Rising Dark (The Darkling Trilogy, Book 2)

by A. D. Koboah

  I looked down at her anxious little face and sighed.

  “I should have known I wouldn’t be able to hide from you, Dallas,” I said. “Come on. Let’s get you that ice cream.”

  She beamed up at me and I smiled in return, letting that simple smile take me away from my troubles.

  I bought her an ice cream and we sat by the side of a fountain. She was absolutely endearing and so well-behaved, and it was hard not to think of Luna and how much she would have adored Dallas.

  “Luna? What’s Luna?” she asked.

  “You can read my mind, Dallas?”

  She shrugged. “I don’t know. It just came into my head.”

  “I think you can. Luna was one of your ancestors. I was thinking that she would have adored you.”

  My torment flowed over me again at this next demonstration of her power and I lapsed into silence. My thoughts were on Luna and of her death, an ever-present wound that would never heal. I was wrenched out of my thoughts by Dallas’s next words.

  “She’s not dead.” She was still focusing on her ice cream.

  “What...what did you say?”

  She looked up at me, and worry creased her brow when she observed my reaction to her words. She was trying to remember why she had said what she said, but was confused now. Like all intuition that lived in shadow, those words had come unbidden to her, but now she was trying to chase it, it remained slippery, darting back into the shadows where it could not be drawn back.

  “Um...I...she’s not dead. She changed, that’s all.”

  I found myself in the grip of emotions too thick for words. It felt as if the entire world had fallen away, save for the child before me and the three precious words she had spoken: She’s not dead.

  I immediately began searching her thoughts, looking for whatever prompted her to say that.

  A giggle escaped her and she reached up to rub her head.

  “Stop that. It tickles.”

  I let a smile touch my lips. She continued to talk about her new nanny. I only half-listened, my soul set ablaze.

  When she finished her ice cream, she clambered off the side of the fountain and placed her rucksack on her back.

  “Thank you for buying me ice cream, Mr Avery.”

  “It was a pleasure, Dallas.”

  Vanessa really was such an idiot. The child was adorable and so well-behaved. Clearly all she needed was some attention. The reason for that exemplary behaviour soon became clear.

  “I just need you to take me home so I can get my teddy and then I can come and live with you.”

  I froze and my throat went dry. Acute anxiety touched me, the same kind of anxiety Vanessa displayed when she ran out of the room at the sound of Dallas’s call.

  “Dallas, I...you... I’m afraid that’s not possible.”

  Her little face fell into a picture of misery.

  “But...but...I promise I’ll be good.”

  “It’s not because of that, Dallas. I would if I could, but you belong at home with your parents.”

  There were tears in her eyes now. “But I don’t want to be with them. I want to be with you. I’ve been w—”

  “Hush, Dallas.” I pulled out a handkerchief and gently wiped away the tears that fell down her cheeks. “You belong at home with your mother and your nanny. She’ll be here any moment now to take you home.”

  Her misery deepened as she, too, became aware of her nanny moving through the crowds searching for her.

  “I...I’ll be sad if you don’t take me with you.”

  “You won’t remember me, Dallas.”

  I kissed her on the forehead and then moved away, clearing her memory of the last twenty minutes. She stood alone crying when her nanny found her.

  I watched from a distance as the frantic woman ran toward Dallas and pulled her into her arms. She held her for a few long minutes.

  I moved away, my thoughts on Luna, Dallas’s words stirring up long-abandoned hope.

  She’s not dead.

  ***

  Ella was in her study with a plate of food thinking about a business trip to Japan.

  “Is Luna still alive?”

  I had surprised her for once, for she dropped the plate as she spun around to face me. An impenetrable wall went up around her thoughts. But before her mind became completely closed to me, I caught a glimpse of something, something about Dallas she didn’t want anyone to know. Something that exhilarated and terrified in equal measure. I could have caught whatever it was before the wall was fully up, but I didn’t care to know what it was. As always when it came to Luna I was sucked into a black hole and nothing, and no one, existed outside of it. Dallas’s words had made me face the devastation in my soul Luna’s death had wrought. If there was even the smallest chance she was alive, I had to know.

  Ella smoothed her hands down her skirt and smiled, an icy smile that was as false as the syrupy genial tone in her voice.

  “Mr Wentworth? It seems as if you’ve forgotten your manners already.”

  She remained unperturbed when I vanished and re-appeared a few feet from her. She merely gazed up at me, shrewd and calculating as always as she searched my face, and no doubt, my mind.

  “You’ve spent some time with Dallas. A surprisingly well-behaved Dallas from what I can see,” she said.

  “Is Luna still alive?”

  “You’re asking me? I wasn’t there twenty years ago. You were.”

  I grew angry. She no doubt sensed the change because she relented and her smile lost its coolness. It became almost sympathetic.

  “Dallas is already an extremely gifted witch. But she is still only a child. An adorable but spoilt, attention-seeking child. She no doubt picked up your thoughts and emotions and said what she thought would please you. Luna is dead, as you well know.”

  I moved away from her to the portrait of Luna above the fireplace and gazed up at it longingly. When I faced Ella again, I saw she hadn’t moved and was watching me carefully, the smile gone now, only those cold, calculating eyes which revealed nothing.

