A Soul to Keep: Duskwalker Brides: Book One, page 1
A Soul to Keep
Duskwalker Brides
Book One
Opal Reyne
Copyright © 2022 by Opal Reyne
All rights reserved. No part of this publication may be reproduced, distributed, or transmitted in any form or by any means, including photocopying, recording, or other electronic or mechanical methods, without the prior written permission of the publisher.
ISBN: 978-0-6455104-0-9
This book is a work of fiction. Any names, characters, places, and incidents are either a product of the author’s imagination or are used fictitiously. Any resemblance to actual people living or dead, events or locales is entirely coincidental.
Cover art: Sam Griffin
Ebook Internal Illustrations: Opal Reyne
To all the MonsterFuckers out there,
This book is for you.
Don’t pretend that you’ve never wanted to be railed by some human eating, dark entity that has a skull for a face – you saw the cover, you knew what you were getting yourself into, and you still chose to open this book and read it.
For as long as she could remember, there had been monsters.
Demons that lay in wait in the shadows. In the snow, in the trees, in every shadowy crevice possible. The disgusting creatures sought the darkness as they listened and waited for their prey. Swallowed by the yawning depth the moonlight did not touch beneath the canopy of leaves, they hid inside shrubs with claws ready to clutch unsuspecting prey.
They were evil. Unholy. Foul.
They terrified the humankind.
They haunted near cottages, houses, and towns to grow that delicious, mouth-watering scent of fear for themselves as though they found their prey sweeter if they were afraid. Howling and emitting crackling, clicking noises, like the rattling of dry bones together, they rustled trees and snapped twigs in the distance – anything to ensure the humans knew they were waiting for them.
Towns attracted the Demons by the sheer force of the scent alone, creating a feeding ground. Like a contagion, one terrified human ignited a stench throughout the entire village.
Along with human guards, walls made of towering wooden spikes circled the towns and kept them at bay.
But sometimes, it wasn't enough to keep them safe.
They came in many different sizes, which informed their prey if the monster in front of them would guarantee their death or not. The smaller the Demon, the less likely they had fed from a human before. With the bigger Demons, one could only imagine how many humans they had consumed to grow to their monstrous height, frame, and strength.
Their skin was black like a void, and they usually crawled around with a human-shaped head and body disgustingly meshed with animal parts. Their faces had human angles except for around their mouths, where instead they had monstrous fangs with some kind of muzzle.
Some had horns on their heads, others spikes. Some had feathers or fur, and others nothing.
Then there were those with bat-like wings sprouting from their backs who were considered ancient. Rare, but some of the deadliest because of the number of humans they’d eaten to obtain wings for true flight. These ancient Demons swooped from above, and before a person even knew they had been taken from the ground, a large, fanged-filled mouth stretched around their head and clamped shut with an explosion of blood and brain matter.
There were only two ways to avoid being caught in the clutches of these monsters. People could either live secluded from the towns that drew the attention of the Demons, or live confined within their walls.
If one chose to live within the towns, they could only walk from the relative safety of the town walls in the daytime, when the light of the sun kept the monsters at bay. It was their only comfort, that most, but not all, of the Demons couldn’t withstand the light.
Those that lived secluded did so with small families and erected their houses in the middle of clearings to protect them throughout the day.
At night, windows had to be closed, doors locked, and it was best not to make much noise or create too much light in order to remain hidden. They also relied on spells placed on the walls by human Priests and Priestesses who travelled the world to help the many towns and their residents. The spells were weak and easily broken, but they kept the smaller Demons at bay. The ward would not stop a torrent of them, however – or the strongest ones.
Thankfully for humankind, most of the Demons that terrorised the world were small. It was the only thing they were thankful for considering the horrible state of the world.
All these monsters lived in the Veil, the place they called home and where it was believed they were created. It was a large expanse of forest, as far as the eye could see, making up one fourth of the entire continent. Surrounded by cliff edges, the shade of the trees never seemed to allow any space for the sun to touch the ground. It was a place all these creatures could roam freely – even in the daytime.
That was the only solace for humans. Demons couldn’t stand to be in direct sunlight and often fled to the safety of the Veil throughout the day.
No one dared venture near that frightful place, and anyone who had never returned. No one knew what lie inside of the Veil.
It was a place of nightmares.
But, despite the Demons and the Veil, there were beings even more terrifying. There were nightmarish creatures that roamed the world as terrible omens. Those that could walk in the sunlight. They were nothing like the Demons, believed to be something else entirely.
Duskwalkers.
To see one meant death was near. Not just for humans, but also the Demons, animals – everything. They were terrifyingly intelligent. They could speak, they could bargain, and they could destroy if their mood decided it.
Some villages, far, far away from where she lived, had never encountered one. Most humans would live their entire lives and never see one, nor speak to someone who had. Unfortunately, that had never been the case for the town she called home.
