Dark Diary (26 page)

I broke free, driving her away with a violent thrust of my arms.

“What have you done to me?” I continued to gasp desperately for the air I did not need. I coughed again and watched as more blood splattered the ground. “What’s happening?” My hands trembled uncontrollably.

My coat glistened red beneath the moon and I could bear
its guilty weight no longer. I tore the sleeves down off my arms and tossed it into the air, thrusting it far behind with the force of my wings stretching wide.

“You cannot escape this, Matthaya,” Ve’tani warned, but her omen went ignored.

“You will not control me any longer.” With that, I took off running into the distance. I had to get away, whether or not she pursued.

A forest blocked my path to freedom, but I knew that with the help of my agile wings, gliding between the trees was a swift alternative to navigating them on foot. I scrambled up the trunk of the closest tree and climbed quickly toward the sturdy midsection. From there, I leapt into the air, caught myself on the branches of the nearest tree, and
then vaulted into those of the next. My nails dug into the bark of one tree, and then another, sliding, leaping, and gliding
as swift as an eagle until I was as far away from Ve’tani as I could get in one night.

The air smelled familiar and my nostrils flinched at the scent of the salty seawater. I was at the shoreline that bordered what had once been Kathryn’s family estate. It wasn’t intentional that I had arrived there. Perhaps fate had sabotaged my fleeting attempt to hide from my past, forcing me to come face to face with the very place that echoed with Kathryn’s death.

Many decades had passed since I had been confronted by the sea that had taken her away from me, and for the first time, I was not looking into an ocean, but a bottomless grave. As I crouched to take a closer look, my head jerked in the direction of a faint splash. A drop of blood sunk beneath the surface and disappeared below me.

My wounds had long healed and it was not my own. It must have been blood from the girl I had recently killed.
Her vengeful spirit mocked me and my loss. I lowered a wing
into the water and quickly gathered the fading blood within it. I would not allow it to tarnish Kathryn’s tomb.

I poured the pink liquid onto the sand at my side and plunged my cupped hands into the sea. I stared hard into the handful of water as it escaped my grasp, seeping though the cracks between my fingers.

Kathryn!

Again, I saw her! Screaming—flailing—reaching for me as she sunk beneath the surface.

“Kathryn!” I shouted, batting violently at the water with
my hands and wings. “Kathryn!” I cried again. My feet slipped
out from under me and I stumbled back against the shore.
Ocean water crashed over me, leaving my wings mottled with
traces of sea foam and my clothes drenched with saltwater.

I felt worthless and empty.

It was there that I stayed until the light of morning
threatened my eyes with a fire beyond expression. I wanted to die then and there. I wanted the sun to burn me alive like the demon I had become.

Take me.

My insides churned and pulsed with a new kind of pain and I curled my fingers around a handful of sunlit sand as I pleaded for a swift end to my suffering.

A large, dark covering was tossed over me and a cloaked figure pulled me to my feet.

“I will not let you die here, young fool.”

It was Ve’tani. She had traced me back to the water’s edge.

“Let me go! Please,” I begged, fighting her grasp, but the draining sunlight had made me too weak to do so.

“We all face this fear—we strong ones,” she said as she dragged me to the safety of a nearby rocky alcove. “We all relive the pain of the lives we took and the life we left behind,” she continued, pushing me to the ground.

“You have felt this way before? I don’t believe it!” I knocked her hands from my shoulders and shuffled farther from her, kicking a plume of sand into the air with my feet. “You’ve never felt pain. You’ve never grieved for anything.” My back pressed into the solid rock wall behind me.

“You know nothing of my past,” she snapped, raising her
claws and readying to lash them across my face. She hesitated. “You know nothing…” she lowered her voice, and then her hand to her side.

She wiped a drop of spit from her chin and looked away from me.

“I, too, have felt the fear that haunts you now—the fear of those you have lost in life and those whose lives you have taken.”

“Then why do you not regard it?” I hissed, my body filled
with sudden new strength.

“Because it will do you no good, Matthaya!”

“You lie!”

Ve’tani’s pupils grew huge; black swallowed the amber of her irises.

“It will do you no good,” she repeated. “You cannot deny your needs.”

“But I can resist them.”

“Hah! I’d dare you to try, but you would fail.” She crossed
her arms. “I have lived a thousand years longer than you. I have seen others fail and die. You, Matthaya, are more
powerful than any of them.” Her eyes traced the edge of my wing
that poked out from the blanket draping across my hunched shoulders. “You are part of a new bloodline and one of the strongest, Matthaya. I will not let you die so easily. Fight it
if you will, but our bloodlust is undeniable.” She stared down at
me. “You should be proud of yourself. In my thousand years on this earth, I have not allowed another the strength that you have.” She scoffed lightly and smirked a half smile. “I only wish I had waited a few more years to take you.”

“I would not have let you touch me, then.”

Ve’tani laughed again. “Do you think you could have
stopped me? You, a pitifully weak young boy, would not have
been a match for my fury. And as for your little female—”

“I wouldn’t have let you near her.”

