Once in the cold, unfriendly entrance of the manor, Darrell took me by the shirt and hurled me inside. I fell on the floor. When I looked at him, his look was almost homicidal.
“I…” I blabbed.
“Shut that mouth up,” he said, gnashing his teeth.
“What’s happening?”
Miss Ward had just come out of her bedroom. She looked at the scene from the stairway, in pyjamas.
“This scumbag,” Darrell said, pointing with his finger at my pathetic figure, curled up on the floor, “has just killed several families at once with his ineptitude. Tomorrow morning, I’m going to tell you all the details; for now, you can leave him to me.”
I turned to Miss Ward’s direction, silently asking for a slice of pity that would never come. She gave me a look that could have been the look one gives to a spot of dirt that needs to be washed out.
“Have you told the Order?”
“Yes, Tajana. I took care of everything while I was in the car.”
“So I can go to sleep, I assume.”
“Yes.”
She turned back and entered in her bedroom.
“To the dungeon,” Darrell ordered. Before I could react, he took me again by the shirt and literally dragged me to the door. “Get up, you scumbag, you got the stairs to do.” I obeyed, and he forcefully took me down. Once in the gloomy, stony dungeon, he made me fall again. A wound in my left knee opened, adding even more pain to what I was feeling.
“I had realized there was something wrong with you this last period, but evidently, I trusted you too much. Starting from tomorrow, you will not leave this manor. Ever. You can only go out if I take you with me, and this isn’t going to happen soon.”
“NO!”
I screamed, kicking my feet despite the wound on my knee.
“Stop there, I have no use of you with a broken leg.”
I stopped obediently.
“I knew the cause, but I didn’t want to accept it. It would mean accepting I have done something wrong in all these years of training. Even when I saw it in front of my eyes...”
I looked at him in horror.
“You...what do...you mean...”
“What’s there? You thought I’m as dumb as you? I’m forty years ahead of you. I can recognize when someone has surrendered to that kind of temptation. I saw you with that boy from a distance.”
I frozed. The harsh truth filled me with dread and horror.
He knew. He had always known. He spied on me.
“You didn’t even realize I was there, eh? Right. You had eyes only for him. And I was so stupid to believe you could still contain your feelings. Well, I was wrong. I gave you too much trust. That period is over, though. You won’t see him any more. Or anyone else except for me and Miss Ward.”
I had enough. I found the force to get up. The amount of things this man had done to me were enough to at least make me try to stand against him.
“I AM SORRY, MASTER! OKAY? I AM SORRY! FOR EVERYTHING! I JUST WANTED TO FEEL GOOD FOR ONCE! SORRY IF I’M YOUNG AND IDIOT! YES, I KNOW SHOUTING WON’T BRING THOSE PEOPLE BACK TO LIFE! I DON’T CARE! FUCK! FUCK! FUUUUUCK!”
Darrell looked at me impassable, moving his hands only to take care of the fireballs I was accidentally evoking. I was wishing so much to make him yell at my delirium, to listen to what I was screaming and hear him reply to me, have a verbal fight, even an actual fight if necessary. I was ready for chaos. But nothing. He just kept looking at me, like if I was the most disgusting thing in the world. Something not too far from reality, maybe.
“KILL ME! I AM USELESS! COME ON, DO IT! I KNOW YOU WOULDN’T CARE, YOU HAVEN’T EVER FELT LOVE FOR ME OR ANYTHING ELSE!”
With that, it was like a ghost of something trespassed Darrell. He looked away for a short moment, while still making my fireballs disappear. Then he inspired deeply.
“I may or may not have a wish to do it. Unfortunately, I have spent too much time of my life looking for someone with your gift. If you think I desire to restart everything from zero, you’re wrong. Now go to your room and calm yourself down. In silence.”
I let my arm be taken by him again. In tears and screams, I made to the stairways and up to my room, too emotionally exhausted even for making any fireball come out.
***
The next morning, I refused to go out of my room, or at least I tried. The insistent knocks of Miss Ward, who called me for breakfast, and her refusals to my requests to bring it there, forced me to take the steps out and prepare myself to see my master.
