by Raven Taylor
“I have much to show you tonight young apprentice. We are excused from work this evening. I have had others fill in for us. It is more important at the moment that I get you thinking straight again. Tonight your eyes will open and you will understand. You will snap out of this gloom once and for all. Myron is concerned about your attitude to work.”
“You told him about Lilly?”
“Of course not but your way of dealing with things has worked its way back to him. He is aware of your struggle with your conscience and he has told me that you must shape up. It is not a serious concern for now but it may become one if you do not shake your unhappiness.”
I shuddered. I did not even want to think of what Myron, that vengeful, spiteful master, might do to me if he thought me no longer fit to be in his service.
“Where are we going tonight then?”
“To the Royal Infirmary.”
In the roughly tunnelled passage we passed two Dark Angels preparing for their nights work. The female had ice blue eyes and shimmering violet hair and was all around Elfin in appearance with her pointed ears and transparent fairy wings. Her face was old though, lined, not a pretty face, there where no pretty faces down here other than my own. She was dressed in a long velvet cloak that matched her eyes with a heavy hood that fell down to her ankles. She was leaning on a staff made of a twisted tree branch and the expression on her face told of deadly cruelty. Her friend, the male, was heavy set with wings like Cane’s and his broad face was criss-crossed with fine scars. He wore a cloak too of some substantial material. Most of them did, dress in cloaks that is. It was Cane and I who looked different in our twist on human attire. Cane in his shabby suit and top hat like a 19th centaury gentleman and me more inspired by the youngsters I saw in the rock clubs, particularly Lilly and her friends, in my tight fitting pin-striped bondage trousers, my slightly frilly black velvet shirt and my spiked collar.
The two others ventured greetings to Cane as we passed and he tipped his hat to them. They simply stared at me and I knew it was jealously I saw in their eyes as they watched us leave together.
The Royal Infirmary was out with the city centre in an area called Little France. I did not like leaving the security of the old town and I felt uncomfortable in the newer parts of the city. Cane said this was only the first place we would be visiting tonight and it was to the maternity ward that he led me. He took me to a private room where a mother slept with her newborn baby in a cot beside her. I was confused. I hoped Cane had not brought me to kill the infant, or the mother for that matter.
He was standing over the cot like a child snatcher from a horror story and he beckoned me to join him. I looked down at the baby sleeping peacefully under the blue blanket, one tiny pink hand just visible on the pillow. I dreaded what he was going to ask me to do to him.
“Do you know who this?” he asked me.
I shook my head.
“In this life he is little Kieran Reynolds, he was born this morning. He was born because of you Winter.”
“Me? How so?”
“Because in his previous life he was Joseph Green and he died of the black death after being walled up in a nursery with his companions.”
“No!” I marvelled.
“Yes,” he insisted, “You helped him move on. What do you think?”
“Well…I’m almost speechless, it is the most marvellous thing I’ve ever seen.”
“I did promise you something miraculous,” he said, “You see, you know that they are reborn after we grant them death, you’ve always known. I just though I might need to show it to you. What you are looking at is not simply a new life, you are also looking at death, so in a way we are responsible for this.”
The baby stirred. I could not believe the soul of that same little boy was there inside of him.
“If they never died, if we never took them, then moments like this would never occur. You would deny them the right to this kind of happiness? You would deny them their very reason for being? You would deny them the right of creation?”
“No.” when I turned back to Cane there were tears in my eyes.
“I knew this would touch your gentle spirit.” he smiled.
“So all of those threads are reused?”
“Yes, recycled, made into something new. Now that is only part of it. Come. We are going right into the Human world tonight to see how they live, how they enjoy their lives. If they thought they were going to live forever do you think they would enjoy their existence? The knowledge that death is the only certainty is what makes them do things. If they thought eternity was theirs they would be forever putting things off and what kind of life would that be?”
“No kind I presume. They would probably all be like me.”
“Precisely! Now, let us return to the old town where for one night you and I shall live like humans! You are going to enjoy yourself!”
He spun on his heel, the walking cane tucked under his elbow and proceeded to march out of the room. I stole one last glance at the sleeping baby and then followed him.
***
The hall was crowded. New music with an old 40’s swing style twist rebounded of the walls and mingled with the sound of human conversation and laughter. The drink was flowing freely and looking out across the crowd was like looking upon something that had been dragged from a 1920’s upper-middle class ball and bizarrely blended with modern day fetish and Goth. The result was maddeningly deranged yet wondrously compelling. There were young men who looked frighteningly like Cane in their tailed suits and top hats while others looked more Victorian in capes and waistcoats. There were girls in flapper dresses, girls in ball gowns with fantastic feathered head pieces and scantily clad ladies in corsets and frilly pants. This was, Cane informed me, Edinburgh’s premier burlesque night.
We stood at the back calmly watching the events, unseen by anyone, sipping champagne cocktails from Martini glasses that we had lifted from the bar. I watched as the cigarette girls in their stilettos and white stockings paraded around like peacocks with their little trays and the musicians on the stage drew one song to a close and began another. This time I recognised Disturbed’s ‘the sickness’ but not in a form I had ever heard before. On the dance floor below the stage their were crowds of people moving to the music and the overall mood of the place further enhanced my own demeanour.
