Rising Dark (The Darkling Trilogy, Book 2)

by A. D. Koboah

  I was so shaken I could not speak. I placed her in front of the fire with a blanket over her tiny form. Then I made her a sandwich and a warm drink. I got myself a large brandy before I sat down in front of her. Then I did what I was dreading and read her mind to find out what she was doing alone, in the middle of nowhere, at night. Thankfully, she wasn’t a ghost. But what I discovered was grim.

  Her name was Mallory and she was nine years old. A week ago she awoke to find her mother cold and lifeless in bed. She tried to wake her and eventually gave up, and merely laid in bed beside her. When the little bit of food left in the house run out, she left the house to look for help, finding her way to the mansion.

  There was no need to control her fear now as the warmth of the mansion, along with the food, had calmed her down. She ate half of the sandwich before pointing to the other half, staring up at me. I saw her thoughts clearly. She wanted me to go back home with her and give her mother something to eat.

  I sighed and rubbed my forehead.

  “Mallory...I...she...she’s dead, Mallory.”

  She shook her head vehemently and crossed her skinny arms over her chest, tears springing to her eyes.

  No. She stood up and took hold of my wrist, trying to pull me toward the door.

  The image in her mind was not of the corpse I had seen when I searched her thoughts. It was of a live woman.

  She’s sleeping, she insisted.

  Not knowing what to do, I picked her up. Perhaps she needed to see the dead body again.

  I took her back to her home, an impoverished little house miles from the nearest neighbour. She remained silent as we stood over her mother’s bed, still holding the sandwich she had wrapped in tissue. The putrid scent of the corpse filled my nostrils, flies were already gathered in the tiny room.

  How she had stayed here for so long confounded me and it chilled me to see empty packets of biscuits on a table by the bed.

  “She’s gone, Mallory. You have to say goodbye to her. She’s gone.”

  There were no tears on her thin, drawn little face as she stared at the dead body. Nothing at all from her thoughts. After a few moments, she got down and placed the sandwich by the corpse. She came back to me, and when I picked her up, she merely lay her head against my shoulder.

  She was fast asleep by the time we returned to the mansion. I entered her sleeping mind and made her forget those harrowing days in that house alone with the dead body. I also made her forget me. Then I drove her to the nearest police station and left her in their care.

  A few days later, I called the authorities and made enquiries about her well-being. She was fine, physically, I was told, but had still not spoken a word to anybody. According to neighbours, she had distant relatives in Texas that they were trying to trace, and she had been placed in a foster home in the meantime.

  I put the phone down, still deeply shaken by finding Mallory outside the mansion. The face of the other red-haired girl never left my mind during the remainder of that week.

  Two weeks later, I was awakened from my daily slumber by movement outside the mansion. I already knew what I would find, but the sight of Mallory sitting outside the mansion peering through the gates still brought a chill over me. And it was hard to dismiss the insistent and irrational thought that she was a ghost come back to haunt me for my past sins.

  When she turned and saw me standing a few metres from her, she bolted to her feet and tried to run away.

  “Mallory. Wait!”

  The sound of her name brought her to a stop and she stared at me quizzically, fear in her light brown eyes. I reached into her mind and released the memory of me I had locked away. The tension melted away from her face instantly and she ran toward me. She stopped short just before she reached me and merely stood staring at me.

  Inside the mansion, she went straight to the chair by the fireplace where she had sat before. Once the fire was lit, she settled back into the chair and fell asleep. I telephoned the authorities. They were having trouble finding her relatives and she was not settling well into the foster home.

  I watched her as she slept in the chair. Whether the decision I came to was made out of loneliness or guilt, I decided I would look after Mallory.

  It was easy to manipulate and deceive the authorities into believing I was one of the distant relatives they had been trying to trace, and a few days later, she came to live with me. I hired a childminder who was to have sole responsibility for her.

