Child of Darkness-L-D-2 (21 page)

Their appearance alone was enough to disturb him. At first glance, they resembled wisps of white smoke in the dark air. But the longer he looked at them—though he knew he should look away—the more solid they appeared. A curling tendril became a skeletal arm and slid smoothly back into nothing a second later. A rictus grin on the roiling coil that revealed a face blended into the air. Cedric’s antennae flattened to his forehead; his body tensed; his wings itched for flight. But they had gotten wet, and he was a creature of air…if he unfolded them now, they might be too sodden to lift him from the ground. That there were so many was a concern, as well. Wraiths were solitary, consumed only by their need to devour and destroy. It was possible that these creatures did not realize they traveled in a pack, so great was their drive that they would ignore anything that was not a source of life or energy. What had drawn them all to this place, then? A horrible chill went through Cedric at the thought that it might have been him—that they had followed him there. The five forms broke off from the tunnel mouth, slipping silently above the surface of the water, dipping below it without disturbing the surface. They scanned the area, heads swinging side to side like reptilian predators. They would draw closer, he realized, but he could not look away, even to run.

And then, strangely, they did not come nearer. They found something of interest, swarmed about it, screeched like metal on stone among each other, and four jetted away, smoky bodies writhing horribly as they sought out other prey.

While they were distracted, he could flee.

He let the tarp slide down silently, and eased himself into the water. In the darkness of the little building, beneath the surface of the water, a face. A face made pale in death shone up like a beacon of blue, eyes open wide and unseeing. In his shock, Cedric lost his balance, fell, splashed into the water completely before he could stop himself. He struggled away from the mortal body, the sickly, bloated thing that seemed to catch on him and drag him down further. It took a great effort to remember to stand, to remember that the water was not a deep abyss.

When he surfaced, he heard them. Their greedy voices raised to a pitch of excitement, the sound of a hangman’s rope twisting in the wind as it bore its heinous load. They were coming for him.

He waded out of the cubicle, horribly aware of the bump and slide of more corpses below the surface of the water. He saw the Wraiths approaching and sprinted, futile against the weight of the water and its terrible contents. He had to make it to drier ground, where his movement was less restricted.

Nothing hindered the Wraiths, however, and they came closer and closer, grew louder. The cold chill of their presence intensified behind him and then, suddenly, lessened. He dared to look over his shoulder and saw that they had stopped in their pursuit. The energy left behind by the death of the mortals was too tempting. They would not leave it behind. Cedric did not know why he had not sensed the angry, red energy of so many deaths. What he had mistaken for his own unease, his own fear that the Gypsies had fled without him, had been something far more serious.

They had not left.

Something in him clawed upward, trying to escape through his mouth. A scream, he thought, but when it erupted, it was a strangled cry, nothing more.

He waded past more bodies floating in the water, bodies that he had, no doubt, pushed aside callously, as though they were mere objects.

And they would have been, to him, if he had not known these people. If they had not fascinated him, if he had not wished to become a part of them. If a Gypsy girl had not lured him into an obsessive tryst, into giving up all that he knew.

Another sob choked him. He subdued it, to lessen the attraction of the Wraiths that still feasted behind him. Did they feast on Dika? Steal her energy, which had always seemed so sparkling and bright, even when she was angry with him? Did she float in his mass sea grave?

The thought nearly brought him to his knees as he climbed up into the tunnel. He turned back, aching to go to her, to find her or not find her, to know whether she had escaped whatever had befallen them.

To know what had befallen them. He stared helplessly down into the Gypsy encampment, or what remained of it, and shifted into his other sight. The Wraiths still did not pursue him, but they stood out as black voids in his vision. The death energy, preserved in the dying moments of the unfortunate mortals, glowed angry red, pulsing. The part of them they thought of as their souls, their consciousness, as Malachi had explained it to him once, was gone, ushered away to some waiting vessel until they could be returned to their One God. If that was what they believed. Cedric realized bitterly that he had never asked Dika what she believed in, or if she believed in anything at all.