As I arrived in the large kitchen, Darrell didn’t give any sign of recognizing my presence. Not that he would usually greet me – in that house, nobody greeted each other - but at least, everyone would give a quick look at whoever had just entered a room. The usual background of the TV tuned on the news was present.
“A witness report about two men fleeing on the north-west side of Plymouth as a fire started in a nearby home, which costed ten people their lives, including three children, made authorities believe the fire is the work of arsonists. The police are currently investigating on the scene to find possible evidence that could lead to...”
My hands were trembling too much to be able to handle any cutlery. Ignoring the cramps in the stomach, I got up, ready to get back to my room and abandon me into sweet nothingness-
Unauthorized duplication: this tale has been taken without consent. Report sightings.
“Stay there,” Darrell barked.
I sat down again, defeated. Darrell...now he had truly become the total opposite of the Darrell I had known first. To think that the nice family friend that would play and laugh with me was the same person I was witnessing-
“Stop your thoughts,” he barked again. “You must be re-educated, and I’m going to do it starting from now.”
I looked at my hands: they were glowing. It was impossible to hide anything from him. My powers spoke the words he needed.
“Darrell,” I said, “I am sor-”
“Yes, yes, who cares,” he snorted, “you aren't the first one to succumb to forbidden feelings.” All of a sudden, he looked away, and as if it was a memory from another life, I remembered Miss Ward words’ from long time ago: Once Darrell...announced he was no more interested in being a Darkfire...he abandoned this house, and then when night came the Apollonids attacked him in the middle of a road.
“All that’s important is you resume your old training and cancel from your mind that little boyfriend of yours.”
I used what remained of my best efforts to stop the fireballs from reappearing. I wouldn’t give him that kind of satisfaction. The effort called my rational side, which in exchange gave me a very good argument to face him with.
“Wait a moment,” I said, venomously, pointing a finger, “if you saw me hanging out with that little boyfriend of mine, why didn’t you stop me earlier? Instead of waiting for me to let those Apollonids kill those children? Eh? Maybe those deaths are both our responsibility?”
Darrell put a hand where his heart was. Ah, he has a heart? Interesting. I had hit the mark. He looked away from me for some moments. However, when his eyes turned back to my side, they were almost in flames.
“If you are trying to make me lose control,” he whispered, breathing heavily, “you’re fighting a lost battle.”
“You didn’t answer me.”
Darrell banged his fist on the table, making all the dishes tremble. I boggled, but at the same time I felt incredibly satisfied. He had never been like this. I had penetrated one of his inner defences. The scholar was beating the master.
“To the dungeon. Now! Before one of us does something regrettable.”
That had to be enough. I wasn’t that stupid to insist. I just got up, took the dishes to the sink, and then proceeded to the usual secret passage. Darrell followed me immediately after, making heavy steps against the cold, grey floor.
“Starting from today, until you are fully recovered, we’re going to meditate.”
“On what?”
“On what I decide to be opportune.”
The next hours were one of the most boring I ever witnessed, even worse than studying maths at school. I didn’t know if it was because Darrell had never had to deal with such a situation or something else, but for an unfathomable amount of time I was forced to remember why this world sucked and why we had to protect it: nothing but a bunch of stuff I knew by heart, stuff I had been forced to learn better than my own name, which he repeated like a robot and I had to repeat as well. How a man was a wolf to men (it was someone called Hobbes who said it, if I’m correct), how love was only some chemical reaction and something people do for profit, speeches about terrorists, criminals and so on. Other than boring, it was ridiculous the way he thought those sermons would have a new effect on me: now that I knew there wasn’t just that in the world, I had the means to disprove him.
But your love for Douglas made you kill those children, an irritating voice told my mind.
Like if they wouldn’t have died later anyway. Better them than my love.
A third portion of my mind told me this latter thought was utterly wrong, but I knew better that I had no better option. In the meanwhile, Darrell continued his useless preaches about hate.
