Shadowed Souls

by Jim Butcher

  He’d asked once when I was around seven if I missed having a real family. Did I miss having parents that made sure we were fed, warm, and safe—the kind that cooked meals, paid the bills so we had electricity and water more than half the month, who cared where we were after dark or cared if we came home at all? Did I miss that over the one who didn’t know if we went to school or not; who didn’t shop for food, much less cook it; who threw whiskey bottles against the walls and brought strange men home for twenty minutes before pushing them back out the door?

  “She’s a drunk whore,” I remembered interrupting him to say, because Niko had tried to pretty things up for me. I wasn’t a baby. I was seven. That was plenty old enough to already know what the woman everyone called my mother really was. I also remembered thinking he could talk forever when he could say it in four words, and I could go back to watching cartoons.

  Although seven or not and no baby, I hadn’t understood the question. Have more people? Even people with food? Why? People weren’t the same as me. Niko wasn’t the same, either, but he understood me, how I was on the inside, how I . . . worked. He wasn’t like me, but he wasn’t one of them. He was between. I liked things the way they were, him and me. It was how it should be.

  I hadn’t been able to explain it better. There weren’t words that fit. It was the sun always rising. It was the sky being up and the ground under you being down. It was just . . . right.

  Niko hadn’t understood “right.” He understood brothers, protecting them, caring about them, that I was his and he was mine. He’d gotten that and he was the best brother, but he hadn’t been able to get the rest. How all of those things were good—they were—but they were . . . small. Next to right. Right was everything there was, the world, the universe, and then everything past that. Everything we didn’t know about now, but was out there waiting to be found someday. I’d tried again to explain it and had given up halfway through. I didn’t have the words I needed.

  People hadn’t made those words yet.

  Right might be too big for people thoughts and people minds, but the idea of having anyone but him at seven had been weird, was still weird today. People living with us. Trying to be part of us? That had been beyond weird. Weird but not because it was wrong. Weird because it was impossible. Sharks and lions didn’t live together. That was crazy. They couldn’t if they wanted to, and I’d been pretty sure they didn’t want to. I’d known I hadn’t wanted to.

  Six years later, I still didn’t understand the question.

  I shrugged off the memory as easily as I shrugged my backpack over my shoulder. I could hear the bus coming. Time to go.

  “List?”

  I nodded.

  “Note?”

  “I’m ready.” I grinned at him, the grin no one but him had or would see. “Why so jumpy? It’s been years since you worried about me having to put up with someone’s shit or that I can take care of myself.”

  “First days,” he said ruefully. “And, yes, it’s infinitely better worrying you won’t put up with someone’s crap”—he aimed a narrow-eyed look at me sharp enough to get his point across—“and that you can take care of yourself or take care of someone else. Several someones, if you have to. Just don’t, please, end up at the police station.”

  He couldn’t fool me there about the cursing. He’d heard worse from me when I was younger than ten. Sophia was all sorts of educational when it came to any and all curse words that existed. Worrying about me, though—that wasn’t fake. He did it every year on this day, the first day at a new school. There was always a new school. First days for their usual students, first days for us; middle of the semester for them, yet still another first day for us. I’d lost count of how many schools there’d been, how many first days.

  This was just one more.

  The junior high school was square, brown, and ugly. All schools were. There was a giant factory somewhere stamping them out on a conveyor belt. Floor was the usual puke green tile, the walls were the shade identical to the walls in every school in every state I’d been. Nothing. They were the color of nothing. Not white, off-white, beige, or gray, not any of those yet not outside of that boring cluster. “Nothing” was the only label for it, simple as that.

  The gym was no surprise, either.

  The teacher? Coach? Both? He was curious though, a little. Heavy with a gut—all male gym teachers were; it was the law—he had hair black as mine although he was starting to lose it, the top of his head covered in a sparse, dying lawn. The hair on his arms was thick and coarse, though. Come Easter, little kids could hide eggs in that shit. Despite being in what I guessed was his early thirties, he had the start of a double chin and no neck; not a great combo. He looked slow and clumsy. Should’ve been slow and clumsy, but I watched him move back and forth through the kids playing basketball. He slid, quick and focused, like a hungry snake.

