Gathering Darkness: A Paranormal Romance Collection

by Anna Zaires

  Ryan started the car and dropped his head momentarily, rubbing his temples. “I need to think about this, Blake,” he said wearily. “I don’t know what’s going on here. Besides, you agreed to stay here with me until we get your bloodlust under control.” He shot me a pointed look. “And, spoiler alert, it’s not.”

  I slumped in my seat, pissed at him. Mostly because he was right.

  We didn’t speak for a few moments. I sat sullenly while Ryan eased the car away from the kerb and we drove away from Clair’s apartment building.

  “I take it you heard everything?” he asked finally, sounding uncomfortable.

  “Of course,” I replied, still pleased that my new skill of ‘seeing’ things in other places was apparently something of a rarity. “It was full color and surround sound.” I gestured to the folded napkin he was holding, which contained the Asphodel flower he’d ripped from Clair’s hair.

  “What’s up with the flower?” I asked. “I thought I was going to break out in hives or something. It was a full sensory experience.”

  “Oh, really?” he teased. “A full sensory experience. Did you enjoy kissing a girl, Katy Perry?”

  I pulled a face. “Whatever. I was too busy being bored to death. I thought you were going to come out once you realized she wasn’t a threat?”

  “She could still be a threat,” Ryan said, glancing at me.

  “The flower,” I prodded. “Can you please throw it out of the window?” I felt my skin getting hot and itchy. “Is this some vampire allergy thing? It feels like I’m standing in the sun all over again.”

  “It’s an Asphodel flower,” Ryan explained. “They only grow in a few places, including The Underworld.” He shoved it into the glovebox between us, and my skin immediately felt a little less hot and bothered.

  “Why are you keeping it?” I asked, annoyed that it was still in the car with us.

  “I need to show Ivy. She might be able to tell me something about its origins, or where it was grown.”

  “I don’t know why you trust her,” I said, without thinking. He laughed.

  “What?” I said, a little embarrassed that I had said that about her. He had known her for a lot longer than he had known me. “Am I being a bitch?”

  Ryan smiled, clearly entertained by me. How nice for him. “No, you’re being smart. I don’t trust Ivy. All I know is that she hates Caleb even more than she hates me.”

  “Why?” I asked, more curious about her than ever. “Why does she hate you both?”

  Ryan’s smile vanished. “She hates Caleb,” he began slowly, “because Caleb took away her entire world. He thought that I was getting distracted by her. So he told her father that we were planning to marry, and where I had hidden her. It’s Caleb’s fault her father discovered her pregnancy. It’s Caleb’s fault her father beat her to death before I could get there in time to save both of them.”

  I didn’t know what to say to that. I tried to think of my own father being angry enough to beat me and my unborn child to death. What a horrid way to end one’s life.

  “And why does she hate you?” I asked.

  Ryan was quiet for a long while, and I eventually thought that he wasn’t going to answer me.

  “I loved her very much,” Ryan said, showing a brief glimpse of the pain and rage he usually channelled into being an asshole. “But she consumed me completely. We were no good together. We would go on rampages together, feeding and killing whoever we felt like.

  “It was dangerous. We were both becoming … demonic, almost. So one day I left her. I left her all alone and didn’t see her for fifteen years.”

  I raised my eyebrows in disbelief. “And the next time you saw her –”

  “– was in Mexico,” he finished. “So, yeah, I don’t trust her.”

  I wanted to think about the whole Ivy / Caleb / Ryan issue some more. There was something I was missing, something that involved me. But Ryan’s mind was like a well–guarded vault, and I couldn’t gain access. Besides, we were home, and we had gotten way off topic during our long–winded conversation.

  “Anyway,” I said clearly as Ryan pulled into the garage and shut off the engine. “Caleb. He probably just wants his heart back, Ryan. So why don’t you give it to him and get him off your back?”

  He looked at me, really looked into my eyes and studied my face. He reached a gentle hand over to touch my cheek, and left it there. It was such a lovely, innocent gesture amongst all of the other crap that I closed my eyes for a moment. And in that moment, I saw exactly why he wasn’t about to give the heart back in a hurry.

