Burn the Dark

by Nicola Rose

  Stronger. Faster. Better

  The darkness disappeared.

  There was only light. Blinding and beautiful.

  The earth thumped beneath my feet. Solid, real. And the world spun back into view.

  33

  Alex

  I didn’t want to tell her what he’d done. I’d wanted to keep it hidden until later, but Constance kept hassling me, saying that it was perfect timing – that Jess needed a strong enough emotion to help break free. Because we knew where she was… sort of. It was clear that she remained somewhere at the de Monsos estate, but actually getting to her, breaking into that alternate plane, well, that appeared to be impossible.

  So we’d waited – Constance and I, and the Unaligned – on the perimeter, ready to strike. I was twitchy. Emory knew we were there lying in wait, and the longer we delayed the more time he had to gather his forces. I was happy to go in guns blazing and force Emory and Beatrix to eat their own eyeballs until they set Jess free.

  Unfortunately, no one could sense Beatrix because she’d gone into hiding like the little bitch she is. Constance insisted Beatrix was the only one that could pull Jess back, so if we went in too soon and lost the fight, then we’d lose her forever. And we needed Jess for the fight anyway, or at least Constance did. She wouldn’t bow to my commands unless she got something for it, which was her little prophecy. Still on her fucking irritating quest to destroy the Elwoods. Whatever. Once Jess was free I’d dispatch with Constance and be done with that charade once and for all. Especially with the new revelation that she’d been sneaking around behind our backs, seemingly unaware of her own actions.

  But getting back to getting Jess out, Constance had said the only way was through Beatrix, or by Jess busting herself out with her own power. Now, given that I’d witnessed all of her power before – and let’s just say that it was underwhelming – this plan didn’t seem promising.

  Yet she pushed and pushed about how opportune this was. How my blood had awoken her magic, how it just needed a push. How Zac’s crime would send Jess into a frenzy. I didn’t want to believe that. I didn’t want to believe he still held that power over my girl’s heart, but it wasn’t necessarily him that caused the pain in her, it was just what he’d done. Right?

  I should have been glad to tell Jess, to hammer one more nail into his coffin. And looking at her now, I could have kissed Constance for how right she had been.

  Jess was divinity incarnate. A blazing vision of beauty and death. Her entire body alight, flames licking every inch of her skin, billowing into the space around her.

  She stepped slowly across the courtyard – naked, burning like a fireball, without a single bit of discomfort from the heat, even though I could feel it, searing and scorching. Skin glowing with the radiance of magic and fire. Red hair rippling on a magical breeze.

  So alive. Fucking awe-inspiring.

  I didn’t even realise I’d dropped to my knees until now. But I didn’t care. I would happily stay there for the rest of my life. She was a Goddess to be worshipped.

  My dark Goddess.

  I’d walk through hell for her.

  Her aura glittered like a million starbursts against a smudge of black. She was light, and dark – a staggering sight of pure energy.

  “Alex!” Syn landed a blow to my face. “Wake the fuck up and join the party!”

  I glanced around to take in the chaos of the Unaligned soldiers fighting against the Bael.

  I should help them.

  If only I could tear my gaze away from her, but I was drawn back in. Mesmerised.

  Bright flashes of ferocious energy arced from her hands, blasting out like rockets and cutting down the enemy, snuffing them out like flies. Bael minions stormed her, only to be annihilated before they got anywhere close.

  She continued walking casually, as if taking a summer stroll through a garden. Her movements were serene, but her head was a riot of complete destruction.

  Her eyes fell upon me, on my knees, worshipping her, and she smiled.

  She smiled and I finally exhaled a sigh of relief.

  She was free. She was immortal. And she was mine.

  34

  Jess

  It was like waking from a dream and realising the dream wasn’t actually the best bit – reality was. Because finally, after all the anxiety and confusion in my life, everything was perfect. Exactly as it should be.

  I was reborn. And I was indestructible.

