by Amir Lane
Dieter swallowed. This was not the conversation he wanted to have. He wanted to pretend that the Shadows didn’t exist, not admit that they were only a few feet away.
“I don’t think you’re supposed to be encouraging them,” he said with as much humour as he could manage.
“These scratches aren’t a hallucination, Dieter. If someone or something is doing this to you, you need to tell me.”
His hands were so gentle, tracing over the scratches almost lovingly. He cupped Dieter’s cheek and kissed his mouth until he melted into it.
“I’m worried about you,” Steven said.
Dieter felt weak. And maybe he was weak. Something so simple shouldn’t have made him feel the way it did. He was used to being worried over, but not like this. Not in a way that made him feel so warm. He always felt like such a burden when people worried. But he didn’t feel that way now.
He felt important.
“I don’t know if I can tell you. It’s not a person doing this. It’s… Fuck, I don’t—”
The Shadows perched closer, as if curious. Or maybe they were just restless.
Dieter took a deep breath and tried again.
“I thought they were hallucinations. Nobody else ever saw them. But these ones, they… They’re real, and they’re…”
Dieter let out a shuddery breath. He let Steven pull him into his chest. It was comforting in a way he’d never learned how to describe them. Like sitting inside, warm and safe, when it was snowing outside.
“I’m getting help with them,” he continued. “I’m learning how to deal with them. I know a guy who knows all about them.”
“If these things are real, then…”
“Then I’m a Sensitive. Yeah.”
“I’ve always maintained that Sensitives are some of the most remarkable people in the world. Clearly, I underestimated how remarkable.”
Dieter felt his chest swell. He buried his face in Steven’s neck to hide the sudden dampness in his eyes. He wanted to be called remarkable again.
They exchanged kisses and soft words into the evening until Steven had to leave for his night lecture. Dieter left with a promise to take care of himself. He had to run to catch the bus home. As the bus was pulling out, just for a brief moment, Dieter could have sworn that he saw one of Alistair’s Shadows watching him.
“I DON’T want to do this,” Dieter said between sobs.
He couldn’t stop himself, as much as he wanted to. Another sleepless week at the hands of the Shadows left him exhausted and desperate. His hands wouldn’t stop shaking.
“Do you want to stop?” Alistair asked.
A Shadow swooped in, barely an inch from Dieter’s face and shrieked. Dieter flinched, almost dropping the knife. It was clean, straight out of the package, and sterilised with rubbing alcohol. But none of that made Dieter feel any better about using it to cut himself.
Still, he shook his head.
“No, I want—I want to try.”
Dieter had to try something. Anything to get some sleep. He swallowed down fear and positioned the blade perpendicular to the vein. His hand shook harder.
“I—I can’t.”
“Do you want me to help you?” Alistair asked.
Dieter nodded. The Shadows swarmed around him, their cold bodies making his hair stand on end. They hissed and wailed and clawed their way across his legs and chest.
Alistair covered Dieter’s hand with his own and kissed the side of his head. His other hand took hold of Dieter’s wrist to keep him steady.
“Close your eyes. It’ll be over soon. Just a few seconds,” he promised.
Dieter ground his teeth together as the knife sank into his skin. Pain blistered through his nerves. It burned through his arm, travelling down the rest of his body. He could only hold it for so long before a sob choked out of his throat.
The Shadows let out shrill sounds. Dieter could feel them smearing blood across his skin as it poured from the cut.
“You’re doing so well,” Alistair said. “Take a deep breath for me, that’s it. You’re almost done.”
Dieter was starting to feel lightheaded. Why didn’t he think of sitting down first? His fingers were starting to lose feeling, but he couldn’t tell if that was from blood loss or nerves.
And then Alistair stopped squeezing blood out and covered the cut with a bandage. He kept applying pressure, waiting for the bleeding to slow. All the while, he pressed more kisses to Dieter’s head and neck and shoulder.
“We’re done. See? That wasn’t so bad, was it?” he said with a smile.
