Of Light and Darkness

by Shayne Leighton

  “I’ll entertain any idea. I can’t stay here much longer, or I fear for my sanity.” He mumbled the last part toward Francis.

  “What if we let them find Charlotte?” Lusian continued.

  “What?” Valek tensed. Charlotte did as well, until Sarah put a hand on her shoulder.

  “Listen. Give the little bastard what he wants for now. It will buy us the time we need. We kill Vladislov, we’ve killed the Regime.”

  Valek stood, looking Lusian dead in the eyes. “Do you know what it’s like to love something more than yourself, you sniveling, insignificant leach? I would sooner watch myself burn in daylight than use her as bait!”

  “You already have, Valek.” Francis snorted. He rubbed at this bridge of his nose. “For what has she been to us all this time than mere bait?”

  “It would be our only hope of succeeding,” Lusian said.

  A flash of anger colored Valek’s face for an instant before it went back to delicate thought. “You’re asking me to risk the only thing that has any meaning for me in this dark life. You’re asking me to place a bet on my daughter.”

  “Your lover,” Francis countered.

  “My world.” He glanced out of the corner of his eye to Charlotte then turned his back to her. “But I suppose I would be making that bet anyway by doing nothing. We must make sure to finish it before daybreak. And I want everything under my control. How do we make her accessible to them without revealing ourselves?”

  Charlotte stared, horrified as they casually continued.

  “We’ll think of something,” Lusian mused.

  “If they capture us, our plan will fail,” Valek instructed. “They must find her at night, when it is easier for us to hide. In the darkness, it is less dangerous.”

  Mr. Třínožka put a protective hand on Charlotte’s shoulder. Her gaze traveled from face to face around her, and found none were looking back. She kept her thoughts quiet though, trying her best to steer away from the thousands of questions she had. She looked back to Valek again, exhaling very slowly through her nose. It made her eyes water.

  “I am tired already of this debate.” Valek sighed. “It is growing early. Perhaps we continue this discussion tomorrow evening.” He clasped his hands together behind his back.

  “The night is still young, darling Valek.” Francis laughed, conceitedly folding one leg over the other. He gestured for his created to take his seat again. “And I am thoroughly enjoying this conversation.”

  “It’s a wonder the Regime has not yet found us yet,” Andela mused.

  “This house is a safe haven. It has been specially protected for years by magic more powerful than mine. It would take the most experienced enchanter to notice anything inhuman about it,” Sarah said.

  A knock rapped at the front door one story above them. Particles of the dirt-packed ceiling snowed down around them. They looked at one another.

  Sarah silently gathered herself up. She appraised the startled macabre faces. “Probably just another salesmen going door to door.”

  “At three in the morning?” Andela asked.

  Sarah didn’t believe herself either. She leapt up the dark tunnel, leaving the Vampires around the crackling fire, the only thing making any noise whatsoever in the basement besides Charlotte’s pulse.

  They were all listening for thoughts, their faces turned slightly upward at the exact same angle. Even Valek’s, Charlotte noticed. She suddenly saw his features change from thoughtfulness, to astonishment, to a mistrustful wariness.

  The others in the coven turned to him as well. “Who is Evangeline?” Jorge said the name as if it were from some foreign planet.

  Charlotte’s eyes widened, and she stood immediately up. “Evangeline? Evangeline from our Occult?” She looked at Valek. They finally locked eyes with each other.

  “And the plot thickens….” Francis wrapped his claws together.

  “I thought she was dead.” Charlotte could feel a new wave of fear squeeze her throat closed, though she couldn’t understand why she was afraid.

  “She should be,” Valek mumbled.

  “Maybe she escaped like we did.”

  Sarah and the familiar cloaked woman plummeted into the basement. Valek froze as he appraised her. The dust settled, and the woman removed her hood. Indeed, it was Evangeline.

  The Witch’s eyes swelled with overwhelming joy as she ran to the Vampire and wrapped him in a wiry embrace. “Valek!” She choked out from behind her tears. “I was so sure you were dead.”

