Welcome to the Darkness (Darkness Trilogy)

by L. M. Justus

  Nathaniel

  The slight creak of the door opening at the top of the stairs broke Nathaniel out of the mindless trance he’d been in for the last several hours. He had nothing to do in his cramped little cell, and only his daily feeding from a cold bottle broke the monotony. Despite his boredom, he felt certain he couldn’t have been in the cell for more than a day or two at most.

  The soft tread of footsteps heralded the arrival of Reed, two vampire guards, and . . . what was this? Nathaniel inhaled deeply, savoring the delectable scent that wafted into the room. His eyes widened at the lovely human female at Reed’s side. She was about medium height, slender in an athletic way, with shoulder-length golden brown hair and brown-flecked green eyes. In a word, scrumptious!

  The human female in question glanced at Nathaniel in alarm.

  The guards guided Reed and the woman into the neighboring cell. With the door securely shut once again, the two vampire guards departed. Nathaniel turned to observe his new cell neighbors.

  “Hey, Nathaniel,” Reed said, breaking the silence. “How’ve you been?”

  It was such a simple greeting, yet Nathaniel could not remember the last time anyone had asked after his well-being. Indeed, the boy was eyeing him from head to toe as though searching for injuries or signs of abuse.

  “I am well,” Nathaniel replied. “I suppose I am fortunate that my greatest complaint is the unrelenting boredom I have experienced while you were elsewhere. Are you going to introduce me to your companion?”

  “Oh, yeah . . . sorry,” Reed apologized and stepped aside to give Nathaniel and the young woman a better view of each other. “This is Sarah. Sarah, this is Nathaniel.”

  He bowed his head. “Pleased to make your acquaintance.” He couldn’t help taking one more little whiff of her delicious scent, though it made his gums tingle in anticipation. He needed to tamp down his appetite, but he thirsted terribly for a “real” meal.

  A frown creased the brows of her lovely face and she spoke for the first time. “You know, I’d appreciate it if you’d stop looking at me like a roast beef dinner.”

  Oh, these feisty modern women: so bold despite being so much weaker than himself. Was it his imagination, or did her frown increase when he finished his last thought? “My apologies, Mademoiselle,” he said in an effort to placate her. The scent of her rising anger began to intermingle with the sweet smell of blood pumping through her veins.

  “By the way, Nathaniel,” Reed said, “she can read minds, so try to keep a lid on your nasty thoughts. If you can.”

  Understanding struck him with a jolt. This human possessed unique capabilities that would be of great interest to the Queen. “Indeed,” he said, his voice controlled to hide his surprise.

  Reed studied him for a moment. “You didn’t know about Sarah, did you? So I bet you don’t know what they’re planning to do with her. With us.”

  “No.”

  “But, do you think they might, you know . . .” Reed paused, stealing a quick glance at Sarah before continuing. “Turn her into a vampire too?”

  Sarah stiffened, but remained silent, waiting to hear Nathaniel’s reply.

  “I doubt that,” he answered. “Firstly, the transformation could destroy her ability, and secondly, it is as likely as not that she would survive the transition. A great many do not, especially women.”

  The door opened at the top of the stairs and they turned in unison to look. The vampire guards had returned carrying two capped bottles and a small paper bag. Dominic typed in the code to open the door to Nathaniel’s cell, and the other vampire handed him one of the bottles. After resealing his cell door, they repeated the procedure with the second cell, passing Reed the second bottle and the bag to Sarah. Then the vampire guards left. Dinner was served.

  Reed observed his bottle with a grimace of distaste while Sarah peeked inside the paper bag. Then Reed leaned over to look at the contents of the bag as well.

  “Nathaniel?” Reed said. “Do I really have to drink this? Why can’t I eat normal food? I mean, that sandwich,” he pointed, indicating the paper bag, “looks way more appetizing than this.” He eyed the bottle again with disgust.

  “You must consume blood every day, or you will lose control of your thirst. Your body is no longer capable of ingesting regular food.”

