Heart of darkness, p.42
Heart of Darkness, page 42
part #8 of Dark Secrets Series
“And bring milk,” I called. “You can’t have brownies without milk.”
“You’re lucky you can eat your emotions and not get fat,” he noted, hugging the doorway of the common room, that gorgeous brow furrowed in mock irritation. “I’m human now. If I keep eating like you, I’ll get fat.”
My eyes strayed to his tummy, a brow arching. “You mean ‘fatter’?” I joked.
He shot a straight finger at me, eyes wide with playful insult. “You’re lucky you’re so adorable.”
I laughed, smiling up at Arthur as he came in. “Hey you.”
“Hello.” He stood in the doorway with an air about him that had me looking up from the game I was trying to win—or cheat at.
“What’s wrong?” I asked.
“Lord Eden has contacted me.”
“Why?”
“He has always fought to protect the humans from great harm—stepping in during the wars, or when serial killers are left to roam without intervention.”
“And?”
“And…” He came all the way into the room in a sweeping long step, his head down, and sat on the chair beside me. “Word has reached him about David.”
“What about him?”
“There is an epidemic out there, Amara, of missing persons.” He cleared his throat, sniffing once. “My nephew, it seems, is no longer acting with discretion—”
“He’s leaving the bodies to be found?”
“The fact that he’s doing the killing in the first place is enough to have turned Vampirie’s head. But, add to it that several children have gone missing—”
“Children?” I turned to face him, sliding forward on the seat. “He’s killing children?”
“We don’t know for certain. All we know is that sixteen children have gone missing in the last week. If it is, indeed, at David’s hand, he cannot be allowed to bring any more harm.” He put a hand firmly over mine. “Lord Eden has requested my assistance in bringing David in.”
“Will he kill him?”
“I asked that he does not. And he is allowing us to instead lock him away, if we can hold him, until Jason is ready to pass on his soul, provided you are certain that it will alter David’s evil state and restore the tree.”
I brought a hand up to cover my mouth. Jase wasn’t ready. I wasn’t. I hadn’t found another way to save the tree. And Daniel wasn’t ready to lose his dad. He loved Jase, and I knew it would be traumatic, for both of us, to lose him right now. How could I look in to my little boy’s eyes when he asked where his daddy was and tell him Jase was dead? That he was gone and never coming back? Danny would lose his shipmate, his storyteller, his airplane ride, and instead trade it in for a piece of that man inside the body of a dark, evil one who would never call Danny his son. A man that had possibly killed children.
“Can I ask you something?” Arthur said carefully.
I nodded, sweeping a tear from my chin.
He slid a little closer, bringing his head in and keeping his voice low. “What if you let David die—”
“Arthur, I just can’t even think like that. I—”
“Yes, but… just imagine for a moment,” he said softly. “Imagine if it was okay to love Jason. Imagine if I gave you permission, right now, if Mike, Elora, Harry—what if we all gave you permission to love Jason the way your heart has eternally longed for him—”
“I—”
“Don’t deny it, Amara. I may have been living away from you all for these past ten years, but I knew you before that. And I know it killed you to make the decision to stay with David.” He put both hands on my upper arms, bringing his eyes in line with mine. “You loved David, which made that decision easier, but you never stopped loving Jason, and no one ever told you that was okay.”
“But David—”
“Is dead, my dear. He died when Lily turned him human and took his soul from his body,” he stated, his own voice breaking. “How can you rightly bring him back when both you and Jason are happier here, in this moment of time, than you have ever been?”
“But—”
“Don’t deny it. You are happier,” he insisted. “And that’s with a missing daughter, and the death of your old lives hanging heavily off your hearts right now. How can it be that you are happier now, when all is lost, than you were when you had everything?”
“I was happy then—”
“But not like this,” he said, a knowing glint in his eye. “I am not asking you to erase David. I am not asking you to kill him. I am simply asking you to analyze the what if. Analyze the possibility of letting Jason live. Just look in on the way it might be and realize that there is another option. That you could continue on this path of friendship with him, maybe something more, but certainly something that lifts you both up. And you could save that tree. Not all is lost if David dies.”
“But it is—”
“Because you love him. You have lived a life, a very long life, with him, and there will never be a way to replace him. Ever,” he said kindly, with a century-worth of understanding, because he’d lost someone he loved too. “But you are lucky in that you have another piece of his soul. You have Jason, and you do not have to do this alone, unlike so many of us when we lose a loved one.”
I thought about Danny, and what he’d want. And then I thought about Elora, and her life and Evie’s. If the tree died, and Elora’s soul was taken by the Silas, her daughter would forever mourn her. Her husband would forever be lost, wandering again without his soul mate. There was more to lose here than just David. This wasn’t just about me losing my husband, and I had not been ready to face that until now.
Finally, the blinders were off, the truth stepping out of shadow, and I couldn’t deny it any longer.
I nodded. “I can think about it, but… I have wanted to. Sometimes, when Jase looks across at me while he’s playing with Danny, or when I come into the kitchen late at night to find him there, having practically read my mind and started making coffee… sometimes I do want to think about what it’d be like, but my heart won’t let me.”
