Dark Skies : A Dark Fae Romance, A Dark Paranormal Romance (Dark Fae: Extinction Book 2) Read online

  DARK FAE:

  EXTINCTION

  DARK SKIES

  BOOK 2

  QUINN BLACKBIRD

  Dark Skies

  Book 2 of Dark Fae: Extinction

  Part of the Dark Fae Universe

  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.

  DARK FAE: EXTINCTION

  WARNINGS

  DARK SKIES

  1

  2

  3

  4

  5

  6

  7

  8

  9

  10

  11

  WARNINGS

  To give you an idea of what you’re about to read, I ask that my family put this down first. Turn off your kindle. If you don’t, gatherings might be awkward.

  There, I said it.

  Content warnings are as follows – mentions of suicidal ideation, graphic violence, graphic erotic scenes, dark romance, dark psychology.

  These are not your friendly neighbourhood fae and I like my heroines twisted.

  —Quinn Blackbird

  DARK SKIES

  BOOK TWO

  1

  I’m a prisoner now. Captured by a dangerous dark fae warrior.

  Just an hour ago, I watched with my own eyes as he struck a dagger up through the underchin of a man who was the closest thing to a friend I had in this world.

  Just an hour ago, I should have died alongside him. Instead—even after shooting this dark fae, trying to kill him as he has killed so many of my kind—I am still alive. Taken by a dark fae beast.

  And I’m not alone.

  Spike is with me, too. ‘Kuris’, he called us. That we both have a set of three freckles in a crooked line is what makes us kuris. Whatever that means, I have no clue—I only know that it spared my life when I wanted to die. I wanted to go out with the rest of my group.

  I’m tired.

  So, so tired of it all. The hiding, the running, the fleeing, barely scraping by on tins of nearly out-of-date foods we find in dusty old shops, forever quiet streets and villages, the dangers lurking in the dark, the fae armies hunting and burning us to ash, and the latest danger of those tentacle-creature clouds that took some of us out before we even had the chance to take our final stand.

  Can’t you see I’m tired? That I don’t want to be here, trapped with one of those beasts? It’s not a salvation of any kind to me. Salvation comes in pill bottles and bullets to the brain, not in slavery.

  I can’t do this.

  Already, my heart is jumping up into my throat, trying to break free of the confines of my chest, my eyes burn with the eternal sting of tears, and it’s all I can do to keep my shallow breaths steady enough to stop myself from spiralling into a panic attack.

  I need to get the fuck out of here.

  Or I need to kill this beast trapping me.

  Either way, I need to be free.

  2

  I’m dying all over again. This time on the inside.

  I ache for the burn of vodka down my throat and the warmth of a pill-bottle in my grip. Instead, I can only feel the prickly sensation of thirst burning me, and all that my hands touch is my side as I twist my arms around to my bruised ribs. The rope around my wrists doesn’t allow for more than that.

  This warrior, this dark fae—my fucking captor—has no intention of letting us go, or even delivering us a swift death. He means only to make us suffer.

  At the top of the gravelly road, where the land lumps up into a mound, the warrior stops us—and he makes us look down at the fiery road of the small village. He makes us watch for a time too long at severed limbs and pools of blood, all glistening under the flames of bomb-fires and a leftover torch.

  The fire is spreading, reaching from the insides of abandoned cars and jumping across the road to the wood-faced houses bordering the street. It isn't terribly long before we’re watching limbs and corpses burn.

  I can’t help it. The sting of stomach acid crawls up my chest and settles in my throat. It bubbles there, preparing to throw me into a heaving fit.

  I shut my eyes and look away, as though that will somehow prevent the mess I’m about to make all over the gravel. But I hardly get the chance to steady myself and fight off my climbing nausea—

  A large, warm hand snatches my face. It clutches so tight that I can feel white spots blossom all over my aching jaw as I snap open my eyes.

  I meet the ember-glare of a furious warrior.

  The dark fae looks down at me, his lashes low, his eyes burning like the flames down the hill. His bowed upper lip twitches as he snarls at me, “Watch.”

  Yet, he makes the decision for me. His fingers dig harder into my face, pushing out my cheeks and lips until I resemble a goldfish, and he twists my head back around to face the village below.

  I blink away tears I didn’t realise had come.

  After a few thrumming heartbeats, his hand slips away from my face. It’s then that it hits me—the smell, no the stink of burning flesh.

  And now it really can’t be helped.

  My body is thrown forward with the force of it. Instinctively, my hands reach for the fabric strip bound around my head. I wrestle it out of my mouth just in time.

  Faintly, I’m aware of the warrior’s hand snatching the back of my neck, as if ready to yank me back to him, as though he thinks I’m making a run for it—but then that wretched gurgling sound happens, and it’s quickly followed by a splash of brown bile.

  Dazed, I watch droplets splatter onto my boots. Who cares? They are already beyond saving, with dried blood, cuts and scuffs, earlier traces of vomit. I’ve only made them a bit worse.

