Darkness The Diary of Samantha Owen (11 page)

After telling them of my meeting the boys, whilst omitting some details, I ended and let out a sigh that I didn´t know where it came from. All of them seemed satisfied, after the short yet intense talk about my life.

We were leaving the room, when Francis decidedly offered that I stay in his house, it was the closest to the training ground. Eric´s eyes shone when they found my eyes in the corridor that led to the exit of the Council. The building was enormous and well lit; something which surprised me, with great pillars of ancient roman style everywhere. The main library of the kingdom was to be found here, it was were all the important documents were kept; it was also where the Council and the representatives of the Kingdom met as well as hosting parties on special occasions. It was a meeting point, but that afternoon it was deserted, the people had been warned that they should not go there until the meeting with me had finished, Fairiel explained to me, when we left the building. Gabriel and Francis were on the staircase of the entrance, still arguing as to where I would sleep during the next few days.

“I live in the countryside, my house isn´t very big, but you all fit if you want
.” Gabriel, after explaining infinity of times that his house in the center of the city was safer for me, accepted reluctantly.

“My dear, if some
day you have any doubts or need help just look for me, I know many things about your mother that you will want to hear.” He said the last part in my ear, pulling me away from the others. He winked and left.

I told my
self that I had to remember this new friendly and charismatic source of information that I had found. When the members of the council left, I could see the view in front of me with some detail. I managed to see a large quantity of houses very like human ones, bunched together in tall buildings. We found ourselves in the center of the city, there was a lot of movement in the narrow and picturesque streets; we were heading towards Gabriel´s house. I could de that the houses, although they looked similar to human houses, looked old and well conserved, with grey stone ornaments, filled with alleyways where darkness reigned even though it were midmorning. On the way the boys told me that the city of The Light had been built first and then the rest of the cities that belonged to the elements of the Earth. Together they formed the great Kingdom of the Moon, as, although they were far away from these cities, they formed part of this great union and all were led from the central part, in which we now found ourselves. They told me that Francis lived in the kingdom of the Earth, which was outside the principal city, there wasn´t so much security not barriers to prevent the wanderers entering as there was here.

Shortly after we arrived to a house that looked Victorian, not as large as Eric’s, it had a somber and blood-curling aspect. We entered to a small entrance hall, there was nobody there. Gabriel told us that they were fighting in what would be for me like Los Angeles. He took me to a modest room with its own bathroom; it had a lovely closet and a chest of drawers beside the bed. On top of it there were some folded clothes.

“Put it on, you will need it to train,” after which he left and Eric stayed watching me until he managed to say something.

“Tonight I will come to your room and we will speak
,” he said in a dry tone. His expression was indecipherable, I didn´t know where all the love I had felt as we danced had gone.

I didn´t respond, I didn´t want more confusion, only I would talk about this with him in the night. When I looked at the clothes I realized that it was the complete black bodysuit with white stitching. It was pretty, with nooks all over for weapons I supposed. The cloth was elastic, to give flexibility. When I had it on I looked at myself in the mirror of the closet, I thought I looked like a ninja, but I liked it. After that I put
the flat black tennis shoes that I found beside the bed. I didn´t feel hot despite it being long sleeved. I pulled back my hair and left the room decidedly, heading back towards the entrance. They were waiting for me when I arrived and Eric´s eyes came out of their orbits when he saw me but he said nothing, he just secretly smiled.

When we went out in to the street we continued in the same direction we were going when we stopped at the house. The streets were steep; I looked up and could see how a great castle rose from within the last houses of the city, on the topo of a hill. I was so fascinated that I stopped. I didn´t know where we were going and what we would do but I felt emotive. On the way I observed that everyone walked in the street, there were no cars. Confused, with the intention to ask why, Eric looked at me and answered.

“We disappear in the shadows, remember. We don´t need cars”

“How do you jump? I want to do it too.”

“You will learn soon,” he answered winking an eye at me. But he quickly continued without looking at me. I concluded that he should be discreet in the city.

We arrived to a building which
didn´t fit in with the rest; it was more modern and newer, made of shiny bright metallic materials. We entered and there before us appeared a great hall, with a carpeted floor and high ceilings filled with horizontal beams at varying heights, which I didn´t know what they were for. Eric set me apart a little and commented a few details with me that I found curious.

