The Darkness in You (The Darkness Series Book 2)

by Diane Ashley Nortje

  “Mates.” My darkness whispers to me. She has been whispering a lot to me since last night. Something must have triggered her return as something was keeping her at bay.

  I don’t understand the term she whispers to me. I push it away for a later time. For now, I take in the scene before me. The library. Or what is left of it. Which isn’t much.

  The entire place burned to the ground. Charred bricks line the floor with cracked glass and what looks like books that managed to survive being burnt to ash, but not worth saving. It’s all neatly tied together with a ribbon, that says “do not cross”. What happened here? Who would burn down a library of all things?

  “Us.” My enchantress snickers in the background of my mind. I’m not sure whether to take her seriously or write it off as another one of her sick jokes. I shake my head.

  I just hope Aunty Amber wasn’t here when this burnt down. The newspaper article I read a few days ago that was sitting on the kitchen counter when I arrived home, said the flames were unstoppable. Nothing they did stopped them. They had to allow it to burn out on its own. But it never grew passed the library. Thankfully.

  Something is tapping at my mind about this library though and it’s not from my childhood. Those are fond memories, not like these ones that are hammering away at me, demanding to remember the terror caused.

  Was the psycho in my head telling the truth then? Did we do this? I don’t think I would have intentionally done it, but hell, who knows anymore.

  I take a deep breathe in. It still smells of fire, ash and blood. The newspaper never said anything about a person dying here. But my enchantresses sense of smell is undeniable. She smells blood. She wants to dive right in and bathe in it all. Crazy ass.

  A sting hits my hand and I look down to see blood running down my hand, dripping to the pavement beneath my feet. I watch as drop after drop falls from my hand. I look around at the people passing me, no one seems to notice I’m bleeding. I look back to my hand and the blood that was moments ago pouring out my hand had formed a river on the pavement, has stopped falling and is now making its way up my arm, as if it is getting sucked up my body. It follows up my arm and then explodes. Blood spills all over my face and chest and I’m battling to breathe. In, out, in, out as the blood continues to flow out my hand in all directions.

  Tap, tap, tap starts to ring in my ear, and I feel blood pouring out of my ears. I look about, no one seems to notice the blood pouring out of my body and I want to grumble to the floor in panic.

  I’m hallucinating, I’m hallucinating. I’m not going crazy. I’m not. I keep saying to myself until a voice pulls me from my breakdown.

  “Well look what the cat dragged in.” A woman’s voice breaks through my thoughts on the library. Her sneer is evident in her voice.

  I turn to look at the woman I haven’t seen in years. And clearly with me being gone all these years, has changed nothing. Her hatred for me was never understandable, I just learned to deal with it and move on and out. I take a quick look at my hand and everything is normal, not a spot of blood, not even a scratch.

  “Margret. Can’t say it’s a pleasure to see you again, we both know it’s not.” I say to her. I’ve grown up since then. I don’t need to take her shit anymore.

  “What are you doing back here, Natalie. I thought we got rid of you!” Her voice is like nails on a chalkboard. I have to grind my teeth to control my reaction to this hateful woman.

  “The reasons I’m back, are nothing to do with you, Margret!” I grind out at this horrid woman.

  “First the library burns down, then Jacin has just disappeared. And now I find that you are back. You have bad juju written all over you!” Margret shrieks out again. And I feel my nails dig into my hands. Any harder, I know I will draw actual blood this time.

  “Well then maybe you should go and cast one of your famous protection spells. It will save me the trouble of you.” I bite back at her.

  “You are not welcome here, Natalie. I suggest you leave, sooner rather than later.” She says to me and marches off down the street.

  Horrible old woman, I think to myself as I watch as she struts down the street, my eyes never leave her until she turns the corner and then I still watch just in case she comes back for more. Jacin has disappeared? Was that dream real? Or was it just my imagination running wild, combining so many events into one big cluster fuck?

