Available Darkness Box Set | Books 1-3

by Platt, Sean

  “This is where it’s supposed to be, right?”

  “Yes.” Judith sighed, likely tired of answering the same question over and over since they entered the canyon what felt like ages ago.

  Talani gave Abigail a smile that said, Don’t mind Judith.

  Judith always seemed cold and distant, but Abigail got the feeling that it was never personal. Yet now, since losing Solomon, she seemed even more remote. Talani had walked beside her a few times, attempting to raise her spirits, but Judith ignored every attempt, keeping her focus on finding Kovar. It seemed she was just hanging on long enough to get them to where they needed to go.

  Abigail wondered if Judith would pull herself together before they left for Jonah. She wanted to do something, but if Talani — practically a daughter to Judith — couldn’t get through, what hope did Abigail have?

  In a way, Abigail was glad that she wasn’t expected to help. It was all she could do to just walk. Abigail felt guilty for such a selfish feeling, particularly since she was the one slowing them down, knowing that if it weren’t for her, they would’ve found the village, and its shelter from the sun, hours ago.

  She felt like a third wheel, square and made of stone.

  As the passage widened, Abigail felt hope — a sensation she thought she might never feel again.

  We’re almost there!

  But as they stepped out of the canyon, the trio found themselves surrounded by trees in every direction, giant trees unlike any that Abigail had ever seen, all of them wider than mansions. Trees that would take fifteen minutes or more to circle around.

  Even worse, they appeared to be at the base of a mountain, and their path continued its ascent with no sign of a village.

  “What is this? Where’s the village?” Abigail asked, her heart sinking.

  “It’s supposed to be right here. She didn’t say anything about giant trees or a mountain,” Judith said, her voice shaky.

  Abigail wondered how much of an immediate threat the sun might be. They had cloaks and cowls, but how protective would they be in full daylight once the sun was high? She wanted to ask about the danger, but felt it might be a reminder that this was all her fault, and they might decide to leave her behind.

  Abigail fought the urge to cry, but tears were welling in her eyes despite her best efforts. She looked at the ground, letting her cowl and long dark hair bury her face.

  Talani said, “It has to be here. Right? We just keep walking.”

  Abigail didn’t look up to see Judith’s response, but hearing the others she followed, hoping they weren’t slogging a path to their deaths.

  They followed the winding path through the woods up the mountainside as the plummeting temperature sent shivers through the group. Abigail thought she smelled the sweet scent of flowers, though she saw not a single bloom. The icy air didn’t make it easy.

  Their agonizing pace had slowed further, thanks to the mountain’s steep incline and the path’s twisted nature, navigating the massive trees, sometimes with several clustered together and occupying the width of an Earthly city block.

  Abigail imagined a woodsman might be able to yield a town’s worth of buildings with the wood from a single tree. Of course it would probably take him a month to chop said tree down!

  She wondered how high the trees went — she could only see about ten feet up before the clouds obscured her view.

  Given their width, the trees could be a thousand feet high, she figured.

  Abigail wanted to ask the others what they thought, but the idea of talking, with her chest so tight already, felt like a punch.

  Soon the rich brown-and-green ground gave way to white.

  And in the snow, the path became even harder to follow, especially in the hazy blue of twin moons bleeding through the clouds.

  Talani was the first to speak. “Is that the end of the trail?”

  Judith scanned the ground, then shook her head.

  “I can’t tell.”

  Abigail felt her panic swelling again. “We’ve been walking forever on this path! Are we going to have to turn around? I can’t go back. I can’t!”

  Her chest tightened more.

  Abigail gasped, certain she was about to suffocate, desperately trying to suck in air. But she couldn’t draw enough to fill her lungs. Her heart was racing way too fast. Her skin felt like a million needles stabbing her at once. She cried out to Talani’s mind.

  What’s happening?

  Talani rushed to her, putting her hands on Abigail’s back, rubbing up and down. “Calm down, Abigail. We’ll find the path.”

