by Tracy Clark
The gentleman had a robust spirit. I felt it in me, swirling smoothly through my body, like stirring sweet milk into black coffee. Shudders of revulsion passed over my skin. Not because of his energy. But because it felt so good. It felt good to be alive.
Before I’d decided to put him back on his boat, I’d pondered whether to tie something to his leg and drop him into the depths. I’d also pondered doing that to myself. That would be a death I surely could not recover from. But just as Cora had been my last thought as I slipped from life, she was my first thought when I rose up again. Shame was a million demon voices hissing at me about my first kill. Since I’d become an Arrazi during my time with Cora, all I seemed to feel was utter, black shame.
I realized I also felt shame for another reason. Had I abandoned Cora when I might have helped her? If I’d died, she’d have one less ally in the world. Could I possibly be of help? To keep her safe from me, though, I’d have to stay far away from her. Banish all thoughts of someday.
You’ve been a bloody, self-indulgent git, Finn Doyle.
The sun had long risen over the city. The question of whether I’d live or die seemed to have been answered, through no conscious accord of my own. To assuage my good ol’ Catholic guilt, I’d figured that if I’d let myself die of natural causes—through lack of other people’s energy—then I might not be condemned to hell. Seemed I wasn’t meant to die. Not yet, anyway.
So, as I sailed away from the gentleman’s floating casket, my new question became, why? Why was I made this way? If I feared a god that would condemn me for murdering, why would he have created me to do so?
Suddenly, I needed the answers with a fervor that rivaled my need for that poor man’s energy. And if I could find answers, then perhaps I could help Cora, help all of us.
Sometimes, a git needs a purpose greater than the one he’d envisioned for himself.
Driving up to the manor was paradoxical. I approached my family home, altered. I’d walked through some kind of fire on that boat, and it burned in my belly. Every question I wanted answered was a puff of breath, stoking the flames. Paradoxically, coming home was also like nothing had ever happened. The same massive stone steps that I’d raced up, fallen down, and sat on for countless photos welcomed me as I walked toward the manor.
No doubt my parents would be overjoyed to see me alive. They knew me well enough to know that I hadn’t been making an idle threat when I’d said good-bye. It had hurt like hell to see my father cry. I think it made me love my mother more, not less, to see her console him and stoically accept that I had the right to live—or die—on my own terms. It was probably the greatest act of love she’d ever shown me.
As soon as I entered the house, I heard yelling.
And my uncle Clancy’s voice.
I’d not thought out how I would react to seeing him again so soon.
“Jesus, Ina, you idealistic twit! Do you not grasp the danger this family is in?”
“I don’t care. I’ve lived this long without being under anyone’s thumb. I’ve lost my only son. Your pursuits and ruthless ambitions are nothing to me!”
Clancy growled in frustration, his footsteps ticking off a worn path back and forth as they argued. “I know, for a fact, that when Arrazi do not cooperate with the Society, they suffer from a sudden attack of dying! Jesus, Mary, and Joseph, we’re all in jeopardy if we don’t at least appear to cooperate with them. Finnegan’s cowardice has only made it worse.”
My nostrils flared in bullish anger.
“Do not speak of him!” my mother roared. “You’ve given me no facts about this group you call the Society. Only threats. You’re afraid and you don’t truly know of what or of whom.”
“I know they are powerful. I know there’s no place too high for their reach, and no place too low they won’t go to get what they want.”
“And what is that, exactly?” I asked, pushing the library doors open and striding in.
“Finn!” My mother gasped. She was dressed all in black and was on her feet, already gathering me in her arms, making me feel like a little boy when I most needed to man up. “Oh, my son,” she whispered. “Know only that I love you.” She tilted my chin up and looked into my eyes. Her elation was smothered by a quick, passing cloud of understanding. She saw my blackest hole.
I was now a murderer.
I tore my gaze away and stared past her, at my uncle.
His simpering smile iced my blood. “How robust you look, my lad,” he said, rocking back on his heels with his arms crossed over his drum of a chest. “I’m proud of you, boy.”
