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“So, Barrett and the others…”
“They’re immortals as well,” he said.
“Cole too?”
He nodded. “James is the only human in our group.”
“And he knows?”
Damien nodded again. “There are very few humans who know our secrets, but yes, to answer your question. Barrett, Vincent, Zephyr, and Cole, they’re all like me. Immortals.”
“So, when Cole told me you helped him when he lost his parents…” I hesitated but asked. “What happened to them?”
Damien cleared his throat, and something icy trailed over my skin and I shivered. “Cole’s mother was human. It’s extremely rare for our kind to reproduce with yours, but it’s not impossible. His parents were both killed by darklings several years ago. He was only fourteen, no family to take him in. When I found out, I took him under my wing, sheltered him, taught him everything he knows and brought him into our ranks.”
An odd sense of pride swelled in my chest. For him to do that, the selflessness of it; I could only imagine how difficult it must have been to take someone in like that. The way they acted, I knew that Damien saw Cole like a younger brother. The whole group did. Still, the question lingering in the back of my mind began to gnaw at me.
I pursed my lips, trying to figure out how best to ask him, but nothing sounded any gentler, so I just blurted it out. “How did I end up out there? I don’t remember leaving my house, and Kat didn’t remember me leaving the first night either, so it must have happened after we fell asleep.”
He leaned forward, elbows resting on his knees as he laced his fingers together, resting his forehead against them. “That, I don't know. I've been searching for answers since I first found you out there. Nothing adds up. There were way too many darklings tonight. We don't normally see that many together. If I hadn’t found you when I did—”
I didn't want to think about what would’ve happened if he hadn't found me, what they would’ve done to me. I shuddered, remembering the feel of the darklings cold, slick hand on my throat.
He took a deep breath, calming himself before continuing. “For the last hundred years, the darklings have been nothing more than beasts. Uncoordinated, typically solitary. It’s always been easy to keep them under control.”
I stuttered at his casual statement. “H-hundred years?”
“Yeah.” Damien chuckled. “My house’s history dates back nearly two thousand years. I guess I neglected to mention that.”
“So…” My mind began to wonder in every direction. “If you don’t mind me asking, how old are you?”
A crooked grin spread across his face. “Are you sure you want to know?”
“Let me guess, you’re like a hundred? Two hundred years old?” I smirked, lifting my water bottle to take a sip.
“Hate to break it to you, but I’m nine hundred and ninety-two years old now. At least, I think. It gets hard to keep track sometimes.”
I choked on the water, spilling a bit of it on my shirt.
He belted out a laugh. “Yeah, I figured you’d react like that.”
“You’re joking right? This is a joke,” I gasped, brushing the front of my shirt before grabbing a nearby hand towel to dab it dry.
“Nope, I’ve been around a while. I think I still have the original program from Shakespeare’s ‘Romeo and Juliet’.” A smug grin spread across his face, knowing I was a theatre junky.
“You watched Shakespeare’s plays when he was ali—”Wait, don’t get distracted, Cas. “Never mind. Ok, so you’ve been around a while that’s clear.”
The humor drained from his expression. “As I was saying, they’ve always just been beasts. They don’t typically hunt in groups of more than two or three. Even still, if they were together, they were likely fighting over prey. They’re greedy and ravenous like that, quick to turn on each other for little more than scraps.”
I thought back to the first night I’d encountered them; I’d seen several darklings. Tonight, there’d been such a large group of them that there was no way I could’ve counted them, and they weren’t fighting amongst themselves at all. No, they were so focused on me that there was nothing else in their sights.
"Before I passed out, I saw a different…” My mind revisited the sight, the towering dark creature made of black mist and shadow, the glowing red eyes. “Creature behind the darkling that had grabbed me. It was huge. I couldn't really make out what it was, but I remember it had red eyes.”
Damien’s eyes drifted, and the look on his face made it clear there are more I didn’t know. “In our race, there are houses of power that have existed for countless millennia, even before my time, all harboring their own unique abilities and magics. Before The Fall of Kingdoms, there were more house than there are today, but our race took a huge blow in that war.” He shifted, turning toward me. “Each House of Power has a blood trait or power passed down from generation to generation. I’m from the House of Skia and we were gifted with the ability to use shadows.”
My gaze jerked to him. “Shadows? Like, how?”
“It’s as it sounds. I can control shadows, small or large. I can travel through them, manifest weapons, even use them to summon shadow beasts like the one you saw. Think of it as dark magic. The creature you saw was one I summoned.”
