Darkness Descends: A Skye Faden Novel

by Alisha Ashton

  “Centuries passed and she and I loved deeply, truly. Our bond never bothered Brandubh – until the day she became pregnant with my child. She had decided tha she wished to be a mother, to bring into the world a child from our union, to create life and learn the wonder of it. When she told Brandubh our happy news, I knew he resented me for it. I only wish I’d realized how strong tha resentment was.”

  He shook his head and took a deep breath, a wounded smile coming to his lips as he continued.

  “Sitheag, our daughter, was born to us in the lake at what is now the forest’s edge. She possessed the powers of her mother, as well as the wolf from her father. She was our little treasure, a beautiful child tha we cherished more than existence. Those first few months of her life are the happiest times I’ve experienced in all my days... but Sorcha and I were unaware of the jealous scheming our bliss invoked.

  “Four moons after Sitheag’s birth, a wealthy man from a distant land came to our forest. He sought to pay Sorcha a great deal for her services, but what he needed was nah within her power to provide. His wife had died in childbirth and he was mourning for her terribly. He wanted more than anything for her to live again. Sorcha tried to console him, she sympathized greatly with his pain, but there was nothing to be done. She had always made it clear tha it was nah possible to reverse mortal death. He refused to believe her – grew angry when she told him there was nah a way to bring back his love. His tone reached a point where I had no choice but to escort him from our lands. She told me when I returned tha she could hear whispers in the wind, tha trouble was coming for us. I tried to tell her tha all would be fine, tha we had one another and our child and nothing else mattered. It did nah comfort her. Sadness settled over her, the likes of which I could nah break.

  “Unbeknownst to us, Brandubh had decided tha he wished to free himself of Sorcha’s powers. He felt tha her conceiving my child was an insult to him in some way. Coward tha he is, he devised a way to have strangers do his dirty work for him. He followed the wealthy man and preyed on his weakness, stoked the fires of his bitter rage. He told him of our creation and posed the question: how could Sorcha do such a thing of magic for herself, yet feign inability to bring his wife back to him? He planted thoughts in the man’s mind, told him of Sitheag and convinced him tha if he could only steal her away, he could convince Sorcha to do anything to have her back. He’d never intended for it to work, of course, had simply wanted the three of us dead.

  “They came in the night...” Faolan whispered, closing his large, golden eyes as the memory replayed for the billionth time in his mind. “And there were just so many of them,” he recalled with a wince.

  Skye’s brows drew together at the sight of the tears suddenly rolling down his cheeks, at the crippling grief she could sense in him.

  “I did all tha I could,” Faolan breathed. “But they just kept coming. No matter how many I killed, another stood behind him. As we learned later, the widowed man was noble born, a general with an army at his bidding. He bade them to steal our child away from us...” He opened his tearful eyes, looking over at Skye and whispering, “Oh, but they stole tha and ever so much more. Sitheag was nah just our daughter – she was our happiness, our future, our life. They set the forest ablaze. The flames took a great portion of our lands from us. Because of the spell tha sustains her, Sorcha is bound within these trees – if they are destroyed, so too, is she. Where the castle now stands was our home. Her garden is all tha remains of what we once had.

  “Though I was wounded gravely, it was still within Sorcha’s power to heal me... but it was nah the same woman I’d loved who held me in her arms as I awoke. The light had left her eyes. Cruelty replaced the love and warmth I’d known in her gaze. She told me tha we would have our child back and make them suffer for what they had done. She created the ainmhidh, the wild beasts tha ya encountered, on tha very night. She made them from my blood and the rage in her own. They are the essence of wolf mixed with violence beyond reason – the violence of a mother whose child was stolen away. They have but a single purpose – to guard these lands. Without my instruction, they kill any who enter. For these reasons, we do nah allow our kind to wander into the forest unless they have called a Gathering. Ya were incredibly lucky to have survived until I reached ya,” he told her worriedly. “Perhaps they sensed in ya what I failed to at first,” he offered, taking a breath before continuing. “With an army of beasts to protect us, Sorcha continued her plan of vengeance, but she needed more than the ainmhidh could provide. She needed reasoning and noble hearts, refused to turn loose an army tha would kill without thought. ‘Children will die, my love’ she said to me, ‘we can nah set free monsters. We need men.’ It was then tha she sensed Latharn in a village to the South, sensed his heart and wisdom. She called to him in his dreams and summoned him here, and it was then tha the first bite was given. Latharn was the first Tàcharain Fhaol, bitten by me and imbued with the power to pass on the gift only to those worthy of the change. He was marked by her, to serve as her eyes and ears in the world so tha she could decide who would be taken.

