Fading Darkness (Bloodmarked #1) (27 page)

Finally, they got down to business because
the next thing I registered was fists flying everywhere. It was rapid-fire
blows to my face, chest, stomach, arm, and wherever they could land them. I
tasted blood in my mouth and fought with all my remaining strength to get out
of the firestorm.

I didn’t have to fight for long, because one
of them was kind enough to give me a lift out of the tangle of fists and teeth.
Too bad he threw me on my back onto the first tier of scaffolding above the
mess of vampires. It knocked some of the wind out of me, and as I struggled
against the shooting pains to get on my feet, others dropped in on me from the
tiers above. One grabbed me by the neck and pulled me up so that my feet were
dangling and my boots barely touched the ground. She pulled me up just above
eye level, but she met my gaze evenly with her jet black eyes.

“You should probably see this,” she said
with a smug sneer plastered on her thin lips.

She spun me around while her hand was still
firmly grasped around my throat. It made it very difficult to breathe evenly,
and I felt my lungs start to burn just before the choking began. My eyes
started to water, making whatever it was I was supposed to be looking at very
blurry.

Then, another vampire approached the young
girl tied to the chair and pulled out a knife. He held it to her throat, and
every muscle in my body screamed to fight. As I reacted, other vampires came to
hold me back. The one wielding the knife was a very tall sinewy guy that had
long blond hair. He had more of a baby face with soft angles but wore a
menacing scowl that didn’t quite fit those features.

As the blade bit into her skin, she gave a
muffled cry under the gag. It made me flinch, but before I could think about an
attack, he looked up at me and spoke. “This is the consequence for your
actions, and it will happen every time you meddle in vampire business.”

Just then, he sliced the knife across her
throat deep into her flesh. The world stopped for what seemed like hours. Then,
the dark red began to pool in her wound and gushed rapidly down her chest. Her
eyes popped wide before glazing over.
Noooo!!!!

“Yes,” said the vampire holding me, but I
hadn’t realized I screamed it out loud, especially since my air supply was
completely cut off.

It was surely a fatal wound, and that
thought enraged me. I got my second wind at that moment and broke free of my
captors long enough to beat the shit out of a few nearby vamps. I lit up a lot
of them, but there were so many that kept coming at me. Needless to say, I was
at an unfair advantage.

I felt myself getting tossed around every
which way, and every body part was smashed or bruised. Fists hit my face furiously
while my body was slammed against each bar and board of the scaffolding. I was
caught in a raging current, being tossed in every direction, unable to regain
control. I thrashed about in a sea of undead monsters. They were merciless and
unrelenting, and when they stopped lashing into me for just a brief moment, I
tried to fight back. But when I tensed for attack, my entire body screamed in
pain. Not all of my muscles were cooperating. I felt myself being lifted into
the air and caught glimpses of the wood beams on the ceiling and black eyes all
around me. My breathing was an unsteady rhythm as I felt my body slowly succumbing
to the inevitable exhaustion.

The vampire who had the grip on me set me
down on my feet on the top tier of scaffolding, but before I could fall and
crumple to the ground in a messy heap of broken bones and torn flesh, the son
of a bitch punched me in my face. It knocked me off balance, and I had no muscle
function left to regain it.

I fell backward, and the thirty or so feet
between me and the ground felt so much farther as my mind reeled from
everything that led me to this. I didn’t want it to end like this, with so much
unfinished business, but as soon as my body hit the floor, I felt several more
bones crunch under the pressure. As my head bounced off the tile, there was a
splitting pressure and my vision of the high ceiling above filled with sparks
and flashes of light like fireworks before becoming clouded in darkness. It
felt a little like the end of the road for me.

Before they could finish me off completely,
though, there was an uproar among them, and although I couldn’t see what was
going on, I felt a change in the atmosphere around me. There were flashes of
heat, and at first I thought it was my body dying or my nervous system
malfunctioning, but then, it occurred to me that those flashes were accompanied
by screams of pain. The vampires were burning.

