Darque Wants

by Diana Steele

  Samson glowered at her. “Are you dense? The war has ended.”

  Adelaide stood up, her heart fluttering with a new kind of excitement. “Look around you!” she demanded. “Are you really ready to accept that this is the end?”

  Samson gazed up at her, a smile playing on his lips. “And I suppose you know what to do to get us out of here?”

  Adelaide huffed out a breath, sitting back down next to him. “We have to leave soon. If we go before Constantine gets back, the whole camp will be paralyzed, waiting for his orders, so we’ll actually have a chance, a head start. And if we leave during the day, they’ll be sluggish and reluctant to venture outside of the camp and the general’s shadow.”

  Samson nodded, an intense scowl darkening his face. “We won’t have to plan an elaborate escape. It’s only the two of us. We could bust through those guards in about five minutes.” At that, he leaned into her.

  She flinched when he grabbed her chin and lifted her face to meet his.

  “You’re regaining you color.” He commented. He then stood up, glancing around the room as if he feared that he was forgetting something.

  She looked up at him, watching him move and wondering what he would do next.

  Finally he turned to look back at her. “I’m ready. Let’s go.”

  Adelaide stood up her heart pounding in her chest. She couldn’t believe that he was actually saying this, that she was on the cusp of yet another massive fight. “What? Now?” she demanded.

  Samson nodded, his eyes wide and questioning. “If you don’t do it now, you never will.” He replied. “You have been in my tent for over three hours now. They’ll never let you back in here again. Constantine will be back in twenty four hours and Lorraine… well she’s got to be looking for you by now.”

  Adelaide nodded. He was right. With a deep breath, she followed him out of his tent. Once outside, she was hit with the stench of the farm once again. In the warmth of the afternoon, it seemed to have intensified. However, she found herself surprised to see that the activity was so low. Somehow, in the broad daylight, it felt even odder to be surrounded by a dome. The contraption made the space feel much smaller than it must have been. Straight ahead were the two guards she had lied to, to get past in the first place. She felt awkward approaching them now that she was intending to fight the both of them.

  Samson, who seemed to have been storing anger didn’t have any trouble storming up to Vince. “Hey.” Vince turned and barely had enough to time to be confused before Samson grabbed a handful of his head, twisting his face around and punched him.

  Vince took a couple of steps back, but seemed largely unphased by Samson’s punch. John acted fast, slipping a knife off of his holster and swinging it at Samson. Adelaide was quick to intercept this. She grabbed his wrist and twisted his arm around until she heard a definitive crack cut through the air. His subdued grunt echoed in the small dome.

  Samson used this diversion to mount Vince and drive him into the barbed wire, it left deep defined, dents in his face, but otherwise, he was unaffected, but Samson did not hesitate in grabbing the keys off of his holster. Just as he was about to reach for the lock, John came back with his knife in his other hand, but Adelaide kicked him in the chest as hard as she could. He flew backwards, hitting the ground with a subdued, thump, and dragging the dirt with him. With her heart fluttering in her chest and goosebumps of fear covering her whole body, she snatched the key from Samson, just as Vince threw another punch, and shoved it into a lock. She heard the unmistakable sound of vampire hands hitting angel flesh as Vince slammed his fist into Samson’s gut, but ignored it, releasing the gate in a fraction of a second. “Come on, Samson!” she screeched as she reached for him, pulling him past the gate with her.

  As soon as they had passed the barrier and were running to the edge of the camp, mayhem ensued behind them. The Vampires screeched, yelling at the others to, “Catch them!”

  “Stop them!”

  “Get help!”

  “We need to get in the air and fast!” Adelaide yelled at Samson. Angels were fast but they could hardly outrun vampires. If they wanted to get away, they needed to start flying as soon as possible.

  “I’m ready!” Samson yelled. “Are you?”

