The Nightling: Darkness Within

by Danae Ayusso

  As if the Goddess was finally listening to me, the shadows around the cemetery started to swirl before taking shape: four legs, wide paws with claws that hungered to bite into soft flesh, burning gold eyes, fur covered bodies, and maws snarling, proudly displaying rows of long, razor sharp teeth that glistened in the moonlight.

  I leaned against a tombstone and pulled my knees to my chest and hugged them when the snarling wolves surrounded me, itching for me to run or scream I’m sure.

  A fourth slowly strolled towards me, splitting the others.

  He was different, almost smaller by comparison, leaner I suppose, with pure black fur and beautiful metallic blue eyes.

  “Are you going to kill me?” I asked, seemingly bored; my eerily level indifference and acceptance of my own demise was unsettling.

  The wolves looked at each other as if my question confused them.

  I waved halfheartedly.

  “Hi, I’m Shawn,” I said.

  Even today I don’t know why I did that.

  The fourth continued forward and shook his head, seemingly telling the others to shut up and leave him alone while he sniffed the weird girl with grass stains on her hands and knees, hanging out in an abandoned cemetery where she had been talking to herself for the past hour.

  As the wolf walked towards me, he erected himself and his fur-covered body blended away to smooth dark olive skin with a thin, perfectly cropped blanket of black hair that you could clearly see his lean, muscular physique beneath. My mouth fell open, and eyes widened as they continued down his body to the impressive promise land that any woman with a pulse, and obviously those without, would love to jump on and ride.

  Whoa… That… Dang!

  He snapped his fingers and my eyes snapped up to his and a beautiful white smile filled his handsome face. “My eyes are up here,” he said with a soft Greek accent before winking and I blushed.

  “Sorry,” I squeaked.

  “It is quite all right. What are you doing out here all alone?” he asked.

  I shrugged, trying to maintain eye contact with him. “I kind of just ended up here. My feet, once again, had a dang mind of their own,” I admitted, making a face. “I think they were trying to find my grandma’s heels that I lost the last time I was here, but I can’t find them.” I showed him my grass stained hands. “They were Rangoni and worth more than gold to me.”

  He nodded his understanding. “Rangoni is a lovely choice, though not for moonlighting in cemeteries. You are what, a size seven?” he asked, looking me over.

  Weird.

  “Yes, why?” I asked, suspicious.

  “I know where you can get replacement Rangoni, though I fear they would not have the same sentimental value as the ones you lost. They would, however, have a great story behind them; something to commemorate our meeting.”

  That was strangely romantic and ominous at the same time, but with my lack of luck it couldn’t be good.

  “Are you going to kill me?” I asked pointblank.

  Again, he chuckled. “I just offered to take you shoe shopping.”

  That’s true.

  “Do I have a reason to kill you?” he asked, amused.

  “Maybe,” I said. “Do vampires and werewolves get along?” I asked the obvious then hissed at him for some reason.

  Yeah, I really shouldn’t have done that.

  The wolves circling snarled.

  That answered that.

  “That wasn’t terrifying in the least,” he said with a chuckle and I pouted. “Do they get along? No, not usually,” the one in front of me admitted, pushing his hand through his shaggy black hair.

  “You’re a werewolf, right?” I asked the obvious since I was just assuming.

  He nodded. “I am. You’re a vampire?” he asked skeptically.

  “I think so,” I mumbled then ran my tongue across the ridges of my teeth, trying for confirmation. “I don’t know… Do I have fangs?” I asked then smiled wide.

  Again, he chuckled.

  That didn’t tell me anything!

  “Honestly, I don’t know anything anymore,” I huffed with a pout. “I was jumping to the werewolf thing since you were a wolf and then you weren’t, and now you’re naked and standing there as if it’s totally normal… Sorry, I’m rambling and trying to maintain eye contact with you because that’s, I mean, yeah,” I rambled, motioning towards his crotch, and my face felt as if it was on fire from embarrassment.

