Welcome to the Darkness (Darkness Trilogy) (3 page)

“
Your Majesty,” Nathaniel said with a respectful bow.

The Queen’s gaze rested on Nathaniel, and then swept over to me to size me up from head to toe.  Her skin was deathly pale, her eyes a cold crystal
blue and she sat eerily still. Her long, blond hair fell in a thick curtain of ringlets over her shoulders. She looked like a zombie child, and if I could use just one word to describe her, it would be ‘creepy.’

“So this is the newling of whom you spoke,” the Queen said in her young, yet commanding voice. She shifted her icy gaze back at me and said, “Come forward.”

I took a reluctant step closer to the throne and stopped.

“Closer,” she snapped. Her gaze darkened
and she pointed to indicate a spot on the floor right in front of her.

I stole a quick, questioning glance at Nathaniel, and he nodded urgently for me to obey. I stepped forward until I was only a few inches from the Queen. The tips of my shoes nearly touched her own.

“Kneel before me,” the Queen commanded. She was clearly used to being obeyed despite looking so young and tiny.

I did as I
was told and knelt before her. She tilted her head to the side while she inspected me, like she was a predator considering how she might attack her prey. I had the scary thought maybe that was exactly what she was doing.

“You’re a pretty one, aren’t you?” she said
and placed her hands on either side of my face. I tensed, expecting her to strike at any moment. Suddenly, she pressed her cold lips against mine. I tried to jerk away, but her small hands held me firmly in place. I froze, and I was overwhelmed with a series of images flashing through my mind like a movie on fast-forward.

I couldn’t make any sense of what I
’d seen. There was a castle with people milling about, then dark, empty rooms where I could almost feel the chill; a man who’s face drifted in and out of view, almost always with a look of cold anger; women cringing in fear and children screaming; a lifetime’s worth of fear and suffering, and one final image of a reflection in a mirror–a reflection of the Queen–but she had mussed hair, red-rimmed eyes, and a normal human skin tone that wasn’t pasty, vampire white.

The Queen leaned back suddenly, breaking her hold on me, as she stared at me with a look of wonder on her face. It took me a few more seconds to realize where I was. I
thought I’d just seen the Queen’s memories from when she was still human. It was disorienting to witness so many memories in a matter of seconds. At least, I thought it had only been a few seconds.

“I have absorbed your memories, youngling,” the Queen
said with a satisfied smile. She resettled herself on the throne. “I see you do indeed possess a fascinating and unique ability to walk in the sun.”

Wait a minute
. . . she had seen
my
memories? I stood up, and backed away to a safer distance.

Apparently coming to a decision, the Queen looked at Nathaniel and said, “You have done well to bring the youn
gling before me. He shall remain here until we find a use for him. You may–”

“Hold on a sec,” I interrupted. “What
do you mean I’ll ‘remain here?’ No way am I staying here. So now we’ve met, yadda yadda, but no offense, this place seriously freaks me out! I need some time to . . . process everything, and–”

“Silence!” the Queen
shouted, her voice a threatening growl, her fangs extended. “How dare you interrupt me and refuse my hospitality.”

“Hospitality?”
I asked in disbelief.

“Hold you
r tongue!” she demanded, rising from throne. “Did you not instruct this newling to treat me with respect, Nathaniel?”

“Of course,
your Majesty,” Nathaniel replied, looking daggers at me. I swear there was a touch of fear behind his eyes as well, and I wished I could backtrack our conversation about thirty seconds. Me and my big mouth.

“Constance,” the Queen addressed the woman behind the throne who I’d almost forgotten about. “Fetch the ot
hers.” I thought it was a bad sign she was still growling.

With a quick head bob, Constance slipped through a door at the far right of the raised platform. She returned seconds later followed by several burly-looking guys. Last, but not least, a scrawny vampire with greasy-looking black hair sauntered in with a smug look on his face. He held up what looked like a pair of gardening shears and gave me an exaggerated, sly wink. He immediately replaced the Queen as the creepiest looking being I’d ever laid my eyes on.

“These two require disciplinary action, my dear Thomas,” the Queen said to the creepy-looking guy. Her voice had lost its growly sound. “Nathaniel, for bringing this newling before me without properly instructing him as to how he should behave in my presence and this insolent boy for his dismal behavior.”

Thomas broke into a bizarre grin that didn’t reach his eyes. He looked like a raving psychopath. “Hold him,” he instructed in a nasal voice, with a curt nod in Nathaniel’s direction.

Two of the men moved to either side of Nathaniel and pushed him roughly to his knees. The one on his right side grabbed his wrist and held his hand out from his body. Thomas stalked over, opening and closing the shears with each step. He grasped the end of Nathaniel’s little finger and snipped it right off. Nathaniel stiffened, but he didn’t utter a sound or react in any other way. Stunned, I stood frozen to the spot as two of the guards dragged Nathaniel out of the room.

Everyone turned
their attention to me. “You–” I began, startled to realize my growly voice was back. “You people are INSANE! What did you do that for? Nathaniel didn’t even do anything!” I felt nauseous, and I wondered if it was possible for a vampire to throw up.

“Now, now . . . we haven’t forgotten about you, youn
gling,” Thomas sneered, while the vampires surrounded me. They tried to shove me onto my knees, but I fought with everything in me.

“Please! Please, stop!” I begged, as they wrestled me down to the floor. “I’m sorry!”

“It’s a little too late for that, isn’t it?” Thomas said. He pried my little finger out of my tightly clenched fist. Four other vampires held me down, and no matter how hard I struggled, I couldn’t escape.