  As they both ran farther and father to the outskirts of the camp, as the vampire shadow began to lift and as the vampires themselves started to close in, Adelaide shed her cape, sucking in a deep breath as her wings flapped up and down, freely behind her. Her energy coursed through her veins, making her muscles tingle and her skin glowed golden. As her feet slammed the ground even harder with her increasing speed, as the wind whipped against her skin and her calves screamed in protest, her hair flew behind her, the wind ruffling her knotted waves.

  Then finally, after weeks and weeks of being trapped on the earth, her wings lifted her up. Out of her peripheral vision, she saw Samson flying right next to her, his neck tensed and his arms pasted to his sides in an attempt to make him more aerodynamic. Below her, the vampires were getting smaller and smaller with every passing second. Some had brought arrows and spears with them out into the field, but others stopped them from firing anything. They were afraid of being that one vampire that killed Constantine’s mistress. Now that Adelaide and Samson were in the air, they were completely untouchable. There flew like this, until the Shadow that lifted and the afternoon sun kissed their skin with its warmth. Adelaide could not believe that she had finally escaped all of that, and she wondered how she could have possibly missed the sun as much as she did.

  Now that they were free, she felt that a weight she hadn’t even realized she was carrying had been lifted, and she was finally able to do what was right…. For everyone.

  Chapter Five.

  Adelaide and Samson flew south until they couldn’t physically continue. She could tell by the way the sun hung in the sky that they were getting close. Even as they flew, she could feel a change in the temperature. The air grew humid and the sun’s rays beat against her skin with an intensity she had not felt for a long time. But, by the time that it was setting, the two of them had grown far too tired to continue. They settled on a beach, in what the humans would have called Texas. Adelaide caught a rabbit in the forest just beyond the sand, while Samson worked up a fire.

  “I still can’t believe we did this.” Adelaide muttered as she slipped the small knife she had always carried with her from around her ankle and began to skin the rabbit she had killed.

  Samson shrugged, sitting down next to her and appraising the fire he had labored to build. “What? Left?”

  Adelaide nodded. “You might find this hard to believe, but my whole life has been in those camps for almost five years now. I have never set foot outside of either one of them. And now, I’m sitting here listening to the waves on a beach. The whole thing is impossibly bazaar.”

  Samson shrugged. “I don’t know about the rest of it, but I don’t find it hard to believe. That was my life too.”

  Adelaide furrowed her brow, “How did you end up with the vampires.”

  Samson frowned. “It was not by choice. I can tell you that much.” He started. “They farmed my family, but Constantine took a liking to me, so he wouldn’t let any of his men feed off of my. I guess you could say he was obsessed for some reason. Then, when the war broke out, he turned me into a spy.”

  Adelaide was surprised to find that she and Samson nearly had the exact same relationship with the vampires. She realized that no one could understand her the way that Samson did and that thought was comforting, because for once, she really felt that she had chosen the right person. She finished cutting up the rabbit and set it over the fire.

  “Where did you learn to do this?” Samson asked as she placed the finished animal down in front of the both of them.

  A mischievous smile spread across Adelaide’s face. “I didn’t.” she replied.

  Samson’s face nearly turned pale as he turned back to look at the cooked meat in front of him.


  Adelaide laughed at this, her giggles drifting away with the evening wind. “Don’t worry. It’s cooked all the way through, I promise.”

  “Yes, but what if it had rabies?”

  Adelaide scoffed, enjoying this banter in spite of herself. “Why would I even touch a rabid animal?” she demanded.

  Samson shrugged. “You had sex with a vampire.” He replied.

  Adelaide playfully hit him on his chest as he erupted into laughter. He smiled at her, holding her hand there. This time, she let him touch her, refraining from wincing or shying away. For some reason, he just felt different. As they continued eating while watching the sun disappear behind the line of water, she couldn’t help but to think back to her parents. She wondered how they would have died, for she was almost absolutely certain that they had to have been dead. Would they have been killed in a raid, as her sister had, or simply drained lifeless? Adelaide shuddered to think that she could have been there with them; could have held their hand, listened to their last words and heard their last screams. But as soon as she thought of that, she remembered that if she had, she would have been dead, and not sitting there with Samson, on the brink of saving the world.

