DARK SOULS (Dark Souls Series) (38 page)

I shook my head. “None of you understand. If you would just let me go, give me some time to explain...”

She scoffed at me. “There’s nothing to explain, Emily. Or
Emilyne
, I should call you. Yes,” she nodded, responding to the shock on my face. “We’ve looked into your past, found out your real name. Found out everything there was to know about your foul, pathetic mother.”

I roared at that, my voice so loud that the walls reverberated. She smiled, and I wanted to kick myself for rising to her bait. She knew what she was doing. She wanted to rile me up; she wanted me to show my dark side to Asher. She wanted Asher to hate me for the monster that she thought I was.

“Yes, there we go,” she smiled, her eyes glittering even in the shadows. “There’s the putrid creature I always knew you were hiding.”

She sidled up to me, never breaking her gaze from mine. I tried to use that against her and light my dark flame to access her soul, but every time I tried, the symbols would flare and I clenched with pain. “How does it feel to know that you’re responsible for your mother’s insanity? That it was because of you she drove off a bridge hoping to die?” She paused, enjoying the look on my face before she said, “She couldn’t
stand
you.”

Gwyn’s words forced my mind back into the depths of my memories, memories that I had buried as deep as my soul would let me. Her words pushed those memories back to the surface, and I flinched at the images they brought with them.

Gwyn was only reiterating thoughts that had been haunting me for twelve years, thoughts I had come to recognize as familiar as they slid around my mind like writhing black snakes, their fangs sinking deep into my brain as they spread their poison.
You’re responsible. You did this to your mother.

Still, my heart lurched at Gwyn’s words and my throat swelled as I fought back tears and heard my own beliefs reiterated to me, Gwyn’s cold, calculating voice piercing my gut like a sharp, bloodied blade with every word she uttered.

“I...I saved your life,” I whispered.

She bent close to me, getting right in my face like so many creatures liked to do to me lately, her sweet peppermint breath caressing my cheek as she whispered softly, “I’ll enjoy watching you die, you disgusting thing.”

My breath caught instantly when her hand snapped up and coiled around my neck, smashing my head back against the concrete and causing me to struggle against her, my hands thrashing uselessly in their binds, the icy fire raining through me like sharp shards of glass. I cursed my body for reacting that way. I wanted nothing more than to sit there stoically while staring her down, showing no pain or fear as she watched the life flicker out of me.  Instead, I flailed like a fish out of water, gasping desperately for oxygen.

“
Enough
.”

The booming command made Gwyn halt immediately, though I didn’t miss the look of fury that crossed her face before she let go. What little part of my body that hadn’t been forced stiff from the chains slackened immediately as I gulped down air.

In my peripheral vision, I saw two shadows come up behind Gwyn. They hit the light of the doorway, and I was able to see that it was the man who had netted me and dragged me here like an animal, and Asher.

“You must be the one called Liam,” I said, coughing against the scratchiness in my throat.

He tilted his head in a nod. “The one and only. These two troublemakers’ big brother.”

There were three of them. Three siblings. My stomach sank.

“The Chaser. The Trapper. The Hunter.”

I whispered their true names, the meaning behind them feeling heavy in my soul.

I wasn’t the Hunter. I was never meant to be the Hunter.

I was destined to be a monster.

Even I was surprised at the calmness in my voice, despite having my throat grabbed and twisted.

All three pairs of eyes latched onto me, considering.

“Well, she’s vile but quick,” Gwyn said, giving my leg an unnecessary kick before she walked towards Asher and Liam. My eyes flared gold in anger, but I remained just as still and calculating as they were.

“You’re not the Hunter,” I said to her receding back, bracing myself for the reaction I knew I’d cause. Her vanity was just a mask she wore in order to hide her true insecurities. Although the old Emily would have softened at that realization, my current pained, aching mind only wanted to use it as a weapon.

I refused to wince as she reeled around. If her breath could have shot flames, I knew she would have directed all of the air she had in her at me.