Dieter sniffed, wiping his eyes. No, it was pretty bad. He leant into Alistair for support.
“Do I need stitches?” he asked.
“No, this isn’t deep. You just need to bandage it up when it stops bleeding.”
With a slow nod, Dieter turned his attention to the bowl on his desk. There was somewhere between a quarter and half an inch of blood in it. A cow-blood sigil surrounding it kept the Shadows from knocking it over. It wasn’t for lack of trying. Two of them were trying to claw through the barrier to no avail. Maybe they knew what he was trying to do. Dieter almost felt bad for them.
“So what now?” he asked, pulling his chair over.
If he stood any longer, his legs would give out. He still felt like puking. This was worse than needles.
“Now we draw a sigil. It’ll be easier to clean if you do it on the mirror.”
Dieter nodded slowly and waited until the room stopped spinning to stand. He moved the mirror closer to the desk. It would have been easier to move the bowl, but he didn’t want to risk the Shadows getting to it before he could send them away.
Alistair held the book open so that Dieter could see the sigil while he painted it on the mirror. Droplets of blood landed on the plastic bag he’d set down. He tried not to think about what he was staining his mirror with. It was still more than he could get his head around.
The Shadows smudged the blood, leaving patches that he had to redo more than once.
“You won’t have to worry about that when you get faster at it,” Alistair assured.
“I’ll take your word for it. So I just—?”
Dieter motioned with his hands.
“Yup, the same way you always do. It’ll take a little more power, though. Hurry up before they mess it up again.”
Dieter took a deep breath and covered the sigil with his hand. He called up that energy reserve in the pit of his stomach. It came up cold and biting. It didn’t feel right. Something was wrong. Something was very wrong. He tried to pull back, but it was too late.
This wasn’t the same magic he usually used. It was something dark, something that made him taste bile and blood on the back of his tongue. The Shadows swarmed, shrieking and clawing at his skin. Dieter couldn’t be sure whether or not he screamed, too. It burned, stronger and more painful than regular magic, and the lines appearing on his skin only made it worse.
All at once, the shrieking stopped. The sudden silence left Dieter’s ears ringing. The room felt empty, hollow. He wasn’t sure it made him feel much better.
Alistair caught him just before he hit the ground. Before Dieter could thank him, the door was kicked in. Two solid thumps and it splintered open.
Dieter had never been afraid of Lenna before. He’d never had a reason to be. But with her eyes glowing yellow, and her teeth sharp and jagged, Dieter was far from ashamed to admit that he was maybe just a little bit afraid of her right now. He felt Alistair’s arms tighten around him.
“What did you do to him?” she growled.
“I didn’t—”
Lenna roared. Dieter could hear Aldo in it. The sound bounced off the walls and made his teeth rattle.
“Len,” Dieter managed, while Alistair swallowed thickly, “Len, I’m fine.”
She pulled her lips back over her teeth, exposing canines meant to kill animals far larger than them. Her eyes were fixed on Alistair’s throat.
“You don’t thin
k I smell your blood? You think I don’t smell what this filho da puta is turning you into?”
“I swear, I’m not—I’m not turning him into anything. I’m helping him.”
Lenna growled at the back of her throat. It was a sound Dieter had heard from Aldo, but never from her. He didn’t know that a human could even make a sound like that. But then again, those teeth were definitely not human.
“You helped enough. Now leave.”
Alistair hesitated. Despite his steady demeanour, a bead of sweat rolled down the side of his neck.
Dieter could feel Abigail and Abaddon in his periphery. He wasn’t going to try fighting her, was he? Shadows or not, nobody could win a fight against Lenna Alvarez. Especially not when Aldo came into play.
“You should go,” he said. It came out shaky. “I’ll call you later.”
Keeping his eyes on Lenna, Alistair kissed his cheek and gathered his bag and jacket. He slipped through the space that Lenna made for him. Dieter could hear his footsteps. Lenna roared, and the steps broke into a sprint.
