Rising Dark (The Darkling Trilogy, Book 2) (15 page)

“
Oh my.” She reached for
my face, gently holding it between her small, papery hands. “I
don’t believe I’ve ever laid eyes on a man as handsome as you.
There was no need to hide your face from me.”

I didn’t answer, just let her continue
to stare at me as if she wanted to commit every inch of my features
to memory along with the others she had cherished for so long.
Seemingly she had achieved this objective for she
exhaled.

“
Now take me
home...to...to Papa.” Tears filled her eyes. “He...he was a good
man, and it’s only now, at the end, that I can see it and be proud
of what he did.”

I held my arms out again and she came
into them.

I held her for a few minutes, using my
powers to lull her gently into a state of sublime bliss and
contentment, and then a deep sleep. I bit into the soft, fleshy
folds of her neck, tearing into the rigid carotid artery which
released the warm, sweet gush of blood instantly. She was far away
in her fantasy world and so felt no pain as I drew on her blood,
consumed with that arousal and all the pleasures that the body
yielded in a gushing, single flow of blood. I pressed her deeper
into my arms, hearing her ribs crack from that faraway place. But
she was long gone by then.

I drowned myself in the crimson tide
until there was nothing left and I was brought back into the room.
The fire had died out completely.

I placed the corpse on the bed and
left the red velvet bedroom to return to the numbness and the
night.

I ran from that town, having no
fantasies to take the edge off an existence that was nothing but
bile. There was nothing for me but the endless hunger.

I eventually left that mansion far
behind me and came to a stop in the middle of grassland. I gazed up
at the single shimmering eye of the moon, the only witness to my
moral annihilation.

Then I was standing in the clearing
beneath the light of the moon and the chapel was before me. And
beyond it, kneeling by the stream with her back to me, was the
darky girl. She looked over her shoulder at me and my heart soared.
I broke into a run.

Her alluring smile and the way she
lowered her eyes seduced me as nothing ever had. I ran, hoping that
this time she wouldn’t disappear and the moment had come when I
could be with her. As I neared, she met my gaze again and the smile
faded. I saw sadness and her yearning was deeper this time. I felt
it so keenly it was like a physical tug.

I struggled to speak, knowing she
would soon be gone.

Your name. Tell me your
name.

She smiled sadly, her eyes filling
with tears so they appeared luminous in the silvery light cast by
the moon. Instead of answering, she merely lifted her head to look
up at the moon.

Then she was gone, and I was alone in
the wasteland with only the mournful eye of the moon.

I sank to my knees and wept, my
anguish was so complete. So, so many years had passed. Would I
never see the end of these dark, lonely nights?

I sat in the grass for the rest of
that night staring at the moon until the sun claimed the land and I
was forced to flee from it and below to darkness.

I passed the mansion numerous times
over the years. It stood abandoned, slowly decaying, the foliage
that the two Negroes had tried to keep from devouring the place
gradually rising up to dominate the area. No one ventured near it
or the surrounding area now. And it lay as a grim reminder of the
desolation and social ostracism that befell those that tried to go
against the social order as the lawyer had done when he chose to
let his conscience, and not his wallet, direct his path in
life.

***

I did not see a vision of Luna for
many years and it seemed all hope was lost. So why did I wait? Why
did I continue to exist in that fashion year after year, page after
page of this never-ending book? Because I had seen salvation. It
was there in a pair of mysterious dark eyes and in those three
simple words:

Wait for me.

It was like the siren’s call of long
ago which led many a hapless sailor to their doom. And whether it
led to life or death, I would continue to follow it for as long as
it took for me to find her.

But after so long in this wilderness,
this Lodebar I had been exiled to, I had all but lost hope. That
was when I began to regret my harsh judgement of Auria, Onyx, and
Emory. In my loneliness and despair, I longed for companionship,
even if it was theirs. I did not know if Auria and Onyx had
survived the fire, but I began making my way periodically back to
the chapel in search of them. The plantation had new owners now and
was once more home to many slaves who would be worked from morning
till dusk for as long as they lived.

Auria would probably kill
me if I came upon them, but at that stage it didn’t seem to matter
so much. At least I would be free of this irrational belief in the
vision of the darky girl and the love she seemed to have promised
me. So I searched for Auria, but deep in the recesses of my heart
and mind, I held on to the image of the darky girl and hoped that
one day I would see her face again, if only for a moment. I would
exist, wandering in this wilderness for all eternity if only I
could see her face once more
.

I continued my directionless
wanderings completely without hope. The man I had been had all but
disappeared, the world around me seen through a veil of shadow
aside from those brief moments when it was awash with the crimson
tide that enveloped me whenever I fed. I had returned to what used
to be the Foster plantation and stood in the trees looking out on
the clearing beneath a blood-red sky as the day made way for
twilight. Although older and scarred by the fire I had started, the
malevolence that emanated from the chapel seemed stronger, the
darkness I had observed all those years ago when I first entered
the clearing, deeper now.

There was someone in the chapel
praying, a battered green Bible held in her work-roughened hands.
It was a female slave, her prayer and the harsh realities of her
circumstances, a tale of woe that was like that of so many I had
passed along my lonely travels. When I heard the rustle of her
clothes as she stood and moved toward the back door, I felt the
welcome pressure along my gums as my incisors pushed through and
lengthened.

A shock passed through me when she
stepped out of the chapel. She moved toward the stream with an
innate grace, her presence like a small candle that beat back the
evil that swathed the chapel. But it remained, curling around her
steps as she walked to the stream and knelt before it.

