Rising Dark (The Darkling Trilogy, Book 2) (8 page)

“
Drink,” Auria commanded,
her voice almost tender.

A part of me felt repulsed by what she
was telling me to do, but it was only a small part, and I again
brought my lips to the blood running down to the girl’s bosom,
which heaved and strained against her dress as she screamed and
begged for her life. I was so aroused, but I only meant to place a
kiss on her hot, bare flesh. I only wanted to feel her skin against
my lips once again. But I found myself licking her blood instead.
Again the taste and feel of it electrified me, seeming to numb my
brain. My arousal increased. I wanted to rip her dress away from
her bosom and lick the blood off her dark, bare breasts. But I
continued to lap at her blood with greater urgency. She screamed
and fought to get away and rage blazed in my mind. I released one
of her arms and crushed her lips with my hand, cutting off her
screams though she struggled as she fought for her life. All sound
faded away and the world disappeared behind a red veil. The only
thing I heard was the frantic beating of the slave’s heart, which
only inflamed my arousal as I lapped at her blood.

This was unlike anything I had ever
felt before in my life. It went beyond mere arousal but was the
pinnacle of every want and pleasure in life. All of it was in the
blood.

Use your teeth.

Auria spoke those words directly in my
mind. I did as she instructed and bit the slave, tearing a chunk of
her hot, salty flesh. She grunted in pain, her breathing restricted
by the hand I had against her mouth and nose. Once the meat was in
my mouth, I spat it out in disgust. It was not the flesh I wanted,
but her blood, and I ravenously closed my mouth over the wound and
sucked, drawing in a gulp of blood which left me swooning with
pleasure. I drank, and as I drank, the ache in my bones and the
burning sensation in my throat eased and then disappeared
altogether.

The red veil eventually cleared and
sound came back to me. My fangs began to shrink until they were
back to normal.

In my arms was a corpse, her eyes open
and glazed over. I let the corpse go and it fell at my feet. I
backed away and fell to my knees, frantically wiping the blood off
my lips.

“
What have you done to
me?” I moaned.

“
I’ve given you
immortality,” Auria said. “But it comes at a price, and that is the
hunger for human blood.” She knelt before me, her voice suddenly
tender and intimate. “Be honest—that was the best experience of
your life, no?”

I did not answer.

“
Because of me, you will
have many, many more moments like that when you devour blood and
the life force it contains, and you will have an eternity to do
so.”

She straightened and laughed as tears
filled my eyes.

“
Come, Onyx. We have much
to prepare for what I hope will be the last sacrifice. We need more
slaves than that fool Foster was able to provide. Let us see if we
can persuade him to bring more before tomorrow night.”

“
Oh, I’m sure I can
persuade him,” Onyx said and laughed.

Auria turned to me, her face creasing
into a sneer. “You! Do not let me catch you near your wife’s body
again. You are not even to mention her name. Do you
understand?”

She did not wait for me to answer, no
doubt assuming I would be a fool to disobey. She vanished along
with Onyx. But this time I saw the air around them thicken and
waver, appearing to shimmer before they were swallowed by
it.

Distraught, I crawled away from Emory,
who was still standing there gazing at me in amusement. Although it
was the last place I wanted to be, I staggered to my feet and went
into the chapel, too ashamed to be near Julia after what I had
done.

I had just murdered someone, an
innocent, helpless slave. I had just murdered
and...and...

I placed my head in my hands, hands
that still had the slave’s blood on them.

Devastation rolled over me in wave
after relentless wave. I wept, despairing at the nightmare that had
wrapped itself around me and would not let me go.

I was staring at my bloodstained hands
when Emory came to stand a few feet behind me. He sighed
heavily.

“
I have been at her side
for so many decades, but it is still difficult to be away from her
for even a few minutes.”

I tore my gaze away from the blood on
my hands and stared at him, confused. He met my gaze a few moments
later, his dark green eyes direct and penetrating. He moved to sit
beside me.

“
Is it so hard to believe
we are capable of loving each other?”

“
Yes, for I cannot
envisage how anyone could love someone who is cruel and totally
without any form of compassion.” Tears sprang to my eyes again at
the image of Julia lying out there in the heat along with the slave
I had murdered.

He chuckled softly.
“She
is
cruel,
but believe it or not, she showed you compassion in killing your
wife quickly. She has not been quite so generous to others. She has
let some last days, just to see how much pain she can inflict
before their injuries kill them, or they are driven insane by the
agony. She has been merciful with you. I can’t say the same for the
one who tried to warn you. As we speak, she is at the bottom of a
dried-up well on the plantation. Who knows if she will die from
thirst or hunger. Or maybe the rats will eat her alive before Auria
has the time to fully punish her. It is hard to say which will be
worse, being slowly eaten alive by rats, or being tortured by
Auria. I would personally prefer the rats.”

I shuddered at the images his words
produced and also in guilt at the plight that had befallen Minny
for daring to warn me. The warning would not have succeeded in
saving us even if we had heeded it. Yet she risked her life to do
so. I looked down when I remembered my reaction when she had taken
hold of Julia’s arm.

“
To answer your question,”
Emory continued, although I had no wish to hear anything he had to
say. “How can I not love Auria, a powerful goddess who could have
brought death, but instead chose to bestow eternal life on me? I
will never forget the first moment I saw her.”

As he had done the previous night, he
pressed images into my mind, spreading them out carefully like
cherished keepsakes and I knew they were memories, his and Auria’s
weaved together so I saw the events simultaneously from both of
their viewpoints. It was clearly a memory he had revisited again
and again, and it was rich in detail.

