Dark World (Book I in the Dark World Trilogy)

by Q. Lee, Danielle

  His wife’s eyes brightened. “When do we move?”

  He held his head high, pulled her into his arms and said, “Soon. A month, maybe two. Then, we’ll be free.”

  After waiting hours for Deme to return from her hunt, Kane realized he and Fate were going to have to continue without her. The two sphinxes may have left defeated, but Kane feared the beasts may have gone to recruit reinforcements and return to finish what they had started. While he and Fate made their way out of the forest, Kane kept a vigilant eye out for his potentially wounded, or dead, tracker.

  Fate had fallen silent after the battle, seemingly locked within her thoughts. Even tiny Ick could not break the spell of sadness lurking behind her eyes. Kane noticed she’d voluntarily placed the mask back on her face. While it would certainly diminish the intoxicating scents that likely bombarded her, he couldn’t help but wonder if she was simply attempting to hide behind it.

  Awkwardness owned the air between them as they walked side by side amongst the glassy shards of the Crystalline Forest. Thankfully, Ick broke the tension when he began leaping back and forth from Kane’s shoulder to Fate’s. Like an agile monkey, he bounced between them, repeating his name each time he landed, “Ick…Ick…Ick.”

  Eyes lighting up for the first time since the encounter with the sphinxes, Fate met Kane’s concerned gaze.

  “Are you alright?” he asked, his brow creasing.

  She shook her head and quietly asked, “What happened to me? Why am I here?”

  Sighing, Kane responded with another question, “What do you remember about the Surface?”

  Frowning, she replied, “The Surface?”

  “When you were human.”

  Staring out at the quartz wilderness, she searched her memories.

  “I remember almost everything—except who I am.” Her eyes lowered. “Who I was.”

  Kane tried his best to explain. “This is Dark World,” he began, sweeping his arm over the landscape. “The humans call it by many names. The Underworld, Tartarus, Gehenna…Hell.”

  She visibly shuddered with the last reference. “How did I get here?”

  “You were sent here.”

  “Sent?”

  He weighed his words carefully, then replied, “Damned.”

  Hurt and fear crossed her eyes as she hugged her torso. “I don’t understand.”

  His large black chest rose and fell, contemplating how much he should divulge. If he were to say too much, he could inadvertently awaken her primal urges again, driving her into the arms of the enemy.

  “Many centuries ago, a great demon king reigned over this land,” Kane started. “We were a strong and powerful people. Magic ran thick through our veins.”

  He paused as they came to the edge of the forest and pointed to a dark monolith in the distance. “The Crystal Pyramid, the source of our power…well, was the source, until it was disabled by…”

  Obviously intrigued, Fate turned to meet his gaze. “Disabled by whom?”

  “The king.” Kane tried to keep his voice steady, the scars of his father’s actions still stinging.

  With a perplexed look, she asked, “Why would he disable the source of your power?”

  “I…don’t know,” he lied, regretting he’d started the conversation. He wanted to tell her everything. Tell her about his mother. The scrolls. Something about her made him trust her, but he knew there was an inherent evil burrowed within her, an evil that hadn’t awakened yet. Despite her willingness to heal and protect him, her gentleness with Ick, and her resistance to act on her predatory instincts, she was still created for destruction. She was still a servant of Malus. If he told her too much—if he spoke the name of her master—would her dark nature rise to the surface?

  All she needed was a shred of her former self to resist the darkness—just a sliver of her soul left within. But was it still there?

  Vague memories flashed through her mind with his words, it all sounded so familiar, yet she felt as if she were trying to capture a butterfly by its wings. What had happened to her? Who damned her to this place? The girl in her dream, the one with brown hair, she was the key.

  Fate wanted to ask more questions, but saw a glint of anguish behind the demon’s blazing blue eyes. She decided not to press it—for now. Besides, there were far more important matters to attend to as she recognized a familiar figure lying motionless on the ground ahead of them.

  “Deme!” Kane shouted, bolting across the parched, red landscape.