With his vision occupied by the other, he touched the surface of the water. Water connected, absorbed, and the death energy filtered into him, not as violent as if he’d touched it directly. It washed through him, revealing pictures that were, if disjointed, somehow fluid and beautiful in their progression. Waterhorses, black and scaly and terrible. Yet oddly graceful. They cut a swath through the still-dry camp, laid waste to everything. The strong, able-bodied men could not protect the women and the children. They were killed for food for the ravenous creatures. At first. But once those appetites were sated, they killed for sport. It would have disgusted him, but he was so overcome with the water’s memory, which neither condoned nor condemned the actions that had taken place in the space it now occupied, that he could do no more than watch. The creatures killed all; not one mortal survived. And in the final picture the water gave him, the creatures seized Dika, tore her apart before his eyes, then tossed her broken carcass atop that of her grandmother’s, the Dya. And as the water, rain from above, descended merrily onto the grisly scene and the Waterhorses retreated, the Dya’s proclamation rang out, mocking, in Cedric’s ear. He will be faithful to you for as long as you live.

When he forced himself out of the other, into the cold, stark reality of the tunnel he crouched in, the Dya’s voice still echoed off the walls. The Wraiths heard it as well, for they paused in their feeding, looking for the cause of the disturbance.

His eyes burning with tears unshed, his chest filled to bursting with sobs he could not release, Cedric ran down the tunnel, back to the Lightworld.

“What are you doing?”

Malachi ignored her question and continued the arduous task of binding his wings. “Have you seen my ring? The large one that you gave me last year?”

“Your ring?” He did not have to look at her face to know that her brow crumpled with confusion. He could hear the matching emotion in her voice. “What ring?”

“The one made of silver, with the large blue stone. The Dragons sent it as part of the gift they bestowed on you for quelling the Troll rebellion.” He winced as he reached behind his back to change the wide linen band from hand to hand. He frowned down at it and smoothed a wrinkle that would, if left unchecked, later cause a deep red welt in his flesh. She came to his side, took the binding, and pulled it across his chest, helping him though she did not yet realize it. “What do you want with that?”

“I want to wear it,” he said simply, raising his arms so she could more easily maneuver around his back. “I think it impresses them.”

With a frustrated growl, Ayla made another pass with the binding and tucked it a bit roughly beneath itself. “Impresses who? Malachi, what are you talking about?”

“The Courtiers. The ones who are still left, anyway. And the Guild members. I think I should look as imposing as I can, should I not? Hand me my blue robes.”

This command she did not follow. “You do not need to appear imposing for anyone. The audience is being held in the throne room, not your bedchamber.”

Now, she was seeing his plan, though she had not expressly forbid him from attending, yet. He eased himself to his feet, and she put out a hand to help steady him, then jerked it back.

“You cannot go, Malachi! You are not healed.” She stamped her foot, and he found it difficult not to laugh at her.

“If I do not go, I cannot see who I will be organizing into the militia.” Before she could protest, he added, “You promised me, Ayla.”

“That was before you were injured!” She followed him to the chest that held his clothing, and sat upon it, arms folded across her chest. “You are not going.”

“I will go. In this state, if I must,” he said, gesturing to his nakedness.

“That will impress them, no doubt,” she grumbled, and she moved aside, for she knew he would make good on his promise.

He moved slowly, still aching from his wounds, and located the blue robe in the chest. It was the color Ayla favored on him, and so he would wear it tonight. She seemed unable to deny him much when she found him physically attractive.

He tried to remember if it had been easier when he was young, but it seemed that in Ayla’s eyes, he had not changed. Or, perhaps the Human half of her caused her to function as the Humans did, their feelings of love not fading simply because age took its toll on their bodies.

“Malachi…” Her voice was a plaintive whisper that stung him to the core. “Please. I do not wish to see something happen to you. I cannot be in this world without you, knowing that there may never be a time when we would see each other again on the Astral. If you die, and if things return to the way they were before—”

“I would be with you.” His chest hurt, and not from the wound there. He slid the fabric over his shoulders and limped to the bed to sit beside her.

