Darque Wants

by Diana Steele

  It wasn’t long before she gave up and decided to take a walk.

  Outside, the night was calm and clear. Beyond the stench of burnt forestry that still hung in the air, Adelaide wondered at how the battle that had just happened just a mile away from where she was had hardly left a mark. Under the cover of the night, it was hard to distinguish the silence of calm slumber from the silence of death, and, often times, she wondered if there was even a real difference between the two.

  After trudging down the aisle of officer’s tents that made up the center of the camp, she came up across a slightly larger structure. Although she had been with the demons for almost two years, she didn’t know any of the officers personally and preferred to keep her distance. So, when she came up across this slightly larger tent with the flag projecting out of the top of it, Adelaide had no idea whose it was and she should be hearing Daman’s voice projecting out of it. She thought about forging ahead anyway; going along with her walk and ignoring this whole thing, she even thought of knocking on the wooden post in front of the front flap and asking the two of them if she could join, but not wanting to intrude on what was probably an important conversation, and definitely not wanting to continue on her aimless, boring walk through the silent camp, Adelaide settled for a third, much more mischievous option. She stepped around to the side of the tent and made herself comfortable so that she might indulge in some good old fashioned eaves dropping.

  Although their voices were a little muddled coming through the cloth, Adelaide could easily make each of them out. Daman sounded stressed and a little tired… “…Are you sure housing him in our midst is a good idea?” he asked in a worried voice.

  Adelaide raised an eyebrow at this. Who could they be “housing,”?

  The other man scoffed at this. “It could only possibly be dangerous if you are planning on letting him go…. Are you planning on letting him go?” he asked in a condescending voice.

  There was a pause during which Adelaide was sure Daman must have been rolling his eyes or enacting some other, equivalent gesture of disdain. “Of course. Of course. But you always run the risk of the possibility that the vampires planned for him to get caught.”

  The man dismissed Daman’s worries. “I highly doubt the vampires would have been so clever as to assume that we would catch a fallen angel. They knew that we had no idea they even had one…. Obviously.”

  Adelaide’s hand flew to her mouth so that she might prevent herself from gasping. They were talking about the angel that had attacked her.

  The other man sighed. “I suppose you are right about that. I just find it odd to have a foreigner with us.” He replied.

  Adelaide felt the heat rise to the surface of her skin at the sound of the word, ‘foreigner,’ slipping out of that demon’s mouth. Was that what he thought of her?

  But Daman replied with, “He has a name. It’s Samson.” He had defended her kind as fiercely as he would if she were standing right next to him.

  Adelaide could feel herself falling a little bit more in love with him all over again. But her smile faded as she thought harder about this Samson, angel. She gulped as that image of him, zooming through the air, his gold skin matching hers, came to mind. She could not believe that a true angel could find himself fighting for the vampires, a race that had raped, killing and sucked angels dry for centuries. In spying for them, he was essentially, aiding in a genocide of all the angels. It made her blood boil just to think that there existed in that vast world a creature as despicable as him.

  “I do admit, you have peaked my curiosity. Where is he being kept?” Daman asked.

  The man replied with, “Just in the first tent on the right at the very edge of the camp.”

  Adelaide stepped away from the tent. She could tell from the shuffling of bodies and the clanking of dishes that they were reaching the end of the conversation and she didn’t want to be found standing just outside of the tent. In fact, she didn’t want Daman to find her outside at all, for then she would be stuck trying to explain herself and listening to his pleas that she be more careful. So she set off in a brisk walk, a small, but very influential part of her mind, driving her towards the edge of the camp where Samson was being kept.

  She had no idea what she would do when she got there, or, if she went in, what she could even say to him, but she knew she needed to at least see him again. He had tried to kill her and the pang of that betrayal dug deep inside of her soul, begging for retribution, whatever form that may have come in.

