Immortal dark, p.1
Immortal Dark, page 1
This book is a work of fiction. Names, characters, places, and incidents are the product of the author’s imagination or are used fictitiously. Any resemblance to actual events, locales, or persons, living or dead, is coincidental.
Copyright © 2024 by Tigest Girma
Map, chapter opener, and university crest copyright © 2024 by Virginia Allyn
Interior art copyright © various contributors at Shutterstock.com
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Cover art copyright © 2024 by Jessica Coppet. Cover design by Jenny Kimura. Cover copyright © 2024 by Hachette Book Group, Inc.
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Interior design by Jenny Kimura.
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Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data
Names: Girma, Tigest, author.
Title: Immortal dark / Tigest Girma.
Description: First edition. | New York : Little, Brown and Company, 2024. | Series: Immortal dark | Audience: Ages 14 and up. | Summary: Nineteen-year-old orphan Kidan Adane, heiress to a fallen House of humans tethered to vampiric creatures called dranaics, navigates her duty to foster human-dranaic relations, but when her sister is kidnapped, Kidan suspects a dranaic and will do anything to find her.
Identifiers: LCCN 2023051680 | ISBN 9780316570381 (hardcover) | ISBN 9780316581448 (hardcover) | ISBN 9780316570404 (ebook)
Subjects: CYAC: Vampires—Fiction. | Sisters—Fiction. | Missing children—Fiction. | Black people—Fiction. | Fantasy. | LCGFT: Fantasy fiction. | Novels.
Classification: LCC PZ7.1.G58365 Im 2024 | DDC [Fic]—dc23
LC record available at https://lccn.loc.gov/2023051680
ISBNs: 978-0-316-57038-1 (deluxe), 978-0-316-58144-8 (standard), 978-0-316-57040-4 (ebook), 978-0-316-58232-2 (OwlCrate)
E3-20240813-JV-PC-REV
Contents
Cover
Title Page
Copyright
Dedication
Map
Prologue
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Acknowledgments
Discover More
About the Author
FOR THE BLACK GIRLS WHO’VE ALWAYS MARVELED AT THE DARK BEAUTY OF VAMPIRES. THE IMMORTALS LOOK LIKE US IN THIS ONE.
&
FOR MY HABESHA GIRLS WHO DARE TO OCCUPY NEW AND WONDROUS SPACES. HOLD YOUR HEAD UP, AND LET THEM SEE YOU.
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Content warning: Immortal Dark explores the savage world of vampires and the humans who try to survive it. It features some heavy elements such as parental abuse, blood drinking, death, gore, murder, sexual content, strong language, suicide ideation, and violence. Readers, please take note before you grab your invitation. The gates of Uxlay University are now open.
PROLOGUE
VISIBLE THROUGH THE CANDLELIT WINDOW OF UXLAY UNIVERSITY, A campus as ancient as the creatures it housed, the dean and her vampire sat in private conversation.
They studied a piece of parchment that detailed the town’s layout, and particularly the drop of blood fading near the cathedral. This map was one of the dean’s most favorite treasures, handed down her family bloodline before all such tools were destroyed. She never could forgive such a loss.
Before the blood disappeared into the yellowed page, it blossomed into three letters, spelling the word “mot.” Death.
“Silia Adane is dead,” the dean said, exactly an hour after they’d first sat down.
Her vampire steepled his fingers and responded in Aarac. For a dead language, it possessed an unnatural amount of life, dancing on the tongue like a stirred snake.
“Then it is true. The will of inheritance is in effect.”
The dean pushed her chair back and went to the window. Night pressed onward from the forest, wrapping long fingers around the Arat Towers and their mourning spire statues. Golden light poured from the open-mouthed lion statues perched on the stone walls. Each animal came awake to illuminate the entrance halls and corridors.
“There are two more Adanes left,” she said.
“You would break your promise to her? I thought she was your dear friend.”
The dean’s thick brows knitted. Her vampire liked his honesty with an equal measure of cruelty. Even when she was younger, she disliked this most about him.
Of course she did not wish to break her promise. For weeks, Silia’s blood had run thin on the map. A rare disease even Uxlay couldn’t cure had infected her. The dean had urged Silia to call her two nieces from wherever they hid and entrust one of the girls with the family’s legacy before it was too late. But stubbornness was the plague of all the Adanes.