Cane put down his glass and gave me a quick nod before he disappeared off into the rabble. I saw him weave his way through the bodies as he made his way to the dance floor. I was happy just to watch. A few songs passed and Cane was still on the dance floor when the band stopped and a tall, thin figure stepped out onto the stage. The lights dimmed and the spotlight picked out the host and the audience cheered. He too was dressed in a top hat and he had on a red tailed coat and he carried a whip in one hand and a mic in the other.
“Ladies and gentleman, good evening and welcome!” he boomed, “For your entertainment I would like to introduce the first act of the night, please give a hand for the Temptation Sisters!”
He stepped back into the wings and two pretty girls in purple dresses and feathered headdresses stepped out onto the stage and began their strip-tease routine. It was fun and entertaining. There was nothing seedy about it, a far cry from how I imagined the strip joints human males often visited might be, it was classy and the girls only went down to their underwear anyway. It seemed to please both the men and women in the crown a great deal. However, There was still no sign of Cane, and I wondered what he had found to occupy himself.
As the girls finished and bowed back behind the curtains with graceful bows, the host took to the stage again. The audience cheered and heckled. He waved them silent.
“And now on with our next act, a very special young lady, please welcome on stage Missy Devine!”
The music started up again, a swing version of Marilyn Manson’s ‘The Nobodies’ and a black clad, sombre girl stepped gracefully into the spotlight. I froze. My mouth went dry. I knew that pale face, that pr
etty red hair, those ruby lips. Missy Devine was my Lilly. I could not watch but at the same time I found it impossible to tare myself away as a tall man dressed as death, a noose in his hand, joined her on the stage and began to act out a mock chase. I stared with growing pain as Death tried to seduce the pretty young victim and every time he got close she would dance away and he would manage only to catch an item of her clothing. She was left only with her underwear now and the beauty of her dancing on the stage with her swan like body and mesmerising movements stabbed my heart. Finally, when she was left only with her pants, stockings and two black crosses stuck over the nipples on the swell of her perfect breasts, Death caught her and looped the noose around her neck. She swooned in his embrace, finally won over and he kissed her. The audience cheered. I screamed. How close to the truth this little scene had been yet she danced with all the wonder of a snowflake without the slightest idea of the thing that was growing in her brain, the thing that I, a real representation of death, had planted there. She had no idea how Death truly did lust after her even at this moment.
I was still screaming as she bowed and left the stage. I was clutching at my head, pulling at my hair, desperately trying to black out the pain. Cane had done this. He had known she would be here. He wanted to torture me.
I saw him pushing through the clapping crowds towards me, a look of concern on his face. He was clumsily ploughing past them and some looked round, a little startled as they felt something unseen brush by.
“YOU DID THIS!” I yelled, real anger consuming me for the first time in my existence, “I HATE YOU CANE!”
He was holding up his hands, shaking his head, looking like I had never seen him look before. I think he was afraid of the wrath that had woken in me.
“No, I swear, I had no idea the girl would be here. I only wanted to cheer you up. I thought this place might appeal to you.” he insisted.
A red veil had passed over my vision and I lunged at him furiously. I hit him. I had never hit anybody before in my life. I caught him swiftly under his jaw and for a moment he looked stunned.
“You brought me here to suffer. Poor, weak little Winter. Watch him break down at the sight of his beloved dancing with death. Let us mock him and his stupid obsession. Let us make him cry.”
“It is not like that!” he yelled back at me.
I hit him again. He had permitted me the first lash but he was angry himself now at my not believing his words. Maybe he told the truth but I was hurt so deeply that at that moment I did not care. I had taken leave of my senses. The fact that he was faster, bigger, stronger did not seem to matter.
I rushed at him again and sent him staggering backwards. He collided with a table and sent it flying. The humans around us shrieked in surprise and backed away.
“Stop it Winter, you’re making a scene!”
“To hell with it, I don’t care anymore.”
I ran for him again.
“I don’t wish to fight you but you leave me no choice.” he said and a mean shadow crossed his eyes as he stood his ground.
As I flew for him he smacked me in the face. I reeled backwards but like something possessed I went for him again. He blocked me easily. He was laughing at me now. I swung at him but he caught my arm and twisted it behind my back.
“Stop this madness.” he hissed.
“Never.”
I struggled against him and broke free but he cracked me across the head with his cane. He was furious at my refusal to surrender. I fell to the floor in a daze and he hit me again with the cane as I tried to rise. I knew I was beaten but still I tried to fight and still he kept on knocking me down. We were both consumed with rage and not thinking straight, neither one of us sane enough to stop the madness. I tried to get up again but I could not. He delivered his final, crushing blow with the cane and I felt my wing break.
I lay curled on the floor weeping, my injured wing lying at an unnatural angle behind me and he stood over me, breathing heavily and putting his hat back in place.
