The Nightling: Darkness Within

by Danae Ayusso

  She flipped him off getting a single-sided smooch in return.

  Apparently it was an inside joke between the two of them.

  “Mercy will take you home and make sure you get in before the sunrise,” Alder promised. “If she doesn’t, she’ll be sleeping on the streets again and dining out of trashcans.”

  I gasped.

  Giovanni shook his head, his way of telling me it was a hollow threat and that Alder would never do that to his cousin.

  “Be nice to your blood,” I whispered before kissing Alder on the cheek.

  “Very well,” he conceded, blushing.

  The walk back to the church started out quiet, and it was grating on my nerves.

  Connor was walking with one eye open, using everything in the vicinity for support as she went.

  Giovanni was spinning in circles, singing Libiamo ne' lieti calici at the top of his lungs, trying to get me to sing along with him. “Libiamo, amore fra I calici. Più caldi baci avrà.”

  I shook my head in resignation, knowing he wouldn’t give up until I entertained him. “Tra voi tra voi saprò dividere. Il tempo mio giocondo; Tutto è follia nel mondo,” I sang, trying to keep my voice down, but it was impossible when singing with Giovanni.

  Connor looked at us with wide eyes as we sang the duet with vigor, spinning and dancing down the sidewalk.

  It was a talent that we got from Papà, one that I kept to myself as much as possible; Giovanni and Papà would sing all the time though. It didn’t matter if they were in public, cleaning around the house, mowing the lawn, washing the car, they would sing while doing it. I would have been strictly a private singer if it wasn’t for Giovanni and Papà making me sing with them around the house or when they were having a jam night in the living room with guitars.

  It had been longer than I cared to admit since I’ve sung, and that was solely because it only made me happy when I sang with my brother or papà.

  “Thank you again,” I said when we reached the doors to the church.

  Connor nodded that she heard me. “You two are freakishly impressive. I haven’t heard street opera like that before. It was spot on.”

  I blushed with embarrassment.

  “That’s nothing,” Giovanni said. “You should hear us when she really tries. Impressive doesn’t begin to describe it.”

  “For some reason that doesn’t surprise me. From Alder. If ya need anything, call,” she said, offering me a business card. “He can arrange for delivery if needed, and truth is, I think he has a bit of a crush on your brother. Glutton for punishment, that one is, but it’s about damn time he moved on.”

  Giovanni smiled wide.

  “Thanks,” I said, pocketing the business card. “Thank you for everything tonight-”

  She pressed her finger against my lips to silence them. “Don’t. I don’t like the cunts ya share a home and venom-line with, and I really don’t want a reason to not hate them. Okay? Stay out of trouble and turn in. The sun will be up soon and I really don’t want to add your soul on top of the others I’ve claimed even if it wasn’t my fault this time,” she said, patting my cheek. “Get inside.”

  Bossy much?

  “Vanni, I’ll see you later?” I asked.

  Giovanni smiled. “Of course. You can’t get rid of me that easily, Sis,” he promised before disappearing in a wisping of smoke.

  I went to open the door and found a note stuck to it.

  Go get a tan, disgusting Daughter of a Demon of Light! You and your lesbo necro owe me $5K! You better be gone by the time I return!

  Connor took the note and chuckled when she read it. “Such a temperamental little cunt that can’t take a joke and horribly abuses exclamation points,” she said, pocketing the note. “He most likely crawled into bed with the first blood whore his broke ass could find so he isn’t here. If he is and he flips ya shit, just wiggle your fingers at him while chanting Is minic a bhris béal duine a shrón as ominously as possible.”

  My eyes widened. “No! Is that a spell or something?!” I asked, slightly excited.

  Again, she chuckled, pulling a cigarette from the wrinkled pack she pulled from her pocket. “No. It’s a Gaeilge proverb meaning many a time a man’s mouth broke his nose,” she translated with a smirk.

  I laughed. “And if he speaks Gaeilge?”