  Charlotte and Mr. Třínožka glanced at each other. The spider-man wrapped one of his long arms around her middle in an effort to keep her calm.

  “I am so happy to see you are alive!”

  Valek pulled immediately away from her with a polite smile. He looked over at Charlotte. “It is good to see you are alive as well, Evangeline. Pane Třínožka told us the fate of our city.” He gestured at the spider.

  Evangeline spun on her heels to see both Charlotte and the Phaser standing side by side. Once again her face swelled as she ran over. “Oh, Charlotte!” She buried Charlotte’s face in her bosom. “I cannot tell you how happy this makes me. I am so glad to have found you!” The Witch pulled away and brushed the hair out of Charlotte’s face, but did not release her grasp on Charlotte’s arm.

  Charlotte glanced back at Sarah once, who looked a little more than slightly confused.

  “You escaped the palace?” Charlotte asked.

  Evangeline’s features turned hard, but she maintained her beautiful, warm smile. “Yes. How lucky I was the guards did not notice the extra teleporting spell I carried on my belt.” Her smile stayed, and so did the grip she had on Charlotte’s arm. She gazed into Charlotte’s eyes for a few moments longer, before something watery tricked from behind her lashes. She turned quickly back to Valek.

  “But how did you find this house?” Sarah asked, disappointed.

  “Well, you are surely a Witch of the thirteenth generation?” Evangeline asked.

  Sarah nodded.

  “As am I! We are like sisters. I can sense our spells from miles away.” She folded her hands delicately in front of her.

  “Well, good!” Francis stood gallantly from where he sat. He clapped his hands in front of his face. “Now we have two Witches to ensure Charlotte’s safety,” he said with a fangy grin.

  “Pardon?” Evangeline’s eyebrows rose.

  “We are plotting our uprising against the Regime,” Lusian explained.

  “And the only way for any sort of break-in to be successful is if we send Charlotte in as a distraction. But you know your way around the palace now. Perhaps you could help us,” Valek said.

  Evangeline’s emerald eyes dazzled as her mouth twisted up in an odd sort of smile that Charlotte didn’t quite understand. “Of course, I would—I would do anything to help my Charlotte.” She wrapped her arms around Charlotte again.

  Sarah grumbled something incoherent and walked to the middle of the circle. She yanked a long, silver chain from her pocket. At the end of it, Charlotte recognized her small, silver whistle. She grabbed for it, but Sarah pulled it out of her reach.

  “My whistle! Where did you find it?” she asked amazed, studying its details in the firelight. It was tarnished; the grooves caked with dirt, but otherwise just as beautiful as it had always been. “I thought I had lost it forever.”

  “I found it the night you and Valek came. It was mixed among the broken glass near the front door. I figured you must have dropped it when you broke in,” Sarah explained. Evangeline marveled at it, too. “I haven’t given it back to you yet, because I wanted to clean it up for you. It was caked with blood and dirt. And also”—she strung it around Charlotte’s neck—“I had a feeling about you. I’ve been working on the spells for days.”

  “What do you mean?” Charlotte asked.

  “You’ll see.” Sarah smiled and glanced toward Evangeline. “It will come in handy when you need it most.”

  “As in, once I’m inside
the Regime walls,” Charlotte concluded.

  “Thank you very much for that, Sarah,” Valek said.

  “Of course,” she replied. “Charlotte is, after all, one of us. I don’t like this any more than you do.”

  “And I’m sure there’s something I can do to help in addition. There are a few other spells I can think of,” Evangeline added.

  Sarah grimaced once before smiling at the other Witch. “Well good, then. It will be a pleasure to work with you. We start in the morning.” She sharply turned on one toe and disappeared quickly back into the upper portions of the house.

  “Morning is an hour away,” Evangeline said to the rest of the coven.

  “We suggest you get your rest, then.” Francis smiled. “If you’ll follow me back up to the house, you’ll find several empty bedrooms. I suggest we find you one most fitting.” He smirked, catching his tongue on the tip of one fang.

