Page 48 of To Free a Soul (Duskwalker Beginnings #2)

“Tell me or leave!” he yelled, pointing towards his exit. “You infuriate me. You will not tell me what I desire, and only share things I do not understand. I hate this about you.”

“You don’t know me to hate me!” Lindiwe shouted. “From the moment you were born, you have been this spiteful little thing, always biting me or those around you. You snapped and snarled, even when you didn’t have a skull to be frightening.”

“Born?” His head reared back once more. “You’ve known me from the beginning, from when I do not remember. You know where I come from?”

“Yes.”

“Tell me.”

“I can’t.”

Merikh roared and then lunged forward. Lindiwe gasped and turned incorporeal, and he chased her around the outside of his cave with swiping claws. “Tell me!”

He wouldn’t stop, even when Lindiwe stopped moving and just stared up at him.

More than ever, she needed Weldir’s voice. She wanted his advice, his ideas. Should I tell Merikh or not? He may leave Jabez’s side, but it could have consequences.

Could those consequences work in her favour? Would Merikh round up the other Duskwalkers and unite them, or would he doom them? Would he... care?

Lindiwe wanted to tell him. He deserved to know everything.

What could Lindiwe achieve if she brought him to her side? Could it repair our relationship? She wanted that more than anything.

“Fine,” Lindiwe conceded with a sigh. “I’ll explain everything, and what you do with that information is your own choice.”

With frantic, rabid huffs, he backed up enough that she could view him properly. His muscular body wasn’t as lean as it’d been five years ago, but he still had a few protruding bones, mainly some ribs and his hand knuckle bones.

“I am your... mother,” Lindiwe admitted, giving him the least amount of information to start with to gauge his reaction.

His bear skull tilted. “Like a female creator?” He patted his thin stomach. “The one that grows life? How can a human make Mavka?” He pointed at her belly. “Too small.”

Wow. That was remarkably easy. For once, she had a reason to thank Jabez, as he’d given Merikh knowledge about such things.

“Weldir is your father.”

“Who is this? This Weldir?”

A frown pulled her face tight. “Weldir. Did Jabez not give you his name? You know, the spirit of the void?”

“What?!” he snapped out, backing up a step. Then Merikh cupped the end of his blunt snout and tapped a foreclaw against the side of it. “I see. He would be interested to learn this.”

Her brows furrowed deeper. “You aren’t upset by this?”

“Yes, but if you are telling the truth, then it makes sense as to why he does not know where I come from, why I cannot die, why I am the way I am.” His bull tail swished side to side. “I thought you did not like the spirit of the void? Sexless, Jabez said.”

Lindiwe’s cheeks flared with so much heat she was surprised the ends of her hair didn’t catch fire. She couldn’t believe her own child had said that to her or knew such a thing!

“I don’t.” Then Lindiwe quickly corrected herself. “I mean, I didn’t. It’s... complicated.”

“Younglings are usually made from affection, yes?” Then he scratched the side of his snout, with his orbs darkening in their yellow hue. “But not for Jabez. No, he only knows pain.”

A weak and panicked smile rose. “N-not always from affection.”

“I was not created that way? No love? Then how is it I am here?”

I can’t believe I’m having this conversation with him. This wasn’t how she’d expected it would go. She thought there would be stomping, huffing, and growling. That he would be angered to learn all this.

He just seemed... curious.

Should she be giddy about that? Honestly, she was just happy they were talking without it being an argument.

“Part of the reason I bonded with Weldir – uh, the spirit of the void – was due to a transaction. My soul and my presence and usefulness on Earth in exchange for servitude. One of the requirements was that I make children for him. Y-younglings, I mean.”

His orbs flickered with blue, and her heart squeezed in sympathy for him. She didn’t think he would have cared that he wasn’t born from love. I’m surprised he would even know that or want it.

His shoulders lost their tension and fell as the solemn hue remained in his orbs. “Then why is it I am here?”

How do I explain this to him? He wanted to know, but he might not find the answer... pleasant. But he has a right to know.

She gripped her left forearm to distract herself and averted her gaze to the side.