  Like a predator.

  Huh.

  Halfway through the game, he pulled one guy out. He had to be in the ninth grade—it was the highest the school had—but he had to have flunked a year . . . or two. He was sixteen at least, six feet tall, and weighed 230 pounds; all muscle, more than any other kid down there. Topped his cereal off with radioactivemutagen–powered steroids instead of sugar for breakfast; ate a cow for supper and got up in the middle of the night to shit T-bone steaks and a leather jacket.

  The gym teacher took him off to the side and, head-to-head, murmured something to him. After a few minutes, Godzilla straightened, gave a nasty grin—I appreciated the nasty ones as I had my own—nodded, and headed toward the bleachers. Toward me. The coach’s eyes were on me, too, the bright and cold shine of black glass. Then they were back on the game. If I hadn’t already suspected when I’d seen how he moved, it would’ve been fast enough for me to miss. And I didn’t miss shit like that. Ever.

  Clattering up the bleachers, two at a time, the freak of growth development gone wild bumped me hard, brutal enough to bruise. He paused in his pass and hissed, “Guess what, new kid? You’re meeting me after school today for the worst ass-kicking of your puny life. If you don’t, asshole, tomorrow I’ll bend you over the bench in the locker room and give it to you like the pathetic little bitch you are.” Then he was past me and gone.

  First days.

  I gave one of those nasty grins I liked so much. It was a helluva lot more fun if they went for you on the first day, made the lesson really stick, when everyone was checking out the new kid. Everyone seeing the same thing—a boy, thirteen, a year too young to be in the ninth grade, thanks to a brother’s relentless tutoring. Hair shoulder length but pulled back in a short ponytail. Bet his parents are vegan hippie weirdos. Gray eyes that blended into the general gray of school life all around, making him barely worth noticing. Barely, but someone had to take one for the team. The new kid was voted for that position every time. Last, they saw someone shorter in inches, smaller and slighter in build, and pale, nearly enough to seem too anemic to live. I wondered if any of those watching me had seen the same shade in the white lining of the spread jaws of a striking water moccasin.

  This was going to be a good first day.

  Shocked I was not that it was this jock asshole, who was almost two of me, to be the one taking the first run. That’s what jock assholes did. But I wasn’t sure it was all him. He’d have gotten around to me sooner or later, yeah, but there was something that had made certain it was sooner. That whispered talk the gym teacher had pulled him into, the glance at me that had casually slipped away. Too casually. A wolf staring to the side at nothing, definitely not the rabbit crouched ready to run. Don’t look at me, bunny. I don’t see you. I’m not even here.

  Chomp.

  I didn’t bother to move from where I was sitting and, as I knew he would, Goliath’s juiced big brother slammed into my shoulder again on his way back down to the gym floor. He handed off a pile of towels, nice excuse if anyone was play
ing hard enough to sweat, to the coach. Good doggy. Woof, woof. The teacher—what the hell was his name? Mr. C. was all I’d caught. Mr. C. dumped them on the floor with no further need of them than an empty candy wrapper.

  That was that.

  I knew what he was.

  Not me, but he lived hidden in the same tall grass.

  Do you have your list?

  Groaning at the familiar echo of my brother’s voice in my head, I dug in my pocket. When I pulled it out, the note was wrapped around it. The note was what had me up in the bleachers rather than down on the floor with the other students. A doctor’s note as fake as the diagnosis of mild epilepsy controlled only partially by diet and meds was met with less alarm than the one I wanted: A thirteen-year-old borderline sociopathic half human disconnected from societal and social cues who will not only catch the basketball your Lord of the Flies student bully throws in his face, but then will deflate it enough with the knife he has on him at all times to shove in your best point guard’s mouth, make him chew it up, and swallow every bite.

  I’d be doing them a favor, perfect for gym class. A little panic with running and screaming is good exercise. Better than push-ups any day.