  It’s my dress I’m worried about. The torn hem at the front wears a faint brown stain that reeks of stomach acid. That will be hard to wash out with some pond water we might come across—if I survive long enough to let the smell bother me. Maybe I’m getting ahead of myself.

  But then, this is what they do, isn't it? The dark fae.

  From what Spike told me—and what I saw with my own eyes in the army during the earthquake—it’s clear this warrior has taken us as slaves. Spike, with the two heavy satchels slung over his shoulders, weighing him down to the left and the firetorch in his sweaty hands, he’s the mule.

  But if he’s the mule—what am I?

  Can’t think about that.

  Just a flash of gruelling possibilities in my mind throws me forward again and I collapse to my knees. Kneecaps crunch on the gravel; my wince is drowned out by another spray of sick. This time, spatters reach my bound wrists and curled fingers.

  A grimace twists my face just as a shudder runs down me.

  The warrior has no patience for my weak stomach; I feel the rough tug of the rope before it takes my wrists out from under me. With my support lost, I fall to my side, barely missing the puddles of vomit on the gravel road.

  I throw a glare up at him. Hatred masquerades as bravery as my lip curls and I spit out the last of the sick
from my mouth.

  He is unfazed. Shadows from his long lashes crawl down his face, partly illuminated by the growing fires down in the village. He tugs again and I have only a split second to propel myself up onto my bottom before I can be dragged across the vomit.

  Spike keeps his gaze downcast. He looks at the toes of his boots, silent and utterly submissive.

  Maybe I should be more understanding of what his fear manifests into within him. My fear isn't healthy either—it turns me into a suicidal wreck. The anxiety that boils up inside my veins, rising like a pressure cooker, floods me with urges to run at the warrior and sink my fingers into his eyeballs.

  Of course, my fear doesn't make me entirely stupid. I’ll just receive another punishment—another beating, maybe. And I can’t take anymore bruised ribs or aching back pains. So I’ll bide my time.

  Gritting my teeth, I force myself to stand. Upright, I sway for a heartbeat under the watchful stare of the warrior. Those ember eyes are just begging to be ripped out of their sockets.

  He keeps his grip tight on the black, smooth rope that binds my wrists to his weapons belt. His other hand, though, is pressed firmly against his side; challenging the blood flow that seeps out from his bomb-wound. And his shoulder leaks black streaks—littered with bullet wounds that I left in him.

  Fleetingly, I wonder if I’ve been punished enough for shooting him. The kick to the ribs, the punch to the gut, the knock to the back, the kidnapping; surely that would be plenty revenge for each of the two bullets I shot into him?

  I fucking hope so.

  My body is screaming all over. I can’t handle another moment like that.

  And still, the nausea clings to me as I sway between Spike and the warrior.

  Spike simply hugs the satchels closer to his chest, as though he fears my little episode of sick and retching will bring punishment down upon us.

  The warrior just watches me for a long, quiet moment. That moment is broken as his gaze drops to my belly and a crease knits his dark eyebrows together.

  I wear a frown to match his and trace his stare. There’s nothing there, other than vomit-and-blood-stained patches on my dress.

  His eyes flicker away, landing on the sick crawling over the small gravelly stones. And then it clicks in my head like a light switch turning on.

  He’s wondering if I’m pregnant. He wonders if my sick spell is from fucking pregnancy—definitely can’t be from the stink of burning flesh in the air, right? Bloody fae. So ingrained in violence and horror that they can’t even fathom the idea of a human finding all that gore absolutely sickening.

  “It’s the smell,” I tell him. “If you were normal, you would be sickened by it all, too. Psychopath.”

  Amber eyes snap to me, alive with the flames on the torch and those burning the village to ash. The creases on his brow fade away and he reaches out for me. He grabs the fabric strip from around my neck and lifts it; it fits snug in my mouth, silencing me.

  I lower my lashes on the devil before me.

  The warrior suddenly turns his back on me—and the gesture has my ropes tugging with the twist of his belt.

  I stagger forward as Spike is quick to right himself.

  He marches on up the gravel road, and we follow with little other choice. Though, I do writhe my wrists in the rope for a while, but there is no give, not enough space between the rope and my skin to even stick a pin through.

  Before we walk out of seeing distance from the village, I throw a look back over my shoulder. It still burns. And I recall that the dark fae warrior moved through the corpses and stabbed them all, making sure they were dead—or collecting their blood for his dagger, like some sort of ritual or whatever.

  There were bodies missing. Back at the village, among all the smog and the blood, I was sure of it.

  Now, I’m not as certain. Could just be my head injury, perhaps I’m simply confused. But when we walked the road for corpses, I counted two less than what there should have been. Kale was among the missing ones.

  With the warrior so close to us—and having a clear knowledge of our language, apparently—it’s not as though I can ask Spike if he noticed, too. So the moment we have a chance to talk, I’ll make note to ask him.