  No, no, we’re going to die here. I can feel it!

  She continued to gasp for air, barely finding a breath.

  Oh God, I’m going to die right here!

  Judith walked over, though Abigail was only peripherally aware of her. Abigail’s focus was narrowing, invisible walls collapsing around her. She pushed Talani and Judith away, desperate for space and still gasping for air.

  “Calm down,” Judith said, echoing Talani. “Close your eyes, and focus on my voice.”

  Abigail closed her eyes, but they involuntarily opened back up.

  Her head spun around, eyes scanning the forest for enemies, certain that something was closing in. She screamed, dropping to the ground on her haunches, hands curled into claws.

  Something is coming!

  Get ready to fight!

  She heard screams in her mind, not voices, not memories, perhaps not even human — animal-like shrieks, so loud she raised her clawed hands to her ears to drown the sound.

  But she couldn’t muffle the nightmares in her mind.

  She kept gasping for air.

  She felt lightheaded.

  She had to run.

  Had to kill.

  Had to feed.

  Noises of the women near her, whose names she suddenly couldn’t remember, were inaudible blurs lost in her bellowing head.

  The older one was approaching her, hands out.

  “Get away,” Abigail snarled, certain the old woman would harm her. She tried catching her breath as the younger girl approached from the other side.

  Abigail swiped a clawed hand, yelling at her to go away, even though the words didn’t come out as intended.

  Why won’t they leave me alone?

  She turned to run, but Abigail’s legs gave out beneath her.

  She cried as she fell, face first into the freezing snow.

  She heard movement behind her as she lay facedown.

  She turned around.

  The older woman was bending down, about to do something.

  Abigail cried out, swiping at the woman with her hands.

  “Away!” was all she could manage.

  She gasped again, trying to suck in air.

  The screams in her head grew louder.

  The walls were closing in.

  The woman reached down to touch Abigail’s face.

  Abigail tried to bite her, but then the woman’s strong fingers found her mouth, and thrust inside.

  What are you doing?

  Abigail wanted to kick, but her legs refused to heed her brain’s commands.

  Abigail gasped, gagged, retched, vomit flooding her mouth, but the woman refused to move her fingers.

  She looked up to see the woman’s trembling body.

  What’s happening?

  The walls closed in tighter.

  Then darkness came.

  Fifteen

  Caleb

  2011 …

  At first, the interrogator, Raina, was in Caleb’s head, digging through his memories.

  He could feel her sifting through them like a catalog of his life’s major events, with nothing he could do to keep her from peering in on his most intimate moments.

  She stopped on a few from his childhood, including a time he’d stuck up for a smaller kid and knocked a bully on his ass. Then a time in his awkward teenage years when he’d cried because the girl he loved didn’t feel the same. A sad time in h
is youth when Duncan Alderman had told him everything would be okay.

  “Please,” he said, standing beside her in his childhood bedroom, “stop.”

  “I just want to see the real you.”

  Raina did something to initiate another surge of memories then stopped on one that caught her interest.

  He recognized it immediately.

  “Please, stop. I don’t want to be here.”

  She ignored him.

  They were in the hotel room, that night.

  Caleb was cradling his dead wife’s burned body as he cried out.

  He turned away from the scene, not wanting to relive the horror of having accidentally murdered his wife, having stolen her life in his sleep as the vampire inside him had been unleashed.

  He closed his eyes, the sounds of his sobs cutting through the past into the present, causing him to cry again.

  “So you were telling the truth?” Raina asked behind him.

  He couldn’t turn to meet her eyes.

  “Yes. I told you that I’m not the monster you think I am. I haven’t been on this world in a long time. I don’t remember my life here, let alone my father or brothers. It was all taken from me, for my own good.”

  “Okay.”

  And then they were in darkness, still in some shared psychic space in their heads as if in a dream. The real world and the torture chamber was nowhere to be seen or felt.