  “But . . . what would happen if I tried to eat something? If I took a bite out of a sandwich and chewed it up and swallowed it, seriously, what’s gonna happen?”

  “I do not think you would manage swallowing such fare, however, if you did manage to choke it down, you would most certainly vomit it back up immediately.”

  “Guys,” Sarah said, cutting into the conversation. “Please. Do you have to talk about throwing up right before eating?”

  Reed looked at her and continued. “But food still smells good. I don’t understand. Why does it still smell good if I can’t eat it?”

  Nathaniel sighed and shook his bottle and opened it. “Think of a vanilla-scented candle, Reed. It smells good . . . good enough to eat, correct? However, you would not eat a candle without extreme difficulty.” He sat on the floor, preparing to lie down for his death after dinner. Without further ado, he tipped the bottle back and drank the entire contents at once.

  “Well, that’s a bummer,” was all Reed had left to say.

  Nathaniel sat up, and Sarah emitted a startled squeak of surprise.

  “Sorry, you moved so suddenly you scared me for a second there,” Sarah apologized with an embarrassed half-grin. “I think I was starting to nod off.”

  Nathaniel was uncertain if he should reply, and he was not one for making small talk.

  Reed lay dead on the floor. Apparently, he had succumbed to his thirst and drank his bottled blood. “Will he wake up soon?” Sarah asked.

  “He should regain consciousness approximately one hour after he finished drinking his meal,” he replied. He settled into a more comfortable position against the back wall of his cell, preparing to relax in silence until the guards returned to release them.

  “Do you guys dream when you’re . . . um . . .?”

  “Dead?” he finished for her.

  She nodded.

  “No,” he answered.

  Perhaps he should offer an explanation or ask her a question in return. Even this stilted conversation was more interesting than sitting quietly hour after hour.

  She saved him from having to conjure up a question by continuing with her own. “Do you always, uh . . . die for an hour?” She said the word “die” as though it left a bad taste in her mouth. “It didn’t seem like you were out that long.”

  “The younger the vampire, the longer the period of death they require after each feeding,” he answered. “I am over two hundred years old, therefore I require closer to three quarters of an hour myself,” he added.

  “Two . . . hundred? My God,” she gaped at him in awe. “You’re older than any human on earth. That’s incredible! Have you been in California the whole time?”

  “No, I moved here somewhat recently, about forty years ago. Before that, I resided in New York, and before that, France.”

  She stared at him with keen interest. “You don’t have an accent. Do you speak French?”

  “Bien sûr,” he replied.

  She broke into a grin that lit up her whole face. Nathaniel tried to remember the last time he had caused someone to smile like that. A warm sensation grew inside him, thawing some of the ice.

  “Can I ask you something on a completely different subject?” she said. “Are these cells strong enough to hold you? I mean, Reed forced my balcony door open like it was made of cardboard, which makes me think you guys could break out of here if you wanted to. Or am I wrong?”

  “The bars are coated with silver, which our skin cannot come into contact with for even a moment.”

  “Oh,” she replied, her brow furrowing as though she were confused. “Is that only true if you’re awake? If I took Reed’s hand and touched it to one of the bars
right now, for example, would that still be bad?”

  “Indeed, it would be very bad. Please, do not attempt such a thing.”

  She leaned back and remained silent for several more minutes. Nathaniel did not interrupt her.

  Eventually, Reed woke up, and they continued to wait. The occasional question or two peppered the silence between them and as time dragged on, Sarah began to yawn. She lay down at last, her head resting in Reed’s lap. Nathaniel noted with some amusement that Reed seemed mildly flustered about being in such close proximity to this woman. The scent of Reed’s attraction to her was obvious to Nathaniel’s vampire senses, but he could hardly blame Reed for that.

  Despite the discomfort of their current accommodations, Sarah appeared to have slept the full night, waking sometime in the early morning. Even underground, Nathaniel could sense when the sun had risen for the day. The expectation that at any moment they would be released from their cells had made the night seem even longer than it would have otherwise.