  However, as soon as Adelaide reached even within three tents from the one where he was being housed, sounds of his screaming leaked out into the night. She slowed her steps, her skin crawling at the gut-wrenching sound and approached with caution. As she got closer, she detected a pattern in the sounds: there was talking in hushed tones, then a pause, then the sound of the sharp blades of scissors cutting through what sounded like flesh… and feathers, and then, of course, the scream.

  Samson’s scream was a guttural one, full of pain, but also of defiance and disdain.

  As Adelaide reached a point where she was as close as she could safely get, she was then able to hear the words that were coming out of the torturer’s mouth. He spewed questions that had to do with what the vampires did to get their weapons, how they were trained, where the nearest camp was, how they fed, etc. But Samson wouldn’t budge, so they continued to clip his wings and he continued to scream. Adelaide found herself transfixed by the whole thing, drawn to the scene like a moth to a flame. She felt phantom pains in her feathers, and goosebumps sprouting on her skin as she listened to this angel lose his wings, one unanswered question at a time. Adelaide realized that this very same thing would have happened to her when she was captured by the vampires, had Constantine not fallen for her. That thought scared her so much, that she stopped listening, and she stopped caring about giving Samson a piece of her mind.

  Instead, she strolled back home to her own tent, where Daman had already settled into bed. She took off her boots and slipped in between the sheets, wrapping her arms around his sleeping body.

  Thinking of absolutely nothing at all, she slowly fell asleep.

  Chapter Four

  The next morning, Adelaide awoke to Daman sitting at her dressing table, staring at himself in the mirror. “That’s odd.” She mumbled to herself as she turned over.

  He looked up at her. “What?” he asked.

  Adelaide sat up, running her hands through her hair as she giggled at him. “I didn’t even realize you heard me.” She replied.

  He shrugged. “Well, you did say it out loud. What’s odd?” he asked.

  Adelaide rested her back against the headboard. “You’re sitting there just staring at yourself.” She explained.

  Daman glanced back at the mirror before looking at her again, as if what she had just said was news to him and he hadn’t even realized that he was staring at himself. “Oh? Well that’s not what I was doing.”

  Adelaide folded her hands over her outstretched legs in front of her and replied with, “What were you doing?”

  He stood up and made his way to his chest on the other side of the room. Adelaide eyed his naked body as he bent over, his manhood dangling in between his legs, and sifted through the chest for something to wear. “Thinking.” He replied, as he set a pair of dark jeans and a black sweater on the bed.

  “What’s wrong?” Adelaide asked, furrowing her brow.

  Daman raised an eyebrow. “I just said I was thinking, I didn’t say anything was wrong.”

  Adelaide pursed her lips. She was tiring of his constant habit of deflecting her questions and inquiries. “All right. No you didn’t. I just know that something is wrong when I wake up to you sitting silently in front of a mirror.”

  Daman shook his head. “We took a heavy hit with that battle. Our division can’t sustain any more fighting. We don’t know what we’re going to do….”

  Adelaide nodded slowly. It seemed as soon as he had opened up the floodgates
to everything on his mind, it had all come tumbling out of his mouth. “That all sounds very upsetting.” She replied as she watched him finish getting dressed.

  As soon as he had donned all of his clothes, he sat on the edge of the bed, lacing his boots up. Adelaide slid over so that she was closer to him and wrapped her arms around his waist. She could tell from the stiffness of his muscles that he had barely felt her, but simply remained rigid and upright, completely ignoring her.

  She set her jaw, but kept her head resting on the back of his shoulder. “I’m sure you’ll figure it all out eventually.” She replied.

  He finished lacing his boots and stood up, wriggling out of her grip. “I don’t know if that’s true.” He replied as he took one more look in the mirror.

  As Adelaide watched him, she kept expecting him to kiss her, but he never did, instead, packing a small bag and stepping out of the tent. Once alone, she slumped back into the bed, wondering what had gotten into him all of the sudden. In less than a week, he had become worse than he was before she was kidnapped. Adelaide often found herself feeling more like a doormat than the angel lover. After lying there in bed, biting her nails and staring up at the pointed ceiling, she threw the duvet off of her and got out of bed. A full night’s sleep had returned all of her strength and it was almost painful to sit in one place with all of that Energy coursing through her veins.

