Dark Remnants (The Last Library Book 2)

by Jill Cooper

  Dark Remnants

  Evil lurks in the darkness as a rebel girl searches for three remnant shards to destroy the dark lord.

  Tarnish Rose has suffered great loss but must forge on with a new ally and guide—the historian Sebastian—as they venture across the Unforgiving Lands.

  Together they must find three remaining dark remnants to lead them to the last library - the only weapon capable of stopping the Dark Lord Creighton and his plans to destroy the world.

  Battling tortured spirits and vengeful ravagers, Tarnish Rose finds her world view challenged as they travel through decimated towns of the old age, encounter a wrathful dragon, and angry new foes.

  With so many standing against her and others looking to her to lead them to freedom, Tarnish Rose must discover the hidden strength inside.

  Before the forces of darkness rip her apart.

  Copyright, 2018. All Rights Reserved. Jill Cooper

  Cover: Ravven

  Edit: Karen Boston & Samantha Wiley & Krissy Smith

  Cover: Ravven

  Chapter One

  Minister of City Affairs

  The Dark Lord Creighton’s orders were clear.

  Find out what the criminal Abby Taylor knew and when she had discovered it. If she was hoarding the illegal books of fiction or of art, evidence was to be collected. She was to be questioned. The books themselves were to be destroyed.

  She was the curator the world had been waiting for. She had to be. Hope and the surge of rebellion would be snuffed out with the Abby Taylor capture.

  And then the death hunters were to execute her very publicly for all the town to see. Make an example of her.

  The Taylor home was an orderly shop, selling tea and natural wellness products. The counters were pristinely clean, products lining the back shelves in neat lines. The warmth of the air was homey and inviting, with the smell of cinnamon and spice. It was ust the kind of place the Minister of City Affairs tried to avoid. Too much humanity, the shop—and the Taylors themselves—stank of it. Humanity was supposed to be driven from the workforce.

  There was no place for it in the world anymore.

  The death hunters worked the perimeter, pulling glass jars and canisters down onto the floor. When the canisters broke, they sorted through the peppermint leaves, the twigs of oregano, and broke open the tea bags. Everything was overturned, nothing was spared, yet the death hunters still showed no sign of finding anything illegal.

  The Minister of City Affairs had to be right. There was no room for error, the girl in league with the rebels was Abby Taylor, and her mother was in the bloodline of the librarians—so the illegal contraband had to be in their shop, their home. They only needed to find it.

  “Look faster!” the minister yelled with great impatience. His cheeks turned pink, and he stomped his cane onto the floor. “Keep looking! Look everywhere!” The death hunters, in their long robes, floated around, scanning everything with their dark, hidden faces. Their skeleton hands pulling down supplies, bottles, and jugs without concern.

  A family’s lifetime of work. None of it mattered if the Taylors had been working against the Dark Lord Creighton.

  Still, they found nothing. It was as if Abby Taylor was guilty of nothing, and that just didn’t ring true. She was guilty. The one everyone had been looking for—the ministers, the dark lord himself, even the rebels. Maybe even the dastardly one the minister couldn’t bring himself to think of.

  The Temptress.

  Just thinking of her caused the minster’s mustache to quake.

  Finally, the minister crawled around in the sleep cove behind the stairs, hidden by a simple white sheet. A child’s room made the minister’s mouth twitch with distain. The candle on the floorboard was half-used, dried wax dripping down the side. What they searched for had to be here, a child’s treasures never trailed far.

  The minister huffed and banged the edge of his cane onto the wall behind the bed. “Seems solid enough,” he muttered to himself. Leaning in close, he scowled at the etchings on the wall. A simple crescent moon, a stick figure girl holding hands with a larger stick figure. A chill ran down his spine, and he backed up without meaning to.

  “Drawings,” he sneered, almost couldn’t believe the word as it left his mouth. This alone was enough to convict the Taylors of illegal activity, but it wasn’t what he searched for.

