She came out of the dark and was unnoticed by anything existing around her. She was a Dark Rider, a being of the shadows, and tonight was the night that she became one.
A Dark Rider always travelled alone to complete their mission. They would never consider themselves united with another Dark Rider, that would be too trusting; a big mistake.
She had a master, they all did, but her only duty to him was to one day defeat him for his position; an ambition that was beating deep within her blood as the first female master of the Dark Riders. She had no more lessons to learn, no more pathetic orders to follow. She would succeed tonight and she would take her sacrifice willingly, she never hurt a soul unless they asked for it.
She was in a place known as San Francisco, a time known as the 21st Century. The large stone hill was stood before her had markings on it that she had never seen before, but it felt right. She had travelled the native path to get here, to follow her instincts to the one who was destined to her, belonged to her, and it would not be long before they were truly within her reach.
They would die of course, if she did not intervene. That was the whole point of having a Dark Rider sacrifice. To choose one that would die soon anyway to save them from their destiny and to give them a purpose in serving her. That way they would give their loyalty willingly or die quickly at an attempt of escape with no remorse.
Her sacrifice was close to her now. She could feel him pull her in as the dusk settled on the back drop of strange buildings and different coloured machines that sat outside the buildings. She knew they were called cars but she was from a different lifetime that did not believe in such things. Her beings were given enough to not want more, to not want something that did everything for them. That was power, not money and certainly not the structure this world seem to function on. Another world that was dominated by men; pity, she thought as she moved stealthily under lights towards her goal. It truly would take the male species in all realms to undergo The Movement before realising what strength lay before them in their females; the men always acting as if their female’s strengths were their weaknesses and allowing them to actually continue believing that. It wouldn’t take long for this world to arrive though, she thought as the sense of change hung in the air like a drug. The females were getting ready to move, they had a lot of male backing here. That was good.
Her heart stopped for a moment as she enforced the power inside her to feel the pull more deeply. He was so close that she could almost smell him, taste him. It would not be long and she would be on the way to greatness, for others, not just for her. The Movement in her world was nearly complete. Man was now equal, she just needed the Dark Riders’ position as master to convince the others species within her world, the ones who were actually worse than man – if you could believe it.
Sean Mallard was half way through a bad day. Oh stop kidding yourself, he thought as he drank his way through his second beer. You’re half way through a bad year, a bad goddamn century. He had not been a lucky man if you considered lucky being a top businessman in the city with a wife, 2.4 kids, and a mistress. Shit, he barely had a mistress he sighed to himself thinking of the night before with Addison. The little minx had finished it with him, whatever they had been doing for the best part of 6 months. She had been 10 years his junior at 22 and had acting like she was 10 years younger than that; but the sex had been good. Too good to be damn true, he thought before taking another swig of the toxin that was making him even more depressed. No wife, oh no, and barely a job. Boy his mother would be proud of him if she had, had the decency to stay alive passed her fifties. Selfish woman he thought, humourlessly at the irony of burying both his parents before reaching an old age himself. They had been the only thing good for him, the only ones who had actually believed the little bit of good in him before cancer had ripped his mother from their family and then his father by a heart attack. ‘A broken heart was what he died from.’ As per Mrs Adelaide, their next door neighbour from the house where he had grown up. He wished he could truly believe that, he really did, instead of the crap of bad luck that had seemed to curse him since childhood; life just couldn’t get any damn better. He slammed the bottle of beer on the bar and stood up to find that the warm feeling was starting to take effect. He could have more of the stuff, a big vat of whiskey before leaving to go back to his parents’ large home that he had received as part of the will. It would have numbed some of the pain that had started to seep back through his veins at the thought of them, but he needed a clear head. He had an early start in the morning if he was to make anything of the building firm he had taken over since his father’s death. He hated every minute of the damn shindig his father had been responsible for setting up but he felt like he owed his parents, like for some reason he felt like he owed damn everyone just for existing. Business wasn’t great but that was no excuse. He knew it was because he didn’t have the heart in it, and that made the guilt settle deeper into his bones. What a year, he thought dismally as he picked up his coat and made his way out the bar. He just wished he had the balls to end it all but no he was too goddamn selfish. He wanted to live, he didn’t care how and maybe that was the problem. Maybe he took like for granted and couldn’t see it for what it was; even if right now he was thinking it was a load of balls. Time to not give a shit until tomorrow, he sighed as he started his way home down the small street. Maybe tomorrow would be a brighter day; a meteor might take pity on him and slam him straight off the earth.
Her quarry was close, she sensed as she sat crossed legged and out of sight at the location of where her sacrifice was destined to die this evening. She could see the patterns and feel the vibration of what was about to happen and knew his death was intended as a cruel one. It would not have been a quick death, she knew this, and it wasn’t due to the fact a car was about to collide into him at high speed. It was due to the fact that her sacrifice was a fighter and not willing to die easily, even if he did not know it yet. That always made death more painful, because the human body would start to try and heal itself with the hope of survival. It was always easier for those who accepted their fate, or for those who had simply given up.