  My power came running at the slightest command, purring in my ears like a kitten, enveloping me in a blanket of supremacy.

  Gone was the fear, the pain, the self-doubt. Instead there was certainty, vitality, preservation. I would obliterate anyone who stood in my way, and I’d enjoy it.

  I don’t fear fire, I own it.

  My private little mantra, created to help me through the trauma of bad memories, had come to life, literally. In a way I could never have anticipated.

  The smell of their burning flesh was tantalising. I revelled in the sounds of their bones crunching. They would kneel before me and I’d show no mercy.

  All the times Zac tried to tell me how dangerous they were, all the times Alex tried to show me…

  And all along they should have been the ones afraid of me.

  The bodies piled up as I strolled through the grounds. Sometimes I wasn’t sure if the vampire in front of me was Bael or Unaligned, so I cut them down anyway. If in doubt, end them. That was my new mantra.

  Alex finally got to his feet and joined the fray. I liked having him on his knees, for a moment, watching me as a loyal servant would his Queen. But there wasn’t time for that now, and there was only so much kneeling I could take from him. He was a breathtaking King, to be admired and adored. My King of the Darkness. Oh, the fun we’ll have together.

  So now it was me watching him, dazzled by his raw power. Snapping his fingers and exploding heads. His hair, slick with blood, flopping down over his eyes. Delicious red droplets spattered over his face. If I could have paused the battle to go and lick it off then I would have.

  But another raging vampire hurled himself at me, unperturbed by the fact that I was essentially a walking ball of flame. Give them their dues, those Bael warriors wouldn’t cower or draw back. They just kept coming, and coming, until we were tripping over the corpses.

  They all looked too similar. Same hair, same height and build, same golden eyes…

  A female passed by me, wrestling with another. For a moment our eyes locked.

  Eva.

  But whose side was she fighting on? Was she fighting with Zac, or with Alex? I wanted to end her, just to be sure, just in case she hadn’t picked the right team. The energy built in my hand, ready to find its mark, but something made me waver. Some hidden sense of friendship or loyalty…

  Stumbling, for the first time on the battlefield, I crashed into a sculpture and watched it topple. The pretty fountains and flowerbeds of Emory’s courtyard were destroyed. Crushed and permanently stained red. I spun round, but she’d gone.

  Where was Emory? Come to think of it, where was Zac? And Constance? Shouldn’t they be a part of this big showdown?

  “My thoughts exactly,” Alex appeared at my side, grinning like a bloodied psychopath. “Follow me.”

  He moved away and my attention caught on the way his jeans hugged his ass, the confident swagger, the blood coating everything.

  This was entirely too much fun.

  Following Alex, we butchered our way through countless vampire-zombies. That’s what they were like – weird fighting drones that just kept coming and never faltered from their path. They never wavered, even though their death was certain once they entered our vicinity. Either Alex would eradicate them into a pile of gloop, or I’d pulverise them with enough fire to scatter their souls to the wind.

  This was no ordinary fire. Their bodies dissolved into ash in an instant. There was no coming back from it. Supposedly vampires could only die through decapitation or total blood-loss, but
I was certain I’d just created a new way. How would they recover from that? There was nothing left of them by the time I was done.

  “Who are they?” I asked, as Alex extinguished five more of the vampire drones.

  “They’re the new army. Beatrix created them with Zac’s blood. They’re kind of like clones…”

  I stumbled then, for the second time. My energy faltered. The earth tilted.

  Clones?! These creatures, without any apparent will of their own, were Zac’s own army? I should have seen it sooner, the golden eyes…

  “Keep moving,” Alex urged. “You can digest that revelation later.”

  We carried on through the grounds of Emory’s estate until we came to a stone archway set into an immense wall, curving round and out of sight behind the mansion. A different sound came from behind that wall. Outside, it was vampires, fighting and killing. Beyond, it was desperate pleas. Human. Lots of humans.