Silia Adane had sought freedom at incredible cost, selfish even if it was not for herself. As such, fourteen years ago, after the death of her sister and her brother-in-law, Silia had disappeared in the middle of the night with her young twin nieces. The dean had forgiven this betrayal of responsibility for one reason only—grief.
Grief had a way of removing duty by its roots. It was why the dean had chosen it as the first enemy to master. Why she was here, planning the next set of events, instead of by her late friend’s side. There was no faltering now. It was this very mastery that made her run a campus that kept peace among nature’s natural enemies. And peace would not last if the Adanes’ will came into effect.
The dean chose not to tell her vampire she regretted the promise. At the time, it had sounded justified. What did it matter if the girls were never to be contacted? The dean had been certain Silia would settle with her lover and birth a child and the great House Adane’s bloodline would continue. How wrong she’d been. Death was pursuing House Adane with great intensity, and she had no choice but to bring new life into it.
She studied the growing darkness. “We’ll retrieve the girl from Green Heights in a week.”
“What of the other one?”
“I’m afraid I don’t know where she is. It’s said she ran away from their foster home the day she turned eighteen.”
She glanced at him. To see if he was aware of this. It used to unsettle her how little their facial muscles moved, how their coal eyes cut into a stare and never blinked.
“Perhaps one is enough.” Her vampire remained impassive. “Their presence will cause some unpleasantness.”
The dean faced the window. “As all estranged things do.”
“True.” He considered. “I would enjoy having them in my class. Their mother was one of my brightest students.”
The tale of the girls’ parents was legend, but legend had a way of bearing tragedy.
“Do you wish me to collect
“No, I will go.”
In the window’s reflection, a line marred his mahogany skin.
“You never leave Uxlay.”
“I’m afraid it’s necessary.”
“Why?”
The dean regained her seat, calm as she delivered the next piece of news. “Because Kidan Adane was detained for murder as of twenty-four hours ago.”
Pinpricks of light shone in her vampire’s black eyes. “Whose life did she take?”
“I don’t know yet. It’s quite odd, but Kidan Adane believes her sister did not run away. Instead, she’s convinced a vampire took June Adane. That they brought her here, to the university, against her will.”
Brows lowered, she studied him again. He wasn’t frowning. She marveled at how he’d settled into his old skin, handsome and stony as the day she met him. Her, nineteen. Him, five centuries old. She rubbed her wrinkled hand. Time was a frightening thing.
“I would know if June Adane was here,” he simply said.
“I thought so too. Surely if such a crime had taken place, you would have dealt with it in the appropriate manner.”
“Of course.” He showed no sign of offense at her inquiry. She valued this about him. He rarely took things personally. Nor did he ever lie. But these were strange times, and loyalty was the first casualty of change.
“How do you know all this?” he asked. “Surely having the girls followed and watched goes against the promise.”
Satisfied he’d passed her questioning, the dean gestured to the pile of letters sitting next to a carving of an animal—a small impala with two magnificent horns.
“Kidan Adane writes quite a lot, always begging Uxlay to return her sister. I have tried to find June, but the girl has disappeared. Unfortunately for Kidan, her aunt Silia made Uxlay the birthplace of all her nightmares.”
He moved with the quickness of a shadow caught in light, careful not to touch the glass impala figurine before collecting the letters. The action made the dean’s lips curve slightly. Superstition caused most dranaics to avoid the beautiful antelope, in the same way it convinced students that rubbing a lion statue delivered strength. As the vampire read, his brow furrowed, a crease forming.
“You never responded?” he asked curiously.
“I kept my word.”
He had stood by her side for nearly forty years and still did not understand her promises, nor how she moved the earth to keep them. Skirting around her vows had made their life very difficult.
“What is different now?” he asked.
She studied one of the letters. Kidan’s words slipping into anger and plea in tandem, the sun and moon of a horrible loss.
“Mot sewi yelkal,” she responded in Aarac.
Death frees us from our previous selves.
In a very rare moment, her vampire’s lips lifted at one corner. It never failed to amuse him when his students quoted his lessons back to him. Especially when they lived long enough to understand their true meanings.
KIDAN ADANE GAVE HERSELF EIGHT MONTHS TO DIE.
The schedule was quite generous, if she was being honest. Two months would have sufficed for the violent act. The extension was a poor attempt at a dream. A dream she wouldn’t entertain if she wasn’t currently dehydrated and fading in and out of her room.
