her knees
gave way. I caught her before she hit the ground. She managed to
focus on me for a few seconds and I struggled to speak to her, to
tell her she had nothing to fear. But her eyes rolled into the back
of her head and she passed out.

I took her over to the pallet and lay
her down, hearing footsteps descending on the cabin. The cabin door
was wrenched open and I came face-to-face with Jupiter, a giant of
a man with coal-dark skin and large, beautiful brown eyes. Shock
marked his features when he saw me, but then he took in the sight
of me looming over an inert Luna. Fear lit his eyes. He rushed
toward me, clearly not thinking of his own safety. I disappeared
before his eyes, his gasp of shock resounding in my ears as I
re-appeared in the dark in the woods by the slave
quarters.

***

For the next hour I stayed in the
woods, despair and fear rising with every second that passed. I
should have left the plantation but I could not leave Luna. To add
to my misery, a small crowd consisting of slaves, the master’s
family and their guests, had gathered outside the slave quarters
when they heard of what had befallen Master John. Luna stood
accused of trying to murder him.

Thankfully the witch arrived as I made
up my mind to get Luna away from the hostile crowd. As fearless and
as brazen as ever, she sought my mind the moment she entered the
plantation and warned me to stay hidden unless I wanted to see them
butcher Luna before my eyes. I did as she bade.

Eventually, it was decided that Luna
would leave the plantation with Jupiter and Father Geoffrey. But
even after they departed on horseback—with Luna on the same horse
as Jupiter—it took some time before the crowd could be calmed down
and dispersed.

Silence finally descended on the slave
quarters. Mama Akosua entered Luna’s cabin and seated
herself.

I waited in the woods whilst she
remained in the cabin in silence, and whereas her mind had been
closed to me, it opened abruptly and images sprung from
them.

I was transported to a
memory of hers, to a woodland—no, a
jungle.

It would be dawn soon but
the darkness was pitch-black, and the torches they carried barely
penetrated it. The heat was suffocating and the whining insects
that nipped at her skin, a nuisance. All around was the sinister
drone of the jungle along with the multitude of night creatures
producing a distant din in the darkness.

Mama Akosua was barely
twelve, the youngest in a small group of adults. She was terrified
but trying not to let her fear show. She walked directly behind a
large, older woman—her grandmother—who strode through the trees,
not seeming to need the illumination of the torch she carried. She
came to a stop and stood in the dark, listening. Then she threw her
torch into the air. The torch arced through the air, illuminating
the trees around them and revealing a sight that made Mama Akosua
gasp out loud. It had a similar effect on me thousands of miles
away in the relative safety of Mississippi.

Hanging upside down from
their feet in the large circle of trees were hideous creatures. I
felt Mama Akosua’s scorn at the fact that I did not recognise
another vampire when I saw one. But these were unlike any vampire I
had ever seen. They had long talons for feet and wore only thin
pieces of cloth around their groins. Their eyes were glassy and
their teeth bared, their fangs reaching almost to their
chins.

At first it looked as if
they were ready to attack the small group of men and women, but
then I realised they were grimacing in pain, and there was fear in
their eyes. At that moment, Mama Akosua became aware of the fact
that it was cold in that part of the jungle, and now she could hear
the whispering of what was a multitude of spirits in communion with
her grandmother. She saw them now as the torch her grandmother had
thrown into the air fell to the jungle floor and was extinguished.
Mama Akosua had been seeing spirits her whole life, but they were
often just lost wandering souls. This was the first time she had
seen spirits such as these thin, silvery spectres that were
powerful and frightening.

Mama Akosua watched her
grandmother utter a command to the spirits, and then the spirits
rushed at the vampires. They were torn out of the trees and hurled
to the jungle floor. The vampires immediately sprung to their feet
and tried to lunge at the men and women, but they found they could
not move and instead were set upon by the waiting crowd, armed with
long machetes that had been made especially for this occasion and
blessed by Mama Akosua’s grandmother.

The massacre began. Mama
Akosua was young, but overcame her fear and revulsion to join in
the fray. She was fearsome as she attacked the trapped
creatures.

The last image she showed
me was of her bringing down her machete on one, ignoring its
screams and pleas. She had been aiming for its neck, but hit its
head instead, burying the machete in its skull. She struggled to
free the machete from its head before she succeeded and then
brought it down on its neck. She was not as strong as the other
adults in the group so it took a few blows before its head lay on
the ground at her feet.

The images vanished, but the lingering
memory was of Mama Akosua swearing that she would grow up to be
exactly like her grandmother. Hidden behind that one was another
she no doubt never intended for me to see. It was her sense of
shame regarding what she now was—a slave—and what her grandmother
would think if she knew of what had become of her.

After seeing that memory, the urge to
flee and never return was strong. The only thing that kept me there
was Luna.

Please. Please,
I begged.
I can end her
pain and suffering. I can give her anything she desires.
Please.

The only thing you can
give her is death, Asanbosam. Leave now and never trouble my
daughter again or I will follow you to hell where you belong. Go
now!

Never,
I vowed
. You cannot stop me. You
cannot keep me from her. I—

I was interrupted by the sound of a
soft gasp from Mama Akosua. Outside in the woods, I listened. Her
heart was beating much faster now.

What is it? Tell
me
, I begged, knowing that there was only
one thing capable of eliciting fear in Mama Akosua, and that was
Luna’s wellbeing.

Finally she opened her thoughts to me
and the vision she’d had moments ago overwhelmed my
mind.

I saw the faces of three
white men who were at the slave quarters earlier. They were on
horses, racing through the night, firing as they went. Then I saw
them on foot in the dark lit by the sickly glow of a lantern. A
thin boy with dark hair held a gun and it was aimed at Luna’s head.
The next image I saw was of Luna’s face, her eyes vacant and the
dirt she lay on slowly filling with blood, half her forehead blown
away.

I was away from the slave quarters
before Mama Akosua had finished showing me the images. Her anger
and fear was like a clarion call in my mind.

She is not yours! Bring
her back to me! Do you hear?

That journey through the woods only
took a few minutes, but it felt as long as those years in the
wilderness. That image of Luna’s head blown in nearly blinded me,
and I was consumed with panic that I would not get to her in time.
Halfway through the woods, I materialised out of the ether, my feet
barely touching the ground before I launched myself into the air,
breaking through the branches obstructing the sky with my arms and
gliding above the trees, blocking out the moon as I looked into the
distance. Even with my heightened vision, they were so far away
that they looked like tiny stick figures. But I could see two
horses, the one with Jupiter and Luna racing ahead. They were being
chased by three others on horseback. I disappeared again, praying
for the first time in years.

The world around me swirled into view
as I burst out of the ether beneath the vast, sooty night sky and
grassland stretching out before me. Sound exploded all around and
terrifying screams of pain filled my ears, disorienting me. My
heart lurched and I thought I was too late.