The house had reduced itself to rubble, huge boulders of white and grey scattered around the grass of the hill. Hale propped himself up on his elbows, dragging the back of his hand across his face. He ran a hand through his dust covered hair.
“So, re-cap of what we have learned today. Wren’s house wants to kill her,” he said, sucking in a breath. He was bleeding in several places, red smudges against the white.
He pushed himself up and jumped the hill that they were lying beneath in one deft leap. He began to pick at the large pieces of rubble that once made up a house.
Wren, after watching him work for a but, eventually decided to follow. She landed crouched at his side.
“Look,” he said, shifting some debris away with his foot. “The things on the second floor; they were statues, although they weren’t your average type. These ones are hollow. They have hinges.”
The piece of battered marble that lay on the ground was smooth and polished, carved in a way that a body would be able to fit in, with comfortable spaces for the arms, the bend of the knees, the broadness of the shoulders. It looked like a huge chocolate mould, but one you could swing open and shut with hinges.
“This whole place. It is, or was, a Darkling lair. They slept in these things.”
“Like vampires and their coffins?” Wren was mildly disgusted.
“Sort of. Darklings feed off darkness, hence their names. Whether it’s the dark of the night sky, or the darkness in a person’s soul, they can’t live without it, like we can’t live without food. Although, unlike things like vampires, they are able to eat proper human food too, except to them it isn’t half as filling to them.”
Horrified by this new discovery, Wren asked quietly, “How do you know so much? About Darklings, I mean.”
Hale looked at his feet. “There are books,” he mumbled. Never had she seen the bullet-proof wall of confidence that Hale had installed fall for so long.
“Is Hera ok?” Asked Wren, quickly changing the subject. She looked over towards the tree where the terrified-looking horse cowered into the tree, covered in dust.
“Oh god, I hope so. Alec will kill me if I did anything to his precious horse. His relationship with his horse is getting slightly out of hand. And by slightly, I mean he has serious issues.”
Hale went to try to comfort Hera while Wren hung back at the site where the house once stood, sifting around for something interesting.
Something glittered in the sunlight. Something gold, buried under the rubble. Falling to her knees, she moved the cement and marble mix away to where another one of the marble coffin-like things rested, scratched and chipped. This figure was slimmer and shorter than the other one they had found. The glinting turned out to be the light refracting off a small, bronze name-plate fixed onto the base of the structure.
“Hale. Hale!”
Hale’s head snapped round, frowning. He caught sight of Wren and ran at full speed, falling gracefully onto the ground beside her.
“What?” He asked, eyebrows pulled into the centre of his head.
Wren pointed towards the inscription. Hale looked grim.
For on the metal plate was written the name: Blackthorn.
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YOU ARE READING
Vital - Book 1 (On hold: to be rewritten)
FantasyIn the year 2015, one scientist created an army of genetically modified humans, the Triangulis, people with powers so valuable that they could save or take a life in a second. They can only hope to be good, but what if you were born to be evil? ...