  I shake my head at my thoughts. I need answers and me standing around a burned down building isn’t going to get me any closer to them. I need to find something that will be more of a trigger. I know who I need to find. And I know where I can find him.

  In my dreams.

  Chapter Nine

  “You think you can best me?”- Jacin

  ~Jacin~

  Water hits my face. The ice that was mixed with the water hits my body and wakes me up. The cold supposed to be torture. They know nothing of torture clearly. But I’m awake now. And the water washes the stench of the ghouls that landed on top of me away. I allowed them. They couldn’t know she was with me, and I want answers.

  Another load of water hits my back, the water is so cold that it burns its way down my body. Idiots. My body adjusts. I feel nothing. The beast inside me is rattled as I’m hanging from chains that keep me suspended in the air. I flick my hair back, to look at the idiots that have taken me.

  I take a look around the place I’m hanging in. I see no visible exits, but I’m not in a hurry, I’m sure I will make one when the time comes. The stone walls give me nothing. I can’t decide where we are, the air smells to much of demons but I know we are no longer in the realm of demons. We are elsewhere. Of that I can be certain.

  They are not ghouls doing their masters bidding. I should have known. The stench in the air wasn’t from ghouls. It’s from unwashed bodies, slaves. Demon slaves. What? Did they tire of being my slaves? Were my punishments too much for them? Did they leave an evil they knew for an evil that they clearly haven’t met yet?

  “Taken down by ghouls, Jacin. Fucking pathetic.” A demon says to me. I haven’t seen him before. But it won’t matter, their deaths will be swift until I can get to their master.

  “Do I know you? Or are you so low on the food change, that I would only feed your body scraps to my hounds?” I taunt him. My words alone make his body go rigid. If that is all it takes to get a reaction of them, these idiots don’t stand a fucking chance.

  “You fucker. I watched you feed one of my brothers to one of your hounds, just because he preferred the craziness of his hound form than he did his human form. So, you fucking fed him my brothers body parts one after the other as punishment.”

  “Clearly I fed the wrong brother too my hound then.” I say to the demon dryly, which only angers him more. The angrier they get, the sloppier they get. No thought will go into their next moves. They will act on anger and not on tactics.

  His fist collides with my jaw. I hear bones breaking. The sound of cracking bone is like a beautiful song. The demon before me yells in pain. Fucking idiot. I spit the blood from my lip onto the floor. As my skin repairs itself almost instantly. The demon howls in pain before me, while another comes to take his place.

  “You will fucking pay for what you have done, Jacin. Your reign is coming to an end. Can you not fucking see that already?” Another demon says to me as he steps up to take the place of the howling idiot. More demons pour out from where they were hiding and come to face me. Great this is turning into a fucking show more than anything else.

  I take them all in. I look each of these fuckers in the eyes. I don’t recognize most. Which is nothing new. I look now at the demon who spoke to me and I smirk at his cocky stance and stupid fucking smirk. Idiots, the lot of them. “Pay for what? Keeping you fuckers in line is a full-time job, which I didn’t get paid a fucking cent for. I’m sure you actually owe me.” I say to the group of demons that has poured out of every fucking hole imaginable.

  Fucking deplorable.

  Another limb hits my face. On
ly they learned not to hit me with their fists this time. His foot kicks my face back and I hear my nose snap under the force as my head is thrown back from his kick, but the time my head falls forward, my nose is repaired, and the remaining blood follows from my nose and down onto the floor.

  The demons smirk quickly falls when he sees that I’m unaffected by his kick. A sick smile starts to form on his fucked-up face. I like the way he thinks. They are just too stupid to realize; I will do it back to all of them. One by fucking one.

  Another demon steps into my line of sight as he shoves the other demon aside. What sob story is he going to tell me now? I just don’t care. I reign for a reason. The beast inside me needs the bloodshed, the torture, the complete and utter wickedness of it all.

  “You don’t remember me, do you?” The demon before me asks. And I study him. Yes, I’ve met this one before. His name evades me though, he clearly was nothing more than a thorn in my side.

