Dark of Night

by T. F. Walsh

He was silent, staring at her, brooding. His arms were crossed, but he was so flustered he couldn’t manage to pull off his customary aloofness.

  She prodded, “I assumed that you already trusted me enough for this, or, at least, trusted yourself enough to believe that you could defend yourself against any attack I might make. I’m a little surprised. You have seemed so confident up until now. You sent your guard outside. You are willingly submitting to my magic — which you have always known I could wield for you or against you without your prior knowledge — but now, suddenly, you can’t stand to turn your back to me. I just didn’t expect you to hesitate on this issue when you’ve disregarded any other danger I might present. Are you truly afraid of what I might do?”

  “Don’t try to goad me into your designs. Such a taunt would only affect a man drunk with his own pride. I am not such a man.”

  She said nothing and tried lifting her eyebrow again. This time she crossed her arms for an additional affect.

  “I do not fear you. I’m merely surprised that you could consider such an intimate plan for our lessons. It strikes me that, as teacher, you should have considered the differences and the difficulties in our positions and adjusted the lesson accordingly.”

  When she still said nothing, he waited a few seconds and then spoke forcefully and calmly, as though he were making a pronouncement. “Enough. I will submit to your instruction. But now I wonder how much loyalty you have for your pack.”

  She winced and looked down, unable to deny the truth.

  He moved suddenly and plopped down in front of her, leaving a space of only a few inches between them. “Is this what you had in mind?” he asked softly, adding, as an afterthought, “I, for one, find blind, unquestioning loyalty a useless and dangerous thing.” He moved farther back, getting closer to her. “This is what you want me to do, isn’t it?”

  He could have been asking about his taking a position next to her or about teaching him in general. Either way her answer would have been the same. “Yes,” she said.

  She was close enough to smell his recently washed hair. She coughed nervously before saying, “I want to do something simple today. You said that you had never experienced a wound from battle.”

  “That is correct.”

  “Ok, well, today, I want to teach you that. If you want to understand your enemy, you must start with your enemy’s fear of harm, what he knows it will feel like when he is injured. The simplest way will be to inflict a small wound to my own body, then transfer that pain to you.”

  He paused for a moment and said, “You want to share pain with me. Fine. Proceed.”

  When he didn’t even glance back at her, she had to add, “I need your knife.”

  He tensed a little, but he moved his hand down his leg and popped it from his leather binding. He was shaking his head back and forth like he couldn’t believe what he was doing, but he handed her one of his knives, bending his elbow and passing it casually over his shoulder. “I’ve already come this far. Why not arm you?”

  “I have said that I won’t harm you.” She took the knife from him. There was a little bit of space between their bodies, so she could have cut her arm behind his back, but she figured that would make him nervous again. Deciding to reach around him, so that he could see what she was doing, Libby learned closer to his back and reached around him. His muscles tensed again as the knife neared his belly, but she just continued and placed the edge of the blade against her skin.

  “Are you ever going to get the business finished?” he muttered grumpily.

  “You’re not, you know, going to get all crazy at the sight of my blood or anything, are you?” He didn’t answer. He just sat there calmly breathing in and out, so she sliced her forearm. As soon as the cut was made, his body shuddered a little, and his shoulders tightened. She moved quickly and placed the knife next to her on the mat. She asked, “May I grab your hands?” but without waiting for his answer, she took his hands in hers and focused her mind on her pain.

  She focused on passing her pain to him. It was similar to the needles of waking that pierced skin as it woke from sleep or warmed from extreme cold. Focusing these images and sensations, she pushed them into Caleb and pictured sending waves of water through her mind into his hands. She imagined the cold water of winter, the water that bit the skin as his knife had done. After a few seconds, she heard him suck in air between his teeth. Was he surprised? Was he in pain? Was it working?

  • • •

  He had never been hurt with any weapon. In all the battles he had ever fought, and there had been many covert missions, he had never been injured.

  So this was pain? It seemed a small and manageable enough thing. Of course, this was a small injury. How much would the sensation change if the wound were larger, more severe?

  All in all, though, this was less painful than what he felt when he accidentally hurt Libby by teasing her about betraying her pack. Damn it. What a fool he could be. He had asked her for a great sacrifice, and then, out of some unreasonable fit of pique, he had injured her, saying he doubted her loyalty. He wished he had not mentioned it, or that she would forget it. He had tried to make a joke of it, but he was terrible at telling jokes, so he had tried to move on, but he worried she was still upset.

  Even though this exercise was distracting her, he would need to find some way to make it up to her. There was a pain in his belly, low, that rivaled anything that was going on with his arm. Was that pain, too? Was his worry over Libby pain?

  “Ok. I think I have had enough. I think I am understanding this more now,” he said.

  She released his hands and exhaled, she sounded tired. “You seem disappointed.”

  “Not disappointed exactly, just confused.”

  “About what?” she asked curiously.

  “I don’t see why anyone would be motivated to avoid something that trivial.”

  “Trivial? Well, can’t you imagine what it might feel like on a larger scale and understand how an opponent would want to avoid that?”