  Their heartbeats slammed into my conscience and a thirst ignited in my throat. Fangs descending, a new desire took over. The hunger from all that time in the void… it burned…

  “Easy, flame-girl,” Alex tentatively placed a hand on my shoulder. He didn’t burn when he touched me. I had no idea how I was exerting that level of control. “We’ll get you fed soon, but we need to finish this first.”

  “I need it. Now—” I stepped through the arch and came to an abrupt halt inside.

  The sight that greeted me stomped all over any confidence I’d had since the battle started, pulling me up short with a slap to the face. The fire fizzled out until I was just a naked girl, standing there amongst wisps of smoke.

  Before us, I observed rows and rows of brick walls, stretching out almost as far as I could see.

  Attached to those walls were chains.

  And attached to the chains were people.

  Hundreds, no… thousands, of people.

  They were all as naked as me. But whilst I’d been feeling positively radiant, undeterred by my nudity, revelling in this powerful body – they appeared to be half-dead. Their heads slumped. Their moans filling the air in a deafening symphony of anguish.

  Pallid, bruised flesh. Broken limbs. Bloody, savaged bodies. Some of them had so many puncture wounds that it was hard to find a spot of unblemished skin.

  Next to each broken body stood a medical IV stand, passing some sort of fluid into their systems.

  I froze.

  Everything that I’d become in the last minutes, hours… how long had it been since I’d blasted free of the void? Whatever I’d been re-born into, it was wavering at this sight. Old feelings tried to surface. Compassion, empathy, fear… they were seeping back in. And the hunger…

  I mustn’t allow that. I can’t—

  “It’s a farm,” Alex said.

  “A what?”

  “They keep them here to feed. The IV contains a saline solution and opium, which keeps them dazed and gives the vampire a rush as they drink. No doubt there’s other shit in there too.”

  “How many are there?” I cast my eyes over the endless rows of captives. Bound and broken. Nothing more than animals to provide food.

  “There’ll be a lot more if Emory gains enough power. This is the future for the human race.”

  My legs gave and Alex caught me with an arm around my waist.

  He twisted, glancing back the way we’d come. Then he stiffened. Body rigid against mine.

  “Jess, there’s no time for weakness now. Get those fucking flames burning again. This fight hasn’t even begun.”

  Be strong.

  Don’t let the weakness in.

  But the smell… the hunger…

  I lurched forward, out of his grip, and threw myself onto the nearest human. If you could call her that. She was more dead-skeleton than human. But the pulse still throbbed faintly through her pallid body, and so my teeth sank into her neck.

  I drank. And drank. And I could feel him – watching, waiting.

  Them. I could feel them.

  So I carried on drinking. Let them wait. Let them watch their new Queen. Let them see what I’d become, what they’d made me.

  Then, I’d burn their world to ash.

  35

  Jess

  Only when the blood stopped coming, and her pathetic whimpering faded, did I remove my teeth from the blood slave’s neck and step away.

  She tasted wrong. This was not the answer for the future. Where was the fun in feeding from animals, kept and bred, and already dead on the inside. No. Emory must be stopped. His army must be destroyed, and the Legacy too.

  Then I’d walk into the night and decide on my future.

  I slowly looked left and right.

  Left, to Zac, who stood between rows of human cattle, watching me through black eyes, as a beast watches another… sizing them up, preparing to fight.

  A vague emotion flashed through my core. The love I had for him. This man, who had given me everything. He brought me pleasure, and pain, and I could never live without him…

  Then to the right, where Alex was still waiting for me, where—

  My heart guttered. Stalled, faltered, tripled its beat. Was it even a heart I had now? It didn’t feel like it used to, but something kicked it to life.

  His face. Those beautiful turquoise eyes. His raw, dark energy.

  Every part of him pulled me in, caressing me in the promise of happiness.

  Some ancient, primal connection snapped into place. He’d sired me. I was his.

  I would always be his.

  I ran to him, my feet moving against the voice in my head that screamed at me to burn… burn… burn them all to hell!