  Caleb looked at her. Her harshness was gone, replaced by a look of empathy.

  “I’m sorry. It’s not often I find a good Valkoer.”

  “So, you’re a Valkoer too? How?”

  “Well, since I saw your horror, let me show you mine.”

  The darkness shifted, and suddenly they were inside Raina’s memories, standing in her childhood bedroom.

  He wasn’t sure how he knew where they were; he just did. It was as if some understanding of the memories was transferred along with Raina’s shared vision.

  The bedroom was small with one bed she shared with her six-year-old sister, a dresser with a lantern and a toy boat atop it, and a closet with no door where meager clothes hung on a pole. The room was odd in that the only truly clear thing he could see was the bed, while everything else was slightly fuzzy, and in some cases shifting. One of the dresses in the closet changed from yellow to blue to red, as if Raina couldn’t remember the exact color and was changing the memory as she recalled it.

  The other thing that didn’t change was the girl on the bed, lying there, covered up, asking, “Will you read to me, Raina?”

  It was an alien bedroom on an alien world, but the scene was incredibly human — a younger kid sister wanting her slightly older sister to read a bedtime story.

  The young Raina materialized in the room, standing in front of the window, staring out into the night. She looked maybe eighteen.

  Younger Raina turned to her sister, whispered, “Hush,” then ran to the dresser and extinguished the lantern, plunging the room into darkness before returning to her spot at the window.

  Caleb walked over to her.

  Suddenly, the older version of Raina was beside the younger, also looking outside.

  “This is when they came,” she said, looking at Caleb.

  He looked outside the window to see a pair of figures getting out of a horse-drawn carriage.

  The man, in a black coat and suit, was large and muscular, with an ugly monobrow and long dark hair. He looked like some of the swarthier European mobsters Caleb had run into while working at the Agency. His female companion was young, in her twenties, if that, with long blonde hair and a flowing black dress displaying ample cleavage. Something about her said prostitute, though Caleb wasn’t sure if that was him inferring it or Raina’s memories of the events flavoring the event.

  “Who are they?” Caleb asked.

  “His name was Hugo, the boss of the local criminal organization at the time. He was also Valkoer.”

  “And her?”

  “Her name was Judith. One of his Valkoer women. He had several, and liked to bring them with him on jobs to help him.”

  “Help him what? Why are they here?”

  Raina looked back at her sister, lying on the bed. Her eyes began to water.

  “They’re here to collect money my father owed them. But he couldn’t pay, and so they’re going to take something else.”

  Raina went to the bed and kneeled beside it, running a hand over her younger sister’s head. But she couldn’t touch in a memory, so her fingers went through the girl like a ghost.

  Raina looked up at Caleb. “I wish I’d read to her that night. It wouldn’t have changed anything, but our final exchange before this was me saying no.”

  Suddenly shouting downstairs.

  Young Raina rushed to the bedroom door and locked it.

  Her sister cried, “What’s happening, Raina?”

  “Shh,” Younger Raina said, “let’s hide under the bed.”

  More shouting downstairs, mostly words Caleb couldn’t decipher, likely because he couldn’t hear anything that Raina hadn’t originally heard when this happened.

  He watched as she hid her sister under the bed.

  The younger girl called out, “You too.”

  “No, I won’t fit,” Younger Raina said. “No matter what happens, keep your hands over your mouth and stay quiet, do you understand?”

  The girl nodded, tears streaming down her face.

  The doorknob rattled.

  Young Raina looked up, startled, then back down at her sister. She put a finger over her lips, reminding her to keep quiet.

  Caleb’s heart raced, watching helplessly, wanting to yell at them to go out the window, that there was still time to escape.

  But there wasn’t.

  He wasn’t a time traveller, only a witness, unable to do anything to alter the past.

  Older Raina’s eyes were flooding with tears. But unlike Caleb having to relive his wife’s death, she didn’t turn away.