My jaw clenched. “Don’t be.”
“Can I dare to hope you’ve come to your senses?”
We stared at each other. This was a critical moment. I couldn’t bow down and swear to be a good little Arrazi killer. But I had to make him believe I could be an ally—of sorts. It was a balancing act. Too contrite and allegiant, and he’d be suspicious. Too angry, and he might dismiss me altogether. I wished I’d had more time to prepare.
In order to help Cora, I had to be in with Clancy, close enough to keep tabs on him. “If my family is in jeopardy, I want to do what I can to protect them,” I said, hoping I didn’t sound as monotone out loud as I did in my head. “But,” I said, as Clancy opened his mouth to speak, “I will not help you find Cora and her mother, and…her friend.” I became aware of the rise in my blood pressure at the thought of Giovanni Teso.
“I don’t need your help. I found them yesterday.”
An anvil of terror and dread swung hard into my chest. “Where are—?”
“Unbunch your knickers, boy. They escaped.” He ran his hand over his mustache and I noticed the fresh cut on the side of his head. “For now. Either we find them, or someone much more dangerous will.”
I shrugged, trying to keep my composure despite my racing heart. “Their blood will not be on my hands, then.”
Clancy stepped close. “Aw now, nice sentiment but,” he said with a menacing smirk, “the passive often have more blood on their hands than those who wield the sword.”
“You and I both know it would be a lie for me to walk in here and tell you that I’m suddenly motivated to help you capture the girl I love and hold her prisoner for the rest of her life. I won’t do it.”
“This isn’t about prisoners, boy. The Society wants all the Scintilla dead. All of them. Every. Last. One.”
Knots of fear and apprehension twisted in my gut. He was suggesting genocide. “And what? You’re working for them? Killing a race of humans that are more beautiful and special than we could ever be?”
“I don’t want to kill the Scintilla.”
“What do you want them for?” It was a direct question. He should have to answer it. Clancy couldn’t resist my power before. My sortilege to get the truth had helped me save her once. Perhaps… I held my breath.
My uncle threw up his hands in frustration. “I sympathize with your anger at me, at your parents. It’s why I never had children of my own—foiled many a romantic prospect, I can tell you. I am just like you, we’re the same.”
When he saw the disgust that must have been evident on my face, he softened his tone.
“You have been like a son to me. I know you can drag the truth out of me against my will, so let me be honest with you so we can start over. I don’t want any more deception between us. The Society has asked me, and all Arrazi allied with them, to seek out and kill any Scintilla they find. I want the three, yes. I always did. But not to kill them. That is the truth. If I wanted to kill Scintilla, I’d have killed Gráinne years ago. She was always more valuable to me alive. They would have been better off with me, even in captivity, than dead, which is exactly what they’ll be if the Society gets a hold of them first. I’m forced to play two games here. Mine and the Society’s. Three is this family’s insurance against Ultana Lennon, the most powerful Arrazi in the world. I want three because she wants three.”
“I see,” I said.
“Finn, you d
on’t have to entertain your uncle’s notions for another minute. Nor do you have to join with him,” my mother said.
I ignored her and locked eyes with him. “I understand.”
“Do you, boy?” he asked, grasping my jacket. “I hope you do. Because it’s not just their lives that depend on how we play this.”
Eighteen
Finn
Clancy left us in the sunlit library, where the fire sputtered like an old man.
“I want to know everything about our kind. And what you know of the Scintilla, as well.”
My mother smoothed her hand over her forehead. “Your life depends upon using the life source of others to sustain you,” she began, sounding very antiseptic. I wondered if this was how she sounded when she delivered bad news to her patients. “At first, your needs will be urgent and come quite frequently. The space between kills,” she said, ignoring my grimace, “will lengthen as you mature. You require more energy when you’re young.”
“Why do the Scintilla affect us differently than regular humans?”