There was
a crunch, and then a fiery pain in my finger. I knew it was gone. I screamed wildly, and my vision went red. My mouth felt dry, like all the moisture had been sucked out. The thirst that overcame me was almost worse than the pain in my finger.

They
manhandled me out of the room through the same door they’d taken Nathaniel. My injured hand was a fire of agony, and I clutched it firmly to my chest, blood soaking into my shirt. They dragged me down a narrow stairwell, and I wondered if we were headed to the pits of Hell.

We entered a room with four barred cells, each su
rrounded by a mesh screen. They threw me through the open door into one cell, and Nathaniel into another. I rolled onto my side, clutching my hand to my chest. One of the vampires stepped into the opening of my cell, and leaned over to place a jug on the ground in front of me. After he stepped back a safe distance, another vampire flicked a switch on the wall. The door to my cell slammed closed with a crash.

I glanced at Nathaniel. He was drinking out of a jug similar to the one placed in front of me. As he drank, his gaze turned to me, his eyes glittering with anger.

The intoxicating smell coming from the jug was irresistible, and I snatched it with my good left hand. Without a second thought, I chugged it down as fast as I could. When I finished, I placed the jug back on the dirt floor. Bits of red liquid dribbled down the side.

I felt insanely tired. “Not again,” I mumbled. I realized I was going to lose consciousness for the fourth time in a matter of hours. At least it would be a relief from the pain of losing my finger, and the hell that had become my life.

I awoke with a giant intake of breath, and my heart gave a large, almost painful thump as though it had come to a complete stop and then
abruptly jolted back to life. Maybe that’s what had happened, but it was too disturbing a thought for me to dwell on.

I spied Nathaniel in the neighboring cell watching me. He was unnaturally still, but he blinked so I knew he was
awake. His dark brown eyes looked black in the shadows, matching his black hair and his mysterious character.

My finger!  Jesus, how could I have forgotten about it? I glanced at my hand and discovered with shock
that all five of my fingers were intact. I brought my hand closer to my face, and turned it from side to side. The skin on my little finger was paler than on the rest of my fingers and hand, and the nail was too long, but other than that, it looked . . . good. Whole.

“Fascinating, isn’t it?” Nathaniel said
, raising his hand to show me his finger had also regrown.

I stared at him with my mouth open, too shocked to say anything.

“What you need to understand, Reed,” he continued, “is there are far worse things that can be cut off of your body than your little finger. Therefore, it would be in your best interest if you were to treat the Queen with the utmost respect from now on.”

“I
gotta get out of this place,” I said, feeling a little ashamed to hear my voice come out in a whimper. Here I was next to a guy who didn’t even make a sound when he had his frigging finger chopped off! Had this kind of thing happened to him so many times he was
used
to it?

I took my first good look at our surroundings
. There were two empty cells on the opposite wall. The floor was hard packed dirt, and the walls plain concrete. A single light-bulb hanging in the middle of the room was the sole source of light, and the control panel on the wall was the only other thing worth noting in the entire area.

Did the people living in this neighborhood have any idea what kind of crazy underground complex there was
here? Or the crazy things that were going on inside it? Obviously not, but it made me wonder how many other vampire lairs like this existed elsewhere, right under everyone’s noses.

I was curious to know how the bars of the cell were supposed to keep us trapped in here
because vampires seemed to possess super-human strength. I reached out with both hands to grab the bars in front of me to test their strength.

“Don’t touch
those!” Nathaniel snapped. He sat up straighter in alarm.

I let my arms drop back by my side. “What?
Why not?”

“They’re coated with silver.”

I leaned back against the wall of the cell with a sigh. “And what happens if I touch silver?”

“It burns through your flesh like a
laser as soon as it comes into contact with your skin.”
“Wonderful,” I said through gritted teeth. I thought about it a moment longer, filtering possibilities through my mind. “So what if I take off my shirt, and use it to protect the skin on my hands when I pull on the bars?” I asked, feeling rather proud of myself for possibly outsmarting these vampire bastards.

“That’s what the mesh is for,” Nathaniel answered as though I were a small child. “It’s formed from pure silver, and
believe me, it would be impossible to protect yourself adequately enough to prevent the mesh from touching you if you were to attempt an escape. I have witnessed not one, but two such attempts, and I have not seen very many things more disturbing. You can imagine what manner of disturbing things I have witnessed over the past couple of centuries perhaps?”

I buried my face in my hands and tried
hard not to shout in frustration. After a few calming breaths to collect myself, I lowered my hands and took a hard look at Nathaniel. “Is this what your whole life has been like for the past two hundred and something years? Is this all there is? I mean, are you ever happy? Do you have friends? Is there anything else other than following the orders of a psycho woman and being tortured and caged like an animal?”

“Having any sort of relationship beyond a working rel
ationship would be . . . unwise,” Nathaniel answered, not without sympathy. “They will use that sort of bond against you.”

“You know what? That sucks. That really sucks,” I said, feeling more dejected by the second. “How long are they going to leave us in here anyway? Are they going to bring us something to eat?”

A minute of silence ticked by, and I was starting to wonder if Nathaniel had given up answering my questions. Eventually, he spoke again. “You will no longer be able to consume human food,” he said. “I’m sorry.”

“This deal is getting worse all the time,” I muttered u
nder my breath.

Suddenly, the door to the room opened with a loud creak, and the two guards from
upstairs strode into the room: good old Abe Lincoln and his buddy, the tall black guy, aka the only vampire I’d seen so far without disgustingly pale skin. I guess hundreds of years of zero sun exposure would make just about anyone’s skin look pale.

Abe tapped some buttons on the small panel i
n the wall near the door. A numerical code maybe? The door to my cell clicked and then hissed open, sliding outwards and to the side. I stood up and held my breath.