The Fell of Dark

by Caleb Roehrig

  I wake up slumped in my desk chair, my elbow throbbing worse than ever following a night of mercifully dreamless sleep. All through my early classes, I’m groggy and listless—but I snap out of my daze quick during third period when Leesha Gardner barrels into class, her face puffy and streaked with tears. When she collects herself enough to speak, she shocks the whole class. “M-Mr. Strauss is dead. Someone killed him last night!”

  Conversation ripples through the room, and my mind reels as I struggle to process the news. There must be a mistake. And yet the first hit that comes up when I search for more information is a story from the local section of the Chicago Tribune—Man Found Dead in Fulton Heights—accompanied by a smiling photo of my art teacher.

  Jesse T. Strauss, 29, originally of Richmond, VA, was found dead behind the wheel of his car late last night on Montebello Road. The body showed signs of violence, and according to Fulton Heights authorities, the suspected cause of death is blood loss from a deep wound to the shoulder area. A police spokesperson said that the Fulton Heights High School art instructor probably died between 6:00 p.m. and 7:30 p.m. last night, and that the death is being treated as a homicide. Strauss’s car had rolled into the drainage ditch that runs alongside Montebello, and was noticed by a passing motorist, who called 911.

  My eyes go hazy for a moment, static filling my ears. It couldn’t have been later than 6:30 when Daphne and I were jumped last night—and Montebello Road is less than two minutes from the mall. In my mind, I keep seeing that wooden stake coming down, the pointed end plunging through neoprene and flesh and burying itself in the ninja’s shoulder.

  That guy just now? He was human.

  You should give some thought to a four-year art and design school.

  I left him alive so he can crawl back to his friends.

  You’ve got a gift, and an academic environment would provide an opportunity to grow your skills and explore other media.

  At the bottom of the article, it says the story is still developing, but I close the tab and delete the page from my phone’s history. I’m fighting to breathe, and for a moment I’m sure I’m either going to be sick or black out.

  My favorite teacher tried to kill me.

  Paris, France

  1793

  This one was a strong body, well cared for and well fed, and its original occupant had not surrendered control without a fight. Even now, sitting in the back of the lurching, rolling cart, the Corrupter could feel her deep inside, battling him for primacy. Like a stone lodged in a shoe, she was a constant irritant, and her plight was senseless. In less than an hour, this body would be put to a gruesome death, and the woman knew it.

  Mortals could be counted on for nothing so much as acting against their own best interests.

  Centuries changed like seasons for him, each subsequent lifetime bursting open with a dazzling newness that tarnished as soon as he realized how dreadfully similar it would be to the last. Fashions evolved, but mortals always stayed the same—their small jealousies, their petty greed, their laughable and unearned sense of pride. A hundred years or more might elapse while the Corrupter slept, and yet every time he opened his eyes, he found himself looking out at a generation of humans that would have reliably learned nothing from their own endless history of warring and bloodshed.

  The cart shook, and the deliberately humble cap they’d given the Corrupter itched against his shorn scalp. A filthy mob shouted from the roadside, their rage so potent he could smell brimstone on the air. Secretly, it delighted him. The fury, the elemental rawness of their bloodlust … it called to him like a siren’s song, stirring the power that trembled inside this moribund shell of meat and bone. To release it would be an indescribable pleasure—the act he’d died countless times waiting to perform. But he couldn’t.

  This body was strong, but not quite strong enough.

  An apple sailed at the cart from somewhere in the crowd, and the Corrupter leaned out of its path, letting it hit the boards near his feet. For all this rage and clamoring arrogance, the only name history would remember from this day would be that of the woman these red-faced rustics were determined to destroy.

  Just because he could, he twisted around and locked eyes with the youth responsible for throwing the piece of fruit—a factory worker with pitted skin. The boy’s thoughts rang clear as a bell in the Corrupter’s mind as their gazes met, a din of hatred.

