Page 39 of Dark Desire
And then I saw it. The raised flesh-coloured markings of a triangle with three eyes in each corner on her shoulder blade. The same flesh mark that fae had. What the fuck was that? Was it some kind of branding?
Leaping off her, I paced the room. I was spiralling. I needed to talk to someone before I did something impulsive. Throwing on my clothes, grabbing my rucksack and slinging the box under my arm, I half-shifted into Ambroz and flew out of the smashed window and over the moors. I landed in a deserted field and rummaged through my bag until I found my phone and the crystal.
I sent Luka a text telling him I needed him urgently and then rubbed the crystal to summon Leif. Leif appeared first, shirtless and in baggy shorts with tousled hair as he rubbed the sleep from his eyes.
“Demon.” He yawned. “When I said whenever you need me, I meant at reasonable times of the day, not at two am.”
“Can you get Luka. I need him too,” I demanded, opening the box and pulling out the photographs, laying them all out on the grass.
“You woke me up so I could be your errand boy?” Leif grumbled, stretching his arms above his head. “If you are about to make me and Luka do some weird twilight photoshoot out here, I’m strangely into it. You do know your tops ripped, right?”
“My brother. Please,” I growled, too impatient for his bouncy energy. He sighed and disappeared in a flurry of green hues. A couple of minutes later, they both reappeared in front of me. Luka dropped to his knees, grabbing my shoulder as I placed the last photographs down. There were at least thirty.
“Z, what’s happened?” Luka asked, his green eyes scanning the photos with confusion.
“Look at these.”
Leif frowned, blinking rapidly as he kneeled beside us to study them. “What am I looking at?”
“Photographs from centuries ago. Photographs taken from times before cameras were invented. Coloured photographs, Leif. How do you explain that?”
Leif lifted one and frowned, shaking his head. “You sure they are legit? They could be costumes or movie sets.”
I lifted the one of our cottage burning and held it in front of Luka’s face. He visibly paled. “They’re real. That’s our house. The night of the attack. And that’s Darcelle. She took that picture. Turn it over.”
Luka took it from me carefully and read the back. His eyes flicked up to mine with disbelief. “But how? That’s impossible.”
I shook my head. Exhaling deeply, I pulled the necklace out from my trouser pocket, and Luka’s eyes bulged. He grabbed for it, running his fingers over the medallion. “Father’s necklace.”
“She had it. In a box with all these photographs,” I growled, barely able to keep my emotions contained. Luka fell to the floor on his ass, staring at the medallion in his hands. His jaw ticked and I saw his own rage come to the surface. Memories of thatnight, of the brutality and merciless way they killed our father, would haunt us for the rest of our lives.
“I went back to the cottage so many times over the years searching for this,” Luka whispered, his voice wobbling a little. “And she fucking had it the entire time? She stole it off our father’s dead corpse?”
I swallowed thickly, a range of uncomfortable feelings fighting their way to the surface. Anger, pain, grief but also the want to defend Darcelle because she was my fucking soulmate. But defend her for what? She had taken it. Kept it. It didn’t belong to her. She had no right.
“If you haven’t killed her already, I fucking will,” Luka snarled, jumping to his feet as his eyes turned black with Heathen’s presence. Instinctively, Ambroz surged forward as I stood up and grabbed the front of his T-shirt in my fist.
“You won’t touch her,” I growled. His face morphed into shock and then alarm. I let go of him and ran my hands through my hair, pacing the field.
“She’s your soulmate, isn’t she?” he asked, watching me with a look of horror. “And you’ve claimed her?” he shouted, lifting his hands to his head. “Zoran. What the fuck have you done?”
“I know!” I roared. “I fucked up! And now I can’t fucking undo it! I have to live with this fucking bond for the rest of our miserable lives, knowing she was a slayer to our kind and being so fucking weak that I can’t even get my revenge.”
“Wait!” Leif interrupted us, rising to his feet with a bunch of photographs in his hands. “What makes you so sure she was a slayer?”
We both stared at the warlock with confusion. Wasn’t it obvious? She was there. She was a witch fighting alongside the slayers who attacked. She took our father’s medallion after they beheaded him. She turned me into a raven.
“We have every name of every supernatural slayer in the supernatural archives. Her name wasn’t among them. We’ve searched every birth record dating back centuries, but there is no sign of her. However,” Leif licked his lips, deep in thought. “When I did my own research yesterday, the only Darcelle I found was a Darcelle Raine who was born thirty-six years ago. She apparently died in a house fire with her parents at the age of three.”
“Right,” Luka answered, just as confused as me. “Where are you going with this, Leif. Darcelle might not be her real name. She probably changed it after the slayers ended their torment because they believed our kind were gone.”
“Maybe. But that doesn’t explain the photographs, does it?” He flapped them in his hands. “What if the reason we can't find any trace of her from centuries ago is because she didn’t exist?”
“But we know she did,” I argued, pointing to the image of her next to my cottage. “We know she was there.”
“The oldest picture she has taken is dated 823 AD. That would make her the oldest witch who has ever lived. She’d be thousands of years old. And you’re telling me she doesn’t look a day older than thirty?”
I paused.Oh shit.