  His broad shoulders heaved with contained amusement, tears flooded his eyes, and one hand was covering his mouth.

  “It’s okay, you can laugh,” I said. “I’m used to people, especially men, laughing at me. It’s kind of all I know and if you didn’t I’d be even more paranoid of why you’re standing here and they’re seemingly waiting for word to rip my throat out.”

  He stroked his chin in contemplation, his metallic blue eyes moving over me many times. “They won’t touch you, not without orders.”

  “Thanks,” I grumbled.

  That didn’t make me feel any better.

  “You don’t look like a vampire,” he continued, eying me. “And it’s been in my experience that fledglings… Only a fledgling wouldn’t know if they were a vampire or not, if that’s even possible, and are completely insane and not rational in the least. It takes decades, sometimes even longer, for them to ignore the calling and the darkness within before they can hold a conversation as we are. Not to mention, a newborn vampire’s eyes are red for their first lunar cycles of their rebirth before turning mirror-like gray for the first decades of life in the dark.”

  I gasped.

  My eyes are red?! Vanni didn’t say anything about that!

  “And yours, Shawn of Forgotten Park Cemetery, are beyond beautiful and not red or mirror-like at all.” His head tilted to the side to regard me. “They are-”

  “Hazel-violet?” I asked, hopeful, that they weren’t red or gray.

  My eyes were the same color as Giovanni and Papà. It was a family thing on papà side of the family tree.

  The smile was back on his face. “With beautiful flecks of dark amethyst and silver that sparkle towards the pupils. They are unbelievably unique and very lovely,” he informed me. “However, if you are indeed a vampire, I have a right to kill you,” he added ominously, but the smile on his face contradicted the malicious intent of his words.

  I snorted, rolling my eyes. “Everything with a penis suddenly thinks he does. It’s the story of my dang life.”

  “Wait, what?” he choked. “That isn’t what I… You don’t honestly believe that we’re going to,” he looked to the confused wolves surrounding us before turning back to me, “rape or kill you, do you?” he whispered, completely disgusted by the thought.

  “No,” I snorted. “Rip my throat out maybe, roll around in my blood out of boredom.”

  He gave me a look.

  “There was this old hunting dog back home that was more stray than hunting dog, anyway, that creature would roll in whatever carcass he could find and come back smelling like… I can’t even put into words how bad he smelled. Vanni used to say it could wake the dead! Most of the time it was cow manure or roadkill he rolled in, but a few times it was blood, a freakish amount of blood, and he looked happy as a pig in poo when he came back covered in it.”

  The naked man in front of me was looking at me with wide eyes and his mouth open.

  The wolves were looking at me much the same.

  “Sorry. I’m still rambling to keep from, you know,” I said, motioning towards his crotch again. “It doesn’t matter. Do what you’re going to do. I’m ready to get off of this dang ride,” I mumbled, giving up on the futility of it.

  If the vampires weren’t going to kill me, hopefully the werewolves would. And if that didn’t work, I was going to grab a phonebook and start calling witches next.

  To my surprise, he sat on the ground across from me and offered me his hand.

  “Tybalt Lykourgos at your service, and no, my mother isn’
t a Shakespeare fan. She’s Greek. And no, I have no longing to roll around in your blood.”

  I blushed. “Shawn Salvatori. No I’m not an albino, I’m just a pale Italian, and I have no longing to see you roll around in my blood but I’m not ruling anything out this crazy night.”

  Tybalt chuckled. “I wasn’t going to say anything,” he teased with a wink, and it made me blush.

  Going against my better judgment, I took his offered hand and gave it a firm shake.

  A strange sensation coursed through my hand and rippled up my arm, absorbed into my blood before seemingly swarming to my heart.

  The look on Tybalt’s face made it more than evident that he felt the same thing; his pupils dilated and consumed the metallic blue with black, the fine hairs on his arms stood on end and horripilation rose across his skin.

  Instantly he released my hand and scrambled away from me, backing up against an altar tomb.

  “What in the hell was that?” he gasped, looking between his hand and mine.

