Realm Book Three - Illuminated Death

by K. A. M'Lady

  My eyes found Kieran and my heart stalled while I waited for his response. I couldn’t help the rampant emotions that coiled inside me. Uncertainty and love ran a three-legged race. I couldn’t help but wonder if he loved me now because of this moment, or if he loved me first and then this moment came. If I took possession of his soul, what would that mean for him? For us, and our future?

  He was watching me. His eyes were so captivating, even from this distance. They were the softest shade of violet I had ever seen. Becoming a Death Stalker had only intensified them. Death had only made him more breathtaking than he had been as a human. I looked at him with my newly given Tells, and all I saw was the glorious power of truth, hope and the eternal glow of Light.

  Kieran had been turned from a warrior of Light into a Death Stalker with a slightly crooked halo. The thought made me smile.

  “Into your tender care I place my soul, moi chroi,” he softly whispered. “So be The Way.”

  The instant the words left Kieran’s lips, Lucien pulled him forward and sank his teeth deep into Kieran’s neck, taking the remaining blood he needed to complete their own future in this parallel time. For me, my time here was up. Our next adventure awaited.

  I prayed that Light would continue to guide me.

  Chapter Twenty-Four

  And the stars shall look not down

  From their throne, in the dark heaven

  With light like hope to mortals given

  From Spirits of the Dead – E.A. Poe

  I didn’t expect the strength or quickness with which I was thrust out of the Shadow Lands. I thought I’d have another moment. That I’d get to see his perfect beauty for at least one more second. That was not to be. It was like a door had been slammed shut on fate complete with thunder and a whirlwind emanating from nowhere. I was cast into its center like Dorothy’s house amidst the tornado, spiraling towards my doom.

  I flashed back into the sphere of Darkness with such voracity that my bones shuddered and my flesh quivered from the force. My teeth clanked together; the sweet copper taint clinging to the back of my throat as I tasted blood. With dry eyes from the rush, I was forced to blink several times to push away the lingering film of mist that covered them. When the film passed, I looked out onto a room of blood and death.

  Kieran’s vampires clung to the walls by dark hands that were nothing more than mist. Jade and his brothers were five wolves deep in battle, with Blaen and his underlings barely winning their war. Someone had set Mercy free and she was busy taking on Blaen herself, her beautiful, naked body covered in wounds too horrible to possibly survive.

  My family was losing. All of them; Markus, Ivy, Jet and Berg fought with gallantry against odds of Death Stalkers and Werewolves that none of us had calculated or imagined. Jirvel and my father had clearly been in league for longer than I had imagined.

  Anger rushed through me like wildfire. Hatred blazed. The Darkness filled me up until I was drowning in its madness, and all I wanted was to do was kill.

  It was in this rage, this mad, black haze, that the sphere melted into me, its oil-slick glaze slithered away like glistening bubbles on glass as it oozed into my being – my soul consuming its vile dark stain. The release felt like a pop; a small sonic boom to my ears when I stepped beyond its captivity.

  The room seemed to fall away from me. All that remained was a clear path to Jirvel, the altar and Kieran and Lucien’s lifeless bodies.

  She stood above them, chanting, arms poised with the blade ready to pierce Lucien’s chest. Her white dress was drenched in blood. Face and hair freckled with crimson droplets. With dark speed she thrust the blade forward in a rush, the silver piercing through Lucien’s chest. In a blinding light, his shadowed soul floated forth.

  “Lucien DeNote,” she stated, the vibrato of her voice ricocheting off the rocks, “By my blood, my power and your oath of fealty, I call thee.”

  Lucien’s dark soul shimmered above his body, floated to the edge of the altar and knelt before her.

  “What is your command, my mistress,” he meekly replied.

  “By your oath and your blood, as your master, I order you to relinquish all that you hold to me,” she told him, finally looking up. Finally taking note that I had stepped beyond the control of her and her dark intentions.

  She tried to hold her smile of victory, but I watched her lip tremble with uncertainty. Watched the way her body shifted just a little. Watched an emotion fill her eyes before she could hold it back. Was it fear? It should be.