Auria wore an ivory dress,
her long, dark hair elaborately coiled atop her head. She was
standing in a small house which had only three rooms; she was in
the living area, which also served as a kitchen. Twin girls slept
in the second room, their mother and father in the third. Auria was
looming over the wife, who was covered in blood, but still alive.
She was staring at Auria, her eyes wide with terror, her mouth
twisted in agony. The woman’s husband came at Auria from behind
with a poker. Emory, a skinny, pale child at the time, threw
himself at the man in a vain attempt to protect Auria. Emory was
eleven, and the family's indentured servant. They had been
relatively kind to him, but for some reason he could not bear to
see this beautiful, fearsome woman, who must have been some kind of
a queen, harmed. He was promptly thrown out of the way by his
master as Auria turned around, already aware of the man and what he
meant to do. She and Onyx slaughtered the whole family with brute
force, Auria’s ivory dress dripping with blood by the time they
were finished. The only person she spared was Emory.

She stared down at him for
a few moments, the bodies of the husband and wife slowly cooling
around them, her expression enigmatic. Then she spun on her heel
and disappeared right before his eyes.

Emory ran outside and
across the empty plains, searching for them and eventually made his
way to the road where they both appeared out of nowhere, lit by
silvery wisps of moonlight.

“
The silly boy clearly
wants me to kill him,” Auria snarled.

Emory’s response was to
tentatively close the space between them, grasp Auria’s hand and
get to his knees, resting his head against her hand. She sighed
softly and dragged him to his feet, holding him aloft by the front
of his shirt as she peered at him in the soft glow of the
moonlight.

“
I should really kill
you,” she said, sounding bored. “But I’ll spare you. Go back to the
farm and stay there. Someone will find you in the
morning.”

The next thing he
remembered was sitting in the farmhouse, where he stayed for the
remainder of that night, surrounded by corpses. Auria hadn’t erased
his memory of them, perhaps because she liked the idea of him
worshipping her from afar, and he had held on to it, revisiting
what he remembered everyday during the years that
passed.

Onyx and Auria passed that
way again years later when Emory was sixteen. He was on his way
home when he saw them walking out of a tavern, half-carrying an
extremely inebriated older man, soon to be one of their
victims.

Blinded by his adoration
for Auria, he rushed toward them with no thought for his safety.
Auria rounded on him, ready to attack, until she searched his mind
and saw his memories of her. Although only sixteen, he was a tall,
strapping young man and already possessed the good looks she had
preserved for an eternity. Looking him over, she reached over and
grabbed his crotch, seemingly pleased with what she discovered
there.

“
Well, you seem determined
to die young. Come. You can carry him.”

She placed the drunk in
his arms, although she could have carried him much easier than
Emory. He followed them without a second thought.

They kept him with them
for the next ten years. He watched over them during the day and did
whatever they asked of him at night, desperate to be allowed to
stay with Auria. He had not known she could change him and make him
like them until she surprised him one night. That had been decades
ago.

“
I will always love her,
no matter what she does to me.” His face became sad as he showed me
more images. One was of Auria’s expression as she gazed at me the
night before.

He showed me countless other images of
Auria in different scenarios with other men and women, most of them
sexual. The one constant in all those images was Emory watching
those couplings, his sorrow and anguish palpable. It was not the
physical act that elicited this emotion, because he enjoyed
watching her being loved by others; it was the little moments of
affection she showed toward them occasionally that fired up his
rage and jealousy.

“
I love her regardless of
her mistakes,” he continued. “She has made many mistakes with you.
She should not have made you straight away, or killed your wife.
Another approach at times is best in situations like
this.”

Like the approach he had chosen, I
thought to myself, the pretence of friendship whilst he slowly
tried to bend me toward what he wanted of me.

“
Yes, that approach. I see
that the thought of being with another man is abhorrent to you. But
when you have lived for as long as I have, the pursuit of pleasure
crosses any boundary you may have set in your mortal life. Flesh is
flesh and there are many ways to gain pleasure from it if you are
not afraid to experiment. And beauty, even beauty such as yours,
can only enchant a person for so long. So do not worry, she will
tire of trying to win your affection.”

You hope,
I thought again, looking directly at
him.

His eyes hardened, almost
imperceptibly, but he smiled calmly even though his rage leapt out
at me. He averted his gaze and continued in his light-hearted
manner.

“
Your beauty may have
caught her attention. But she turned you into one of us purely on a
whim. So do not think you can ever take my place. Besides, making
you was a big mistake, and I do not say this out of jealousy. You
are young, not merely from my advanced years on this Earth. You are
young in mind even among men of your years. You have an innocent,
pure spirit and she should have known being turned into a vampire
would haunt you.” He smiled wryly. “Or perhaps she did and it is
the reason why she chose to do it. But you cannot be made into a
vampire without it changing you. How long before you become exactly
like us? Years? Decades?”

He directed a level stare at me and,
as always, his gaze was a little too intimate. I vowed I would
never be like them.

He laughed softly and got to his
feet.

“
Time will tell. And you
have plenty of that now. So I will wait and look forward to the day
you finally yield to me.”

He smiled once more, a leering smile,
and then he walked away, leaving me with my thoughts.

I remained in the chapel, trying to
come to terms with the devastating events that had taken place
since arriving at the plantation. Auria and Onyx returned not long
after with some male slaves in tow. I heard Onyx order them to
place barrels of whisky they had brought with them at the back of
the chapel. She told them they could leave and I listened to their
footsteps as they ran all the way back to the relative safety of
the slave quarters. When I heard Auria leave again, I ventured
outside and just stood in the clearing gazing up at the night sky.
The crumpled body of the slave still lay where she fell, and I
avoided looking at it, disgusted and ashamed, but also aroused
whenever I glanced at it.