  Once the two of them had finished their meals, they grew groggy and lay together in the sand. Samson outstretched his wings and covered Adelaide with them. She was easily engulfed in them. It was the safest she had ever felt. As she slowly drifted into a deep and consuming slumber…

  “Adelaide!” she awoke to the sound of Samson hissing at her. Her eyes flipped open to the sight of the sun rising just above the ocean. Her muscles felt stiff and sore, but other than that, she felt well rested.

  “Okay. I’m up.” She muttered, nudging her way out of the cover of her wings. As she sat up, she looked in the other direction, past Samson and towards the way that they had come. Rapidly approaching them like a summer storm cloud was the Shadow. “Oh fuck.” She muttered as Samson stood up. He hastily kicked sand in the fire, then scurried down to the ocean.

  Adelaide followed him, reaching into the ankle-deep waves for water to splash on her face. The cold liquid helped her wake up.

  “They’re coming for us.” Samson uttered in a worried voice.

  “They were always coming for us.” Adelaide replied as she glanced back at the cloud.

  “We don’t have very much time. God, how did they get here so fast?” he asked.

  “They’re faster than us.” Adelaide replied. She could almost feel Constantine getting closer and closer. She turned and walked back up the sand.

  “What are you doing?” Samson asked as he followed her.

  She ducked her head, wondering what he was so confused about. They were losing time. “We need to get to Mexico.”

  “Yeah, but that’s two hours of nothing but ocean, and that’s if we fly as fast as we can.” Samson protested.

  “But the vampires can’t run on water. It’s the only way we can get there before they catch up with us and still have enough time to awake the king.” She argued back.

  Samson looked longingly to their right, at the path they would have taken if they had had all the time in the world, but he knew that she was right, and as much as it made him uncomfortable he took off with her over the water towards the land they could barely see in the distance, leaving behind the vampire cloud and Constantine with it.

  After only thirty minutes of flying, Adelaide was quickly losing steam. Her breath came slow and heavy. Her lungs hardly inflated as the oxygen filled them, and then, as she released her breaths, her abdomen screeched in pain. Her arms were so sore that it hurt just to pin them to her sides. She glared desperately at the distant land mass ahead of her. It hardly looked any closer, and yet, she could see to her right that the Shadow had extended almost half the distance they had already travelled, thus, she hardly had the time to be tired.

  And yet, she was. The sun, which had been pleasantly warm only an hour ago, felt like a million knives on her skin, sweat dripped down her bare arms and her jeans felt tighter than ever. The land mass ahead of her looked blurry, and she could almost see two silhouettes instead of just one. To her right, Samson looked just fine, his wings flapping healthily around him and his arms hanging limp in front of him. How was it that he could be completely relaxed, while she was practically dying from this heat and from sheer exhaustion…?

  Before she could finish that thought, she started to fall. Her wings seized up, refusing to move up and down so that she could stay in the air. With a yelp, she launched into a freefall, charging towards the ocean at an insane speed. Her heart pounded in her ears as she flailed her useless arms around her. With the water rapidly approaching from below, the sun beating down on her and wind battering her body, she found it impossible to catch her bearing and lift herself back up. She found it impossible even to breathe.

  In the next moment, Samson realized what was happening and swooped down to catch her. He wrapped his strong hands around her body, lifting her back up away from the waves with ease. She adjusted herself so that she was back in the correct flight position, and made as if she was going to start flying again, but he tightened his grip. “You are not strong enough for both of us!” she yelled up at him.

  “Yes I am!” He argued.

  “I need to fly on my own!” Adelaide protested, but she looked up at him just in time to watch him shake his head.

  “You are still recovering from Lorraine. You need to preserve your strength.”

