We Walk in Darkness

by Bill Hiatt

  “I would never have revealed anything,” I said quietly.

  “You would have revealed it all in time,” the Praeceptor said sadly. “The humans now know you are vulnerable to light. They would have locked you away in a place with no shadows, and therefore no escape. Then they would have tortured you until you revealed everything.”

  “Umbra,” she continued almost gently. “You were such a promising student. How could you allow your target to get the better of you like that?”

  “His abilities are greater than we thought—”

  “Do you blame me, then, for your failure?” asked the Praeceptor, a dangerous edge in her tone.

  “The error was mine, Praeceptor. I knew he was fast, but I could not figure out his fighting style. I have never seen it before. I will not make the same mistake again.”

  “How comes it that there even was a fight? It is better always to approach by stealth and kill before your presence is even suspected.”

  “Such was my intent,” I tried to explain, “but he knew I was there somehow, and even in the darkness, he could see me.”

  There was a long, torturous silence, and I was sure the Praeceptor would criticize me for trying to shift blame again. Instead, she said, “If what you say is true, then we may have misjudged this human. We suspected he belonged to a fey bloodline because of his speed, but perhaps he inherited other abilities that our research should have been thorough enough to uncover. A dominus would never forgive such an omission on a real mission.

  “Based on this new information,” she continued, “I may be able to convince the other praeceptors that a second trial is warranted before making the decision that you are unnecessary. Knowing more about him now, do you think you could defeat him?”

  “I am sure I could,” I said quickly, knowing that was the only answer that would keep me alive. Inside, I was not so confident. The target had surprised me, and perhaps he would again. If our original assessment of him was wrong, he could still have tricks about which we knew nothing. I would also need to study the way he fought, and I had no idea whether I would be allowed the time to complete such a study.

  “That is well,” said the Praeceptor. “Prepare yourself, and I shall speak to my colleagues.” She did not say good-bye; she never did. I sensed, however, that she was gone.

  The questions I wondered about most remained unanswered. I did not dare ask them.

  As far back as I could remember, I had been taught that light would burn me. It stripped away my cloaking shadow and made it difficult to see, but I felt no burning, and my skin remained unmarked. I knew I was not like my fellow sicarii, but I had no idea how much difference there was between me and them. Perhaps the fact that light didn’t destroy me was the reason I had been chosen, but then why not simply tell me that?

  The other question would have been even harder to ask.

  Everyone here was cold to the touch…everyone except me. When the human male was on top of me, when his hands gripped mine, I felt his body heat. It was like mine.

  No one here sweat…except me. When the human male pressed against me, I felt sweat on him…again, just as he would have felt on me.

  I had studied humans somewhat, mostly in terms of how to kill them as needed, or how to hurt them in a fight if I had to fight one. In all these years, though, no one had ever told me they had the same physical peculiarities I did. Even his face, his hair, the general structure of his body, with a few obvious differences, resembled mine far more than did the featureless praeceptors and sicarii around me.

  I tried to ready myself for another effort to kill the human, but that one question haunted me.

  Was I human myself?

  Chapter 5: Dancing with Shadows (Lucas)

  An aspirin and a couple of ice packs later, I was more or less good to go…well, except for the whole not knowing whom to trust thing.

  The mystery woman though, made a good point as the three of us sat around the kitchen table. “Lucas,” she said, “you must have known for some time that you aren’t an ordinary boy, and your mother and I both saw you move faster than humanly possible. You’ve also admitted to being chased by a shadow that turned out to be a girl. If you can accept that, why would you think it so strange for me to be an Encantado?”

  She had me there. I had known I was different ever since puberty, and having Encantado genes could explain a lot. However, there were still holes in her story.

  “Why haven’t I heard any of this before?” I leaned forward.

  The mystery woman sighed. “For many reasons, some of them too complex to explain fully now. Your mother may have been right in thinking that knowing would place a burden on you.”

  “More of a burden than knowing I could do things others couldn’t but having no idea why?” I asked—though really, if my concern was being a freak, I’m not sure knowing I descended from what amounted to magical weredolphins would have helped a whole lot.

  “I’m truly sorry,” Mom said, sounding sincere. “This kind of power often skips several generations. I myself have almost none, and there was every reason to think you’d lead a normal life and never need to know about your background.”

  That didn’t make me much happier, but I had to agree it made sense. “You said reasons, plural,” I reminded the mystery woman.

  “Once the supernatural…species, I suppose you would call them, mingled much more freely with humans, and the Encantado continued to have love affairs with them into early modern times.” Mom cleared her throat at that.

  Yeah, great, so I’m not just descended from weredolphins, but from horny weredolphins!

  “But,” I prompted, “something changed.”

  The mystery woman nodded. “Over the centuries, it became harder and harder to visit your world, and some lost the privilege completely—usually those who allowed themselves to be worshiped as gods. My people assumed that they had better watch out, or they too might find themselves confined to the Encante. We still visit occasionally, but very discreetly, and we never reveal ourselves to mortals. I can be honest with you only because you are of my blood and need my help. Had you not been in peril, I would have been…discouraged, let us say, even from visiting, much as I longed to. That is why you know me only by letter and old faded photographs. I used to visit your mother much more often, and I was punished for taking too much of a risk.”