  No, the minister needed more, but it gave him hope he was in the right place. He searched her drawer, her tabletop, and then beneath the mattress under a loose floorboard, he found it.

  A simple torn corner of paper. Nothing more.

  Giddy, the minister held it up and laughed. The paper wasn’t much, but on the corner, he saw it. The letters made up the name for Abigail Taylor. If the girl could write, she could read.

  It was enough to convict her. Abby Taylor, the curator, was their enemy. And she had been living under his nose the entire time. Unfortunate as it was, he could spin it just the way he needed to, make sure the Dark Lord Creighton understood he wasn’t to blame.

  Heads would roll, and the Minister of City Affairs would make sure his wasn’t among them.

  ****

  The paper collected, the death hunters cut the wood from the wall, revealed Abby’s drawing and headed back to his central office. He sent the death hunters far and wide in all directions, searching for Abby Taylor and anyone who might’ve colluded with her.

  The Minister of City Affairs sat at his desk with his back to his window, nursing a lukewarm cup of tea. Unsweetened and bitter, the tea was just as he liked it on a dreary, rainy day, and make no mistake, they were all dreary.

  Not a fan of sunlight or daytime, his thick, heavy gray curtains were pulled closed. When his curvy secretary with wide hips entered the room, he barely looked up.

  Instead, he just scowled at the paper with a magnifying glass. There was much to inspect and learn from Abby. An interesting girl with green eyes. The minister never should’ve trusted her family, but Robert Taylor had been such a rock to the community. Everyone looked to the Taylors for support, and they weren’t rule breakers. By nature, they had been enforcers, helping those around them tow the party line.

  Just the type of humans the minister liked.

  The minister wouldn’t make such a mistake again. He needed to be harder and less forgiving, no more mistakes. Next time, it wouldn’t be the Taylors' lives on the line. It would be his own.

  “Minister.” His secretary cleared her throat. She folded her hands in front of her giant bosom in the way she did before giving bad news. “We’ve checked with the train station here and at Efflewood. There’s been no sign of Abby Taylor. If she’s left Rottenwood, she hasn’t used her merchant’s pass.”

  The Minister of City Affairs grunted, peering up from his magnifying glass. “She left,” he slurred his words out of anger. “If not, she would’ve turned up by now. She took that Tippin boy and she ran. Somewhere. We must find them.”

  His secretary, with her tight fitting brown dress and beehive hairdo, nodded. “Yes, Minister.”

  “What of the boy’s mother?” the minister asked, leaning back in his chair, finally glancing up at her face. For a big woman, her face was attractive. Clean and polished. She must’ve sensed in the air around town that something serious was afoot.

  The woman shrugged, a slight quiver to her movements. “The death hunters took care of her. She won’t be a bother. She was told of her son’s escape, and she showed no remorse, Minister.”

  “No?” His lip twitched up in a sneer.

  She shook her head. “She said, and I quote, ‘Good,’ before she spat at them. Minister! She spat at the death hunters!”

 
He grumbled, not real words, but simple sounds, because there were no words for what had transpired. Six hundred years they had been at this. Six hundred years, and still human resolve reared its head from time to time. How much longer would it take to beat resistance from their hearts? Kill the ones who rebel, it’ll weed it from the race, that’s what they had been told. That’s what they had understood.

  So why did it keep coming back? Why couldn’t they destroy it once and for all?

  “She’s dead now. Disintegrated. She’ll never be a problem again, Minister.”

  “Good.” The minister smiled, maybe his first real one all day. He didn’t delight in the death of citizens. Over the centuries, he got used to it, but he didn’t delight in it. However, troublemakers were a different story. Those with a black heart, filled with nothing but rebellion….

  “Is that everything, Minister?”

  “Yes, yes, please return to your…” A noise outside interrupted his train of thought. What kind of noise had that been? “…desk.” There it was again. “What is that racket? It sounds…”

  “Sounds like mischief.” His secretary shook her head with disdain and headed to the window. She pulled the drapes back and gazed. “Umm… sir?”

