Dark Genesis (The Darkling Trilogy, Book 1)

by Koboah, A D

  Fast, so fast that Eli barely had time to scream, the creature was upon him and violently hoisted him up off the ground by the neck with one hand. It looked up at Eli with inhuman rage, its fangs clearly visible whilst Eli gasped for air, his face turning red as he struggled like a fly caught in a spider’s web. I heard the third man cry out as his gun flew out of his hand. Mr Jenkins was the last to be disarmed. He dropped the lantern so he could clasp his gun with both hands and was nearly sent toppling off his horse when it was wrenched out of his grasp.

  With barely a glance at the two men with whom he had arrived, he turned his horse around and galloped away.

  In the fast diminishing light of the dying lamp, the demon reached for Eli’s arm, the one that had been holding the gun, and grasped it above the elbow. Eli began to scream, a hoarse keening sound of raw pain, and then there was a sickening, wet snap as the demon tore Eli’s arm away from his shoulder in one swift, brutal motion. Blood spurted in a crimson arc from the wound, splattering Jupiter and me. We could only look on in dazed horror as the demon casually flung the limb away and released its hold on Eli’s neck.

  Eli fell to the ground, his left leg, which was already soaked with blood, brushing against my arm. I shrunk from him in revulsion as his agonised screams melted away, leaving only the sound of his quick, pained breathing as he lay with one hand on the warm, steaming flesh where his arm should have been. The hot metallic smell of blood suffused the warm night air and made me gag, as Eli’s eyes began to glaze over and he went into shock.

  Screams of fear filled the air again and I looked behind me in dismay. The man who had been restraining Father Geoffrey had run off when the demon attacked Eli. He was screaming now as he was dragged back toward us by unseen hands. The demon materialised a few feet behind me and caught the panic-stricken man in its morbid embrace. His screams were cut short when the creature placed both hands at the sides of his head and picked him up. The acrid scent of urine mingled with the smell of blood in the air and I realised that in his fright the man had soiled himself. There was a horrifying crunching sound as the demon crushed his skull, causing his face to cave in. His left eye popped out of its socket to dangle on his cheek. Blood peppered with bits of bone and a spongy-looking tissue began to ooze down the side of his face. When the demon finally released him, the man’s arms and legs twitched spasmodically for a few moments before he went completely still.

  A fear-soaked silence hung in the air for a few moments and then the creature looked off into the night in the direction Mr Jenkins had taken. Its smile had no mirth in it, only cold ruthlessness. And then it vanished.

  A few seconds later we heard another scream that was abruptly cut off. I stared into the dark and tried to imagine the horrific death that was being visited upon the man who had been so hell-bent on shedding my blood, and I knew, somehow, that the demon was drinking his blood, slowly.

  I shivered. In a matter of moments, this thing had slaughtered three men in the most barbaric of ways, and that same fate might soon be ours.

  I quickly stood up, and ignoring Jupiter’s gasps of pain, dragged him to his feet. Father Geoffrey, who was still shaking, had started tugging at his hair and was staring fixedly in the direction Mr Jenkins had taken.

  “Father,” I cried. “We has to get to the trees.”

  It didn’t seem as if he heard me. His complexion had taken on a greenish tinge, his lips were chalky white, and he was trembling as he continued to pull out clumps of his own hair.

  “We...we can’t outrun that thing. Did...did you see the way—?”

  “Father! We have to go now!” Jupiter cried.

  But it was already too late. As fast and as silent as I had always seen it, the demon appeared again about two metres from us. Its teeth were back to normal now but it had blood on its mouth and hands, the blood of three men. It stood before us with its hands held loosely by its sides, and although rage no longer marked its features, that tumultuous longing continued to blaze in its eyes as it stared at me.

  The heat of its stare was hard to hold but although I wanted to look away, I couldn’t. And in spite of the carnage I had just witnessed, I still felt my spirit come alive in the presence of this thing. Again, I had to stop myself from moving closer to it.

