Dark Requiem (The Darkling Trilogy, Book 3) (31 page)

Only one spirit remained,
that of the woman I had called Mama during my first earthly walk. I
saw her as clearly as I’d seen her when her spirit had summoned my
true self in what I had seen as a dream. Although she could join
the others, such was her devotion to me that she meant to linger,
as she had done for centuries to ensure I could return to
him.

I gazed upon her face for
the longest moment, taking in her smooth, dark skin which glistened
as if she stood in soft sunlight. I drank in her onyx eyes and the
rows of scars on her forehead and cheeks. I had lived for millennia
before I chose an earthly existence, but had never known the true
love of a mother until she became mine. I memorised every line of
her face, and although a part of me wanted her spirit to remain
with me always, she had earned her rest so I urged her to join the
others. Her sojourn was at an end and she could be at
peace.

I was alone now in a place
where the past was indistinguishable from the present and the
future. I was everywhere and nowhere at once, the scene before my
eyes fluctuating, splitting, blooming before me.

I saw a mahogany-skinned
female dressed in black, racing across an empty vermillion
landscape under a flame-coloured sky, her feet barely touching its
surface.

I also saw Avery in dark,
ghostly woodland, his black clothing and white necktie tattered,
his hair long and tangled, his eyes hollow wells of sorrow as he
continued his lonely wanderings in the hopes he would have even a
glimpse of the being that had called to him and told him to wait
for her.

I saw another on a long,
lonely quest. A larger, more colourful version of the son he
sought. His natural charm and exuberance dampened by grief, guilt
and the belief his son was in pain and needed him.

His name was Leonard
Wentworth. I had never met this man, but I loved his son, and it
was painful to see him travelling from town to town, spending many
nights in filthy, cramped boarding rooms, if even one could be
found. His travails, his every thought during the years after
Avery’s disappearance, were a lament, a prayer only a goddess could
hear: That of the desire to save his son. It was a prayer that
whispered to my soul and I knew I could grant it, although not in
his lifetime or in the way he expected.

I was drawn to another in
pain and I found myself in woodland as the sun crept into a lonely,
dusky dawn. A man with coal dark skin lay amidst the undergrowth,
sound asleep. His knuckles were bruised, as was his face. I knew
who he was, for my first earthly incarnation had given birth to
him. He was Dembi, my son. He awoke with a start, eyes that were so
much like his father’s, wild and dark with confusion as he stared
around him. His trousers were unbuttoned and the alien scent of
another woman clung to him. He got to his knees, his head bowed. He
groaned in despair.

It had happened
again.

He recalled snatches of a
female voice. Smooth, dark skin and the feel of short, fat legs
clamped like a vice around his waist. He recalled little else, like
her name, or where they met. These blackouts occurred often and he
wanted desperately to tell his sister, Lina. But how could he make
her believe something strange was happening and that he wasn’t in
control of it?

He groaned
again.

He loved his wife so much,
how was he going to explain yet more lost hours, the female scent
that clung to him, or the mindless violence branding its ownership
upon his face and knuckles?

He looked up, tears
trailing down his cheeks, and then went rigid with shock, his gaze
focusing on where I stood.

“
Mama?”

He could see me and I knew
now that the chapel entity had been attacking my earthly
descendants from the moment I was turned into a vampire, using the
males especially—from Dembi to Lina’s sons—to breed children far
and wide who were disconnected from the family and so were
vulnerable to an attack that would see it reborn again through one
of them.

Dembi stared at me, his
anguish raw and deep.

“
Help me, Mama, help
me.”

I couldn’t because to
intervene would mean many men and women, who had been born as a
result, would cease to exist. Including a certain heroic vampire
hunter I had watched die in my arms.

Tears filled my eyes, but
I moved away, leaving my son alone in the woods, distraught and
wrestling with pain and confusion in the tepid dawn light seeping
through the trees.

I found myself next in a
small home in Louisiana. An overweight white woman with greasy dark
hair, who appeared to be in her twenties, sat smoking. Her face was
flushed with drink, her expression dark with discontent.

“
Mallory! Mallory! Didn’t
I tell you to clean up this mess,” she said, staring at some toys
on the floor by her feet.

Moments later, a thin,
red-haired girl entered the room. She remained at the door, her
face thoughtful, a hint of fear in her eyes as she stared at her
mother.

“
Well, don’t just stand
there! Clean it up.”

Mallory moved into the
room and approached cautiously. Her mother watched her with mean,
quick eyes. All the frustration and disappointment she felt at her
life gathered to a sharp pinpoint of hatred directed at her child.
When Mallory got close enough and bent to pick up her toys, she
directed a thick, sharp slap at the child.

“
I tell you time and again
not to leave your crap in my clean living room!”

She reached out to slap
her again, but Mallory was able to dart out of her reach, her toys
in her hand. She rubbed her cheek, fighting back tears as she left
the room.

In the corridor, she let
out a breath. She was used to these vicious moods of her mother’s,
which rarely lasted more than a few days. She would be back to
normal soon, but tears still stung Mallory’s eyes. At times like
this she wished desperately for a father, someone to stick up for
her when her mother was being mean. She disappeared down the
corridor to her room, lost in familiar fantasies of a father who
would come and whisk her away from a life that was smothering
her.

That night I watched her
mother as she slept, snatches of her past, present and future
spread out before me like the pieces of a patchwork quilt. I looked
at the choices she had made which had resulted in the frustration
and anger now directed at her child. I also saw what Mallory would
be like at the age her mother was now. I saw an overweight woman,
her beauty faded, her face drained of all joy and vitality, a child
hanging on her hip whilst she shouted at another.

