Dark World (Book I in the Dark World Trilogy) (5 page)

All she wanted to know
was
why
?
What could they possibly have gained from this? She wanted to stand
up and scream at them, demanding an answer for her premature
demise. How could her life be over when it had so recently begun?
She’d only gotten seventeen years. She’d wanted marriage. Children.
Travel. A life. Now it had been stolen from her. All that remained
were the skeletons of hope, a graveyard of buried
dreams.

Her ears perked, Scarlet listened as
the sound of dry grass and leaves crunched beneath their feet, then
slowly faded away.

Silence.

Hot, angry tears flooded from behind
her eyes and rolled down her temples. Frozen like a marble statue
by the elixir, she was forced to endure her last moments inert. In
the dark. Alone.

The excruciating pain in her chest was
nothing compared to the agony of her screaming soul.

Why? Why me?

She just wanted to go home, wrap her
arms around her mother and father, Shelby, and maybe even Greg.
None of this was right, it wasn’t meant to be this way. All the
years she’d been robbed of. All the experiences she’d never know.
Anger consumed her, leeching her soul of forgiveness.

If there’s an afterlife and
I can come back, I’ll haunt those bastards until the end of
time!

As her lifeblood slowly drained,
pooling in the grass beneath her, she realized it was time. All she
hoped was that she’d been a good enough person to go to a better
place. As her last breath warmed the cool night air with a final
cloud of exhalation, Scarlet waited for something that resembled
leaving her body and the appearance of the tunnel of
light.

It never came.

An unfamiliar sensation possessed her.
Fear twisted around her soul like a venomous serpent.

The ground shuddered beneath her, then
began to give way.

Oh God! I’m
sinking!

Her lifeless body began to submerge
into the center of the pentagram. Enveloped into the dense, cool
earth, Scarlet could only surmise that the ground had opened up and
was swallowing her whole. Loose soil spilled from above, sealing
her into a tomb—a grave.

Am I dead? I can’t be, I’m
still
in
here.

Trapped in an undead body, fully aware,
yet incapable of movement or escape, she was falling through the
cracks of existence and couldn’t do anything about it.

Is this Hell? Is this what
it is?

Scarlet searched for something—a
memory—to soothe her. To take her away from this nightmare. She
reached into the recesses of her mind, recalling the first time she
observed the stars up close.

“
Daddy,” young Scarlet
began, dancing around her father as he set up her new telescope.
“Why are the stars so far away?”

He winced as he cranked a bolt on the
side of the contraption. “They’re very hot, honey, if we get too
close, we’ll get burned.”

“
Why do they sparkle?” she
inquired, scrunching up her nose.

He replied with a shrug, “I guess
that’s just their way of saying hello. Here,” he said, taking his
daughter by the hand and showing her how to peer into the eyepiece,
“they’re saying hello to you, right now.”

An ache in her soul jarred her back
into reality. Behind her sealed lids, her eyes stung with
tears.

I would have loved to say
good-bye to the stars…and to you, Daddy.

Somewhere in the midst of the pain and
darkness, Scarlet felt her consciousness slip away. Immersed in a
nightmare, her psyche locked itself into a room deep within. A
childhood prayer echoed through her broken thoughts:

Now I lay me down to
sleep,

I pray the Lord my soul to
keep.

If I should die before I
wake,

I pray the Lord my soul to
take.

Calm fell over her, blanketing her like
a shroud. For a split second, she thought an angel may have heard
her prayers and had come to save her. But the withering of her soul
told her otherwise. An emptiness gathered within, a black hole
owned the space where her essence once dwelt. An eclipse. A shadow
of what once was Scarlet.

Still aware of her surroundings, she
could no longer ignore certain sensations—certain hungers. An
instinct overwhelmed her, one she could not name, but it presented
itself as desire.

She felt her body change, morphing into
a sleek predator of unprecedented strength and prowess. A sharp
pain stabbed behind her eyes and a burning filled her lungs as she
tried to inhale.

A flame of hate smoldered beneath the
surface of her skin, burrowing itself deep into her soul.
Bitterness settled on her heart like thick, dark ash.

The girl she’d worn beneath this skin
fell asleep.

Dark arms embraced her, pulling her
under. Stole her from her world. Her life.

Sinking.

Then it stopped.

She was Scarlet no more.

A foreign whisper invaded the privacy
of her mind. A female voice she would come to know well.

“
Welcome…to Dark
World.”

Part Two

Dark World

Dark Evolutions

In the beginning, there was
darkness…then light kissed the earth. A cascade of illumination
warmed the surface, encouraging the growth of plants, animals—and
humans.

Over the course of millenniums, the
humans evolved, mastering the arts of fire and technology. They
populated the planet in epic proportions—but they weren’t
alone.

While modern humans believed the earth
to be a solid chunk of rock, portions of the mantle had fallen away
eons ago, leaving a cavern the size of a large continent. Life not
only grew within the subversive realm—it flourished. Alongside the
evolution of the humans on the surface, a powerful underground race
spawned from the seeds of magic and elemental gods—demons. The
source of their immortal power, a Crystal Pyramid, magically
reflected light from the sun above.

Led by an all powerful demon, Lucifer,
the Legion of demons ruled Dark World for thousands of
years.

Amidst their reign, a cataclysmic
earthquake shook the earth to its core, opening an abyss and
swallowing a small portion of the surface. Thousands of humans and
mystical creatures were stolen from the world with a sky and
brought down to dwell in the underground kingdom. Weak and frail,
the humans naturally became the demons’ slaves. Forced to mine
precious bloodstone, they were all but bound to an eternity of
hell.

