The Depths of Darkness

by Laurie Bowler

  “Oh,” I replied shocked. “And why not?” I demanded to know.

  “Because I leased it to someone else already so you don’t technically have it anymore.”

  Breathless moments passed as I steadied myself and the anger of his actions swelled inside of me; he felt my apparent anger and held me steady.

  “Don’t be angry,” he begged. “I did it before the fight and I knew you wouldn’t want to go back there anyway, not without me anyway.”

  His lips met mine in a hasty but pleasant kiss, hungrily he sought my lips and we kissed. This time there were no barriers or apprehension and no rules that could dictate how wrong we were together when blatantly we were made to be together and compelled towards each other as we had been from the very beginning, him with his darkness and secrets and the many nights he’d dared to enter and interrupt my dreams giving me the same hot steamy dream for many nights. And now, here we are, ready to stand and face whatever torments happened to come our way and I was sure there would be a few simply because of my title.

  “Hey love birds,” Darcy called giggling, “come on in and join us.”

  We pulled apart at the sound of her voice, hand in hand we walked across the separating grounds back to the remnants of the house, the many walls had been knocked through. On closer inspection with my new immortal sight which allowed me to see much more in the darkness than my mortal sight, the rubble that lay around would be a mean feat for Luke and the others to clean, but I shrugged harmlessly, with their vampire strength they could do anything.

  “Where is Herbert anyway?” I asked, searching for him and calling his name softly in the night.

  “Right here,” Luke said, his tone rough and his teeth gritted tightly together. I laughed when he turned around; there on his leg clawing upwards was my darling beloved pet, Herbert.

  “Hey boy,” I collected him stroking him and cuddling him close. “There you are, now where have you been?”

  He meowed and hissed angrily at Luke. All this time I’d thought he hadn’t liked Luke purely because of the vampire state, but now I guessed it was out of pure unadulterated jealously that he’d taken a dislike to him.

  “I think he’s jealous,” I said.

  “He’ll be homeless if he claws me like that again,” he complained.

  I playfully punched his arm and ran ahead squealing with laughter when I heard his fast approaching legs hurrying after me.

  Breathless and deliriously happy we entered the house, faced by Darcy and Benjamin who were in a rather odd predicament. They’d recognised each other and had finally admitted their feelings, that much was obvious. Not only had Darcy realised that she didn’t love Luke as she had once said, but she’d also recognised it was Benjamin who had captured her heart.

  “I see you two have made yourselves at home,” Luke commented pulling me close to his side, warily eyeing the cat. “And I see you have certainly managed to find some common ground to work on.”

  “We’ve decided that we want to be with each other,” Darcy said. “Do you mind?”

  “Of course not,” he replied easily struck by their loving and startling revelation. “I’m a little shocked I’ll admit, but I don’t mind.”

  “That’s good,” she said. “Patty,” she added the hope entering her voice, “can you forgive me for being such a prime bitch?”

  “Already forgiven,” I said.

  The house rang out with laughter coming from everyone inside, laughing and joking talking about the future. Eventually it was time for me to sleep before the biggest and most collective day of my life tomorrow, facing the realm and setting the rules straight.

  “Are you ready to go upstairs?” Luke asked beside me, his eyes clearly incensed to have me alone for a little while.

  I nodded, and we headed towards the stairs, neither of us felt the need to speak; it was a futile attempt to make a moment that was already engraved inside both us, great. When we reached the bedroom where I’d been turned, and entered inside, Luke was the first to step inside and climb into bed stripping off his clothes and revealing his muscular body that made me go weak at the knees. Never had I seen such a beautiful body in all my life, the silver veins that I could see on his face traveled downwards and branched out all over his body.

  Curiosity built up inside of me and I wanted to see if my body was the same as his or if I was completely different. With trepidation building rhythmically inside of me, I began to undo my clothes and although I’d gotten changed earlier, I hadn’t given the rest of my body much thought. My mind had been focused on getting down stairs and meeting my parents without eating them and not on what my body might look like underneath the layers of clothes.

  Luke propped himself up on his elbow and watched me closely; his eyes flickered over my body as he restlessly watched me change and strip of my clothes. I took a deep breath and walked to the mirror; for once I did walk without the embarrassing sharp run like walk I’d done earlier.

  Standing in front of the mirror and seeing my once human body transformed into something marvelous and a glorious sight to behold, my eyes traveled and roamed to all the places where my beautiful silver veins branched out. I looked stunning, to the eyes of a vampire it was completely compelling and the entirety was mesmerising by far.

  “I knew you’d look stunning the minute I met you and I was told to protect you. I wondered then what you’d look like as one of us,” he commented softly and quietly in the silence of the bedroom. “Are you happy patty?” he asked.

  “Of course I am,” I replied, watching and turning to every angle to see the radiance erupt from my skin, the moonlight captured the veins and summoned forwards shards and small rays of light across the room, filling every dark corner with a blast of small light that had been created from my skin. “How did you know it would work?” I asked cautiously aware that I might upset him with my questions.

  “How what might work?”

