Between the Shadow and the Soul

by Susanne Winnacker

  “Are you okay?” he asked softly.

  “I guess so.”

  He stepped closer, hoping to get a better look at her face, but for once she was giving nothing away. “Are we okay?”

  “We?” Now a frown tugged at her brows.

  “You’re not thinking about quitting, right? There’s much more magic out there than what you saw today. We don’t have to discuss what happened tonight ever again.”

  It wasn’t what he wanted. He wanted, he needed her to improve her abilities so she could try bringing back his sister. That way he’d be free of his Master and she wouldn’t have to die. But he couldn’t tell her that.

  She was staring at him, not moving, not blinking. “No, I’m not thinking about quitting. I need to learn how to control my magic. Now more than ever.”

  She opened the door and a wave of freezing air came in. She sucked in a deep breath before she walked out and grabbed a bike that leaned against the house wall. “Do you want me to accompany you?”

  She mounted the bike, then shook her head with a humorless smile. “I don’t need a protector. I have my pepper spray.” She swallowed. “And maybe I’m capable of more scary shit if someone attacks me. Who knows?”

  She pushed off and drove past him without a word of goodbye. He ran a hand through his hair. “Damn it.” He’d found out what he was supposed to find out and yet this evening felt like a major failure.

  ***

  When Darko returned to his apartment and closed the door, the silence hit him like a sledgehammer. He’d never noticed it so profoundly before.

  He sat down on his bed and opened his laptop. As usual it took a while before he could get online. He logged into one of the chatrooms he frequented when he needed fresh supply for Master Valentine. The moment he entered the chatroom as a thirteen-year-old boy, the perv he’d been chatting with for a couple of weeks was already waiting for him. The man had been pressing for a meeting in their last few chats, but Darko had put him off until the right moment. He could practically feel the eagerness of the asshole now that young Leon had finally agreed to a meeting. He’d get the shock of his life.

  Anger swirled in Darko like a thundercloud, growing bigger every second. He was almost looking forward to it. He didn’t enjoy killing, never had, but tonight it might be exactly what he needed, and it was what the asshole deserved. The man had said he was only seventeen, but from their first chat Darko had known it was a lie. The man didn’t talk like a teenage guy and there was something too desperate, too eager in his words. Darko had enough experience with men like him. And if he was indeed mistaken and his date wasn’t a pedophile, he’d have to improvise.

  Darko gathered the shadows around himself and let them carry him to a side alley near the main station. He’d been traveling too often by shadow in the last few weeks and he could tell that the darkness he’d locked away deeply inside resurfaced a bit more every time. He was feeling exhausted and his nights were haunted by nightmares, worse than they’d been in months.

  He gritted his teeth and walked toward the end of the alley; from there he could see the bus stop where they were supposed to meet. A few junkies were sitting on a bench a few steps from the stop, but they wouldn’t remember anything. They were lost souls, like so many of the women and men strolling the streets around the main station looking for a john who didn’t have high expectations or who enjoyed to use those that were at the very bottom. You could get pretty much anything for money. If you were a cold hearted bastard and good at bargaining, you could buy a woman’s body for less than € 30. Without protection. A wave of anger crashed over Darko. There were so many people out there benefiting from the misery of others.

  He noticed a car parking at the curb close to the bus stop. It was a no-parking zone and the car was far too nice to be here by accident. A Mercedes E-class, not the newest model, but well-kept. The man wore a white baseball cap like he’d said he would. Of course he hadn’t said anything about a car – especially since he was supposedly not of age to drive one.

  Darko had two options. He could walk up to the car, slip in and force the man to drive him to an abandoned street, but there was the risk of the man freaking out or that one of the junkies wasn’t as far gone as Darko hoped they were. They would remember him. Or he could disguise himself as the boy he’d pretended to be. It was complicated magic and took lots of energy. It wasn’t Darko’s forte. His strength lay in the dark spells, the one that fed on anger and despair.

