Tasting Darkness

Read Taming Darkness By Jessica Hall Book 3 Chapter 18 - Aleera My eyes swept over my surroundings. This could not be what it looked like, she was using my memories against me. | was desperate to find a weak spot or vulnerability into what could only be an illusion. Though, the harder | looked at it, the more | got the sense it truly was my hthat had been destroyed by fire, plucked out of titself and given back to me.

There was no way | would trust that. | glanced over at her minions, they followed after her in perfect obedience, but there had to be ssort of weakness they would display forto take advantage of.

“You can look all you want, but you're not going to find a way back. You'll never escapeagain,” she taunted.

| kept my eyes low, avoiding hers, and tried to look like | was shaken about where I'd ended up. Think, Aleera.

Maybe there would be a hidden secret inside the building | could use, since there was nothing out here. My mates had spent years searching for this place, it had to be the power hunter's lair.

| turned my head and watched my mother as she strolled forward. taking in my surroundings she was correct there was nothing out there, | couldn’t even see the road leading in anymore, it led to the dead end street amongst the trees. The grass was overgrown, and this place gavean eerie feeling. Even the sky looked off, as if we were in ssort of matrix, it appeared to ripple and morph like looking through a bubble at the sun, it glimmered oddly. Turning my attention back to my mother, | watched as she talked with sof the power hunters that were standing guard around this place.

| wondered briefly if the power hunters were aware she was just using them, yet by the devoted looks they gave her, it was as if she was their deity they prayed to, or an altar they worshiped on.

My mother smiles and converses in a tone that setson edge, one | realized was reserved foras a child, she spoke to them like sloving mother and | watched as she caressed the guard's cheek, manipulating him with soft words and gentle touches before he rushed off to do as she asked.

The man she spoke to went in the direction of the surrounding forest, and suddenly disappeared, makingnotice the dome-like protection surrounding this place as the shield ripples. No wonder my mates were never able to find her.

They'd sifted through so many clues and witnesses, only to hit one dead end after another. They'd even gone as far as hiring snitches and paying them off, those most likely to know exactly where this special little piece of hell was, but the results were always the same.

The men | can see were brainwashed, the power hunters indeed did worship the ground she stood on as we approached the huge building that was once my home. All coming to speak and touch her while sneering atas | trudged behind her.

Every forward step of progress my mates made over the years, toward finding the real location, only ended in shoving them three steps back. They'd been betrayed countless times, while my mother’s minions had lured them farther and farther away from the truth.

All of them had been desperate to unearth the place where the root of all the evil had buried itself. Where it hid, right under our noses, concealed from the eyes of everyone outside their little members-only organization.

After all the tthat has passed, it boggles my mind that she never left. Never would | have considered the possibility, even if someone had soughtout and explained in great detail, that she was hiding in our hunder concealment. Not even that would have ledto believe the truth. But seeing it now, it was the perfect cover, a place no one would ever suspect.

And yet, here we were.and the bitch of a woman who broughtinto this hellish world. Never once in all this thad | ever dreamed of meeting her, this woman who thought she had capturedand was bringingcloser to my end to fuel her tyrannical reign.

Unbeknownst to her, | wasn’t the one that stumbled into a trap, she was. Reason escapesas to why she would so easily fall for it in the first place, was it because she had been in hiding for so long, or does she just completely underestimated me? Either way, she never took into account the plans other people might have. Her oversight worked to my advantage, and I planned to reap the benefits of her underestimatingand my abilities.

Even the gardens looked the sas we walked through the small track leading to the front porch. | used to play in the gardens, which were slightly overgrown now. The grass in the garden beds strangled the plants, plants that looked like they were from another planet, not this one. | wondered how | had never noticed as a child the oddity of them. They were otherworldly.

“Is it how you remember?” my mother asks, motioning around me. It was the sbut also different, maybe because | wasn’t looking through the lenses of a child's eyes now.

“A little different,” | admit, and she smiles softly, and for a second | almost see the woman | remember from my childhood, until her lips purse and the glint in her eyes turns sinister. “Your father hated this place when we first moved here. However, | am glad | managed to convince him.” Her words irritatedbecause | realized my father was just another victim for her to torture. Yet growing up they seemed devoted and loving toward each other. It madewonder how much of my childhood was a ruse.

She might have given birth tolong ago, but she was no longer my mother, but a dangerous stranger. She didn’t know anything aboutor the lengths | would go to for those that I loved. Nothing could prepare her for what | was willing to do to protect my mates and strip her of her position and power.