  My lips found his and the fire ignited. I was alive in the flames, at one with them. He didn’t burn. He held me tight. My flames would never hurt him.

  I was his, and he was mine.

  The clapping of Zac’s hands was somehow enough to pull me from that kiss. Not the screaming, the fighting and dying, the Bael clones clashing with the Unaligned. No, those sounds were a melody to my darkness, feeding it and burning my flames brighter.

  But that slow, sarcastic clapping from Zac’s hands? That stilled the world and quieted it all. A wicked rage tickled at the base of my spine. My flames died.

  I turned to face him, and Alex gripped my hip tightly.

  “Congratulations,” Zac’s voice was something like a bear, a demon, a deep rumbling. “Looks like you became the woman Alexander believed in all along.”

  Zac ran his feral eyes slowly up and down my body, and my nakedness suddenly felt awkward. Alex went to pull me closer, but resisted, instead removing his hand from my hip altogether and standing by my side. He whipped his t-shirt over his head and offered it to me with a reassuring smile. It barely came to my ass cheeks, but at least it was something.

  “He tried to tell me, towards the end, once he’d started falling for you,” Zac continued, shaking his head. “Moaned on and on about how I was holding you back. But I should’ve held tighter. I should never have let you wander so far from the leash.”

  “No, you shouldn’t,” I hissed. “Because now I’ll show you why you were right to fear me.”

  “Fear you?” Zac laughed. “Don’t flatter yourself. My lies gave you just enough confidence to want to stay with me, to happily turn a blind eye as I squashed you into my plaything. A fuck-up like you couldn’t wait to bow down, to kneel before me. I could have dragged it out for years, breaking you down and devouring you before the sanguine ritual. Now you’ve ruined it all. Now you’re nothing but tainted meat. And an obstruction to my cause.”

  Lies. It was lies. The darkness talking. He hadn’t always felt this way.

  I pressed into his mind, pushing past the barriers that he hadn’t bothered erecting. Too confident that he didn’t need them. Surprise registered for only a moment on his face as I slipped in. I braced for the force of him throwing me out as I stared into the eyes I’d once loved, but instead he relaxed and allowed himself a smile.

  A
lex tensed beside me, no doubt aware of what I was doing, but held his tongue.

  “Hello,” Zac spoke through his thoughts. Such relief in his tone. Not the demon voice from outside, this was the real Zac, the one I’d loved. “You realise your mistake coming in here?”

  Yes. I did.

  I realised it as the weight of his emotions brought me to my knees.

  He was still there, inside his own head, but also not there. The darkness had taken over and was controlling him, but there he was, locked inside a small part of his own mind. Trapped. Or hiding. The Beast was in control now, and this old Zac was dormant.

  Squashed, but not dead. A maelstrom of feeling. Swirling and surging, each emotion locked in battle against the others.

  When Alex thought of me there was passion, pride, awe… there was love. But with Zac? It was anger, frustration, hurt. So much hurt. Endless, spiralling anger… feeding the Beast.

  He hated me. He really did.

  “It’s not your fault. It’s the Legacy, the—” he started.

  “So you didn’t feel this way before?” I searched to find a kernel of love in there, lost somewhere in the storm. Love, or happiness, or hope… but there was none.

  “Oh, I did. These feelings were always here, but there was also love to suppress them. Now that has slipped away, it’s so hard to pull it back out.”

  “I’m sorry.”

  “I’ll never stop trying to find that love again. No matter what I say or look like from the outside, I’ll be in here, searching for hope. You’re my light. But I can’t hold back the darkness.”

  “I don’t know what to do.”

  “Yes, you do. Get out of my head and finish this fight. I’m ready.”

  A wave of blackness crept around me, tightening, threatening. I sent a shaft of light through Zac’s head and it recoiled, then instantly redoubled frantic efforts at pushing me out. From the outside, where I looked upon Zac, he was snarling and clutching at his own head.