  “No, but I bet you are going to remind me either way.” I say to him dryly. They need to stop dicking around and just get to the torture.

  “You don’t remember me, or my family.” He asks me again in surprise.

  “I deal with a lot of you fuckers on a daily basis. And you expect me to remember each and every one of your sob stories?”

  His fist lands on my ear, popping my ear drum. There is a sick sound ringing in my ears, and I feel the blood start to leak from my ears. He is creative, I’ll give him that.

  “That was for my sister!” He screams in my face.

  “I’m guessing, I killed her, or tortured her or sent her soul to suffer. Right?” I ask him, as I shake my head to get rid of the ringing. I’m bored already of these idiots.

  “Fuck you, Jacin. Your reign will end. We will fucking see to it!”

  “And what was she again?” I ask him and I spit another mouthful of blood to the floor, as the blood continues to leak from my ears.

  “My sister was a succubus, she was a member of the crown sisterhood, does that ring a bell?”

  “Ah, that group of whores. If I remember correctly. They were from the seventeenth century. Nasty group of whores too. They fucking infected six villages of humans, by fucking each and every man and boy. Infecting each family, and the disease spread like fucking fire. It would have killed every single human alive.”

  “What the fuck you care for humans? They are fucking dirt beneath our feet.”

  “I don’t care for humans; I care for control. And for the fucking balance. If your sister was one of the whores that spread the disease, then let me tell you one thing.” I bite out to the demon before me. “I ripped their fucking organs out of their dirty fucking mouths, then tossed their bodies into the fires of hell, so they will burn for the rest of eternity and they will never have peace. They are still suffering, to this day.”

  “They were following the crowns orders!” He screams at me, spit flying into my face which I can’t wipe away.

  Another limb collides with my body, breaking my ribs only to instantly form a new pair. Another hit and another. One after the other. Nineteen demons take their turns on my body, blood pours from my body, but it is instantly repaired. When they finally let up, I continue to bait the demon that had just spoken to me.

  “Considering I wear that fucking crown, whose orders were they following?” I ask the demon after he comes back to face me, as I spit more blood to the floor.

  “Who should have been our chosen ruler!”

  “Well, I can assure you, I lifted that crown right off my fathers decapitated body. So, again whose orders were those bunch of whores following again?”

  “Our rightful ruler! We never chose you as our ruler and we never chose your father either. We should get a choice in the matter.”

  “You want a glimpse of him? All you had to do was ask!” I say to him. “And if you fuckers get a choice, you would fucking kill each other for the crown and then who will rule over what? A fucking pile of dead bodies?”

  “I will rip your head from your body and fucking kick it around for fun, Jacin. You don’t know who you are dealing with here!” The demon screams at me again.

  “No, clearly you fuckers don’t know who you are dealing with!” I bite back. They are too fucking stupid to even think further than their own fucking revenge and for what? Because I have maintained control where others couldn’t. They think they are oppressed; well they haven’t seen nothing yet.

  “Well maybe we should show you what we mean then.” The demon says and whips out a dagger from behind him.

  “Now who the fuck brings a knife to a demon fight?” I ask him. “Unless your demon is as pathetic as you are.” I taunt him. I know he would never be able to inflict any damage on me without another means.

  The dagger slices through my skin as if it was butter. It cuts right down to my bone, before he removes the dagger completely, he slices another long cut down my arms until it reaches my chest. Blood pours out of my body, but before I lose too much blood, the cuts seal themselves as if I was giving myself stitches. Which only angers the demons before me even more and they slice me open from my stomach up to my chest. My organs don’t even feel the intrusion. They are healed long before the dagger even leaves my body.

  Cut after cut through my skin, inside my muscles, to my motherfucking bone. And I fucking relish in the pain. That’s where they are completely wrong. I deal out pain, I am sin, but I can take it back tenfold without even blinking. My depravity, how people don’t even know its limits.