  She paced back and forth around the bed, thinking about what she could possibly do to pass her time and energy. She thought about flying, but then decided against it. The skies were overcast that morning, and, what’s more, she had a distinct feeling that she wouldn’t be her safest flying over no man’s land. Besides, what if they needed her to go on some sort of assignment? No. She needed to stay in camp. But a moment’s more of thinking told her that there had to be slews of demons wounded. The army had doctors more than equipped for this kind of thing, but Adelaide assumed that there could be nothing wrong with using what energy she had to help ease the burden. Besides, there were no other choices.

  So, after throwing on a tank top and a long, multi-layered skirt, she stepped outside. The air hung thick and heavy, making Adelaide feel more like she was swimming than walking, as she rounded her tent and made her way to the medical quarters on the west corner of the camp. She could detect a little bit of activity, as there were a few straggling soldiers wandering around in the camp… but only a few. The atmosphere held the anxiety of a working day, but the eerie silence of a rest day.

  As she neared the medical quarters, she could hear the chaos of doctors and nurses scrambling to save people along with the screams and grunts of demons in pain. Adelaide reached the first of three large nursing tents and hesitated in front of it. The flap was populated with straggling soldiers pacing back and forth, their worried faces telling Adelaide that they feared for their friends. After sucking in a deep breath and arranging her facial features into the hardest face that she could manage, she stepped inside of the tent.

  What she saw before her nearly made her eyes bleed. The air was filled with a dark violet mist. Rows and rows of bed were filled with demons who had severe wounds, or illnesses caused by the wounds. Oil lamps dotted the fog, penetrating the purple air with their orange glow.

  Adelaide squinted her eyes, darting in and out of nurse’s ways as they struggled to stretch themselves beyond their limits. It took her a couple of minutes to find her bearings, but before too long, she spotted Doctor Berit sitting in a wooden chair at the foot of the bed of a soldier that had wounded his foot in battle. Although he was not the only doctor servicing the demons, he was the nicest. Adelaide reminisced fondly at the time when Daman had received a gash to his neck in the beginning of the war. Berit had acted fast, possibly saving his life, and, all the while, making Adelaide feel included as well. The fact that he was human fostered in Adelaide a kind of admiration she had previously reserved for angels and other creatures directly at risk of the vampire apocalypse.

  “What’s wrong with him?” she asked when she was within ear shot.

  He looked up from her, taking his glasses off of his face so that he could wipe the mist on his dark shirt. “Oh. It’s nothing, just a foot that has been infected. He stepped into a knife yesterday and was unable to clean the wound in time. I have to cut it off.” He explained.

  Adelaide felt a pang in her stomach at the mere thought of this demon, with ghostly white hair and grey eyes that she had never even met before, losing his foot. “Is there anything I can do to help you?” she asked.

  He gave a curt nod, gesturing at a tall absinthe sitting on the side table. “Force him to drink that, while I prepare for the incision” he explained.

  Adelaide nodded and grabbed the cool bottle of strong alcohol. She slipped a straw she fetched from the top drawer into the bottle and pressed it towards his lips. The soldier, whose eyes were barely open, whose pasty skin was covered in sweat, looking like he scarcely possessed the strength necessary to even suck the drink into his mouth, but, after some urging, she was able to get him to drink some of it. As soon as his Adam’s apple bobbed with the drink tumbling down his throat, he began to grow even limper. Adelaide raised an eyebrow. “What is in this stuff?” she asked.

  He shrugged. “It’s just something to make him sleep through this. A mixture of Absinthe and opiates.” He picked up a scalpel from his personal table and cut at the demon’s ankle. It twitched a little as he worked, but otherwise, he remained sleeping.