  “Things, as it seems, are ne’er as simple as one would hope them to be. Brandubh had nah returned since before the attack and Sorcha knew tha it was his doing. She meant to kill him, to undo his creation... but when she haunted his dreams, he told her something shocking. Upon learning of our survival, Brandubh had taken our child away from the mortals. He’d known tha Sorcha’s vengeance could only be stopped if it would cost her daughter’s life. And ever the egotistical one, he’d flaunted his gifts to many mortals. They followed him loyally seeking to earn his power. If he died, they swore to kill our child without hesitation.” Faolan arched a brow and smirked at Skye. “But much like the temper I sense in ya, Sorcha is nah the type to be held hostage. She told him tha she agreed to his terms. As he wished, she would nah kill him, but he had failed to restrict her from punishing him for his betrayal. The hexes and spells tha poured from this forest to him lit the sky tha night and caused the very earth to quake.

  “She took his reflection, so tha he could ne’er again look upon his own face. A terrible punishment for one so vain. She cursed him to darkness, told him tha the damned should nah know the light of day. He would live in eternal night, where her power would shine down upon him to remind him of his treachery. She banished him from the safety of the forest he loved – made it so tha the sacred trees were toxic to him. She told him tha he would spend his life amidst the mortals to which he betrayed us.”

  “Trees are toxic to them?” Skye asked curiously and watched him nod in agreement. She had never put that together, but it made sense now. “So, I gather, jamming a wooden stake into their heart is pretty much injecting the poison right to the source. No wonder it kills them.”

  “Aye, for the young ones, it is fatal, thank the spirits. Unfortunately, such a wound only slows Brandubh and his ancients down,” he explained. “If they remove the wood from their body, they will heal.”

  “Damn,” she said with a sigh. “Oh well, I’ll just have to stick a whole bunch of them in him and keep him from pulling them out,” she offered. “Anyway, you were saying?”

  Faolan smiled over at her fondly and shook his head. “Lastly, she reclaimed the gift of his immortality. She told him tha, as agreed, she would nah kill him. In her stead, time and age would bring his death.”

  “Nice burn,” Skye commended. “He didn’t say that she couldn’t cut down his life expectancy. Well played on her part.”

  “Oh, but he was frantic at tha knowledge,” Faolan assured. “He had ne’er dreamed tha she could take such a thing from him. In his panic, he sought out the dark mystics of old to aid him. He found their caves in the cliffs a day’s journey from here. Cradled in his treacherous arms was our Sitheag – a bundle of Sorcha’s power to be tapped into. The price of their assistance was simple. They knew what he would become and wished him to change them in return. After he agreed, they used Sitheag’s magic to give him the means of sustainin
g his life before Sorcha could prevent it.”

  Skye frowned and looked over at him. “The ‘means’? You’re talking about the fangs and blood drinking.”

  “Aye, he gains life from the lives of mortals,” Faolan explained. “His body died a short time after Sorcha’s curses. Ever since, he has fed on the energy of blood, used it to prolong his existence.”

  “The illusion of immortality,” Skye mused. “Explains why faoil live just fine without sucking innocents dry, but the fògaraich leach off the living. So... were they able to do anything else with Sitheag’s magic?”

  He shook his head quickly. “Nah, Sorcha sensed the use of the magic our child had inherited. She locked it away, bade it to sleep until Sitheag could grow strong enough to protect it on her own. It was too late, of course, to have stopped the changes made to Brandubh, but it prevented the mystics from doing further damage with her power.