  Sir? “Well? What is it already?” he asked, turning toward the window. Beside the heavy curtains, the heavyset woman tapped the glass. In it, her reflection revealed her mouth hung open as she stared at something he couldn’t yet see.

  As if he didn’t have better things to do. With a sigh, he stormed to the window and took in the sight. In the sky, where the mist continued to rain down, was something he hadn’t seen in six hundred years. A rainbow, an actual beautiful rainbow—purple like paisley flowers, yellow of daffodils, and red so vibrant, it defied descriptions.

  Colors he hadn’t seen in centuries. It wasn’t possible anymore, it just wasn’t. If he couldn’t believe his eyes, he also couldn’t believe his ears because he heard chimes like music coming from somewhere. It made his ears twitch and his stomach churn. Something about the song lifted his spirits, made his heart want to sing.

  No! It couldn’t be.

  Color? Music? What kind of sacrilege was this?

  Down below, people started to gather, pointing fingers up at the sky, and chattering excitedly. The minister scowled, and his eyes pinched together. Fume would’ve come out of his ears if he could’ve managed such a thing. Death hunters would need to be called to break the crowd up, but unless he wanted to sentence all of those to death…

  The excitement wouldn’t just continue. It would grow.

  There was only one who could’ve achieved such a thing. It had to be a curator, and she had advanced much further along than he expected. Her magic had released color into the world. Maybe it was only a bit, but once this news reached the Dark Lord Creighton’s ears, there would be hell to pay.

  Rottenwood would burn for what Abby Taylor had done.

  The minister slammed his cane onto the tile as he barked his orders. “Back to work! Now!”

  His secretary hustled away, her giant hips swaying side to side as she moved as easily as a giant mammoth across a desert plane. The minister had work to do. It was time to pay Sandra Taylor a little visit.

  Time to find out how much she knew and where she had sent her daughter.

  Curators. Librarians. They would burn.

  ****

  The Minister of City Affairs knew how to get to the heart of women like Sandra Taylor, who wielded her position as a merchant’s wife like a pointed weapon. He invited her up to his office, had his secretary put on a pot of hot tea and bring in some delicate cookies—the official cookie of the minister’s office.

  Light and melt in your mouth soft, with a hint of vanilla and covered in white powdered sugar. Once upon a time, when the minister had been human, they had been called a snowball cookie. Now, however, while they had snow, no one had made a snowball in a few centuries. The name, and term, would be lost on everyone but the ministers.

  They were the only ones who remembered life from before.

  “I told you, Minister,” Sandra Taylor sat across him on the other side of his desk. She gathered the fabric of her brown dress and twisted it as if wringing water. “I don’t know anything. Abby was sent to collect herbs and ointments for our shop, such as always. She should be back any day now. If we’re just patient and wait.”

  “Wait?” the minister huffed as he leaned his cane against the edge of the table and took off his bowler hat. He flexed the rim as he gazed into Sandra’s eyes. There, he saw intelligence and a vulnerability not uncommon of the people in town, but the one thing he didn’t see was fear. Abby feared him, and Robert had, too, but Sandra? No, she didn’t fear him half as much as she pretended.

  Even the display of twitching her dress was for his benefit. She sat up straight, almost rigid, like a school teacher lecturing her young. Her eyes were bright, the skin around them didn’t crinkle and she didn’t sink away. Sandra met his eyes head on, unafraid, almost challenging him.

  “Your daughter’s train pass hasn’t been used since her last return trip. We have ways of checking such things, Mrs. Taylor. I’m not the only one who has an interest in your daughter, but if I were the one to bring her in, things would go better for her. You don’t want to meet the Dark Lord Creighton one-on-one, trust me.”

  The minister pushed the saucer of cookies toward her. “Have a cookie. Tell me what you know.”

  That brought a rush of emotion to her eyes, and her cheeks flushed brightly as she glanced at the stack of three elegant cookies, but she dared not touch them. “My daughter deserves your grace. She’s a good girl, always does as she’s told. She’s never caused any trouble. Never!”