  Only when Father Geoffrey began to mumble a prayer did I find myself able to tear my gaze away from the demon. The priest’s hands were shaking violently as he held out the large cross that was hanging from a chain around his neck.

  The demon turned its gaze to Father Geoffrey and a small frown wrinkled its brow as it stared at him with an almost human mixture of anger and pity. Then it took a step toward him, reached for the cross, and tore it away from Father Geoffrey’s neck. It kept a steady gaze on him as it closed its pale fingers around the cross and snapped it in half, before releasing the fragments in much the same casual way it had discarded Eli’s severed arm.

  Father Geoffrey’s voice had wavered when the cross was taken from him, but he steadied it and continued praying with his eyes closed.

  I heard a roar then that was like a battle cry. Jupiter pushed me back with one hand and lunged at the demon. What occurred next happened so quickly that I didn’t quite see everything that took place. The demon moved so quickly that he became a blur of pale white skin and coal black hair and when I fell to the ground, I saw Father Geoffrey lying unconscious at the demon’s feet. Jupiter was now imprisoned in the demon’s grasp and it was holding him up off the ground and snarling at him, its hands on either side of his head as Jupiter tried in vain to fight it.

  “No!” I screamed and the demon stopped long enough for me to get to my feet, regarding me in confusion and distress. “No!”

  I made to run toward the creature but before I could take even one step forward, hands clasped my upper arm and I was whirled around.

  The next thing I knew I was standing in complete darkness with the demon’s arm around my waist and my chest pressed against his. We were now closer to the trees, about twenty metres from where we had been and I could see Jupiter lying on the ground beside Father Geoffrey in the decayed ochre of the feeble lamplight. I could only assume that he was dead.

  “No! Jupiter! Noooo!” I screamed, pain racking my mind and body at the sight of him lying dead in the dirt.

  And then the scene before my eyes wavered and the demon and I were in the woods.

  Chapter Eight

  In the woods I fell silent, my senses completely overwhelmed now that I was in such close proximity to the demon. My heartbeat had sped up out of control, my breathing coming in quick shallow breaths and it felt as if my brain was on fire as the demon swept me along with it on a dizzying journey through the trees.

  So far I had seen it disappear and then re-appear elsewhere instantaneously and thought it did so by walking or running, but moving far too fast for the naked eye to see. But that’s not how it crossed distances in a matter of seconds. Instead it stood still with one arm around my waist and it was everything else around us that appeared to move. I can only surmise that the demon was able to exert some force, some power on the area around it and I watched wide-eyed as the trees, the earth beneath my feet, and the very air began to shimmer as if it were losing cohesion. It would look as if it was all being pulled in toward us and then it would abruptly push away and we would be in a completely different location, maybe miles, or tens of miles, from where we’d been before.

  I had no way of measuring the distance we travelled, or jumped—if you want to see it that way, but a few minutes later we reached an area where the trees had begun to thin, letting the moonlight pool on the grass in lucent swathes. Towering over the trees was a gigantic rock and protruding from its base was a flat ledge about a metre high.

  This is where the demon released me and I stumbled away from it until I backed into the rock face. It stood there studying me but I couldn’t see its face as it stood with its back to the moon and so was just a shadow amongst shadows. Then it vanished.

 
I sank to the ground, my head swimming with all the horrors I had witnessed that night.

  Was Eli still lying there surrounded by corpses, taking in those quick shallow breaths as the pool of blood he lay in grew? And Jupiter. Jupiter, who had stood by my side when the whole world was against me, was now dead.

  A wave of misery swept over me and for a moment the whole world seemed to tilt threateningly. I felt my stomach constrict and I leaned forward and threw up. Then the tears came, hot, salty tears that did nothing to ease the pain or stop those images from filling my agonised mind.

  I sat with my back against the rock and cried, feeling as if my mind was going to tip over into insanity as the images continued to crawl around my overwhelmed brain. They were dead. Five men had died horribly tonight because of me. I cried until all the tears had been wrung out of me and then I sat staring in silence until at last, my tortured mind began to form some sort of coherent thought.