“You know that in this room time is different. A minute outside is an hour here inside. You can train much more, also you won´t feel tired, or pain, the atmosphere is designed for it.”

Eric moved towards Gabriel to comment something to him while I inspected the room. I bumped into them as I looked at the ceiling; they had stopped in unison and the looked at me expectantly.

“What is it?” I asked.

“We want to present you to the best trainer in the kingdom; he will teach you all you need to learn to fight. Don´t worry, we will be here to help you,” Gabriel said in a neutral tone.

Without delay, a big strong man appeared behind my back, dress
ed as I was. He presented himself to me and told me to follow him. At the end of the room there was a small door, which hid a weapons room full of swords, daggers, knifes and all kind of bladed weapons.

“We don´t use firearms to fight, they don´t hurt our enemies. We will start by giving you a sword and see how you yield it and I will teach you the cutting points. Don´t worry, today we will only train for a couple of hours.

I nodded my head and we returned to the hall. There was a mannequin in the center. The instructor showed me that the cleanest zones for effective cuts to kill a wanderer were the neck, the heart and the wrists. He gave me the sword and I almost fell over by the weight. I grabbed it with both hands trying to remember everything that I had been told in two minutes. After several hours of trying to kill the doll without any success, I gave up. I couldn´t handle that sword, it was too big for me and I didn´t feel comfortable with it. After laughing at my failures, he decided that that would be enough for my first day. He had given me an hour of theoretical classes after my first tries and then I had passed the afternoon fighting against an immobile object. My spirits were low, at the moment I returned the sword I thought that perhaps I would never learn to fight as a daughter of the night.

We left to receive a fresh night breeze and we returned to Gabriel’s house with the hope that the next day would go better.

Chapter 8

Phoenix looked at the façade of the house, just as old as the rest, but darker, he thought. He knew that Gabriel wouldn´t be long in arriving and he hoped to be able to see the face of the boy that wanted to find him. It seemed ironic to him that a young man with no experience in magic and witchcraft should want to contact him. Nobody had seen him since the last battle he had taken part in. After that, he decided not to place himself in danger for the sons of the night or for humans. He almost died in that battle which had made no sense; he remembered melancholically and did not want to allow that to happen again. He appreciated his life too much.

Many wizards that he had met had not understood why he wanted to be immortal, but he never explained it, the secret was his alone.

With a little magic, he opened the door to the house, leaving sparkling speckles on the lock. He closed it again and looked for Gabriel’s room to wait for him. At that moment he felt confused, yet alive, it had been a long time since he had done anything so emotive.

When he found it he sat down on a trunk in front of the bed, to wait. He didn´t like to be kept waiting, but this case was different, he wanted to sur
prise him and hear his plan, at any cost.

“Prepare a nice letter for your sister, my dear Elizabeth
,” Ian said in a heavy tone. “We must sow a little panic before attacking,” he laughed softly.

They were in the office of his house, dark, with the windows hidden by dense wine colored curtains. Ian did not like daylight. It seemed like a symbol of God and he was willing to submerge himself in the world of darkness forever. He desired to let all the demons of hell loose and help them to exterminate the humans. To do this he needed an immortal, able
to go to hell and back with life to open the gates. Only he knew this plan and he felt triumphant for it. He knew who he needed and that he would soon find himself before him.

Elizabeth took pen and paper ready to write, unemotional as ever. Every day her freedom was a little closer. She was sure that she would kill her sister as soon as she saw her. She hated her so much that she could not bear to even think about her. When she finished writing, she got up slowly from the desk as her master continued walking round the room. She moved towards the door, but before doing so she stopped at the small piece of furniture beside the door and looked at herself in the mirror, fair hair, clear complexion,
and clear blue eyes. Pure beauty she said to herself. Smiling, she went out to the street; she should give what she had written to the mailman, so that it was take time in arriving to the principal city. There the postman from the kingdom would take it to the address where she was staying.

She imagined for a moment where her sister might be. Immediately, Gabriel came to mind
; that tall boy with dark hair and violet eyes that had once conquered her. It was only one night, she thought at times, but she knew that it hadn´t been so. Iain had forced her to follow and spy on him, to find out everything about him. Until one night she decided to carry out her master´s plan, which was to enter and leave the house, convince him of the plan and leave. But it wasn´t like that, her feelings played a nasty trick on her. He was a good boy and she didn´t want to ruin his life. That is why in the next battle when she saw him she would abandon him, though that meant losing a part of her heart or what would remain of him. She couldn´t put him in danger, not for a second time.

