Met by Midnight: Shadow World Stories and Scenes, Vol. 1 (The Shadow World)

by Dianne Sylvan

  I went back to my Haven, back to my world, but my sleep was haunted—my waking was haunted, too. All those eyes, in my dreams, were accusing. Thousands of children, ribs protruding from starvation, choking on their last breaths, clamored toward me begging me to open the windows so they could breathe. Why? They wanted to know. Why do we have to die? How could you let this happen?

  Guilt dogged my steps, but at least I used it to some good. I poured money and aid in whatever way I could to wherever I could. I demanded to be heard by the Council, and for once, they listened to me…or, at least Napolitano did. Between 1945 and 1950 he hunted down every last Nazi-affiliated vampire in his territory and had them all beheaded, and made sure I knew where those who fled Western Europe were holed up on my side of the border. Seeing their heads hit the ground in a wash of blood did little to help my conscience but it certainly didn’t hurt.

  I heard stories, later, about others among the Signets who’d been silently helping all along, not wanting to alienate Napolitano or me or risking censure for getting involved in mortal affairs but unable to hold back. There’s a lot of anti-Semitism in the Council as well, but I was pleased to see that none of my allies gave a damn about their opinions. We had all tiptoed around each other afraid to cause offense while so many died, but when we finally took a stand, it turned out there was little opposition.

  There is, of course, no reason to believe that Hitler’s death was anything other than suicide, but I like to think it was…assisted, let’s say. I know people who could have gotten in and out of that bunker without being seen, even during the day. I know people who have their ways.

  I’ve been told by those people that I’m a lunatic for even thinking that…but it’s a nice idea. It satisfies.

  I thought about God a lot in the days after Poland. There are questions that never leave us, as a species—and I mean that to include both humans and vampires. Does God exist? If so, how can He allow such suffering? We’re not talking about a single person dying of cancer or a plane crash killing 50; this was millions of people—good people, whose only crime was being born different to those in power—wiped from the Earth, in agony and fear, babies in their mothers’ arms, old men who had lived holy lives and should have died peacefully in their beds instead gasping blue and dying in their own waste.

  Does that mean God is not good? Or not omnipotent? Or indifferent? What kind of Divine plan, whether labeled with the platitude “mysterious ways” or not, can justify the horrifying deaths of millions of innocent people? In fact, what plan can justify the suffering of a single person? Is God just, or merciful?

  For a while, I tried to find answers. I spent a good five years after the end of the war on a sort of pilgrimage—except that it went nowhere, either physically or spiritually. I read every book on theology I could get my hands on, then expanded past orthodoxy and into the mystics…then into Judaism, Islam, Buddhism, the heathens, everything I could find that offered any sort of meditation on these questions. I sought out holy people of all kinds. I found arguments in every direction. I read the works of the most zealous atheists and rigorous intellectuals, even at the risk of losing what remained of my faith. There came a point I no longer cared what the answer was—I just wanted to know. I needed the questions settled.

  Of course it was hubris thinking I, one man in a position of power, could uncover the eternal truth that all these great thinkers had not. Almost all were quite certain in their positions, but so were those who contradicted them. In the face of all of that, how could anyone believe in anything? One might as well just pick the story that fit one’s own desires and flaws. Make a god of anything; what difference did it make? You could pick and choose whatever pieces of the Bible fit in with your own prejudices—how then was any of it valid?

  Some of my favorite works were by some of the Jewish scholars, it turned out—their attitude was less “This is what the Scripture says and therefore it must be the absolute truth,” and more “Eh, we don’t really know if this is true, but it works, so, we go with it.” A good-natured shrug seemed more honest than all the fire-and-brimstone rhetoric. I still feel that way about many things.

  But by the turn of the decade, I had given up. I grew angry, bitter. The questions, their answers, all became meaningless. I decided not to care. Luckily, fate, or whatever, offered the perfect distraction in the form of a man called Procházka who declared open war on my rule.

  I was thrilled at first to have an adversary—he was the perfect target for my rage. Procházka was an actual Nazi; he and a few of his allies had escaped execution, letting us kill off any potential rivals so he could ten take over what remained. He’d been a commandant at Sobibor, so he personally oversaw the murder of hundreds of humans while feasting on the prisoners, using them for every appetite you can think of. The thought of his blood gushing out over the stones and the feel of my sword biting into his neck was what kept me going for a while.

  He wormed his way into several other underground groups and whipped them into an anti-Signet frenzy, claiming he planned to topple the whole system—but this of course was a lie, he wanted the Signet for himself and intended to kill all of them off once he had it. Such pure ideology. It must be nice to be so convinced of one’s own superiority. So simple.

  We have gotten used to modern vampire warfare—strategic, clandestine, few open battles and more ambushes and targeted attacks. This was old school martial brutality. Procházka sent dozens of his men into the District of whatever city he felt like taking, and destroyed everything in his path, rounding up survivors, forcing them to either take his side or die. He actually took control of a few areas before I really admitted he was a credible threat.