  I was still alive. God knows how or why, but I was still alive and I had to get away from here before the demon came back.

  I climbed down from the ledge onto the soft grass and looked around. As I tried to decide which direction to take, I saw something in the distance: a dark shape moving to and fro.

  I moved back against the ledge and peered into the dark. The creature was still here, pacing back and forth amongst the trees with its hands held to its head. Holding my breath, I started to back away. Abruptly, it stopped pacing and spun around to look directly at me.

  I felt a surge of panic and quickly turned, intending to run, but before I could take a step forward, it was standing a few feet ahead of me, blocking the path. I froze, my heart thumping horribly in my chest, sweat trickling down my back.

  After a few moments it made to move toward me and I scurried backward, tripped over a fallen branch, and fell to my knees.

  “Please,” I gasped and it immediately halted its advance. “Please don’t kill me.”

  Some kind of turmoil crossed its features as it watched me trying unsuccessfully to fight back tears.

  “I am not going to kill you,” it said, articulating the words slowly and carefully.

  I was surprised by how soft its voice was and noticed that it didn’t speak like the other white men of the south. But I had never heard an accent like it before so wasn’t able to place it.

  “Then why has you brung me here?” I asked.

  It seemed to shrink away from that question and lowered its gaze.

  “Please,” I said wiping away tears. “Please, take me back.”

  It was standing before me one moment, in the next it was gone. I gasped and brought my hands up to my chest when it reappeared kneeling on the ground a few feet away from me, fear marking its handsome face.

  “They will kill you if I do that!”

  I was silent, unnerved by the anger I saw, anger which seemed to drain away as it gazed at me.

  “Then...then let me go on back there so’s I can bury Jupiter and Father Geoffrey,” I managed after a few moments of silence. “I can’t…I can’t leave his body there. Please, you gots to let me bury him.”

  It was gone again and when I looked up it was standing a few feet away, agitated and trying to avoid my gaze.

  “No, no. They were not dead when I took you away.”

  “Don’t lie!” I screamed, anger at the thought of Jupiter’s corpse being left for some wild animal to scavenge overcoming my fear and I was only mildly aware of the fact that it had flinched in response.

  “Even if you be telling the truth,” I continued. “How long you think he gonna stay alive out there?”

  “I...I—”

  “He dead. Jupiter be dead and it’s all cause of me!”

  I cried without restraint now and the demon stood there with its hands curled into fists at its side, its expression one of helplessness.

  Then it drew its lips together into a thin line and began to stare intently at me. I found that I couldn’t look away. The dizziness that had overwhelmed me at the chapel returned along with that tantalising melody, and I realised what it was doing.

  “No,” I mumbled.

  The dizziness took over and I closed my eyes, my head swimming with its sweet melody and then everything, my grief, anxiety and fear, began to disappear, until I sank into nothing.

  ***

  The sound of birdsong drifted gently into my sleepy haven and I let out a heavy sigh.

  Morning. Already?

  It seemed as if I had crawled into bed only moments ago and it was already time to get up and make my way to the Master’s house where I would spend the day at their beck and call. I was exhausted and there was also a hazy impression of terrifying blood-filled nightmares at the back of my mind.

  “Luna.”

  It wasn’t the sound of a male voice in my quarters at such an early hour that brought fear tiptoeing into my mind, but the way it said my name, wrapping its tongue around the word as if to savour it.

  I opened my eyes.

  I was lying on what looked like a loveseat by the window in the drawing room of a house I had never been in before. It was a large, stately looking room of the kind that can be found in most mansions of the south, but this one looked as if it hadn’t been used in years. All the furniture was covered in a thick film of dust. There were cobwebs everywhere. It was dawn and the sun was beginning to break over the horizon letting a weak golden light into the room. I could see the demon standing at the door in the shadows the sunlight had yet to reach.

