Rising Dark (The Darkling Trilogy, Book 2) (48 page)

It was mid-afternoon when I stepped
into the clearing. Body, mind, and soul were aflame as I stared at
this place. It held so many tortured memories.

A moment later, he appeared at the
chapel entrance.

He was exactly as Luna’s mind had
revealed him to be. He was a tall, well built man. His hair was
worn in a well-groomed afro, his complexion a burnished caramel. He
appeared vain, even from this distance, and arrogant.

“
I didn’t expect you to be
here for quite a few days,” he said. “Luna will be pleased to see
you. So just make me into a vampire and I’ll tell you where she
is.”

I leapt into the ether and
materialised a few yards from him.

“
Do you think I wouldn’t
know she’s dead? That you killed her?”

The arrogance wavered and he moved
back into the cool darkness of the chapel. I could feel the
presence of the entity reaching for me, much stronger than it had
been when I rescued Mama Akosua from it.

“
It was an accident,”
Simon spat. “If she’d just done—”

I moved slowly into the chapel,
something he hadn’t expected me to do. He held out his hands and
backed away farther into the chapel.

“
Wait now, hold on! I
didn’t kill her. It was that damn thing. It tricked me!”

As he spoke an image from his mind
rose up like a cobra. It lunged at me and I couldn’t speak, just
stand there and stare at him.

Luna died at the back of
the chapel. He wound a silver chain around her neck and suspended
it from a hook nailed to the ceiling. He then hoisted her into the
air, directly in the sun shining through the gap in the roof. Her
hands and feet were tied together. It was as if I were standing
just a few yards from her, yet she was completely and forever out
of my reach and I couldn’t save her as blood flowed from an
incision along her wrist. He stood before her, his lips and shirt
covered with blood as he shouted at her.

“
Tell me!” he roared.
“Tell me how I can become a vampire!”

When he received no
answer, her eyes rolling back into her head by now, he yanked on
the chain, increasing the pressure to her neck.

That is when things moved
out of his control with devastating speed. The chain became taut as
if it had a life of its own. Then it tugged itself out of his hand
and broke free from the hook attached to the wall. Like the tail of
a scorpion, it lashed out and whipped itself across his
face.

He leapt back, bringing
his hand to his face as fear overrode the pain from the blow. At
first he thought it was Luna controlling the chain, until it
whipped through the air out of his reach and hoisted Luna higher
into the air, winding tighter around her neck.

“
No,” he murmured as he
ran toward her.

She was only
half-conscious but was still able to struggle as the chain cut into
her neck. Below, Simon was in a panic and screaming her name as he
jumped into the air trying to catch hold of her feet and pull her
back down. But in the end, all he could do was move back in horror
as the chain bit deeper into her neck, cutting through the flesh
like a knife. Up until then she had shown no overt distress, her
eyes closed, her face calm, almost serene, as if she had completely
surrendered to the inevitable. But then intense anguish seized her
and her beautiful face flamed with terror as her lips moved
wordlessly.

Simon looked away as she
was decapitated.

The tension went out of
the air as she fell into a heap on the floor, her head rolling
across the ground, stopping a few inches from his feet.

He ran out of the chapel
and threw up outside in the stream, the water turning crimson as it
was mainly her blood in his stomach. This increased the nausea and
it was a while before he could stop.

The chapel was quiet when
he re-entered it, as if the entity had gone to sleep. He took
Luna’s remains outside and buried it. Then he pulled a jumper on
over his bloodstained T-shirt. He didn’t want to stay at the
chapel, but he knew I would find him before the sun set and that
this was the only place he would ever be safe. The entity would not
let him die. That had been their pact. He was supposed to force
Luna to turn him into a vampire so the entity could live again
through him. It would not let him die.

He was still talking, backing farther
into the chapel, every word he uttered inflaming my anger and
cheapening the loss I had suffered.

“
You can’t kill me,” Simon
was saying. “I’m the only one that can control it now.”

I closed the space between us in less
than a second and placed one hand in the thick dark afro he was so
proud of, the other on his neck. I tore his head off his neck and
blood spewed from his headless corpse. I released him and stood
staring down at his body twitching beneath me, the violence doing
nothing to assuage the turmoil and grief.

It was a few moments before I noticed
something strange was happening. It took a few seconds for his
heart to stop beating and blood gushed violently from his neck, but
instead of pooling on the floor, it was sinking into the ashen
floorboards of the ancient chapel as if it were being consumed,
lapped up by some grotesque unseen tongue. The presence around me
seemed to surge with power and those fingers were upon me again,
pulling at me and trying to draw me deeper into the chapel and its
cold, dark stomach.

I backed away from Simon’s remains and
out of the chapel. I could still see the image of Luna tied
helplessly, struggling in vain as the chain bit into her neck,
sinking deep into her flesh until...

I covered my eyes with my hands. But
of course, I could not block out the image.

I turned and ran into the
trees.

I do not recall the drive home. I only
remember removing my shirt and wiping off as much of Simon’s blood
as I could before I put on a spare set of clothing I kept in the
car.

When I entered the mansion, Mallory
ran out into the hallway. She glared at me.

Where
were
you
?
her mind screamed at me.

I could not speak. I could not even
utter a meagre apology for forgetting to pick her up from school or
even ask how she had gotten home. I swept past her and to my room,
where I was finally able to give in to my grief.

She was dead. Luna was
dead.