  But magic that only changed the image the world perceived of him, that took positive energy and he had little left of it. He needed a good memory, something that gave him hope. An image of his family, their last Christmas together popped into his mind. It was January 7th, the day when orthodox Christians in Yugoslavia celebrated Christmas. His sister was laughing. His father was breaking Cesnica, the traditional Christmas bread, into four pieces, one for each of them. Darko bid into it and his teeth hit something hard. He grinned and pulled the coin out that his mother had baked into the bread. It meant he would have good luck.

  Bitterness clogged Darko’s throat. If he’d known luck would mean he’d be the sole survivor of his family in a few years time, he’d have burnt it. No, those thoughts wouldn’t bring enough positive energy for the complicated magic. Everything from his past was laced with sadness and fury.

  He needed something recent. Something that had given him a flicker of happiness. An image of Nela entered his mind, her amber eyes narrowed as they so often were around him. That was it. Finding her meant hope. She was what he needed. What the Master needed. He focused on that tiny ball of hope deep in him and worked on his appearance. He wasn’t actually changing anything about his body, but whoever looked at him would only see the projection Darko wanted them to see. He only managed to smooth his skin and remove his beard stubble, but that made him look fifteen, definitely not thirteen. It would have to do.

  He turned up the collar of his coat and walked up to the car, making sure he appeared unsure and a bit lost. He opened the car door and slipped in.

  “Leon?” the man asked.

  “Yeah,” Darko said in what he hoped was a young voice. There was no chance he could change that too.

  The man didn’t turn the ignition, though his hand rested on the key. “You’re older than I thought.”

  “You too,” Darko said with a bit too much venom. The man stiffened. Damn. Darko moved quickly and pulled his Atlame out of its sheath and pressed its tip against the guy’s balls. “Drive,” he hissed. “Or I’ll castrate you.”

  Darko poked the man lightly to drive his point home. The man winced. “Please, what do you want with me? I didn’t mean any harm.”

  “Drive.”

  He finally turned the key and pulled away from the bus stop. “Follow the street until I tell you to turn left,” Darko instructed.

  “I can give you money,” the man pleaded. “I have a lot of it.”

  “I don’t need money,” Darko said simply, not taking his knife from the crotch of the guy.

  “You all need money. It’s nothing to be embarrassed about.”

  “We all need money?” Darko asked softly, his fingers tightening around the hilt of his Atlame. “So I’m not the first boy you’ve lured into your car.”

  “It’s not like that!” the man protested.

  “Turn left.”

  “Please.”

  “Now!”

  The car swerved to the left and they entered a deserted street. “Stop the car.”

  Contemplation flickered on the man’s face.

  “I won’t repeat myself,” Darko warned. They came to a stop.

  “How many boys have you used?”

  “I didn’t—”

  “How many?”

  “I don’t know! I didn’t force them. Many of them approached me. They needed money. I paid well. I never hurt them.”

  “This won’t hurt either,” Darko hissed as he plunged his hand into the man’s chest. He always marveled at how eas
ily flesh, sinews, muscles and bones gave way. The man gurgled, eyes wide. Darko’s fingers tightened around the beating heart.

  He wondered what Nela would think if she saw him now. She thought of herself as a monster because she could bring back the dead. It had been written all over her face. She’d never been face to face with a monster before or she’d have known she wasn’t one. He’d seen men do monstrous things under the disguise of doing God’s bidding and yet they’d never seen the monster in themselves. They’d seen it in others, even in the innocent. They’d seen it in Darko when he’d been only a wide-eyed boy. He hadn’t been a monster when they’d accused him of being one, but he’d been one after they were done with him. The only difference was that he’d always known he wasn’t doing anyone’s bidding but his own when he’d done all those monstrous things.

  The man sucked in his last breath, then sacked forward, his forehead hitting the steering wheel. Darko pulled his hand out, clutching the heart in his palm. He pocketed it before he made the body disappear, then he got out of the car and set it on fire.