  “No. Honestly, no, I can’t.” He paused. He had an idea, but … “Let me ask you, does your kind heal as quickly as ours does?”

  “There goes that look again. What are you planning to do with me, Caleb?” She asked, seemingly shocked, but she was laughing. Why would she be laughing? How could a person be happy and horrified at the same time?

  “Why are you laughing? I never understand why you’re laughing.”

  “You should see yourself, Caleb. You are eager at the prospect of maiming me, yet you ask your questions so earnestly, so matter of fact. I think you might even call me your friend, yet you don’t hesitate to ask if you can maul me.”

  “I don’t want to maul you, not exactly.”

  “Just my point. You haven’t even told me what you have in mind. You have jumped ahead to the effects of what you want and if my body can handle it.”

  “Well? Can it?”

  She laughed again, and again he had no idea why. She never explained herself well enough to suit him, but she answered him, saying only, “Yes, I suppose it can.”

  • • •

  Over the next few weeks, they experimented. She spent much of her time at the palace. Every three days, without fail, undoubtedly by Caleb’s design, she would be returned to the prison. She would stay for one night and one day. Then she would return to Caleb, to the palace, and to their experiments.

  As time passed, Caleb would have said that Libby’s recuperative abilities were severely tested. Libby would have said that she had almost died a couple of times. They were both right. Libby was tempted to conclude that this was all part of the young king’s bizarre plan to slowly torture the former Conall-pack heir, but she could feel his earnest confusion with each new venture. Caleb simply couldn’t grasp how the sensation of pain motivated strategy or, for the most part, neutral
ized strategy.

  “This is absurd. Why would anyone run from this?” he said, gesturing toward their broken legs. Libby’s leg was mangled; Caleb’s leg, unlike hers, was fine, straight, healthy, strong, but she had transferred her pain to him — yet he still did not understand.

  “Caleb, you’re absurd. No one could run from this. After getting this wound, no one could run. Period.”

  “Don’t be ironic,” he snapped and rubbed his leg, finally showing a little of the pain that was pounding inside his apparently normal limb. Noticing her arched eyebrows, he amended, “Fine. Fine. It hurts, ok? But between this and losing a battle and, thus, losing a war? No. I repeat, who would run from this? Pain is temporary,” he hissed, clenching his teeth against a fresh wave of pain.

  “It’s a good deal more temporary for some,” she said suggestively, knowing that, soon, the pain that plagued him would return to her until her leg healed.

  “Don’t give me that, Libby. I’m not impressed by irony.” He sounded angry, but then his voice changed and he sounded apologetic, almost sad. “We can sit here, re-working your spell until you heal. I would be honored to bear this for you. I just — I need to understand this. Please, help me.”

  Knowing that he was likely to continue suggesting exponentially more agonizing and adventurous ideas, she recognized that her days of waiting for him to comprehend this on his own were over. They were both hurting too much for this to go on as it was.

  “Caleb, the pain isn’t what they are trying to avoid. Can’t you understand that? Do you remember, last week, at the wall, when we … well, when we fell?” She was referring to their experiment last week when they jumped from the mountain wall into dark water below. “Can’t you remember what you and I felt at the end? It wasn’t pain. It was fear, fear of dying. Caleb, your enemies, your allies … They aren’t motivated by trying to escape pain. They want to live, Caleb. They want to make their fathers proud. They want to protect their wives and children. They have a thousand other motivations and feelings that are beyond pain. You’re only playing at this, skimming over what is really going on. War is pain, but not this kind of pain.”

  “Can you show me those things, too? Can you?”

  “Let’s just see what we can see, Caleb,” she said, tiredly.

  “Just like that? We’re starting over?” he asked.

  “Just like that.”

  “Ok, we’ll just see.”

  They both recognized the words she had said to him when they first started working as a team. They smiled awkwardly at each other. His smile more a grimace due to the pain in his leg, and probably due in part to his broken face.

  “In your head, you’re calling me Broken Face, aren’t you? I can — damn this hurts — I can see it. Your eyes shine or something when you make fun of me.”

  “We’ve had enough of this I think,” she said, eager to change the subject. Working the spell, she returned the pain to her own leg.

  Following their usual pattern, Caleb lifted her up and carried her to a bedroom in the palace where, over the last few weeks, they had created a makeshift clinic.

  “Do you think I will ever comprehend what you’re trying to show me?” Caleb asked.

  Ignoring his questions, she teased, “Now, let’s start by healing, shall we? Carry me over yonder threshold, prince.” Squeezing his shoulders tightly and cradling her head inside the crook of his neck, she whispered, “My leg is really killing me. We’re not going to do this anymore are we, Caleb?”

  “No. I suppose not. I’m sorry to be so poor a student.” He laid her gently on the bed, and moved into the bathroom. “Once we reset your leg, it will lessen your pain. I am going to run a hot bath for you. I — excuse me — but I could see a hot shower in your head.” He cleared his throat, embarrassed.

  “Yes, thank you. I would like that. You don’t have to be chagrined … is that really the word in your head? Anyway, you don’t have to be chagrined about getting in my head. I’ve opened the door for you.”

