Rising Dark (The Darkling Trilogy, Book 2) (20 page)

I moved away from his window, admiring
the witch’s power and how well she had avenged her daughter. But
John Holbert was another matter entirely, and I would not rest
until he was dead. The spell the witch had placed around the
mansion was powerful, but provided no real protection as it did not
extend to the minds of its inhabitants. But there was a reason why
she was trying to protect them, and since Luna’s wellbeing was
always behind everything she did, I did not wake John Holbert and
try to lure him out of the mansion.

But I remained outside the mansion,
delving into his diseased mind, looking for weaknesses which I
could use to punish him for the things he had done to Luna. That
was when another much stronger mind called to me through the
dark.

I had felt her presence
lurking on the edges of my consciousness for days, her words always
the same.
Bring her back to me. Bring my
child back to me
.

I walked away and made my way to the
Marshall plantation.

She sat at the table in her cabin and
had not slept very much since Luna and I disappeared. I felt a
twinge of guilt but then remembered how Luna had been soothed
merely by the expression on my face, and how radiant she looked in
her new clothes. Clothes which were fitting much snugger than they
had a few days ago now she was well fed and rested. I showed all
this to the witch along with the zeal with which Luna took to my
lessons every evening and just how quickly she was learning to
read.

I would do everything
again if I had to.
I spoke into the
witch’s mind
. Let her go and I will give
you your freedom.

She
scoffed
. You think you can change your
dark heart the way you have changed your clothes? You have the soul
of a demon and the heart of a man. A
white
man. I see you with her in
that house and I know you lust after her, the same way every white
man that has ever seen her has lusted after her, even when she was
only a child. And just like them, you will give into your base
nature and let the lust you have for her body, and her blood,
overcome you.

Never.

She
laughed
. Poor creature. You think
you
love
her.
She spat out the word love. Her
laughter rang through my mind, again bringing my anger to the
surface.
Luna will
never
love you,
she concluded
.

Her words ripped a large, bleeding
hole in the contentment I had allowed myself to feel, for I knew
all too well the truth in them.

I do not need her to love
me. She will stay with me and there is nothing you can do about
it.

I plucked one of her memories from her
mind, one which she had tried, and failed, to keep hidden from me,
and threw it back at her in spite. It was of an event that had
occurred the night Luna agreed to stay at the mansion with me. It
had terrified her mother for it was something that had never
happened to her before, and which was unheard of in the
supernatural world she dipped into from time to time.

The night had almost drawn
to a close and the witch was sitting outside her cabin in the dark,
a small wooden bowl before her. She was weak and dawn would be here
soon, so she had to hurry and perform the ritual to conjure help
from the spirit realm.

She performed the usual
incantations and made a deep cut in the palm of her hand, letting
the blood drip into the bowl. She dropped a lit rag into the bowl
and its contents burst into lilac flames. She held her hand over
the flames and the cut healed as the lilac flames were snuffed out.
The air was thick around her now. They had heard her and were
beginning to break through to our world in response to her call and
her dark cry of desperation.

Abruptly, the air around
her contracted sharply, sucking the air out of her lungs. The bowl
was knocked over, spilling its murky contents. She was on her feet
immediately as the spirits receded. They were gone but something
else hung in the air around her. She listened intently, assuming
the demon had come back, but the area around her was tense and
frigid with expectation and she could not sense the demon’s
presence in the powerful energy around her.

Then she felt something
brush her face. But there was nothing there. And then she heard
it.

Gyae, gyae.

She heard the words
clearly, words spoken in her mother tongue, which few recognised
and even fewer spoke.

‘
Stop,’ it meant.
‘Stop.’

A powerful breeze erupted,
sweeping through the trees toward her, knocking her back a few
paces.

Gyae,
gyae
, it insisted.

Bewilderment replaced the
anger and rage and she stared around her in confusion. And then a
flower fell to her feet. She looked up, and for a moment, the night
sky was blotted out by white flowers which had materialised out of
nothing, the sweet scent completely overwhelming her senses as the
first light of dawn broke over the trees.

Gyae
, it said, much softer now.
Gyae
.

Then it was
gone.

She stared down at the
carpet of flowers at her feet, knelt and picked one up. They slowly
began to fade away before her eyes like melting snowflakes. Only
the one in her hand remained. Days later, it was still impossibly
there in her cabin as white and crisp as the night it fell out of
the sky.

To add to the mystery, she had tried
the ritual again, one she had performed many times in the past when
she needed information and help from the netherworld, but nothing
had happened. There hadn’t been a repeat of the phenomenon with the
flowers, but, for whatever reason, something was blocking her from
summoning supernatural help.

There was something else that had been
hidden from me when I chased that memory, something disquieting she
had realised about the entity that blocked her efforts. But the
truth behind whatever it was that had blocked her was something she
didn’t even want to admit to herself, and so it was hidden from
me.

Whatever her disquiet, the unusual
event bode well for me and I was relieved when I left the
plantation, leaving quickly after throwing my discovery at
her.

But Mama was not one to taunt. She may
not have been able to use her spirits to locate Luna and myself,
but she had no intention of leaving me alone.

***

I was sitting in the drawing room with
Luna. She had been pouring over some lessons I set for her when she
abruptly faced me. She was wearing an exceptionally beautiful
cornflower blue dress, one of many I’d had made for her, although I
don’t recall any of them having such a low cleavage. It was so low
I could be sure I saw the dark shadow of her areolae peeping over
the top of the fabric and it was an effort not to gaze at her
cleavage.

