Darklight 4: Darkblood Read online

  Darklight 4: Darkblood

  Bella Forrest

  Contents

  Problems reading?

  Chapter 1

  Chapter 2

  Chapter 3

  Chapter 4

  Chapter 5

  Chapter 6

  Chapter 7

  Chapter 8

  Chapter 9

  Chapter 10

  Chapter 11

  Chapter 12

  Chapter 13

  Chapter 14

  Chapter 15

  Chapter 16

  Chapter 17

  Chapter 18

  Chapter 19

  Chapter 20

  Chapter 21

  Chapter 22

  Chapter 23

  Chapter 24

  Chapter 25

  Chapter 26

  Chapter 27

  Chapter 28

  Chapter 29

  Chapter 30

  Chapter 31

  Chapter 32

  Chapter 33

  Chapter 34

  Chapter 35

  Chapter 36

  Chapter 37

  Chapter 38

  Chapter 39

  Chapter 40

  Chapter 41

  Chapter 42

  Chapter 43

  Chapter 44

  Chapter 45

  Chapter 46

  Chapter 47

  Chapter 48

  Chapter 49

  Chapter 50

  Chapter 51

  Ready for the next part of Lyra and Dorian’s journey?

  Read more by Bella Forrest

  Copyright © 2020

  Nightlight Press

  All rights reserved.

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  Chapter One

  We could say what we wanted about the Immortal Plane, but this place had a devastating beauty.

  I hated it for its strange splendor.

  When I first laid eyes on the cityscape in my sleep-addled state, I thought for half a second that somehow the harvester had suckered us, rowing us to San Francisco instead. The Immortals had built dwellings and streets on sharp hills that nearly reached our height on the cliff. The streets, which appeared as streams of light, swooped down through buildings that rimmed the seaside. A gigantic, glittering bridge connected to an island half a mile or so out to sea.

  Yesterday, we had all watched in horror as Kono, a vampire I’d met at the Hive, was caught by hunters, a group of sadistic Immortal rulers. It also meant the safehouse we’d intended to use as a base during our mission had either been raided already, or likely would be soon after Kono was tortured for information. Even more frustrating was that we’d been unable to leave the cliff for the rest of the day and the following night due to rolling patrols of hunters moving around the edge of the city, likely looking for any more vampire incursions.

  After an unwilling but sorely needed rest, we were finally ready to plot our invasion strategy from our vantage point. We stood together, a misfit band of humans and vampires about to infiltrate the most dangerous city in any dimension.

  “The island is where the ruling caste lives,” Kane told us with muted disdain. He and Dorian had spent several hours questioning scouts in the Hive about the city, while Sike and I looked for information about the curse. “They siphon their luxury off the hard work of others. It’s where we’ll find the Immortal Council—the rulers of the rulers—sitting around talking about whatever monsters discuss.” He sneered in the island’s direction.

  I marveled at the city. The buildings in the distance loomed large and strange in shape, with overwrought architecture of various designs. I was no connoisseur, but the rulers seemed to like stitching together as many competing architectural styles as possible. Greek columns sat next to gilded wrought-iron fences while Gothic spires mingled with art deco windows. Clearly, they’d had access to some human inspiration when building the city, but they’d put their own twist on it.

  I frowned through the scope of my rifle as my gaze landed on a creepy black building closer to us. It was simply one large sphere, eerily perfect in shape and texture. Next to it, a cottage had been assembled from a dull white material. I squinted, and my stomach lurched as I realized the building was made of bones. I skipped over the rest of the houses, deciding to spare my senses until it was absolutely necessary to face those horrors.

  The shadows of the buildings and trees stretched deeper and darker than they should have. They flickered in one moment and solidified the next. What was somehow even more jarring, however, was the sheer quantity of soul-lights trapped in golden lanterns or gathered on strings. They decorated the tops of most buildings and wrapped around poles lining the streets. Every available rooftop and corner appeared to be covered with them. In the Hive, there had been a sense of respect in the way the souls were used as illumination. Only as many as necessary were used; they weren’t used like bunting on parade day. Here, the whole city was aglow with souls, a beacon in the surrounding dim light of the Immortal Plane. It created its own version of daylight, but it was a light that felt false. I twisted my mouth uneasily. Everything was too weird and bright in Itzarriol.

  In the air above the city, I spotted glittering things. It was hard to describe what kind or size they were, as the lights flitted over the buildings. The glowing objects darted around in patterns, dancing this way and that.

  “Gaudy,” Kane said scornfully. He was right. The Immortals’ city perfectly exemplified them. Everything was garish, colorful, and too much. It was hard to put my finger on it, but the entire city felt off balance. Like admiring a painting with its frame an inch askew.

  “This place gives me the creeps,” Roxy said and cracked her knuckles. “I guess we’ll have to get used to it.”

