Daeva: Black Diamond Chrysalis - Danielle Bolger (essential reading txt) 📗

fat! But that's no reason not to love a person!" She exclaimed loftily.

"Bethanie..." That same distant voice called. "Don't..."

"Darling, are you sure you don't want a ride on the camel? It could be a once in a life-time experience!" She enticed.

"You should do it." Michael added. "Mother-daughter time, hey? Us boys can do a bit of shooting, that should help burn through some of the adolescent testosterone from Cameron's system!"

Cameron raised an eyebrow. "How 'bout a real gun?"

To this Paul guffawed. "Not a chance, buddy! To do that you need to be eighteen and besides, I don't think there's any facilities for that here. But hey, when you're of age how about we go to a shooting range and check it out, yeah?"

"Eighteen..." Cameron groaned. "But that's ages away!"

"It'll happen." Paul responded sagely. "Before you even want it to."

"C'mon, Bethanie!" My mother pleaded. "I so wanna do this with my only daughter! You know I can't do mother-daughter stuff with anyone else since this little one is yet another boy!"

"Mum..." I murmured.

"Please! I need someone to hang onto up there!"

Just as my grip began to slip again I heard that same distant voice. "It's coming for you, Bethanie! Don't let it touch you!"

There my mother reached out to grab my hand.

With a sudden strike I cut down with a vertical arc through the woman that looked like my mother. She frowned after the blow and shone blue eyes on me that seemed to ask, why? Before splitting in two. Then with a waver the bright sunshine of the festival grounds returned to the eerie blue hue of the forest and before me I watched a shade split vertically in two, its hand outstretched as if reaching for mine.

Then I felt a force slam from behind me so hard I almost lost my footing. "Oh, Bethanie!" I heard Abigail's strained and high-pitched voice. "Don't ever scare me like that again!"

My knees slumped hard down onto the ground. Abigail tried to hold me up, but she was just too small and no match for my dead weight. I felt myself fall, uncaring if the earth decided to swallow me whole, but then I stopped, my face just a couple of feet from the messy forest floor. The jarring in my wrists told me that I had pressed my hands out, something that occurred no doubt because of reflex. There brown decaying leaves crunched within my grasp.

"Bethanie?" Abigail prodded. "Bethanie!"

"She is... much stronger than I thought." Dismally I heard Dorothy's voice analyse. "She managed to cut through my song, but... it seems her blade is not enough to remove the pain from her heart."

"You stay away from her!" Abigail' roar was more akin to a cub's. "Just leave us alone!"

This caused Dorothy's eerie high-pitched cackle to return. "Don't worry, little lamb, I won't lay a finger on either of you, only... I can't promise they won't."

I heard Abigail's feet crunching backwards.

Slowly I raised my eyes and saw beings I too easily forgot, shades that had came by their attraction to the music. There were six of them in total, a small gang, standing tall around us, their invisible mouths drooling. They situated themselves in an arc between Dorothy and us and slowly, almost unseen to the eye, edged closer towards us never taking a step. Interestingly the background had changed, the blue fluorescent scene returned back to its original aura colours. As if the spell of her song was broken, but the effect clearly still remained.

Feebly I returned to my feet, the effort costing me many seconds.

"Hahahahaha!" Dorothy sung. "That's it! You can't give up yet! So long as you are living you will fight! Noes, my friends, take their auras but leave me their precious diamond cores!" Here Dorothy licked her lips indulgently.

I didn't even mutter gross, just stared ahead with shaky empty hands as black beings rushed towards us.

I heard Abigail's terrified gasp, her scream something about my sword, but I couldn't react, I couldn't move, not after what I had done to my mother. And there in the face of darkness I watched my doom approach me without fight.

Chapter 16

 

Abigail

 

The shades were coming for us, moving unbelievably fast. I barely had time to look at Bethanie and see her empty hands before I knew it would be too late. I screamed, shutting my eyes but from behind my eyelids I thought I could see a light, one beckoning to me, one promising it could grant me the power to save my life. I was just about to reach out a figurative hand towards it when a voice had me snap my eyes open.

"Not today, Dorothy. You're not going to unleash any more of your crazy on these two poor girls!"

"Pearl!" I yelled happily as hundreds of golden feathers slammed into the shades, pushing back their limbs and forcing them down. A couple of shades managed to snake around the sparkling air-mines but were at once punched through with five narrow holes a piece, the strings just catching the golden light and shimmering.

"That's a dirty way to fight, Dorothy." Lara snarled, her long straight brown hair flowing away from the fluttering of feathers. "You're ordered not to harm any of us, but you figure if it's not actually you then you can get away with it, right?"

Dorothy rolled her eyes. "So what if I used a little word play, it's not like the others didn't expect it, it explains why you're here."