  “I guess that makes as much sense as anything else that’s happened today,” I admitted. “It’s just a lot to take in all at once.”

  “And neither one of us wants to rush you,” said—uh, might as well provisionally think of her as Bisavó. “Unfortunately, we may not have much time. The pessoas da sombra will not wait long to come after you again.”

  “By the way,” Mom interrupted, “that was very brave of you to face that shadow…and very foolish. What would Mestre Ribeiro say about confronting an opponent whose capabilities are not known to you?”

  “I didn’t have much choice, now did I?” I asked. “An unknown opponent could just as easily have struck while we were inside the house. None of us knew then how light sensitive she was.”

  “Which is why I will tell you all I know,” Bisavó said, “though it is not as much as I wish I could tell, and part of it was proved wrong tonight.

  “Most early cultures regarded a person’s shadow as something supernatural, but as far as anyone knows, this particular group of shadows originated in ancient Greece. Some Greeks believed it was possible to sacrifice one’s shadow to Zeus. Others thought that if worshipers entered the temple of Zeus Lycaeus, their shadows would be taken from them.”

  “Surely neither of those things is true!” I protested.

  “Probably not,” Bisavó conceded, “but it does seem to be true that at a person’s death, at least in ancient Greece and Rome, his or her shadow went to a place called Terra Umbrae, the Land of the Shadows, in the underworld.”

  “What for?” I asked impatiently.

  “No one knows,” she admitted. “A
ll we know is that over centuries, a great many shadows accumulated in some supernatural realm. They may not have had thought processes in the beginning; no one knows. However, they seem to have developed thoughts over time. Maybe evil was inherent in their natures, or maybe they sucked it in from the air in the underworld, and they developed a society whose sole purpose was to train assassins.”

  With an audience like my great-grandmother and my mother, I couldn’t use the expletives I wanted to. “This sounds like a fairy tale,” was all I could politely get out on the spur of the moment.

  “I only wish it was,” Bisavó said. “Think about it though, and you will see how logical it is. Somehow, the pessoas da sombra found a…hole; yes, a hole…that led into your world. They moved faster than humans—other than people like you, anyway—and in darkness they could strike unseen—again, except against people like you. I gather you were late tonight because you encountered your assassin earlier. You must have realized she was there, yes?”

  I nodded impatiently, now hungry for every detail she could give me.

  “What evil being would not pay well for a fast, undetectable killer? In many realms, their services became highly demanded. Oh, escaping undetected after the deed was done is also something they are famous for. Apparently, they can travel from one shadow to another without passing through the space in between. They can also travel through shadow back to the Land of Shadows. The Encantado can do much the same with water.”

  I had a light bulb moment. “That’s how she kept getting in front of me when I tried to run home!”

  “Indeed, they are difficult to elude at night,” Bisavó agreed. “But even during daylight, if one really wanted to follow you, it could jump from one shadow to another. Somehow, probably by magic, as long as they are in shadow, they can see an area near the shadow, regardless of how well-lit it is. Only if they are actually in the light does it blind them.”

  “Why would someone want to kill me, though?” I asked. “What have I ever done to anyone that was so bad?”

  “Nothing I know of,” Bisavó replied. “Carolina, is there anything?”

  “No, Lucas is a good boy,” Mom replied firmly. “He’s never hurt anyone.”

  “Then I would guess it’s a training exercise.”

  “Shadows need to be trained?” I asked, having a hard time visualizing that kind of school. “Actually, something else doesn’t make sense. What I fought tonight didn’t seem like just a shadow; she seemed human.”

  “And that, Bisneto, is the most frightening part,” Bisavó replied. “She was afraid of the light, but she wasn’t a shadow, or light would have done more than just scare her off. It may be that she actually is human.”

  “You mean…like a changeling?” Mom asked, eyes wide.

  “I’m afraid so,” Bisavó said. “Consider this from the point of view of the pessoas da sombra. Having trained humans as assassins would be a great step forward for them. The sombras are fast, but it takes effort for them to become solid enough to strike a physical blow, and enough direct light will drive them out of your world. They could teach human agents to operate in full daylight, though the girl we just saw hasn’t been prepared this way yet. Quite a training strategy if they could get it to work, though. Totally brilliant…and totally evil!”

  This conversation was becoming like English class without Spark Notes. “You mean, she’s like those kids in fairy tales who, uh, get kidnapped and taken to live with the fairies?”

  Bisavó nodded. “Though some of the children taken by faeries actually ended up happy. It’s hard to imagine how a human child could ever be happy in the Land of the Shadows.”

  “Do you think she realizes she’s human?” Mom asked.

  “She knows human anatomy pretty well,” I said ruefully.

  “Judging by the way she reacted to light, I doubt it,” Bisavó replied, though she seemed uncertain.

  “Well, whether she knows she is or not, is she vulnerable to anything humans are?” I asked. “She certainly seemed to react to a punch or kick the way a human would.”