“Don’t you
speak
to me,” she said, her voice hissing. “I’m just as powerful as the Hunter. I can inflict just as much pain.”

To prove her point, she stomped back over to me and forced my chin up, her manicured nails digging into my already tender cheekbones. She forced my eyes up into hers, and without any ability to stop it, my mouth slackened with pain as my right elbow started to twist around in its socket. With my wrist held solid by the chains, my arm was unable to move with my elbow, and I screamed at the snap.

“You’re not the only one with powers,” she whispered before breaking her gaze with mine and waltzing back to Asher and Liam.

I whimpered, knowing my body wasn’t going to heal as fast with these symbols trapping me. I trembled in even more despair when I realized that Gwyn was able to touch me and not feel any burn. These symbols that trapped me were powerful. For the first time in as long as I could remember, I started to feel real, terrifying fear. I couldn’t help but look up at Asher and continue pleading with him with my eyes.
Make it stop
, I begged,
just make it stop.

Before my darkness kills you all.

CHAPTER THIRTY-SIX

“Asher,” I said, my arms clanging uselessly against the chains as he continued to stare at me with cool indifference. “You know I’m not a monster, that I’m not evil. I’m fighting for my soul. There’s something that’s trying to control me, to swallow me. But I’m fighting it,” I said, sobbing to him. “I’m fighting it. I know you understand what that’s like. I know you do.”

He didn’t even flinch. His arm didn’t even so much as twitch. My heart screamed as my mind forced me to come to the conclusion that I had lost him.

But I refused to look away from him. If he was going to kill me, then I would make him watch my pain as he did it; I would make him see the sorrow and betrayal in my eyes as he destroyed me. I continued to stare at Asher even as I heard Liam approach, his head cocked to the side as he studied me like a rat.

“I say we let her go,” he said. “It’s no fun this way. We can’t truly test what she can do. Or what we can do to her.” He lifted his arms, spreading them wide as he looked down at me. “The net’s not my only special weapon, you know.” Smile. “You may have the burn, demon. But I have the rest of the elements.”

He sucked in a large breath, taking in more amounts of air than I had ever seen in a person. I was forced to break my gaze from Asher’s when I looked over at Liam, fascinated, as he continued to suck in copious amounts of air in one single breath. Too late, I realized that all the air he was building inside of him would have to come out just as forcefully.

His eyes widened unnaturally as he began to expel the air from his mouth, causing such a gale force wind that my body painfully snapped back, my broken right arm searing with pain as my torso flattened against the wall behind me.

My back began to press so hard into the concrete behind me that a spider web of cracks began to form around me. And it was cold, so cold that even the dark flame within me began to sputter.

I am so sick of this
, I thought as the shards of ice that formed in the wind hit me and cut deep into my skin.
I am so sick of being trapped, of being prey.

There had to be something I could do to get myself out of this. I am, allegedly, the most powerful demon there ever was, a destroyer of worlds, and yet I couldn’t even break myself out of being chained to a wall?

The answer came to me in a sudden, agonizing wave.

Let me out,
she whispered,
Let me take over...

For once, I didn’t shoot her down. I gazed through my frozen eyelashes at my captors, all of them stone-faced. All them ready to torture and kill me.

“Don’t make me do this,” I whispered to them, so low that I almost didn’t think they caught it. 

Gwyn laughed. “Don’t make you do what? You’re already a monster. You were born a monster.”

“Let me speak with her alone.”

His voice startled me just as much as it startled the other two. Gwyn and Liam looked over at Asher with open surprise on their faces.

“What do you think you’re going to solve?” Liam asked Asher.

“Let me speak with her,” Asher repeated, his tone just as sharp and filled with warning.

Gwyn huffed out in annoyance, but she did as he asked. She made her way back up the stairs, but not before shooting me a look of such scathing hate that I flinched, the fragile shards of ice that had formed on my skin cracking as I moved. Liam followed her reluctantly, whispering softly to Asher as he passed him, “You’re making a grave mistake.”

“I’ve already made the mistake,” Asher replied faintly.

