Rising Dark (The Darkling Trilogy, Book 2) (9 page)

I was still getting used to
controlling the amount I could hear. I was surprised to discover I
could even hear the slaves in the slave quarters talking long into
the night about how many of them would die to fulfil Auria’s
sacrifice. So at first, I couldn’t be sure the whispering I had
been hearing wasn’t part of some unidentifiable sound of the
woodland all around us. But it had been getting stronger over the
last hour and I could hear it clearly now.

Avery. Avery.

Was I going insane or was someone
whispering my name? I looked around me, looking for the source of
the sound. Onyx, who was lounging against one of the trees, was
gazing into the woodland as if lost in thought. When I turned to
Emory, who was sitting at the foot of one of the trees, I found his
gaze trained on me, as it had been for most of the night, a mocking
smile on his lips.

“
What is that? Can you
hear that?” I asked.

“
Hear what?” he
said.

It seemed as if he was trying not to
laugh, although I did not know why.

Onyx only glanced my way briefly
before she shrugged and turned away, her expression bored. I gazed
at them helplessly. What was this new thing only I could hear? I
was already so weak and vulnerable among them. To lose my sanity
would place me in a much worse situation than I was already in. The
whispering began again, louder and more insistent than
before.

Avery, Avery. Surely you
know my voice.

I waited, unsure of what to
do.

It is I, your dead
wife.

I froze. Knowing the ease with which
they could read my thoughts, I moved away from them, trying to hide
my emotions.

Julia?
I said in my mind, hoping she could hear me.

Yes! I have returned from
the dead.

Tears filled my eyes as hope and shame
danced mercilessly through my being. I had seen so many
extraordinary things over the course of the last twenty-four hours
that I was fraught and still coming to terms with what had been
done to me. In the maelstrom of my emotional turmoil, I clung to
the hope that maybe, just maybe, she was still alive in some way
and I wasn’t alone among monsters.

But tell me this,
Avery.
Her tone changed dramatically,
becoming thick with anger and despair.
Why
did you let her kill me? Why, Avery?

I... It...
My misery crested like a dark wave, and for a
moment, I couldn’t answer her.
Forgive me.
Forgive me.

Auria’s voice cut through our silent
dialogue like a whip slicing through the air.

“
Stop it!” she
snapped.

I spun around to see her beside Onyx,
her hand coming down to slap her. But her hand met only air as Onyx
vanished. Emory burst into uncontrollable fits of laughter. Onyx
re-materialised above Auria, hanging upside down with one leg
hooked over one of the tree branches. She blew Auria a
kiss.

Although Auria was angry, I could see
the corners of her mouth tugging into a small smile of her own as
she glared up at Onyx.

I stared at them in bewilderment as
Auria turned to me.

“
I warned you to never
mention her name again.”

“
But...but...I heard her,
she is not dead.”

“
She
is
dead, you fool. It was Onyx you
heard whispering. You’re getting stronger now, so you can hear our
thoughts. That’s all it was. Soon you will be able to manipulate
the minds of humans as we do.”

It felt as if she had ripped out my
spine and I was caught in that moment all over again, helpless as
Onyx snapped Julia’s neck.

“
You...you killed her and
now you torment me with my grief!” I let the tears flow
freely.

All I got from her was a cold light in
her eyes and laughter. Auria was soon before me, doing a very poor
job of hiding her own amusement.

“
It was a joke, Avery.”
She took me by the arm. “Come, let me show you what else you can do
now you are one of us.”

As Auria took my hand and led me away,
I noticed that Emory’s laughter had faltered away sharply and that
anguish, which was all too familiar to me now, was alight in his
eyes. But Onyx continued to laugh as she swung down from the tree,
landing lightly on her feet. As I walked away, I heard her in my
mind again.

Your pretty little wife.
Her heart stopped the second she died. But the second heartbeat—it
took much longer for that to stop.

I came to a halt.

Second heartbeat? Was she saying Julia
had been with child?

I faced her.

I’m going to kill
you,
I vowed silently.
Even
if it takes me an eternity, I
will find a way to kill you.

She acted as if the threat was the
funniest thing she had ever heard and convulsed into giggles. As I
followed Auria into the trees, I could still hear her laughter
filling my ears.

“
Did you hear him?” she
chortled to Emory. “Did you hear what he said?”

She disintegrated into another fit of
laughter. Emory was silent and I knew all too well why.

I was thankful when Auria took my hand
and the woodland around me disappeared, cutting off the sound of
Onyx’s laughter.

“
Get that nonsense out of
your mind,” Auria said when we were miles from the plantation. “She
is even older than Emory. She would tear you to shreds. Onyx
respects my wishes, thankfully, so she will not harm you. But I
gave you a lot of my blood, so I am weak now, and it will be
decades before I fully regain my strength. If you try to carry out
whatever foolish plan you have, she will kill you and I will be too
weak to stop her. So stop your plotting.”

“
Why did you give me so
much of your blood?”

“
To make you as strong as
possible. You’re still weak compared to Emory and will be for a
long time. But at least if he tries to kill you, you will have some
chance.”

“
And you believe he
will?”

“
Perhaps. He is extremely
loyal and fiercely protective of my affections, as you have seen.
But he knows not to anger me. Onyx and I have been together for
many years. I came across her in Virginia and knew immediately I
wanted to make her into a vampire. She had led a pitiful existence
up until that point, like so many other slaves, and she knew much
pain and suffering. I gave her the strength to avenge her
tormentors and she cast away her old life along with her name. She
became Onyx from then on. My dark goddess. Now look at her. She is
utterly merciless. She is my soul mate and nothing will ever divide
us. As for Emory, I am extremely fond of him. I do not want to give
him up, but I will if it is necessary.”