  In the beginning I kept my distance from Mallory. Every time I laid eyes on her, a chill came over me, the other child I had murdered in the woods over two hundred years ago quick to come to the surface.

  Whenever I arrived home in the mornings, she would be waiting by the stairs biting her nails, her pale face devoid of emotion, her eyes dark and serious. The moment I uttered a good morning, she disappeared down the hallway and a twinge of anguish found its way into my heart. In the evenings, she often came to whatever room I was in and stood by the door watching me. Whenever I faced her and tried to make conversation, she darted out of sight.

  Soon she began greeting me with a shy smile, and in the evenings she did her homework in the study whenever I was there. Before long, when I arrived at the mansion at dawn, she would be standing on the stairs in her pyjamas waiting for me. Joy flushed through me and I laughed with pleasure when she ran into my waiting arms. I would make her breakfast whilst she hovered around me, her little fingers tracing words in the air, often struggling for the right sign (as she was still learning sign language.) But more often than not, she spoke to me through images in her mind.

  I took her to school every morning before retiring for the day, making sure I was awake to get to the school gates on time to collect her. We were seldom apart before long, and without my even being aware of it, she had taken away some of the loneliness that had come with Luna’s absence. I still thought of Luna daily, but I no longer let hatred mar those thoughts, although I was still very angry at her. I also began to think of the other red-haired child less and less.

  Another pleasant and unexpected effect of having Mallory with me was that the bitter bile that arose whenever I thought of Onyx and the second heartbeat, soon faded away. And in this way, the world once more began to be open to me and life pulled me into its tender bosom once more.

  Chapter 39

  Life went on, and I can even say it became a pleasure again now I was greeted at dawn by the smile of a red-haired child who had become my own.

  I returned to the mansion one evening, a year after Mallory entered my world, laden with presents for her. Christmas was only a few weeks away and I was looking forward to seeing the joy on her face when she opened her presents. One of my staff was waiting for me in the drawing room.

  “There is someone here for you, sir,” he said. “A coloured girl. She said she is a friend of yours.”

  I vaguely registered the disdainful way in which he said the word “coloured” but I didn’t wait long enough to hear the rest of his sentence, for I had seen in his mind who that someone was.

  I hurried out of the room. Once out in the hallway, I vanished, reappearing in my bedroom where my father’s swords were. When I dipped into the ether and materialised in Mallory’s room, I found her sitting on the floor by her bed. Luna was sitting on the bed behind her, her dark hands buried in a sea of red hair.

  Uncle Avery, Mallory signed. Luna’s doing my hair like hers.

  I barely glanced at Mallory or at the two rows of plaits on the side of her head. I only had eyes for Luna.

  She was dressed in a jade-green flared jumpsuit, which had a belt at the waist and a matching jacket. The front of her hair had been plaited back, the rest was a large feathery afro. Sadness hung around her eyes as she watched me. I hate to say this, but seeing her again after so long felt like that moment when I stood beneath the trees on the Holbert plantation and saw her in the flesh for the first time. The shock of that mesmerising beauty and that the dream I had waited for all those ye
ars was actually real.

  I quickly closed my mind to hers. But her thoughts were completely open to me and I saw no walls or fences to bar my way. Everything was there for me to see, the murders she hid from me when we were together, those years when she told herself she hated me whilst following me around the world as I searched for her. The brief, unsatisfying dalliances with other men. It was a merciless onslaught, but the thing that lay like a silken sheen over everything she had done, was her love for me.

  Her fingers, which had been working in Mallory’s hair, stilled as she studied me. All I could think of was how quickly she would be able to snap Mallory’s neck before I could reach her.

  “Mallory,” I said, trying to sound much calmer than I felt. “Stand up and slowly walk toward me.”

  Mallory looked up at me in bewilderment. Her eyes widened when she glanced down at the sword dangling loosely at my side. She twisted her head slowly round to look up at Luna.

  “I’m not going to hurt her. She knows that,” Luna said, a hint of reproach in her words.