“
Does you think I’s
pretty, Avery?” she asked innocently.

“
Of course, of course,” I
answered with much enthusiasm.

“
Then show it.”

She was before me in an instant,
gazing defiantly up at me, the chest I had been trying to avoid
looking at thrust forward.

“
Luna, I...”

She grasped me by the side of the head
and kissed me. I kissed her fiercely before she abruptly pushed me
away. The coquettish expression had disappeared and I was looking
at a face full of wrath.

“
Luna?” I said in
confusion, my desire drying up.

I didn’t see the knife until she
plunged it into my chest.

I screamed, the pain in my chest
radiating out to every inch of me as Luna looked on, a triumphant
smile on her lips.

I woke up with a start. It was silent
in my daily grave, but I could still feel the pain in my chest and
I was stunned at such a lucid dream. And then I heard laughter in
my mind, a soft faint chuckle that could only belong to one woman.
Mama Akosua.

She was gone moments later, leaving me
angry and embarrassed at the dream, which she had no doubt seen. I
did not sleep for the rest of the day. Sleep had been difficult
with Luna nearby and her face was always so clear in my mind. But
it was worse now and I stayed awake lest I have more dreams which
the witch would no doubt see and use to taunt me.

That evening, I kept an even greater
distance than usual from Luna, ashamed of myself for having impure
thoughts of such a gracious, kind and generous woman, especially
since she was beginning to trust me.

The dream was especially painful
because I knew it would never become a reality. As I observed her
thoughts, my pain increased, for the one man, the one who had a
hope of capturing her heart, was in her thoughts regularly.
Jupiter.

Often she would be staring at me,
admiring something, maybe my eyes or mouth, and then she would come
to an abrupt halt and consternation would cloud her thoughts. As if
seeking safety from her errant musings, her thoughts would
automatically turn to Jupiter and he would intrude on our little
world like a dark giant, in all his gentle, quiet beauty. I would
often jump out of my seat as if burned and move to the shadows lest
she see the emotion that had been stirred, the hatred and spiteful
twist of jealousy whenever I saw him. It was undeserved, for he was
a good, kind man. But it was there all the same. It was
there.

I turned to Luna again and
saw she had gone back to the work I had set her. Feeling my gaze on
her, she looked up. A soft smile touched her lips before she dipped
her head back down. The smile slowly melted away as she
concentrated on the task before her. The dark cloud her
recollection of Jupiter had produced lifted. No matter what she
thought of him, she was here with me. Watching her lit in the
half-moon glow of the candlelight, her mahogany skin shimmering in
its gentle light, she appeared otherworldly. It wasn’t that she was
bathed in light, she
was
the light in my world. She may never be mine
completely, or in any way, but she was here with me and I could
hope and dream that one day, she could come to have some sort of
regard for me.

So I went to ground that morning
somewhat reassured. She was here with me and the witch could not
take her away. I fell into a restless sleep, where another unwanted
dream closed in on me.

This time Luna was completely naked. I
stared at her in awe as she walked toward me. The control I exerted
over my desire for her was not only torn away from me, my desire
was intensified, and I felt myself harden. I tried to resist, but I
had no control over my actions and I reached for her and kissed
her, losing myself completely in her soft lips as she pushed me
onto the sofa, straddling me. Again, she pulled abruptly away, but
it was no longer Luna before me but Mama Akosua, fully dressed, her
face a mask of hatred.

“
You,” I gasped, realising
this was not a real dream and that she had been behind this one and
the other.

This time it wasn’t a knife that was
in her hand, but an axe. She brought it down on the centre of my
head.

I awoke, again feeling the pain from
the wound inflicted in the dream. The sound of her laughter filled
my mind. To make matters worse, the desire I felt in the dream was
still upon me and a huge erection added to my discomfort and
embarrassment. The witch caught this from my thoughts and her mirth
increased until she was howling with laughter.

Seething with anger, I stayed silent
until her heartless laughter faded away.

I stayed awake again that day, afraid
to sleep in case the witch played another little trick as I
slept.

Luna’s presence that evening, along
with her clear and sweet joy at learning to read, soothed my
wounded pride at Mama Akosua’s cruel trick.

But I was still angry when I left Luna
in the early hours of the morning, and after my nightly kill, I
returned to the Marshall plantation meaning to remonstrate with the
witch for using my desire for her daughter, desire I took great
care to never reveal to Luna, to taunt me.

I got to the Marshall plantation to
hear an odd, deep rumbling sound coming from her cabin. Then I
realised what those sounds were. They were the witch’s snores. She
had fallen asleep at the table she used to prepare her herbs and
potions. I stood in the trees near the slave quarters, undecided
now, because I knew she had not slept much at all since I took Luna
away and it was hard to ignore the fact that my actions, no matter
how unintentional, were causing the witch harm and distress. Then I
remembered the dream again and the merciless way in which she had
used my lust to mock me.

Two can play that game. Whenever she
searched my mind, she unwittingly opened her mind to mine. I now
knew of a few things she was fearful of—including a very unusual
phobia no one knew of. So I entered her sleeping mind and created a
dream of my own.

In the dream, Mama was in her cabin
washing herbs when she saw a hairball on the floor from the corner
of her eye.