Free Rising Dark (The Darkling Trilogy, Book 2) by A D Koboah

fool. It was Onyx you
heard whispering. You’re getting stronger now, so you can hear our
thoughts. That’s all it was. Soon you will be able to manipulate
the minds of humans as we do.”
    It felt as if she had ripped out my
spine and I was caught in that moment all over again, helpless as
Onyx snapped Julia’s neck.
    “ You...you killed her and
now you torment me with my grief!” I let the tears flow
freely.
    All I got from her was a cold light in
her eyes and laughter. Auria was soon before me, doing a very poor
job of hiding her own amusement.
    “ It was a joke, Avery.”
She took me by the arm. “Come, let me show you what else you can do
now you are one of us.”
    As Auria took my hand and led me away,
I noticed that Emory’s laughter had faltered away sharply and that
anguish, which was all too familiar to me now, was alight in his
eyes. But Onyx continued to laugh as she swung down from the tree,
landing lightly on her feet. As I walked away, I heard her in my
mind again.
    Your pretty little wife.
Her heart stopped the second she died. But the second heartbeat—it
took much longer for that to stop.
    I came to a halt.
    Second heartbeat? Was she saying Julia
had been with child?
    I faced her.
    I’m going to kill
you, I vowed silently. Even if it takes me an eternity, I
will find a way to kill you.
    She acted as if the threat was the
funniest thing she had ever heard and convulsed into giggles. As I
followed Auria into the trees, I could still hear her laughter
filling my ears.
    “ Did you hear him?” she
chortled to Emory. “Did you hear what he said?”
    She disintegrated into another fit of
laughter. Emory was silent and I knew all too well why.
    I was thankful when Auria took my hand
and the woodland around me disappeared, cutting off the sound of
Onyx’s laughter.
    “ Get that nonsense out of
your mind,” Auria said when we were miles from the plantation. “She
is even older than Emory. She would tear you to shreds. Onyx
respects my wishes, thankfully, so she will not harm you. But I
gave you a lot of my blood, so I am weak now, and it will be
decades before I fully regain my strength. If you try to carry out
whatever foolish plan you have, she will kill you and I will be too
weak to stop her. So stop your plotting.”
    “ Why did you give me so
much of your blood?”
    “ To make you as strong as
possible. You’re still weak compared to Emory and will be for a
long time. But at least if he tries to kill you, you will have some
chance.”
    “ And you believe he
will?”
    “ Perhaps. He is extremely
loyal and fiercely protective of my affections, as you have seen.
But he knows not to anger me. Onyx and I have been together for
many years. I came across her in Virginia and knew immediately I
wanted to make her into a vampire. She had led a pitiful existence
up until that point, like so many other slaves, and she knew much
pain and suffering. I gave her the strength to avenge her
tormentors and she cast away her old life along with her name. She
became Onyx from then on. My dark goddess. Now look at her. She is
utterly merciless. She is my soul mate and nothing will ever divide
us. As for Emory, I am extremely fond of him. I do not want to give
him up, but I will if it is necessary.”
    She looked pointedly at me and I
averted my gaze.
    She showed me all of the things that
my new body could do and taught me how to read minds and search the
memories of my victims. She also instructed me on how to manipulate
them into doing, and feeling, what I wanted.
    “ You have the power to
command the world around you. You can move solid objects merely by
thinking about it. You can also use its power to travel in the
blink of an eye,” she instructed. “Try it. Call the ether to you.
Move into it with the image of where you want to be, and you will
find yourself there.”
    There were limits to what we could do.
She showed me by taking me to the slave quarters when we returned
to the Foster plantation. “Try