  But my beast, he will remember every cut, every broken bone and every fucking word uttered here. Unlucky for these motherfuckers. My hold on him is like a balancing act, I take, and he gives. But when he takes, I must give. Insanity takes over and I am no longer human, no longer sane. Depravity blends into insanity and that is a bad fucking combination.

  “You are going to have to do better than that.” I taunt the demons before me. “If you want to do any real damage to me, that is.”

  The demon with the dagger still in his hands, comes forward. My blood coats the metal, the smell sets off my insanity. When the fucker comes over and shoves the dagger beneath my neck and says, “Maybe we should just slit your throat and be motherfucking done with you.”

  That was his mistake. Coming to close. Setting off the beast inside me.

  My beast comes out within seconds of him being too close to me. My claws lengthen and my teeth become razors, our transformation is so quick, if you blink you will miss it. I latch my mouth onto his neck, bringing his body closer to mine and then kick him back with my foot. The impact from my foot alone breaks his pelvic bones, but as he is thrown back, I rip his throat out with my teeth.

  I spit out his throat, that lands in a wet thump on the floor before the demon can even land on the other side of the room. Dead. Laying in a pool of his own useless blood.

  “Next motherfucker who wants to come close to me?” I ask the group that is standing there in shock. Their companions blood runs down my jaw onto my chest. I will fucking end the lot of them.

  “Jacin, you motherfu-.” A demon yells but is cut off by another yelling at the end of the room.

  “Enough!” Someone yells. But I can’t exactly make out where and who says it. “Fucking inject him, keep him in that state, until Master can arrive.” He shouts out again and then I see a dark figure retreating from the room.

  I feel a sting in the side of my neck as they push whatever shit they think they have to use against me. But I should have known. They would know nothing has ever kept me down, ever. Except once before. How the fuck did they know? And how the fuck did they even get it?

  ~ ~ ~

  “Man have some. This stuff is some good shit.” Hades says to me as he hands me his smoke.

  “What is it?” I ask him as I take a drag of the smoke.

  “Some herbs my mom mixed up for me. Fucking mellow man.”

  “When aren’t you ever mellow?” I ask Hades and he just smiles at me. He is as high as a fuc
king kite at the moment.

  “Can’t risk it man, too much shit going on up here.” He says to me as he almost punches himself in the head. Insanity leaks from his pores.

  Depravity from mine.

  I take a drag of his smoke. The smoke fills my lungs as I breathe it in. It hits me like a ton of bricks as I breathe it out through my nose.

  “Hades, what did you say this was again?”

  “I didn’t. But I’m fucked.” He says to me.

  And now that makes two of us.

  It took one drag and my body has gone numb. I can’t feel my fingers and when I try move my body, I fall to the floor.

  “Man, fuck. You okay down there?” Hades says to me from above and I don’t know how he is standing right now.

  “Hades get Bishop. Whatever was in that fucking smoke, my beast can’t deal.”

  “Shit, man. Stay right there.” He says to me as he falls forward out the door to find Bishop. It’s not like I was going anywhere anyways.

  A loud crashing sound happens somewhere in the room. But I can’t move my head to take in who or what was the cause. I’m numb to my core.

  “Sorry man, that was me.” I hear Hades call out to me. “He is over here, hurry the fuck up. I don’t know what happened to him!”

  I think I see Bishop standing over me, I’m not sure. My eyes are spaced out and is that a fucking halo floating above his head?

  “Jace. You okay down there man?” Bishop asks me.

  “I’m fucked. Why isn’t Hades fucked?” I ask him.

  “What was in that smoke?” I hear Bishop ask Hades. Didn’t he even hear me?

  “Just herbs my mom brought back from home to help me deal.” Hades says.

  “Was it a new mixture or something? This hasn’t happened before.” Bishop asks Hades again as I continue to lie on the floor, numb to the bone.

  “Yeah, she said it was something, but I can’t remember now.”

  “Get Albert. I’ll get Jacin up.” Bishop says to Hades, I think.