  Another vision? Jesus, my brain could only process so much information.

  THIRTY-ONE

  I was no longer in the car, but falling through the air, an invisible spectator in another time and place.

  I blinked several times and looked at my new surroundings.

  We stood by a huge underground lake that was as still and smooth as plate glass. The light was dim. The air surrounding us was so cold, the water should have been freezing, but the wafts of steam that were coming off the top suggested that it was warm. The ground beneath my bare feet was cold and damp, stone covered with dark green moss. The cavernous ceiling was at least fifty feet above us and stretched into oblivion, decorated with stalactites that dribbled icy water every so often.

  “What’s happening?” I asked. Ryan could tell I was freaking out. The feeling I had is so hard to describe. It was as if I was still frozen in the car, a hand brushing at my cheek, and yet I was here, in this cavernous space that stretched further than my vampiric gaze could see. I felt a draft on my bare skin and looked down to see that I was now wearing a thin white dress that looked suspiciously like the one I had been wearing that night. “What the hell am I wearing?”

  “Chill out. This is a different way of showing you a vision. You’re not just seeing it in your mind, you’re seeing it in real life.”

  I scowled. “And the dress?”

  He smirked. “It suits you. We have to fit in, after all.”

  I studied his new outfit – a white cotton dress shirt with beige chinos – and shook my head. We were both barefoot. “We look like we’re about to go to a luau,” I said sarcastically.

  “A journey through The Underworld, actually,” he replied. “Among other places.”

  I baulked. The Underworld. The place where the dead came to rest. I grabbed his arm, terrified.

  “Relax,” he said calmly, squeezing my hand. “We’re not actually here. We’re still sitting in the car. I’m just showing you a memory from my own mind, and channelling it into yours.”

  “Oh,” I said, letting my shoulders loosen. “Okay. That’s good.” And as he said it, I could feel part of my consciousness in the car, almost as if I were able to see two worlds at once, and switch between them at will.

  “I want to show you why I think you’re in danger,” he said. “Why I think Caleb chose you. I didn’t figure it out until I was told to Turn you instead of just take your blood. I don’t know what he was planning to do to you, but I do know it can’t be good.”

  “Awesome,” I said sarcastically. I hated being the last to figure things out, and right now it seemed that I was always out of the loop on everything.

  I realized I was still holding his hand and took it back, blushing. I felt like a scared little kid in a haunted house ride.

  “Can anyone even see us?” I whispered, gesturing to the dress I was wearing.

  “No,” he replied. “It’s just a memory, remember? Like watching a movie on a 3D screen.”

  Well, at least I fit in, I snarked, shivering in the thin dress he had chosen for me.

  “Oh shush,” he said, and in an instant I was dressed in my own jeans and t-shirt. “Watch the bloody show.”

  And he had meant that literally. I heard a girl’s bloodcurdling scream and turned to see a large, hulking man dragging a pretty, young girl by her long, dark curls. He must have been at least seven feet tall and as stunning as he
was terrifying. Silver tattoos that glowed in the nightlight were etched all over his luminous skin; skin that shone like gold and fire. His eyes were magnificent – large, black with tiny gold flecks that sparkled with such intensity, it was like looking directly into the midday sun. He had human features but was definitely not human.

  “Hades,” Ryan supplied helpfully.

  “As in the Devil?”

  “Mmm-hmm,” Ryan replied.

  I blinked and continued watching. The girl was screaming, Hades was getting angry and I was nervously bouncing from foot to foot.

  He forced the girl up from a kneeling position to her feet.

  “What is your final decision?” Hades asked the girl, his voice so loud and full of bass, it shook the air around me.

  The girl was a blubbering mess. “Please,” she begged. “Just let me go. I don’t want to stay down here. I won’t marry you!”

  Resignation settled in on Hades’ face. “Very well. You leave me no choice.”