To free themselves, they did the
unthinkable—they sold their souls to a demon—Malus, Queen of Dark
World.

Empowered and desiring to overthrow her
husband, Malus sent scouts to the surface to recruit more souls.
The scouts learned that the humans were willing to sacrifice their
youth in exchange for supernatural powers.

It was then that a ritual steeped in
the dark arts was born.

By the time King Lucifer discovered the
plot to overthrow him, it was too late. Malus, his wife, had become
untouchably powerful and the underworld was overrun with a dominant
new race: shades.

Determined to right the wrong, the King
removed six pages from the Devil’s Bible and hid them. Using the
last of his powers, he sealed the abyss to prevent further
communication with the humans. However, dividing the power of the
Bible came with a terrible consequence—the Crystal Pyramid ceased
to light Dark World, leaving the demons weakened—and
mortal.

Today, the demons have become the
slaves—their extinction imminent.

Black Chrysalis

Kane’s seven foot frame stood poised
atop an obsidian boulder. He held his large body motionless, thigh
muscles flexing beneath his black skin. Horns the shade of midnight
adorned either side of his head, drawing to a whorl at his temples
whilst dark blue dreadlocks fell between his folded wings,
stretching the length of his back.

With his ebony hooves balanced
precariously at the edge of the rock, the demon’s arm muscles
twitched in anticipation. His glowing sapphire eyes focused,
angular ears twitching with his prey’s slightest
movements.

His black skin reflected the crimson
hue emanating from the outlying magma rivers, other than the
bioluminescent creatures around him, his only source of
light.

To his right, a distant range of
volcanoes roared and blustered, spewing angry streams of hot lava
from their gaping mouths. Ahead, the arid sands of the Crimson
Desert lie flat and unyielding. A sprinkling of ash snowed over the
landscape in attempts to blanket the dry, cracked terrain, but was
blown away by consistently zealous gusts of air.

The searing wind blew across his arms,
raising the tiny hairs. Though heat was always welcome upon demon
skin, he wondered how a cool ocean breeze might feel against his
face.

A streak of envy tainted his
concentration and his dark brow furled.

Humans,
he brooded.

He ground his sharp teeth together,
forcing himself to focus on the task at hand. Wielding a smooth,
silver dagger with bended arm, the demon awaited the perfect moment
to strike. Before him, scoring a wavy pattern in the red sands, a
lava snake inadvertently glided towards his death. With scales the
color of fresh magma, the snake tasted the environment with a thin,
forked tongue. Its lithe body no longer than two feet, it sashayed
ever closer to the waiting demon.

After taking a final aim and snapping
his arm straight, Kane speared the snake in the back of the head.
Climbing down from the boulder, he bent over and retrieved both his
knife and his meal. He then sat on the slab of obsidian and worked
quickly to strip the creature of its casing. He cradled the reptile
within his large palm as he made an incision, piercing the coral
skin with a razor-sharp talon. With his pointer finger, he
carefully sliced the creature open, cautious not to spill the
organs and entrails.

When he tossed the scaly hide aside, he
heard the inevitable scuffle of meegles emerging from their burrows
beneath the rocks. The hairless rodents sniffed the air guardedly,
skittering towards the discarded flesh. Their rounded eyes,
disproportionately large for their tiny bodies, blazed yellow
against the pitch background. Marked with two sapphire
bioluminescent stripes running down their backs, they quivered as
they surrounded the remains. After a great deal of snarling and
gnashing of teeth amongst them, one of the tiny beasts snatched the
carcass and dragged it into his den. A rare feast, no
doubt.

Pleased he could feed another,
Kane focused on his own meal. Placing an ebony hand over the meat,
he whispered a magical incantation, “
Lucem ferre.”

Within seconds, a pulsation of orange
ignited in the center of his palm. He controlled the flame, searing
the tender flesh to medium-rare. His mouth salivated with the scent
of his impending dinner. Meager as it was, it would be his first
meal in nearly two days.

For almost a week, he’d been on the
hunt for a rogue shade spotted near the hidden city. Two days ago,
he discovered the body of a young female demon, her soul missing.
The calling card of a shade. Kane’s indigo eyes flared with the
thought of his kind being murdered. A population once flourishing
with demons now dwindled within a dying world.

Deep bitterness shrouded his
heart.

It wasn’t supposed to be
this way.

His gaze wandered over the darkened
wasteland, eyes shining with internal illumination. Enhanced with
infrared receptors, his sight pierced the veil of darkness to
expose a broken landscape. A realm once rich with power and black
magic now lay in ruin, war-torn and desolate. Overtaken by shades,
the world he’d been born into no longer existed.

He flicked his long, thick tail in
frustration, taking a bite of his humble feast. The warm, tender
flesh slid over his tongue and he felt an iota of his strength
return. As he scanned the distant mountain range, their reddish hue
painting a panoramic scene, he remembered a time when the Legion of
demons ruled. Food was plentiful. Demons lived free amongst a
crystalline wilderness.

And flying.

He flexed his large bat-like wings as much
as the shackles would allow, wincing as the barbs cut into his
flesh. Hidden beneath his sheathed sword, two circlets of
unbreakable steel, forged within the earth’s core, were bound where
his wings met his back. Adorned with needle-sharp spikes, the cuffs
pierced his flesh with any endeavor at flight. Many failed attempts
to remove them merely proved what he already knew: only the Devil
could remove the enchantment put upon them. The shackles were
placed on the demons after the Apocalypse. The ones that survived,
anyways.

The
Devil
. His eyes narrowed to slits.
Malus.

He wondered if his world could
ever be the same. Would it ever be the way it was before the
Queen’s vicious
takeover?