She looked pointedly at me and I
averted my gaze.

She showed me all of the things that
my new body could do and taught me how to read minds and search the
memories of my victims. She also instructed me on how to manipulate
them into doing, and feeling, what I wanted.

“
You have the power to
command the world around you. You can move solid objects merely by
thinking about it. You can also use its power to travel in the
blink of an eye,” she instructed. “Try it. Call the ether to you.
Move into it with the image of where you want to be, and you will
find yourself there.”

There were limits to what we could do.
She showed me by taking me to the slave quarters when we returned
to the Foster plantation. “Try and open the door,” she
urged.

I hung back, already remembering the
intoxicating desire I had felt when I drank the blood of the slave
girl. “Go on,” she said.

Hearing a hint of impatience in her
tone, I did as she commanded, only to halt at the door.

It felt as if there was something
surrounding the cabin, pushing against me, exerting a weight on my
mind that made it feel as if it were turning to lead. Intrigued, I
brought my hand to the door, and although I was able to touch the
door knob, I could not open it, the force gathering around the hand
on the door and preventing me from turning the doorknob. The
pressure on my mind increased, becoming more disconcerting the
longer I stayed at the door with my hand on the door knob. I
eventually stepped back.

Auria was smiling when I faced
her.

“
See. We cannot enter
without an invitation. But there are ways around that. We can call
them outside, like I showed you. Try and see.”

I backed away from the cabin,
something which only made her laugh. “Tomorrow, when the hunger
takes you, you will not be so hesitant.”

My only response was to move farther
away from the cabin door. But even as I did so, I felt that
arousal, that dark call. It was difficult to resist, especially
since anger flared whenever I thought of the Fosters and their
slaves—all of whom had known of the fate that awaited Julia and me
but had said nothing.

“
We are nearly
indestructible,” Auria continued.

The moonlight bathed her face in an
effluence that turned her face to porcelain, her eyes glittering
black jewels. “Only certain metals can pierce our flesh. Gold,
silver—pure metals. Other than that, only the teeth and nails of
another vampire.”

I listened and learned
from her, but my thoughts remained on Julia and Onyx’s
words:
Why did you let them kill
me?

We headed back to the chapel in
silence. She spoke to me as we materialised in the
clearing.

“
Stop all that moping. She
is dead. It cannot be undone. And there was no second heartbeat.”
She wouldn’t look at me. “Do not think of her around the other two.
They see it as a weakness and they will hound you for
it.”

She moved toward the chapel. When she
realised I wasn’t behind her, she turned and glared at me for a few
moments. Then she sighed before disappearing into the chapel where
the other two awaited.

I moved to where Julia lay beneath the
trees.

I could hear the other three, not just
their words, but their thoughts, which were becoming clearer to me
as time wore on. I could not escape it. In that moment, the
enormity of the situation I was in gripped me with a cold, hard
hand. I was trapped. I would never be free of those
beasts.

I looked down at Julia. She was almost
peaceful in comparison to the other one I had...eaten. Her gaze had
been locked on mine right up to the last moment of her life and, as
always, her trust and faith in me had shone through her eyes. Eyes
that now had flies clustered in a dark pool around them. I hung my
head and closed my eyes as bitter tears filled them.

It was a few moments before I was able
to open them again, and when I did, I saw I was standing on
blackened floor boards bathed by daylight, instead of grass turned
a deep sea-green by darkness.

I glanced up with a start.

What new trick was this?

I was standing at the back of the
chapel and it was dusk. But the chapel had changed and was scarred
by fire. Its walls were blackened and there was a large hole in the
roof at the back, exposing a sky tinted blood-red by a setting
sun.

I spun around, expecting to see the
others and that they would have an explanation for this, but they
were gone. Instead I saw a Negro woman kneeling a few feet from me.
She wore a faded purple dress and had her head bowed. The
unexpected sight pushed all thought of Auria, Onyx and Emory from
my mind, and completely forgetting the odd circumstances I found
myself in, I took a step toward her, feeling unburdened for the
first time since I had stepped into the clearing.

Perhaps my movement alerted her to my
presence, because the image of her that I saw seemed to waver and
then she looked up at me, seeming to separate from the image I had
first seen of her. It stopped me in my tracks when I saw her face
fully.

I thought I knew what beauty was, but
every woman I had ever considered beautiful seemed to melt into
insignificance beside the one before me. Her skin was a dark, rich
mahogany, her face heart shaped and her piercing, deep set eyes
almost feline in quality. She had high cheekbones and full,
sensuous plum-coloured lips that seemed to invite a caress. It was
the kind of beauty that cut deep, leaving me gasping and unable to
ever forget it. Her ebony hair, which was the woolly texture that
most Negroes possessed, was pulled back, a scarf hastily tied over
it. I was not aware of the fact that I had started moving again
until I was standing directly before her. She merely gazed at me, a
sad, soft smile on her lips as I knelt before her, drinking in her
beauty. She had an innate gracefulness in the turn of her long,
slender neck and I sensed a quiet strength in her. Staring into
those bewitching eyes, I had the strong sense that she was much
older than she appeared to be, although her face was
youthful.

I could not take my eyes off of her
and I reached out to touch her, wanting to feel her skin which
looked like dark velvet. I stopped myself in time, surprised by my
boldness, but she seemed to lean in slightly, her eyes fluttering
shut, long, sooty lashes resting on her cheekbone, as if she longed
to feel my touch.