Bereft: Demise

60 | Of Princes and Their Promises

The wind spoke many words in many different tongues and brought tidings from lands far beyond the skulking mist of the manor's moors—but all Darius heard was silence in the breeze's open maw. The silence offered no succor, no relief. It offered only uncertainty.

"Shit—."

Amoroth's voice and the clatter of heels sliding on wet shingles rose from the ramparts below. Darius waited as she leapt through the Realm again and landed properly upon the roof's top rail. Her balance was terrible, but the Sin managed to remain standing.

"I'll never understand the penchant you and Cuxiel have for tall, impossible places," Amoroth confessed as she tried holding her arms parallel to her body for balance, then gave up and crouched, lowering her center of gravity. "You don't have bloody wings anymore, you know."

"I am well aware." In times like this, knowledge of what he lacked was apparent, as if his deficiency could assume corporeal forms to taunt him. He was a Sin. His deficiencies were many.

Darius's fingers folded around the rail beneath his feet and began to bend the iron.

He recalled looking for her. He remembered taking the stairs one by one as he heard the barghest's growl and the vampire's howling. Roman had been there, blood seeping from his eyes, his nose, his ears, and scoured lip.

He had heard the words gone, she's gone—and the rest of his memory was steeped in red.

Next he was aware, Darius was atop the manor's roof.

"Roman and Gavin will heal," Amoroth told him as she flicked bits of dead leaves from her pant leg. "Eventually."

He remembered blood—the vampire's blood. He remembered throwing himself from the stairs and the snap of the creature's bones in his hands. The rest was a blur, a jumbled assortment of images that managed to rise through the crazed rage. Cuxiel's wolf changing, lunging at him as he throttled the leech. The mutt's whimpering howl, his furred body colliding with a wall. Smoke and embers, pain in his hands. Ravens screeching.

Then nothing.

"Gone, she's gone. Father made me do it, made me take her to him."

Darius didn't respond. He cared little if the dog or the bloodsucker survived. Gavin and his pack were responsible for the grounds' protection, and they'd failed. The vampire should have been put down years ago with the rest of his kind.

Sara was gone. Taken.

"Has Cuxiel learned anything?"

Amoroth shook her head, sending her curls bouncing about her face. "He doesn't know anything more than you at the moment. Though, we'd know more if Roman was conscious." She sniffed with disapproval—then began to slide from her perch on the rail. The Sin grabbed the decorative prongs for balance. "Then again, you may have done him a favor. Sethan isn't gentle with his toys and he left the leech's mind a wreck."

It began to rain again, and every drop of water that struck Darius's head seemed to beat with the same words. Gone, she's gone. Sethan isn't gentle with his toys.

He looked at his hands. They were clean now, washed of blood by the downpour of mist. Gone. Such a simple word to trigger such madness and desperation. Gone. Darius couldn't process the full extent of his own reaction. When the vampire had cried that Sethan had taken Sara, a concept had stirred in a section of his mind the selfish Sin hadn't examined in years. Like glossy scales glinting in the jet-black waters, the thought 'No. Not that. Why couldn't he have taken me instead?' had risen.