“Scintilla energy is especially potent. Their energy is such a perfect match for ours that it lengthens the time between our necessity to kill. It also gives us our sortilege.”
“But we still have to kill, even if we’re regularly taking energy from a Scintilla, as Clancy was doing?”
She sighed. “Yes. But much less frequently.”
“And if we take a Scintilla’s life? What happens then?”
“If you kill a silver one, you will gain their sortilege as your own, and never have to kill again. That is the rumor, anyway.”
“Clancy knew this, and he didn’t kill them? Why?”
“I don’t know why my brother didn’t kill Cora’s mother. As he said, he hoped to find three of them. I’ve never met an Arrazi who’s killed a Scintilla. We thought they were extinct, remember? We’ll talk more later. You’d better go see your father. He’s upstairs. He’s been disconsolate since you left.”
“I’m sorry.”
My mother sighed heavily. “Nearly every Arrazi has been there. Not all of us return.”
I turned to go but stopped with my hand on the door. “I’ll go let Da know I’m okay.”
Her smile was tight-lipped and grim. “We’ll have visitors tonight,” she said. “That’s how the fight started with your uncle. The Arrazi woman, Ultana Lennon, from one of the old families, who is evidently quite enmeshed with this Society.” Her hand waved on the word like it was a triviality. “She is coming to speak with your father and me. I can’t imagine what she wants. We’ve kept to our own all these years. I’d like that to continue.”
“Kept to your own? What do you mean?”
“You are from one of the oldest Arrazi families known. There’s no hiding what we are from other Arrazi. Families talk. But now, they wish to drag us into their politics. I don’t want any part of it. I’ve sheltered us from that because I don’t want you to have any part of it. You can’t be serious about cooperating with him?”
Hence, her overprotectiveness all my life. I’d not answer aloud. Who could know the ways my uncle had of spying? But the look I gave my mother was pure seriousness. I went upstairs to find my father.
His door was shut so I gave two light taps before entering. He slumped at his desk by the window overlooking the sea, chin resting in one hand, face drawn. The other hand played idly with a gray stone. Shock rounded his eyes when he saw me walk in. Wordlessly, I crouched in front of him. He simply took my face in his hands and pressed his forehead to mine. It was startlingly intimate. I ached. My father had always been the softer of my parents.
“Forgive me, Da. I didn’t know what else to do.”
One lone tear raced down his cheek and suspended like an icicle from his stubbled jaw before dropping down. “I questioned everything, too, when I was your age, but came to one conclusion—it’s not as though the Arrazi created ourselves, son.”
“Maybe not,” I admitted, begrudgingly. “But you created me.”
He simply nodded. So many words filled the room that silence was the only communication that made any sense.
“You have to be careful, Finn, about taking what you must. How you do it. Where you do it. Now you understand why your mother and I became doctors—to work around sick people. It seems more…humane. But sometimes we are forced to take wherever we can. It can be done quickly, more expediently.” He thrust his hands out in front of his chest, holding the stone out to me.
“What’re you on about with this?” I asked, turning the smooth rock over in my palm. It was engraved and painted with a strange marking: a green lotus flower with a hexagram in the middle of it. “Go on, Da. What’s this about?”
“It is called anahata. It is the Hindu symbol for the fourth chakra, the heart chakra.”
“What’s the meaning of the hexagram?” I asked, fingering the triangles within the symbol. “Is it the Jewish Star of David?”
“It looks like it, but no. The two triangles make up the shatkona, the Hindu symbol for the union of the opposites of the masculine and feminine forms.”
“I’m sorry,” I said, placing the stone on his desk. “What’s this got to do with anything?”
“It has to do with how you can be less severe when taking what you need. Imagine a funnel of energy from their heart chakra, right where the heart—”
I wanted to cover my ears like a child. “Don’t bloody tell me how to kill!” I was already heading for the door. “There is nothing more severe than killing someone.”
“You can make it easier on them.”
I looked over my shoulder at him. His eyes were imploring.