Trembling, I sank to my
knees in the undergrowth and merely stared at the beautiful Negro
in the faded purple dress as she knelt down at the stream. It
was
her
. She was
real. I searched her thoughts quickly. And if I needed any proof
she was the one, it was in her name.

Luna.

Luna, the goddess of the moon, and she
had finally answered my prayers.

But although light appeared to be
pushing back the darkness that had swathed me for so long, I hung
back in the trees, my heart thumping painfully against my chest,
afraid to move. This girl—Luna—she was human, but the woman I had
been seeing wasn’t human. I didn’t know what she was, but I knew
she was powerful. The other confusing thing was that the girl
before me was a slave.

Then anger shot through
me. She was a
slave
. Someone had dared to enslave my goddess. I slowly got to my
feet, my hands clenched. I had never felt this much rage since that
dark evening when I massacred nearly every living thing on the
Foster plantation. The men who had caused her suffering would drown
in their own blood.

Caught in that tight knot of rage, I
did not realise what she meant to do when she dipped a hand into
the stream and picked up the rock. Its sharp edge glinted in the
weak light that was fast disappearing, the sun almost gone now as
night reigned. When she brought it up to her face and closed her
eyes, her intention came through to me on another wave of anguish.
She meant to disfigure that beautiful face. Anxiety tore through me
and I reached out mentally and stayed her hand as she brought the
rock to her face and pierced the skin on her forehead. A thin
trickle of blood ran down her forehead to her nose and the scent
almost drove me wild.

I moved her hand, and the rock, about
five inches away from her face. But she resisted.

Her anguished thoughts reached me
again, the intensity of her emotions almost overcoming me. She was
desperate to blight the face that delighted her master so, and
thought it would keep him away from her. But I had seen into the
minds of hundreds of men like her master and I knew that ruining
that beautiful face would not stop him.

Her mind seemed to quiver and I do not
know how to describe this, but it was as if something hidden deep
within her awoke, like an eye in the dark opening slowly. That eye
appeared to be staring straight at me.

That was when I realised she had heard
my thoughts. But even as she heard it, she became confused. But the
eye in the dark continued to peer at me and I knew that on some
level, she was aware of my presence.

I was so shocked I almost lost the
hold I had on her, because she was still struggling to bring the
rock back down to her forehead. I used my telekinetic power to rip
the rock out of her hand and throw it across to the other side of
the clearing.

Her raven eyes flew open. She seemed
confused but alert as she searched for the rock. The eye in the
dark continued to peer at me as she got to her feet and looked
around her. She knew she was not alone and she was afraid now. I
entered her mind again and tried to take away the fear, but again,
she resisted and I had to apply more force so everything around her
began to sway and she was lulled into a waking sleep.

I stepped into moonlit clearing. She
stood swaying with her eyes open, trembling even though it was a
hot, humid evening.

I closed the space between us until
she was inches away from me and simply stared at her, overwhelmed
by her extraordinary beauty which left my heart racing and words
beyond my grasp.

I reached out a trembling hand and
touched her face, her skin as smooth and soft as I had imagined it
would be. But uncertainty clung to me. I searched her mind but
could get no clear answers. But there was one I saw in her memories
who could perhaps give me some of the answers I sought regarding
this extraordinarily beautiful slave: her mother, an African who
had given Luna herbs to end an unwanted pregnancy.

I wrapped an arm around Luna gingerly
and transported her to the main house. Then I made my way to a
neighbouring plantation. My thoughts remained on Luna and the
darkness I had walked through for so long could no longer overwhelm
me.

***

Mama Akosua was a small, lithe woman
whose face showed hints of Luna’s delicate feline features. Her
head was shaved clean and her cheeks and forehead marked with
tribal scars. She was in her cabin when I arrived at the Marshall
plantation. It stood slightly apart from the others, a blur of
white that sat hunched beneath the menacing trees. She appeared to
be ill at ease and was pacing the small space when I arrived,
keeping to the trees. She stopped pacing and moved to sit at the
small table in her cabin, her gaze taking in nothing in particular.
She appeared to be waiting for something and I searched her
thoughts, fascinated with what I found.

She was an actual witch who had
psychic abilities and could commune with spirits. Her world had
been shattered when she had been torn out of Luna’s life when Luna
was three and she had never fully recovered from the loss. She
thought of her daughter every day, a grown woman she saw
infrequently and who was little more than a stranger. There was
another she thought of constantly although the time she had spent
with her had been fleeting. She still revisited the memory daily
and I saw it now.

I saw the witch making her way through
a fierce storm, stopping occasionally to peer at the little brown
face that was all but covered in rags. I also saw, and felt, the
pain that tore through the witch when she reached a cave where a
small family of runaways had been hiding. She had given them the
child, knowing it was unlikely she would ever see her
again.

The more I saw, the more impressed and
fascinated I became with the witch. I tried to delve deeper into
her mind, to try and find out more about Luna. But I found I could
not go any further. She stood up abruptly then and moved to the
window. She appeared extremely stern and formidable as she stared
at her reflection.

Then to my shock, she spoke. But the
words she uttered were not meant for her reflection and I not only
heard the words through her senses, I heard her voice, heavy with a
Ghanaian accent, in my own head sharp and clear like a snake
rustling in the undergrowth.

Asanbosam. You dare to
enter my mind?

I found myself flung out of her mind
with a force that left my head tingling. But she wasn’t finished.
She spoke again and this time, I not only heard her voice in my
mind, she reasserted the image I had seen of her speaking to her
reflection, placing it firmly in my mind in a show of strength that
astounded. Her eyes burned with a dark fury as she spoke once
more.