“She took her own life, Matthaya! Now,
being what you are, you will never desire another to take her
place.”

“Damn you, Ve’tani!” I tossed the sheet from my wings and leapt at her. She dodged me, easily, and then shook her head in disbelief.

“Oh, I thought I had trained you better," she said, “but
you have much to learn. Perhaps you need some space. I will
find you again someday and we will continue this confrontation.” She pulled the hood of her cloak over her head and chuckled. I followed her a few steps closer to the entrance of the cavern until she dashed out toward the sunlit beach.

“Ve’tani!” I lunged for her, but stopped as the sun’s rays stung my hands. There was no use chasing her. In the past, she had left me for days at a time and I had never been able to find a trace of her. She was invisible when she chose to be.

But we were connected always, and if I stopped looking, she would find me… in time. My ability to sense her presence grew sharper over the years, however, and some days I
wanted nothing more than to escape her ever-watchful mind.

As I sat back in my chair, I realized that it was for this very
reason that I feared making Kathera my own. If she were an incarnation of Kathryn, then we were fatally connected to one another throughout the threads of time. Making her like me would stain her innocent hands with blood.

Already, a day had passed. The hunger grew inside me as I
tired of the wait. The taste of Kathera’s sweetness lingered on my lips and resurrected the desire for more. I had to sleep it off or it would only grow stronger.

It would take only another day,
perhaps
… I hoped.

Any longer of a wait would drive me to insanity.

The curse may have been alive inside her, but there was no denying the truth—
she
was dead. She was cold and still. The sound of her heartbeat no longer dizzied my senses, but the stillness of her body made my soul ache.

And then, there was all the blood. The scent was fading, but she was still covered in it. Though the bite mark had healed, her delicate white-lace top was sullied with rusty stains and her fair neck retained crimson traces of my sin.

All I wanted was for her to come back to me—to open her
eyes and gaze into mine once more.

To speak.

To touch.

I wanted to know she was okay—that she would forgive me for it all.

I closed my eyes and willed myself to let go.

I had to sleep.

I had to make the cravings pass.

THE DARKNESS STIRRED AND A
bolt of color invaded my thoughts.

Kathera!?

I could sense her mind stumbling back into consciousness
even as she remained sleeping. It was faint, but it was there
—the light sparks of memory and instinct awakening in her brain.

Another look at her body made me grimace.

Crimson painted her skin.

I slipped my hands beneath her and scooped her up into my arms. With only the moon to join me, I carried Kathera out into the night.

I would not let her awaken to so much blood.

I waded into the water until I was waist deep in the lake and then lowered her entire body barely an inch below the surface, letting a shallow ripple sweep over her face. Her mind was growing brighter and our link stronger with each
passing minute. Like a pulse, her thoughts flashed in and out.

Reddish clouds drifted from her hair as darkened strands danced beneath the surface of the lake, and the stains
in her shirt lightened, revealing a subtle hint of her skin tone beneath. I wiped a splash of blood from her throat and her lips parted.

Her eyes sprung open.

Fingernails pierced the flesh of my arms and her legs flailed and kicked violently against the water as I pulled her
up. She thrust me away from her and the brilliant azure glow
of her gaze left me stunned in a moment of regret.

Kathera’s fangs flashed beneath the moonlight; watery reflections bouncing at her from all angles left her frenzied. She hissed and bared her teeth at me with a snarl.

“Kathera!” I called out to her as she waded frantically toward
the shore and trudged out of the lake to get away from me.

The hinge claws at my shoulders unclipped and my
wings flung open with a powerful flap. I used them to propel out of
the pond and to the shore, but she was running on full adrenaline,
and at break-neck speed. I was losing sight of her fast.

Her bare feet dug into the ground, pushing her body ahead
of me as each step kicked dirt and grass up into the air. My wings made me swift, but there was no way I could catch up with her even with their help. Kathera was lean and agile and the curse had made her fast.

“Kathera!” Again, I called out, but this time, only to darkness
.
I’d lost sight of her already, even as my mind continued to
throb with her crazed hunger. She was out of control and on the hunt. There was nothing I could do to stop her. I wanted to go after her, but something told me she wouldn’t be in the mood for reasoning.

My coat had nearly been lost in the scuffle of her escape. I lifted it from the shore and gave it a hard shake to loosen the sandy remnants from the fabric, sweeping a hand down the back a few times to smooth the wrinkles. My wings retracted and folded into themselves and back into place on my back, snapping their top claws together into the indention between my shoulder blades. I tossed the jacket over my back, shrugged my arms through the sleeves, and then buttoned the center button.

I headed back toward the city streets. As I walked, I could feel
her moving through the night. The flashes of her consciousness were fragmented and inconsistent. She was confused and driven by desire. She was near and far at the same time—running, trying to get away from something or someone—probably me.

I had stopped killing years ago, but the transition had been difficult for a while. Surely I could train her to do the same, but at this point, she was rabid with the infection and I had no way of knowing how to get through to her.