Lord of Eternal Night by Ben Alderson
28
Igripped a hold of his hands, thrashing my legs out at him in panic. It felt as though my head would implode beneath the pressure, both hands pushing inward as he lifted me from the ground. All I could do was scream, unable to truly hold onto breath as I fought hard to get out of his grasp.
“You are mine.” His muffled hiss hardly registered as I kicked out at him. Marius did not flinch beneath each blow. Pain vibrated through my feet, feeling as though my bones would shatter. But I did not stop.
I clawed my nails down his hands and arms, even thrashing out at his face. All of which he hardly batted an eye towards. Not even as deep droplets of ruby blossomed beneath the cuts I left across his face. Only his tongue escaped his firmly, closed mouth to lap up the droplet that dared fall near it. Before my eyes the marks healed, fresh skin knitting together until his face was once again perfect. Untouched.
I began to beg, his large hands muffling my panicked pleading. “Marius, let me go. Please. Please, Marius.”
“Your attempts are wasted, and here I was led to believe you were prepared for this very moment.”
I could not mutter a word as his hands clamped harder on each side of my face. I felt my cheekbones scream beneath his touch.
My vision doubled. Tripled. Until the corners of darkness began to close in around me. All I could do was look into his obsidian eyes, searching to see a part of his true self. Hoping the Marius I knew would look back at me and registered what he was doing and stop.
I gave up on my fight, losing energy quickly. Just the thought of calling on my power simply slipped between my fingers. “Please…” I managed again, voice a weak croak. “You are hurting me.”
The world dropped out from beneath me in a single moment. I felt nothing as I hit the ground, his touch lingering on my cheek. My neck ached, a terrible pain that spread down my spine and up through my skull.
He had dropped me, my knees now leaking blood from the torn skin and ripped trousers.
Looking up at the looming figure above me, I willed for my vision to calm.
“I wish you had more fight left in you,” he growled. “It is a true shame that my feast is too pathetic. So… weak. Promised resistance and I am left with you. I do hope your taste is worth this embarrassment you display.”
“I… I will not fight you Marius.”
He sneered, teeth bared, “Why!”
“Because I love you. I told you I would not hurt you and I… I hold myself to that promise.”
Marius, or the creature he had now become, sucked his teeth in disappointment. “Then let us end it now. I have grown tired of waiting, which is spoiling my appetite. If you refuse me entertainment, then I give up encouraging it.”
I rocked back on my hands, slumped in a heap on the ground. All around me the prowling bloodhounds reappeared through the darkness as their leader took steps towards me.
“Marius, if you can hear me, please do not do this.” The sky above was lightening slightly, suggesting the arrival of dawn. Had it really been that long? I was tired, exhausted, my body a mess of aches and pains — mine not swiftly healing as Marius’s did. It still could be hours away, the red stain across the sky still ever-present.
“He is not listening. This is my night, the boy you call for is not present.” Marius smirked, dark eyes flashing. “You should know this. More than I. For it is your power that created me.”
“I rebuke what they did to you,” I spat, broken slabs pinching at my palms as I scrambled away from him. “What she did to you… was wrong.”
“She, you. Does it truly matter who tightened the bowstring or who created the arrow? For the outcome is the same. And I am hungry. I admit I have never talked so much with my supper. They usually scream and give in to the hunt long before this point.” Marius stopped before me, the bloodhounds faltering to his side where they bared yellowed, serrated teeth. “Stand. Meet your fate.”
I winced as I followed his command, not from fear, but from the blast of heat as yet another window exploded from the castle. Bricks crackled and charred as the fire burned on. Marius utterly unfazed that his home was destroyed, crumbling before him with each passing moment.
He hardly looked towards it this entire time, unable to take his hungry focus from me.
“I will not give in to you.”
“And you believe I need your acceptance?”
I shook my head ever so slightly, not once taking my gaze off his. “You can try but dawn will arrive and you will go without feeding.” Iron laced my words, the bitter taste of determination rearing its head for a final time.
Panic widened his stare, only enough for me to notice. His lips thinned, straightening into a pinched line. Spittle lined both lips as they finally broke into a snarl. “I will feed.”
Fire.
I unravelled my fists either side of me, opening them like a rose in spring, buds of orange flames twisting in warning. “You will try and fail. Then morning will return, and with it my Marius will return. You will return to me.”
Marius’s snarl intensified into a growl that seemed to vibrate through the very night. The bloodhounds at his sides echoed his anger at my taunt, each bowing their dark-furred bellies to the ground in preparation for a signal.
Air.
The world around the burning castle began to scream as the winds picked up. A gust of conjured pressure that blew through the grounds, forcing dirt and debris to swirl in torrents around my feet. The fire that reached beyond the destroyed windows bent beneath its force, longing and reaching to join in with the whipping wind’s race.
Marius shifted his weight to take a step forward but I gathered air in my lungs and released it slowly, encouraging the wind around us to strengthen in a barrier.
“I will not kill you, Marius, but my life’s preparation will not go to waste. You will see.”
Water.
The tear that escaped my eye was not from sadness. No. It was the invitation for the fat droplets that began to fall from the sky. I did not need to look up to know that pregnant clouds coated the sky as the red tint from the cursed moon dulled, covered by my power. Rain crashed down upon my head, my skin, hissing as the droplets fell into the balls of flame that were cradled in my waiting palms. I risked a blink, enough to loosen yet another tear. Then the rain thundered down upon us. Each droplet that splashed against my body made me feel refreshed. Revitalised beneath the kiss of the element’s calming, all-knowing power. It thrummed within me, and around me.