  “Except she broke her husband-to-be out of prison and escaped capture; that was quite rebellious of her.”

  “She has a good heart,” Sandra argued but didn’t dispute the accusation outright.

  “Hearts do not dictate matters, not that I need to tell you. The law and logic do, Mrs. Taylor. Logic tells me you and your husband know she’s gone, maybe you even sent her away.”

  Sandra shook her head. “No, Minister. Nothing you’ve said is the truth.”

  “You’ll tell me where she went. Where you sent her.” The minister fingered the rumbled torn paper in his pocket and pulled it out. Flattening it, he lay it across the surface of the table, but Sandra never flinched.

  “I found this in her room, buried beneath a stack of brick. Don’t you want to look at it?”

  “No. Whatever it is, it won’t be what you say.” Sandra hotly held her nose in the air, and the minister saw a quick peak at the real woman. Defiant, rebellious, strong—everything he hated about humanity.

  Wouldn’t be what he said? “Are you calling me a liar, Mrs. Taylor? Did you dare to call me untrustworthy?”

  Sandra’s nose flared hotly, and her eyes widened as she managed to sit even a bit taller. “I dare to think you will railroad me, my daughter, and anyone who doesn’t fit your narrative, Minister. So, if it’s all the same to you, I'll refrain from speaking.”

  Anger swelled inside of him that someone of her low stature would take the high road with him. Who was Sandra Taylor to talk to him that way? He was a minister! All knowing and immortal, she couldn’t comprehend the problems he held on his shoulders all these years.

  “You can refrain from speaking in a prison cell until your execution, Mrs. Taylor, if that’s your wish.”

  She crossed her arms, and a flicker of tears crossed her eyes, but they didn’t cripple her the way the minister expected. “It is my wish. Keep your damn tea cakes for yourself.”

  The minister slammed his finger down onto the table. “These are words, Mrs. Taylor. Letters. Your daughter wrote her name.” He slid the paper over to her. “Read it.”

  “I can’t read any more than my daughter can write!”

  “Liar!” The minister’s mouth twitched as he leaned forward across the table. “You are a liar, just as she is.
She’s a curator, and she colludes with rebels to unseat me and destroy the dark lord! Admit it!”

  “I will not!” Sandra leaned forward, and her eyes widened as she yelled. “I will not admit to a falsehood! If you wish to execute me, it’ll be done without a confession because we’ve done nothing wrong!”

  The minister thought he had her where he wanted her, but it was clear, Sandra was stronger than he had given her credit for. She wouldn’t cripple, she wouldn’t cry.

  She would, however, die.

  “But the world will continue on as it has for six hundred years. My death will mean just as little as my life. I’ve come to peace with that fact. My heart is right, my head is clear of all wrongdoing. I’ve been ready to die since I was six years old and could whisper the words death hunter.” Sandra swallowed hard and patted her hands on top of her legs. “Now, if you could please return me to my cell.”

  The minister laughed. “Stupid woman. We’re not done with you yet. You’re going to wish you had told me everything because now…,” the minister leaned forward to whisper in her ear, “now you’re going to have to talk to him, and he takes no prisoners.”

  And then Sandra’s chin quivered with real fear.

  Chapter Two

  Tarnish Rose

  Everything I thought I knew was gone.

  I escaped the rebel base inside the old crumbled museum after the ravengers attacked with my guide and last historian, Sebastian. I had only my books, a small knife, and a golden staff, which offered little protection. The one who controlled them called herself Temptress, and as I faced her, I felt real evil. I was glad to be free of her as we escaped down through a tunnel and into a cavern. There, we stayed on the row boat for an hour before we reached the other side of the hidden cavern.

  During that time, my mind swarmed with images from everything which led us to this point. The arrival in Imagination, meeting Markus, and accepting this mission I was now on to find the last library. With so much on my shoulders, I could barely breathe without worrying.