Chapter 13
Thirteen
Isabella
"All you have to do is breathe in the darkness, pour out the light. You feel that warmth you cling to? Get rid of it. I don’t need your goodness. I want the corrupt part of you.”
Hands clung to my shoulders. The darkness snaked around my fingers and cried for more of Julius.
At this point, I’d grown to be wary of his whispers in my ear.
I realized when he spoke, a darkness in me grew until the manifestation lingered even when he wasn’t touching me.
The darkness made a home in me and that was exactly what he wanted.
Every touch, every kiss, every time he was inside me, he left bits and pieces of something horrid.
When I wasn’t succumbing to the darkness, I had a moment to think, and I’d remember a dead demon’s face from nights ago, and it made me wonder why I only had time to think of all the bad things Julius did when he was away from me.
Then it was somewhere around that night when I finally realized that every feeling I felt toward him was a mirage; a manipulation because when he was away, I felt disgust roll off me in waves.
I looked down at my frail body and I tried to understand how I survived off darkness and deceit.
The more I thought, the more I couldn’t remember the last time I ate or if I even did eat anymore.
I ran to the mirror and looked at myself and gasped.
I wasn’t the little girl I remembered, but I wouldn’t call myself a woman either. I was hollow—skinny and lifeless.
What was he doing to me?
I needed to see more of myself, but there were no lights.
Searching the room, I found a lantern, flicked it on, only to scream.
Something ran all over my skin like tiny black snakes.
I backed away, but I couldn’t escape myself.
What was I becoming? My hands smacked over the lines but they were everywhere, and not only that, it hurt. The light was torture to my skin.
In the middle of my panic, my bedroom door opened and Julius stepped in.
His hair, I swear, was bathed in flames.
I’d never seen anything quite like him. Even the monsters dimmed in comparison to the glint in his eyes and the way he carried his shoulders.
His skin sometimes looked white, other times it was almost the color of his hair.
“What have you done to me?” I screamed at him.
“Calm down,” he said as he came for me. I backed away. He smiled. “Why do you always do this? Why do you fear me? I take care of you. You’re becoming like me.”
“No. No.”
He reached for me. I tried my hardest not to let him touch me, but I was so strangely weak until he gave me his touch… And when he did, the fear dulled. Everything faded away. His hands gripped my shoulders roughly as he leaned down and whispered into my ear. “There, there,” he soothed me.
The darkness purred, and all my worries became nothing at all. I sagged into his arms and sighed happily. Whatever had weighed heavy on my heart… Was there such a thing?
“Look at you, you’ve taken so well to my power,” he purred into my ear. “There’s something we must do.”
“What?” I asked.
“There’s something I need you to harvest.” I nodded, and he grinned. “I’ll let you stay in my world when it is all that’s left. Just you and me. Then we’ll dance on the Devil’s grave when his future is stolen by me.”
◆◆◆
I sat on my knees in a dark room. For how long, I couldn’t tell. I wasn’t aware of some of the things I did. Sometimes I was a blank slate. Only when I did become something that had thoughts, I was left confused and afraid. I glanced around the room trying to figure out where I was.
For some reason, I thought of family. I had a family. Then I’d remember they gave me away to Julius—a monster in disguise of a man, but they made me equally bitter. Still, I missed them. I wanted to go home. Did I say this to Julius?
The room I was in was so hot I could hardly bear it. I sucked in a breath and the reality came tumbling down. My vision had been nothing but a mirage. I was surrounded by flames. For some reason, my mind was crystal clear as my childhood home came into focus.
I heard someone scream and recognized one of my sister’s voices right before it was cut short.
“Isabella, please.” I turned my head to see Mom crawling on her belly toward me. I blinked, tears stinging my eyes.
What was going on?
“Mom?”
“Please,” she begged. “Make him stop.”
Julius stepped through the flames in front of us with the lifeless form of my sister dangling in his grip. I stood and anger consumed me.
“Julius? How did we get here? What’s happening?”
“Aren’t you happy?” he asked as he dropped my sister. “I’m hurting the ones that gave you away.”
“You’re the one that wanted me!” I screamed.
“Why do you keep waking?” He stepped forward. “Why does a part of you continue to resist me after all these years together?”