  “Our faoil swelled in number and killed every mortal responsible for taking Sitheag away from us. Unfortunately, by the time they were through, Brandubh had discovered his ability to pass his affliction to others in the same manner tha he had for the mystics. He was nah nearly as discriminate in those he changed as we had been. More lifeless, blood-drinking creatures sprang up with each passing night. Very quickly, their numbers rivaled our own. War came – far beyond anything we could have imagined. It spread across the lands like wildfire while we were forced to remain here. Mortals were drawn into the struggle, desperately trying to protect themselves from the fògaraich tha preyed upon their people.

  “And as the battles raged on and years passed with blood spilt on all sides, Sorcha grew ill over it. She said tha her magic had been tainted – tha she had only wanted love, nah the deaths of innocents. She said all of it was her fault, tha she needed to end it. She decided to set in motion a spell tha would kill every fògarach, and possibly us, the ainmhidh, and the faoil, as well. Our men gave their blessing. They were ready and willing to face death. They would make any sacrifice to end the plague of the fògaraich. I held Sorcha’s hand tha night. We spoke words of love for one another, praying tha perhaps our child would be given a chance at life by our desperate act.

  “It was then tha Brandubh reached out to Sorcha’s mind. He had our daughter, now a young woman, in his arms. She was crying and fighting as he held her tightly... and he was preparing to give her the bite. The sight of it sent Sorcha into hysterics. He told her tha if she called off the war, he would allow our daughter to live amongst the mortals and have a long life. She would grow and have children, and her children would have children of their own. Sorcha would be able to sense their life, but not their location. He swore, however, tha if she did nah put an end to it, he would bite Sitheag, change her into the abomination tha he’d become and she too would die as a result of the spell.

  “Ne’er before had I seen my beautiful Sorcha so broken. She appeared to the eyes of every Tàcharain Fhaol in tha moment and told them to stand down, ne’er again to attack a fògarach unless it was self-defense. And then she retreated into herself. She did nah speak again, did nah smile or laugh, she simply... existed. And so it has been ever since. Sometimes she still hums Sitheag’s lullaby, but she does nah have the heart to put words to it. I sit beside her for weeks on end, but she barely moves, even to breathe.”

  He stared up at the moon, struggling to speak.

  “I have nah heard the voice of my sweet love... for 4,000 years,” he whispered. “And still I starve for it.”

  Skye frowned and stepped closer to him, wondering at the level of grief such a loss must have inflicted on him. He had been created as immortal, a creature with the single purpose of loving a woman for all eternity, only to lose her to her sorrow. Skye took his hand, squeezing it sympathetically when he looked over at her.

  Faolan forced a weak smile in response and held her hand tightly. He was incredibly grateful for her gesture of comfort, no matter how insignificant it may have seemed to others. After all, Skye, herself, was currently grieving. He drew a steadying breath and forced himself to continue.

  “In all tha time, the fògaraich have kept Sitheag’s descendants hidden from us. Ya see, locking Sitheag’s powers was only intended to be temporary, but she and her daughter, and her daughter’s daughter and on throughout time, ne’er reached a point where they were strong enough to wield their magic. Without tha link, without tha spark they were imperceptible to us. Sorcha always sensed their life force out there somewhere, though – for she ne’er called our clan to action to avenge their deaths. The Tàcharain Fhaol searched far and wide for them for many centuries, but it was no use. Even if they had been in the very same room with our child, with our child’s greatest grandchild, they would nah have been able to sense the magic if it remained locked away. We sought at first to locate Sitheag’s bloodline by the wolf in them – but along with Sitheag’s power, it seemed her wolf had been bade to sleep. It would have passed dormant from one generation to the next, from female child to female child, indiscernible and unnoticed. Eventually we lost all hope...”

  He stopped, turning to Skye and caressing her cheek with his hand, staring into her eyes deeply.