  Honestly at least 75% of Signets go down that way—we’re arrogant and blind, and often think ourselves invulnerable. Along comes some upstart or a gang that seems like the buzzing of flies, and we laugh and go on about our business until next thing you know there’s the sound of a drawn sword and off with our heads. The same thing happened to Auren, which worked out quite well for us, but it just goes to show that we never learn.

  But I realized in time that I had to take Procházka down, so I turned the Elite on him and we cleaned his people out of the cities—but it was a hard fight, seemingly endless, with many losses on both sides. The outside world, meaning the Council, doesn’t know how close I came to losing my head.

  Finally that April, just before Easter, Procházka was holed up at the edge of Prague, planning to lay siege to the Haven itself. He had taken over an abandoned church. I suppose in hindsight that was ironic.

  This was before conveniences like thermal imaging and satellites, so our ability to spy on the enemy was limited—I had friends in the military who could arrange an overhead reconnaissance mission, but our window was very small. I had to attack Procházka before he could vacate the church and disappear into the city, or my next chance to destroy him would be when he came for me himself. It was tempting to wait, to let him besiege the Haven and wear himself out on its walls, but fool that I am, I wanted the bastard dead on my terms. He’d been killing off my people for months, and I was done letting him.

  Yes, I’m aware how that sounds—like a Prime about to get his head cut off for being an arrogant fool. As I said…I came close.

  The battle was one of the bloodiest I’ve ever seen. They were expecting an attack, but we had them surrounded and grossly outnumbered. They had the home ground, we had sheer numbers to break upon the walls of the church.

  Here’s more of my foolishness: The church was on the edge of town, isolated from other structures. If we didn’t take it in time, we’d either have to retreat to find shelter from sunrise or we’d roast. I was so focused on getting inside—both to ensure the safety of my men and to get to Procházka if it killed me—that I didn’t realize we were slowly being flanked.

  Next thing I knew, they had cut us off from retreat. That left only one option: Get inside and win the fight. And we were running out of time.

&
nbsp; My guards and I broke through first and made it to the sanctuary—there were great gaping holes in the roof, and I could see and sense dawn approaching. At the far end of the chamber I saw my enemy cutting down my people; the church’s cracked marble floor ran with blood.

  I could see nothing but Procházka, and rage filled my eyes. But so intent was I on reaching him, I did not notice the man behind me—I certainly noticed the stake he slammed into my back, and the second one fired at me from the right, from a crossbow.

  Hope to God you’re never staked. It’s a pain like nothing else. You can feel every millimeter of the wood inside your body, scraping and tearing your tissues and ripping your veins open. Your body tries to heal itself, but cannot, and your helplessness becomes its own kind of torture—knowing unless you get the thing out you’re doomed is almost worse than the actual agony of the hit. But the shock of it to your system makes it hard to move; your limbs suddenly won’t obey, and you grow weak so quickly, almost like a human. Some of us react more strongly to it than others, you’ll find—but even a Signet can fall prey to it.

  I hit the ground, sliding in my own blood, the cacophony of battle turning to a single screaming in my mind. I knew, lying there, that I was dying, and I could hear the shock running through my Elite—telepathy seems like a handy talent, but when you lose your hold over it, the noise of the fighting becomes a thousand times louder amplified by the minds of the dying and afraid.

  I landed on my back staring up at the gathering daylight, driving the stake even deeper. Would the stake finish me, or would I cling to life long enough to catch fire?

  In that moment, confronted with the enormity of my failure, my eyes drifted right, to the altar, where Procházka was already crowing his triumph. Instead of fixing on him my gaze lifted, wandered, until it lit upon the cross above the altar, or rather where it should have hung.

  It was a strange thing—I was used to seeing old Catholic crucifixes, the kind that are gruesome and horrific, with every scratch from every thorn painted in loving detail, giving Christ a rictus of pain and suffering that always made me look away. Such a figure was emblematic of why I had given up on God—our supposedly loving God, willing to let His own child suffer so…I have never met a parent on this Earth who would allow such a thing to happen to his own child, yet the Father of all things whose love is eternal and perfect turned away. Was it any wonder He would abandon humanity to the ghettos and gas chambers?

  But here, the crucifix had been taken away whenever the church was left to the ravages of time; there was only a bare shape on the wall, where the paint had once been protected by the wood. It was just bare, and white, and strangely pure among all the blood and violence that surrounded it.

  “Jacob.”

  I lacked the strength to jerk my head toward the voice, but it mattered not—the voice was inside my head.

  “Get up, Jacob.”

  I was also too weak to laugh.

  “You have work to do.”

  The voice filled my head, and along with it came a feeling I had never known before, one I wasn’t even sure how to classify until much later. Such an alien thing, and far too huge for my little mind to comprehend…but it was love.

  I was still staring at the cross. “I’m dying,” I told the voice. “It’s over.”

  The feeling of love surrounded me, lifted me up out of my body, until I found myself staring down at the church, where my men were losing heart and, rapidly, losing their lives. “You can save them,” the voice said calmly.

  I struggled to identify the sound—it was so familiar, as if it were someone I hadn’t seen since childhood but whose laughter I remembered from long afternoons running through the woods of France. A young voice, touched with both wit and joy. It wasn’t booming, full of brimstone; it wasn’t terrifying. It was the voice of a friend.