  “I really am sorry about it. I don’t try to look, but when we’re going back and forth, I get flashes,” he called out over the noise of running water.

  “Caleb, don’t worry about it. I told you, it’s fine.”

  Stepping back into the room, he looked at her, and quietly asked, “Is it fine? Is all this really fine?”

  She knew he was asking about her pain, about how he had put her in harm’s way, but also about the communion they had with each other, about the fact that he was in a bedroom about to help her undress, about how, to many of his people, they were doing something wrong, very wrong, about how they were breaking new rules everyday. They were falling together, feeling together, and they had no plans to stop.

  “Oh, Caleb. I don’t know. I can see a lot of things, but human relationships … I can’t see what we will be or what your people will feel about you, about this. I can’t even see what we will eventually feel about it. There are too many variables. Individual lives don’t run on a cycle that I can discover. We don’t know our own stories. And even if we did, our stories don’t have shapes that I can see. I’m sorry. It may not be fine. I — ”

  “You don’t have to say anything else. It’s fine. We’ll just see, right? We’ll just see,” he said, coming to stand beside her, leaning over her. Handing her some pills and some water, he stood again to pick her up and move her to the bath.

  She could feel that Caleb was hoping whatever they had done and whatever they were going to do would be as easy to clean, as easy to heal, as the wounds she received this evening. She could have told him that the worst wounds suffered in life were in places that people couldn’t see, in places that people couldn’t reach, and that those wounds could take lifetimes to heal. She could have told him that, but she didn’t. Words, even more than magic, had limits.

  Chapter 17: IN PRISON FOR QUITE A SPELL

  Tomorrow he was going to be crowned. Tomorrow he would be king. He was done with waiting. He would announce a council meeting and demand Libby’s release. He was going to remind them that he his word was law. The time had come. He could not wait any longer, and he was sure Libby couldn’t, either. Tomorrow he would see her again. Tomorrow, Libby would be at home, with him. Tomorrow. He just had to get through this one night. If only he could be on the other side of morning.

  If he could get through this night without incident, it would be enough to guarantee his coronation. It would be enough to free her. There were many who remained distrustful of him and who were not willing to believe that Caleb could promise protection from enemies or from himself. Every full moon, every full moon without exception, the city stilled, closed in on itself.

  Tonight, the beast would reign, but tomorrow Caleb would be king. Tonight would be hell, but tomorrow …

  • • •

  The moon would be full tonight, and her powers would be stronger. She was going to work her magic. She had waited long enough.

  Caleb was king, and she was not yet free. His coronation was tomorrow night, but the decision of the council had been made days ago. In every way that mattered, Caleb had been king for over a week. He had not told her. He had not met with her since, and she was still in prison.

  She’d been practicing her spell, knowing she would have only one chance to get this right. Once the vampires understood more about her powers, they would find a way to prevent any attempted escapes like this again. She had to get this right. But … the flaws in her plan simply kept surfacing, shaking her confidence, making her feel she was taking too great a risk on too unlikely an outcome.

  Her people had never fully comprehended the long epochal lives of their enemy. It was possible that she could expend the energy to work the spell only to see the guard grow a little grayer and to watch a thick line of dust form around the base of the walls. A vampire had a long life. So did this building. Difficult enough to
contain the span of their lives in her mind, let alone to capture it within her spell. Worse, she would have to cast on both objects almost simultaneously. She would have to defeat the cage and the captor in one blow.

  No matter. She was going to try it tonight. Practicing for the last few weeks, she had learned more about the limits of her power and about the limits of time. She had studied the cycle of moments that held the prison and the prison guard. Over and over, she had experimented, and she knew exactly how to add a few gray hairs to the head of the ancient guard, how to make fine cracks and layers of sand appear in the stone. After her hours of practice, her magic was finely honed, no energy, no image wasted. Having practiced precision and control beyond what she had ever mastered before, she hoped that she could apply that tonight, expand it, multiply it with continued accuracy, and, finally … be free. She wanted to leap from this building, unchained, like the stone wolf outside.

  • • •

  The shift was coming. Usually cool to the touch, Caleb’s white skin was feverish with the energy of the wolf inside. His eyes seemed to burn from a heat within him, especially when he glanced toward the prison where Libby was held. As he paced in his room, he sensed the wolf pacing, too, eager in a way that it never was, not simply hungry, but — but what? Achy, needy, hollow.

  His body was trying to tell him something, but what?

  Caleb had considered that the wolf responded to Libby, but what that would mean in the future, or what it might mean even now, he could not hazard a guess. He and the wolf were separate, sharing nothing. He was not privy to the creature’s thoughts and feelings, and thus could not determine with any accuracy whether the beast wished her well or ill. Its quiet rest at the feet of the prison suggested that it was waiting for her. But what could the beast want with her? What would tonight hold for her, for him, for his people?

  And yet, despite his questions, despite his worry, the shift was coming. The beast would surface, burn away the man he was. In a few hours, Libby would be nothing to him; he would be nothing to himself.