I’d been with him that long already? Why could I not remember things?
“We had no choice. He’s known of your birth long before you were born,” Mom coughed. “He formed a blood oath long ago in our family ancestry so that he’d have you.”
“No matter,” Julius said, placing his boot on her skull and crushing it.
“NOOOOOO!”
I called to the fire, and it came to me. My body absorbed it all. He looked at me in awe while I was in tears for the family that I lost and all the things that were happening to my body and mind that he controlled.
“You have no idea what your existence means, my little harvester.”
“Don’t touch me.”
“Oh, but look, the darkness is begging me to.” Julius pointed toward my skin and while the change in my skin mesmerized me, he reached up and touched me. The darkness moved for him, making it so that I arched into his touch as well.
Just like that, I was a blank slate again. But I recalled my last thought, and I told myself to remember it well when I could again.
Escape.
◆◆◆
Who I was or who I could be flickered in and out with whom Julius tried to turn me into.
He came for me when I was ten, but that didn’t mean I didn’t realize what he did.
The way he thought, was all wrong, yet I couldn’t escape the hold he had over me.
The darkness grew inside me, but sometimes I’d make sense of myself and my thoughts and…
I became Isabella Wen again, now lone survivor of the Wen clan.
When I became aware of what was happening around me, an imp was holding my hand and leading me forth.
He flew and made weird flapping noises with his wings.
When I tried to tug my hand free, more imps flew around me encouraging me forward.
“Where are you taking me?”
Of course, they didn’t answer. Their language was vastly different from any human language. It sounded more like clanking, followed by guttural squeaks.
Touch, take. Touch, take.
My fingers twitched as we came into a huge open room. The darkness in me was begging and crawling all through me for something as we grew closer.
I had a terrible unease in my chest. Flashes of dead demons and animals, merged and mutated bodies of Julius’s creations haunted me, and I tugged at my hand again.
“Stop.”
“There you are,” an unfamiliar male demon called to me. There were a lot more like him all around. “We need you to harvest this one’s power too.”
Too?
How many had I? Once again, glimpses of things I did while under Julius’s control bombarded me. I shuddered and stepped away.
“He wants to see how much of her power you can hold,” he informed me.
I glanced between them and saw the figure of a woman curled up.
A circle of demons was around her. Blonde curls tumbled over her shoulders.
They wanted me to hurt this female with my touch?
This darkness Julius had created had stolen the breath of so many already, to kill another?
No… no. Not while I was present inside my own mind.
Only I didn’t have to worry about that because a shadow of death swept over us so quickly all I heard was screaming.
The last fearful cry of every last demon in the room but me.
The chill that ran up my spine was there for days after.
One by one the demons’ blood bathed the room in every color—green for the fallen imps, black and red for the demons.
The twists and cranks of bones breaking had me following the shadow around the room with my eyes as it sought to kill everything in its path.
I was quite a distance away when the shadow stopped and in its place, a man of coal black skin surfaced…
Not really a man. More like a monster. Horns rested on his head and although it wasn’t the first time seeing a demon with horns, there was something truly frightening about him in a way that Julius dreamed to be.
I feared the breath I needed to breathe would give me away, but he knew I was there because his eyes landed on me before focusing on the woman unconscious on the ground.
The darkness in me didn’t care about my fear, it still slithered and crawled inside of me.
Twitchy fingers. Twitchy fingers. It wanted to go to the woman. It didn’t care about the monster, despite the vast amount of power that rolled off him.
“I need you alive, Isabella.” I shivered from the thickness of his voice, the thrum of power his voice alone wielded.
There was a thud, and I looked down to see a portal chip at my feet.
I just looked at it momentarily stunned, blinked, then looked up at the authoritative monster.
“You’re the start… but not this way.” His eyes trailed over the female again. “Leave.”
When I didn’t do as he said, he added, “I know her sin calls to you, so leave.” I still waited and his eyes flickered red. “You’re only alive because this isn’t the day I need you to die.”
Ignoring his own haunting words, I finally found my own. “What about her?”
“Her family is coming for her. They’ll be here soon.” His gaze lingered on her. “She’s safe…for this day.”