Without Alistair supporting him, Dieter slunk down on the floor. The front door opened and closed again, and Abigail and Abaddon drifted out of focus. He looked up at Lenna, scowling despite his terror and, admittedly, curiosity. He’d never seen her like this.
Lenna blinked furiously, clenching and unclenching her teeth. Fangs shrank to a normal size, and her eyes shifted back to brown. She cracked her neck, squinting as if she couldn’t see.
“What the fuck was that?”
Dieter’s voice came out higher than he meant it to.
“That, querido, is one of the few things I can do with my very limited magic.”
“I thought you said you weren’t a witch.”
Dieter tried to keep his voice from sounding accusatory. The last thing he wanted to do was piss her off again.
Lenna sat down next to him and pulled him against her side.
“I’m not,” she said. “Never was, never will be. But me and Aldo, we’re so connected, it’s hard to tell which is which sometimes. You know Familiars have their own magic, right?”
“Right.”
“Well, sometimes, he’ll lend me some.”
“Like now?” he asked.
“Like now. We panicked, okay. We smelled blood—lots of it—and we freaked a little.”
Dieter laughed before he could stop himself.
“I would call that more than a little,” he said.
Lenna shrugged. Black ink moved across her arm, weaving through the rain forest tattooed on her skin. She shuddered as Aldo climbed off her body to curl up around Dieter.
“Yeah, well. We like you. Sue us.”
Dieter scratched Aldo’s head. He was rewarded with a purr as the black jaguar exhaled.
“I like you guys, too. But I don’t need you kicking my door in to fight my battles.”
“Right… I will fix that tomorrow. Sorry.”
“And I don’t need you scaring off my friends.”
“That, I will not apologise for.”
Dieter sighed in frustration.
“He’s helping me, Len. The Shadows are getting so bad, I haven’t slept properly in weeks. I can barely eat. I can’t study, I can’t go out, I can’t run… I’m desperate here. I wish I could just quit this,” he said. “I mean, fuck, you don’t know how much I wish that. But I can’t. The only way to get rid of them is more likely to kill me. And I don’t want to die, either. So I don’t exactly have that many options.”
Dieter rested his head on her shoulder. He pulled his knees up and wrapped his arms around them. He noticed for the first time pain blooming across his back.
“Christo… Those assholes really did a number on you…”
Dieter’s laugh quickly turned into a sob.
“I’m just so tired,” he whimpered.
“I know, baby, I know. You go take a shower and rest up. I’ll go make you some tea. How’s that sound?”
“Sounds good.”
Aldo followed him to the bathroom and lay down on the floor, visible through the shower curtain. The hot spray burned the scratches all over his skin and cut on his arm, even through the bandage. He clenched his teeth together, but a few pained sounds still escaped his throat. The water at his feet ran red, then pink, then finally clear. He stayed under the spray until it was cold despite the sting. There was something grounding in it, keeping him from getting lost in thoughts he wasn’t ready to consider. Only when his teeth started to chatter did he shut the water off and get out.
He sat against the counter, wrapped up in a towel. His eyes were painful from crying, but he couldn’t stop the tears from falling all over again.
“I don’t know what to do, Aldo. No matter what I do, I’m screwed. I’m such a fucking mess. I can’t even function properly. I—What am I supposed to do?”
Aldo pressed his nose to Dieter’s cheek.
“I don’t know what to do anymore. Alistair is trying to push me into bigger magic. And I don’t—I don’t want to. But the Shadows are out for blood. If I don’t give it to them…”
Dieter squeezed his eyes shut. His voice dropped to a whisper.
“And all this Shadow crap? This isn’t even it. You have to promise you won’t tell Lenna this part.”
Aldo gave a small nod. Whether he was being sincere or not, Dieter couldn’t tell and he didn’t care. He had to tell someone. Someone who wasn’t Lindy.
“I’m having an affair with one of my professors. I know it’s wrong and unfair to his wife, and I’m sick and disgusting for not stopping it. I know it’s just a game, and I know he’s using me. He’s an Empath, too.”