  ***

  The Master was even less pleased about the heart of Darko’s newest victim than he’d been about the last. “You don’t listen. You never do,” Master Valentine ranted as he established a magical link between himself and the heart. “I don’t know what to do with you Darko, to finally make you see. I know you’re capable of more. You didn’t have a problem killing innocents in the past.”

  Darko stiffened. “Those people weren’t innocent,” he growled. The glass jars in the lab began shaking.

  The Master whirled on him. “Get a hold on yourself.”

  Darko flushed. The jars stopped moving. “I’m sorry, Master. Today has been tiring.” He’d lost control of his magic. The last time something like had happened was shortly before he’d fled his village in Yugoslavia.

  The Master pursed his lips.

  Darko lowered his eyes. His heart was still throbbing in his chest. It didn’t keep the same rhythm as the hearts trapped in the jars, and somehow it felt strange. “I have good news,” he said carefully. “I’m making progress on Nela. Tonight I met her for magic lessons. I had prepared a dead cat for her. She managed to wake it. She is a necromancer like you suspected.”

  “Indeed, hm,” the Master murmured. “Did she intentionally raise the dead or was it by accident?”

  “By accident, Master. She got angry and that seemed to awaken her abilities, but she couldn’t control them. I had to chop the cat’s head off to return it to the dead.”

  The Master’s lips twisted with dark amusement. “And how did the girl react to such a brutal glimpse into your character?”

  Darko frowned. She hadn’t actually said anything about his actions. Had he scared her? Maybe even scared her away? “She was too shocked by her own abilities to pay much attention to me.” He shifted on his feet. “Is it normal that she can’t control it? Will she learn in time?”

  Master Valentin narrowed his eyes. “She’ll have to hone her craft. Of course it would be easier if she had a necromancer to guide her, but her abilities aren’t our concern. For our purpose it’s enough that she possesses the gift of connecting to the dead.”

  But Darko’s goal was different from his Master’s. How could he teach her how to control her talent without the help of someone wiser?

  The Master sank down on his stool. Despite the new heart, he looked pale. “There’s no use in harboring any hope that the girl could help you with your sister. Even if she were trained in her art, that wouldn’t change anything. Necromancers can raise the body of the dead and they can control it, bend it to their will, but they can’t infuse it with its soul. They raise empty shells. Only a necromancer or wizard with the power of a demon at his hand can reconnect what was severed, can unite body and soul.”

  “But the cat was writhing in pain. If it was empty, why was it reacting like that?”

  “First of all, an animal is a very different matter from a human soul. The human soul is more aware of death and thus strongly anchored to the afterlife. What you saw, might have been something else entirely. The girl might have projected her own terror into the cat. That would explain the strong reaction. Or maybe she somehow managed to unite a very small portion of the original soul with the body and that caused the cat’s anguish. There are several explanations, but in all the time I’ve never known a necromancer who could actually bring a human back to life with its body and soul intact. It can’t be done. And remember, your sister’s body is already badly decomposed. A mere reunion between body and soul wouldn’t be enough in her case. You’ll have to create a new body for her. Only a demon possesses that power. Don’t waste time on foolish hopes, Darko.” There was a warning in that sentence.

  Chapter 13

  Nela pressed her eyes shut, trying to breathe evenly, and yet the pain remained. The fire in her back had barely faded since last night – since she’d raised a dead cat. The pitiful meows of the poor creature still rang in Nela’s ears and the moment she closed her eyes its writhing body took center stage in her mind. What had she done?

  She’d never done something like that before. Or had she? Maybe she could ask her mother about it later. She had pretended to be sick this morning in order to avoid having breakfast with her parents and having to face them. If they knew what she was, what they were harboring under their roof, what would they do? Necromancers were feared, not only by humans. She’d be shunned by witches and humans alike. But who was she kidding? She wouldn’t even get the chance to be shunned. If the Brotherhood found out she was capable of raising the dead, she’d burn at the stake. There would be no trial. Her mere existence was a crime against nature, against life, against everything the Brotherhood believed in.

