Dark Angel Prologue

A chill hung in the air, much as it had those past few years since the fall of the Rome. The moon was high but the clouds hid her sad, graceful face from the mortal world below. A lone wolf, his coat torn to rags and speckled with blood, howled in the dark distance.

The girl pulled her black fur-lined hood closer about her pale face, her pale grey eyes darting quickly from left to right. A drunkard watched her pass and shivered when her dark shadow crawled across his pimpled skin. The black alley cat hissed and ran.

The heavy oak door of the tavern repelled from the gentle touch of her black gloved fingertips. The riot inside hardly blinked at her arrival, in fact it could even be argued to have intensified from her presence. But her goal was simple; to falter now would send her straight back to whence she came and there was no time for such.

Dark winds were closing in.

Her steady steps, surer and stronger than she truly felt, led her over the empty bottles and the unconscious men and women to a small table in the corner. He sat with three others, speaking in hushed tones. They felt her presence and their conversation ceased, with it the joy and laughter that that filled the air. Every pair of eyes turned to her, some with intrigue and some with fear but all with lust. All but those four sets of golden eyes that she so longed to have.

She took a breath and sat at the empty seat.

He poured her a crimson wine and the room erupted once more into a drunken revolt.

None of the men looked to her, nor did she to them.

“To what do we owe this pleasure, my lady?” said he with hair as golden as his liquid eyes.

“Crowded places disgust those like you,” one spat.

“On the contrary, sir,” she said, her voice unintentionally laced with silk and honey, “such chaos draws my attention.”

“I shall ask you once more; why are you here?”

The girl closed her frail eyelids for a moment, her head bowing slightly as her shoulders curled.

“I come to surrender, my lord.””

“Leave us,” the first says to his companions. They look to one another but follow his command. He moves closer to her, very much aware of the eyes and ears that crowded the small stifling room. “Why?”

“I cannot be expected to share him any longer with my sisters. I want to go home and be free from my chaffing bonds.”

Her voice wavers, an occurrence that is rare for one of such power. The golden man recognises such as he lays his tanned hand gentle on hers for a moment.

“I am only thought of as the beauty, my lord, the desire of every man. But, I grow bored of such empty affections. Please, I beg you, let me repent. Let me go home.”

Crystal tears glisten in her silver eyes and she wipes them away angrily.

“Our Lord has long wished for your repentance, Lucrezia. And he shall gladly give it. But yours alone is not enough to send you or I back to the heavenly realm in which we belong. Without the penance of your companions we shall be eternally sentenced to this dreary land.”

Her pale brow creases as the words stick in her slender throat. “I have the key.”

From a pocket hidden in the bodice of her burgundy gown emerges a great golden key encrusted with seven small gems of emerald, sapphire, amber, garnet, amethyst, pink tourmaline and rhodochrosite. But at the heart of the intricate maze that these stones created was a giant bloodstone, a gem black in colour with small specks of crimson littered across the skin. The sheer beauty of such an instrument could catch anyone’s eye, but the vast power held within each tiny gem could be wielded only by a few.

He stared, transfixed.

“My lord master trusts me, too far perhaps. Without this he has no power, yet he gave it to me freely.”

“How? I had heard that he would never part with it, even when he sleeps.”

Her eyes gleamed in the dim candlelight. “He is just a man, my lord, and men will always succumb to the right charms.”

The bright smile that lit his golden face began thawed a drop of the ice that the devil had sewed around her black heart when he first fell.