  Adelaide could not argue with this. As much as she wanted to be completely independent, the last thing she wanted to do was to take a chance that would possibly leave her too weak for her to help Samson raise the King. If that happened, Constantine would find them completely undefended and he would kill them. There is no doubt about that.

  By the time they had reached the coast of the next landmass, the Shadow was nearly upon them, but just looking at the vegetation on the coast; the bright, blue waters, the lush bushes and trees, the bright flowers, they could tell that this was where the king dwelled. “He is deep within a cave.”

  Adelaide stared at him with a furrowed brow.

  He shrugged as he looked down at her. “At least, that’s what the elders always said.”

  Adelaide raised an eyebrow as she followed him into the forest. They hiked through the dense brush, huffing at the cuts the thorn left on their ankles, and later at the tingling sensation of their bodies rushing to heal itself. “He couldn’t have just been lying in the sand?” Adelaide muttered as they began to ascend the last hill. She could see the opening of the cave just up ahead.

  “Well, this explained why no one thought to do this already. They would have seen this hike and turned away immediately. Our desperation is the only thing keeping us going.” He replied.

  “True.” Adelaide muttered as she reached the mouth of the cave and embraced the shade. She doubled over, struggling to catch her breath.

  “Are you sure you’re going to be okay?” Samson asked, placing a reassuring hand on her back.

  She nodded. “I have to be, don’t I?” replied.

  He nodded, then took her hand and led her deeper into the cave. Adelaide listened to the sound of their breath echoing against the walls until they reached a dead end. There, set just at the dead end of the cave, was the king’s tomb, just like her grandmother had promised.

  “But can it be this easy?” she breathed.

  Samson did not answer her but grunted as he pushed the massive lid off of the tomb. A cloud of dust rose as it slammed against the ground. She rounded the tomb, her eyes wide as she stared inside of it. There the king as, lying there in a completely peaceful state. Adelaide almost felt rude awaking him like this, and yet, she could think of no other way. He was a massive angel, easily at least three feet taller than her, and although legend says that he had been dead for hundreds of years, he looked like he had merely settled down for a nap. “Incredible.” She breathed.

  Samson nodded glancing straight ahead. Even from this distanc
e, they could see that the vampires were gaining ground. It looked like the sun was beginning to set on the outside of the cave.

  “We don’t have much time.” he replied as he placed both of his hands on the king’s chest.

  Adelaide nodded, then rounded the tomb and cradled his head on both of her hands.

  Samson adjusted his feet, then looked up at her. “Are you ready?”

  Adelaide, convinced that this would somehow hurt really, really badly, just nodded at him. “As ready as I’ll ever be.”

  Samson had already closed his eyes. “All right, don’t rush this.” he ordered as he sucked in a deep breath.

  Adelaide furrowed her brow. “I’m sorry, have you actually ever resurrected an angel king before.”

  Samson sighed. “I’m obvious just using common sense. Now really isn’t the time.”

  Adelaide rolled her eyes. But, in spite of herself, she closed her eyes and followed his lead. With another deep breath she focused her mind on her own life force, and dispelling that force from her body. Her blood boiled hot and thick as it seeped through her veins. Her muscles burned, as if she was being set on fire from in the inside out. Tears seeped from the eyes she had squeezed shut and dripped down her flushed face. Her wings extended at full span to either side of her, colliding with Samson’s. She could feel the king growing warmer and warmer underneath her fingertips. There was a kind of tingling underneath her palms that she wanted to believe was his energy reawakening.

  A short moment later, it became impossible to deny. The king seemed to be stirring underneath her. She could feel him, really feel him. He was as real as any of the other creatures she had touched, as real as Samson, who stood right next to her. But no sooner had she realized that she was starting to succeed, did it occur to her that her own body was failing. Her thoughts came in detached phrases, incoherent sounds and words that banged around in her head, never becoming anything more. Her arms started to shake uncontrollably the muscles seeming to detach themselves from the bone, her knees started to give, over and over again. She willed herself to keep standing… to keep going.