  He had plenty to be angry about, the Corrupter acknowledged, feeling his way through the boy’s short and miserable history before their tenuous connection evaporated. The details were a little hazy, but certain facts were quite clear: backbreaking labor, starvation, loss. The young revolutionary blamed the woman in the cart because of what she represented, and because he had no one else to blame. He wanted her to die.

  The cart turned again, and then once more, the crowd growing louder and thicker; then they entered a vast public square packed with people. Soldiers with bayoneted rifles, Parisians climbing on statues to get a better view, parents hoisting their children up as if attending a carnival. Their zeal, their desire for carnage, made the Corrupter hum deep in his borrowed throat as the horses pulled him closer to the scaffold and the guillotine.

  It didn’t have to end this way. With no effort at all, the Corrupter could surface, snapping the fragile tethers of mortality that constrained his body, and give the crowd a show to remember. With a single breath, he could reduce the square and everyone in it to ash, send them all screaming to hell in a bath of fire and blood. This body was strong.

  But not strong enough. It would withstand his unadulterated splendor for maybe a hundred heartbeats before it disintegrated utterly. And the Corrupter would, ironically, pass into his next incarnation even faster than if he simply waited for these men with their vicious ideals to finish their overly grandiose execution.

  They were all dying anyway. Even without the full range of his power he could see how close to the edge they were. The boy with the apple had a mass in his lung that would take him before two years were out; the cart’s driver would drink himself to death shortly before that; and even Maximilien Robespierre, an enthusiastic architect of this grisly little drama, would lose his own head in this very square in just nine months’ time. They bayed for blood, believing it would salve the deep wounds of exploitation and abuse, but not one of them would live long enough to see the stable republic of their dreams.

  Escorted from his cart and up a flight of creaking wooden steps to the platform, the Corrupter stood resolute as various proclamations were announced and crimes read out to the gathered mob—and then something familiar whispered across his skin. There.

  He’d been looking for them. For the entire hour it took the cart to travel from the Conciergerie, he’d been waiting for that telltale prickle, knowing they would come. The crowd shifted, parting to reveal three figures like the remains of a dock at low tide. Clad in mourning dress, their faces hidden from the sun behind heavy veils, they stood near the base of a wide pedestal. The Corrupter nodded with a smirk, and they nodded back, a familiar conversation passing over the heads of the mob—over the span of centuries.

  Rough hands guided him toward the guillotine, and he stumbled, stepping on the foot of his executioner. Locking eyes with the man, the Corrupter sent out a gossamer thread of cold terror. “Pardon me, monsieur. I did not do it on purpose.”

  The words were soft and polite, with just a trace of a crisp Austrian accent, and he made the executioner look away first. It was a moment that would linger in the hooded man’s dreams for the rest of his unfortunate life. Then the crowd pressed forward as the Corrupter knelt down, stretching out across the block. Everyone wanted to watch as Marie Antoinette, erstwhile queen of France and enemy of the Republic, met her death.

  Queen of France. Whether in the terrible inferno of the Ascension, or at the vengeful hands of revolutionaries, she had always been doomed to die; with the first breath he’d taken inside her body, the Corrupter had known his time was already runni
ng out—and he’d known that, once again, his own destiny would be deferred. A pity. What a life it could have been.

  Next time. The Corrupter made a promise to himself as the blade dropped, crashing down with terrible speed.

  Next time.

  12

  After the announcement of Mr. Strauss’s death, the rest of the day passes without my noticing it. I’m too shaken to focus on anything other than my memory of last night, of the sword he thrust at me before Daphne could intervene. I can’t stop thinking about all the times he praised and encouraged me. You should give some thought to a four-year art and design school. When he said that, he’d already been planning my death.

  I keep telling myself not to cry, and then I cry anyway. The art room has been my oasis for years, and aside from Adriana and Hope, Mr. Strauss was the only person at this school I ever looked forward to seeing. He taught at FHH for a year and a half. Was he watching me that whole time? Sharpening his swords and waiting for me to start sketching mob scenes and bodies burning alive so he’d know it was time to finish me?

  The worst part is, I’m also sad because I miss him. How messed up is that?

