Where Shadows Lie

by J. E. Cammon

  Jarvis stared into the man’s face and then dropped him. Out of surprise, or something else, he was not sure. “Your son?” the giant asked, looking down on the dying man.

  The distant and sudden snarl was the only warning before calamity struck. Jarvis closed his eyes briefly, scanning around. As if the brick wall were a window, he could clearly see the golden ball of fire careening down towards the building, towards him. There would be arms and legs and teeth in accompaniment, but the raging spirit was most pronounced to Jarvis right then. It was the first moment of indecisiveness that he experienced in an even longer while than he had the stinging kiss of argentum. It was obvious that getting out of the way was most prudent; Jarvis was hit by several careless cars in the past, and it always turned out worse for the person being struck.

  He began to move almost reflexively, but stopped when he looked down at the dying light of the old man. David’s father.

  The vampire bent down to grab him, to move him, but he was already too late. David came barreling through the wall like a wrecking ball, and with the age of the building and its lack of upkeep, things fell apart. Jarvis met David’s eyes the once, primordial, feral pools that they were. One of the vampire’s hands was bunched around Mr. Cruz’s clothes, while the other reached for a handhold that wasn’t there in the hole that appeared suddenly in the floor trying to swallow them all.

  Sideways became up, and the vampire’s fingers pushed themselves easily enough into the wood of the floor, but the planks flapped skyward like an uneven fence.

  David growled as Jarvis hurled his father up and away even as he reached out for him. The vampire wondered what David’s thoughts were behind those horrible jaws and killing eyes. They fell, tumbling down together into what they wrought.

  Chapter Twenty-Four

  The fall went better for Jarvis than it did for David. Peering down into the hole they were falling into gave him a fair approximation of which direction to drift as he plummeted. In his rage, David swatted with huge arms and sharp claws even though Jarvis was out of range. The lycanthrope spun and tumbled through the air, and fell hard among pieces of stolid metal and unyielding masonry. Before the massive impact occurred, Jarvis could pierce the darkness clearly, but the erupting dust cloud was more difficult to see through. The vampire tried to adjust himself in the air.

  He kicked off a wall a head’s height before the bottom floor of the ruined building and slid to a stop nearest the center. Jarvis didn’t have to look for David. He was alive, and the vampire needed no confirmation. However, he did take a few moments to perhaps gather himself before exploding from the rubble, his cat’s eyes searching for his prey. Gouts of hot air bellowed from his maw, like he was breathing fire.

  Jarvis’ thoughts turned for a moment to Tomohiro, who might be able to explain the situation. Glancing over, he saw the puppet man was lying still on the huge chest of the summoned.

  “David,” Jarvis called, without moving.

  His stoicism incensed the lycanthrope further, although he still had a few pieces of wood and metal stuck through him. He began angrily breaking himself free.

  David described the rage to Jarvis before, the wild, feral mindlessness. It sounded unpleasant, which David admitted it could be, but it was also an experience of unbridled freedom and power. Jarvis had little reference for that, but David almost salivated when describing it, his pupils growing wide. Jarvis told him that addiction benefited none of them. It was something someone said to him once. They were monsters, but could choose how monstrous.

  Jarvis’ stance was a warning one as well. He dropped his blade somewhere, and suddenly he felt diminished because of that fact. It didn’t occur to him that he might have to kill David until the man charged. Jarvis was ambivalent until the lycanthrope got about halfway to him. The vampire contemplated, knowing that this was not how he would perish yet wondering what it would mean for him to go forward. Much like him, David had no formal training in combat, and his stoked anger helped him none at all.

  David brought his arms up as if to slash down. Jarvis took a slight step forward, catching both wrists. David pushed him back as his boots searched for traction. Jarvis gave up ground as David lurched forward, but that was expected, too. The far wall came closer and closer as the lycanthrope shoved and wrestled forward. Rather than be crushed into it, the vampire hopped backwards, pressing against it. Perpendicular as they were, Jarvis could see more of the place. Tomohiro’s still form lay atop the massive presence of the summoned. Somewhere above their heads was David’s father. He likely would not need medical attention, but his kind didn’t recover so well from dismemberment. He would have that wound until he died, or it killed him.

  “David,” Jarvis said again.

  At the odd angle, David had even more trouble snapping at him. That fact, and perhaps Jarvis’ tone, made him shake with ire. He began to sway as if to throw the vampire sideways to wrench him from the defensive position.

  David needed more time to come down from wherever he was. Jarvis pushed from the wall, shooting overhead, bringing the furry wrists with him. One benefit of the condition was the lack of possibility for what the vampire considered simple injury. Both of their pairs of shoulder sockets whined and popped, but his much less so. Jarvis’ joints eased open and closed as he willed them, the same as walking. He was animated from a stance of mind and nothing else.

  David made a confused, strangled noise as the breath was shoved from his lungs while Jarvis tugged. The vampire used his momentum and strength to hurl him end over end, back towards the jagged pile of refuse.