  Connor shrugged, lighting the cigarette dangling from between her lips. “A swift kick in the bollocks never hurts… Well, doesn’t hurt the one doing the kicking that is,” she instantly corrected, looking evil and up to no good, smoke rolling from her nose. “Get inside before the sun breaks the horizon. There’s only so many wars I want to wage this early in the morning, and this isn’t one I’m going to add to the list. Goodnight, Shawn.”

  “Night, Connor,” I said before ducking inside the church, the doors closed behind me and locked on their own, causing me to jump. “I will never get used to that,” I complained, looking around.

  The church was quiet, dark aside from each candle burning in their votive, painting the darkened area in rainbows-

  “That isn’t normal,” I said, regarding them curiously. “Last time they were red, but now they are clear cut crystal and less Satanic and ready to sacrifice a goat or virginy.”

  The light passing through each facet caused small rainbows to paint the surrounding darkness, making it look homier.

  “I approve. More homey and less prison-turned-Satanist temple like. Nice update,” I said, nodding my approval; the red with the black wrought iron creeped me out. It was a dark vibe I didn’t like and le mie none would never approve of. “There might be hope for you ancient brats yet. Now, if I can only get you to do something about Luka’s attitude and figure out a way to un-Catholic this place so Vanni can enter then it won’t be as prison like.”

  High hopes!

  I started to head towards the stairs when the unmistakable sound of the security grates sliding shut on the inside and outside of the church filled the air.

  Okay, I was cutting it close.

  From overhead, domed plates slid over the domed stained glass like shields.

  “To see the sun through the panes just once would have been a beautiful thing to see,” I whispered with a sigh.

  Once the church was sealed for the sun’s path, an eerie silence followed and it caused the hairs on the back of my neck to stand on end. Goosebumps covered my exposed skin and the unsettling feeling of fear flooded me.

  It was the first time that I had been alone in the church when not in my bedroom, and it was scary.

  Non-Heathen places of worship were terrifying in general to someone that worshipped in nature and in the comfort of home. Singing, dancing, some nudity—I was much too young to participate in that aspect of it—and plants and flowers were involved in the Heathen religions.

  Irony that we’re considered heathens in their eyes when they shun the poor, demand what little their flock has, and builds stone temples that rival castles as status symbols.

  The higher the steeple the closer to God was how non-heathens believed it worked.

  Not that it mattered at the moment.

  “Hello?” I called out. “Is anyone home?”

  Mockingly my voice echoed throughout the corridors.

  “Fine, I’m going to bed,” I complained and hurried to the stairs and started up them. My hand slid along the handrail as I went so I didn’t trip going up the stairs; I had a bad habit of doing that.

  When I reached the top of the stairs, I pulled my hand away from the railing and looked at it; blood was smeared on the palm of my hand. It wasn’t overly wet as if it was fresh, but it was still sticky. Up the stairs were drops of blood and they led down the hallway towards the bedroom next to mine.

  The door was slightly ajar.

  “Andrei?” I called out, following the trail of blood down the hallway. “Are you in here?” I asked, pushing the door open more.

  The room was completely dark, and from experience with my room I knew there wouldn’t be a
light switch on the inside wall next to the door. The church was old and wasn’t retrofitted with switches of a modern variety, instead they were on the wall next to the bed; four buttons that turned on the chandelier and another to turn it off, and one to turn on the lamps on the bedside tables and another to turn them off.

  This one neighbored my room, but I wasn’t sure if it was Luka’s room or Andrei’s…

  Then again, it could have been storage for all I knew. Blood storage, where they kept their blood servants, the bodies, goats for when they observe the Sabbath, or their next victims.

  My imagination was running wild.

  I shuffled my feet so not to trip over anything, nearly tripping over my own feet in the process.

  “Luka?” I asked, blindly reaching out for the wall. “You better not be hiding in here so you can attack me. I’ll tell Andrei on you, or better yet, sic Connor on you again. She did a real number on you, and she told me to kick you in the balls. I don’t want to resort to that, but I will if you don’t respect my boundaries… Please?” I added, trying to prevent the fight that would ensue because of Connor.