  “Do it!” she bellowed.

  “Oh, Jirvel. You poor, poor fool,” I told her stepping closer to the altar, Kieran’s body and Lucien’s kneeling soul.

  His shadowed spirit turned at the sound of my voice. Recognition streamed in dark glistening waves from it.

  I stared at Jirvel, never taking my eyes from her. Her death was my main focus, but I knew as well there was so much more I had to worry about. “I claim a dying promise made, Lucien DeNote. A promise bequeathed in blood, in the witness of many. In a pool of water long ago, in a time beyond time. A promise to a child of the Light, a child of the Fey. Once given, can never be broken...not by anything other than true death.”

  The world pressed in around us. Light and Darkness shifted in waves like heat on pavement.

  “Lucien, I command you to give me his soul!”

  Lucien’s tired soul looked up at me, and something passed in his stark blue eyes. Memories. Life, love and laughter. A myriad of things that he had once felt, once shared with his friend. Things he knew he would never know or share with him again. But it was the love that shown the most. The same love that Kieran had shown in that pool so long ago that had caused him to give up his own soul for his dying friend.

  I had once thought that Jirvel had taken Kieran. Taken him when she had killed Kieran’s wife. But as I looked on Lucien’s soul he passed a memory: He had drained him, given him just enough of his blood that he would live. When Jirvel came and slew Kieran’s entire village and taken the life of his wife, Kieran used it as his ruse to enter her circle. Used it to gain Jirvel’s blood and her power. He allowed her all those long years of belief that she had made him. When she had finally learned that Lucien was Kieran’s true maker, she cast him out, and her hatred of the two had grown, as well as her plans for revenge.

  Lucien had suffered for his part. Hundreds of years at her tender mercy. But Kieran was free. Despite their separation, their connection allowed them to grow strong. It was because of this that Jirvel needed Lucien to give Kieran’s soul to her now. She needed it to set my father free. Once he was free, she would gain from his powers.

  Too bad I knew that this would never happen. That my father would slaughter everyone in this room and his Darkness would only spread throughout the land.

  “Lucien!” Jirvel screamed. “I order you to give me his soul.”

  Lucien turned from me and looked on his master with a blankness that only comes from the dead. I had no idea what he would say or do.

  His soul rose up, hovered above Kieran’s lifeless body. My heart stopped beating. The noise from the fighting in the room returned in small increments then ceased. Everyone hung on the next few seconds. I could taste the bile in my throat, and it tasted like fear.

  “Remove his blade,” he told her.

  “If I remove the blade, then his true death comes.”

  “You must remove the blade so that I may call his soul. When it comes, then I can relinquish it.”

  Jirvel smiled, her fangs protruding, the glint of victory returning to the onyx of her eyes. If I could have crushed Lucien to vaporous ash, I would have.

  Trust in the Light, whispered through my mind.

  Jirvel reached for the blade and as she callously ripped it from Kieran’s heart, Lucien stated, “I call thee my brother, Kieran. I call thee with love, with blood and by the bond of our oath.”

  Kieran’s soul appeared in a sparkling haze. It was filled with both Light and Darkness. It glimmered an
d danced like a diamond-dusted shadow and my stomach clenched with love, hate, worry and fear. My mouth turned dry as I swallowed down my emotions. My cry of angst stuck in my throat. I watched his soul turn to me. Acknowledge me with the small smile that crept across his lips. Jirvel was screaming orders again, but I couldn’t hear what she was saying. I didn’t care. All I cared about floated before me in a shimmering haze, and I feared my life would be over if I lost him.

  “By our pledge and our promise, I sanction our souls to…” he paused, looked around the room at the masochistic destruction Jirvel had wrought. Looked at Kieran and smiled a dark, mischievous smile. The he rose up and floated towards Jirvel, stood next to her and leaned in as though he would give her a kiss on the cheek, but instead stated, “I pledge our souls to The Chosen.”