  Face down with a stream of blood trickling from between her lips, Deme moaned in response to Kane’s call. He knelt down as he reached her and tried to determine how badly she was wounded. An angry laceration wept blood from her right shoulder and a wound gaped on her waist.

  “Deme, what happened?” he asked, examining her body from head to toe. “Sphinxes?”

  She nodded and mumbled incoherently, trying to push herself up, managing to bend her elbows an inch or so before losing consciousness and flopping onto the dirt.

  Kane exhaled, then turned and eyed the shade intently. “Can you heal her…like you healed me?”

  “I…don’t know,” Fate began. “I’m not even sure how I did it the first time, but I can try.”

  She folded her legs beneath her and sat near Deme’s torso. Fate laid her hands upon the she-demon’s hot back, careful not to bump her shackled wings. She closed her eyes and concentrated, trying to conjure the same feelings she’d felt when she mended Kane. While a warm sensation stirred within, she couldn’t replicate the process. The wounds ceased to bleed, but she wasn’t able seal them.

  “I’m sorry,” Fate said, taking her hands away from Deme’s back and staring at her palms like they were broken. “That’s all I can do.”

  Kane nodded. “Thank you for trying. Let’s get moving, we have to get her to the city as soon as possible, the shaman can help her.”

  He grunted as he lifted the female warrior and slung her gently over his shoulder. “Come, we can make it to the demon city in a day or two.”

  Demon city?

  She swallowed hard and glanced at Kane, recalling their first meeting.

  We’re going to a city filled with demons that hate shades. Great.

  Cryptica

  Deme weighed heavily on his shoulder, but not any more than the game he usually acquired on hunting excursions. He set her lifeless body down every hour or so to stretch and switch shoulders. To Kane’s relief, she would groan occasionally, reminding him she was alive.

  While they trekked ever closer to the demon city, he had to admit it was a bit strange strolling along the dark shores of the Nephthys River with a shade. The black, oozing tar of the river gurgled and burped as it meandered through the desert terrain.

  As Fate’s hands swung by her side, he again wondered if he should have set her free. Sure, she’d helped him fight the sphinxes and she’d shown considerable restraint with Deme, Ick and him—but what if she got hungry again? And she would. It was inevitable.

  He observed her long silver hair as it cascaded over her shoulders, her slender physique and female curves hidden beneath Deme’s pitch cloak. Light on her feet and sleek with her walk, he marveled at her natural elegance. She was as graceful as a cat traversing thin ice. Was she simply created to be so statuesque or did she possess some inhuman charm he didn’t comprehend?

  I wonder what she was like as a human?

  The thought startled him. He’d never considered shades anything but monsters. Abominations of a dark magic gone terribly wrong. They hadn’t existed until they sold their souls to Malus. The day they all transformed, exchanging their humanity for an evil immortality, was a day Kane would never forget. The apocalypse. The last day of demon freedom. The day he and his father had flown from the mines. One of the last times he’d seen the loyal illumination of the Crystal Pyramid.

  The screaming. So much panic.

  Kane closed his eyes, trying to block the memory of the culling. His family, his friends—everyone. T
he demons hadn’t known death until then, their immortal bodies loyal, steadfast.

  The humans morphed into the creatures of darkness in the blink of an eye, souls ripped from their chests. Thousands of glimmering blue spheres raced through the sky, summoned by the new Devil, Malus.

  Then the terror began.

  Thousands of newborn shades, slaughtering demons young and old, keeping only enough for slaves. Kane was but a child. Wings shackled and tossed into the mines, his mother denied his existence.

  Now, before him—a shade. Mere feet from him, the offspring of those who’d destroyed his world.

  He watched her tickle Ick under his chin and feed him a strip of meat she’d torn from the sphinx’s hide. How had he never noticed the human behind the monster before? The shades that had executed his family, friends and comrades had worn sick smiles of pleasure while they’d slain his loved ones.

  Why is she so different?