His attempts at rescuing my minds continued for two weeks straight, two weeks of absolute hell. Not because of Darrell, I couldn’t care any more about him and his actions. It was my distance from Douglas. I had no clue to contact him, even though I used to have his number, because Darrell had confiscated my mobile phone, just to avoid the possibility I’d fall again into temptation. Each day would start with me crying out of frustration. Inside me, I had the absolute certainty Douglas would think I had abandoned him. Maybe, one day, I’d be once again in front of his door, and he’d just slam it in front of my face. Eventually, he would forget me. Every morning, before heading to breakfast, the heaviness of this possibility made me fall down a vortex of despair, where I would just verse my tears all over the floor of my dark, solitary room. Afterwards, I would have to go to the dungeon, listening to Darrell trying desperately to raise my hate once again.
His attempts became less and less boring by day, but I don’t mean it in a positive way. He was trying anything he could. First, he attempted to use only words.
“Lots of gays are also rapists. Are you sure he’s not one too?” Bullshit. If he had really been a rapist, he wouldn’t have waited for me to let myself fall into his embrace to get my body.
“Many are also paedophiles. He could have hurt lots of children.” Bah. Maybe some gays were paedophiles. Not Douglas. Damn, Darrell, I know what you’re trying to do. It just doesn’t work on me any more.
“Have you heard about AIDS? He may have infected you. AIDS is a typical gay disease.” You wish. One of the first things Douglas told me was he tested himself no less than twice a year. Hah. You failed, Darrell.
At the end of the day, his sweaty and frustrated expression would become more and more evident with the days passing by. With great joy, I would go out, have quick dinner, and continue crying on my room.
Eventually, Darrell’s methods became much more extreme. When he realized words had no power, he tried to literally brainwash me.
After failing with his infamous words against Douglas, he began forcing me to watch disturbing videos. Images of children being sodomized and then slaughtered. People with horrible mutilations. Men inside a prison, in female dresses, being humiliated in the most absurd ways. But I knew what to do. I would just pretend to watch them, and in the meanwhile, just think of Douglas.
Then he passed to the next step of folly. Darrell locked me inside the dungeon. Passing me food from the door and leaving immediately, with nothing but the same disturbing videos around me, I effectively began to lose my mind, scratching the walls just to have something to do that wasn’t watching those things again. But even in this case, all that I had to do was thinking of my love, and immediately a pleasant heat in my heart would help me resist.
The last stage was physical harm. Darrell, one day, finally opened the door of the dungeon; not to set me free, but to beat me. He gave me kicks. He gave me slaps. The visible portions of my face became more red than pink. I cried more from the pain than for Douglas. But even now that Darrell had reached his highest level of madness, the thought of Douglas saved me from succumbing. Eventually, when he asked me to evoke my fireballs again, only small, weak, almost transparent spheres would come out.
“I...can’t believe it...” he said with short breath, looking at me in the dungeon. I was lying on the floor, face down, standing up only with my sore hands; I was the dirtiest I had ever been in my life; I smelt like a wet dog, if not worse; I had blood running in one cheek and both my knees; I could barely walk from the fatigue. Yet, he was still failing. “If I can’t restore you...all these years have been wasted...”
With incredible effort, I smiled. I had won. The torture I had to endure had been worth it. It had made me stronger against the bullshit Darrell had put me into. I said nothing, like I just hadn’t said anything during the whole two weeks.
“I didn’t want to do it...raising hatred through inner emotions should never be done…but you left me no choice...”
I raised one eyebrow. What was he going to say?
“This is likely the last day of my life...” My body started shivering. If Darrell was acting like this, especially after abusing me unsuccessfully for all those days, there was something big. Something atrocious.
“...but you are too precious...and I have nothing left to make you a good Darkfire once more...”
He paused. He was shivering, too. I wasn’t sure if I had seen correctly, but I could have sworn there was a tear in his left eye. He had never been so emotional, not even when he used to be my childhood friend. “Besides...I will finally get free of what has tormented me all these years...”
He looked at me.
“Hayden.”
No. No. Those almost sweet eyes. Suddenly, the Darrell of my childhood had come back?
“What the hell?” I snorted, but I was keeping shivering as well. “After what you’ve done to me, you think you can suddenly act like this?”
“Hayden. It’s time for you to know something.”