Even from when she was little, she’d known about Duskwalkers. That if she saw one in the distance, to run.
The easiest way to spot a Duskwalker was their face, or rather lack thereof.
The Duskwalker that presumably lived closest to them in the Veil walked around with black clothing that covered its body from neck to feet. It also wore a black cloak that covered its head.
One could have presumed it was a human from behind, based on its attire, if it weren’t for the fact that it was seven feet tall with Impala antelope horns jutting through two holes cut into its black hood. If it faced you, you would see a long-nosed wolf skull as it stared at you with glowing blue orbs that floated in its empty eye sockets.
The Duskwalker never travelled alone, always accompanied by two black ethereal wolves that had blue flames wisping through their fur. Their faces were skulled as well – like they copied their master – and they were disturbingly silent. Their paws never crunched in the snow in winter or rustled the leaves in summer. They didn’t huff their breath. They didn’t howl.
They only made a strange, warped bark of an animal that sounded as though it was dying, and they only did it on command of their master.
To see a Duskwalker, and his companions, roaming above the Veil in human territory meant it had been ten years since it had been last seen, and it was looking to make a bargain in one of their towns once more.
And apparently, Reia Salvias was going to be offered up as a sacrifice.
“For as long as we can remember, there have been monsters,” Reia said with a stern, yet dull voice. Lifting her arms, she allowed the Priestess dressing her to deftly clad her in a white dress. “Why do they believe I am the reason for them now?”
The dress slipping over her body was simple enough.
It hugged her curves around her torso before it hung loosely around her hips and legs. Lace cuffs were frilly as they draped long and wide around her wrists, swaying each time she moved her hands. Although her hands stopped at her mid-thighs, the frilly sleeves draped down to just below her knees.
Other than the long sleeves having lace, the only other place there was lace was around her waist that then trailed down in front of her, reaching a V down to her knees.
It appeared to be terribly made, but it was remarkably soft, like a cotton cloud, against her sensitive skin.
“You know why,” the Priestess answered with a curt tone. “They have told us you are a harbinger of bad omens.”
The Priestess – since that was all Reia could call her by as they didn’t share their names – was dressed in a white cloak that had large purple runic symbols painted into the seams of the cloak. Every seam around the hood, the sleeves, the opening down the centre, and even the hem that danced just above the ground were covered in purple runes.
They all wore white clay masks with accents of gold decorating each one. The woman dressing her had decided to paint a cat-eye design around the mask’s white mesh covered eyes, while the lips, that bore only the slightest opening so she could be heard, were painted golden like lipstick.
The Priestess sounded much older than Reia’s twenty-six years of age, but instead of the kindness that she’d spoken with in her aged voice to the rest of the village, she spoke coarsely to Reia.
She was forced to watch herself being dressed in the oval-shaped mirror of this small room that was her entire house. The Priestess’ gown disturbed all the hidden dust Reia hadn’t managed to find and clean away. The du
Instead, it looked beautiful, peaceful, warm – despite it being so early spring that not a single flower could blossom under the remaining snow.
In front of her was her body length mirror, while next to it was her wooden-carved single bed that held the most uncomfortable mattress known in creation. It should have been made of fluff, fur, and wool; instead, it was made of straw and hay.
On the other side of the room was a small stone kitchen hearth she had to light with a match to cook. The dining table and singular chair – since she never had visitors – was right next to the hearth in this cluttered home.
The last piece of furniture she owned was a wardrobe holding the clothes she’d made by hand herself – the village people feared touching the clothing she’d wear – with rolls of ugly fabric tilted against it.
She didn’t own anything else.
No jewellery, no housing decorations, no pretty paintings. Reia owned nothing but this tiny home that had been built for her just on the outskirts of the town between it and the walls of wooden spikes that surrounded it for safety.
I’m sure once I’m gone, they’ll burn this house down.
It was cold since it was crudely made. Over the years, she’d worked into stuffing holes she found in the round timber slats with the leftover material of her clothing creations in order to keep the wind out.
“It’s not my fault I’m the only one that survived,” Reia grumbled to herself quietly as she was forced to place her dainty feet into a pair of white slippers.
She had not made this outfit.
It had been brought by the Priests and Priestesses who arrived earlier in the month. They came knowing the Duskwalker would eventually be approaching one of the three villages it visited once every decade. The dress had been cleansed, just as Reia had been when she’d been wiped down in some perfumed liquid that smelled heavily of herbs and oils. She’d hated every moment of the Priestess washing her body for her, but the Priestess claimed the spell she was using required her administrating it herself.
“That may be true,” the Priestess said as she shoved a leafy, white, floral crown around her head. Reia’s straight, blonde hair had been yanked of all its knots and looked shiny beneath the crown, a touch of green peeking out from the stems and leaves they’d used to weave it together. “But you are still the only one that did. You should have perished with the rest of your cursed family.”