  “What? Noooo!” Jirvel’s angry wrath broke my reverie. Screaming like a banshee, she reached for her blades and hacked Lucien’s head off with one clean blow, the other she plunged back into his heart. His true death was now complete.

  Stunned, my hands were moving before my mind caught up as ball after ball of power shot straight into her; pushing her with my power away from the altar. There was no way in hell I was waiting for her to do the same thing to Kieran. I knew it was too late for Lucien. His wounds were fatal, his soul now gone. Even Maebe couldn’t bring him back.

  I leapt onto the altar, scooped up Kieran’s body in my arms and breathed the word Live in a rush of commands while I jumped from the marble top to the other side of the room. Moving as far as I could from Jirvel’s stunned frame.

  I knew she wouldn’t remain that way for long. I had mere seconds if I was going to turn the tables. I threw open the door to my powers of Light, reached for every delightful, earthy, sun-filled thing I could summon and thrust it into every creature in the room that was on my side and walked in the land of the Light. I Called Gimlit from the Shadow Lands and he appeared before me, hail and whole and ready for battle.

  “What kept you?” he questioned, his turquoise eyes sparkling with mirth.

  Without bothering to reply, I then reached for my Darkness, the place that held my anger and my hatred. I knew I didn’t have to go far. It was there beneath the surface; I held it in my arms. All I needed to do was look at Kieran’s still form and it bubbled up and boiled over. Live, damn it! I told him. Live, or I swear, Kieran, I’m kicking your ass. Live! Live! Live! I was screaming the words at him, my heart racing in fear and anger.

  I don’t know how long it took or when he opened his eyes, but seeing him blink and feeling him shift in my arms had tears streaming down my face. He reached up, wrapped his hands in my hair and pulled me to his lips in a blinding, searing kiss that burned to the core of my soul. My heart burned with love and thanks to the Prophets for giving him back to me, but on the surface my hatred for Jirvel and my father danced a skeletal minuet.

  Kieran’s tongue skimmed the outer edge of my lips and I opened for him. The rush and taste of him inside me after so long seared my mind for all eternity. I never wanted to feel his loss again.

  “Um…hate to interrupt, but we’ve still a toothy bitch to kill,” Gimlit stated with a clearing of his throat.

  It took a lot of will, but I forced myself to part from Kieran. The feel of him wiping my tears from my cheeks was a feeling I’ll never forget.

  “Thank you,” he told me. “I owe you my life.”

  “Against my better judgment, you have become my life.”

  “Then let us finish this. I want to feel the heat of you burning for me before the dawn.”

  What kind of girl can’t be persuaded by that incentive?

  As one, my family stood, whole and hail before the wounded remains of Jirvel and her dark army. I let the twin powers of my Light and Darkness fill my family, sharing with them all that I was and all that I was becoming. As one, we tore into their remaining force with vigor and vigilance. Leaving nothing and no one but Jirvel to stand alone.

  “I send this message to my father,” I told her, knowing that my father’s essence hid in the shadows of the room. “What is mine, remains mine. What walks in the Light shall be guarded by the Light. But remember this as well, you made me part child of the Darkness and I will use every power in my being to stop you and any other who thinks they can destroy any that I love. Any that are under my protection. Cross me again at your peril.”

  Then, I extended my hand to Jirvel and let the calm spread through me. Let myself open to the half of me that lived in the Darkness.

  And I ripped out her soul.

  Chapter Twenty-Five

  Until in this place

  Of dying and dead:

  From creature to ghost

  The way is so strange –

  I die, I live,

  In the anguish of both.

  From Creature to Ghost – Pauline Hanson

  My body came alive with the burning flame of his touch. Heated lips on flesh warmed by long awaited passion. Need ignited the fires of deep-seated yearnings and stifled hopes held too long. Words were not enough. I had to show him how he made me feel.

  I reached for him. The weight of his body above me brought tears to my eyes. The sight of his pale, beautiful flesh, sculpted and glowing in the candlelight, was far more lovely than my dreams could imagine. Everywhere I touched sparked a memory and burned a new one to savor for time eternal upon the wounds of my weary soul.