  Chapter Twenty-Two

  Promises Unkept

  The rest of the coven lingered around the fireplace. Some of them silently watched it die out. Some of them chattered out loud about what they had seen and talked about, all the while glancing in the direction of the south wall of the basement, where Valek and Charlotte sat close together, their fingers intertwined.

  “I know you’re scared,” he admitted.

  “I am. But I would do anything to make your world safe again.”

  “Our world.”

  “You know what I mean.” She put her forehead against Valek’s cheek. Her face lit up. “I get to stay with you tonight!”

  Valek didn’t say anything in response. He smiled.

  “Unless Francis will make you stay with him,” she continued.

  He looked down at her and stopped smiling. “How intuitive you are.”

  “Will he?” she asked.

  “We are changing the subject.” Valek pulled his face away from hers.

  She looked down and started to fiddle with the hem of her dress. “Do you like the clothes Sarah has given me?”

  “Yes. Very much,” he answered, but did not look at her.

  “How long do I have with you before they make me leave?”

  Valek sighed and pulled her by the waist onto his lap to face him, like he used to when she was a child. Only this time it made the muscles in his middle tighten. “I don’t know, Lottie. As long as it takes Evangeline and Sarah to come up with a way to make sure you will be protected.”

  “Sarah doesn’t trust her,” Charlotte divulged.

  Valek looked at her, surprised. “Are you mind-reading now as well?”

  She smiled, nervously straightening his tattered ascot. “No. Call it women’s intuition. It doesn’t take immortal powers to sense that.” She looked at him. “Do you trust her?”

  “She has no devious thoughts. For me, there is no reason to not trust her.” He thought for a moment. “I will keep my distance, however.” He chuckled.

  Charlotte did not find this funny. She let her hands collapse in front of her. The scar Valek had left from that first night started to ache faintly on the side of her neck. She winced as she brought her hand to it.

  “What is it?” he asked, worried. He pushed her hand aside to examine it.

  “Nothing. It just burns sometimes,” she admitted.

  Valek frowned. He had never heard of that before. “Burns?”

  “Just a little. Very lightly, and only once in a while.” She smiled at him. “I like it. It makes me think of you.”

  “Tell me if it gets worse.”

  She leaned in to kiss him. But he didn’t kiss her back this time. She looked at him expectantly.

  “It feels inappropriate, Lottie.” He glanced toward the gaggle at the fireplace.

  She accepted this and leaned in again, only to put her cheek on his shoulder this time. Her nose brushed against the cool skin on his neck. “You’re my hero, Valek.”

  “And you are mine.”

  She could feel Francis’ stare burning into the back of her head still. She only glanced for a moment over her shoulder before cradling Valek’s cheek in her hand. “Tell me about it. How did it happen?”

  Valek frowned and delicately removed her hand. “It is a very long story.”

  “Tell me the short version, then.”

  He sighed, a small smile returning to his lips. Francis continued to listen from the distant corner. “It was the beginning of World War One. Czechoslovakia was a cultural wasteland heavily oppressed under the weight of the Iron Curtain. Our language—our very national identity was on its deathbed with the start of the First World War.

  “I had just moved to the city from a small village in Eastern Moravia with my young wife. We were very poor. There were more opportunities in Prague for a doctor.”

  His eyes were distant and foggy. Charlotte could tell he wasn’t in the room with her anymore. “She didn’t want to move.” He laughed, but there was an immense sadness that underscored it. “She told me life would be more difficult in the city away from her parents. But I was young and stupid. I was excited to begin my life and to establish who I was. But the winter was very cold that year….” His sentence trailed off and he stopped talking altogether.

  Charlotte lowered her eyes and climbed off him. She stayed next to him, his hand in hers, and waited for him to continue.

  “I didn’t know what else to do, so I continued to work and live in the city. What else should I have done?” The glaze in his eyes disappeared and he locked his gaze with Francis. He stood up in blazing fury.