  I shrugged apologetically, lowing my hand. “Sorry, I have what papà called a farmer’s handshake.”

  “This isn’t possible.” Tybalt looked at himself, as if just realizing he was naked. “I shouldn’t be… What are you?” he demanded, shaking his head to clear it, his eyes once again metallic blue.

  Before I could tell him I didn’t know, loud growls ripped through the night air, surrounding us.

  The voice of reason in the back of my head started yelling at me, and again it sounded like the annoying creature that threw me out on the street.

  I clenched my eyes shut and covered my head with my arms.

  Just because I wanted it to end didn’t mean that I wanted to see the means to the end, and I was rather confident that it was going to hurt worse than turning into a strigoi.

  The loud, menacing growls that were circling us made me tremble and flooded my mind with every gruesome, and seriously deranged, scenario possible, all of which involved me getting killed. The growling coming from the man in front of me didn’t help to push the killing Shawn images from my mind either.

  In fact, it magnified them tenfold!

  ‘I am coming.’

  Usually I’m not such a glutton for punishment, but everything that’s happened as of late apparently caused my inner, deeply buried, masochistic side to surface.

  Sometimes I wish that I could bury it again, especially in moments like that.

  “Shawn, stay down,” Tybalt warned, his hands on my shoulders.

  My eyes opened and they focused on his handsome face.

  “I won’t let them hurt you, I swear it,” he promised.

  “Why?” I asked, dumbfounded.

  He blushed. “I have my reasons. Stay here and whatever you do, don’t run. When you run they chase. Understand?”

  I didn’t, but I wasn’t about to let him know that.

  I nodded.

  He chuckled, caressing my hair back from my cheeks. “Liar,” he said with a wink then leaned back. He rolled to all fours and his smooth skin seemingly exploded in thick black hair, hands and feet were replaced by paws with long claws on each toe, maw elongated, and fangs glistened in the overhead light.

  Tybalt looked at me intently, his metallic blue eyes locked on mine, before he nuzzled against the side of my neck.

  Not sure what to do, especially since a hot guy that just happened to be a werewolf and in wolf form at the moment was rubbing against me, I wrapped my arms around his neck and hugged him tight.

  “Be safe,” I whispered.

  There was no mistaking the smirk pulling at his lips before he licked the side of my face, causing me to giggle.

  Tybalt jumped, soaring over me, and his buddies were quick to follow.

  ‘Disgusting.’

  “Oh shut up,” I complained.

  ‘Stay down. Do not even breathe.’

  I rolled my eyes.

  Of course when someone tells you to stay down you automatically do the opposite of what you were just told, and that’s exactly what I did.

  Carefully I peered over the edge of the granite headstone I was cowering behind and my eyes widened.

  ‘But of course.’

  “Oh shut up. As if it wasn’t bad enough to have Vanni hanging around when I wasn’t in that church turned prison you call a home, but to have you haunting my head at all other times is completely unacceptable and something I will get professional help to resolve. I can only handle one overly possessive pain in the butt brother-”

  ‘Brother?!’

  “Tone noted, Jerk,” I grumbled, looking around. “And when you stop acting like an overly protective brother I’ll stop comparing you to one. Got it?”

  Of course there’s no answer, my apparent psychosis I can turn on and off like a light switch.

  Isn’t that awesome?!

  ‘Not in the least and you did not shut it off. You cannot get rid of me that easily.’

  “Ugh! Of course I can’t,” I complained, looking around, appraising the threat and situation even though I hadn’t a clue of what I was looking at or was supposed to do. “I can confidently say this is a first.”

  ‘I would certainly hope so.’

  “Again, tone noted.”

  It was as if a bomb of wolves had gone off!

  There must have been at least ten of them, but only four I was pretty dang sure wouldn’t kill me at the moment, and because of that I was scared for them. There was no mistaking that the darker wolves, my wolves, were protectively holding the ground in front of me, but they looked different from the others.

