Rising Dark (The Darkling Trilogy, Book 2) (25 page)

But Luna merely stared at it and then
placed it over my neck, staring intently at me, deep shadows behind
her eyes, the anger I had observed earlier completely
gone.

“
No, Avery. I’s gonna be
fine so long’s I knows you out there somewhere even if I don’t
never sees you. Thank you, for everything you done for me.” She let
her hand rest on my chest. “You gots to go now, Avery.”

I gathered her tiny hands in
mine.

“
It will take them about
three quarters of an hour to reach here,” I said, referring to Mama
Akosua and Master John. “Goodbye, Luna.”

I quickly bent my head and stole a
kiss on the forehead before I disappeared.

Away from her, but close enough to
reach her in minutes if she needed me, I waited and watched the
sunrise, knowing it was likely to be the last sunrise I would see.
I thought back to those long years waiting in the wilderness. Luna
had been worth every second of it. I could die now knowing she was
free and she had been mine, if only for a few hours.

They were close. Already I could feel
Mama Akosua’s messengers of death from the netherworld gathering in
anticipation. The air had an arctic hint to it and the sunlight
appeared to be eaten away as they gathered, a breathing tangible
force, although still invisible.

My attention was on them, so when I
heard the sound of Luna’s footsteps, I did not immediately realise
she was running back from where we had just come, until she came to
a stop.

“
Avery, Avery!”

I leapt from my seat and raced toward
her, running into the thick of the gathering entities.

I soon saw her standing among the thin
forlorn trees with her head in her hands.

“
Luna!” I
cried.

When she looked up, I saw tears
coursing down her face. She looked on me as if she had just seen a
miracle. Then she ran into my arms.

“
What happened,
Luna?”

The words I had been hoping to hear
from her ever since I saw her face at my darkest hour were I love
you. She didn’t say those exact words, but the ones she did utter
made my soul soar with joy.

“
When you asked about
Jupiter, I lied,” she said, her voice barely above a whisper, tears
still coursing down her face. “I do feels for him but...but it
ain’t nothing compared to what I feels for you, and I wants you to
never leave me, ever. I wants you to know that I’s gonna follow
wherever you go and for as long as you’ll has me. If you won’t let
me be with you, then promise you gonna let me see you from time to
time over the years.”

Is it possible to hear death, to feel
it all around you, and yet experience such joy? In that moment I
did, even with Mama Akosua's messengers of darkness drawing
strength all around me.

“
Oh, Luna. My dear, Luna.
It...it is too late. They are coming,” I told her, watching her
face crumble as it dawned on her that staying nearby instead of
running away had doomed me.

“
I’s gonna die before I
lets anybody takes you away from me.”

She clung to me fiercely as if her
very life depended on it even though our pursuers were only seconds
away. Fear lit a feverish path within me for I knew her master
would kill her if he saw her affection for me. The only thing that
could save her was to use my telekinetic powers to push her away
and onto her knees with her hands over her head.

The spirits attacked and I was thrown
against a tree as Mama Akosua, Master John, Jupiter, and four white
men came around the rock face.

And so I was captured. But when Master
John raised an axe which had been blessed by Mama Akosua for the
sole purpose of killing me, Luna stopped them. But not for the
reason I had first assumed.

“
You has to take it back
to the chapel,” she said, her words turning the blood to ice in my
veins. “That where it be made so we has to kill it there at
night.”

I stared at her in bewilderment and
did not truly believe that the love she had professed for me had
been a lie until she faced me.

“
You’d better be sure
about this,” Master John said to her.

“
I is,” she said, iron in
her eyes, her lips curled in a sneer. “He gonna suffer more this
way and I never has to worry about him coming back.”

Every last bit of strength I had
dissolved under the weight of that truth. I sank to the earth, the
chains they had placed around me sapping the last of my strength,
the flames the sun ignited in my bones becoming unbearable under
this new onslaught. Consciousness dissolved all around
me.

***

I do not recall most of what occurred
from that moment on. I know I slipped in and out of consciousness
during the journey back to the Holbert plantation, and even when I
was awake, I was in pain and could not be sure of what I saw around
me. All I knew during those brief waking moments was that I was
aflame. Fire burned through my bones, devouring every inch of me. I
was in so much pain it paralysed me, and I could not move or even
let out a cry in protest.

Just when I thought I could not take
any more, sweet relief came and darkness swallowed me, only to hurl
me back into fire and pain. I awoke, knowing only that I was slung
over the back of a horse. The metal chains wound tighter around my
body, while the relentless sun continued its work upon my unnatural
flesh. Then the darkness would come for me.

The only lucid moment during that day
was when I was thrown out of the darkness by an image that forced
itself upon the dark.

Luna.

Luna’s face was contorted in terror as
she screamed my name. I saw blood, blood everywhere, and Master
John looming over her.

I opened my eyes in panic and tried to
sit up as the fire blazed again, although not as fiercely as it had
before. I was aware of the silver chains winding tighter around me
and of the decaying walls of the chapel. Everything else was a
whirl of confusion, noise, voices, and, of course, pain.

“
Luna! Luna!” I cried, so
sure the image I had seen was real.

The din around me diminished for a few
seconds, long enough for me to see her through the eyes of those
around her. She was walking away from the chapel when I cried out
her name. She came to an abrupt stop, her back straight as if
something chilled her to the core. Then she hurled herself toward
the trees, entering the woods as if the hounds of hell were nipping
at her heels.

I lay back.
She’s alive. She’s safe.

I would have surrendered to the
darkness again were it not for him.