  “Mallory! Come here, now!”

  She sat up with a start and I was relieved Luna let her go and sat watching me with a pained expression as Mallory scrambled to my side. I felt intense relief when I picked her up, holding her close to me.

  “I’m here to talk. That’s all, Avery,” Luna said, sadness in her eyes.

  Wait here!

  I shimmered out of the room with Mallory and gathered the rest of my household staff, ignoring their fear and confusion as I pulled them into the ether with me and out of the mansion. I took them part of the way to the church and pressed on them the urgency of the situation, commanding that they get to the church as fast as they could and not leave it until I came to get them.

  The last I saw of Mallory was her little face looking back at me, her cheeks red, tears streaming down her face as her minder pulled her away.

  When I returned to the mansion, Luna was waiting in the drawing room at the window. I gazed at the small, vulnerable curve of her shoulders, remembering those serene days spent in our bed-sized chests in each other’s arms, closed off from the sun.

  “What do you want, Luna?”

  She didn’t say anything for a moment. The room waited. Outside, the evening sank into darkness and the night called to me.

  “Mallory is adorable. She is also slightly intuitive. Did you know that, Avery?”

  “Answer me, Luna. What do you want?”

  She sighed before she faced me. At first she wouldn’t look at me, and she appeared as frightened and as vulnerable as the morning I brought her to the mansion against her will. When she finally looked up and met my gaze, her voice was low and full of sorrow.

  “I love you, Avery.”

  For a few moments I couldn’t speak. Her words were so unexpected and the thorns from the rose of my enduring love for her cut deep, drawing blood.

  “What cruel game are you playing?” I hissed.

  “It’s the truth, and something I wish I had said to you every second of every moment we spent together. And I’m sorry. I’m so sorry for killing—”

  “Don’t!” I whispered. “Don’t you dare say her name.”

  “I’m sorry for what I did to your wife,” she continued after a few moments. “And I’m sorry for leaving you and letting you waste years searching for me when I was always just a heartbeat away.”

  “Why are you here, Luna?” I said, anger along with treacherous yearning making my voice waver when I spoke.

  “I’m here because I need you to understand that I know what I did—all of it—was wrong. When I left you, at first it was because I was angry and I wanted to hurt you. But after a while, I stayed away because I couldn’t understand how you could love me when I was so wrong in so many ways. You loved me when I was just a slave. And when you found out I had been killing for years, I thought you would finally see I wasn’t worth your love. But it was still there in your eyes, your words, and in what you did. I couldn’t understand it and I couldn’t face seeing it.”

  “What does that matter, now?”

  “It matters because I love you. I love you but...but I gave up on us and I lost faith in the world. I just kept thinking about all those years we spent having to hide what we were to each other. We’ve never been able to walk down the street hand in hand just like any other married couple. I thought it would always be like that.”

  “But...but I loved you. Why couldn’t that be enough?”

  “It was—it is—enough. It’s all I’ll ever want or need.”

  “She’s still dead, Luna,” I whispered, years of agony and guilt over Henriette’s death overwhelming me.

  She faced the window, but not quick enough for me not to see her eyes shining with unshed tears.

  “I didn’t plan on killing her, Avery. I thought that once you saw me you’d forget all about her. But you...you placed yourself between me and her. And when she threw that sword to you instead of running for her life, it...it made me see that she could be a threat. That she wasn’t the weak, inconsequential little thing I thought she was. I regret what I did to her, to you. I’ll never forgive myself for it.”

  I was silent and it was difficult to keep my composure because I could see she spoke the truth. The years of guilt were there in the way she couldn’t meet my gaze, the defeated lowering of her head, the small hands fidgeting ceaselessly, buttoning then unbuttoning the last button on her jacket.

  “It’s taken years for me to summon the courage to return and ask you to forgive me. Even then, I may not have been able to do it if I hadn’t promised Sutana. It was the last thing she asked of me before she...”

