Darkness Fades

Chapter 16

It’s quiet for a while. Neither of us can speak. Or maybe he’s just waiting for me to say something, but I’ve lost my voice. He looks so different, still him—black hair, eyes like charcoal, a slight cocky expression—but beneath it is pain. Pain from his flesh rotting. He’s changing. Still?

“Aren’t you going to say anything?” he finally asks, stretching out his long legs.

Say what? I’m too speechless to speak. “Why… I mean how are you changing, just now… when I saw you last, you were so close and that was a while ago?”

He shrugs nonchalantly but there’s emotion in his eyes, though I can’t tell exactly what. “I did turn. I turned into one of those horrible monsters. It was like being stuck in a bad dream…” His forehead creases in puzzlement as his head cocks to the side. “Until I bit you.”

“What? You changed and then you changed back?” I ask, shocked, wanting to pick up my knife so I can maybe be comforted by this lost, helpless feeling inside me; one I’ve never felt before. “I don’t understand, Sylas. Aren’t the effects of the bite permanent?”

He sighs tiredly then steps backward to the crate and hoists himself up, his arms wobbling, then he sits on it with his bare feet hanging over it. “Oh, the effects were permanent. Well, at least they were supposed to be. But when I bit you, I could feel something in me start to change. The instant my teeth sunk into your skin, something ignited inside me and I knew I had to stop hurting you, like it was an instinct.”

“So, you bit me?”

He shrugs again, but there’s a hungry look in his eye that make my skin feel hot. “Well, do you really blame me?”

I try my best to shake it off, but the fact that he’s sitting here, not hurt and almost not an abomination, is making it hard not to want to do anything except hug him and tell him that I’m sorry for leaving him. “So do you think my bite cured you?”

“Maybe… Monarch did make you special after all, but then again we know little about the abominations,” he says with almost a thoughtful expression as he assesses me. “The one he wanted to be perfect.” He pauses, glancing down at his skin, amazed at the sight of it healing.

I walk closer to him and pick his arm up. I’m not even sure why I do it other than I feel this need to touch him, to feel that he’s real, so I trace my fingers over one of the open wounds on his arm. The bleeding is barely noticeable as the skin works to stitch itself back up.

“This is amazing.” I say. “You’re really changing back.”

“Yeah, it is.”

I look up and meet his eyes. The hunger is there again and instead of wanting to run away from him, I want to get closer to him, like I did when I thought he was dying. I place my hand on his cheek. His skin feels cold and sort of rough, unnatural almost, yet I don’t pull back.

I’m not even sure what the point of my touch is, but before I can rack through my thoughts and figure it out, he grabs my hand and jerks me into him, eliminating any space left between our bodies. He slams his lips against mine and kisses me with passion, his hands wandering to my back as he presses me closer to him. He tastes strange, like rust, yet at the same time, he tastes good, and I realize how much I’ve worried about him while we’ve been apart.

What does that mean? About my feelings towards him? Something… I can feel it… this is so much different than with Aiden… so much more… sweltering and hard to breathe.

He pulls back abruptly, his lips a little swollen, giving me barely any time to react as I stumble back from the disconnection. “I shouldn’t have done that,” he says.

“Why?” I frown because it doesn’t sound like something he’d say at all.

“Because…” He drags his fingers through his hair roughly, looking stressed out and Sylas never looks stressed. “It may not be safe; I may not be safe. I mean, we know nothing about this process… changing back.” His gaze encounters mine. “What if I hurt you or infect you?”

I’m not sure how to respond. Part of me wants to be irrational, but the other part wants to rationalize that it could happen; that we know nothing about the abomination or the process. “There’s something that I don’t get,” I say. “Why are you healing after biting me, but vampires have bit me before and haven’t changed back?”

He shakes his head. “I don’t know, other than maybe there’s something different about the process of an abomination then a vampire. I mean, I know they’re different...” He trails off, lost. “I just wish we had the answers.”

“So do I.” I glance back at the papers. “But hopefully I can get some now.”