Dieter didn’t know what the sound Aldo made meant, something between a growl and a sneeze, but he took it as disapproval.
“I know! But I don’t want to stop. He makes me feel… special. I don’t know, human? Important? And even if I wanted to end this, I don’t know if I can. It’s not the same as what I have with Alistair.”
Aldo growled deep in the back of his throat.
“I get it, you hate him. But I don’t have anyone else who can help me with this. Do you? I didn’t think so.”
A light tapping resounded through the door. Dieter’s stomach clenched as he awaited the reappearance of the Shadows.
“Dieter?” Lenna called. “Your tea is getting cold.”
Dieter let out a breath he didn’t know he was holding.
“Just let me get dressed. I’ll be out in a bit.”
He pushed himself up to his feet and shuffled back to his bedroom while Aldo sat at the top of the stairs, waiting for Lenna to take him down. The door frame had been awkwardly pushed into place, but it did little to hide the damage. He pulled some clothes on, sitting on his bed to give his legs a break. He was asleep before he even realised that he was lying down.
WEEKS, MONTHS passed, and Dieter found that blood magic did become more bearable with time. That wasn’t to say that he enjoyed it, far from it. But it was bearable.
Alistair had been banned from the house for weeks. But Dieter’s self-appointed guardians eventually decided that if he was going to be learning Necromancy, it would be better to do it at home where Aldo could maul Alistair if necessary. So the ban on his presence had been lifted. Alistair’s visits were still few and far between, though, especially when Lenna was home.
There was no denying that what Dieter was doing was Necromancy. There was also no denying that he was starting to get the hang of it. It didn’t take as much out of him anymore. As much as Lindy and Lenna disapproved, even they had to admit it.
And as much as he hated the Shadows, Dieter couldn’t avoid finding uses for them.
“It’s all about frequency,” he told them as if they could possibly understand. “You assholes exist in one frequency, and we exist in another. But there’s an overlap. See?”
He scribbled on the dry erase boards that took up the majority of the far wall. They were covered in notes and equations. Every book on physi
cs, Necromancy, and magic he could carry from the library was piled on the table to his left. He heard a Shadow smack against his window from the outside like a bird, but it couldn’t get in. One of his own—he hadn’t gotten around to naming them—threw itself into the glass and shrieked at it.
“Can you not?” Dieter asked dryly.
He took a step back to observe the mess of equations and diagrams, tapping his nail against his teeth.
“But you’re attached to me. So sending you out of this overlap would take part of me with you. That’s why people who try ditching their Shadows… have issues after.”
It reminded him of what Lindy had told him about Alistair’s sister. It felt like a lifetime ago, and he still hadn’t brought it up. He wasn’t sure he wanted to know. And really, it was none of his business.
Dieter squeezed his eyes shut and rubbed them. Maybe Lindy had some eye drops he could borrow.
“Pass me the blue marker,” he said, holding out his hand. He opened his eyes when something was set on it. “This is green. Green, not blue.”
The Shadow seemed confused. Dieter pointed to his eye.
“Blue.”
Dieter leant back as the Shadow reached for his eye with a clawed hand. He pushed it away, sparks flying from his hand. The Shadow jerked back with a pained yelp.
“What the fuck is wrong with you? Mar-ker. My eye is not a marker.”
He let out a sigh and wrote, ‘Shadows = colour-blind +/or stupid’ at the top of an open page in his notebook. Lindy kept one for her Second Sight, he kept one for his Necromancy. So far, it was about half full of notes and spells and tricks to keep them in check. Maybe Steven would like to see it.
A smile tugged at his lips. The Shadows had evened the playing field between them. They gave him a kind of power that Steven could never have over him, Empath or not.
The ink on his fingers left prints on a book as he flipped through it. He made another note on his white board.
“All this, it’s just physics. I just don’t think anyone’s noticed it ye– Touch my white board, I dare you. See what happens.”