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  TAKEN

  THE DARK FAE

  BOOK TWO

  Taken

  Book 2 of The Dark Fae.

  Copyright © 2020 by Quinn Blackbird

  All rights reserved.

  No part of this book may be used or reproduced in any manner whatsoever without written permission—this includes scanning and/or unauthorised distribution—except in case of brief quotations used in reviews and/or academic articles, in which case quotations are permitted.

  This is a work of fiction. Any resemblance to actual persons, whether alive or dead, is purely coincidental. Names, characters, incidents, and places are all products of the author’s imagination.

  Imprint: Independently published.

  1

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  1

  The hotness is unbearable.

  Sweat sticks my clothes to me, my hair clings to my soaked face, and I try to escape the uncomfortable embrace of the heat. My legs writhe against the constricting leggings that grip me.

  “She’s waking,” an unfamiliar voice says.

  I follow the sound and, through dazed and lazy eyes, glare up at the face hovering above mine.

  “There,” the older man says with a gruff nod and jerk of the thumb. “Told you she’d wake up.”

  He moves away, but is quickly replaced by the face of a young woman, around my age I think, somewhere in her mid-twenties. Her dark hair has a red tint to it, the kind my grandmother used to call “auburn”. I always thought it was a nice way of saying “almost ginger”, but that’s just me.

  “Can you hear me?” the girl asks, and tucks a strand of hair behind her ear. I notice her ear is somewhat deformed. The upper shell of it warps inwards, like it’s deflated somewhat.

  I force a nod. But even just that one movement sends screaming pain down my spine and dizzies me instantly. I groan and reach for the back of my head. Before I can touch the wound that’s bandaged by scraps of t-shirt, the girl stops me. She takes my wrist and sets it back down on the hot ground. Then, she holds up her hand.

  “How many fingers am I holding up?” she asks me.

  I fight the urge to hit her hand away from me.

  “Three,” I say, and the hoarse, gravelly sound of my voice shocks me. I need water, I realise. And as soon as that need sinks in, I’m suddenly parched. My throat burns with the fiery air forcing its way inside of me.

  As if reading my mind, the girl brings a plastic bottle to my lips. She pours some lukewarm water into my mouth, and I swallow as greedily as my energy can manage.

  “That’s it,” she encourages. “Just a bit more.”

  Someone is supporting my neck. I feel their lap shift under me and, as I draw away from the half-empty bottle, I look up at the one kneeling under me. It’s the man who ripped apart his t-shirt to bind my head-wound. He doesn’t look down at me. Instead, his grim face is aimed at the fires devouring the village.

  I trace his gaze and feel my veins run cold. All of the village is burning. Not a building left untouched by the angry flames.

  We’ve moved away from the spot I was dumped at. Now, we’re at the end of the village, parked a safe distance away from the fires. Still, that doesn’t stop the molten heat from burning my exposed skin. The wound on my arm grows itchy under the heat.

  As I force myself upright, I shrug off the man behind me as he tries to guide me back down. I want to see it for myself.

  I sit up and watch the flames devour the village. From this far, despite that the searing heat hurts my eyes, I can see bodies dotted along the main street. It’s too far to recognise the faces, but I know in my churning gut that they were my group. People I was surviving with.

  I doubt any of them survived. More will be burning in the buildings, or severed to pieces in the alleys.

  All around us, dark fae watch the village die. Some wear slight smiles of satisfaction as they drink in their handiwork. Others look bored, picking at their nails with the tips of blades, or wiping ash off their arms and faces with damp rags.

  But they all watch. Like some kind of ritual.

  I look around. The dark fae surround us. No sign of the leader. At least, he’s not near us. The hundreds of dark fae are spread out, taking rest after their efforts today.

  Only a few are still on alert, and those are the fae who guard us. They encircle us, some sitting, others standing at full attention. They are like a fae-cage, trapping us humans in this small circle we’re crammed into. My heart turns to ice in my chest as I study the humans around me.

  They don’t look too bad, given the circumstances of the world. Their clothes are dirty, but they aren’t gaunt and on the brink of starvation like I am. Despite their captive situation, they look relatively healthy.

  But that’s what worries me. Why do the dark fae keep them alive, feed them, keep them healthy and protect them from the fires they set themselves? What’s so special about them—or should I say us?

  Something ghastly shatters my thoughts.

  I blink, rub my eyes, then stare again at the horse climbing the slope up-road. It’s not like any horse I’ve ever seen. It’s something out of a horror movie.

  The beast is hairless. Grey skin clings to the protruding bones of the steed, and a thin, narrow tail sways behind it, reminding me of those swords used in fencing. It looks as sharp as a sword, anyway. And its eyes… crimson balls of fire.

  Without tearing my gaze away from the beast, I hit out at the girl beside me, the one who fed me some water. Before I can ask her if she sees the beast too, she takes my hand gently and sets it down on my lap.

  “I know,” she murmurs under her breath, quiet enough for me to hear, but also quiet enough for me to suspect she doesn’t want the fae overhearing us. “You get used to them.”

  The beasts or the fae?

  What’s the difference, really?