  “Turning me,” I ventured. “I mean you didn’t know it would work or that my body would accept it, did you?”

  “True,” he said. “I was hopeful though and I stayed with you the entire time; Darcy did too. She was beside herself with worry. Neither of us wanted to leave you alone and we knew you might need us at some point.”

  “It must have been hard,” I said. “How does it work though? I honestly can’t remember anything about it; is it painful?”

  He lay back against the pillows watching me cautiously, aware of the questions I had in my mind, but still I was intent on getting the answers.

  “I know you have some crazy idea that it’s all a perfect transition to become one of us, but it’s not,” he answered. “Luckily for you though, because of your state and the way your body was and the fact you were already slipping in and out of consciousness, you didn’t feel a thing.”

  “I know I didn’t,” I replied slowly turning to face him. “But how was it for you?”

  “It was painful,” he said. “I was dying already, a gunshot wound centuries ago. I didn’t stand a chance and that’s when he stumbled upon me and decided to change me.”

  “Did it hurt?”

  “Like you would never believe,” he replied. “I’m not telling you anymore. It’ll freak you out. Now how about you come and get into bed. You have a very long day tomorrow and I’m sure you might want to actually rest before you face them all. Are you sure you don’t want me to come with you?”

  “I’ve been thinking whether I was making the right decision whether to get you to come with me or not, and I think I am. It would be a mess if you came; there’s no way they would accept you in the realm, especially when they know I’m like you now as well. It’ll be like adding salt to their wounds, you know?” I tempted him to answer but he shrugged as if it didn’t really matter when all the while I could see it boiling up deep inside of him.

  “I guess you might be right,” he sighed. “Now are you coming to bed or not?”

  The open ended question suspended in the air betwee
n us. I had no idea about the expectancy he had from me; he seemed to be completely relaxed in the room and with the idea of us both climbing happily into bed with each other.

  It felt new and my mind was steadily relishing in the fact that he actually liked me, more than that; he loved me. It was a whole new experience. A scary and yet two dimensional world of love that I’d never known before, I felt elated and frightened at the same time knowing he was accepting me for who I was and not for the powers that I had or because I’d been made for a particular purpose.

  “Come on,” he soothed sensing my anxiousness, his smile steady and he held his hand to me beckoning me towards him, “I don’t bite you know.”

  I could have groaned at his choice of words, bad timing and certainly a better choice of words he could have used, my mind in turmoil and torment with the power of the moment I had been flung into. I wanted badly to get into bed with him, but I was scared which was uncanny considering the fight I’d just accomplished against someone who’d learnt all of her powers from one of the greatest witches of all time, Matace.

  “You don’t have to be afraid,” he coaxed. “I only want to be able to hold you. Do you know what it’s like to think you might actually loose someone you care and love? It was awful Patty and I never want to have go through that again. I care so much for you, and I know sometimes I’m a little hard to understand but I’m just as scared by all this as you are, despite my front.”

  “Are you?” I asked, he’d opened a small doorway into his own personal world. It wasn’t the Luke I was used to, but a more vulnerable side to him I’d never thought existed.

  The very idea of attachment scared him, that much I was sure of and the idea of never seeing the person he loved again was equally a dismounting pleasure in his world. How many people had he loved and lost? Considering he was older than me, it must have been a fair few for him to turn into some oddity that didn’t allow for the closeness of anyone not even those of his own kind.

  Scrambling across the bedroom and tried hard not to stare at the brilliant lights that I made as I went across, the many colours as my veins picked up the different shades of the room and the remainder of the covers that still lay on the bed.

  I snuggled into Luke’s embrace, knowing that he was opening himself to me, revealing secrets he would never show to another person. The complete and total trust was evident in the way he held me close to his chest.

  “I’ve lost so many people Patty in my lifetime,” he explained, “when I saw you lying there after Lilly had gone, I didn’t know what to do but I knew I wasn’t going to let you die. There was no way I was going to let it happen again to me. I had to stand by and watch my parents die and my sisters. It was awful not being able to say goodbye because I was still looking considerably young while my sister had aged with time like she should have done. The people back then,” he gulped suddenly his fingers dug into my upper arm but I didn’t mind although I flinched slightly with the sudden unusual pressure, “they would have cut me up and pulled me apart, anything they could do to take away what they saw then as the devil himself resurrected. I watched so many of our kind captured and killed that way. Every village had their own hunters for those who they called ‘dead walkers’, and when I became one of the very people I’d hunted myself with my father, I fled to the mountains and hid like a child, unsure of what I was supposed to do. You see when I was shot, it was by one of the villagers who’d misfired and accidentally caught me with his bullet. My father was furious and flew at him with rage.”

  “Oh Luke,” I said silent tears cursed down my cheeks with the pain his family must have gone through.

  “Its fine,” he assured me gently, still locked in his past time of events. “I was lying on the forest floor, bleeding uncontrollably and past the time when someone could have saved me. The medicine wasn’t very good back then and I knew I was going to die. This stranger appeared from the darkness and the shadows, full of fear and actually scared to come towards me, I wanted him to send a message to my father who hadn’t come back. I called him towards me but he spoke to me.”