  Francis stood at the far end of the basement also, smiling however. “I wish you would stop whining, Valek. I handed you the world on a plate.”

  In a blind instant, Valek was in front of Francis, his fangs bared. He slashed the side of his creator’s face with his claws, but Francis only continued to chuckle as the wounds healed instantaneously.

  “You’ve always been so angry Valek,” Francis taunted.

  “You give me good reason,” Valek seethed. “I have had very few regrets.” He turned on the rest of the coven. “I do regret what I am.” He looked at Francis. “I do not regret doing what I did for you. Since I saved you from starving to death in this city of gutters, you have done nothing but try and cage me. If there’s any chance of redemption for our kind, I at least know that might be a possibility for me. But not for you. I should make you suffer in turn for making her suffer….” He reached back and ripped a wooden arm from the nearest chair. He set flame to the thing from the fireplace before holding it against Francis’ throat.

  Charlotte leapt up and raced to intercept them. Grabbing Valek’s arm and with a hand outstretched to Francis, she yelled, “Stop! You don’t want to do this.”

  Francis began laughing again. “You wanted me to do it, Valek. I saw it in your mind. The curiosity was so thick, I tasted it when I drank from you.”

  “My wife perished for what you did.” Valek’s jaws clenched together.

  “No, dear Valek. She died because of your neglect. That’s the thing. You do have regrets. Many of them. I was just the catalyst.”

  Valek dropped the stake, the flames extinguished in the moist dirt. “Either way, you owe me happiness with Charlotte,” he said quietly. “My wife’s death was partially your fault. If I never met you—”

  Francis interrupted. “If you’d never met me, you would be dead, and Charlotte would have in all probability grown up in an orphanage, unbeknownst to any of this.”

  “In return for saving your life, you will release me from this cage and let me have happiness. I’ve finally found a source of it in her in this miserable reality. After all of this is over and the Regime is overthrown, you will let me go and let me live out the rest of this damned existence as I wish. I’ll follow your idiotic rules under your roof, but I can promise you I won’t be here forever.”

  Francis ruefully folded his arms and smirked. He shrugged his shoulders. “You may have her when you leave. But we made a promise to each other. Until this is over, you a
re mine.”

  Charlotte thought for a minute and turned her head to look up toward the thin shafts of light falling from the tunnel. “It’s almost time. Can we continue this argument a different evening?”

  Valek stiffened. He and Francis stayed glaring at each other like two titan statues. The firelight glinted off the garnet brooch at the base of Francis’ pearly throat. The idea of decapitating him was extremely appealing to Charlotte in that moment.

  “Take me back up to the house.” Charlotte tugged softly on Valek’s shirt.

  Francis walked away, yawning. He made his way to one of the coffins on the other side of the basement, and with one last, evil glare toward Charlotte, he closed it with a thump. The rest of the coven averted their attention away also. The excitement was over.

  “He wants me dead. He will kill me,” she whispered.

  “No, Lottie, he won’t.” Valek turned her gaze back to him again. “He knows I cannot stay away from you as a beloved no more than I can stay away from you as a life source.” He leaned in so his nose brushed at the tip of her neck.

  “You’re torturing yourself, you know,” she said.

  He sighed, pulling away, his eyes black. Charlotte frowned.

  “Shall I take you up then?” he asked sadly.

  “Hold on.”

  He leaned back on his heels and waited.

  “What happened?” she asked. “You did not…finish the story.” She treated her words like stepping stones atop delicate ice.

  He opened his mouth to answer and then shut it.

  “How did you save a Vampire’s life, when you were only human?”

  Valek moved forward and traced her spine with his finger. “The same way you did. I allowed him to feed on me so he would not starve.”

  She frowned. That wasn’t the answer she expected. “Is that how you became one?”

  He smiled darkly. “No.” He fell silent then and stepped back from her. He playfully held out his hand. “Shall we?”

  “Valek?”

  He stayed silent, his arm out to her, waiting. When she stubbornly refused to take it, he began to walk in the direction of the tunnel, anyway.