  I look the girl straight in the eye.

  “What is happening?” I ask in a whisper, voice wrought with the pain pulsing through my body. “Why are we here?”

  She shakes her head as if to warn me to drop it. I notice that the man behind me suddenly slips away and joins the others who huddle away from me.

  “Shh,” the girl hushes me, and throws a wary glance around the fae guarding us.

  One of the guards has turned toward us and watches us with unveiled interest. But there’s a glimmer of anger there in his eyes, hidden behind the curiosity. I get the feeling he wants us to keep talking—and that the consequences won’t be friendly.

  I cut my gaze to my ankle, where the sleeve of a jumper is wrapped tightly. “Who did that?” I ask without thinking.

  But for some reason, the guard doesn’t react, and the girl’s shoulders relax, like she’s relieved or something. Maybe it’s the change of topic, I wonder. We can speak, especially about our injuries, but not about the fae or their motives for keeping us here.

  I bite my tongue on the questions I’m aching to ask. I’ll get my chance to ask later. Not now in the silence, broken up only by the crackles of the fire in the village, and the occasional murmur between nearby fae.

  “Hassan did the dressings,” the girl tells me, and gestures to the dark-haired older man whose lap I was rested on earlier.

  He looks middle-eastern, and it makes me wonder how far and wide this army of dark fae has travelled, or if Hassan was picked up in some other country.

  “I did this,” she adds, and lifts my bare arm.

  The open wounds (self-inflicted) have been smeared with some sort of paste.

  “I’m Adrianna,” she says. Her expectant look my way waits for my introduction.

  It’s Valerie, but “Just call me Vale,” I say.
/>   “All right, Vale,” she starts in a faint accent that I can’t quite place. It’s a mixture between Canadian and Australian. It’s got that thick twang to it. “I’m going to give you some of these—” she pulls out a pill bottle from her jacket pocket, and uncorks the lid. “—for the pain. It’ll numb you enough for the journey.”

  As she deposits three orange pills onto my palms, she catches my gaze with a severe look my way. In a low voice, she urges, “Don’t fall behind. Slackers end up dead. No matter what, you have to keep up with the army.”

  I nod slowly, a frown creasing between my eyebrows. But I don’t argue it. I throw back the pills and swallow them with the rest of the water in the plastic bottle.

  It hurts me—physically gives me a pang in the chest—to see Adrianna throw the water bottle away once it’s empty. Old environmental habits and all…

  Adrianna shifts to sit at my feet, and she falls silent. All the humans do, actually. There’s a terrible, thick moment in which we all just watch the village disintegrate to ruins. We watch for a long time. So long that, eventually, the fire loses its rage and soon simmers into flickering flames again.

  I finally look away from the village.

  The dark fae have forgotten about it already. They talk amongst each other, share drinks from dark-leather canteens they carry over their shoulders, and pick at grapes they must have foraged from the vineyards in the south, and I spot some apples being passed from hand to hand under the fierce light of the fire-torches.

  We, the humans, don’t have fruit. No food at all, actually. And it’s been a long while since I’ve eaten. My bag full of rations lies somewhere in the destruction of the village. Wasted food meant to fill my belly, but it looks like I’ll go hungry again—not unlike the other humans I’m with.

  Sure, they don’t look starved or too skinny and frail. They look fed enough, not overfed, not underfed. I wonder when the last time they ate was, and how long I’ll have to wait until food is dished out again. Since none of the human captives carry backpacks with them, I imagine the food rations are decided and delivered by the fae.

  When ash and soot are what’s left of the village, restlessness ripples through the dark fae, and one by one, they start to rise. I watch as leather-canteens are stowed away and daggers are sheathed. We’re on the move within minutes.

  I keep up as best as I can.

  After Adrianna’s warning, I don’t risk falling behind in the human group.

  Every hobbled step sends shooting pains through my leg. My ribs ache, my head spins, and I can feel the cartilage in my knees rubbing against the bone. I’ve never been more exhausted or worn-down in my life, and I’ve lived through more than most. All the survivors have.

  There have been too many challenges facing us since this all started. Since the day Britain’s sky was overtaken by pure and utter darkness, the world was never the same. That’s how it started, but not how it ended. It only got worse from there.

  The darkness spread fast.

  In a matter of weeks, all of the world was covered in the blackness. But then, our planes stopped working. Some fell out of the sky. Our televisions and cars died all over Europe. Radios stopped broadcasting—we were quickly isolated from each other.

  That was around the time I was evacuated to another city. And only days after I arrived, war broke out. Not the kind with planes that drop bombs, the good old fashioned bloodshed took place on battlefields against neighbouring countries.

  Everyone was just trying to keep their borders impenetrable as people fled, chasing stories of where the darkness hadn’t spread, or just chasing sustenance. We were starving. Without machines to slaughter and transport livestock, without the farming industry to feed us, the world became hungry.

  Even then, we lived off what we could find in grocery stores and shopping centres. But that time didn’t last too long, just like the wars. I moved around so much in those days that I don’t remember when the wars stopped or how.

  What I do remember is the plague that nearly wiped us out.