  Nathaniel continued to listen to the conversation that Reed and Sarah had started after she’d woken up.

  “Today was my eleventh day on a new job,” Sarah said. “I was hoping to get this deal with the vampires sorted out more quickly. I can’t afford to miss more work.”

  Suddenly, a deafening boom ripped through the air, and the room shook violently. Nathaniel fell to floor and Sarah shouted, “Holy crap!” at the same time that Reed shouted, “Earthquake!”

  Cracks appeared in the ceiling and the walls around them and the room continued to shake. A large chunk of concrete broke loose and tumbled to the floor in a cloud of dust, followed by a shower of rocks and dirt. Sarah screamed when the ceiling collapsed above them. The roof of Nathaniel’s cell came crashing down toward him and he flattened himself against the floor. Images flitted through his mind: of the bars burning into his skin while he was buried alive.

  The floor shifted like the deck of a ship on a rocky sea. “Reed!” Sarah yelled in a panic. “You have to break us out of here!”

  “I can’t! I can’t touch the bars,” Reed yelled back over the sound of the walls crumbling.

  “Yes you can! You can touch silver. Trust me.”

  “No. I really can’t. Nathaniel said it will cut my hands off.”

  “And I’m telling you that won’t happen,” she said, choking on the dust that permeated the air, desperation clouding her voice. “I touched your skin with silver . . . in my apartment, when you were unconscious. Nothing happened. Please, just try, and hurry.” The floor beneath them rumbled with another aftershock, and the room continued to disintegrate piece by piece.

  The lights went out and Nathaniel could no longer see. Even a vampire needed a little light to see in the darkness. The screeching sound of metal bending and ripping filled the air, and someone crashed and stumbled through the wreckage.

  “The stairs are here. Go!” Reed’s voice carried through the dark. “I’ll be right behind you. I have to get Nathaniel.”

  He couldn’t believe Reed was going out of his way to save him. Relief flooded over him as Reed crashed through the rubble. Strong hands grabbed him by the shoulders, pulling him to safety.

  They scrambled up the stairs, bursting through the door into what was left of the Queen’s chamber. Nathaniel jerked to a stop as soon as he entered the ruins, pushing himself against the back wall in fear. Sunlight streamed through a gaping hole in the chamber’s roof.

  Reed skidded to a stop and turned back. “C’mon! We have to get–” he began, then tilted his head toward the light, realizing why Nathaniel had stopped. “Oh, Jesus . . . hang on a sec, I’ll be right back.”

  Nathaniel cringed back into the shadows, his eyes burning from the residual sunlight. A sound to his right caught his attention, and he turned, gaping in surprise. The Queen, crouched behind the throne. Her eyes glittered with anger, and they stared at each other, not saying a word.

  Reed zipped back into the room, carrying what looked like an area rug from the main floor. He threw the rug flat on the ground next to Nathaniel, and shoved him down on top of it. Frozen by fear, he did not resist Reed’s efforts to save him. It had been so long since he had glimpsed the sun.

  Reed rolled him up inside the rug and hoisted it off the floor. Terror gripped Nathaniel while he flopped about and Reed ran up the stairs and exited the house. Nathaniel had not come this close to being outside in the sun in over two hundred years, and he shook in horror at the thought of sunlight mere inches from his skin.

  He was crammed into a small space, doors slammed shut, and tires screeched when they pulled away.

  Nathaniel felt grateful that he wasn’t claustrophobic. He was extremely uncomfortable however, squashed into his current position. He wasn’t sure whether to be more afraid of being out during the daytime, or of the Queen’s wrath and retaliation if he managed to survive to see nightfall. He knew without a doubt that the destruction had not been caused by an earthquake, but by some kind of explosion.

  Reed

  Sarah stole yet another glance behind us. “Reed. Earth to Reed. Hello? Where are you taking us? Pull over and let me drive. It’s my car.”

  “No,” I said.

  “Reed! Where the hell are you going? Stop the car right now.”