  I tossed the note in my backpack and went on to the list. 1. Watch for the monsters. Check. Done it every day of my life since I was five and found out there were monsters. 2. Do not bite off anyone’s body parts. He was never going to let that one go. And it had been only half an ear, not even the whole thing. If the kid grew his hair out one, two . . . four, four inches, no one would notice. Besides, if he’d been better at dodgeball, it wouldn’t have happened. 2a. Do not play dodgeball. God. What the . . . Never mind. Just never mind. 3. Do not bite anyone, then tell them you wanted to know how they tasted. That had been in kindergarten. Although it probably didn’t help when I’d told them afterward that they tasted like the really good kosher beef hot dogs. 4. Do not bite, period. Jesus. Okay. I got it. 5. Do not set buildings, trailers, or cars on fire. That—that was not fair. It had been a medical emergency. I was not taking the rap on that. 6. Do not investigate houses when you smell dead bodies in their basement. Yeah, whatever. Blame the victim, not the serial murderer who lived next door. That was a lesson for us kids.

  The list, updated every month, had gotten long, now covering the front and back of the card in tiny print. That didn’t strike me as leaving a lot I could do. Grumbling, I started to skim faster, since everything I’d already done I was beginning to suspect topped the list. Yep, 15. Do not blackmail. Victimless crime. Well, technically there was a victim, but because they’d done something bad enough to deserve being a victim. Like a nurse who lifted narcotics from the hospital. 15a. Regardless if they are addicts who steal drugs from their place of employment. Damn it. Resigned, I skipped an entire chunk to get into things maybe I hadn’t done yet. 37. When you are much older and certain urges become stronger, do not sexually molest livestock as a reaction to your phobia of passing on your difference by (due to birth-control failure) impregnating a girl. That was wrong. That was so wrong. I knew that and I was half-monster. Did he really think I’d . . . Nope, wasn’t going there. I skipped again, and there it was.

  43. Do not kill unless in self-defense or the defense of others.

  Fuck.

  I didn’t need to kill the jock asshole to take him down. And he wasn’t smart enough to use other kids as personal attack dogs. He wasn’t smart enough to have killed and gotten away with it, either. He was a bully and lived to hurt anyone or anything—a predator, but there were different leagues. He was an amateur. Not even JV. Barely more than a benchwarmer. Mr. C. was varsity. MVP. Playing for fun. Playing for the adrenaline rush. Playing for the love of the game. Beatings wouldn’t be enough for him. They’d be a side of fries. He’d want the whole buffet. He’d want the kill. And he’d want it hands-on, no attack dogs there. If he hadn’t done it yet, he would.

  That’s what my gut told me.

  I looked away from the card and down at him. A man with a beer gut and the soul of a snake, but no visible blood on his hands. I wasn’t a killer without rhyme or reason, but I was a born predator. When I killed . . . if I killed . . . I’d have a reason. One that I could give my brother and look him in the eye when I did. That was the whole point, I supposed, to the list.

  Putting it in the backpack with the note, I fished around more. Soon I had a sheet of paper ripped out of my notebook. Less soon and a crap load of cursing later, I had a pen. I started writing, beginning with a lopsided number 1.

  No one said I couldn’t make my own list.

  Two hours later, Lord of the Flies was surprised that I was waiting in the parking lot, just as he’d told me. He was more surprised I’d found his douche-bag Lexus. Other students were already gathering. Everyone had heard, and when I asked if he had a car, at least twelve fingers had popped up to point it out to me. They either didn’t like him or wanted me to piss him off enough that he’d actually tear off one of my limbs and try to beat me to death with it.

  Didn’t know which; didn’t care. I had promptly swiveled sideways as taught by my brother and his teachers at the dojo, knocking off the driver’s-side mirror with one snap kick. Picking it up, I had bounced it from one hand to the other before tucking it under an arm and giving the asshole a one-fingered wave when he showed up.

  Before he could get past the disbelief of what I’d dared to do, I took him down with one sweep of a leg to both of his while avoiding a sluggish swing of his fist. The juice makes you slow. “What the f—” he began, before I cut him off by slamming an elbow into his diaphragm to drive every breath out of his lungs and render them wheezed and worthless.

