Becoming Valkyrie

by Brandy L. Cunningham

  Fifty Vampires surrounded him, crowding the room and the halls as they stared in both fascination and horror at what I had done to their own. To my own. Desmond shook his head at me.

  “The Fiddler warned me that the darkness within you would become too much for you to control. I honestly never expected this.”

  I stared from him to the Vampires behind him. “Since when do you run with a mob of Vampires, Desmond?”

  He laughed at me. The sound was harsh and cruel. “Do you really think I stole an ancient spell just to revive the woman I loved?” Again, that sadistic laugh.

  “The Fiddler was always a fool. With his head buried in his books, writing and practicing his spells, he had no idea of the things he muttered in front of me. I knew you would die long before he told me of the death he foresaw. I also knew you would become a monster if I resurrected you. It was not the spell that changed you, Valkyrie. It was the tainted blood that already coursed through your veins.”

  I stared at him. I wanted to understand him, but my mind refused to let me. The darkness fought with my heart. It said to kill him, destroy him. My heart, however, would not allow it. I swallowed. The taste of coppery blood tickled my throat.

  Desmond waved the Vampires forward. “Subdue her. We need her alive. If she dies, we will have to wait another eighteen years, and that’s if she is reborn in this decade.”

  The Vampires crowded around me. I didn’t fight. I seemed immobile. I tried to move my limbs to shake them off, but something was wrong. I hissed.

  Laughing, Desmond ran a finger down the side of my face. “What’s wrong, love? You cannot move? Oh yes. That’s right.”

  He walked past me, surveying the bodies that lay mutilated on the floor. “Rafael said the darkness would be your downfall. He just didn’t realize I would be the one to blame. I anticipated your lust for revenge against Dominique. That’s why I fed him the poison that would rend your mind unable to control your body.”

  My eyes flew wide, but I knew he spoke the truth. My mind was growing cloudier by the minute, and my limbs would not obey my commands. My world was rotating, and I knew I didn’t have long.

  Looking into his eyes, I asked, “Why?”

  “That should be obvious. Power. With you in my clutches, even the vile Byron will have no choice but to bow down to me. When the world becomes shadowed, I will unleash the creatures of hell upon this earth, and then I will rebuild it under my reign. You are the ultimate weapon, Pyralis.”

  I couldn’t grasp the fact that I had been so blind. I had been a fool. I had reminded myself that this man had loved me, and I had loved him. I had believed the stories that had been fed to me. The Fiddler had tried to warn me. He had told me my allies may not be who I thought they were. He was right. I felt the metal shackles clasp shut around my wrists and ankles—shoved forward, shackled like a dog—chains dragged behind me, carried by several large Vampires.

  I glared at Desmond. “You will not get away with this. I swear to you. I will make you pay.”

  Desmond laughed. “You can try.” With a few muttered words from him, blackness descended upon me like a dark mouth engulfing me.

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  20

  Loss

  Darkness filled my mind. Wings flapped in the void, and desolation rose up in my soul to fill every part of me. I had been blind and dumb. Betrayal was a finicky thing. Love was brutal and cruel. What was a heart without blood? What was a soul without morals? I had no blood left, they had starved me. My soul was as shattered and splintered as my heart. Metal dug into my wrists, where I hung suspended from a shaft. I could see nothing, for it was as though my body had ceased.

  All that was left of me was my mind. Stuck in an eternal damnation of thoughts and voices and visions, I was unable to look around myself. There was no quiet here in the recesses of my constantly waking mind. I was anger with no outlet. I was depression with no end. Whispers came to me in the darkest hours. My body needed light. It needed the sun and the moon. I needed blood. I felt myself withering like a fruit that has no water.

  Over and over, I felt my body burn until there were no flames left to ignite, no power left to heal. The blackness was neither my friend nor my enemy. It just was. I neither lived nor died. I just was. Always the ceasing flapping of wings and the licking of flames. Always the emptiness around me. My body I could no longer feel. My mind was aimless, wandering through stories and memories, through decades long past, and decades more recent.

