Page 14 of Taming Darkness

Xandrious laughs, like what Porter just said was the most hilarious thing he’s ever heard. He waves Darius forward.

“Do you know why I gave you your job back, Porter?” Xandrious questions with a sly smile on his face.

“You were looking for a bounty hunter,” says Porter with a shrug, and I can tell he finds this line of questioning abrupt and strange.

Xandrious laughs harder. Tears spring in his eyes from his laughter, and he wipes them. This man is truly psychotic.

“No, you twit.” He motions for Darius to step forward, and Darius obeys, not wanting to show him what he pulled from Lycus’ mother’s head a few years before when he went to her house to snoop in her head.

“She fucked your way to the top of bounty,” Xandrious laughs. “Show him.” Darius grits his teeth, placing his fingertips on the sides of Porter’s head, showing him his wife's infidelity, showing him how he got the job. What Porter didn’t know was that his mate had done all those things, to save him from going to prison, saving him from death for stealing from the Demonic King, and what she did, she did for her son because she had no choice.

Doing it made all his charges disappear and kept him in a job for years. Then, when he got fired again for wrecking a company car and was deemed unemployable, she sucked off Xandrious, getting him the job he has now.

However, Darius wasn’t allowed to show the reasoning as to why she did it, just the acts themselves, which made him sick that the woman was taken advantage of. Porter blinks, horrified, before he snarls.

“Now, with that out of the way,” Xandrious says, waving Darius off, and he takes his spot by the door again. “You have three weeks to find out where Grayson took the antidote. Grayson has it. I know he took it when he burned the facility down.”

Porter nods his head, looking like he’s still in shock.

“I ordered him to destroy it when we realized what we created, yet the vials were gone, and the place burned down. I know he took it, I know the bastard is planning something, and we need that cure if we are to save what’s left,” Xandrious tells Porter.

Darius stares ahead, listening. He clenches his jaw from the overwhelming feeling of memory flitting through his head. Through Darius’ memories, I learned my father didn’t burn down the facility. Darius did. He was also the one that stole the antidote for my father, under the impression his father unleashed the plague. But that wasn’t the case, though. My father lied, telling Darius it was his father’s plan, and that he could help correct it by burning down the facility and getting him the cure.

“Find it, and you will be allowed to live.”

“But isn’t that the council’s job? Search his house,” Porter says with a shrug, and Xandrious shakes his head. “I can't, and I can’t draw too much attention to it, not with my involvement. I am already being watched. The bastard lied to me. I thought we were creating a cure for the disease of the White-Fae. Now one plague has swept through, and we need that cure before the second wave hits.”

“Second wave hits?”

“Yes, idiot, Grayson made two originally! All week he has been spouting his nonsense at the council. I can’t have my men investigating him; it will draw attention to me, and my involvement to the blood that created the plague used being my son’s.”

“Grayson could just tell them,” Porter offers.

“Not without implicating himself; he won’t risk his reputation,” Xandrious tells him.

Porter sucks in a shaking breath.

“Three weeks, find it,” Xandrious says, dismissing him.

Porter leaves through a portal. Meanwhile, I feel everything Darius does. Guilt nags at him, yet I don’t understand why he feels guilty about the antidote. Why he felt he was to be blamed for the plague.

The memory skips ahead to a few weeks later before it comes across the news about Porter’s wife being found dead, brutally beaten to death. Moreover, Porter’s son, Lycus, was missing. Both had been last seen the day he showed Porter of her infidelity. And now I know another of Darius’ deepest secrets; he was not just tied to Kalen’s parent’s deaths, but Lycus’ mother, and his hellhounds killed Thomas, Tobias’ brother. The list stops at his blood which is what created the plague, but still I knew I was missing something.

Something that pieces everything together, but one thing is undeniable. Everything and everyone links back to Darius. He said his past haunts him, that he has blood on his hands, and now I know what he means, because the blood that stains him is ours, the ghosts of his past that haunt him are ours. And those skeletons in the closet he has tried to bury for so long are also ours.

Chapter6

~Tobias~

Darius was gone, but we couldn’t go looking for him since we were trapped in by his magic. Aleera was stuck in this memory state, her eyes flitting back and forth, her power magnifying with each tortuous second that passed. Unable to focus on anything else, I pace back and forth while getting dressed.

My eyes focus on Aleera in her memory trance. Black and gold webbing seems to bleed out of her pores, spreading like a rash over most of her pale body, her breathing becoming rapid as we watch her. Kalen’s worry and fear seep into me like poison as he chews his nails, staring absently at where Darius just left through a portal.

Lycus grips his hair, his fear is also potent, which only amplifies mine. “What are we going to do?” Lycus whines, she had only been out for a few minutes, yet that was long enough for Darius to escape us and trap us in this room.

We could still feel him, though we knew he was badly injured. We tried to break the seal that snared us in, yet we were just wasting the energy and power we will need when the seal is dropped.

With each passing second, we feel his power dwindle rapidly, and if she doesn’t wake soon, we have no way to break the seal Darius placed on this room. Aleera would be able to do that, sure, but she needed to wake up first. She writhes, absorbing Darius’ power. All our power flowed through her, strong like a beating heart, a muscle waiting to be flexed and used. I know she would be the key to breaking the seal.

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