Tears shone in her eyes, and one spilled, sparkling in the light, down her pale cheek. She made no move to brush it away, as she would have were she angry. He put his arms around her, ignoring the pain that still lingered in his flesh. “You know I will die one day. You cannot prevent that.”

“I do not wish to hasten it,” she muttered angrily, but she did not pull away from him. “You cannot know what will happen after your death. You were a Death Angel, yes, and you watched many mortals die. But you do not know what it means to die, to be the one dying.”

“And you do?” He forced a laugh to hide his own fear. “You are correct. I do not know what will happen to the mortal part of me that is my soul once I pass on. But I have spoken to Cedric about your realm, the Astral. He remembers a time when mortal souls roamed there as freely as they roamed in Heaven when I was created. Even were Heaven to be restored, I cannot imagine that my soul would be welcomed there. Not when I have fallen.”

She leaned back from him, her eyes as wide as the full moon she had never seen. “I have such a horrible dread, Malachi. It has gripped me from the moment the Ambassador came into the throne room, and nothing has yet to dissuade me that this—the war, Cerridwen’s disappearance, Flidais’s betrayal—is not some tipping point. There is doom over this place, like a shroud over the dead. Do not tell me that you cannot feel it, because I know you can!

Otherwise, you would not have gone to such lengths to disguise those letters from me, to keep me from knowing the truth of what Cerridwen has done. You did those things because you wished to deny that which is becoming clearer with every passing moment. Our death approaches, Malachi.”

He did not like to hear her speak in such a way, not when every word she spoke seemed to lay bare the fears he’d been struggling against. “Cerridwen will be fine,” he said, knowing it was not the issue. “We will bring her back.”

“It is not Cerridwen I fear for!” She covered her face and laughed hopelessly. “What a thing for a mother to say. But I say it because I do not believe that she is in danger. The horror I feel has nothing to do with her, as if fate is unaware that all those around her are doomed. I have no doubt that she will survive whatever trap she has laid for herself. I only hope that I will see her again, before this dark cloud strikes us down.”

The certainty in her voice was too bleak. No words came to him to argue against her, though, as if the very blackness that she feared had robbed him of his hope as well. “You will not die. And I will not. And if we die, what then? Do you not believe that the dead reunite with one another after?”

“You cannot know what happens for certain!” Her hands dropped to her lap, her shoulders sagged. “And there is the other place, the one you told me of, where you would be separated from the divine, tortured for eternity. I do not wish for you to go there!”

“I do not wish to go there, either.” He had seen Hell before, in the days after the first fall, when it had opened like a festering sore and tainted all those angels who’d stupidly followed their new God into the flame.

“What, then?” Ayla’s tears crept into her voice on a wave of hysteria that broke as she struggled to speak. “What is left for me but to keep you safe for as long as I can? I cannot bear the thought of you suffering for eternity. You are mortal, and have no understanding of how very long that will be.”

“I have not always been mortal,” he reminded her, though he knew she had not truly forgotten.

“Why, then, do you insist on leaving me for that bleak world? Why do you…cling to your beliefs in one God, one cruel God who wishes only to punish you?” She stood, paced as though she meant to imprint the floor with her steps in her anger. This was not a new sentiment she expressed. For a time, after the tragedies and trials of their meeting, after he had left her and then returned to her in the Lightworld, they had argued often about his devotion. He’d thought at first that her lack of understanding had been because of her race. How could an immortal creature look to the divine, when they had no real chance of ever confronting it? But as they argued, tirelessly at times, he found that she was not mocking his belief out of immortal superiority, but that she truly could not understand the concept of one God, and only one.

And she could not understand how he continued to worship a God that had abandoned him, just as her Gods had so clearly abandoned her people.

She’d confessed that to him, tearfully, one night, recounting the charge given to her by one of her Goddesses in a dream. While she’d lain in seclusion in the dungeon, imprisoned by her own mate, she’d had a vision, and that vision had shaken her to the core. And when she’d nearly died fighting against Garret, that Goddess had come to her then, too. But never again.