  Somewhere inside that bright island, a seedy darkness pulsed like a heartbeat. If the city was a monster, we needed to find the brain, where the Immortal Council made decisions and planned their diabolical strategies. Where they would have planned their union with the Bureau and begun the extermination of vampires. If the Immortal rulers continued to operate unchecked, the darkness in this plane would continue to grow and spread until it consumed the Mortal Plane as well. I refused to allow that to happen. Our friends back home counted on us to do our best here. The future stood before us, perilous and fragile.

  Below the cliff, the waterfall plunged into an aqua pool. It was hard to tell through the spraying water, but it looked like there was a garden at the end. I made out greenery, but you never knew what something really was in the Immortal Plane.

  “What a lovely sight,” Kane muttered.

  We trekked down a small, nearly-invisible trail running down the mountain to the garden, where we crouched behind a thicket of tall scarlet trees with thick, seaweed-like vines hanging from their branches. A sickeningly sweet odor, like synthetic jasmine, enveloped me. I wrinkled my nose. It was nothing like the jasmine fragrance my mother preferred to spritz on her wrists.

  It was best to keep inside the greenery, despite the smell. We didn’t want to end up like poor Kono. Despite the hours that had passed since his capture, we continued to see the occasional hunters combing the edges of the city, both on the ground and in the air. The patrols had finally thinned enough th
at we had a window of opportunity to enter the city.

  I marveled at the pool of aquamarine water collecting at the end of the waterfall. High above us, the cliff spewed blue water downward in a powerful rush. Fractals of gold and amber glinted in the water. It was all too bright and too colorful to be authentically charming.

  Beneath the spray of the waterfall, a massive statue rose from the center of the pool. The blue water spilled over the towering figure of an Immortal ruler who glared into the distance for eternity, decreeing everything inferior with his frozen stare. He had a sharp nose with a straight bridge and a broad, handsome face, but his eyes were narrowed to slits like a serpent lying in wait for its next meal. The tilt of his chin was cruel. The sculptors had taken great care to trace the perfect tendrils of long hair coming from his head. An elaborate crown of jewels sat atop his glorious tresses.

  “He’d be pretty if it weren’t for the ominous aura of pure evil,” Roxy whispered. She flicked a hanging vine out of her face to get a better look. The plant hissed and curled upward.

  “You’ve got that right,” I admitted and followed her gaze. Something unsettled me about the statue, beyond its imposing presence, that made me want to crawl out of my own skin. I felt intensely observed.

  Laini glowered at the construction. “Fitting that he made them build it so enormous that people would be forced to look up at him forever,” she said, her voice as rigid as the statue. Her usual calm was nowhere to be found. Perhaps she had left her peace permanently on the harvester’s boat, lost in the tormenting mists of the Gray Ravine.

  “Who is this ugly mug?” Roxy asked, glancing around at the vampires. “I like to know when there’s someone worth hating.”

  “Oh, he’s worth hating,” Kane said flatly, crossing his arms. “This monstrosity represents Irrikus. He currently heads the Immortal Council.”

  “He’s in charge?” I asked, searching the statue’s face with new eyes. For a moment, I half-saw Alan’s face on that final day in the boardroom. “Leadership must favor the cruel in these parts.”

  “For over a thousand years, he’s personally headed the charge against vampires,” Dorian said, his voice as dark as the bursts of shadow swirling beneath his skin. “His campaign stretches back into our grandparents’ time.”

  My heart burned slightly, though he stood on the farthest side of our hiding spot, but that pain couldn’t compare to the anger I felt when I looked up at the cold face of Irrikus’s statue. A thousand years. This struggle was on a scale I couldn’t begin to comprehend. I shut my eyes for a moment. This Immortal had taken so much from my friends. This was the face of the being that had ordered the brutal destruction of Vanim. Skeletons still lay where they fell in the streets—unburied, unmourned—because of him.

  I balled my hands into fists, pressing my fingernails hard into the soft flesh of my palms. If I ever got the chance to meet this Irrikus, I hoped it came with the opportunity to put a bullet through the middle of his smirking, arrogant face.

  “Utterly lacking in coherent design,” Laini muttered, staring at the glittering cityscape below us. Her comment reminded me that before Vanim fell, Laini had been training to become an architect. “Pathetic and obscene. Itzarriol.” She shuddered, violet eyes flashing black for a moment as her anger surged.

  “It’s sort of pretty from afar. Like the Las Vegas strip took a hit of acid,” Roxy supplied, unfazed. Laini grimaced, and Roxy corrected herself. “Sorry. I meant it’s terrible.”

  “It’s fine,” Kane said, though his voice was tight. “It’s just that Itzarriol represents everything wrong about the Immortal rulers. You’ll see. It might look like a magical world, but it’s closer to cursed.”

  A vine crept into my vision, and I batted it softly away from my face, earning both a wave of jasmine smell that burned my nostrils and a little hiss from the plant. We needed to discover the source of the conspiracy between the Immortal Council—who had kept their solid boots on the necks of vampires for hundreds of years and chased them out of their own cities—and the members of the Occult Bureau’s former board led by my uncle in the Mortal Plane. Whoever we’d thwarted by taking down Alan and his corrupt board in the Bureau was probably furious at what we’d done, and we needed to find out what their next moves would be. I just hoped we weren’t too late.