There is simply no way for me to
accurately describe what I experienced following Luna’s
death.

For the first few months I would stand
outside the mansion in the predawn darkness and wait for the sun to
push its way up toward the sky expecting, and hoping against all
hope, she would somehow be able to keep the promise she made and
find a way back to me. But mid-morning would find me still waiting
in the field of flowers for her.

I completely disappeared into myself
during the months and years that followed. I went through the
motions and only returned to the world around me for brief
moments.

One evening I left the mansion to walk
the dogs and was brought back to my surroundings by the feel of a
small, cold hand in mine, by how tightly she was holding on to it.
I glanced down at Mallory. She was looking up anxiously into my
face, shivering, her teeth chattering. Her eyes were large in her
pale face, her hair wet and plastered to her head. Her nose was
red. I realised I had been standing in the same spot for the past
fifteen minutes staring at absolutely nothing. It was also raining.
Heavily.

“
You’re completely
soaked,” I mumbled.

I called the dogs and scooped her up
into my arms, only dimly registering how tall she now was. I ran
through the rain back to the mansion.

On another occasion I was in the study
sitting in the chair by the fireplace staring morosely ahead of me.
Mallory was in my arms, fast asleep. It was three o’clock in the
morning.

I stood up with her in my arms and
shimmered out of the study to her room. I placed her in bed. Then a
flare of illumination hit me. It had been two months since Luna’s
death and Mallory, who had spent nearly every moment by my side
since that day, had not been to school in that time.

I left the room and returned to my
seat by the fireplace.

Mallory was stunned and bewildered
when I woke her up to get ready for school a few hours later. At
first she refused and her demeanour soon turned frosty when she saw
I wasn’t going to let her stay at home. She sulked on the drive to
school. Outside the gates, I leant to kiss her on the cheek. She
snatched her hand out of mine and stalked away. I saw only the
rucksack on her back, thin pale stalks for legs and a flash of her
red hair as she disappeared into the school building. But I caught
a glimpse of her at one of the windows watching anxiously as I
drove away.

When I returned to collect her from
school, I was surprised when she ran up and flung her arms around
me. She held on tightly to my hand. It was a small return to our
usual routine, but I remained vacant, lost in the devastation of
Luna’s death.

My trips to reality grew longer as the
years wore on but I still remained largely oblivious to all that
was going on around me.

I was forced back into the world of
the living three years after Luna’s death. The day began normally
enough. I returned to the mansion after a night spent wandering the
streets. As had become habit, I avoided the field of flowers. It
was just too heart-wrenching to see it, expecting to find her
waiting for me.

Bernice, Mallory’s current minder,
walked into the hallway only moments after I materialised there.
She was holding a vase of white flowers. She half jumped out of her
skin when she saw me standing there.

“
Mr Wentworth, I didn’t
hear you come in,” she said with a slight frown.

I had hired her shortly after Luna’s
death. She had no experience with childcare, or housekeeping, but
was now responsible for Mallory’s care and the running of the
mansion. I had chanced upon her on one of the brief moments when I
returned to my surroundings.

Mallory and I were in the supermarket
when I came to and saw her signing with a heavyset African American
woman in her early forties. She was childless, and it was clear she
adored Mallory and that the feeling was mutual. She scowled when I
approached them. She saw us weekly and had observed the way in
which I barely took notice of the child and she didn’t like it one
bit. That is what made me hire her despite her lack of experience.
She was now solely responsible for Mallory’s well-being as I rarely
spent time with her these days.

Bernice’s frown disappeared and she
assumed her usual, and extremely annoying, cheerful
demeanour.

“
Did you have a good
night, Mr Wentworth?” I had told her a million times she could call
me by my first name, but it always fell on deaf ears.

“
Yes. Is Mallory
awake?”

“
Not yet, sir. That child
is up until all hours.
Every
night. She hardly gets any sleep at all these
days.”

“
Hm. I have left some
packages in the study that need to go to England. Can you make sure
they get sent out today?”

“
Of course, sir. I was
talking to Louise yesterday...”

I stared blankly at her.

“
Louise, the
cook.”

“
Of course,” I
said.

“
Mallory was telling
Louise she would just love to go to England, and we were thinking
it would be nice if you could take her to London for a few days so
she can see where you grew up.”

“
You can go ahead and book
the holiday for you and Mallory.”

“
Yes, Mr
Wentworth.”

I tended not to read the minds of my
employees as I generally did not want to be bothered with their
thoughts of me or their job. I did not want to be bothered with
much of anything these days. But as I turned to leave, Bernice’s
thoughts came to me clearly, probably since those thoughts had been
directed at me and because of the force of the emotion behind
them.

Oh, I could take this damn
ugly vase and throw it at his head. That child is running wild, out
God knows where every night, and this fool hasn’t even
noticed.

I was so surprised I stopped and faced
her with a frown, my gaze involuntarily drawn to the vase, which
she held in an extremely tight grip. When I turned my gaze to her,
her eyes widened in shock.

Oh God, oh God! Did I just
say that out loud?

I carefully took the vase out of her
hand and placed it on the small table in the hallway. I smiled to
try and put her at ease. “These lilies really brighten up the
hallway, don’t they?”

She let out a breath, visibly
relieved.

“
Why don’t you order more
and place them in every room?”

Oh great. Like this house
isn’t enough like a funeral parlour as it is.
“Yes, sir. That’s a really good idea. I’ll get that done
straight away, Mr Wentworth.”