The boy was so alarmed the first time he heard the
plan that Elizabeth doubted that it would happen.

<<
The girl had entered by the window of the principal bedroom, in the city of the Light. She had never been there; it seemed like a nice place, she still did not understand why her master wanted to destroy it. She sat on the edge of the bed, in front of the window, looking at the grand castle that could be seen from afar, on top of a hill. She had agreed with her master that she go alone. She knew that he was more drastic and could not bear seeing Gabriel suffer if he did not accept the deal. She had spent more than five months spying his every move. If he travelled, she went behind him; if he slept, she watched him peacefully. They hadn´t separated, although he never knew it. He had almost discovered her on a few occasions, when she leaned on the windowsill of his bedroom window to observe him while he read and he suddenly lifted his head knowing that someone was watching him; she had to jump down to the street with no warning. The girl smiled slightly when so many memories flourished in her mind, however, her happiness didn´t last long, she should convince him and she didn´t know how to. It was going to be a difficult job, she thought.

Gabriel entered his room and closed the door after him. He was worn out after a hard days training and he just wanted to read. He flopped onto an armchair beside the bed, close to the door. It was the year 1890, the intense light from bulbs flooded the whole city, but he still preferred the gentle light from his gas lamp. He got up and moved towards the window, as he so often had in the last months, searching for that presence that he tended to feel close to him, but as in all the other occasions he found nothing; just the city immersed in the night and the soft glimmers that came from the windows of the houses, that little by little were turned off after supper.

He turned around to light the small lamp that was on his bedside table and was paralyzed with what he saw on the table. He wasn´t sure if what he had seen a fraction of a second before was real or not, he turned his head slightly until he stood in front of Elizabeth. She was sitting on the border of his bed; the darkness of the room highlighted her blue eyes in an unusual way; the moon was reflected in them. The handsome young man did not know what to say, he looked her in detail without moving a centimeter from where he was. He looked as her fine straight hair met with the smooth color of her close-fitting outfit. Without light he couldn´t distinguish the colors properly, but he could observe how the fine lines of her face were smoothly marked. With her not too large eyes, beautiful lips and a pretty nose, slightly up-turned. <> was the only thing that Gabriel could think. Never, in all the years he had been alive, almost a century, had he seen such a beautiful woman. She was unusual, but very special.

After a moment of fascination, he realized that she too was examining him, as though she wished to engrave his image on her mind.

“I have spent a long time wanting to look you in the eyes and that you look at me too,” the girl said without warning. Gabriel remained silent. He had the sensation that she knew him but he knew nothing at all about the woman he had before himself.

“How have you come in?” he managed to say.

His black eyelashes rubbed against his cheeks as he half-closed his eyes to think with more clarity.

“Through the window, of course
,” he responded to himself “Who are you?” he said intrigued. He thought that his questions were beginning to make more sense.

“I am called Elizabeth and I need you
,” she responded directly to the young man.

Elizabeth, aware of Gabriel´s confusion extended her hands to him and sat him down by her side. She lifted her hand smoothly and started to caress his face; passed it through his hair and ended up with it resting over his heart. She closed her eyes to hear how it was beating frenetically. She looked at him with a sweet smile on her face.

Being confused, Gabriel did not know what to do, he simply didn´t move until he at last regained his composure to continue speaking with her.

“What do you need me for? And why?”

“You should listen to me carefully, it is a very important and delicate matter for me,” the girl went on.

She started to look
at him deeply; she was going to hypnotize him as Ian had taught her. That way he wouldn´t suffer and he would fulfill the commitment she was about to indicate to him. She couldn´t do that to Gabriel, she had spent so much time with him, knowing him in such a different was comforting to her, so much so that she didn´t even try to convince him as to her evil plan. In the last few weeks, she had considered fleeing from Ian, but she knew that he would find her and the effort didn´t merit the pain.