  How had he burrowed so deeply inside my heart? And so quickly too? Had I needed to be loved so badly?

  “Do not waste this moment with questions that need not, at least for now, be answered,” he whispered against the nape of my neck. Teeth grazed where lips and the wet heat of his tongue trailed currents of fire down my flesh, building an inferno in the erratic beat at the base of my jugular.

  “Know that I want you,” he told me. “That I need you.”

  “And I you,” I responded, unable to hold back the tears that my voice held.

  He kissed them away with his lips, and my heart trembled. Every touch of his mouth upon my body built the blaze higher. Teeth and lips grazed the taut peaks of nipples and I rose to his touch. Begged him to take me further into warmth of his embrace.

  He suckled and the fire spread from my breasts to my belly. I reveled in the soft, but inhumanly strong feel of him. The sight of him over me and the scent of him around me filled all of my senses, my entire world. This was my Vampire lover. He had become my dark knight and my gallant Death Stalker. A mere man who once walked in the Light, but gave it all away for the lives and the love of others. His duty and honor were things measured in blood and time. It was that precious time with him that I never wanted to worry about losing again.

  When the warmth of his lips met the flat expanse of my belly, I gasped. Chills broke out all over my body. Strong hands held the curve of hips while his lips and mouth lingered to dance their seduction down the flat expanse of hidden valley towards the indenture of my womanhood before he moved on from thigh to thigh. With subtle ease and gentle persuasions he spread me wide, then lay like a king at feast before me. Tenderly he kissed his way up from the base of my knee to the quivering juncture between.

  My heart danced with desire long spun out of control while my body wept for him. I yearned to feel the thick heat of him inside me even as he kissed and savored the heat his delicate ministrations brought forth. But I wanted him to burn for me like I burned for him.

  “I never wish to lose you,” he softly told me, trailing more hot, wet kisses up between my nether lips, as he whirled his tongue at the tip of my bud before moving on to the pulsing vein at the indenture of my thigh.

  I knew what he was asking without him saying the words. Saw the question in his hungry, heated gaze. Yet it was a question filled with the promise of love. The promise of a lifetime of love. This would be our next mark. Our next willing exchange of blood with each other.

  Did I wish to do it? And if I did, what would it mean?

  “Nor I you,” I told him, unable to
hesitate. I knew in my heart of hearts I never wanted to worry about losing him again. The rest didn’t matter.

  He kissed me at the base of my thigh. Hot and long, until I could feel his incisors scraping against my artery. We both knew he was holding back. The tension rode his body like thunder seeking a storm. He moved, settled his large frame between my legs; the length of his manhood rested against me. It pulsed with its own need, and nothing else mattered to me but the weight of him and our unquenchable thirst for each other.

  When he leaned into me, the softness of his lips against mine, he thrust forward, filled me completely. My gasp was stolen by the sweet surrender of our kiss. The tango of emotions welled inside of me as he rocked against me. I rose to meet each driving thrust. Clutched him to me. Raked my nails across his back, feeling the blood beneath fill the crescents of my nails; my she-wolf sparking to the smell of fresh blood.

  He kissed me deeper, thrust harder and faster into me; the blood quickening his own desires. Then he pulled me tighter to him, sat back on his knees with me before him as I rode the storm of need with mad abandon. Relished the dark fire that burned in his eyes.

  The feel of his lips on my neck and the spike of waves that rolled through my body let me know that we were both close to the edge. There would be no turning back.

  “What I take from you, I freely surrender in love and trust. For now and for always,” he growled against my neck. The strength of his hands as he clutched me to him, guiding our bodies, only intensified my passion. Drove me mad with the intense demand for more. I had to feel his teeth on me, breaking my flesh; knowing my blood filled him... Now.

  The world spun in blinding rays of liquid gold as my orgasm rushed through me and Kieran’s teeth pierced the flesh at the base of my neck. Lights danced an array of cosmic flashes beaming through my mind, one spectral beam bouncing behind my lids in a rapid display of magic and artistry.