  They don’t let us leave early, and when I go to the office to say I don’t think I’m handling the news very well, all they do is make an appointment for me to see the school psychologist—at the end of the day when classes are over.

  So I white-knuckle it through the afternoon, and then an additional hour with Dr. Janovsky—in which I lie, sweatily and creatively, since he is absolutely not ready to hear about either the Corrupter or how I am 99 percent sure that Mr. Strauss tried to murder me—and then I’m finally free to go. The door to the art room stands between me and the exit, and I pass it at a sprint, ready to dive headfirst into the meltdown I’ve been resisting.

  It isn’t until I’m outside, the chilly air snapping its fingers in my face, that I remember: I didn’t ride my bike today, because it’s still in the mall parking lot, and the late bus won’t come for another thirty minutes. I whirl around to catch the door before it shuts and locks again, and yelp out loud when I see who’s standing there, leaning against the wall beneath the overhang—again.

  “Hello, August.” Jude is in his ripped jeans and denim jacket, a stubby cigarette pinched between two fingers. Belatedly, my skin prickles to life, and I dig my crucifix out of my pocket as the door bangs shut.

  “Don’t come any closer!” My voice shakes a little. It’s still technically daytime, but the sky is so overcast I’m not sure it matters. I don’t totally know how that rule works.

  “For the hundredth time,” he begins wearily, dropping the cigarette and grinding it under his boot, “I’ve no intention of hurting you—no matter what your friend had to say. The Brotherhood of Perseus has its own agenda, and I’m sure—”

  “She saved my life.”

  “From another human,” he adds promptly, his gaze not wavering from mine. “In fact, no vampires at all have attacked you yet. Have they?”

  “I was jumped in the middle of a crowded café,” I remind him. It bothers me that he already knows what happened in the parking lot.

  “By a vampire that did nothing but look at you.” His tone is calm. “I have no hidden intentions here, August. I’m not your enemy.”

  “You had … henchmen watching my house last night!” I exclaim, not sure what else to say. His not wanting me dead is great—it’s what I like most about him, actually, aside from his pretty face and sexy knees—but I still don’t trust him.

  “I have been watching your house for three weeks.” He produces a pack of cigarettes, drawing one out with practiced finesse. “Just me. I would have been shadowing you in the parking lot, too, to make sure you were safe, but after the way things ended, I didn’t want to provoke your guard dog.” Flicking open a silver-plated Zippo, he lights up. It’s all very Bad Boy Vampire cliché. “At the risk of repeating myself—again—I’m the Syndicate’s only representative in Fulton Heights.”

  “There were two vampires in my neighborhood, I could sense them,” I shoot back imperiously, my sense of righteousness at catching him in a lie thwarted immediately by the realization that I’ve just handed him an update on my Corrupter abilities.

  “Actually, there were three.” He wiggles as many fingers. “That’s the reason I’m here. We didn’t get a chance to finish talking yesterday, and there’s more you need to know.”

  “I’m not interested.” The words come out automatically, and they’re absolutely true. I don’t want to know any more—I don’t want to know what I know already. What I want, with every molecule of my being, is to wake up from all of this. I want to run until this can’t see me anymore.

  But I stay where I am. You can’t escape the prophecies. There’s nowhere to hide.

  “Look, August, you’re right to distrust the undead. You said it yourself the first time we met—you’re our food.” Coming from a vampire, it’s an unsettling statement. “But vampires aren’t some hive-minded monolith. Our brains work the same way yours do.”

  “That’s because they’re our brains,” I point out, arms akimbo. “And I’m not falling for this reverse psychology bullshit—where you tell me why I shouldn’t trust you, and it makes me trust you more.”

  “No psychology.” He lifts his hands, palms out. Nothing up this sleeve! “What I’m getting at is that the decision of the Syndicate to publicly reject the Corrupter as a myth is a … complex issue. Not all vampires feel the same way about it.”

  “Right. Some of you believe in it a hundred percent. And just in case the stories are real, you want to make sure I’m locked up tight in a Syndicate holding cell, where you and your buddies can use me like a private vending machine for ‘true immortality.’”