  Her words trailed away. I stared at her in anguish, wounded by the image in her mind of the dying vampire hunter lying in her arms in a grove of trees, staring up at the sky in wonder as she slipped out of the grasp of life.

  I closed myself off from her thoughts. I was not going to let our shared loss weaken me. She faced me again, letting me see the tears trailing down her face.

  “I know you don’t want me here, Avery. But I love you so much and I have to know if there is a chance, no matter how small, that one day you will be able to look at me and not be consumed with hatred as you are now. I have to know that, Avery.”

  She took a few steps toward me but stopped halfway across the room, as if afraid of getting too close to me, her head lowered.

  “I don’t expect anything from you straight away, but maybe I could have a house not too far from here and we could meet for a few hours each night. Just a few hours, that’s all I ask. I hate myself for the way I treated you, even when we were together. But I need to know there’s still a chance for us.”

  I desperately wanted to say yes, but the image of Henriette’s broken body lay between us and there was no crossing that.

  So making sure my mind was completely closed to hers, I met Luna’s gaze.

  “Then hating you is at least one thing we have in common.”

  She let out a soft gasp.

  “Do you mean that?”

  I moved to the fireplace, keeping my back to her.

  “Yes. Yes, I do.”

  The silence in the room seemed to curl into a hard ball.

  “There is one thing I have wondered about over the years,” she said after a few long minutes. “That night when I threw my sword away. Did you know I would be able to stop you if you tried to kill me?”

  “Yes. When I brought my sword down, I knew you were fast, and strong enough to stop me. But I didn’t know if you would. That is something that has haunted me ever since that night. I don’t want you dead, Luna. But it does not mean I ever want to see or speak to you again.”

  After a few long, agonising minutes, I turned around. She was completely still and watched me, a mixture of disbelief and debilitating anguish etched in her features.

  “I want you to go now, Luna.”

  At first it was as if she hadn’t heard me, then she nodded. She tried to smile but tears
were still streaming down her face.

  “Can I at least say goodbye to Mallory?”

  The anger in my eyes was answer enough and she again nodded, undoing the bottom button of her jacket again before she let her hands hang limp at her sides. She seemed unsure for a moment and then moved with confidence to stand a few inches away from me. She looked up at me whilst I stared at a point past her head, controlling the urge to pull her into my arms. The scent of her perfume was so familiar, a welcome greeting from the past. It was one I’d had designed especially for her, a mixture of floral and spicy. I thought it was perfect for the unique jewel I had waited for so long to find.

  When she reached a hand toward my face, I stiffened and she withdrew it. After a few moments, I allowed my gaze to meet hers, hating the pain I saw there, but refusing to do anything to ease it. Slowly, she rose up onto the tips of her toes and kissed me lightly on the cheek. Then she was gone.

  I was alone. I was alone again with only the lingering scent of her perfume and many more years ahead with this pain. I sank to my knees and wept.

  Chapter 40

  The following months were ones of deep anguish. It had taken decades for me to rebuild my life after Henriette’s death, and seeing Luna for even that short space of time had thrown me back into the emotional wasteland I thought I had left behind me. I could not stop thinking of her and her apparent contrition.

  Maybe I could have a house nearby, she had said. And in the beginning we could spend a few hours together a night. A few hours, that’s all I’m asking for.

  Those words tortured me, and during those aching daylight hours, sleep was as elusive to me as a moment free from the lust for blood.

  Despairing, my thoughts and emotions in turmoil, I withdrew from the world once more and from those around me. From being the light of my life, Mallory was suddenly shut out of the warmth of my affections and completely left out in the cold.

  She was crushed and bewildered; I saw it daily—her confused little face staring up at me, imploring me. I eventually shut myself off from her thoughts and the ceaseless questions in those brief moments I was around long enough to hear them. At night I listened to her cry herself to sleep, but was too exhausted emotionally to be able to give her the comfort or attention she needed.