  When my hand brushed against a lampshade, I knew the wall couldn’t be far and I started slapping at it until I hit the wall and eventually found the buttons then I pressed the third one down.

  The white light from the bedside lamps caused me to wince and I looked away from the brightness; I don’t think vampire enhanced sight had anything to do with it, and instead it was from being in the dark then blinding light. It was a struggle to get the flashes to clear from my vision so I tried to focus on the dark flooring in hopes that it’d help bring everything into focus.

  “Same flooring,” I whispered.

  Talking out loud helped to push the fear away.

  “The room is the same size as mine, a mirror reflection of mine to be exact. The bed is on the same wall, only the stone wall separating our headboards… I don’t want to hear that. If this is Luka’s room and I have to listen to him have sex I’m going to have nightmares and be sick,” I groaned. “So gross.”

  Where my bedding was white and billowy, thus bedding was dark and regal looking; navy duvet that draped all the way to the floor with eight perfectly, and evenly, spaced pillows at the head of the bed, with a white cashmere throw expertly laid across the bottom.

  “It has to take three hours just to make the bed.”

  The walls were covered in the dark navy equivalent of my wallpaper, the mid-century modern, wall mounted swing lamps above each nightstand were matte gold with navy shades, the overhead chandelier matched in modern style and color, and looked really good with the Victorian gothic wallpaper. The furniture was newer, unlike the Victorian era stuff in my room, which made me believe the room belonged to the more mature and professional of the Belova-Revnik brothers.

  I looked around to make sure I was alone before burying my face in the pillows inhaled, practically throwing myself on his bed.

  If Giovanni would have seen me, he would have questioned my sanity.

  “Andrei,” I whispered, my eyes fluttering. “Dang he smells good,” I whimpered, resting my head on his pillows.

  I liked the way that felt way too much.

  “I think I’ll steal this one,” I mused, taking one of his pillows. “He always takes my stuff.”

  Across from the bed was a fireplace, much like mine, only there were many floating wooden shelves filling the wall, making up a unique bookcase, each shelf was filled with ancient looking books and small trinkets and bobbles that I couldn’t even begin to understand the purpose or the significance of.

  “Totally Andrei’s room since Luka wouldn’t read to save his life,” I mumbled, caressing the ridiculously soft duvet, fighting the urge to steal it as well.

  Two retro wingback wood and leather lounge chairs were positioned in front of the fireplace. A small table sat between them with a book on it, the gold satin bookmark dangling from three-quarters of the way through its thousand plus pages.

  “Not what I expected,” I admitted. “Never would I have suspected you were a fan of the Maison de l'Art Nouveau movement,” I commented, looking at the set of nine mirror framed and white matted black and white pictures evenly spaced on the wall behind the bed. “There’s nothing really that would suggest a vampire that’s old lives here. It’s just an institutionally organized room from the pages of a fancy magazine. Totally disappointing,” I huffed, hugging the pillow I stole to my chest. “Where did the blood come from?” I asked, making sure I didn’t get any on the pillowcase.

  It was impossible to see blood against the dark floors, and the light from the bedside table lamps was daylight white but didn’t help to illuminate any pooling or drops of blood. If anything, the darkened bedding, wallpaper, and floor seemingly absorbed the light.

  I pressed on the next button, hoping the overhead lights would illuminate more and shrieked when, what felt like, I turned on the sun.

  “Ouch, that’s stupidly bright,” I complained, rubbing my eyes, turning it off. “Seriously, how have you not blinded yourself yet?! Where are you, Andrei? Shouldn’t you be complaining that I’m in your private domain without permission? That I’m touching your bed, stealing your pillow, and contemplating taking your bedding? Not that you ever ask permission to violate my domain, space, privacy, being conscious need not apply, but still. Why aren’t you in my head complaining?” I whined, making a face. “Yeah, it’s annoying that you’re in my head, but at the same time it makes me feel as if I would never be alone again and I kind of like that aspect of it, even if you’re an overbearing pain most of the time.”