  “They need your help, Jacob. And there are others who will need you soon. There is a whole world that needs you…and such beauty waiting for you, a life beyond what you could dream for yourself.”

  “I can’t,” I whispered. All the despair and emptiness that had been eating away at me for years tried to slap the voice away. “I’m alone.”

  He laughed. It was exactly the sound I remembered it being, in that memory that didn’t exist; a merry thing, but full of sympathy, and something about it made me want to laugh too.

  Suddenly I felt my body filled with light—not the sunlight that threatened us overhead, or the light of fire, but a soft and kind light, one that offered power and healing and, most importantly, resolve.

  I could feel my hands again. I concentrated, harder than I ever have, on my arm, and reached the stake, gripped it tight.

  I barely had to tug on it and it slipped out of my body, the wound closing as fast as the wood left the flesh. I grabbed the other one and did the same.

  With my other hand, I reached over and took up my sword.

  Overhead, the sky was cast into shadow as a storm cloud covered the gathering dawn.

  As I got to my feet, amid the gasps of the warriors and the sound of weapons clattering to the ground, I heard one last thing, a benediction: “You are never alone.”

  *****

  As the story came to a close, he watched Cora’s face, expecting some sort of doubt or disbelief, or perhaps an affirmation that he was an utter lunatic.

  Instead she took a sip of her coffee, peering at him over the rim of the cup. Her eyes seemed to be growing more and more perceptive by the night—there were even times he caught her staring through things the way other Consorts often did. He wanted to ask what she was looking at, but he was still afraid to pry, afraid to push her too much. Right now she enjoyed his company; the thought of making her uncomfortable made his chest hurt.

  Finally, though, he couldn’t bear her silence anymore. “Do you think me mad?”

  Cora blinked, surprised, and slowly smiled. There was just enough coyness underneath the expression that his heart turned a somersault. “Is that a valid question, my Lord, in a world where you and I are bound by a pair of magical amulets, our friends can move things with their minds, and we are, after all, vampires?”

  He laughed. “I suppose not, when you put it that way. But religious revelation and voices in one’s head are still looked at askance by most.”

  “Perhaps.” She set down her cup and regarded the thick book in her lap—she had seen on the internet that today was January 27, the anniversary of the liberation of Auschwitz, prompting her to seek out a book on World War II and, by extension, prompting tonight’s conversation. “I confess I am envious of your vision—not of the despair that brought it about, but of the surety it gave you. When…all those years…I would curl up in a corner and beg God for deliverance, pray in any second of silence I could carve out for my soul.”

  She so rarely spoke of her time in Hart’s clutches, he found he could barely speak above a whisper. “And there was no answer?”

  “Sometimes I thought there might be. Sometimes I would feel touched by something, find scraps of strength I thought long gone. Other nights…if I’d had the strength for anger, I might have raged at Him, not only for my fate, but for those other girls, and all the countless lives Hart brutalized into nothingness. That same God who allowed him to reign all those years also allowed this place to exist.” She patted the book. “How do we call such a God loving?” She looked out the window at the snow that reflected the purity of the full Moon’s light, and was silent a moment.

  At her feet Vràna bumped the Queen’s hand with her shaggy head, and Cora scratched her behind the ears as she regarded the Winter outside.

  He couldn’t help it—the thought of her as she had been when they’d met, emaciated and terrified, shrinking back from any man who came near and screaming herself awake every day…comparing that to the quiet yet regal creature sitting before him here…he was about to take her hand, but she turned back to him and smiled.

  “But then I look at where I am now, and I remember the kind
ness I have known, the love of so many who wrapped me in their wings and held me fast, and I think perhaps God is not loving—God is love. It is up to us to be loving. We must strive to embody that love and to extend it over the Earth. Perhaps such an idea is childish, naïve; doubtless the theologians would laugh, and it is no excuse or explanation for the suffering of the world. But let others cling to their notions of a judgmental God, a tortured figure on a cross, a Hell in which to cast those who are different—I will cling to this God, the one I see out there in the snow, the one in this cup of coffee. The one who gave of Himself to redeem, leaving the tomb empty, suffering turned to miracle. The one who, by whatever name, inspired the poets and saints and those who lift up the lives of others instead of tearing them down.”

  Now, she took his hand, and turned it over to look at the palm. His heart hammered so loudly he was sure she could hear it. Whatever she was looking for, she merely covered his hand with her other one and said, smiling again, “The one who brought me here, my love, to you.”

  The Chosen One

  The Prime of the Southern United States knew he was in for a weird night when he woke up with sparkly purple toenails.

  “Miranda,” he began mildly, lifting his head from the arm of the couch, but she wasn’t in sight; he could hear the shower running, though, and let his head drop back down with a grunt.

  Before he could drift back off into his nap, however, Faith’s voice piped up at his wrist: “Sire, there’s a situation in town.”

  Her tone was serious, but not urgent, so he replied, “There’s a situation right here, Second. I don’t have a single shirt this shade of plum.”

  “Um...” As was her custom, she decided to skip right past his eccentricities and went on, “If you can manage it, your presence would be appreciated.”