  Dorian’s eyes briefly flashed my way, and I brushed a stray lock of my hair behind my ear, trying to catch his gaze for a moment to get a sense of his emotional state, but his glance deliberately didn’t linger. Our mission was of vital importance—if we were to manage the curse, then we had to be vigilant about not causing each other pain.

  I fought the butterflies rising in my stomach. The stakes were now higher than ever, and thanks to the development of our curse, our next task would be harder than anything that came before. Since coming to the Immortal Plane, Dorian had started feeling the pain that had plagued me from the beginning. The last time we’d gotten too close—on the shore of Lake Siron after barely fighting off the hunter Inkarri—we had both passed out. Dorian had woken up hours later, but I had been unconscious for three days. We couldn’t afford to repeat the mistake, especially not here, deep in enemy territory. For a while, I hadn’t even been sure it was safe for me to join the team for this final stage of the mission. I’d worried I would be more of a liability than a help. But Dorian insisted that he needed me, both for the qualities that made me such a good soldier as well as the personal support we brought each other. All Dorian and I had to do was keep a distance of fifteen feet between us to manage the pain, and it was working so far.

  Whatever the outcome of our mission, my mind rested more easily knowing the rest of our vampire and human companions were safe in Scotland, trying to learn what they could about the Bureau-Immortals conspiracy in the Mortal Plane. Of course, the shooting at a press conference in Edinburgh a few days ago meant that Major Morag Bryce, Bravi, my brother, and the others might be grappling with much bigger issues right now. But who knew how long it had been since we’d left the Mortal Plane? I wished I’d thought to bring some kind of calendar, but there was no point. The days passed strangely here, and I was only just beginning to get used to the patterns of when the soul-lights were bright and when the winds blew the glowing amber lights away, creating almost complete darkness. Had it been a week? We’d spent several days at the Hive—one of the final secret hideouts for vampires in the Immortal Plane—and left behind a severely wounded Sike and Bryce with the stoic Arlonne as their guardian.

  The Hive vampires were a blessing in many ways, but they were not the battle-ready allies Dorian had hoped to find. When we began our journey, I’d also desperately wished for more recruits to add to our ranks, both here and in the Mortal Plane. Seeing the chaos of the Immortal Plane had changed my mind. Maybe it was a good thing that the Hive was focused on preserving what they had, hoping to survive without direct conflict for as long as they could. They refused to approach Itzarriol except for the occasional feeding, using their safehouse in the city to hide from the rulers. But now even that safety had been stripped away from them.

  “This mission is deathly important,” Laini said. She spoke so softly that it drifted over us like a melodic but ominous whisper. “And we have very little time before the hunters find the safehouse… if they haven’t already.”

  “Then we should begin,” Dorian said, a weight in his words that acknowledged the heaviness of this moment. Our next step would take us well past the point of no return.

  Kane cocked a finger gun at the statue. “After we succeed, I propose we use the human guns to destroy that monstrosity.”

  Dorian took one last look past me to regard Irrikus. His glacial eyes were brighter than they should have been in the shadow of the greenery. He scowled, then gave a slow, controlled exhale.

  “Maybe on our way back out we can take it down,” he said. “It would be an honor to see to the destruction of this beast’s monument, after he laid waste to Vanim.”

  On our w
ay back out.

  We would have to succeed first.

  His determined promise wrapped around us, shifting the mood to one of action. I rubbed my hands together and mentally catalogued every weapon on my person. A handgun in a shoulder holster under my jacket, a disassembled rifle with a scope in my pack, two knives tucked into the boots I wore, and my own two hands. The small pack on my back had been provided by the Hive vampires to carry the bare essentials for my survival: dry food rations, water, medical kit, fire-starting supplies, lightweight rope, notepad and pencil, rifle, and ammo from my original pack. The rest of my gear was in my Bureau pack back at the Hive. I tested the straps of the light canvas pack, grateful for the reduced weight.

  Dorian looked confidently over the landscape with a determined set to his jaw. “Those buildings are nearly in the tree line. We should be able to climb to them,” he said and gestured for us to move. We followed his lead in silence, the five of us traveling as one efficient organism.

  He led us through the tall, rough brush that started a few dozen feet from the quieter outskirts of Itzarriol. The vines tangled into bunches on the ground and hissed as I trampled them under my boots. Roxy relished stabbing at their little tendrils with her knife. I followed behind her, taking up the rear. The heartburn in my chest was enough to make me struggle slightly for breath, but wasn't impossible to deal with. It was like running with a weighted vest on, something I had done regularly to maintain my fitness for the Bureau. Except now I was doing it in another plane of existence, under threat of discovery by hunters at the safehouse we were supposed to use as shelter. I took a deep breath and kept going. Forward was the only way to go. Forward to help the Hive vampires who might still be hiding in the safehouse, wondering what had happened to Kono, with no idea that hunters would soon be on their way. Forward so we could make it back to our wounded friends left under the protection of the Hive and return to our friends back home in the Mortal Plane.