Once the noise died, and everything was
silent, I began to slip into a more dreamlike unconsciousness. The last thing I
remembered before slipping completely into the darkness was hands underneath me
lifting me swiftly up into a gentle protective cradle. Those hands were warm
and sensitive. Those hands were familiar, and if this was my last moment on
earth, I didn’t want those hands to let go.

†

My unconsciousness was an interrupted haze,
and through the fog, I periodically surfaced to consciousness with feelings of
pain and discomfort. In the background I heard murmuring that sounded more like
chanting.

“Stay with me. Don’t leave me. Please stay
with me.” I felt his regret and a pain that drove a nail straight into my heart,
splintering it and leaving it completely weakened and vulnerable.

There was nothing else I could do but let
out a raspy whisper, “I’m sorry.”

“Shh, don’t try to talk,” said the voice of
an angel. It felt more comforting than if I were in the cemetery with my usual
angels.

I was so out of it, but the one thing I knew
was that I was a mess. Besides the excruciating pain from my multiple injuries,
there was another discomfort that kept jarring me out of unconsciousness. Every
once in a while I would come to and feel a tugging sensation on my skin
following a needle prick. I had a sense of someone nearby, working frantically
to stop the bleeding.

I felt a heavy cloud of desperation in the
air around me, pressing down on me. I breathed it in, taking it into myself,
and I felt panic for myself. I started to believe this might be it. The end. I
was too tired to contemplate the weight of that, but the fear that engulfed me
told me I wasn’t ready for it. All I knew was that there was something to live
for and I had to fight, for something, for my life.

Eventually, the blood loss and exhaustion
finally did me in and the unbearable pain wasn’t even enough to keep me awake.
I felt myself being pulled farther down into the darkness, but before it could
swallow me whole, I felt warmth on my forehead, then a sweet pressure on my lips,
a final send-off into the abyss. Whatever it was, the blackness began to shift
into a familiar light of a recurring dream. It was the first time tonight that
I felt hope. Maybe I wouldn’t wake up a monster, assuming I wake up at all. But
I hoped I would because I couldn’t let the monster responsible for all this go
unpunished, and I had a lot of fight left in me.

At one point, I couldn’t tell if I was
dreaming or awake, but I caught the middle of a muted conversation in the
distance. I recognized his voice immediately, but it sounded like he was on the
phone. I heard a muffled female voice on the other end of the line.

Gavin’s voice was clear. “Maybe I like the
way she looks in my bed.”

The female voice cut in with disapproval.
“You shouldn’t be so close. You’re getting too involved on an emotional level.”

“I’ll be fine. I can handle it,” his voice
wavered slightly.

My hearing faded like I was underwater, and
eventually the darkness swallowed me once more. My consciousness faded in and
out for what felt like days to me, but then things shifted.

I found myself walking the streets at night on
a familiar path and ending up at a familiar abandoned church. The door opened,
beckoning me forward into the darkness. I didn’t bother checking for anyone and
just pushed through, stepping lightly down the main aisle, unable to take my
eyes off of an empty chair in front of where the alter would have been. It was
barely visible in the dim moonlight. It was dripping fresh blood, blood of the
innocent. Being in a church and all, the parallelism hadn’t escaped me. The
weight of it brought me to my knees on the cold tile floor. I bowed my head in
shame for my sins. What have I done?

I then felt the familiar presence behind me
and didn’t bother turning to see him. Moments of thick heavy silence passed as
I waited for the big ‘I told you so,’ but it never came. I wondered why. It was
what I deserved. Before I could be crushed by the overwhelming guilt I turned
to face him. “Well…” I prompted.

“Why here? Aren’t you worried you’ll be
caught?” he asked, which was not exactly what I expected.

“It doesn’t matter anymore does it? They’ve
already gotten to me.”

“Do you expect me to make you feel even
worse than you already do? Because that’s not why I’m here,” he said in a voice
thick with pure emotion. “I just wanted to…I…Shit. I don’t know. I just want
you to be okay. I worry about you every second of the day, and I was so scared
when,” he trailed off, and it wasn’t his confession, necessarily, that made me
gasp but the sound of his voice, the unsteadiness and pure vulnerability in it that
left it so raw and ragged.

