Untouchable Darkness (The Dark Ones Saga, #2)(57)

The fire crackled as she spread her hands wide, her palms facing down. “My father was trusted with the immortal secret, with the knowledge of another world. He helped bring them humans in the beginning, he was the one who helped start the calling of numbers once immortals realized that humanity would need more help reigning itself in. The immortals were a type of police, and they didn’t have the numbers for it. So my father helped start the calling of breeders. They discovered that if an immortal Vampire for instance, mated with a human, the human not only gained immortality but she was able to birth children. It was the perfect plan.”

“But not all immortals are created equal,” Cassius mumbled and then pressed a kiss to his mother’s hand. “Why don’t you sleep? You look tired, I can tell her the rest of the story.”

“Yes.” His mother nodded, tears pooling in her eyes. “Yes, I’ll do that.”

She stood and walked off, softly shutting the door behind her.

“How is she alive?”

“A gift.” Cassius answered. “From my father.”

“Sariel?”

Cassius nodded. “You said you wanted to know what Dark Ones really were and how it happened, so I’m going to take you back to the beginning.”

“The beginning of the Dark Ones.”

His eyes flashed. “To the first one ever created.” He sighed as if he bore the weight of the world on his shoulders. “Me.”





Cassius



THE PAST WAS A painful reminder of my uncertain future, and exposing her to that, unsettled me completely, but if she wanted the truth.

I could not.

Would not, keep it from her.

“Watch,” I whispered, lying down with her near the fire, as her body relaxed against mine, I waited for her to fall into a deep sleep and prayed that she wouldn’t hate herself for what she was.

Because Dark Ones… were not the heroes.

But the villains.

I kissed her forehead and began my story as I walked into her dream, grasping her hand tightly. “Look, look at the ones who watch.”

Two hundred men stood on the edge of the mountain, each of them well over seven feet tall, their faces were perfectly shaped as if the person who had created them had special knowledge of just how far away eyes should be from the nose, and the nose from the lips.

To stare at them was to experience the fullest of contentment.

To be in their presence was absolute adoration.

A battle brewed in front of them, yet they were immobile.

“They were called the ones who do not sleep.” I pointed at the line of men as their gold armor glistened against the sun, a sword and shield was placed in each hand. They continued to stand, their hair tangled in the wind, a mixture of reds and black tendrils escaped out of their gold helmets.

One of the two hundred flinched as a man was decapitated.

He lowered his head for a fraction of a second, while one of the men next to him grunted.

And still, they stood.

“Why aren’t they helping?” Stephanie asked. “Humans are dying! Getting slaughtered by one another. Why don’t they intervene?”

“Because it’s not their job,” I answered. “Their job is to watch, their job is to never close their eyes. For when you close your eyes, even for a brief moment, you lose sight of what’s in front of you, and at times, you can lose sight of what’s inside.”

“That makes no sense.” Stephanie pointed back down at the humans. “Blood’s everywhere, it would take two of the men on the mountain to stop this.”

“One,” I corrected her. “It would only take one.”

The scene changed and suddenly the village in front of them was getting swallowed up in flames.

And again.

They watched.

Stephanie screamed at them. And yet they watched. “Cassius! Do something, there’s women…” She choked out a sob. “Children are dying!”

“Children die every day.” I spoke in a soft whisper. “They see it every day, they’ve been watching for hundreds of years, what makes this day different?”

Stephanie covered her eyes as a child was tossed into the fire—alive.

Screaming she tried to run toward the men watching, but I held her back. It shattered my heart, to see her reaction, to know that the men could have done something—but that they couldn’t.

“Stephanie.” I licked my lips. “To act is to go against every cell in their body, every reason they were created. You have to understand, they were not made to feel, they were made to act.”

“Then why don’t they act!”

“Because they have not been told to… yet.”

More children screamed.

And then suddenly a light shone down on the two hundred men, flickering against their gold shields. Each shield held the design of a tree, but every tree was different, as if its origin came from a differing country or region.

The shields swiftly moved to the front of the men, and with a roar the two hundred descended upon the crowd of humans getting slaughtered.

It was over in thirty seconds.

Less than that.

The humans thanked the men, the same men who had watched them suffer for days, weeks, years, not knowing that this wasn’t some army marching through as they had claimed, but actual beings, created to watch over humanity.