"Words, hey? You always liked your poetic little words, but me, I much prefer to play with strings!" Lara declared right before flicking her wrists and the captive shades shattered into pieces.  As the lines relaxed they fell through the falling black crystals with an arc, the golden light reflecting off these lines, then straightened once more as they retracted back into the tips of Lara's outstretched fingers.

"Whoa..." I breathed. "You two are incredible!"

"Just you watch this, honey." Pearl gave me a quick smirk before she ran forwards into the golden swarm and remaining four shades. Then she leapt up and suddenly some feathers homed towards Pearl and took the form of wings behind her shoulders and higher still she rose. She was flying, literally flying over the top of them.

But as I noticed her up there, gleaming like a goddess, there was something wrong, something black and raised framed her eyes.

The shades' restraints were weaker and tried to elongate their arms into the air to hit her but ten thin almost invisible lines severed their pointed limbs. Then Pearl rose her hands and flicked downward as a rain of feathers poured down, pelting like hail and quill-end first. The dazed shades had not even a chance to react before they were pierced at least a dozen times each.

With clear gaping holes through the black they appeared petrified and it was left to Lara to finish the job. There she swung one arm from the left, the other from the right as two columns five strings high sliced through the air. At the end of the movement Lara's fingers were interlocked, the rigid lines criss-crossed.

Pearl, no longer winged, landed amidst the black falling stones.

"Whatever, this is music is boring.  I'm bailing!" Dorothy pouted.

"What? You don't want to do the vocals? That's gotta be a first!" Lara quipped.

The silver-haired girl rolled her eyes. "Well haven't you heard, girls? I've gone solo now!"

"If you're on your own, then why hang around Raziel and the daeva-noxes?"

"Because." She smirked as she began to turn away. "They're gonna give me the power to make all my wishes come true."

"No wait, Dorothy!" Pearl urged. "Don't go back to them. You still might be able to come back to us..."

Lara, having approached her side, placed a hand out in front of Pearl to stop her. "You know not to bother with trying anymore, Pearl. She's lost to us, forever. She's just another phantom now."

"Lara's right, Pearl. There's no way I'm going back to your side. The darkness holds so much power, but not enough, not yet. Soon though, soon we'll have all we need to recreate this world and bring our desires into reality!" Her silver eyes glimmered with wild glee.

"It won't work, you know." Lara warned. "What you're planning, it won't bring him back, it'll just destroy everything!"

"Oh, I don't expect you to understand, you can't when you still cling to the lifeline of this world. But you will, that is - if you survive long enough!" She giggled. "I'm leaving, you can..." She gazed first at me, then to Bethanie's vacant expression. "Clean up these little rug-rats."

And just like that she vanished into thin-air, as if she was never even there.

Suddenly Pearl collapsed on the ground holding her head.

"Pearl!" I cried as I ran over to her and frowned as I noticed her raised hand had a floral pattern of black diamonds, raised, as if glued there.

"Pearl?" I asked, my voice wavering. "What is that on your hand?"

The girl forced a pained smile. "It's not just on my hand." And as she removed it she unveiled a matching design pointing towards her left eye.

"What is it? Why is it hurting you?"

"There must be more shades in this world now," Lara analysed as she turned back to us. "So many that even after we expelled these the markings aren't disappearing anymore."

I gasped as I noticed the black diamonds on Lara's right arm and neck and also on one calf. It was creeping all over each of their bodies, I realised, in beautiful raised flower designs.

"That," Pearl winced, "but also, our time is running out."

"Hold on!" I cut in."What are you two talking about? What do you mean your time is running out!?"

"They mean." Bethanie stated evenly as she walked to our small gathering. "That they are running out of time before their whole bodies are taken over by the diamonds and they fall into chrysalis."

"Chrysalis?" I echoed. "Like a butterfly?"

Pearl smiled sadly. "Not quite, sweet-heart."

"Well what do you mean then? What happens when the chrysalis ends?"

"We disappear." Bethanie replied bluntly. "Dead, gone. But what does it matter, I'm a ghost anyway..."

The slap across Bethanie's cheek ricocheted off the trees.

"You're a ghost already, is that it, Bethanie!?" Lara spat. "Well then go run off and have your chrysalis then! We don't need you, we can fight the noxes, shades and Raziel on our own, we have enough of us!"

"Are you so sure?" Bethanie sniped back. "The two of you look like you could be disappearing any day now."

Lara grabbed her by the collar and gritted her teeth, hand out to the side with fingers rigid and clawed. Bethanie just stared back into her eyes without emotion, as if daring Lara to unleash what transpired within her mind.

"Stop it, both of you!" Pearl yelled as she unleashed golden feathers in the area. "Now..."

"She doesn't have the balls to anyway." Bethanie provoked. "Even back there, I could see how much you hated Dorothy and even though she's one of the bad guys you just couldn't take her out. So scared that you didn't even try..."

"Bethanie!" I screamed as after Lara's punch to her face she soared backwards and skidded against the crunchy leaved floor.

"Lara, stop this!" Pearl called as Lara walked after