  Aeron’s voice drifted to me often. He told me to hold on, that he was coming. I heard the roar of Panthers and the mighty bat-like wings of Gargoyles. I heard Rafael chanting through day and night, and the eerie mournful howl of Wolves. None of them were real. My mind created tricks to haunt me.

  There were other voices too. Desmond. The name and the voice brought the rage within me to an ultimate crescendo. The woman’s voice I did not recognize, but she spoke to him of tests, experiments. Often, she would anger him. He was not happy with her answers. He wanted to know the key to my abilities, but she could not tell him. No one could. My fire left me, and I was barren and cold. The bitter feeling of winter crept into my veins, chilling me from the inside out.

  Sometimes, I heard screams. I wasn’t sure if they were real, or figments of my imagination. Nor did I know if they were my own, or others’. The darkness allowed me no real answers, only these godforsaken voices, and images. The images haunted me the most. And of all of them, Aeron’s were the worst. Over and over, I saw him as I had last seen him. His fangs extended and his mouth devoured mine. Then, those hateful words would resound in my mind, and I wished to weep.

  I tried to fight the haunting dreams, but my mind was weak. I could neither chase them away nor shut them out. It was like a sick, twisted game. Hate them, love them. Hate them, love them. Oh, how I longed for the quietness of the forest. The solitude and the peace. A tune I had heard rattled off in my brain. No rest for the wicked. I laughed at that. It became my mantra. For it was true. I was wicked, and there was no rest for me.

  Days and nights drifted together. I had no sense of time, no sense of direction. The ironic part about being immortal was that you could endure torture until the end of your days. Until someone decided to take pity and cut your head off. In my case, they burned me. Over and over they set fire to my body. Over and over, I healed. I could hear the seething voice of Desmond.

  “Why is she still healing? She has not fed in months. She should be weakened by now!”

  The woman’s voice shook with fear. “I am sorry. I do not know. She is not like anything I’ve seen before.”

  Desmond hit something. I heard it shatter. The sound resonated off the walls around me, alluding to a shaft or tunnel of some sort. Still, my eyes would not open, and my body would not move.

  “Fine. Torture her. Use the silver we created just for her. If I cannot use her, she will feel pain.”

  Over and over, I heard the slap of the silver whip as it seared my flesh apart. Still, I felt no pain. Only anger.

  Desmond spoke of a metal, something they had created just for me. He called it the strongest, most heat resistant metal that existed. I could neither break it nor melt it. He mentioned Nitrogen, carbon, and Hafnium, though I had never heard of the last one. He said it could withstand temperatures up to seven thousand degrees Fahrenheit. Several times, I heard him speak of the coming eclipse. He spoke of a world shrouded in darkness.

  In and out I drifted. Images shifted. Brightness rained down upon me. A bird. I saw a fiery bird. Its wings spread wide, and its body engulfed with flame. It whispered sweet thoughts into my mind, caressing my soul as it wrapped its fire-engulfed wings around me. It comforted me. I felt the heat lick my skin, and the flames heal the flesh where the silver metal had sliced me open.

  I saw her. My mother. She visited me in the recesses of my mind. Her white eyes rimmed by blue were mesmerizing. She was beautiful. I saw her there in my mind. She smiled at me, cooing to me as though I were a small ch
ild. Whispering, she told me I was born for more than darkness. She told me to find the good within me, and hold it close to my heart.

  I turned away from her, watching the sadness in those silvery white depths as I did so. There was no good inside of me. Like a swirl of smoke, the darkness took over again, shrouding me in a void of hate. Whatever this poison was that they had given me, it was too strong for me. I couldn’t fight it. I could only wallow here in the void of my mind.

  Desmond whispered about the amulet. He wanted to remove it, saying I would become weaker, and he would be able to control me if it were gone, but he was afraid. It turned out, even Desmond had no idea what I would really become without the protection of this amulet. Rafael had never gotten around to telling me why he had made it, and why I should not take it off. Desmond would visit me sometimes, alone.