  Adelaide gulped as a deep purple, almost black substance began to ooze from his leg. Once Berit had sliced all the way to the bone, he placed the bloody scalpel onto the side table and picked up a small hand-saw, which he then used to cut through the bone.

  “How much Energy do you have?” he murmured in a calm voice.

  Adelaide shrugged. “Enough to raise the dead.”

  Berit chuckled at this as he continued to work. “All right. Do you mind if I use you?”

  Adelaide shook her head. “Of course not.”

  “All right. As soon as I finish with this, I need you to heal the fringes of skin. You see this, here?” he asked, shoving his gloved finger deep into the ankle, pointing out the bits of skin that he had left and their jagged edges.

  “Okay,” Adelaide replied. She turned towards his table of tools, and, with shaking hands, picked up the second, clean scalpel and stepped away from him. As she pressed it into her wrist, bracing herself for the cut, a little voice in the back of her head berated her for volunteering herself in the first place, but she ignored it, pressing the blade into her wrist and grunting at the sharp pain that sprouted on that end of her arm, throbbing as she dipped the scalpel in and rubbed her sharp, red blood on its surface. She took a deep breath as she handed the scalpel to Berit, then stepped back away from him, leaning on the pillar at the head of the demon’s bed. Her head spun from the blood that was oozing from her new wound and she had not given herself enough time to recover from the battle on the day before.

  As she stood there, struggling to get her bearings, a deep and guttural screamed surged through the room, soaring over the subdued tones of the nurses and the grunts of pain. Adelaide, like everyone else in the tent, snapped their heads in the direction of the demon that had uttered that noise. Her eyes went wide as she watched his body writhe in pain. His eyes had lost their purple pupils, instead becoming one uniform, almond-shaped, white organ. Thick beads of sweat sprouted on his forehead, but went nowhere, adhering to his melting skin. Steam lifted from his body, drifting into the air. Adelaide felt her stomach lurch and it took everything in her to resist vomiting in front of everyone, and possibly disrupting an operation.

  “He’s been bitten.” Berit explained as he finished with the leg. “One of us doctors must euthanize him before the change completes itself. We have just been so busy with other matters”

  Adelaide watched the demon suffer as Berit continued.

  “He has reached the last phase of the transformation. There isn’t much time left…”<
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  If Berit said anything else after that, Adelaide didn’t hear it, for she had closed her eyes and was attempting to focus all of her attention on healing herself. Through her efforts to clear her mind, she could hear the demons harsh screams. She just squeezed her eyes tighter and willed him to just shut up, but he wouldn’t.

  Soon enough, Adelaide had lost herself and it wasn’t a demon’s screams she was hearing, but her own sister’s. She was back home in her angel dress, but she brandished a silver sword, because the vampires had invaded. They charged through her childhood home, pillaging everything they could lay their hands on. Their dark shadow had obliterated the warm light that filled all of the rooms and their white furniture became covered in soot and ash. They stopped their running and destruction only for long enough to grasp an angel and kill it.

  Adelaide held fast to her sister Chloe, grasping her tiny, seven year old hand as hard as she could as she ran through their state room. Yet she was still several yards away from the door when she felt something tug hard on her sister. She yanked back, but the vampire was too strong for her. He ripped Chloe clean out of her hands, her Diamond Head piece slipping out of her long, brunette hair and crashing to the ground. Adelaide swung her sword at the vampire, fueled by the sound of Chloe shrieking for help, but she felt another vampire grab her from behind. She turned and sliced his free hand off. He grunting in pain, and wrapped his hand around her throat, squeezing as hard as he could, but she drove the sword right into his chest, lifting his heard clean out of the cavity. He fell to the ground with a deep thump and a panting Adelaide turned back to Chloe, but she was too late.

  The vampire had bitten her. He sat over her sucking on her neck. “Hey!” Adelaide roared, raising her sword, but he ran away as quickly as he could, becoming reduced to a mere blur of light before her angel eyes.

  Chloe lay there writhing in pain. Adelaide was too late. Chloe was gone.