Reia gritted her teeth as her hands clenched into such tight fists that the back of her knuckles, which had been pink from the cold, turned white and pale like the rest of her skin.
“I don’t know why the Demons didn’t eat me like the rest of my family. Just because I survived, does not mean that I am cursed or a bad omen.”
I don’t want to do this! Her life had been dictated to her by this village, every waking moment of it out of her control, simply because her family had died. Then she had been blamed for it! Blamed for something that had been going on for centuries. And now, she was being forced to sacrifice herself, wear this stupid little dress, because they were making Reia do it or she face the consequences. It’s not fucking fair!
Reia had only been seven when it happened.
She remembered very little about the night that two strong Demons, massive and large in her memories, had managed to break through the protective wards in place around her home, destroying everyone inside it.
Her mother, her father, her baby brother... even their dog, which hadn’t stopped barking, had eventually been eaten.
She knew she hadn’t screamed, hadn’t tried to run, hadn’t done anything but wait as her family was eaten. It had been dark which made it hard to see. The only thing she could truly remember were the sounds of crunching bones, tearing skin, the slurping of mouths, and her family’s dying screams.
She’d covered her ears to hide from the disturbing noises and sat in the corner of the living room, occasionally feeling splashed with a spray of blood. That was only the beginning of the massacre she found in the morning when the sun finally illuminated the inside of the house.
She only remembered feeling sadness and loss, knowing her family was gone. She’d walked from her home as she cried, making her way to the village to tell them what had happened.
A group of three men had taken her back to her home and told her to explain what had happened. Really, they were trying to figure out how she was still alive.
They were already wary of her, and on the way back, they were attacked by small and medium Demons while walking through the forest in the late afternoon. Only one of the men survived. She knew now that he had run from her just as he’d run from the Demons.
But despite their fear of Reia, the villagers didn’t want the monsters to grow stronger by devouring even one more human. They refused to abandon her inside the forest to survive by herself in case a Demon fed upon her and grew more powerful.
As much as they thought she was a bad omen, they feared she would somehow grant them even more power if she was eaten – like she may be some kind of chosen human.
There is no such thing as a chosen human. Not even the Priests or Priestesses believed this. Other than being labelled as some harbinger of death, or darkness, or bad omens, Reia was an ordinary human.
Other than that one fateful night and day, there had been no more cluttered destruction from Demons around her.
Unfortunately, it had never been safe to walk the village at night. Those stupid enough to do so were sometimes caught, leaving nothing behind but a trail of blood. Even though it was uncommon because it was generally a flying Demon, and it had been happening since before she was born, she would somehow be blamed for it.
They would claim the person had spoken to her that day – although no one in the village spoke to her at all. Or that she’d made eye contact with the person and it solidified their coming death – even if she hadn’t left her home.
“You survived regardless,” the Priestess coldly rebuffed. “The Demons left you alone, that in itself is a bad omen. You are cursed, and you are probably the reason your family is dead.”
The flames of anger burned in Reia’s chest as a white cloak was tied so tightly around her throat that it rendered a gentle choke from her.
“Then why hasn’t the village just killed me?” Reia asked, already knowing the answer.
She just wanted someone to say it out loud, hoping it would convince the Priestess to help her stop this.
“Because it is considered bad luck to kill a human who has been given the title of harbinger of bad omens.”
“Then is sacrificing me to the Duskwalker any safer?”
Behind her mask, the Priestess clicked her tongue as she applied golden eyeshadow to Reia’s eyelids. Then she dusted her cheeks with pink and rubbed a reddish paste against her lips that would dry smooth to tint them.
“We do not know,” she answered truthfully, after a short while of thought. “But they believe they are returning your tainted soul back to the Veil where all human sin belongs.”
Reia stamped her foot lightly in frustration while blowing a strand of her hair out of face, realising her plan wasn’t working. I’ll have to be more direct.
“Can’t you convince them otherwise? I lived for a reason. Perhaps I am actually a bringer of life and protection.”
The Priestess snorted a laugh, shaking her head underneath the hood of her white cloak.
“No. It is the choice of the village on who they will sacrifice to him. We have no say in this, especially since we do not know what will happen. This could bring prosperity to your people.”
“They are just trying to get rid of me!”
“True.” She sighed, stepping away as her mask tilted downward and then back up, as if she was looking over her outfit. “But he offers a protection ward that is more powerful than anything we humans can produce with our weak magic.”
“Your magic is considered just as unholy, and yet you aren’t allowed to be sacrificed.” Apparently, the magic inside of humans was disgusting, and Demons and Duskwalkers didn’t like the taste. For this reason, they were often left alone when travelling between villages and towns. “What if it is the same? We could anger him. He could kill me and desecrate the entire town at the same time!”
