Dark Empathy Archibald Bradford (best books to read in your 20s TXT) 📖

Jonathan was in the process of changing her bandages while she hissed in pain.

“I’ve converted the last of the girls you brought in before... this.” He remarked with a vague nod at her wounded abdomen; “That leaves us with fifteen Tenebrae, all sitting around and getting fat off the last of our provisions while we wait on you to-”

Her glare silenced him and he swallowed nervously.

Being an Empath, he could normally sense just how much she hated him, all tangled together with her love for him, but right now she was leaning rather heavily towards hate.

“Eve, we can still do this. First we get you well, then start up again, no one knows where we are-”

“Do I look like I need your words of encouragement?” She demanded; “I will be well, and when I am, I will find those cunts and tear them apart. I will rip off the angel’s wings and make her watch while I feast on the Minotaur’s heart and the giant’s tongue.”

She meant every word, and the violent images that they invoked were horrifying, made doubly so as he experienced them through his gift.

Jonathan shuddered, but continued in his work, no stranger to her rampant bloodlust.

He had known Evadne for almost his entire life; she had basically raised him after his parents were killed in a freak accident.

At least, she told him it was an accident.

Once he came into his powers he soon learned that she was the one who killed them, she was the one who tore out his mother’s throat right in front of her infant son.

They never spoke of it, because he didn’t blame her.

He knew why she did it, why she hunted the Empaths to near extinction: They were the greatest success of the Valkyrie, the greatest chance for peace between man and monster.

And the forces of entropy that held a piece of Evadne’s soul could not allow peace.

Jonathan had always been convinced that once their task was complete his love for her could break the hold the demons had over her.

But that was tomorrow’s battle.

“Okay fine. You’re going to slaughter and eat them. For now though, you need a meal that isn’t dripping with the blood of our enemies.”

In the dark chaos of her mind she felt the faintest twinge of affection at his concern for her well-being and the same constant guilt for her treatment of him welled to the surface.

But though it gave him hope, it was quickly crushed by her darker thoughts as he turned to the cabinet where their provisions were stored.

Because in a part of the Chimera’s mind that he could not feel, another voice sounded.

“I have not forgotten.” She spoke low to answer the silent question.

“What was that?” Jonathan called.

“Nothing.”

“Right. Oh, before I forget.” His head turned and his hand paused in slicing meat for her; “I heard more noises in the east tunnels.”

She hissed at the irritating news.

“Are we discovered?”

He frowned and waggled the knife back and forth.

“Maybe, but I don’t believe so. Something is digging over there. I suspect whoever it is will break through in the next few days if that is their intention.”

“And then?”

Her words were flat, but her meaning was clear.

She just needed to hear him say it.

He sighed as he turned to face her again, a plate of bloody meat in hand.

“And then I sick the Tenebrae on them.”

__________

Back in the Saenga village, Adrian stared at nothing, dearly wishing he had taken Alcaia’s warning to heart.

He was sitting by one of the Amazons’ many fires with a blanket over his shoulders, but all he could see, whenever he blinked or his mind wandered, was Cheri’s face.

Due to the cold, the Amazons had been unable to close her eyelids.

Instead they had placed a cloth over her vacant eyes, but he had pulled it off in his urgent desire to see her again.

He could practically hear his gentle Truffle scolding him for being such an idiot.

“Hello again, Aegis.”

An oddly accented voice cut through his haunted musings and he turned to see that Olena had returned.

“Alcaia sent word to me.” She said by way of explaining her presence.

“Oh... kay.” The words felt foreign and hollow on his lips as he acknowledged her.

She stared at him for a long time, measuring his non-response.

The feel of her eyes on him drew him out of his reverie, but that only made him remember the bodies of his friends, all lined up in the village.

The grief that he had barely been holding at bay suddenly overwhelmed him and he slumped in place, gasping and sobbing as the faces of his friends filled his mind.

“I just ran!” He said bitterly; “I should have, I should have died with them!”

Olena said nothing at first, then gave an almost nonchalant shrug.

“That’s pretty selfish. If you had died with them, then the world would be so much worse off for not knowing the truth.”

As she spoke she drew a large needle made of bone from the folds of her shawl.

Then stabbed him deep in his uninjured shoulder.

He yelped and pulled back, the pain sending a rush of energy through him even as he flinched away from it, but he lost his balance and his crutch fell to one side as he landed on his ass on the cold ground.

“Ow! Hey! What the-”

“I am helping. Don’t be such a man about it.”

She drew her fingers down the length of the needle to collect his blood and began to work it between them, muttering an odd chant under her breath. Eldritch light seeped out of her eyes like green mist and quickly turning the blood a similar colour.

“Grief and regret. No joy