  “What did he say?” I asked after breathless minutes had passed between us.

  “He asked me if I wanted to live,” he said. “I didn’t know what he meant so I whispered back that I did to watch my family grow and the watch my mother and father to make sure they were alright and well cared for. I was their only son and back then the burden of the household fell to me; with me gone there was no way they’d survive.”

  I listened with my whole heart stuck inside this timeless moment, devouring every breathless detail of his words and his own memories were encircling me and snaring me, taking me into the depths and the past of his own life, a place I’d never been privy too before now.

  “I promise not to do anything completely stupid tomorrow,” I whispered into the darkness of the room, “and I won’t be dying anytime soon either.”

  “You’d better not,” he growled and held me tightly.

  His arms were holding me, and his kisses lightly touched my head as we both lay inside the bed and watched the dawn approaching, both of us lost inside our own worlds where neither of us needed to explain. His was built on worry and concern for my time tomorrow with the realm. We both knew they could tear me apart and if my father was wrong and the other elders didn’t show up, like he’d explained in his hasty phone call once he’d returned home and persuaded my mother to take a sleeping pill so he could concentrate and explain his real visit today.

  My own world was locked to the hilt with the ideas I had started to build inside my mind for their realm; it was a comparison to the one that was already here and the power that had reigned for so long.

  Dawn approached bringing the magnificent spectrum of colours of our veins that shone through a brilliant light across the room. My own gaze locked with Luke’s as we waited for the sunlight to bring with it the glare we both knew would take away the harsh light of our skin. It was by far magnificent but at the same time too brilliant for our eyes; the lights were dazzling and danced from every corner and crevice of the room.

  “It's beautiful,” I said. “I love this.”

  I moved my hands in wonder in front of me, watching the lights dim and then glare as I moved with deliberate purpose into the shadows and then back into the light again.

  You won’t be saying that when you’ve had to face it for centuries like we’ve had to,” he chuckled.

  “I think I will,” I replied stubbornly, “although it is very bright in the dawns light,” I commented.

  “I know,” he agreed, “that’s because for us the dawn’s light is the brightest and the strongest before the real sun comes out and then it just sort of settles itself,” he said.

  “Oh, I see,” I murmured switching my hands to look at the other one in wonder.

  “Will you stop moving at least until the dawn has changed to daylight,” he moaned. “I can’t bear it. I know to you it’s fascinating but to me it’s plain annoying. And,” he continued, “I don’t really want to have to see it all the time either, so if it’s alright with you, I’ll be having the blinds and the curtains back up with the help of Darcy and Benjamin before you come home today. Unless of course,” he added with the rising of hope entering his tone, “you want me to come with you?”

  I studied him, for the first time I saw the desperation of someone who was frightened to lose something precious. It was a remarkable sight to see a man, a vampire who was supposed to be known to be vicious and the complete opposite to the man that lay with me now, full of fear, doubt and an innocence that I guessed came from the facts that he hadn’t been given the opportunity like I had to grow and then become a vampire. His world had changed the day a stray bullet struck him down on the hunt for our own kind but in different world, a distant land that had happened so many centuries ago, how many I wasn’t sure since I wasn’t brave enough to ask him how old he actually was.

  The daylight broke into the brilliant sunshine we ha
d been waiting for. The dazzling veins seemed to calm and their glare vanished almost as if it hadn’t been there and I’d imagined the entire episode. I stepped outside once I’d washed and dressed, feeling the air on my cheeks and the wind waft through my hair, creating my gentle locks to twist elegantly and my clothes to blow and billow out behind me. The wind wasn’t harsh but gentle and sublime, the kind you could easily take a nice stroll in.

  I was alone for the best part of the morning, practising and honing in some of my skills, and learning the new endurance of holding my spells for the longest time possible which might come in handy for when I faced anyone who dared to challenge the high witch. This might be a possibility considering my status and my new lease of life; everyone expected me to be dead and in some ways I was. My mortal life had ended and had been replaced by this life, a new start where I could begin to make sure my name did light the sky and I was sure I could re create the records and the factors that had led to the death of Matace and Lilly.

  Chapter Eighteen

  It was a short distance across town to the place where the realm meetings were held under their own umbrella of magic stealth that protected them and in short made them become the most hidden paranormal beings in this world, aside from the fact that it was hardly a matter for the demons to come crawling out and try and cause a ruckus amongst many of the strongest witches that had ever lived and reigned in their own small way.

  I stepped inside the revolving glass doors, with the place swarming with security of all kinds and unfortunates were scattered around as they tried in vain to cram their heads in my direction hoping to catch a glimpse for themselves of the latest arrival.

  I felt more like a super star rather than a witch heading into the unknown meeting of the realm. It was the hardest time ahead for me, that much I knew but I felt the power, I could taste it and I was sure if I reached out Id be able to touch it. Not being power crazy had always been my passion, but I was instantly drawn to the effects it had on me, the currents of the charging powerful spells that I’d practised all morning to Luke’s mortification in his garden, setting objects on fire and swaying the trees back and forth with the powerful clasps of thunder up above us.