He was getting choked up over
me
.
That tore at my heart more than my guilt, ripping an even bigger hole that I
swore I could feel bleeding in my chest as moments passed. His face was
shadowed but I felt his gaze on me and saw his chest rising and falling
unsteadily. His shaky breaths came out in frosted puffs and it began snowing all
around us. I tore my watery eyes from his before I was reduced to a whimpering
mess on the hard floor. I looked up to feel the snowflakes melting as they
lightly brushed my face.

“I did this. This is my mistake, and I can’t
fix it. I got innocent people killed for what? A little revenge? More answers
that lead in circles?” I choked, wallowing in guilt.

“Lucille, look at me,” he pleaded, voice
still coarse.

It forced my eyes back to him. What passed
between us then was difficult to describe, but it felt a little like compassion
on his end and respect on mine. I was too tired to deny I had any other
feelings for him other than anger, because it just wasn’t true. And my petty
stubbornness seemed so small and unimportant at the moment. I just needed to
hear what he had to say. I wasn’t sure why exactly, but his words did matter to
me, more than I ever could have admitted before.

“I know you’re still trying to sort through
all your rights and wrongs. God knows I am too, but the truth is, sometimes,
there is no right or wrong. We don’t always have the right gage or perspective
to judge the difference, but I don’t think we are supposed to. And you could
cry about it all day long or get pissed about all the people who’ve died. The
important thing is that you care. You care enough to get angry, and you say it’s
about vengeance, but I know you care about those people. And
that
is
more human than you know.

“So as long as you keep fighting for what
you care about you’ll have your humanity, and all the demons you think you have
can’t take over. They can’t have you. I won’t let them, and I will be here
anytime you need to be reminded of that. You’re a good person, Lucille, and you
have always inspired me to be better. I need you as much as you need me. So
please don’t leave me yet. Please keep fighting. Fight with your heart. Please,
Lucille. Please, don’t give up on me,” he said, his voice breaking on the last
few words.

I could only stare at the beauty of his
plea, his heart right there in front of me on display. I had never seen so much
emotion in him before and it was painfully and heartbreakingly stunning. After
all the time I had spent blind, not wanting to see or feel any emotions, it was
difficult to comprehend him caring so much about
me
. I felt guilty just
for ever thinking he was a cold closed-off monster, and it made me feel
unworthy of his compassion. But the way he was gazing at me made me want to be
worthy.

I could have told him he sounded like a
broken record like I normally would have, but I didn’t, because a part of me
felt every word he spoke, right down to my core. Maybe it was my soul. I didn’t
know. I didn’t know anything anymore. Except that I believed him. His words
grounded me. Without them, I would have spun completely out of control. I
turned my head back up to the open ceiling and let the dark sky drop big fluffy
flakes on my hot, emotion-stained face.

I took a few deep cleansing breaths to let
Gavin’s heartfelt plea and soothing presence sink into my bones. Then I felt
myself floating and through my closed eyes saw a bright light. When I looked
back, Gavin was gone, but the light was washing over me, warm and inviting.

I floated up, closer and closer to that
beautiful light that made me feel more and more at ease. Then his words came
back to me and things shifted. The snow turned wet and thick, pushing me back
down to earth. It blocked out the light and drenched my clothes. I was getting
heavier and heavier, and then I felt the cold ground on my back. The pain was coming
back to me. I tilted my head back to see what was looming behind me.

As my eyes adjusted I saw the tombstone
above my head. I was lying on the cold ground in front of a grave. I read the
lettering on the headstone. It was my name. This was my final resting place. There
was fresh blood pooled around me like on the chair, but this time it was my
blood. It rained down on me from a pitch black sky. As I lied there bleeding to
death on my own grave, the heaviness continued to weigh me down, and soon
enough, the darkness pulled me back into unconsciousness. My last thought was
that I had to keep fighting, no matter what.