  As sad as it was to admit, it was the truth.

  The thought of never being alone anymore, regardless of how much I wanted to be alone lately because of the situation, made me feel good.

  When I lost Giovanni, I felt as if I was alone and would be for the rest of my life.

  Discovering that my pesky brother was still around, even in spirit form and we couldn’t hug or touch, and it sucked that we couldn’t hang out in my room and talk like we use to, was totally acceptable because it meant that, in a way, we were still able to hangout however we could made it acceptable.

  “Now to find that annoying vampire and see what kind of trouble I’m in for allowing Luka to get his butt handed to him by a Necromancer then hanging out with those that saved me from his pesky brother this evening,” I said.

  When I headed for the door, a weird sensation flooded me.

  It was a sensation I had felt before, many times, but I was hoping now that I was dead, in a matter of speaking, that I wouldn’t feel it again.

  Of course I was wrong.

  I always am.

  “Nothing good ever accompanied this feeling,” I whined. “Come on! Was taking every person I have ever loved, and constantly denying me from joining them, not enough for you?! Now you have to come at me like this?! Ugh!” I screamed into the pillow clenched in my hands in frustration.

  The last thing I needed that night was to deal with Death.

  Once I was done throwing my fit, which was over as quickly as it started, I composed myself as much as possible.

  “Very well, let’s see who it is Death is trying to take from me this time, shall we?” I cheerfully asked, heading around to the other side of the bed, looking for a body or clues.

  There was nothing.

  I flipped open the book that was on the table by the fireplace and went to the bookmarked passage.

  “Baba Yaga,” I read in a whisper, caressing my thumb over the inked words on the Post-it note stuck to the thin velum. “Is this what you were working on?” I rhetorically asked, trying to read the ancient text but it was in Russian and I didn’t speak or read Russian. There was an inked picture with enamel and gold-leaf accents of a hunchback old woman with wild stringy hair blowing away from her, nails elongated like claws, face twisted in agony and anger. Littered on the ground were piles of bones and skulls, and the ground was a river of blood.


  “That isn’t right,” I said, caressing the picture.

  When I did, a chill ran down my spine and my breath came out as a frozen puff past my lips.

  “Baba Yaga is one of three sisters, matron mothers of the forest, not an evil creature,” I said, arguing with Andrei even if he wasn’t there. “They were villainized by Christianity as all witches had been. It wasn’t their fault they didn’t age well,” I grumbled, turning the page then the next, until one caught my attention.

  Sprawled across the two pages was an ancient oak tree with branches in a thick tangle, the leafy canopy in shades of metallic gold, red, orange, amber, copper, brown, and dark green. They sparkled and shimmered in the light, almost as if the canopy was swaying as I moved the page in the light. The background was darkened, swirling charcoal, navy, royal purple, and deep indigo. It made the tree standout and almost appear as if it was rising off the aged vellum. The darkened background moved, shadows taking shape, long tendrils of black snaking from around it like claws.

  “That would freak a normal person out,” I commented, caressing over the trunk of the penned tree and the texture in the bark lifted off the paper. Amused, I pressed my finger against the black claws, pinning them to the tree. “But I’m no stranger to the otherworldly,” I mused and the book snapped shut on its own and dropped to the table. “Fine, be that way. I didn’t need your help anyway, Spoiled Sport,” I huffed.

  It made me curious why Andrei would use a Post-it note written in English. As old as he was, not that I knew how old he was but I suspected it was ancient, and the overabundance of intelligence I knew he possessed from what little I’ve seen of him since being held captive, it strongly suggested that he knew many languages. That had to mean it was purposely left…

  “For me?” I asked, dumbfounded, scratching my head. “That can’t be right. I’m just tired, and need to find Andrei or the source of the blood so I can get it cleaned up before Luka accuses me of being a messy eater.”

  There was one last place to search, aside from under the bed which I wasn’t going to do because that was Giovanni’s job, I headed to the closet.