  “If she was alive. Would you tell me?”

  “No,” she said simply with a sheepish smile. “Because it wouldn’t serve either of us. But she is dead. So close the door on Luna, along with the past, and open your heart to something new. You have many, many more years ahead of you. The only way you’ll be able to recover some of what you’ve lost is to look to the future.”

  I wasn’t sure what to make of her words, or the sympathetic tone. She was so tricky, mercurial, and at times totally ruthless.

  The last thing I saw before I disappeared to claim the night air were those shrewd eyes carefully appraising me.

  I stayed outside the mansion for a few minutes. In my hand was a hair band with bright blue baubles. Dallas had given it to me. I stared intently at it, thinking about what Dallas had said, her open, simple thoughts, and Ella’s words.

  Long ago, when I had been captured by Master John and Luna fought to keep me alive, she told them that vampires could resurrect unless their ashes were scattered.

  I also did not see Luna’s dead body, only Simon’s memory of it.

  Could Luna still be alive?

  When I turned around to look back up at the mansion, I saw Ella at the window watching me. The only thing I could be sure of was that I couldn’t trust anything she told me. She had no reason to lie to me about whether or not Luna was alive, and perhaps I was deceiving myself, but I didn’t want to believe her. I carefully placed the bright blue hair band in my pocket.

  I drew the darkness to me and delved into the nothingness, spiriting myself away from her home.

  Chapter 47

  The end of the nineties and the beginning of a new millennium saw me searching for Luna. I travelled to every corner of the globe and stayed in each location for months, scouring every city, searching the minds of those I came across for a glimpse of her, the dead and undead alike. I only broke away from the search whenever Luna’s descendants or my own relations nee
ded me.

  I thought constantly about Dallas and the extraordinary power I had seen her display so far, power that would no doubt mean she would be preyed on by the chapel entity before long. And whenever I broke off from my search, I immediately went to New York to check on her and look for signs it had begun to target her.

  One night I arrived at their apartment in New York to discover no one at home. I was able to discover from one of the doormen that Dallas’s father was away on business, her mother was probably with her lover and Dallas would likely come stumbling back to the apartment drunk, or high, in the early hours as had become the norm for her since her thirteenth birthday over a year ago.

  I made my way to the club she frequented on a weekly basis.

  I moved through the dark rooms of the night club, moving past drunk scantily clad females draped over glassy eyed males. They gyrated to the soulless music being pumped through the air beneath dazzling strobe lights.

  I found no sign of Dallas among the sweaty bodies around me although I had been told she was definitely here. I entered the deserted ladies toilets and came to an abrupt stop in the doorway. The years since the first death, Ebony’s, had seen me surf unending waves of hopelessness. But it did not come close to what I felt when I entered the ladies toilet.

  Dallas was in one of the cubicles, the door wide open. She was sitting on the toilet, her slender dark legs and arms sprawled, her head resting against one of the cubicle walls, her mouth hanging open. She was unconscious, her black lace knickers around her ankles.

  It was a few moments before I was able to move to her and lift her off the toilet seat. I pulled up her underwear and straightened the short, tight dress she wore.

  She had begun to stir by the time I picked her up and carried her out of the toilets and the garish, soulless club.

  Out in the bracing night air, she seemed to come to enough for me to place her on her feet, although her eyes were still closed and her arms draped heavily around my neck, her head against my chest. She shivered against me in the cool air. I took off my jacket and draped it around her. She had no handbag. I can only assume it had been lost or stolen.

  I could have taken her home in seconds, but I did not want to leave her so soon and so I waited for a taxi. Her thoughts came through to me of what had occurred that night, events she probably would not recall the following day. And anger heated my chest at the image in her mind of her boyfriend, Omar, who had brought her here and then abandoned her, leaving with another woman.

  I felt her shift, the warm soft pressure against my chest disappearing. I glanced down at her distractedly to see her awake and staring up at me. I was momentarily taken away from my troubled thoughts by the clarity of her gaze, and the raven eyes that were so much like Luna’s. Again swift pain and yearning clenched my chest. They all looked like her in some way, but it never failed to bring the pain and a reminder of all I had lost.

  Her lips curved into a smile.

  “You,” she murmured, her brow furrowed in a sleepy frown. “Now where have you been?”

  I was completely speechless because she remembered me. Vividly. Although I had made her forget our last encounter. How could she already be this powerful?

  I was saved from responding by a brutish looking white male in a black suit who had a slab for a face and small, mean looking eyes that hid a heart too easily broken by trying to fix the world and everyone in it. His current and equally fruitless project was Dallas, whose behaviour he had watched steadily spiral out of control since she first started coming to this club.

  “Is everything okay, Dallas? Where’s Omar?” he asked.

  His gaze was on me and there was only the barest hint of civility to veil the menace in his tone.

  “Hey, Justin. It’s okay. He’s my vampire guardian angel,” she slurred drunkenly.

  I tensed and could only stare down at her in surprise. Her words brought an exasperated smile to Justin’s lips although his stance was still hostile.