“He wanted servants. Younglings who would collect souls to help empower him. None of you know it, but each time you eat a Demon, you take the souls they’re unwittingly carrying on their person and cleanse them.

When you return to the Veil, to his mist, he takes them from you, and it strengthens him. ”

Nothing else was said, and the silence between them weighed heavily on her. His breaths drew in and out, deeper with each one, and she found her own mimicking them by accident.

Their increasing rate made her heart flutter nervously.

“ That is why I exist?” he asked with a dark, foreboding tone.

He pointed a claw at his chest, and when she brought her gaze back to him, his orbs had returned to their normal scarlet hue.

Then they shifted to crimson. “ That is why I am here? To be a fucking servant for a being of the void?! I fucking aid him?!”

“He’s very thankful for it,” Lindiwe said as she lifted her hands placatingly. “He also cares about you all very deeply. He watches over you.”

“Thankful? I don’t care if he is thankful!

” Merikh roared. “He is our enemy! You are our enemy. Being created by you is one thing, but this ?! This goes against everything.” Then he placed his hands over the top of his skull and gripped his bull horns.

He turned to the side with white flashing in his orbs.

“Jabez will be enraged when he learns of this. I empower the very being in his way!”

Lindiwe was thankful she was still incorporeal because when she reached out in hopes of placing a soothing hand on his biceps, he slashed his hand out and his claws went right through her head. She retreated, putting much-needed space between them.

“You don’t have to tell him,” Lindiwe suggested.

“Of course I do! He is my friend , and he will want to know. He will hate me if I withhold this from him and he learns of it.”

“Merikh...” Lindiwe didn’t know what to say or do to calm him.

“Leave!” he bellowed.

Lindiwe cupped her hands to her chest. “Merikh, please.”

“Is that all I am? A fucking tool to be used by you? By him?! I have seen what servants are, how their wants matter little to those above them. If that is all I am – not created from affection but to be used – then I have nothing else to say to you.”

“I care about you!” she shouted, thankful she couldn’t cry in her Phantom form, as tears would’ve spilled by now. “From the moment you were born, I loved you.”

“I don’t care! You brought us into this world and then abandoned us in it. To ferry souls. ”

“That’s not true. I’ve always tried to be there.”

“And yet you weren’t!”

Before Lindiwe could utter another word, Merikh roared, his orbs darkened into a nightmarish red, and he shifted into his more monstrous form. He attacked her ghostly body, and nothing she said to try to console him worked.

Whether it be anger, confusion, or loss, it was just too heavy for him to carry. He couldn’t regulate his emotions; all he knew how to do was maim when he couldn’t escape pain.

Lindiwe retreated, and he chased her intangible form. Enraged, inconsolable, he fought air.

She slipped inside a tree and waited while he slashed at it with deadly claws. When he wasn’t looking, distracted by the trunk as if his bloodlust saw it as a living, breathing Lindiwe, she fled.

The cracks and groans of it being destroyed until it eventually fell reached her ears even when she was deep inside the Veil’s forest.

Only when she was so far from him and his massacre that she was no longer in earshot, and her scent would be difficult to chase, did she turn into a human. Pressing her hand against a thick tree trunk for support, Lindiwe breathed through her anxiety, her regret, and the guilt that festered within.

I shouldn’t have told him. I shouldn’t have said anything.

It didn’t matter that he wanted to know, deserved to know; apparently this knowledge was just too much of a burden for her children to bear. They weren’t human, and they didn’t understand the weight she, or they, carried – not like her.

I really, really fucked up this time.

He will tell Jabez. She didn’t think it would matter, but she’d just pushed Merikh further away from her. Does this mean I shouldn’t tell... any of them?

“Curses, Weldir! Where are you when I need you most?!” she screamed out, before gasping at a roar in the distance and the loud thumping of a four-legged nightmare heading her way.

Merikh had caught the thread of her scent and was hunting it.

Lindiwe flipped her feathered hood over her head and transformed long before he could find her.

I’m so tired of learning as I go and failing constantly.

Why could nothing go right?