  The powerful strike by the dark fae, no doubt. Before they came to sweep our world clean of humans, they released the virus. Something completely foreign to us, a virus we had no way of combating, especially not with our electricity and machines at a standstill.

  We were in the dark ages again. And it killed the entire world. Almost.

  I caught the virus. And I was the only one in my quarantine to survive it. That includes the doctors and nurses—no one survived it. I was left alone in the middle of an abandoned town, west of Helsinki in Finland.

  That’s when I started walking.

  At first, it was to find others. Other survivors of the darkness, the wars, the famine, and the pestilence. I found Olaf first. He died before we reached the outer towns of Moscow, and by then we’d picked up a few other strays along the way.

  I smile at the faint memory of Olaf. A big, beefy Norwegian with a scruffy copper beard and a heart of gold. We didn’t talk much. He didn’t understand a lick of English, and I only knew the basics of his language; ‘hello’, ‘thank you’, and ‘goodbye’, that sort of thing. I spoke that last word to him in his final moments. What a way to go, dying from a festering infected wound in the leg, after surviving so much already.

  It was winter then, and the freezing, snowy conditions didn’t help. After his leg was hurt, we couldn’t move. So we bunkered down in a cabin in the woods, and we stayed with him until his last breath.

  It’s strange to think about him now, so long after I knew him. I’d almost forgotten him in the (what feels like an) eternity between us. Truthfully, it’s only been about ten months since he died (I keep track in my diary, now lost to the fire of the village), but it feels like it was a lifetime ago.

  Time is a funny concept now. I don’t fully understand it anymore. According to my diary, it’s been fourteen months since the darkness came from Britain. Twelve months since I last heard anything about wars and I was quarantined in Finland. And eleven months since I walked out of that ghost-town and went in search of others like me—survivors.

  My home in London was devoured by the black skies. My grandparents, probably long gone now. I have no delusions that they have survived and are out there, somewhere. And to survive this, it’s better to just let the memory of them become just that—a memory.

  Eventually, that’s how we all end up. But soon, there won’t be anyone left to carry on our memories. We will fade to nothing in the dark. Eventually, we will all become ash, just like that village, and be left to wash away in the rains and wind.

  And who will remember us then?

  2

  One thing I didn’t think I would have to get used to again is light. The orange glows from the fire-torches all around brighten the road we walk, and it’s still as disorientating as it was at the village. My eyes squint against the onslaught of light and they can’t help but sting and water.

  But the light from the fire-torches isn’t bright enough to illuminate much more than the road. At the front of the march, the fae carry the most torches and that brightens the path we’re taking, but back here at the far end of the army, our light is fairly dim in comparison. Still, the light is enough to bring my fists to my eyes and rub every so often.

  The trek to Colmar isn’t a long one.

  We’re breaching the border of the medieval-renaissance town in what feels like a couple of hours, but in these dark days, it’s nearly impossible to tell time. Even with my diary in which I marked off the days that passed, it was all just guessing. I didn’t really know when days passed and nights came, so I just went off how it felt.

  Like now, it feels too soon to be marching on the border of a town this large, so large that it can almost be called a city. A small one, but still.

  It gives my gut unease. There might still be people in here, or survivors passing through.

  Anxiety is flooding me by the time we’re halfway uphill, and I see the peaks of the timber-faced houses rise up against t
he dark sky. Dusty orange light from the fire-torches illuminates the dead town the closer we get.

  Uphill is a battle for me. My ankle screams with every step up the slope. Soon, I have to lean my weight on Adrianna, and hope she doesn’t let me fall behind. From her warnings, I doubt it’s a pleasant fate to become too slow for the fae army.

  To my rescue, Hassan comes up my right. He takes my arm and drapes it over his shoulder, letting off some weight from the exhausted Adrianna. I can feel her relief ribbon through her as she draws away from me.

  “Thanks,” I mutter under my breath. Hassan hears me just fine, it’s the guards I’m careful of. I don’t want to draw any attention to myself, and the last thing I want is for them to realise how weak and injured I am. They might not wait for me to fall behind before they remove me from the group.

  At the thought of the group, I think of my old one. None of them would have helped my like this, taking my weight on them uphill just to make sure I survived another day. I would have been left behind.

  It’s not a comforting realisation. Because I don’t know if I can do the same for them. So long I’ve been fighting for myself, I can’t fathom how to fight for others too. Even in the old world with my old life, I wasn’t one to come to the rescue of others. I’m more of an observer—watching from the sidelines, observing, having my thoughts and opinions, but never acting on them.

  Whatever can save me—that’s what I want. Even if it means leaving people behind; because it wasn’t just my group who did that, I did it too. I turned my back on people and walked away with the others.

  I’m just as horrible as they were.

  But I guess it is people like me who are built for this world. I’m surprised Adrianna and Hassan have survived long enough to get to this point.

  No matter. We’ll all be dead soon anyway.

  Beside me, Adrianna keeps pace. “How’s the pain?”

  I throw her a withering look. “Painful.” Stupid questions deserve stupid answers. That’s what my grandmother always said. And she wasn’t wrong.