  There was a crack, a crunch, and before I knew to cover my eyes, he had snapped her neck like a piece of kindling. All of this had happened in a matter of three seconds and it was only now, after teetering on her feet for a few moments, that the girl hit the ground, dead.

  Only that wasn’t the end of it. Almost instantly, the girl’s ghost (or what I assumed to be her ghost) sat up, delirious, and stepped up out of the body that she had been contained within only minutes before her death. This was both incredible and distressing for me. I thought of the window then, of falling and crashing into the ground, and I edged away from Ryan a little. He gave me a serious look. He knew what I was thinking about, as usual.

  He nudged me and gestured to the scene unfolding in front of us.

  The girl, who was now a more pale, translucent version of herself, tried to run away. Each time she did, his hand shot out and grabbed her long, dark locks. She finally stopped struggling and looked up into the eyes of Hell incarnate. “Even in death, you will not leave me be?” she pleaded.

  This made Hades smile. “Especially in death,” he replied. I swallowed back bile as he continued to speak.

  “In death, all belong to me. But you already knew this, Talitha Mae.” He picked her up and carried her into the darkness of The Underworld until her cries faded into the void.

  “Jesus,” I said, staring at the body in front of us. It was all too much to take in. I had just watched a girl die – again, after having to watch Kate be ripped apart by Caleb in front of me just a few short weeks ago. I shivered and wrapped my arms around myself.

  “Do you know why I showed you this?”

  I gulped. “Because I look almost identical to that girl?”

  “Bingo,” Ryan replied.

  I blinked, and the body of the girl who looked just like me was gone.

  “What does any of this have to do with me?” I asked, my voice a little too shrill.

  “I’m not entirely sure,” Ryan said. “But I know you’re the key. You, and the heart. That’s why I took both of you. That’s why you can’t leave me, not yet.”

  That’s why I took both of you. His referral to the heart as a person left me extremely concerned.

  I started to pace, just like I always did when I was worried. “So you had nothing to do with that?” I asked.

  “No,” he replied, picking up a stone and skimming it along the surface of the lake. It seemed to skip along the surface forever before succumbing to its murky depths. “It happened before I was even born.”

  “Then how is it a memory in your head?”

  “The same way I have now placed the memory in your mind. Caleb showed me this memory. Talitha, in turn, showed it to him. It is the truth. Vampires are powerful, but we cannot make up things like this. If someone shares a memory with you, you can safely assume that it is true.”

  I nodded. It was a lot of information to take in, but I thought I was coping remarkably well with it all. Except for the part where I had just watched a young girl, no older than me, who looked just like me, have her neck snapped by the bare hands of Satan himself.

  “Kosher?” Ryan asked.

  I nodded.

  “Great.” He clapped his hands together and the universe around me changed again. I was suddenly aware of the heat as an unforgiving sun throbbed directly overhead in the midday sky.

  “Bet you wish you were wearing that little white number,” Ryan deadpanned, smirking at my jeans and t-shirt.

  “Bite me,” I replied, rolling my eyes.

  The Underworld was completely gone, as if it had never existed. We now stood in a narrow dirt alleyway in the middle of two squat limestone buildings. The stench of sickness and death immediately invaded my nostrils, and I had to stop myself from retching. I jumped at the sound of Ryan’s voice.

  “Do you know where we are?” he asked me. I shook my head no.

  “Smack in the middle of the greatest human plague, in the twelfth century. The back alleys where whores go to conduct business and decency goes to die. Welcome.”

  I wrinkled my nose in distaste. “It smells like ass.”

  He ignored me, instead gesturing to a pile of debris further into the alley. I took a few reluctant steps, each one bringing me closer to the source of the stench.

  I recoiled when I realized what I was looking at. A haphazard pile of rotting arms, legs and faces lay at the end of the alleyway. The faces were the worst. Some of them were bloated or streaked with old blood and almost everything was covered in flies. Rats and mice darted in and out, and I turned away after glimpsing a brown rodent chowing down on what was left of a man’s ear. “Oh, shit,” I moaned. I wanted to hurl, but I didn’t, and I think it was only because we were in spirit form that I kept my baggie of blood down. “Why are we here?”