“Of course it won’t, my dear.” He patted my hand. “You have loved David for almost forty years. And it was a deep, all-encompassing love. But things change,” he added, and his tone changed too, “life in this long eternity never stays the same, and you have had a lifetime together. If you choose to let him go, it would not be the end. For any of you.”
I drew back and turned away, leaning my elbows against the table and looking out the window. “How will you bring him in? He’s powerful, Arthur. Even more than me, because he uses the darkness.”
He grinned, standing up and offering his hand. “I’ll show you.”
I walked with him along the corridor to the front entrance, wondering what he was up to. Outside, he let go of my hand and we stood on the front steps overlooking the university courtyard.
“What are we doing?” I asked.
“Just… watch.” Arthur folded his arms and leaned on the doorway, looking at all the people going about their day. In that moment, every single person walking, sitting, standing, reading, drinking coffee or laughing with their friends, subtly put a finger into their nose and had a dig around, drawing the digit away then with embarrassment and shame, some wiping it on their jeans, others laughing and pointing or looking around, unsure what happened.
I laughed, turning to Arthur. And it wasn’t enough just to say wow. I launched into him and threw my arms around his neck. “You’re back. When did this happen?”
“Almost immediately after I was turned,” he confessed. “I’ve been strengthening my abilities every day, but I didn’t want to tell you—”
“Why?”
“Because you’ve been so happy.” He affectionately swiped his thumb down my cheek, his eyes glinting with pride. “I knew that if you saw that, your efforts to track Aubrey down would be renewed and you’d not rest. We will never find her, Amara, and I know that. Lilith herself believes it,” he said sadly. “And I just didn’t want you to waste these last few months with Jason fighting for something we have little hope of achieving.”
I nodded, stepping away. He was right. These last few months had been some of the brightest of my life, but it hurt to admit that, so I cloaked it away in the place where I’d always kept Jase. “When are you leaving?”
“Immediately. Vampirie is meeting me at the helipad in New York, and we will bring David back here to await your decision.”
“Do I have to make it now?”
“No.” He shook his head, smiling sympathetically. “We will have time. Between the great Lord Eden and myself, we should be able to contain David in a cell. For now. But a decision will need to be made.”
“And you think I should let David die?”
Arthur straightened, unfolding his arms. “I think that there are times in life when we have to admit that something has come to an end. I don’t want to lose my nephew, my son, but I am strong and wise enough to accept that he has had his time.”
But I wasn’t. And I wasn’t sure I would ever be.
* * *
Falcon flew in from his Set when he found out that David was being brought back in, probably afraid I’d kill Jason and he wouldn't get the chance to say goodbye. He and Blade guided me down through the tunnels of the cell block to where David was being kept, both completely without words to say. Everyone had been told now. They all knew what David’s dark soul had done out there, what Arthur and Lord Eden found when they subdued him, but, so far, no one had said a word to me about it. I told them I didn’t want to know. I fought against them when they tried to call a Private Council meeting to discuss what to do next, because I knew what they’d say. Even now, I was afraid they were leading me down here to lock me up so they could take matters into their own hands, do what had to be done.
“Is he awake?” I asked, approaching the cell.
“No. Vampirie has put him under somehow,” Blade said, his voice cold and angry.
“Is Jase coming down to see his brother?” Falcon asked. It sounded so weird when he called him Jase.
“No.” I walked into the cell when Blade opened it, hugging myself. “He’s with Danny.”
Falcon nodded. “Is it okay if I go up and see him?”
“Sure.” I smiled, reaching over to rub his arm. He placed his hand on mine, holding me there for a brief exchange of everything he wanted to say, and then turned away, sucked up by the shadows outside the cell.
“Did you know about his relationship with Jase?” I asked Blade “You were here when it was going on, right?”
Blade smirked, leaning on the wall with his hands in his pockets. “Yeah. I knew.”
“Lily drugged them,” I said, moving to sit on the steel-framed bed beside David, looking him over in the darkness to make sure he wasn’t hurt. “But… was there anything between them besides that? Like—”
“Did they have sex outside of the potion? No. Not after that one time.”
“Falcon’s so…”
“Hung up?” Blade laughed. “Yeah. But Jason’s like that, I guess. I’m no pole-hugger, but I think Jason’s personality makes him easy for someone like Falcon to love.”
“What do you mean?”
“Falcon’s manly. Jason’s… not.” He laughed.
“He is,” I assured him. “He’s just also a gentle soul, very creative and poetic, I guess. The last of the true romantics.”
Blade scoffed. “You got that right. You know, Morgana stole Jason’s journals once—”
“What?”
“She read them. And because we used to date, we got to talking one day and she told me about them.”
“What about them?” I swept a lock of hair off David’s brow, watching his mouth press in with his restless dreams.
“Jason said in them that he didn’t have to be a man. That, with Falcon, he didn’t have to be strong or hide his emotions. He could be hurt, crushed by the world, and—his words, not mine—Falcon would be the man that held onto him until it all went away.”