  Jarvis’ shoulders sighed back into their sockets and he got a sprinting start and pushed himself into the ceiling of the building, holding onto a beam supporting the roof, looking for David’s father. The vampire didn’t see the old man immediately, but he did spy the conjurer Nick picking his way around the periphery. Jarvis was confused, and curious, but the moment passed as he ignored the distraction.

  Finally finding David’s father, he swung easily back onto what remained of the top floor, crouching over the still form of the old man. He was breathing, and his body recovered from the initial shock and settled into an equilibrium of sorts. Jarvis put the backs of his hands to the floor and slowly pushed at the body until it rolled onto his forearms. He heard David coming and was careful not to spin around too fast, lest he drop the old man over the side some many feet down.

  David came bursting up through the floor, angry and salivating for destruction. To his credit, he paused when he saw the vampire holding his father.

  “He’s alive,” Jarvis said.

  David flexed murdering hands but decided to abstain from tearing through his father to get to Jarvis. He worked his killer’s mouth open and closed as if he could talk, or would try. Jarvis extended his arms and took a step forwards, as if to relinquish the unconscious man.

  David stood looking at him for a time, considering something. Jarvis couldn’t read his mind or his body language, but typically change always came to his relationships with people. They tried to accept or look past certain things, but eventually, they turned away from him. Jarvis imagined that David was thinking the way Raymond Bethel thought recently.

  A frightened noise interrupted David’s thoughts, and together they looked over the side, down into the center of the lower room. Nick, wearing a tight collar of the summoned’s fingers, was being suspended above the floor. The creature’s head, one of the horns still missing, turned slowly to the suffocating Nick and then the entire massive body moved. The other arm of the summoned lovingly scooped Tomohiro’s body, cradling it against a sizable conjunction of thick arm muscles. Its feet touched the floor and it stood to its full height. Jarvis remembered the first time he saw the thing, a full head taller than him, and wider. There were few things that the vampire ever encountered that were larger than him.

  Seated on a meaty neck freck
led with stitches, the face of the outsider seemed itself and not itself all at once. It spoke in Tomohiro’s broken tongue, “It is done, my sir.” It seemed ridiculous that such a small voice could come from such a massive chest.

  David made up his mind about something. He leaped into the air and bulleted from one side of the building to the other on his descent, leaving Jarvis with his father. The vampire looked down into the man’s face. David said he was from an island, far away to the south, a rich port. Jarvis always imagined it as some sort of golden hilltop with plantation houses and fresh fruit, no war, and long, cool nights. The old man said that the vampire couldn’t have his son.

  Jarvis heard the impact of Tomohiro’s arm against David’s side. Nick was thrown clear a ways. Jarvis closed his eyes and focused. In the candle-top world, he remained the clutching darkness, holding the dull yellow cloud of David’s father while somewhere below, the golden fireball that was David streaked back across the room towards a bonfire the color of muddy blood. Nick was a dull ping of sparking red and blue flame entwined. The summoner and Tomohiro burned in the direction of one another, pointedly.

  David’s fireball flaring almost to explosion broke Jarvis’ concentration. This time he smashed into the floor. Tomohiro reached out for him in a way that the vampire himself reached out so many, many times before. It was to be the end.

  The old man’s body dropped to the floor with a distant thud. Jarvis could not readily recall how he covered the intervening distance so arrow straight, but he did. For the briefest of moments, he might have understood friendship. The vampire’s feet were on each of Tomohiro’s immensely broad shoulders. Their faces were only inches apart; in that short time, he could see the creature’s expression change.

  Tomohiro sailed backwards awkwardly, impacting through a far wall into a small room further back. David was up again in an instant; something was forming in his eyes, but the vampire couldn’t piece it together. They did look more human, though. The lycanthrope roared, livid, reaching out for control, or maybe for the rage. Tomohiro crept through the wall; his smile was gone. He stood to his full height again, gesturing with an arm.

  “This is not what I wanted, my sir,” he said, adjusting the aim of his pointing. “None will accept you, and least among them are the guardians.” He pointed at David. “They exist to hate everything that you are. That we are.”

  Jarvis could scarcely recall a time when he thought they could all exist among one another in tenuous harmony. The vampire looked at the lycanthrope, watching his eyes develop irises and then fade back to black. David was good; he was determined to be a savior, a shepherd. Tomohiro’s description had the flawless fit of truth. Such things came natural to David, but Jarvis was an abomination. He did not belong. They should be destroying each other, he realized.

  Jarvis thought the contemplation showed on his face, but David didn’t move. The vampire turned back to Tomohiro. The puppet man’s new body was naked save for the delicate charms dangling from his wrist.

  “No.” The vampire shook his head.

  The following moment stretched as much as it could, like fleeting peace. Then, the three of them resumed to destroying one another. Jarvis could not speak for David, he finally realized, but he lost himself in it. He was, after all, losing everything else. David was a wave of cutting and tearing and slashing and biting. He was smashed in, broken down, and shattered but there was no ceasing in him. He and Jarvis were as two bloody hands on the same killer.