  As if sensing his eyes upon her, she glanced in his direction. Though he looked away quickly, he was certain he blushed. He continued walking with apprehension burdening his thoughts. Could he really be so wrong about the dark race? At present, she didn’t resemble a killer. She’d spent most of the journey with her eyes wide and head moving from left to right, then up and down. Like a child, she was enchanted by the new world around her, absorbing her surroundings like a sponge. She bombarded Kane with questions, most of which he responded to with a simple yes, no, or I don’t know.

  He was just so unsure. How could he befriend the enemy?

  We need her.

  His father’s voice of reason echoed from within. The demons needed her—badly. With Malus out to obtain all six hidden pages of Devil’s Bible, Kane knew he had to find them first. Only, he couldn’t touch them, nor could any other demon or original race within Dark World. Only a shade could lay their hands upon the scrolls.

  It was an oversight on his father’s part. The day he died, he enchanted the scrolls, cursing them so even if Malus found them, she couldn’t touch them. If she did, she’d age one thousand years in the blink of an eye. King Lucifer then spread the six pages of his Bible over Dark World, five among the races and one, to a secret location. Every region was assigned a protector for the scroll—a guardian.

  The problem was, the curse worked for everyone—except shades. For whatever reason, whether it was spoken incorrectly or damnations of that nature didn’t apply to soulless beings, shades were immune to the hex.

  Kane was the guardian of the first page—and he’d failed to protect it.

  If only I’d been there. It’s all my fault.

  It dawned on him that all the races were now in danger. True, one shade was able to break in and steal the demons’ scroll, but to what lengths would Malus go to retrieve the rest? His eyes focused again on the shade in his midst.

  Maybe Malus would be willing to bargain—since I have something she wants.

  But could he use this girl? This gentle soul forced to be a killer? He watched her as she visually embraced every element in sight. From the enormous pterodactyl bats that swooped overhead, to the inky, bobbing heads of the tar eels as they coasted with the current of the Nephthys River.

  Upon arriving at a field of giant flowering fungi, Kane heard the shade gasp. Perched atop the mushroom caps, petals of deep orange and turquoise unfolded before her, releasing hundreds of bioluminescent orbs the size of Kane’s head. Fluffy and white, like tufts of feathers balled together, they drifted along the arid breeze to seed elsewhere. Balanced on Fate’s shoulder, Ick playfully batted the airborne spores.

  Geysers fired in the distance, their steaming mineral waters shooting hundreds of feet in the air.

  Deme groaned, her wounds glaring angrily.

  “We need to find help,” Kane said sternly.

  “Why?” Fate queried, swishing a hand at the puff balls of light and watching them bounce away on a gentle wind.

  “Deme requires medicine…soon,”

  Kane’s gaze swept over the landscape. Ahead, lingering in the shadows, was the wraith village, Cryptica.

  A flicker of anxiety cast over him. wraiths weren’t particularly fond of outsiders—especially shades.

  Shrouded in writhing black mist, the exterior of the wraith village resembled a turbulent storm cloud. With no apparent doorway, Kane marched up to the twenty foot high cyclone wall and hollered, “Hello! It is Kane, son of Lucifer! May we enter?”

  He set Deme down onto her wobbly legs, keeping her steady with her left arm draped across his broad shoulders, her ruby skin alarmingly pale.

  Fate stood a few feet back with Ick, uncertain as to how she’d be welcomed. So far, shades didn’t seem to be a favorite among the locals of Dark World. Granted, she’d only met two of them so far, but from the way they’d reacted when they first met her and the things they’d said along the trip, she knew her kind were very hated indeed.

  My kind—what is my kind?

  She hadn’t really paused to think about what exactly she was. Kane and Deme had called her a shade. But what did that mean exactly? Was she a vampire of some kind? She did crave the essence of other creatures, but it wasn’t blood, so vampire didn’t quite fit. A zombie, maybe? Her appearance would suggest some kind of fiendish transition had occurred within, but she didn’t desire brains or anything weird like that so she dismissed that one as well.

  I just don’t know what I am. Lowering her eyes to the ground, she wondered if she’d ever really understand what she’d become—or if it could be reversed.

  “Something’s happening,” Kane commented.