  “You’ll see,” Ryan said quietly.

  A man, no more than thirty years old, dressed in rags and clearly sick with whatever plague had killed the pile of bodies, stumbled into the alleyway. He coughed, tilted his face towards the sky, and squinted his beautiful, sapphire–blue eyes at the unforgiving sun. His mortal eyes had been something wondrous to behold.

  “Caleb,” I breathed. “He’s human.”

  Ryan nodded. “He’s dying.”

  “Help!” Caleb cried out, stumbling to his knees in the dirt.

  As if from nowhere, a young woman stepped out of the shadows of a doorframe overhang and stood in front of him.

  “That’s the girl from The Underworld,” I whispered. “I thought she was stuck there?”

  She didn’t look as similar to me this time. Her hair was longer and darker, her skin was deathly pale, and her eyes were solid black. She looked positively terrifying and beautiful all at once.

  “She was,” Ryan replied. “She escaped. She’s possessing a human’s body.”

  What’s wrong with her?

  She’s been in Hell for hundreds of years, Ryan whispered through the bond. She’s become a demon.

  “What is your name, love?” she murmured.

  “I don’t remember,” he said sadly.

  “Then I shall give you a new one. I will call you Caleb, the chosen one, and you will live forever.” She reached down and cupped his face in her hands with such affection, it made her appear human for a short moment.

  Caleb let out a small, strangled sob. “Who are you?” he asked in between coughs. “Are you an angel?”

  Her rosebud mouth turned upwards in a wicked smile, but her eyes remained dead and black.

  “I am Talitha,” she said softly. “You belong to me now.”

  She took one of her long fingernails and drew it hard along the smooth skin on her wrist, until blood sprang to the surface. I looked closer and baulked.

  It was black. Her blood was pitch black.

  She pressed her open wound to Caleb’s mouth, and he drank greedily. I cringed as I realized what was about to happen.

  He was going to Turn.

  Sure enough, he dropped to the ground and began screaming and
clawing at his face. I couldn’t watch. I looked away.

  Thankfully, Ryan jumped to the next scene, rather than making me relive the entire painful and grotesque process of Caleb’s Turn.

  We stood in a small clearing in the middle of a pine forest. It was nightfall, and things felt eerily quiet, until several pairs of footsteps began thundering through the undergrowth. Caleb and Talitha came into view and stopped in the clearing near us, both panting for breath. It was obvious some time had passed – Caleb was a vampire, though his eyes were still blue, not yet that insipid pearl white they had been when I met him in Mexico.

  I heard growling and panting all around us and realized that the beads of light in the dark surrounding Talitha and Caleb were actually eyes.

  Wolves?

  Hell Hounds, Ryan confirmed.

  One of the Hell Hounds stalked out of the shadows and into the clearing, the weak moonlight bringing it into focus a little better. It was huge, much bigger than any dog I’d ever seen, with short, glossy, black fur and teeth that glittered with anticipation.

  Talitha was crying. She was a demon, but in that moment she looked like the broken human girl who had been tricked by the Devil. She and Caleb bent their heads together so that their foreheads were touching.

  “You know what to do,” she said forlornly.

  He nodded and kissed her forehead so softly, so gently, that I could not imagine it was the same person that had tortured me and made me bleed.

  The Hell Hound leapt into the air, flew in a wide arc, and knocked Talitha to the ground.

  “Noooooo!” Caleb yelled, as a second Hell Hound began chasing him away from her. The Hound easily jumped him and forced him down to the ground, all the while a horrific growl emanating from its thick throat.

  The Hound snapped at Caleb’s throat, and it seemed to take all of his strength to hold the beast just far enough away to stop it from taking his head off.

  Talitha was not faring so well. I didn’t want to look, but I could hear. The bigger Hound was literally ripping her to shreds. The smell of blood mixed with dead pine needles radiated through the forest, and I retched.