She wanted to live with her sister again inside that odd little house. Live in a time when innocence didn’t need to be proved at every turn. That last thought pulled her out of her haze, made her chuckle. She sounded wronged and, if she dared think it, a victim.
Her laughter rattled again, a clogged chimney inside her chest sounding painful and raw. How long had it been since she’d spoken? The curtains remained closed because of the cameras, so a bulb had become her only source of light. Like any artificial sun, it overheated and burned the air around it, forcing her to work half naked on the apartment floor.
Sweat gathered on her dark forehead now, wetting the file she was reading, her folded leg buried somewhere in the swarm of papers. She couldn’t afford to switch off the light. Not when there was so much to do. Not when she was this close. In Kidan’s mind, she was trapped in one never-ending night and hell was not dissimilar to this.
Movement—she needed movement. She stood too fast, stumbling, and blood rushed to her folded leg, paralyzing her. She shook off the numbness and walked to the small kitchen.
Murderer.
The word jumped from the newspaper article plastered on her fridge, branded above the image of a Black girl.
Kidan Adane was a murderer. She waited for the prickle of remorse she should have felt at those words. She even pinched her mouth and scrunched her nose, trying to force the emotion out of herself. But just like that fiery night, she failed to cry. She waited for a sliver of humanity to slip through. She was completely dry. A statue carved out of obsidian.
Kidan poured herself a drink. The shutter clicks of a camera snapped, accompanied by tiny flashes of light. She swung sharply to the window, drink nearly slipping from her grasp. The curtains remained drawn, but the reporters clawed at the gaps, like seagulls scratching for bread.
Be patient, she thought.
It would all be clear soon. In eight months, exactly. That was when her trial date was set. Kidan had no plan to attend. Long before any of it, her confession would be found taped to the underside of her bed and the violent workings of her mind unveiled for all.
The camera flashed again, making her wince. It was unlikely they could get her picture, but maybe she should put on clothes. It wasn’t her full chest or her wide hips that she wanted to hide. A racy picture of her might actually work in her favor: a gross violation of her privacy making the rounds. It didn’t sound bad at all. She shook her head. There she was again, thinking of ways she could manipulate sympathy.
She met her reflection, and a thin, frail voice slipped out of her. “You are not like them. You are not like them.”
Them.
Aunt Silia called them dranaics. Vampires.
Despite the heat of the apartment walls, Kidan shivered. Dranaics appeared no different from humans. It was the very source of all her disturbance. Evil shouldn’t go around in human skin. It was a desecration.
Kidan loathed her aunt. Loathed her inaction. She had waited too long to rescue them from that vile society. Maybe then evil wouldn’t have seeped into Kidan as a child. June had fared better, but Kidan had feasted on it. Her morbid curiosity with death, her sick fascination with and collection of films depicting its art, and now committing the final act itself—all this came from vampires. If she could dig into her chest and pull out her twisted heart right now, she would.
Eight months.
Relief punctured through with those two words. All she had to do was wait eight months to die. Make sure June was found. Bear this wretched existence a little longer.
A picture of June beamed at her from her open laptop. They looked nothing alike, despite being born within minutes of each other. June’s disappearance received no coverage, not even a whisper in the neighborhood. Where would Kidan be if these reporters had hunted for her lost sister the way they hunted her? No, Black girls had to commit horrifying acts to earn the spotlight.
The papers on her floor were the frenzied tracking of a place called Uxlay University. Kidan had searched for twelve months and twenty days. Her eyes darted to the recording taped under her bed, and the temperature of the room dropped. It held the last, tortured conversation between Kidan and her victim.
Better, she thought, almost smiling. She was assigning blame where it needed to go. Kidan’s victim.
The recording held the proof, the name of the person—no, animal—responsible for taking June. It was only a matter of finding the fucking place. And him.
Kidan squatted and studied the trail of her search. She reached for a pen, pulled off the cap with her teeth, and started another letter to Aunt Silia, who never wrote back.
If there was even the slimmest chance of finding June again, she’d spend the rest of her life writing.
Her fingers tensed, digging into her palms. Thin arcs of blood irritated her skin. With her forefinger, she traced a continuous square inside her palm. Nerves. She recognized the emotion. So she wasn’t completely lost yet. The jagged mirror across the room cut an ugly shape along her dark throat. A cool, unimpressed expression gazed back. If only she could master crying before her trial, the world might forgive her. She might live longer.
Cry, she ordered her image.