  “You worry too much about me, Justin,” Dallas continued. “I’ll only end up breaking your heart. That’s what my vampire angel thinks anyway. But I’ll never hurt you. You’re my friend.”

  “It’s all right,” I said to Justin before Dallas could say more. “I work for the Marshalls.”

  I entered his mind and calmed his anger and unease, allowing him to see the truth of my intentions toward her. A taxi had pulled up by then.

  “Here.” I handed him my business card. “I’ll make sure she gets home and if she is ever in any trouble, give me a call.”

  He nodded, his concerned gaze on Dallas as we got into the taxi. She waved at him and blew him a kiss as we drove away.

  In the cab she sank into my arms, her sleepy mesmerising eyes on me as she only half-listened as I lectured her on her behaviour. I ignored the less than wholesome thoughts that were directed at me. She appeared to have passed out again by the time we arrived at her apartment.

  I placed her in bed and stood staring at her for a few moments. Then I again erased all her memories of me and placed a mental command that would stop her drinking and partying. Then I left the apartment, the anger that had heated my chest earlier now a ferocious blaze.

  ***

  I rang the bell four times before it was pulled open by a tall, handsome African American male. He was completely naked. He glanced up at me, his eyes glazed, his face creased in confusion.

  “What the fuck do you want?” he asked.

  He moved forward, out of the apartment, in response to a mental command and I seized him by the arm, dragging him into the ether with me. We materialised on the roof of his apartment block where I released him. He stumbled back a few steps and looked around him in confusion.

  “What the—”

  His words were cut off by a blow to the jaw that knocked him off his feet. He hit the ground hard, his eyes rolling into the back of his head as he spat out blood.

  I beat him, only just managing to control myself enough to not kill him. But it still saw him left with multiple broken bones. When I was done, I left him at the door of his apartment having placed a mental command in his mind that he never make contact with Dallas ever again.

  It was only then that the anger that had blazed in my chest cooled to ash. But anxiety still plagued me along with the memory of the shivering girl in my arms, the raven eyes that had wrought so much pain and the helplessness I felt regarding the threat she was not even aware of.

  The following week, I returned to New York to discover once again that Dallas was not at home. I sighed. Clearly the mental command I had placed in her mind had had no effect whatever. I waited until she returned. She stumbled into the apartment block in the early hours with a half empty bottle of champagne in her hand, her dress even shorter than on the previous occasion.

  I sighed, and when I was sure she was fast asleep, I left New York. My destination? Switzerland, the next stop in this never-ending quest for Auria and an answer to the problem of the chapel entity.

  ***

  Ella’s death—to old age, thankfully—was a blow. She was the only one who knew of the danger facing the family, and in her death, I lost my only living ally in this battle against an intangible evil that continued to claim lives of men and women that were like my own children.

  I continued to keep a close eye on Dallas and watched her grow up into a beautiful young woman. Of all of Luna’s descendants, Dallas resembled her the most. But at times I could not be sure my memory of Luna was true since it had been so long since I had gazed upon her face. Dallas continued her extremely reckless, wilful, and irresponsible behaviour, drinking far too much and always finding herself in the most dangerous situations. I worried constantly about her.

  One night, I made my way to Atlanta after another warning, in time to prevent Dallas from being preyed on by a vampire. I had not needed to do much to warn the vampire away from Dallas, but rage and fear had made me chase it across Georgia until I eventually grew bored of following the exhaust
ed, terrified creature. I returned to Atlanta at dawn, where Dallas was staying with her aunt Rose and learned, to my dismay, that Dallas had come across Luna’s journal.

  “I’ve seen the chapel before. I’ve been dreaming about it for years,” I heard her say.

  Alarm touched my heart. When I entered her aunt’s mind and made her tell Dallas to stay away from the chapel, I found myself thrown out of her mind, whether by Dallas or Rose, I could not tell. Exhausted, I decided to head for home. I would deal with Dallas when she came searching for me.

  She came and I sent her away, as always, making her forget the encounter.

  Lonely and deeply yearning for Luna, I resumed my search for her, but I had already given up by then and was merely going through the motions, pretending there was hope when all hope was lost.

  So it was with a heavy heart that I roamed the streets of Louisiana one night, deep in thought about the ever-present dilemma of what to do about the evil that was stalking Luna’s descendants. Then I received a frantic call from Mallory, asking me to return to the mansion immediately as there was something I needed to see. Mallory rarely called me during the night hours unless it was of the utmost urgency, so I headed back to the mansion.

  I knew there was someone waiting for me in the field of flowers even before I got within sight of the mansion.

  It felt as if my heart ground to a stop and for a few moments I could not move, my hands shaking as I stood alone in the Louisiana countryside, wondering if she had finally kept her promise and returned to me.

  I raced toward the mansion and materialised in the field of flowers to a horrifying sight.

  There was a pink luggage set by the door. Dallas was standing with her back to me and for a moment, her silhouette against the Louisiana night was like Luna’s that night on the windswept rooftops of London, that air of waiting. When she turned around, I was in for a shock.

  Beautiful, warm Dallas was no more. A powerful vampire was what met my gaze.