  As we walk the gravel road, far beyond the village’s orange hues and into the darkness with only the torch to shed light on our steps, I hold onto the possibility that others survived, that two of our group got away. Because maybe, just maybe, that means they might come back for us. They might devise a plan to save us, or do what they can to end the warrior before he does godknowswhat to us.

  Wishful thinking, though.

  If anyone did make it out of the village, they wouldn't come back for us. We would be left behind, and I know that. It’s sort of an unspoken rule among our group; those who fall behind, stay behind. Don’t risk more people to save them.

  So I feel the cold, hard truth that we are alone, and this is our fate.

  Still, there is a glimmer of hope. The warrior is hurt. His wounds bleed freely; especially the one on his side that, no matter how hard he presses his hand against, oozes black—the worst kind of blood. He’s slowing down, too.

  I watch him out the corner of my eye, how his shoulders are starting to slump, and his fingers are slick with black blood. The firetorch casts orange glows over the gradual stagger of his legs.

  Before he can succumb to his wounds, the dark fae takes us off-road and onto dry, cracked land. A farm, I think fleetingly, as we step over a fallen wire-fence.

  The walk over the farmland is hard on the knees. The earth here is tougher than rope, harder than stone. Part of the reason I’m wearing a dress is that the breezes are warm and the air is dry—it’s undeniably summer, and the heat has dehydrated this farm.

  I’ve never understood how, without the sun, we still have seasons down here in the dark. Without photosynthesis, how can the grass and trees still grow, how can the air be touched with warmth?

  But then, the dark fae have a magic about them, don't they? A power untold, undiscovered by my kind. Maybe the sun really is penetrating the black in a way, but we just can’t see it?

  The thoughts dizzy me. At the back of my head, the wound there is throbbing. Feels like it’s swelling, as though I can track every step it takes to turn into a large lump.

  I wouldn't mind so much if it weren't for the rest of my body. Aches have sprung up all over, and I will be surprised if when I look at myself, there aren’t bruises littering my pale skin.

  And even though the warrior has slowed down from his own injuries, he’s still moving too fast for me across the desolate farmland. I’m struggling to keep pace—and when the toe of my boot catches on a small rock, I’m sent tumbling over.

  Long blonde hair is quick to whip my cheeks as I go sprawling; a tangled mess, blinding me. Skinny arms grapple to stop my fall, but t’s all I can do to cross them and block the impact.

  I land hard on a collection of stones. My cry of pain catches in my throat as a grunt, muffled by the material silencing me.

  There is no pity to be found in the dark fae. He jerks the rope hard enough to have my bones screaming in protest. I swear my wrists creak.

  Again, I cry out, feeling the tug reach all the way up to my shoulders.

  Bastard, my eyes say as I struggle onto all fours.

  Weighed down by satchels and balancing a firetorch in one hand, Spike stretches down for me. I think for a moment that he’s meaning to help me up, but the creep grazes the side of my breast as he reaches for my arm.

  My muzzle garbles the words I throw at him but not the kick that I boot out at his calf. He grunts at the impact, his balance thrown off for a beat.

  I push up from the stones.

  As I right myself and shake my wrists to ease the aches budding there, I catch the gaze of the warrior. His frown has returned, cutting his gaze between me and Spike.

  I cast my stare down to the stones, avoiding him as best as I can.

  The rope loose
ns somewhat. I lift my eyes up just enough to watch as the warrior unwinds it a little from his belt, feeding me more space.

  My face wrinkles with a scowl. He must need me relatively well and healthy to be a useful slave to him before he finds his army.

  Whatever his reasons, I’m given no more time to mull them over—he’s walking again, and I notice that he’s cut to the left. Purpose sinks into his steps, alleviating some of the stumble he had earlier, and he journeys into the thick black ahead.

  He’s seen something. We’re coming right for it.

  And with the rumble spurring deep in my belly, I pray to Mother Earth that he’s found something to eat. I’m starving, and I don’t recall the last time I ate other than the chocolate nougat bar back at the flat.

  I’m so hungry I could eat the rotting sheep carcass we briefly pass.

  And then we come to it; what the warrior saw ahead in the dark—

  A shed.

  The warrior swipes the torch from Spike (he trembles at the close contact and I recoil). He doesn't pay any mind to our reactions, probably used it by now after carting around so many kuris with his unit.

  My eyes blur as he flips the torch so that the flames lick up it, not flicker above. He sinks the small fire into the hard earth.

  Light is extinguished, and we are thrown into bleak nothingness.

  3

  Still, even after years of this life, I’m amazed at just how dark it is out here. It’s a thick blackness, dense—almost suffocating. It’s more than air; it is a smog, blinding and tangible. I can physically touch it; feel its soft curls against my skin, the pressure of it against my palm.

  Can’t see my own hand in front of my face.

  Hell, I can’t even see my nose.

  Jolted out of the moment of awe, the warrior marches across the plains to the shed—and the ropes drag us along with him.

  Then I hear it and I trip over my damn boots. I right myself quickly, but my heart still punches against my chest. There’s a faint creeeeek, hreeek slithering out of the dark.