  He would run his hand down my body, telling me how beautiful I was. “Valkyrie. Do not hate me for what I do. You cannot imagine what it has been like these last four hundred years. I had hoped that with your resurrection the two of us could rule this world together. With you by my side, we would be invincible.”

  I felt his hands as they touched me, and I wished fervently for control over myself so that I may rip them from his limbs. His touch no longer brought me lust and desire. No, now it brought me disgust. The feel of his lips touching mine as he spoke brought me feelings of hatred and made me feel soiled.

  “When I first found you at the tree that rose from your very ashes, I had hope beyond anything I had felt. I thought we could finally take our place together as the rulers of this world. Unfortunately, you ended up in the clutches of that fool. When I saw you with Nyte, all of my dreams were shattered. I could feel the connection the two of you still had. It’s fascinating, isn’t it, how you could come back to life with a connection to the one who haunted you so many years ago, but not the one you chose to love.”

  I felt him slice into me with a blade. I knew it must be a celestial blade because it penetrated the layers of my skin, but it did not cause me pain. It was his words that hurt me. He bellowed when my skin healed where he cut me. Panting, he leaned against my body.

  He laughed breathlessly. “Oh, sweet, Valkyrie. I will never forget the day you told me about your engagement. I was livid. You were so in love with me, you couldn’t stand the thought of someone else. That changed. The more time you spent with La Croix, the more intriguing you found him. I felt your feelings beginning to shift. I had heard the fool of a Fiddler speaking, mumbling about the prophecy and about your death. I knew I was going to lose you. If I wasn’t going to have you, neither would he.”

  Again, he laughed as his hands moved across my body. “I am sorry, Valkyrie. I betrayed you back then, and I betray you now. He will not have you. You belong to me.”

  Anger welled up inside of me. I knew now it had been my own lover who had betrayed our love to my father. I could not believe Desmond had been the one to deceive me all along. My mind overflowed with seething rage until it became too much to bear, and I sunk again into the pit of darkness that had become my only escape.

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  The whispers in my mind became overbearing. I felt as though my head would split apart if they didn’t cease. I groaned. The pounding in my skull was greater than the pain of Desmond’s beatings. It was as if someone were trying to drill their way into my soul. That was when the darkness inside of me surged, and the whispers changed. The Fenix he called himself.

  I had seen him before. The Firebird that had wrapped his glorious wings around me and bathed me in warmth. He spoke of darkness, of fire, and destruction. He also spoke of light, glorious light that burned brighter than anything any human could withstand. But I was not human, he whispered to me. I was rebirth. I was life and death and chaos burning bright. I was the Pyralis. The convergence of immortality and the fires of hell.

  I wanted to know more about this Fenix. I wanted to feel those wicked wings around me again. He told me to be patient. He whispered stories to me, soothing and beautiful. He painted pictures in my mind. The eclipse, he told me, was coming. He whispered of this beautiful occurrence where the sun would become black, and the solar fires that burned on its surface would shadow that darkness, creating a ring of fire. He said the influx of power would hit me as nothing else had.

  I didn’t know who he was, but he brought me comfort. He made me ache to wake from this dreadful state I was stuck in. I wanted to open my eyes, to peer into his own and know who it was that soothed the fires within my soul. Part of me was afraid. What if this was just another trick? I had allowed the darkness within my soul to take over, and because of that, I had been caught unaware. I had left myself open to attack, and I had been stabbed by the last man I had ever expected it to come from.

  Something had shifted. The air around me felt charged. I felt...I felt. My legs, my arms, I felt them once again. Shock coursed through me with the realization. I was afraid. I kept my eyes closed, unsure of the safety around me. Straining to hear, I listened. Silence. All around me there seemed to be nothing. Then, a whisper in my mind.

  No, not a whisper, a whoosh. Like the beating of wings in the air. The sound was nearly deafening. An alarm sounded around me. People shouted, and the sounds of fighting surrounded me. The Gargoyles. I could feel them. They descended upon me, upon this place. Roars echoed through the shaft in which I was kept. There was a rattling, and then, glorious light shone down upon me. I felt the immediate response as my power surged through me.