“So he held him while he cried?” I glanced back at him.
Blade shrugged an affirmative response. And my heart peeled open and wilted. Was that all Jase needed? All this time, he’d been there for me, and I knew he was hurting too. I’d talked with him, laid with him, but he hadn’t cried. And I thought maybe he was numb, but… he just didn’t feel safe to cry with me. To be anything but a strong, capable man. A knight.
And yet he clearly needed to so badly. I wondered then if he’d spend the evening with Falcon tonight—talking in the study like old times—his chance to finally have someone hold him who wouldn’t make him feel weak, who didn’t want him to die or be someone else.
After I was killed by my sister and then rose from the ashes, living without my memory, David had just wanted me to be his Ara again, no matter what. So I completely understood how Jase felt to be second to someone’s love. And it hurt.
Blade suddenly stood up off the wall then and dropped his arms to his sides, bowing his head. A second later, Lord Eden emerged from the darkness, floating into the room. His youthful face took in the scene, fixing with hatred on David’s unconscious body.
“Leave us,” he said firmly to Blade, who bowed to me, then left.
I didn’t know why he was here or what he wanted, so I turned my attentions away from him and swept David’s hair back again, running my hand along his cheek. “How is he more beautiful now, with all this darkness, than he was when he was my David?”
“If you had seen what I’ve seen, you would not touch him that way.” He grabbed my wrist gently and moved it away, as if I were about to touch a hotplate.
“When he’s his old-self again, all of this will kill him, you know?” I advised, snatching my hand back and laying it to David’s cheek. “My David was nothing like this.”
“The David you loved would never have done this, no. But this darkness did not taint him; it merely made him feel righteous to commit such sin.”
“I don’t think—”
“Your David would have changed with time, Amara. Over the centuries that passed, his darkness would’ve overtaken him, and you knew this.” He nodded, holding my gaze. “We all knew this.”
Yes, as it slowly had already, every year layering atop another, just as his surges of hatred from that hex had become stronger, happening more often. It mixed with his magically dark soul, and gradually tainted him. I could understand that he might have eventually been gone, beyond repair. But…
“He wouldn’t have become this—”
“He would have. You forget,” he said, holding both of my arms and making me stand. “I see all. I have looked into the future of every single possibility within the circulating energy of this world, and though it takes time, that darkness in him eventually takes hold, and he, more with each decade, becomes a man you despise.”
“But with Jason’s soul, he…”
“He is still the darkness of all Man, even if he carries the light. As you have seen these past months.”
“But he wouldn’t do what he’s done if he had Jason’s soul.”
“Yet.” Vampirie turned away.
“Then, if Jase had his soul, would he become dark, like David?”
“No. Because he is not born of darkness. It is not only the soul of a man which defines him, but what is in his blood.”
I didn’t want to believe that. It was safe being ignorant to it. I wasn’t ready to look into David’s darkness and see it as a disease that would one day take him away from me. But it had already begun to progress. And I had ignored it for the sake of love.
“I do not need to defend my knowledge, Amara. It serves only as a warning. And you will make your choice either way but hear this”—he turned back and looked me square in the eye—“it will be on your shoulders and you will get no help or pity from me. Or from Lilith.”
“What’s that supposed to mean?”
“In his darkest hour, one day, thirty years from this moment, he will do something unspeakable. And you, as a mother, will kill him for vengeance.”
“What does he do?” I asked, mind racing.
“I will say no more.” He lifted his head, placed his hands behind his back, and walked away.
He’d once predicted the death of his son Sam—at Elora’s hand. And we’d done everything in our power to prevent that. Yet it happened anyway. As a being that was surrounded by prophecy and premonition all the time, I had come to learn that there were few cases in which the future could be changed. And Vampirie knew that. He wouldn't have told me that unless it was one of those cases.
I turned my gaze away and let it fall on the sleeping, almost innocent face of David, afraid, because I could so clearly see the monster now beneath the lies I’d always told myself.
And yet my heart only wanted to defend him, protect him from his own dark truth.
Aubrey
Cillian trusted the supernatural bind of me to his ring enough to take me into battle—outside the grounds of this castle, where he had no wards, no barrier spells. I would be able to see ghosts within the fissures out there, and he couldn’t stop me from passing messages on to my family. I didn’t know where I was, what this castle was called, but I knew it was in Scotland. That’s all I needed to know. They’d figure out the rest.
But if we took the London Set tomorrow, Elias would be dead. Nothing could survive me. I hadn’t tested my power yet, but I had trained endlessly over the past year, and Cillian had a lot of faith in it all. Enough that he was only bringing an army of two hundred vampires—all of them his own creations—to fortify the castle once we’d taken it. I was excited about a battle, excited to test my skills, but if I killed Elias, I’d have nothing left to fight for.
There was also a chance I might see him. I was probably only a few months short of eighteen now—not that I could really say—and it would have been drawing closer to the time when he would come to ‘court’ me.
I smiled, thinking about that word and how he’d reacted when I teased him for it. I missed simple things like that now—like laughing at words, and his knightly manners.