  She felt sick and that combined with the constant pain in her back, made her lie back down on her bed. She wouldn’t sleep. She hadn’t all night. She hadn’t even dared take a look at her tattoo yet. Healing magic had made the tattoo spread less than a quarter inch, but raising the dead was a very different kind of magic. The darkest kind. If the fact that the space under her right shoulder was hurting now was any indication, then she was in trouble. She heard the bell, but she couldn’t bring herself to sit up, much less go downstairs.

  Her mother’s and Finja’s voices drifted upstairs. Nela had sent her best friend a message last night and of course Finja had come as soon as she could tear herself away from the breakfast table. Nela wasn’t even sure what to tell Finja. This information could lead Nela straight to the stake. She trusted Finja more than anyone, but was that trust enough for this revelation?

  Someone knocked at the door. “Nela? Finja is here to visit,” her mother said.

  “Okay,” Nela responded and a second later the door opened. Finja walked in but behind her Nela could make out her mother’s worried face. She’d noticed something was going on. How much longer till Nela couldn’t keep it a secret anymore?

  Finja’s forehead creased with worry but she didn’t say anything until the door was closed and they heard Nela’s mother walk away. “You look horrible,” Finja whispered as she perched beside Nela. “What happened? Did that guy do something to you?”

  He had done something. He’d revealed her true self to her. If she’d never met him, maybe she could have died blissfully ignorant. But no. At some point, Nela would have slipped, like she’d done with the boy in front of church, and then she probably wouldn’t have had someone to cover her traces like Darko had done. She shuddered when her mind replayed how he’d cut the cat’s head off. It had looked so brutal even though he’d freed the poor thing with his actions.

  “Nela, talk to me,” Finja pleaded. “You’re starting to freak me out. That look on your face. I’ve never seen it before.”

  Maybe that was her new mask of evil. Nela let out a giggle, and then froze. She was starting to lose it. Finja seemed to think the same because she looked close to calling for Nela’s mother. Suddenly, she was scared. Scared of Finja’s reaction when she to
ld her. Finja was her best friend, her only friend except for Oskar, and he’d been extracting himself more and more. If she lost Finja, too, she wasn’t sure what she’d do. Darko wasn’t her friend. She wasn’t sure what he was, but definitely nothing that came close to filling the gap that losing Finja would rip.

  “What I’m going to tell you is really bad,” Nela started, her voice shaky and small. “And I’m scared of how you’re going to react.” She felt tears rise into her eyes. Finja swallowed. Nela wasn’t usually a crier. “I’m scared you’re going to hate me, or worse fear me.”

  Finja gripped her hand. “Don’t be stupid, Nela. I’ve known you all my life. Nothing could make me hate you or fear you. I promise.”

  “Don’t say that.” It was an empty promise, Nela knew that. She closed her eyes. She couldn’t watch her friend’s face if she wanted the courage to tell the truth. “I’m a necromancer.” It were the first words out of her mouth, but more followed. She told Finja about bringing the cat back from the dead, about its cries, about her inability to return it to the dead, and then she fell silent.

  She waited a moment, but nothing came. She dared to open her eyes and found Finja staring back at her with wide eyes. She’d never seen her friend so shocked and pale. Something shriveled in Nela. She tried to pull her hand back from Finja to make it easier for her, but her friend tightened her hold. She wouldn’t let Nela retreat.

  Finja swallowed, then took a deep breath. “Maybe it was him who did this. Maybe he’s the necromancer. Have you ever thought of it?” There was hopeful despair in her expression, and Nela wanted to latch onto that hope, but she knew better. She’d left something out from her recount of the events – her emotions, the utter sense of power that had washed over her for a brief moment after she’d raised the cat. She couldn’t even put it into words. She’d felt a connection to the cat. Somehow she’d known she could have told the cat to do anything she wanted and it would have done it. She hadn’t exactly communicated with the creature, there had been a strange static there, like whatever presence she’d raised in the cat was very confused, or perhaps even broken.