  Raina watched as if it was her duty.

  The door burst open. Hugo entered with the woman, followed by Raina’s father, a skinny older man pleading, “Please, no. I swear, I’ll pay you.”

  Hugo smiled, eying Raina up and down and licking his lips. “Oh, Reginald, why didn’t you tell me you had such a lovely daughter?”

  Caleb’s stomach turned. He wanted to launch backward in time to knock the sick grin from the man’s face.

  The woman was wearing long black gloves. She put a hand through Young Raina’s hair, “Oh yes, she is a lovely one, isn’t she?”

  What kind of sick fucks are these people?

  Caleb looked under the bed to see Raina’s little sister, but the girl was a blur. Perhaps because Raina hadn’t been looking at her then.

  She was too busy staring straight ahead so as not to alert anyone to her sister’s presence. The monsters didn’t seem to know that there were two girls in the bedroom.

  “Please, just give me one more week. I’ll find the money.”

  Hugo spun around, his face twisted in an angry ball. “I gave you time! Repeatedly. But you keep lying. Keep stalling. How do you think that makes me look?”

  “I’m sorry! It’s been hard since my wife died. It’s only me and —”

  “Silence!” Hugo screamed, thrusting a finger at the man.

  Reginald froze, staring down at the man’s hand, obviously aware of the deadly touch poised to strike.

  Hugo turned to Raina, eying her with his sick, lust-filled eyes. “Are you spoilt, girl?”

  She was frozen, eyes filling with tears, her body shaking.

  Judith, now behind the girl, holding a hand on her shoulder to keep her from fleeing, leaned forward, sniffing the girl’s neck and hair.

  “She’s still a clean one,” Judith said.

  Hugo smiled, then turned back to Reginald. “Good news for you, Reginald. Your debt is now paid, in exchange for your daughter.”

  “No!” Reginald looked like he wanted to charge Hugo, but knew d
oing so would endanger both him and his family. Nothing worse than a brave man without a defense against evil.

  Caleb wanted to ask what Hugo had planned to do with Raina, but as he thought it, the information entered his head. They would sell her into prostitution to the Valkoer Elite. They’d take turns raping her body and her mind. If she was lucky, they’d turn her first. If not, they’d leave her next to dead, a vegetable to be used over and again until there was nothing left to use. Actually, Caleb wasn’t sure which outcome was lucky — to have your senses but be imprisoned, or to be slowly dying, oblivious to the hell?

  “Please, just give me one more week. Please, you can’t take my daughter!”

  Hugo shook his head. “Too late. Your time is up, Reginald. Thank you for your business.”

  Hugo turned his back on Reginald, eager to eye his prize again, perhaps calculating the totals he’d get for her. Maybe he was even considering keeping this one for himself.

  Then it happened.

  Reginald ran at Hugo, a black blade in his hand, screaming as he charged.

  Why he screamed, Caleb did not know, because it merely alerted Hugo to danger.

  That would be Reginald’s final mistake.

  Hugo turned, quickly, his hand grabbing Reginald’s knife hand.

  And the feeding began.

  Reginald screamed as Hugo’s hand locked on, and the fire spread through his violently shaking limbs.

  Raina screamed, tried to intervene.

  Judith grabbed the girl violently by her hair, yanking her back and whispering into her ear, “Don’t. He’ll only kill you too.”

  The woman seemed to say this less as a threat and more of a warning.

  Caleb looked at Older Raina, thinking she’d certainly be turned away as Hugo fed on her father’s burning remains. But she stared on like a soldier, unable to flinch.

  Caleb tried to look under the bed, but the little girl was still a blur. He was afraid she’d scream; then Hugo and Judith would find her.

  He didn’t even want to wonder what would happen to a six-year-old, lest Raina fill him in on details he didn’t want to know.

  Hugo released Reginald, then opened his fingers, letting the man fall to the ground. Raina’s father exploded into chunks of dust on impact.