“Is that why you came back here?” he asks and then a playful, arrogant look crosses his face. “Or was it to save me?”

I roll my eyes, but have to bite back a smile. “We came back for the papers… the one’s you and I found before we were captured.”

“So Aiden’s going to help figure out what they say? So you can save the world? Save humanity?”

“No…” I’d almost forgotten about Aiden. “So you saw Aiden then?”

He nods, but seems reluctant. “During the chase, yeah, but not afterward… I hope he wasn’t bitten.” He doesn’t sound that convincing and I’m not surprised. The two brothers never did get along very well.

I sigh. “Well, if he hasn’t been bitten now, he’s still changed.”

He looks at me curiously. “What do you mean?”

I sigh again and then pick up my knife from the ground and hop up on the crates beside him. “He took the injection, Sylas.”

He stares at me with his mouth agape. “He what? Why did he do it? He’s always been against it… arguing with us about it. What the hell?”

“Because of me…Tristan told him what happened to us; that we were captured. He thought the only way he could save me… us, would be to become a Day Taker.”

“He changed for you. To save you…” He considers this with a strange look on his face. “I’m glad he did.”

He reaches out to lightly touch my cheek with his finger. I’m not sure how to react, be on guard or not, but I end up just sitting still.

He finally leans back, withdrawing his fingers from my cheek. “What else happened while I was gone?”

For some reason I’m hesitant to continue. I know that they’re competitive and I am afraid that, if I tell Sylas everything about what Aiden has done, he may hurt when I tell him that Aiden is a Day Walker not a Day Taker. I wonder how upset he’ll be to hear it, and to hear that the power is going to Aiden’s head, making him unstable.

Sylas senses my hesitation. “Whatever it is just say it.”

Swallowing the lump in my throat, I take a breath. “That injection didn’t turn Aiden into a Day Taker. He’s a Day Walker.” There’s hurt in his eyes, but it disappears rapidly at the same time he tightens his jaw. “He also thinks that humans don’t need to be saved,” I add. “That the rest of the population needs to become Day Walkers because he feels they’re perfection.” I roll my eyes. “He thinks that the cure isn’t the way we should be saving the world. That instead, we should be making people turn into Day Walkers, but only the one’s we choose.”

He takes in everything that I am saying with a serious expression. “If that’s the case, then why did he come with you to get the papers?”

“I think he’s hoping to change my mind. Make me agree with his ideas or something, but honestly, I don’t know.”

“Where is he now?”

“I don’t know…” I glance at the crates around the room and the door; the only two things in here. “We got separated when we were attacked by the monst—” I cut myself off, unsure what to call them since he was one of them—still sort of is.

“It’s okay. They’re monsters and I was one of them,” he says like it’s no big deal, but I can tell he’s lying, feel it flowing off him.” They’re all connected, you know. Their thoughts, the movements they make. The Highers are intentionally creating them. Building an army.”

My eyes enlarge. “An army? For what reason? They already control the vampires and the people in the colony. What do they need an army for?”

“They’re not satisfied with what they have,” he explains, picking at one of the wounds on his arms. “They want more. They know there are other people—humans—out there. They want to find them and take over them. But the thing they really want,” he pauses, looking up at me, “is you.”

I sigh. “There’s never enough for them. Greed. That’s the reason it started and that’s the reason it’ll never end.” I hop down from the crate. “Until I put a stop to it.”

Sylas jumps down next to me, landing unsteadily on his feet. “How do you plan on stopping them exactly?” He looks doubtful that I can do it because it does seem impossible; however, I was created for a reason—to stop this.

Anger burns inside of me as I think of all the people that have either died or turned into some kind of monster because of the Highers’ need for power. Greed. It ruined the world and made it a horrible place of death and fear so they could have their rules; their control. We were all simply walking around, obeying them, but now it’s time to change that; change the future.

“I plan on doing whatever it takes,” I say, scooping up the papers, hoping they have the answers written on them, knowing there’s a chance they don’t. I need a backup plan just in case something doesn’t go right because I will save the world.

No matter what it takes.