Earth.
I grinned, looking through the sheets of rain as Marius teetered side to side. Beneath him the ground shook violently. A gasp of surprise broke his façade as his footing was lost to yet another tremble that jerked beneath him.
“Enough with your games!” he shouted above the elements. Marius raised a clawed hand to shield the lashings of rain and wind that battered against him. It blew the stark, white hairs from his head, exposing glowing skin and hateful eyes. I could not hear what he said next over the howls of his creatures that pounced frantically beside him. He seemed to shout as his mouth opened into a circle of dark oblivion.
Then the bloodhounds attacked.
All at once they threw themselves as balls of shadow, teeth and fur. Time seemed to slow as they each left the ground, throwing themselves with split jaws, towards me.
I cried out, fuelling my emotion into the fire in my hands. I sensed each tongue of flame that burned in the castle. Even the licks of candlelight in the town far away, beyond the barrier of this place. As I willed for the element to aid me, I became it. And it became me.
Light exploded before me, a wave of flame that burst from my hands and grew into a monstrous wall between me and the bloodhounds. I poured my very desperation into the element, causing the heat to intensify and the wall of flame to only burn wild and hot. I half expected the creatures to pass straight through. Like darkness through worn, hole-ridden drapes. But I sensed the bodies of shadow hiss and wink out of existence as they met my power. Not a hair passed successfully through my barrier. It devoured them entirely. Light ended the darkness. Heat destroyed the cold touch of death.
I could no longer see Marius beyond the wall of flame, but I sensed him. In the back of my mind I knew that I could let the wall fall upon him and he would, like his creatures, be destroyed. Like pleading song, I almost gave into it. The power had a mind of its own. I sensed its hunger much like that of which Marius spoke about.
It wanted him. To take his life and return the power that thrummed within him to the witches scattered around the world. All it would take was a thought. A will and the fire would end this.
But in the reflection of the hissing light, I saw the soft face of the boy that hid deep within the creature that currently hosted his body.
I thrust my hands inward, urging the fire to retreat and gather back within me. It rushed for me, like a child returning to its father.
The other elements raged around me, each out of my control as I focused solely on the fire. They would wait for my command. But for now I had to fight the siren song to release my magic entirely and kill him.
The world was suddenly dark again. Only the fire that burned within the castle provided light. My hands were empty and mundane as I surveyed the emptiness before me.
No Marius. No bloodhounds.
Just me and the darkness.
At least that was what he wanted me to believe.
Before I could call out into the dark beyond me, panicked that my power had in fact reached him, a force of shadow slammed into my stomach. I dropped to the ground, winded, clawing at my neck and chest in hopes that it would help hold onto breath.
“So it is me and you. You have got what you want, now it is my turn to play my part.”
Another slamming of power collided into me, this time knocking me to the sodden ground. My hands fumbled pathetically to soften the fall but failed miserably.
Laid on my back now, I could hardly keep my eyes open against the rain that crashed upon me. One blink followed by another.
Then the force of a body pressed down above me and a face leaned over me, protecting me from the rain. I finally blinked the water from my eyes.
“I will savour every drop and stop only when you are entirely empty.”
I could not use my hands and call forth the fire for his weight kept me pinned to the ground, his hands gripping like shackles onto my wrists, preventing me from lashing out with flames.
Sucking in an inhale of air, Marius clamped a hand down over my mouth to prevent me from exhaling. The gust of air that barrelled within my chest burned me from the inside out, an energy in need of escape that stormed through me.
Marius did not speak again, instead leaning his split mouth towards the curve of my neck. There was no fighting, no kicking or punching, no strength I could muster.
So I did what he longed to do and bit down into his skin. The flesh of his hand was tough, but soon broke to my desperation. A wash of cold blood filled my mouth, threatening to choke me. Taste of copper and, something sweet, like honey. It exploded in my mouth, trailing down my tongue and cheek as though I had no choice but to devour it.
Energy flooded back into my being as his blood entered me. Fuelling me.
Marius threw his head back in a roar, releasing his hold enough for me to heave a blow.
The gust of wind that followed threw him from me as though his body was a feather. Forgotten and light. I forced every ounce of breath from my body until my head tightened and my chest spasmed with longing. The cold droplets of his blood spread down my chin, tickling as it covered my neck and chest.
I did not wait to see where Marius was thrown to. I forced myself from the ground once again, wet with his blood, and bolted.
Towards the barrier at the edge of the castle I ran, blindly throwing my free hands behind me, commanding the ground to split, the air to scream, and the rain to become shards of frozen glass, my attempts to keep him from me.
I did not stop until the barrier was before me, the invisible ending of the castle and where the world beyond began. I stopped only when I collided with the rippling surface of the barrier, slamming panicked, urgent fists against it.
Yet it stayed strong, impenetrable. I turned to face the world behind me, pressing my back against the cold layering of shadow that kept me from leaving.
The castle burned. Now a skeleton of brick and stone. Materialising from the shadows, Marius stalked towards me, a grin cut across his pale, deathly face.
“Nowhere to run. Nowhere to hide. Jak, you will not be able to keep this up. Not for long. You have power, enough from the starved witches that had stayed empty since the curse was laid upon me. But even you will have your limits. And I am ready to discover where they begin. And end.”