I stared down at Mallory’s
mother as she slept. The power of a goddess was to command all
around her. The power of a goddess was that of life.

She could also take it
away.

So, like a ghoul in the
dark, I reached out and drew her life force out of the trappings of
the mortal body lying before me.

Mallory’s mother was soon
standing beside me in her true form, radiant and full of love and
peace. She stared at the corpse before her as if she did not
recognise it. She turned to me, her brow furrowed.

Why?
There was no grief or anger, only the question.

I showed her all I had
seen.

Sorrow peered at me from
her almond brown eyes, which were so much like
Mallory’s.

I was hurting her that
much?

I nodded.
You understand?

Yes, but what
will—?

She will be taken care
of.

She nodded and looked at
the door which led down the corridor to Mallory’s room, her eyes
shining with tears of love.

I took her hand and led
her away.

I returned immediately to
find days had passed. Mallory had remained with her mother’s corpse
the entire time. She was in the kitchen standing on a chair
searching the half empty cupboards for something to eat.

She sat down on the chair
and bit her nails. She may have remained in the house for a few
more days had I not given her a gentle nudge to go and find help,
bringing forth an image of what she had always wanted. A
father.

She followed that
intuition and left the house into the night. She turned in the
direction of their nearest neighbour, but I moved to block her
path.

She came to an abrupt
halt, her skin tingling. She rapidly backed away and went in the
other direction, which would take her into the woods and to the
mansion. Just before she disappeared into the trees, she stopped
and looked toward where I stood. Then she dipped into the
woods.

I watched her move out of
sight. She would soon stumble across the mansion and Avery, but
there was still more for me to do. I moved into one of the
shimmering fissures that were mine to command and found myself in a
large, clinical, dorm-like room with roughly six beds. I moved to
the bed near the window where a small mound topped with long red
hair lay beneath the covers. Before I reached the bed, she was
awake and had pushed the covers off of her. She sat up, her small
form tense, her eyes wide in the dark as she peered around her as
if listening intently. She remembered nothing of the short time she
spent with Avery, but it appeared as if she had been waiting for
something. Before I could prod her, she got out of the bed and
dressed silently, constantly peering around her at the long, deep
shadows in the room, almost as if expecting one of them to come to
life before her. She definitely knew I was there although she could
not see me. When she was dressed, I moved to the door, and she
followed, although she still could not see me.

She opened the door and
walked through it, stepping into bright sunshine and
woodlands.

If she was aware of what
had just taken place—that she had crossed space and time in just a
few steps—she did not show it. Her gaze was transfixed on what
could be seen of the mansion through the gates. She moved toward it
as if sleep walking and sat down by the gates.

It was how Avery found her
minutes later.

Although I knew she was
safe and would have all she had ever wanted—a loving father who
would protect her—it was still difficult for me to walk away from
this Mallory and give up what I had wanted the moment I laid eyes
on her in my mortal life. A child I could raise with
Avery.

I moved away, consoled by
the fact that the adult Mallory waited for me in the present. I was
also consoled by the fact that the prayer to save his son, that had
kept Avery’s father wandering through America for years, had not
gone unanswered. For unbeknownst to him, a night of passion with a
beautiful, red-haired woman had produced a child he had never known
of. During those years, he had often thought of the beautiful woman
whose flame-coloured hair had been a beacon on a dark and stormy
night. He had considered going back to the town and finding her. If
he had, he would have spent the rest of his days relatively happy
and with a child whom he could perhaps atone for his past sins,
something he could never have done even if he had found Avery.
Unfortunately he had continued on in his fruitless search. Although
Mallory was not aware of the fact that the being who had become her
adopted father was in fact related to her, she had been able to do
what Leonard Wentworth’s soul had prayed for: save Avery and keep
him in the world long enough for me to return to him.

I was drawn now to the
call of one who had waited aeons for me.

Akan.

I found myself in the
woodland on the Holbert plantation. He was there waiting for me
beneath the trees in the timid sunlight filtering through the
trees, and had been for so long.

When I was before him, he
got to his knees and bowed his head, one hand against his heart. I
placed a hand on his shoulder.

“
Get to your feet, old
friend. Why have you summoned me?” I said, knowing now why he had
appeared to me as the brown mare that had been crucial in helping
me save Avery’s life centuries ago.

He rose and peered down at
me.

“
Goddess. It was foretold
long ago that I had your favour, and you would grant me whatever it
is I ask of you. I have waited a very long time to be able to do
so.”

“
What do you wish of
me?”

He sighed and hung his
head. There was much emotion in his gaze when he looked up at me
again.

“
First I need to show you
the rest of my story.”

I nodded and our
surroundings began to change as time bowed and surrendered before
me, letting thousands of years drift away like leaves on a warm
summer breeze. And I learned what became of the little girl who had
dared believe she was a goddess.

Years passed and Alayai
grew lovelier with each day, but the endless days confined to the
temple were painful for her. She was twelve now and although her
face had lost its childlike glow and her body was beginning to
soften into womanhood, the path to marriage, children—life—was
closed to her. She was destined to waste her years away in the
suffocating temple, burdened with entreaties, petitions and endless
disputes, not to mention tributes from the many villagers that came
to worship the earthly incarnation of the goddess of the moon. Only
Akan’s visits a few nights each week brought respite from her
boredom and isolation. The many attendants she spent the long,
tiring days with merely another part of the temple—silent, fearful
embodiments of stone.