  The memories of the night’s events came tumbling down upon me one at a time, bringing with them a hopelessness that was deeper and darker than the depths of any ocean.

  “It wasn’t no dream,” I moaned, tears filling my eyes.

  “No,” it said sadly.

  There were a few moments of silence before it spoke again. “I...I have to leave you now, Luna.”

  I tried to sit up but a jolt of pain shot up along the left side of my body and I let out a gasp. Immediately the demon was away from the door and kneeling by the chair with its hands hovering over me.

  “What is it? What ails you? Tell me!”

  “Get from me,” I cried and tried to bury myself deeper into the chair, tears springing to my eyes again.

  It did as I asked, this time not by vanishing and reappearing. He simply stood up and took a small step back from the chair.

  Now that it was standing in the meagre light streaming through the window, I found myself arrested by the beautiful guise this demon had chosen to wear. But those unfathomable blue eyes were still terrifying in their intensity and I was thankful when it looked away, as if it had been reprimanded.

  The thing was even filthier than it had been the first time I saw it. There was blood and dirt on its hands and clothes as well as small amounts of fresh earth. As I studied it, the creature appeared to notice these things for the first time. It looked down at its hands carefully as if it had never seen them before and then looked away, almost in shame.

  “Please. Tell me what ails you,” it asked in a whisper.

  The pain was from the fall the night before. I hadn’t felt it at the time but now that I had rested, those muscles had seized up and screamed in protest when I tried to sit up. It would be gone in a few days but I tightened my lips petulantly, refusing to ease the demon’s worry. Let it think I was seriously hurt.

  But something in my expression must have told it that I wasn’t seriously hurt because it seemed to relax slightly even though I hadn’t said a word.

  “Where you going?” I demanded through my tears. “You can’t be leaving me here on my own.”

  It was absurd that the thought of this creature leaving would fill me with dread, but it did. I had no idea where I was or how far away I was from the plantation or other people.

  “You will be safe here, Luna, I promise you. No one ventures out this way so you will be safe.”

  I studied the gloriously handsome face of the demon. Did that mean that there were people relati
vely close by? And if so, would I be able to walk to them from here and maybe find my way back to the plantation?

  “You will not be able to leave here, so do not try,” it said, bringing its gaze up to meet mine again as a small frown creased its brow.

  “I wasn’t gonna,” I said but it continued to frown down at me.

  “Those two men. The preacher and the African. They will not die.”

  Despite my screaming muscles I sat up and swung my legs onto the floor. Leaning forward, I reached for the creature’s arm but at the last minute withdrew. I just couldn’t bring myself to touch it.

  “They alive?” I suspected that this was a lie but I desperately needed to believe that Jupiter wasn’t dead. “Please, tell me. How you know they alive?”

  “I took them back to the plantation. They were unconscious but not hurt too much. They will live.”

  Its mouth turned up slightly at the corners. It wasn’t exactly a smile but it took away some of the intensity in its gaze.

  I closed my eyes, letting the relief sweep through me. Jupiter was alive.

  Then I fixed him with a steady gaze.

  “Why?”

  “Because you wanted me to.”

  The tiny bit of hope and joy I had allowed myself disappeared, leaving only the overwhelming doom I felt at waking up and finding that the events of the night hadn’t been a dream.“What you want with me?” I asked. “Take me back. Please.”

  He lowered his gaze again, took another step back and clasped his hands together in what looked like a punishing grip.

  “I will return at dusk,” he said looking briefly at the rising sun through the window. “I have already stayed far longer than I should have.”

  “No! You can’t be leaving me here on my own. Take me back home, please.”

  He seemed completely heartbroken when he looked at me.

  “Sleep now, Luna.”

  The last thing I saw before I was overwhelmed by the dizziness of that haunting melody were those searing blue eyes and whatever unfathomable emotion burned within them. As I drifted away I thought that what I saw there was loneliness. An intense, all-consuming loneliness and despair.