  That’s when I did what I had done at every new school. Showed them who stood at the top of their food chain. With this dick and this school, I did it by pounding his crotch repeatedly with his own car mirror. He would have screamed for his mommy if he had breath to do it.

  We’d been circled by the usual crowd. There were the identical boring shouts of “Fight! Fight! Fight!” as soon as he’d hit the ground. I thought that was hilarious at every new school I heard it. Fight?

  There never was a fight.

  “New kids are bitches. Isn’t that what you said?” I hammered another blow directly to his balls, the bigger target, this time. His dick, what little his shorts had showed him having, had retreated for cover. A walking slab of meat, but none left over for the sausage. Sad.

  “Bitches who are bent over benches in locker rooms to get what’s coming to them.” The next blow, number six, was the last, as his balls had swollen to elephant size, large enough to show below his basketball shorts by inches and mound beneath the rayon, making him the picture of an idiot who thought smuggling melons over the border was a great idea. He was able to get enough breath back to make hunh-hunh sounds, hitching in his throat. Sobbing. He’d call it moaning, if he could talk, but, as predicted, he was crying for his mommy. Without actual words, yet that was what he was doing. That, with the snot everywhere, rivers of it, made the entire deal disgusting.

  You could bet I wouldn’t be biting him to see how he tasted.

  I leaned in and showed him an extranasty grin, the type of nasty he hadn’t dreamed existed. “But take away your weapon of choice, what little of it you had, and then what? I bet you’ve pissed off a shitload of us ‘bitches.’ When they get smart, they might go to a sporting goods store, buy a Louisville Slugger, thinking about you when they pay for it. Deciding they don’t like how you treated them. Decide they don’t like your asshole, bullying attitude. Decide they don’t like how you talk shit to them while shoving them against the lockers. Decide they don’t like how you walk around like you own the school, or how the teachers grade your illiterate crap like you’re a college professor because you’re king of the basketball team.”

  Moving in farther until we were face-to-face, bare inches between us, I could see the blood bursting in the whit
es of his eyes. His heart was in overdrive, beating too fast for the small vessels to handle. “Sooner than you think, they’ll decide they don’t like anything you do or say. Decide they don’t even like the way you breathe. Notice how you’re alive. Decide they don’t like that, either.”

  There was a shifting in the crowd, and the yelling had gone to dead silence three blows in. This wasn’t how things went. This wasn’t how scrawny new kids acted. Was it? Now there were low and frightened but also vengeful whispers racing around the circle. And they weren’t aimed at me.

  “How are you going to fight back when you’ll barely be able to stand? How will you run away when you can’t even walk? And how long before you find out if you can ever get it up again? Or if your dick is as useless for good as your brain?” I sat back and let the mirror fall on his chest. Tilting my head slightly to the side, I aimed my unblinking gaze at his reddened, wet one. Prey, but only just. He’d turned out to be more of a bug. There’s no fun in squashing a bug.

  What a waste of a first day.

  “Last question: Do I care about any of that? Do I care if they come for you like you came for me? Take those bats and break every bone in your body?” My new grin wasn’t nasty now. There wasn’t any emotion behind it. It was a functional baring of teeth with only one purpose: ripping out throats. That was how we were made, those of us who lived in that tall and endless grass. “Hell, no, I don’t care. I’m not a bitch, asshole.

  “I’m a fucking lion.” I stood. “I hope they eat you.”

  In the First

  (Present Day)

  I built a gate. I tore open a hole in the world, and the world screamed in agony. It did with every gate I made. No one could hear it but me. Not that I knew. It was possible the Auphe had been able to catch it. If they had, they’d never said, but, then, the First hadn’t been big talkers if it didn’t involve telling you how they were going to play cat’s cradle with your intestines, flay you inch by inch, and let your skin fly up and skate on the air, a homemade kite, a toy. That’s all you were to them: a toy. Brand-new, bright and shiny.