  Bisavó considered a moment. “She clearly has the ability to use shadow magic, and she can see in the dark. These signs suggest the sombras have…made changes in her. However, your combat experience suggests she is still basically human.”

  “Then it should be relatively easy to capture her and end this,” I said, smiling for the first time in hours.

  “Ah, Bisneto, if only it were that easy. How would you propose to keep her captive? Your house is not exactly a prison, and even if it were, she needs only one shadow to travel back to the Land of the Shadows. Almost certainly, we will have to kill her.”

  “I’m not killing her!” I said, hardly able to believe what I was hearing. “If you’re right, she’s been brought up and brainwashed by these…shadows. She still has parents somewhere who don’t know what happened to her. We can reunite—”

  “Stop!” Bisavó commanded. “She was probably kidnapped as an infant. She doesn’t know her parents, and I doubt she can adapt to living in human society again. Even if she could, could she overcome her training? She’s a trained killer, not some poor, misguided girl you can save. She might pretend to be grateful to be rescued, only to come after you later.”

  “Still, killing someone…Mom?” I turned in her direction.

  She seemed to be studying the table top with great interest and did not meet my eyes.

  “Mãe? Do you want your son to be a killer?”

  “I want you to be alive!” she snapped at me with unexpected ferocity. “If the only way to keep you alive is to kill her, I’ll kill her myself!” Finally she looked in my direction, her eyes filled with tears.

  “There has to be another way!” I insisted. “Please, Bisavó! Please think of something else!”

  Bisavó looked both pleased and surprised by my acknowledgment of her, but she wasn’t thrilled with my tone. “Lucas, don’t be selfish! Even if we could keep you safe from her, she’s bound to kill someone else eventually. That’s what the sombras took her for in the first place. Suppose, though, that a miracle happened, and she decided she wanted to rejoin human society? Do you think they would leave her alone so she could start over here? No, Bisneto, they would kill her anyway.”

  I pushed my chair back so hard I probably scraped the linoleum, but I didn’t care. “Is this how it works in your world, Bisavó? Do people have to kill all the time in the Encante?

  “We are lovers, not fighters,” replied Bisavó, watching me intently. “There is no violence to speak of. Wait! That gives me an idea.”

  “Well?” I said after a long pause. “What’s the idea?”

  “You aren’t going to like it, but it will avoid killing the girl, if that is truly what you wish.”

  “It is,” I agreed.

  “Since you are part Encantado, there is nothing stopping you from coming back with me to the Encante. It’s an underwater realm, but I can make it possible for you to breathe there. Given how difficult it is for Encantado women to seek human lovers anymore, you will be…very popular.”

  “Gabriela!” Mom said, clearly shocked. “In our society Lucas isn’t even of age. I want him alive, but I don’t want him to become the…boy toy for your…your bridge club.”

  “Don’t be silly!” Bisavó replied. “We don’t play bridge in the Encante.”

  I had only one thought at this point: sign me up!

  Miraculously…and unfortunately, my mind kept working.

  “How long would I stay?” I asked, visualizing the whole idea as if it were a really great vacation plan.

  “You would have to stay your whole life,” Bisavó said gently. “A sombra assassin never gives up until the job is completed. I can keep you safe there, but there’s no way to keep you safe here.

  “In fact,” she continued, “As I think about it, even if she dies, the sombras will just send someone else. The organization is as single-minded as the individuals. We should probably take you to the Encant
e this very night.”

  “You mean I won’t ever see him again?” asked Mom, shocked. Clearly, she had not anticipated this turn of events any more than I had.

  “We might be able to arrange an occasional quick visit during the daytime,” Bisavó said. “But even that’s risky now that they are using humans. Of course, you could come along yourself, Carolina, as you also are part Encantado.”

  Mom took less than fifteen seconds to digest that. “And Paulo?”

  “These days, the rules are strict about someone who is fully human coming to the Encante. Only if he is a lover of a full Encantado would such a thing even be considered,” Bisavó replied.

  “But…but…he’s my husband!” Mom protested.

  “We can make the argument,” Bisavó said, with less sorrow than I thought appropriate, “but there is no guarantee anyone will listen.”

  “I’m not going anywhere without my parents…both my parents,” I said. I didn’t add that I didn’t really want to leave all my friends, dance and capoeira behind either. One thing at a time.

  “I cannot keep you safe here!” Bisavó snapped. “It simply cannot be done.”

  “Then I’ll have to keep myself safe,” I said. “I’ll be like the dude in Darkness Falls who doesn’t go out at night, has a house in which every corner is lit, and carries flashlights with him all the time, just in case.”

  “And that will work precisely as long as it takes the sombras to figure out what you are doing. Then they’ll train a human to come after you in broad daylight, and you’ll be done.” Bisavó sounded tired now more than angry.

  “You’ve seen me fight,” I insisted, “and I’ll just get better from here. I can see the shadow assassins coming, and I can move faster than any of the human ones.”

  “I don’t want this either,” Mom said, “but Lucas, to have to watch your back every day for the rest of your life? Would that even be a life?”