  “I can’t. There’s something I need to do. Can you trust me? We’ll make a quick stop in King City, and then we can figure out what to do after that.”

  “King City?” she spluttered. “That’s the first place they’ll look for you.”

  I blinked, trying not to roll my eyes. “No they won’t. No one’s looking for us. The vampires are all dead. Even if some of them survived, they can’t come outside during the day.”

  Sarah shook her head, but didn’t say anything else.

  I glanced at my watch only to discover it had been smashed during the explosion at the vampire lair. I ripped it off my wrist and chucked it in the back seat. The clock on the car’s dash was working though, so now I knew I was going to be a touch late. At least I wouldn’t miss the whole thing. I needed to be there, even if a big part of me dreaded it.

  Sarah bit her lower lip. “I figured out where you’re headed.” She tapped her forehead.

  Great. She’d read my mind again. I’d remembered the details about my family’s funeral from the newspaper article Sarah had shown me in her apartment.

  “I understand,” she said. “Of course you want to go.”

  I snorted. “But?”

  “But . . . is it a good idea? Think about it. What are you going to tell people about where you’ve been for the last few days? Or about what happened?”

  I bit back a surge of anger and thought about what she’d said. How could I not go? We’d escaped from the Queen’s lair just in time for me to get to the funeral, like it was fate.

  “I have to go,” I whispered, a lump forming in my throat.

  After a pause, Sarah nodded. “All right, but I think you should consider the consequences.”

  We continued driving, the quiet broken only by the sound of cars whipping by. Low mountains were to our left and the barren autumn landscape rushed past the car windows. It was a brilliantly sunny day with a few white clouds dotting the sky. How could it be so beautiful and bright out when inside I was storming?

  “I’m sorry my plan backfired,” Sarah said. “Some idiot must have set off the hairspray.”

  “Is that what happened? I thought it was an earthquake.”

  “Didn’t you notice none of the other houses around the vampire lair were affected?”

  “No.”

  She sighed. “Reed, they already wanted us for our special abilities, and now they might want revenge. Either way, they’re going to come after us.”

  “I already told you, they’re all dead. It doesn’t matter. Let me concentrate on driving.”

  “Fine.” She crossed her arms over her chest and turned away.

  It took just over an hour and a half to reach King City, and I followed the familia
r main street to the local church. The parking lot and surrounding streets were packed, so I pulled into the closest spot I could find, three blocks away.

  I climbed out of the car and shut the door. Sarah’s eyelids drooped with exhaustion, but she still managed a half smile of sympathy.

  “Hurry back,” she said. I nodded.

  She didn’t join me, as if she understood this was something I needed to do on my own. I glanced at the trunk of the car, feeling guilty about poor Nathaniel crammed inside. We hadn’t heard a peep from him during the entire drive.

  I jogged down the tree-lined streets to the church, cutting across the lawn toward the gray stone building. The church was as old as the town itself, but it had been well maintained. The stonework was in perfect condition, the hedges surrounding the building were neatly trimmed, and the stained glass windows gleamed in the sunlight.

  I paused outside the large wooden doors at the front of the church. I thought about what Sarah had said in terms of revealing myself to everyone. As much as I wanted to deny it, I realized she was right. There was no way I could go inside. I would have to keep my presence a secret for now.

  Suddenly, someone’s singing voice flowed over me like a cold river, and shivers ran up my spine. I crept around the side of the church and peered over the bushes into a window.

  My mouth fell open. My friend Julia was singing Ave Maria with her eyes closed and tears flowing. How could someone so petite create such a big, incredible singing voice? I didn’t even know she could sing.

  Three caskets stood lined up side-by-side at the front of the church, and the pews were jammed full. It looked like all my friends and family had come to pay their respects, along with the entire school. I pictured the remains of my parents and sister nestled inside the coffins.

  My throat was parched, and I could hardly breathe. My eyes burned, and a tear escaped, tracing a hot trail down my cheek. I swiped the tear away with my fist.