I couldn’t see Jupiter, but I felt
him, his blood calling to me as he moved to stand at the chapel
door. His mind was on the night I attacked and almost killed him.
The next thing he remembered was daylight, Luna gone and Mama
Akosua tending to his gunshot wound.

The creature not only let
me live
, he thought to himself,
it took me and Father Geoffrey back to the
plantation
.
Now
the mighty creature is laid low. I know it is evil, but I still
cannot understand why it let me live.

He stared into the shadowy interior of
the chapel, lost in thought, when an image pressed itself against
his mind. He jumped, taking a step back as if someone had struck
him. He kept still and showed no fear although the impulse to cry
out was strong.

He saw his own memory of
his ill-planned escape from the plantation. He was eighteen years
old and he had disappeared into the woods when the overseer had
been distracted, with only his midday meal tucked into his pants
and no real knowledge of the area, or where to go to reach safety,
if even safety could be found in this world of evil masquerading as
men, where the colour of your skin meant you were punished all your
life. Then he heard something and followed the sound until he came
across a child in the woods. The attack, the violence that had been
done to one as young as her horrified him. He hadn’t even
remembered his plan to escape until he reached the slave quarters
carrying Luna in his arms.

Then he saw something else, a memory
that did not belong to him. This time he gasped out
loud.

He saw the rock face where
they found Luna and the demon only a few hours ago. It was dark,
although he could see everything as if the sun shone directly
ahead. Luna was on her knees a few feet away in the memory, and her
face was lined with tears. She was begging the person the memory
belonged to, begging them to allow her to go back and bury him and
Father Geoffrey.

The images stopped and his mind was
clear and his once more.

I felt his intense confusion regarding
what had just occurred. He backed away from the chapel and then
swiftly moved toward the trees.

I listened to Jupiter’s retreating
footsteps.

I was alone now, although there were
humans nearby. I closed my eyes and waited for the sweet release
that the darkness brought me, and for death.

Instead of meeting the darkness, I
found myself in the hidden chamber beneath the chapel. It was
aglow, all the sconces along the walls lit and burning fiercely. I
was lying on the ground on my back a few feet from the golden altar
and the chains were gone.

Luna stood at the altar. She was
completely naked. A necklace of tiny human skulls, which could only
have come from babies, hung around her neck. Both her nipples had
been pierced by two small bones, and an elaborate headdress of
raven-coloured feathers adorned her head. She regarded me with a
soulless smile.

You are not
Luna.

Its head moved slowly from left to
right. Suddenly it was by my side leaning over me, placing a cold
hand against my brow. My mind was flooded with it and I groaned,
feeling only coldness, death and time stretching backwards and
forwards with nothing in between. It did not speak words, for
language had long been lost to it, but its wants and what it
offered were clear.

I could live, it communicated. It
would save me if I gave Luna to it. It could live once more through
Luna if I turned her into a vampire.

I grimaced and faced away from
it.

Get away from
me!

The hand on my brow was withdrawn.
Then I felt pain, pain in my mind as if a million shards of glass
were imbedded in my brain. I screamed whilst cold, bitter laughter
filled my mind.

The underground chamber disappeared
around me along with the pain and its cruel laughter. I opened my
eyes and the chapel came into view, the sun streaming through the
hole in the roof. The chains around me felt heavier. Weakened
considerably by whatever the entity had done, I fell into darkness
again, but this time it wound itself around me like a boa
constrictor and I knew I would never escape it.

The darkness began to recede, but it
was still around me, keeping me from the living world and the pain
consuming me. Then a voice broke through bringing awareness of a
weakness that pressed down on me, keeping me bound in
darkness.

Wake up. Wake
up!

It was Mama Akosua. Would that
wretched witch never leave me alone?

She had what she wanted, I was dead. I
must have been because it felt as though the string that kept me
tethered to life had at last been cut. But it seemed as if that
wasn’t good enough for her, she had to follow me to the afterlife
to continue to torment me.

But beneath the surface, there was a
plaintive quality I had never heard before in Mama Akosua’s voice.
That was probably what made me stir in response.

Go away.

Her voice came back louder and I heard
stirrings of hope, but there was still that uncharacteristic
vulnerability.

All right, I will go and
let you sleep while Luna dies slowly, and painfully, by your
side.

Panic boomed through my
mind like a thunderbolt.
Luna? Where? What
happened? Tell me!

There was no answer.

The last thing I remembered was the
chapel, the spirit and its vile proposition. What could Mama Akosua
mean? What had happened to Luna?

I continued to struggle against the
weakness, trying to block out the rising panic so I could
concentrate. It was an effort, but my eyes opened.

The scent of blood attacked my senses,
quickening me slightly, but making it difficult to focus on
anything else. I saw nothing but darkness and then slowly, the
inside of what must have been a cave came into view. One end of the
cave led to a long, narrow corridor, the other was a pile of rock.
I put together her words and the smell of blood at the same time I
saw the hand sticking out of the pile of rubble. Not just any
hand—the small brown one I had longed to hold for a
month.

A strangled cry escaped me, almost
paralysing me with horror at what I was seeing and what it
meant.

Strangely, it was the witch’s presence
that kept me from completely coming undone in that moment. I
half-sat up, the small movement sending excruciating pain through
me. My limbs were heavy and as useless as paper when I tried to
move some of the rocks away from Luna. I tried to use my mind, but
nothing happened. I was so frustrated I almost wept. She was buried
under the rubble, buried alive, because I could still hear a faint
heartbeat, along with trickles of blood from more than one source,
slowly being drained out of her body. Luna was dying and I was too
weak to help.