“Tell that to them, Father. I don’t want to know how to efficiently kill someone. I want to know how to stop it.”
My mother wasn’t waiting for me in the library as I’d hoped. What did I expect? In my mind, I returned to this house something other than their boy and they’d treat me differently. I’d killed a man. You’re never a boy again, after that.
Being alone afforded me the opportunity to peruse her books. I’d always ignored these new age books, thinking they were the silly hobby of a woman in need of diversion from her hectic professional life. As I scanned some of the titles, I caught myself thinking, Do people really take this stuff seriously? But those thoughts belonged to another time—a time when I thought I was normal and that magic and mysticism were only make-believe.
Most of the books were about the energy around people—the science of it, the seeing of auras, how to “cleanse” your aura. There were books about chakras with colorful illustrations for each chakra. I stared at the page for the heart chakra, anahata, the one with the triangular shatkona my dad said to focus on when killing. I blew out a ragged breath as I looked at the beautiful symbol.
“His books are some of the best I’ve found,” Mum’s velvety voice said from behind me.
I looked at the author’s name on the spine. “Edmund Nustber? Hm. Why do you have so many books about auras if Arrazi can’t see them?”
Mum sat in her wingback chair and crossed her legs. My mother was the most deliberate and composed person on the planet. “I wished to train myself to see them, especially when I was younger. I foolishly thought that if I could see auras, I’d be able to pick and choose who I killed.”
“Why is that foolish?”
“It’s like picking fruit, only I wanted the spoiled ones. The ones who were already sick, or…rotten.”
“I don’t think that’s foolish.”
She took a sip of tea and set the cup down on its saucer. “It’s foolish to want what you can’t have.”
“So, we can’t see auras?”
“I know of no Arrazi who can.”
I gathered a few of the books under my arm. “Can we talk more later?”
She inclined her head. “Of course.”
“I’m going to my room.” I needed peace, rest, and some privacy to do a little digging on my own.
I flopped onto my bed
, sinking into the white pillows. I scanned the familiar room with new eyes: a variety of guitars, clothes slung over a wide chair, framed album covers of B.B. King and Stevie Ray Vaughan. I berated myself for the comfort it gave me to be here. The man I’d killed would never again feel the simple comfort of slipping into his bed at the end of a long day. If I had to carry his gentle soul within me, I vowed never to take it for granted.
For quick information that might have been more current, I did a computer search before diving into my mother’s books. The internet was a rabbit hole of speculation masquerading as knowledge. As I suspected, there was nothing about “Arrazi.” I typed in “Taking energy from people” which immediately rendered results about “energy vampires” and how to protect yourself from the “energy parasites, energy vampires, psychic vampires” of the world.
My stomach sank.
So, this was a phenomenon that people had surely felt, though it seemed clear they didn’t know the whole truth. Neither did I, for that matter. For instance, our origins… Were there always Scintilla and Arrazi? And if so, how was it possible that others didn’t know about us?
My mother was right about the author, Edmund Nustber. He was everywhere. On the surface, especially in videos, he came off a bit of a mentaller. Right-wing conservatives constantly attacked him for claiming to be an expert on scripture and for his claims that there were loads of secret messages in the Bible and in the gospels that were left out of the official canon. He loved conspiracies and even believed the Sistine Chapel was full of surreptitious messages encoded in the paintings. But if you ignored all that and concentrated on the energetic stuff, he seemed to know more about the phenomenon of giving and taking energy or auras than anyone else.
Nustber wrote about how psychic vampirism was actually the forerunner to the folktales about bloodsuckers. Soul eater, energy predator, pranic vampire, psychic vampire, and parasitic vampire were some of the ugly names they had in place for what we were really called. I couldn’t blame them. Damn accurate, they were.
I read about Hindu vetalas, spirits who fed on the prana of others, exhausting humans’ brilliant light to fuel their own abnormal embers. Hours were spent combing through books and sites. Enough of the truth was out there that there was no denying; the belief in those who took energy from people had been around for thousands of years.