  The clouds overhead moved across the sky, and the moon once again illuminated the area in silvery white light.

  The gray wolves were different! Each snarling wolf had a strange aura around them—that’s the only way the sci-fi fan in me could describe it; Tybalt and his friends had white, golden light, and the gray wolves had a reddish-brown glow to them.

  That wasn’t normal, was it?

  “This isn’t right,” I mumbled, trying to figure out how to stop whatever this was.

  It didn’t feel right.

  ‘No, that is not normal, and you need to shut up and duck down. If you do not, their blood will be on your hands.’

  “Wait, wait?” I asked, looking around then back to the wolves. “Oh no!”

  The realization that they were risking their lives for me, to protect me—I was giving myself way more credit than I was due, but I was in emotional chick mode at the moment so it made sense in my mind—upset me. The last person that did that was my brother, and there was no way that I was about to let another overly protective boy die on my watch.

  I didn’t know what werewolf etiquette was, if a six on four thing was normal or fair, but I couldn’t risk it.

  When I started to get to my feet, a severe stabbing in my head was accompanied by the debilitating sensation that could only be described as dread and sexual frustration in an unnatural, and foreign, form flooded me before dropping me to my knees.

  ‘Stay down!’

  “No,” I snarled through clenched teeth before crying out in pain when it felt as if a knife was twisting in my head.

  Tears flooded my eyes and I couldn’t breathe. My lungs felt frozen, blood was swarming to the invisible burning dagger in my head, and the sudden unimaginable pressure in my chest felt as if my heart would burst at any second.

  Sniffing and nuzzling against my neck was accompanied by a large, fur-covered body stretching out the length of mine on the ground, protectively.

  It was a struggle, but I was eventually able to focus on the metallic blue eyes encased in black that were moving over my face.

  “What’s wrong with me?” I stammered, tears streaking down my cheeks.

  Tybalt sighed then licked along the underside of my jaw before resting his maw on my shoulder.

  That really wasn’t an answer, but it made me feel slightly better.

  With a shaking hand, I reached up and caressed his head, pullin
g my fingers through his surprisingly soft fur.

  The simplistic action seemed to make the searing stop, or at the very least, it made me focus on something other than the pain, and that helped it fade to the back of my mind where it was easier to ignore and I could breathe again.

  “Thank you,” I whispered when I was slightly more composed.

  How I was able to ignore the growling and yelping coming from all around us, I’ll never know, but when Tybalt was involved, the rest of the world seemingly faded and it was only the two of us…

  I could never thank him enough for that.

  Again, he licked along the ridge of my jaw.

  I giggled, scrunching up my nose, and he snorted in return.

  “I’ll be a lady and keep my tongue to myself,” I teased, wagging my brows.

  His body vibrated before he pulled his tongue up the length of my face, causing me to giggle again.

  What a flirt!

  When Tybalt started to get to his feet, I sat up with him, but before he could get off me, a large gray wolf slammed into us.

  It felt as if a wrecking ball had hit me!

  Our bodies flew through the air; Tybalt’s progression was stopped by the angel statue he slammed into before slumping to the base of it unconscious, his body turning back into that of a man. My body went smashing through a marble obelisk, sheering it in half, before partially embedding in the wrought iron gates of the mausoleum in the center of the cemetery.

  The gray wolf that smashed into us was on the ground, shaking his head, trying to clear it.

  ‘This is war!’

  “Oh shut it,” I mumbled. “It was just a love tap.”

  ‘War!’

  “Whatever,” I mockingly said, peppering myself with blood. “You aren’t going to go around killing because you’re bored. Get over it.”

  ‘So no war?’

  The voice sounded uncertain yet greatly amused.

  “No war,” I confirmed, ignoring the blood coating my lips and dripping down my chin. “You know, I’m pretty sure that this a whole higher level of crazy, but at the moment I’m not going to worry about it. Exhaustion, stress, brain damage, and hunger is why I’m so accepting of this, or imposing your voice in my head or something, but I’ll figure it out later and get it fixed.”