Dark Requiem (The Darkling Trilogy, Book 3) (7 page)

Still aware of that dark
mass pushing against me, I spoke as if from a faraway
place.

“
I’ll be outside waiting
for him.”

She nodded. I darted out
of the mansion as if I could outrun the hunger that was still
threatening to overwhelm me.

Outside in the warm air, I
tried to still the trembling within and the ache in my bones. All
my senses were painfully focussed on Mallory and I tracked the
sound of her heels striking the floor as she hurried through the
mansion. Moments later I heard the beep of a cell phone and then
her voice speaking in a frightened whisper. The fangs pushing down
on my bottom lip receded after a few moments. The dark mass I
sensed had disappeared and now I wondered if I had imagined
it.

I thought of how soft and
frail Mallory had felt in my arms and a shudder passed through me.
Unease filled me for the first time since being made into a
vampire. I pushed it away. Avery would be here soon. I tried to
focus on that and not the dark mass I had sensed or the unease that
was bitterly scrabbling at the edges of my mind.

I was snapped out of my
reverie by a gasp. I spun around and there was my Avery standing a
few feet away from me, deep anguish in his eyes as he stared at me
with his mouth open in shock. Joy shot through me and I felt my
breath literally stop as I stared at him. His hair was longer than
when I had seen him at the chapel and was swept back away from his
face. The jeans and T-shirt he wore strained to keep his muscles
contained. It seemed a person could simply drown in those vivid,
blue eyes of his.

“
What have you done?” he
said.

“
Avery.” A smile broke
across my face and I ran toward him. I was so caught up in the joy
and excitement of seeing him after so long that I didn’t take in
his words or the disquiet in his eyes. “You don’t have to turn me
away. I’m like you now. I’ve come to stay.”

I went to throw my arms
around him, but found myself hoisted off my feet and into the air,
Avery’s hand around my neck.

Fury had turned his eyes
into a dark and stormy sea. His teeth were bared and smooth, white
fangs curved to the sharpest tip pressed against his lower lip.
Thorns of terror made it feel as if my insides had turned to
mush.

“
Who did this?” he
hissed.

“
Avery. I can’t
breathe.
I can’t
breathe
.”

Then the realisation hit
me. I was a vampire. I no longer needed air to breathe. Before the
knowledge could fully sink in, I found myself thrown away from
Avery. I soared through the air and slammed into something solid. A
loud crack filled my ears as pain shot through me. I tumbled to the
ground where I lay for a few seconds.

I was sure I was dying,
the pain was so intense.

As suddenly as it came,
the pain began to ease, flowing out of my body like water rushing
down a drain. I was able to scramble to my feet. I looked behind me
and saw the oak tree Avery had thrown me into—although still
standing—had a long split down the middle. Yet I felt...fine. There
were no broken bones and no blood anywhere on me. Even the pain had
completely disappeared.

“
Oh my God, Avery! What a
rush! Did you see that?
Did you see
that?
” I gestured excitedly at the split
tree. “You threw me and I’m not hurt. There’s not even a scratch on
me!”

I ran up to
him.

“
Do it again! But throw me
farther, throw me into the other tree.”

He looked down at me, and
although his eyes still resembled a raging tempest, his face was as
hard, cold and aloof as a statue’s. Then without uttering a word,
he turned his back on me and walked back to the mansion.

“
Avery.” I ran after him.
“Where are you going?”

“
I want you off my
property!”

“
What? What do you
mean?”

“
I want nothing to do with
you, so get off my property.”

We were at the front door
now and I saw Mallory standing in the doorway. She was still pale,
her almond eyes dark with unease.

“
You can’t do that,
Avery,” she said.

“
Get back inside,
Mallory!” She stood uncertain for a few moments, looking from me to
Avery. “Now!”

With one last sympathetic
glance in my direction, she stepped back inside and closed the door
to the mansion.

“
She’s right, Avery. You
can’t do that to me. Where am I supposed to go? I did this for you.
I did this so I can be with you. I may not be Luna, but I love you
and I know I can make you happy.”

Curiously his expression
mirrored Maryse’s when I said I was going to catch a plane. The
anger that followed, however, was a lot more disconcerting than
hers had been.

“
You
would make a very poor substitute for Luna. If you come back
here again I will kill you.”

I stood open mouthed,
gaping at his retreating back as he turned and entered the mansion,
slamming the door shut behind him.

I burst into tears as my
heart broke into a million pieces.

I cried, noisily and
ardently, for the next few minutes.

He hated me. He actually
hated me. I had given up everyone and everything for him and he
hated me.

Mallory’s soft, anxious
sounding voice floated out to where I stood although it was barely
above a whisper.

“
Avery, at least let her
come inside so she can explain what happened.”

“
Stay out of this,
Mallory!” he said.

There was silence for a
few moments, then I heard her again as she tried to reason with
him, her tone low but persistent, each word like flint striking
steel.

I drew my arm across my
face to wipe away the tears and the snot dribbling from my nose. I
looked down to see a dark smudge of mascara on my arm.

I had spent hours getting
ready to meet him. Now my clothes were torn and my make-up ruined.
I glanced up at the door he had practically slammed in my face and
my eyes narrowed.

No one ever turned me
down.

No one—and I mean
no one
—had ever spoken
to me like that, least of all some uptight two hundred year-old
vampire who was too old and stubborn to see a good thing when it
came knocking on his door.

“
Avery!
Avery
!” I screamed.

The whispered voices
inside came to an abrupt halt.

