Tears from a black heart

Tears from a black heart
Chapter 172

Thane’s POV

The space in front of me was empty. No, I meant the space where the hotel had been standing just a few minutes ago was empty. The space I had watched Ruby walk into was now nothing but a crumble of a building that had been razed to the ground like a missile had been dumped right on top of it. 

I seemed to be experiencing an out-of-body feeling as I stood there, I didn't even pick up the sound of the sirens wailing around me or the shouting of the police officers cautioning me to move away from the perimeter. 

I didn't see the ambulances moving around to help the bleeding people or even Lucas, who had just landed half-transformed a few feet away from me. Everything seemed to be playing in slow motion and without color until the world was just black and white.

‘’Thane!! Thane!! Ruby never left the building, we need to dig and find her…’’ Lucas's words seemed to fly right over my head. I wasn't even listening to him. I could hear the human police force calling out orders for me to step away from the wreckage as they fell into a tight formation behind me, their guns being pointed at my back, but I paid no heed to any of that. The only thing that existed in my universe was my mate, and the fact that I couldn't feel her anymore through our bond felt like death itself.

I took one cold step after the other toward the pile of rubble, frost spreading like raised crystals wherever my feet touched down on the pavement. Even as the police behind me started a loud countdown, my feet just slowly left the ground. I began to elevate into the air, my body feeling weightless as rage slowly took over. 

Next came the downpour of my shadow like thick, black smoke falling to the ground but this wasn't just me using my regular shadows this time. I was summoning my beast.

‘’Rooooooarrrr!!!!!’’ A guttural roar filled with deep pain echoed from my throat, shaking the windows of the surviving buildings nearby. The sound was a mix of my own voice and that of my shadow beast who hadn't even formed fully yet. 

He was just a massive, roiling mass of black shadow that looked like darkened storm clouds covering the entire space behind me with his red eyes, which looked like glowing portals to hell, slowly gleamed from the darkness as he formed. 

Then the humans let out fire. The sound of bullets going off at me rang through the air, the empty casings hitting the ground with a loud clicking sound but I ignored it all eEven as hole after hole showed themselves on my body and making light go through my body, my eyes were only fixed in front as the black runes on my skin were glowing even darker, looking like cracked ground and I sent my command to my beast.

‘’Find her.’’ The command was silent in my mind but my voice echoed around the area like the world was about to end. Without a second of hesitation, large shadow tendrils burst out from the cloud with full force. They whipped through the air, throwing police vehicles out of the way like they were made of plastic. 

The screams of humans filled the air, both of terror and cries of pain as the force of my power flattened everything in its path. I didn't care about anything else. I only cared about my woman under these stones.

The sight that followed was one of pure chaos. Huge debris and rocks of the fallen pillars of the now-crumbled hotel, were being ripped out of the earth. They began to levitate in the air one after the other, held up by the strength of my shadows. 

The black hands of my beast combed through the floors of the hotel, tossing aside concrete slabs that weighed tons as if they were pebbles. There were numerous bodies buried under the ruins, some screaming in pain to be helped and some silent, but my mind was just out for one specific soul.

By now, the sky had darkened completely and turning a dark as though it could feel the deapth of my pain. Thunder struck, lighting up the darkened earth for just a second with a flash of white before it all went pitch black again. 

Then came the downpour of rain as it slapped on the earth and I was drenched in the next second. The water ran down my face but I didn't move. I stayed suspended in the air, watching as my beast tore the world apart to find my wife.

I was just holding my last bit of self-control back as the seconds passed, each one feeling like a slow twist of a knife in my heart. My shadow still hadn’t found my mate under the huge mountain of debris and the desperation was starting to make my vision go dark at the edges. 

My face felt soaking wet from the rain that patted onto my skin and no one could tell that the water on my cheeks was also mixed with my own hot tears. I stood there suspended in the air, feeling like a ghost while the world around me screamed and froze over.

‘’I shouldn't have let her come… I shouldn't have put her right in front of the lion's den like this. I should have had her locked up in the house away from prying eyes, away from all this danger… if only…’’ My voice cracked and died in my throat as all hope seemed to be bleeding away the more the seconds ticked by. 

I knew I could have kept her locked up for her own safety, but the one thing she had always hated even back when she was Auxoria, was the feeling of being caged. I hadn't wanted her to ever feel that way again, especially after the horrific state in which I had first found her in the shadow realm centuries ago.

I could still remember the first time I had laid my eyes on her back then. She had looked so malnourished, her ribs sticking out and her skin which was pale and her beautiful hair had been matted to her face, which was covered in layers of dirt and there were heavy chains hooking her limbs in every direction, pinning her to the cold stone. 

That image was burned into my mind and I promised to never let her be a prisoner again. My trip down that painful memory lane slowly came to an end as my shadow beast finally sent a sharp jolt of information directly to my brain. It had found something.

Without even a second to waste, I was zapping through the air, leaving a loud sonic bang behind me as I reached the far end of the wreckage. This was where the massive pillars seemed to have fallen over each other in a pile, but they had now been raised up into the air by my shadows to reveal what was buried underneath them. 

My entire body shuddered in extreme pain, my mind not even being able to digest what I was looking at. My mate lay there, defenseless and weak in the dirt.

I fell to my knees by her side, the impact of the stone hitting my joints not even registering in my mind. My eyes were blurring out as I watched the rainwater fall with softly against her now white and bloodless cheeks, leaving a trail of dark dirt across her skin. 

‘’Ru..by…’’ My voice cracked so bad it was barely a whisper. My hands shook and trembled like I was under severe shock as I reached forward to slowly push off the strand of her hair that was covering her eyes. She wasn't moving. She wasn't even twitching in pain. 

My eyes trailed down her body to see that she was in bad shape as from her hip down, she was smashed beyond description, her legs were crushed too and it was the same for her right arm which was twisted at a weird angle, and her ribs seemed to have been carved inward by the force of the pillar that had been on her.

‘’No…’’ I gasped, the air catching in my lungs. My head slowly leaned in weakly toward her face, fear eroding my entire body from the inside out. I hoped, I prayed to whatever gods were listening that she was still here. I hoped that she was still breathing, that she still had even the faintest heartbeat hidden under her chest. But even my hope couldn't save me this time.

I felt my whole world crashing down around me as I was met with total silence. There wasn't even a single breath coming out of her nostrils, and her chest was as still as the world to me.

‘’Noo… no… no… no.. it can't be… it can't happen again… Ruby…’’ My voice shook like it had never before in my whole existence. It felt like all my worst nightmares were finally staring me right in the face and mocking me, showing me that I had failed to protect her once again. I grabbed her cold hand, pressing it to my face refusing to accept this.

‘’Nooooooo!!!!!!’’ A scream of pure, raw pain tore through my throat that was loud enough to drown out the thunder that cracked through the sky at that moment. Frost spread with a violent blast from where I was kneeling in contact with the ground and went blasting far and wide in all directions.