  Jude’s brow creases in irritation. “Just for a second, would you listen and stop letting the Brotherhood speak for you? Not all vampires actually want ‘true immortality.’ Some of us would be overjoyed to prove that the Corrupter is a fantasy, and put this whole thing to rest once and for all.”

  I stare at him, waiting for the punch line, and when it doesn’t come I laugh anyway. “Oh, okay, sure. The most powerful organization of undead creatures on the planet sent a special emissary to my shitty hometown to spy on me and seduce me, but you’re totally not interested in day-walking.”

  “I am not trying to seduce you!” he protests with a frustrated laugh. “Flirting and seduction are two different things, all right? I’m a four-hundred-year-old pansexual vampire, and I can certainly find willing partners without having to lure them into it!”

  “That’s your argument?” I toss my hands out, indignant. “There was a massacre here thanks to a bunch of day-walking wannabes, okay? I know what you’re after. You vampires are obsessed with your almost-immortality!” Then, struggling so hard not to look at where his dick is that I totally look at where his dick is, I mutter, “And, you know, your … reproductive parts.”

  “Vampires can’t reproduce sexually,” he retorts with a feline smile. “But my parts are productive.”

  My face warms because, damn it, in spite of everything, Jude Marlowe is incredibly hot, and now I’m thinking about him naked. “Stop trying to distract me!”

  “Have you ever given any thought to what it means? Living forever?” He considers the smoke coiling up from his cigarette. “I was supposed to die at seventeen—I did die—but here I am anyway. I’ll be young for as long as I walk this Earth, and unless I do something truly unwise, there’s no known limit on how long I’ll be here.” His eyes shift to mine. “Isn’t that immortal enough?”

  “Again,” I reiterate slowly, “this reverse psychology thing—”

  “True immortality means I never check out. Ever.” He flicks ash from the cigarette. “Humans are destroying this planet just as fast as they can, because every generation figures it’ll be the next generation’s problem; what do I do when you all wipe yourselves out, and I carry on for eternity, starving in a parched, baking wasteland? What happen
s to me when the sun eventually goes supernova? I would endure an inferno, only to be blasted into the depths of space, where I’d just … float for eternity—alive, but frozen solid. Just me and my thoughts in airless silence, revolving in the dark, until the end of time.”

  His eyes are vacant, fixed on the sky, and I just stare at him. What he’s describing is existential horror on a level I’ve never contemplated, and the hairs on the back of my neck are dancing like one of those wiggly armed noodle creatures outside of a car dealership.

  “The prophecies say nothing about ‘imperviousness,’ by the way—just endless life,” he continues evenly. “Right now, almost any wound I sustain, no matter how severe, will usually heal within an hour, but if I’m decapitated, that’s the end. What if I had true immortality, and some Persean Knight managed to cut my head from my shoulders? Could I reattach it? Or would I be in two parts for the rest of my eternal life?” A grim smile plays on his lips. “If I got blown up by a grenade, would I just exist forever as severed limbs and meat and a pile of mutilated brain tissue that can’t die—”

  “Okay!” I’m practically gargling bile, my back a Slip ’n Slide of icy sweat. “I get it: True immortality is not the rosy, daytime blood feast lots of vampires always imagine it to be. You can stop painting me the picture now, please!”

  “But that’s the problem. Lots of my kind do see it that way—even some within the Syndicate.” Jude takes one more drag on the cigarette and then stomps it out before it’s even halfway spent. “Just as you said, I represent the most powerful organization of undead creatures on the planet. The majority of Earth’s vampires descend from the original Syndics, and our strength is such that we’re able to compel even those who fall outside our influence to comply with our directives.

  “If you’ve ever wondered why Fulton Heights has so many vampires and yet so few vampire-related fatalities, it’s because the Syndicate forbids the unnecessary taking of human life.” Jude stuffs his hands into his pockets. “The punishments for breaking that edict are medieval, because I’ve seen firsthand what happens when humans get scared and start to mount large-scale demon hunts. It goes badly for both sides.”