“
I know you can hear me!
I’m not leaving. Do you hear that? I’m not leaving. You can’t do
this to me, dammit! I won’t let you do this to me! You’re all I’ve
got now. You’re all I’ve got, you...you...miserable, arrogant,
idiotic, old fool! I’ve turned myself into this and given up
everyone and everything I love for you, and now you’re going to
turn your back on me? I won’t let you do this. You can’t do this to
me. What am I supposed to do now, for God’s sake?

“
I love you, dammit! I
don’t even know why I feel this way, but I love you. And love isn’t
something you turn your back on. Do you know what I would give to
have someone love me as much as I love you? You’re a fool if you
give it up. Do you hear that? You’re a fool if you turn me
away!”

I faltered to a stop,
spent and miserable. My heart was empty and breaking miserably.
What was I going to do now? Go and find myself some hotel or a
hovel like Shadrach’s and Maryse’s to while away my lonely days and
nights? I could cope with a hovel, but only if he was with me. I
couldn’t leave.

“
Avery!
Avery
! I might be in love with you, but I
hate you! I hate you! And Luna would hate you, too. No matter what
you think of me, her blood runs through my veins. I’m one of her
descendants, and she would hate you for treating me this way. And
you’re an ass—”

“
For God’s sake, would you
stop making such an infernal racket! I’m sure the whole of
Louisiana heard your nonsensical diatribe.”

I spun around. He was
standing at the steps of the mansion looking stern and harassed. He
ran a hand through his hair. Against my will, my heart jumped at
the sight of him even though he appeared so hard and unyielding. I
tried to probe his thoughts, but they were as closed to me as his
heart appeared to be.

“
You can stay here for one
day. I will find somewhere else for you to stay after that. Do you
understand?”

“
Yeah, whatever.
Okay.”

I walked past him up the
steps to the mansion door. Then I stopped and turned to look at my
suitcases and then at him.

His mouth tightened, but
he moved to my suitcases and picked them up.

It wasn’t exactly the way
I expected to achieve victory with my hair in disarray, my clothes
dirty and torn, my make-up smudged and snot running from my nose,
but it was better than nothing. At least phase one of my
plan—getting inside the mansion—was complete. I would worry about
the rest tomorrow night.

***

An hour later after a
long, hot bath, I went to find Avery.

I found him in his
bedroom. It was a large room with magnolia-coloured walls and heavy
dark wood furniture. There was an air of indifference about the
room, as if it were a silent servant you relied on but barely
acknowledged. A custom-built bookcase extended across the length of
one of the walls and was cluttered with books and lots of little
trinkets I imagined he had gathered over the centuries. A sea shell
here, or what looked like an ancient African carving there. Like
pretty much everything else in the room, there was a forlorn air
about them as if they had been forgotten the moment they were
purchased.

The room spoke volumes
about how Avery’s life had been after Luna’s death—the joy he used
to find in the world had either been forgotten or ignored. That
saddened me and for some reason I felt intense guilt whisper to me.
Heavy shutters attached to the windows were open to the night,
letting a sweet breeze into the room and the buoyant call of the
night which sounded like the excited chatter of strident
voices.

Avery sat at a mahogany
desk with his back to me. I was completely taken by surprise when I
saw the sketch I had made of Luna mounted in a gold frame above his
desk. I stared at it, at the heavy charcoal lines depicting her
face hidden in shadow as she knelt at the stream.

A shrinking despair
touched my heart. He had kept it, but that was not because it was
from me. How could I possibly win his heart when it would always be
Luna’s whether she was dead or alive?

I glanced from the sketch
to Avery. He was bent over an old, heavy book and the desk was
cluttered with other large, dusty-looking tomes. One appeared to be
a bible written in some ancient language. The other was a book on
the occult.

Jesus, such serious
reading.

He spoke without
turning.

“
Go downstairs, Dallas.
I’ll come down and speak to you in a moment.”

I ignored him and walked
farther into the room, glancing around me. Then I moved to the
wardrobe and threw it open, rifling through his clothes, most of
which were safe, boring pieces, all in drab colours. Boring,
boring, boring. The next thing on my to-do list was to take him
shopping for a whole new wardrobe. I pulled out a couple of
shirts.

“
No, no, no. These have
got to go, Ave.”

I walked over to the bin
by the desk and tossed the offending shirts inside. He glanced up
from his book and down at the shirts in the bin. His mouth set into
a grim line. He looked up at me and noticed what I was wearing for
the first time. A lacy bra and matching briefs over which I wore a
sheer black wrap.

His brow
furrowed.

“
Aren’t
you...cold?”

“
Thank you, Ave. I do look
nice if I may say so myself.”

I plumped myself on his
lap and placed my arms around his neck.

He sighed. “My
name
is not
Ave
.”

He disentangled my arms
from around his neck and gently pushed me off his lap onto my
feet.

“
Let us get one thing
straight here, Dallas. There is only one reason why I didn’t kill
you the second I laid eyes on you, and that is because you are one
of Luna’s descendants. But do not try my patience. You put yourself
in danger by approaching a vampire and asking him to turn you into
one of us—and don’t think you can keep his—or her—identity hidden
from me for long. There is also the matter that you were able to
enter this mansion although Mallory did not invite you in,
something that deeply concerns me especially since Mallory was here
on her own. And you put her in danger when you came here without
having fed first.”

A twinge of anxiety
touched my heart at the mention of Mallory’s name. I thought of the
moment I tightened my hold on her in the foyer, the alien feel of
my fangs pushing against my bottom lip, and that overwhelming
desire to tear into live, warm flesh and devour. I shuddered,
especially when I heard her footsteps in the corridor heading
toward Avery’s bedroom.