  She moved closer and watched the dark funnel surrounding the wraith village part like the Red Sea. As though a set of misty drapes had been pushed aside, a passageway formed amidst the storm. Kane ducked his head as he went through the tunnel with Deme hobbling beside him. After a hesitant exhale, Fate followed.

  Tempestuous winds swirled on either side of the trio. Fate swore she heard moaning and wailing emanating from within the gale. The hurricane seemed to breathe around her, threatening to collapse at any moment.

  Ahead of her, Deme and Kane moved at a snail’s pace. Dim light radiated ahead. They were almost there. Almost free from the whirling storm of shadows. As they stepped out of the tunnel, the gap in which they’d just walked through sealed itself, closing off any exit.

  The perfect trap, she thought with a shudder.

  Like a tornado, the center was calm while the walls of dark fog twisted relentlessly. Several beings stood before them, hovering a foot or so above the ground. The creatures, who she assumed were the wraiths, seemed to wisp in and out of existence. Their hands and feet manifested briefly, then would disappear into a tendril of smoke.

  Vaguely transparent and dressed in long, hooded cloaks, they hung silently in the air, their form dematerializing and then reappearing like magic, sometimes a few feet from where they’d originated.

  The only things that didn’t waver out of existence were their cold, amber glares—and they were focused solely on her.

  Kane could feel the tension in the air as if it had its own consciousness. Hatred wove its way past the two demons and landed directly on the shade.

  “Friends, I assure you, the shade is harmless,” he said, attempting to diffuse the growing pressure.

  One wraith, the tallest, moved forward, his eyes locked on Fate. “No shade is harmlessss…” he hissed, his hollow voice hovering above a whisper. “Why have you brought her to Cryptica?”

  “Please, my…friend, she needs help,” Kane tilted his head towards Deme, who had fallen unconscious once more and lay slumped against his torso.

  “Because you are Lucifer’s son, we will assist you.” The wraith pointed a vaporous finger at him. “But you must leave immediately after.”

  “Of course,” Kane stammered, “I apologize for the burden.”

  Two of the wraiths moved forward and gently took Deme from Kane’s grasp. With their unseen hands, they carried her into a tower made ent
irely of polished obsidian slabs.

  Kane approached the tallest of the wraiths and asked, “Which of you is the guardian of your scroll? It is urgent that I speak with them.”

  He hesitated a moment, uncertain.

  “Thisss way, but the shade stays here,” the wraith rasped, shifting his path to the left and gliding towards an dwelling across the village.

  Kane gave a fleeting glance to Fate. Her expression read volumes. With her arms wrapped around herself in a hug and eyes fastened on the ground, he worried about leaving her. But he’d seen her in action, she wasn’t frail by a long shot—she was lethal. He hoped she’d be able to stay out of trouble for a few moments. So far, she’d been a fairly agreeable companion, all things considering.

  The wraith led him to a secluded edge of the village, paused in front of a hollowed out spherical shell made of rose quartz. As he ducked into the crystal shack, an overwhelming odor pervaded his nostrils.

  Black incense?

  There was only one being in the entire realm that burned the ancient bouquet of the undead.

  Enigma

  Perched upon her shoulder like some otherworldly parrot, Ick suddenly lifted up Fate’s long, white hair and stuffed his head between her locks and the nape of her neck.

  “What are you doing?” she asked of the gargoyle, trying to pry him from his hiding spot.

  After pulling him out, cursing as he scratched her arm in protest, she took a quick look around and realized what he was afraid of. The five remaining wraiths were moving towards her, encircling her, their arms outstretched like ravenous zombies.

  “What…are you doing?” she repeated, only now it was directed at the phantom creatures surrounding her. Their blazing orange eyes were locked on her, seething with an ancient hate.

  Oh no…Kane, where are you?

  She didn’t want to fight. She didn’t want to kill. But the rising inferno swelling within her core was taking on a life of its own. The pulsating sensation was overwhelming. Like a spinning top, the dizzying power amplified with every beat. Ick jumped down, seeming to sense the imminent danger. He scurried to a far corner and shivered, shielding his eyes as Fate’s sight flooded black.