  “At least we had, until now,” he whispered. “For ya are the child Returned to us from the One stolen, my dear Skye. Ya are the descendant of our lost Sitheag, the first in her line strong enough to wield her power and awaken the wolf within.”

  Skye stared at him dumbly for a moment. When had they switched from a tale of origins to another declaration of her being something important? She had no idea what to say to him. He had caught her completely off guard. Instinctively, she fell back on denial. It was always the safest response.

  “Umm, I hate to disappoint, but I think there’s been some sort of mix up,” she said nervously as she took a step back and held up her hands. “I’m just your average, run-of-the-mill, feisty American... not a mystical bone in my entire body. Nothing remarkable about me, other than my temper. Well, and being a faol – but hey, that doesn’t really count since I was bitten,” she rambled.

  “Tha’s nah true, love.” Ciaran whispered determinedly.

  Skye looked over at him in surprise, realizing that he had kept his silence this entire time.

  “There’s nah a single thing about ya tha’s average,” Ciaran insisted. “Ya know you’re something more. All ya need to do is feel it, nah think so much about it,” he said softly as he stepped up in front of her and took her hands in his. “Ya were drawn to this place. Ya hear the whispers. Ya see things tha have nah yet come to pass. Ya had yellow in your eyes long before the change – it was the wolf in your blood shining through, the wolf that has been a part of ya since birth. And ya even took two lovers as Sorcha did. One for loyalty. One for friendship.” He winced as his eyes glistened with tears, looking down at their joined hands as his thoughts returned to Taran yet again. “Ya claimed us as your own, a stóirín,” he choked out. “Taran and I were both bound to ya from the first moment ya laid eyes upon us.”

  Skye had only just begun to tear up at hearing Taran’s name when Faolan cut in.

  “Ya have claimed Ciaran, as well?” He asked in astonishment.

  Skye arched a brow and studied him, wondering why that was so important.

  “Well... yeah. I mean, I don’t know,” she looked back into Ciaran’s beautiful blue eyes and smiled weakly. “I just knew he was mine. He’s...”

  “My dark one...”

  “Right, ‘my dark one’. That’s what I call him,” Skye answered, but immediately went rigid. The voice she had just heard was that of a woman... and it had not even been her wolf this time. More troubling was the fact that she recognized it. That same whispery, ethereal voice had come to her so many times in dreams and visions.

  Uh-oh...

  A glance over at Faolan revealed tears of joy streaming down his cheeks. White light was reflecting in his eyes, and its source was apparently directly behind her. She swallowed hard as she looked over at Ciaran, Latharn, Drostan,
and Cathal – and watched worriedly as they all fell to their knees and bowed their heads in reverence. All at once, every faoil in the clearing followed suit, bowing to the woman standing behind her.

  After a moment of building up her courage, Skye finally managed to turn around and see for herself who she knew it must be. A gasp escaped her at the beauty of the woman standing before her. Wild, silver blonde hair reached the woman’s waist, pooling over her shoulders and the white pelts that covered her body. A warm smile graced her lips as her blue eyes sparkled brightly. She was glowing – as in literally – her magic bathed her in a soft white light.

  “Sorcha,” Skye breathed, unable to move or speak as she watched the woman approach.

  “My child,” Sorcha whispered lovingly as she kissed her cheek.

  The sensation of it brought tears to Skye’s eyes. She watched the woman in awe as she stepped away. They were the same height, Skye noted, and the similarities did not end there. Even with four millennia of separation between them, she could see the features that she had inherited from this woman – the eyes and smile, the bone structure and wild, wavy hair. It seemed that mystical genes were dominant. But Sorcha’s hair was like moonlight, shimmering and fluid as quicksilver, cool to the touch.

  “I have dreamt of this day for an eternity,” Sorcha said as she cradled Skye’s face in her hands. “Ya are all tha I wished ya would be. The power is so strong in ya. I have sensed your rage – your vengeance when ya wielded it. I knew it would nah be long before ya would Return to me,” she said with an adoring smile.

  Skye looked at her in confusion.