  Flames, hotter than anything I had ever felt engulfed my body. I thought the blaze would scorch me until there existed nothing more of me. I had never burned this hot before. Like the inferno of hell, I blazed hotter than the sun itself. Crying out in anguish as I thought I would surely combust, I felt the silver metal of my shackles become liquid. The metal melted in hot rivulets down my arms, dripping slowly onto the ground.

  Hands grabbed me around the ribs, hands that seemed startlingly familiar to me. They pulled me down, my weak body refusing to leave the position it had been molded into for so long. I was weak, frail, like a newborn. The fire was my only ally. It burned around me protectively. I felt my body cradled against a warm chest, and despite the not knowing who held me, I sunk against them in gratitude. I wasn’t sure who this was, that they could withstand the burning flames I emitted.

  Roars and battle cries filled the night air around us. I could hear the Gargoyles, but with them, I could hear the roar of big cats as well. Realizing that both the Gargoyles and the Panthers had come to my aid defrosted my cold heart just the tiniest bit. I tried several times to open my eyes, but each time, they refused to budge. Feeling the wings of the great Fenix wrap around me in comfort, I sighed, melting into his comfort. My mind resting finally as I succumbed to the blackness beckoning to me.

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  My eyes remained unopened. I was unsure of where I was or who I was with. Darkness surrounded me, and I could hear the trickle of water somewhere nearby. I lay very still, listening to the sound of my own heartbeat. The weakness of my body was evident as I could barely even move a finger. Voices drifted to me from somewhere in the distance.

  “We must remove the amulet. That pendant is what kept her from achieving her greatest power. If she had been able...”

  “No! The amulet must remain on her, at least for the time being. It was not the necklace that stopped her from escaping them. It was the poison they were feeding her. She is weak. She needs blood, and rest.”

  “And if they come after her again? Then what?”

  There was a lull in the conversation, and then another voice joined the debate.

  “Let them come. There are two hundred Gargoyles ready to protect her, and just as many Werewolves and Panther Shifters. That’s not even counting the Witches and Viren’s loyal followers. They know of her now. There is no way that inferno was going to be kept secret for long.”

  “Yes. I suppose you have a point, Chandler. That blast…it was as if she pulle
d the energy from the eclipse itself. I’ve never seen anything like it before.”

  “No one had, Rafael. No one knows what this power she holds is. You say the amulet keeps her contained, but imagine if she were to do that without it.”

  Another silence. I heard feet shuffling, air entering and exiting lungs. I waited. I too wanted to know what the hell I was.

  “Rafael, how did he carry her out of there? How could anyone have withstood that blaze?”

  “I do not now, Chandler. There is much about him I do not know. That, I’m afraid is going to remain a mystery, for now.”

  I groaned. I needed blood. I needed to replenish my strength. My throat was dry and my lips were cracked. “Am I mortal, now?” I barely managed to croak the words.

  The shuffling intensified. I felt the cool soft hands I knew belonged to Rafael. They wiped the hair from my face soothingly.

  “My dear, if you were mortal, you would be long dead. You have suffered harshly, you have been starved for months. I will get you blood.”

  I listened to his feet moving away. Feeling a hand take my own, I tried to smile. “Chandler. Thank you.” I croaked the words, barely able to mutter them.

  The hand on mine tightened. “I told you I would follow you anywhere. In my eyes, you are my queen. You gave me direction when I had none. When others saw me as hideous, you thought I was beautiful.”

  My lips tried to smile. It was incredibly difficult. I swallowed, trying to form words. “The Fenix, where…where is he?”

  Chandler was quiet for a long minute. “The Fenix? I’m sorry Valkyrie, but I’m not sure who you mean.”

  Rafael returned. I felt him insert a straw into my mouth. The delicious aroma of blood drifted to me, and I sucked it up greedily. I felt much better even after the small amount.

  “More.” My voice was low and gritty.

  “I am sorry, child, but you must take it slowly. Too much too fast will make you sick.”

  I choked on the warm liquid as it trickled down my throat. I felt dry and shriveled everywhere. Swallowing several times, I asked, “What happened?”