  Tomohiro, however, was from elsewhere, and they finally ran out of time. David was flung up into the air, this time changing finally, shrinking and diminishing, and landing naked and useless in a heap of bruises and bones misshapen from breaking. Tomohiro reached behind himself and tore Jarvis from his back. His body was bleeding from everywhere, but that seemed not to deter him. Jarvis suspected it wouldn’t, but the red stuff kept him standing for far longer than he should . Tomohiro was angry, beyond frustrated. He had plans, and they came to ruin at the hands of a trio of dead men.

  The red liquid soaked into Jarvis’ pores and he became himself again, only to be crushed into the floor a moment later. Tomohiro made the place pock-marked with their bodies, chipped stonework from fixtures, tumbled over machines that were moored to the floor, and still the sun refused to shine. Idly, Jarvis thought that through it all Nick never got up or stirred once. Tomohiro beat the ground with him, then he beat Jarvis with his fist. He screamed at the vampire, sometimes speaking in his small voice, other times in the disharmonious chorus that was apparently the summoned’s voice.

  “No?” He landed another blow. “No?” Another. “You think we are not the same? You are right, my sir.” He brought his left hand up, working his wrist. Jarvis wondered if he broke it on his face. “You will not understand,” he screamed.

  Jarvis demanded his eyes open, and they responded. The vampire wished his mouth to work. He willed his voice up out of his corpse. “No,” he said, putting his left hand around the pinning wrist, scarcely feeling the odd grouping of charms and the chain. “I think I finally do.” With that, experimentally, instead of seeing the creature, he smothered it. Tomohiro’s flame was wild and awesome, and Jarvis formed himself into a hollow pillar of night-colored steel and strangled his light.

  Connected as they were through the trinket of charms, Tomohiro seemed like a small man, thin and frail, covered in strings that pointed off to nowhere. Overlaid on his face was a thin pall of a myriad of faces, sometimes women, sometimes men, sometimes children. He draped himself in the guise of others for so very long.

  The vampire guessed, really, about his being a man. It turned out that he was right. Jarvis was always beaten the worst because he was clever.

  Tomohiro screamed as Jarvis devoured his soul. It seemed the only thing he had left was a name, and the vampire took it as his. The massive body slumped on top of him and Jarvis smiled with a broken face.

  A time later, Nick bobbled into view, limping as if on a sore ankle, holding himself like his elbow was injured. In his small way, he helped roll the corpse off of Jarvis—that is to say he watched. Jarvis told him to fetch his blade. When he couldn’t find it, the vampire settled for wrenching the thing’s head off with his hands. He dug into its center, seeking out its heart. It had none to speak of, but he devoured what was there. The kill was fresh enough that it revivified him greatly.

  Nick watched, stunned, with a glazed over expression. “What do we do?” he asked as the vampire stood, holding the head by the one horn.

  Jarvis looked over at David and then glanced up idly as if he could see his father. A cold flurry blew past them, a reminder of the gaping hole in the side of the building.

  “Get him away from here. When he wakes, tell him I’ve gone.” Jarvis looked up to see snow beginning to fall white against pools of varying red. There was too much blood.

  “Gone?” Nick asked.

  The vampire looked at him, and Nick didn’t recoil or jump. He held Jarvis’ gaze for just a moment, then looked down. He was scarred; his gaze steadied.

  “Away. Tonight is the last. There is a place where I can secure passage. For a price,” Jarvis said, remembering Tomohiro’s words. The vampire walked over to David and stood above his body. He was very badly injured, but like his father, he would live, with rest. “His mother must be strong, too,” he said idly. Nick followed Jarvis; he wasn’t aware. Strange.

  Nick helpfully provided Jarvis the rough location to the gathering place and the name of its keeper. The snow began falling faster. The scene was one of great destruction, but it was quickly becoming a uniform white. The site of the ritual would always remember, though.

  Nick put his hand out toward Jarvis, in thanks. He didn’t say that the vampire didn’t have to go. He didn’t say anything, and Jarvis didn’t shake his hand.

  Like an awful thought or a nightmare, one moment Jarvis was there, and the ne
xt he was gone, lingering but distant.

  Chapter Twenty-Five

  David didn’t have a choice, really. His body decided to give him less control, given the irresponsible way he acted. Consciousness came back to him slowly, and he didn’t complain.

  Smell came first, with hearing right behind it. His first thought was that he was back home—home-home, in his father’s house. Mother was making dinner. He wanted to cry, sort of, and when he heard the voices, the impulse didn’t change.

  “I feel like I should thank you again, for saving me.” That was Nick; the man’s voice made David wonder where he was, but a quick sniff confirmed that this was home. Whoever Nick was talking to, didn’t respond. “So, thanks,” Nick added, and then he went quiet.

  When feeling returned, David discovered he was sore and terribly hungry. He couldn’t tell if his eyes were open or not, which meant it was either very dark or he was blind. Searching through his memories cleared up a lot of confusion. They were beaten severely, but David guessed they survived somehow. Thinking about Jarvis turned his mood back to negative.

  David put his hands against the naked mattress and sat up, groaning. His ribs hurt, and his back and his legs. A knock came at the door.

  “Yeah, Nick.”

  The man opened the door, flipping the light on as he came. He was doing a commendable job of balancing a plate of hot food on a cup while opening the door with his other hand.

  “Evening.” He leaned over, offering the food and drink.