“What is going on?” Gabriel made her lift her head and look at him; her face was sad. “If I can help you someway tell me, I will do everything that is in my hand”.  In that instant he knew that the words that he had pronounced were true, he felt admiration and something else for the girl. He was attracted to her, he knew it the moment he saw her sitting patiently in front of him. He was willing to do anything for her.

Elizabeth didn´t know how to tell him the truth, so in a sudden act she kissed him sweetly on the lips and to protect him, she got up and led him to the window, prepared to jump. She was decided to find someone else for the mission, but not him. Gabriel, faster than her, grabbed her wrist and turned her towards him. He placed himself in front of her and pulled her hand until she came close to his body. He couldn´t let her leave, he wanted to know everything about her, he wanted to love her, it was an uncontrollable sensation that he didn´t understand but liked.
He held her strongly around her waist and pulled her even closer, ending up nose to nose. For a moment he closed his eyes and could smell the perfume of the beautiful girl, citrus blossom, he identified. He opened his eyes again intoxicated by the woman he had in his arms, he knew that what he was about to you and what he was doing was not right, but he didn´t care.

He kissed her smoothly on the cheek, making the girl jump in surprise. Gabriel lifted his startled gaze for a moment, but she was already caressing his back with her hands. This astute movement calmed him, allowing him to continue with what he considered to be his new mission in life, kiss every centimeter of her body. He started to do it; first smoothly on her chin, then lowering to her neck, then gently going down to her collar bone, where he caressed the rising breast of the girl with his lips.

Elizabeth wanted to stop him, but at the same time he so desired to be with him, that she couldn´t even be offended by his boldness. Her breathing started to break as she embraced him strongly. His mouth opened the way to the other side of her neck until arriving to the corners of her lips. He kissed her slowly once and then again, with all the gentleness he was capable of. Elizabeth, desperately, placed her hands on his head, bringing his head to her face, uniting their lips in a sweet kiss. They kissed each other in delight, weaving their tongues together in a slow and sensual pace. They didn´t know how long they stood there, although it didn´t matter to either of them. Gabriel, decidedly, lifted Elizabeth in flight and laid her delicately on the bed, as if she were made of porcelain. He lay by her side and looked at her with eyes burning with love and passion. Then he brushed his hand through her silky hair and turned to be on top of her and see her better. His eyes transmitted adoration.

Elizabeth had dreamt so many times with that scene, she could barely believe that it was really happening. She looked at him and her heart was flooded with joy. She was sure of what she felt for him, he was very strong; it seemed strange to her that he felt the same way, but she couldn’t help feeling happy and fulfilled in that situation. Kissing him again, the intensity increase with every nibble they gave each other.
Passion flowed between their bodies and they were not going to stop. Almost impatiently Gabriel got up to be able to take his beloved´s dress off. It was fastened by a row of round buttons that finished at her hips. He started to unbutton them one by one, leaving her breast uncovered little by little. The fine blue cloth laid loose round Elizabeth´s body. The outfit was simple, luckily for both of them; it had fewer pieces of cloth than the usual pompous outfits of the period. When the garment was loose he looked at her with a hint of deception on his face, seeing that she wore a pastel tone corset below. She smiled and helped him to undo the back; while he finished, she removed his jacket and shirt leaving his muscular and defined chest uncovered. Gabriel in a determined outburst threw the clothes to the floor, ending up covered only by the smooth cotton sheets. Now without impediments, they continued loving each other, kissing each other, caressing and embracing each other without exchanging a word. Their breathing was accelerated; and with a deliberately slow rhythm they fused together in the darkness of the night until the light of morning; allowing the passion to flow from every pore of their bodies.

A few hours later, Elizabeth woke up startle
d, until she looked to her left and saw Gabriel’s face looking at her in adoration as he caressed her hair. She was leaning on his chest; she turned a little to see him better and hug him, rubbing his thighs smoothly with her hand. She found him very sexy, all of him was; she loved to touch every part of his skin. All of a sudden she realized that she shouldn´t be there, with him. If Ian found out, he would kill him and she would never forgive herself. She sat up suddenly on the bed, letting the sheet fall from her body leaving her breast uncovered. Seeing this Gabriel took her by the waist and put her on top of him, noting the heat of her body. He started to kiss her neck, his intention was to make love to her once again, that was his only intention for the rest of his life, to love her; he stopped when he saw the worried look of his beloved.