As soon as the basement door shut behind them, we were blanketed in silence, not even our breath making a sound. My chest remained tight as I watched Asher, standing so close to me yet remaining so far away.

“Asher,” I whispered, breaking the shroud of silence.

In answer, he walked towards me and bent down, his eyes level with mine. In that moment, when his face was so close to mine, I felt a sudden, faint shred of hope sparkle within me. His eyes, always so cold and flat whenever he looked at me, his face, always shrouded in stony silence, now blazed with overpowering, inescapable longing.

“Stay with me,” I whispered, my voice rising and falling with every sharp intake of breath I took. “Be with me.”

I paused as I kept my gaze locked with his, using my eyes as the windows to my soul as I tried to convey to him everything that I was feeling; every ounce of turmoil, torment and destruction that had been drowning me, before I breathed to him, “Save me.”

He trembled as he continued to hold my gaze, and through my tears I saw him lift up his hand and raise it towards my face. I closed my eyes as his palm moved to caress my frozen cheek, feeling an uncontrollable need to feel his skin on mine, a touch I had been so desperately yearning for. With his touch, he could make me whole again. He was my light. He was my everything.

I cried out in agony when his skin finally met mine. His hand seemed to burn right through my soul and leave it in tangled, shredded tatters. Tears coursed down my face as I screamed in denial over what had just happened. What his touch had done to me.

Burned, shivering and barren, I opened my eyes and met his. I let out a wrenching sob when I saw the raw pain in his gaze transform into arctic, murderous ice.

“You really are a demon.” His voice broke with his answer, his eyes tightening and quivering as he stared at me with hurt and horror.

“Asher, no...” I said through the pain. “No...you touched me once, remember? You touched me without pain.”

He stood up, his gaze cold and hard as he looked down at me. He had shut himself off; he had shut himself away into a windowless, black box as soon as he had touched me and the truth went scorching through him.

“You were weak then. You were human,” he replied, his soft voice still managing to be sharp as knives. “If you had just stayed there, if you had just let it die, you would’ve stayed human.” His face looked pained. “But instead you left. You left and took more souls. You’re no longer human.”

“But…”

I wanted to deny it. I was
going
to deny it—until I remembered. The clenching pain, the thoughts of just wanting to die as I lay in bed in his house, curling up and begging for release. Asher’s words made me realize that I wouldn’t have died there. Not me. Not Emily. The only thing that was dying that night, the only thing that was growing weaker, fading…was my darkness. I would have survived.

The realization was like a knife twisting into my stomach and ripping up into my chest.

Damn you, Derek.

He didn’t let me lose my darkness when he came in and carried me to more souls. He forced me to become it. He wanted me to become it.

And now, with Asher staring at me with so much hurt, so much hate, I just wanted to lose myself.

I had lost him. I had lost my light.

Without another word, Asher turned and made his way silently up the stairs, my blurred, tortured eyes following him as he walked away from me.

I tilted my head up when a shaft of light broke through the blackness, and I squinted with terror and shame as the three of them descended back down to me. My time had come.

Gwyn walked up to me confidently, and even had the gall to stroke my hair like I was a young, upset child that she wanted to pacify. She bent down so her lips almost touched my face. She blew out a sharp puff of air into my eyes, causing me to flinch back and knock my head against the cracked concrete. She laughed softly at my reaction, as if she were a spoiled five-year-old teasing a caged, helpless animal at the zoo.

“You were never meant to live,” she whispered sweetly as she raised her hand and tucked a loose tendril of hair behind my ear.

I was never supposed to live.

Her opinion of me, said so cavalierly and coldly, an opinion that had resided inside of me like a rotten, poisoned apple for all of these years finally sent me over the edge. I didn’t have to call upon the darkness when I twisted sideways, caught her wrist with my teeth and chomped down.

She wailed in shock and agony, her cries high-pitched and squealing as she ripped her wrist out of my mouth and held it to her chest, large red streaks splattering onto the floor.

“And I didn’t even need my fangs for that,” I said through a bloody smile.