“See,” he said, “See what you have done with your infatuation?”
“She was dancing with death.”
“I know. I would never have brought you hear if I’d have known she would be here.”
As the madness dissolved in me I began to believe him. I was now in both physical and emotional pain. He crouched down by me and reached out for my wing.
“No, don’t, it’s broken.” I warned him.
“Come on, stand up.”
He helped me to my feet and supported me as I stood. The broken wing hung lamely at my side. I could not move it.
“Oh Winter, I did not mean to cause you so much harm.” he looked genuinely upset, he himself barely affected by my feeble blows.
He helped me walk, leaving behind the carnival of happy party goers, and somehow I managed to drag my battered self back to the Underworld.
CHAPTER TWENTY ONE
Trapped in an existence that was so unbearable and bleak. If I was a shadow of a ghost in the streets of Edinburgh before then I was even more so now. I refused to work. I rarely returned to the Underworld even to sleep. I spent the days sleeping in the vaults under Niddry Street and my nights skulking around the bars and cemeteries.
When we had returned to the Underworld following our fight I refused to let Cane anywhere near my broken wing to tend to it. Consequently it did not heal, it just hung uselessly at my side, trailing lamely on the ground, the black feathers scuffed and damaged. In some masochistic way I enjoyed the pain and misery it caused me. If Lilly was going to suffer then shouldn’t I suffer too?
I barely ate or drunk. We do need to do both, though if we don’t we do not waste away physically as humans do we just fade and fall gradually towards the spirit world. So an Angel cannot die. No, we do not have that luxury, we simply become doomed wraiths in the spirit world but unlike other trapped spirits there is no hope of reincarnation for us.
I was leaning dangerously towards this stage after a week of starvation. I had begun to feel hollow and not quite there and I was loosing my ability to touch physical things. I knew what I had become now: An outlaw. Even if I had wanted to return I could not because Myron would be sure to torture me for all eternity for my refusal to do what I was made to do.
For a week and a half I did not see Cane and part of me was disturbed and saddened by this. Had even he, the ancient rebel, forsaken me? Perhaps this was my punishment, to become a wraith and wander the cemeteries in pain and misery forever.
He did come though. At last he did come.
I had been inside the tomb of George McKenzie for two days. I had not seen his ghost or poltergeist but I had started to hallucinate. I fancied I had seen every ghost in Edinburgh come by to watch the Dark Angel fade. I thought at one point, as I drifted in and out of consciousness, that Lilly was there with me and that we made love on the stone sarcophagus. All fantasies though. Just illusions brought on by my slow passing. Until Cane came.
I was weak with hunger and sprawled on the floor of the tomb when his worn black shoes stepped into my line of vision. I could not move even to look up at him or force my lips to speak. I was right on the edge, a broken reflection of my former self.
“So this is where you’ve been hiding.” said Cane.
I could not respond.
“Don’t even try to speak Angel.” he said as he bent over me and tried to lift me from the ground.
To his distress his arms passed right through me and he groaned out loud.
“Oh, Winter, what have you done?”
He was kneeling by me but his constant efforts to comfort me, to touch me, were thwarted. I was almost gone. He lay down beside me so he could look into my eyes. My cheek was pressed against the cold stone floor.
“Is this what you want?” he asked, trying to keep the hysteria from his voice and searching desperately for any sign of an answer in my glassy stare, “Please Winter, come back, you have to come back to me, I can’t bare this.”
Cane had tear
s in his eyes now and I forced a smile that took all my strength to form. Here he was suffering. At long last Cane was suffering the sorrow of loosing someone he loved. Through my agony came a shaft of euphoria.
“Don’t do this,” he moaned, “I love you Winter. I cannot have this existence without my beautiful Winter. All in my life is ugly, twisted, distorted and you are the light to my dark. Don’t put out the light on me Winter, I’m begging you.”
It was ecstasy. All this while he had been trying to open my eyes and here I had been the one to open his. I was glad he was hurting. It almost made my own pain go away.
“If this is what you want, truly, make a sign and I will leave, but if you do not respond I am going to do all I can to drag you back.”
I did not move. The smile was frozen on my face.
“This is beyond me, but I will return with help.”
I could see spirits everywhere now. Black eyed spectres in old dress crowded the room once Cane had left. I was deep in their world now and they had come to gloat. There at last was McKenzie himself. I was mildly surprised to see that that particular spirit was still earth bound. I was getting the best type of revenge.
Cane was not gone long and there was someone else with him when he returned. I could see only feet and I closed my eyes against the ghosts that hollowed and mocked all around me. Someone was lifting me now but I was aware that it was not Cane. Far too gentle to be Cane as my injured wing was carefully gathered up behind me and my wilting body was cradled in the arms of another. There was such a sense of peace about this newcomer like I had never felt before, an overall feeling of goodness and harmony that embraced me. I was loosing consciousness, sinking deeper into the bliss that surrounded me and I was barely even aware as I was carried from the tomb, it only vaguely registered that soon we were flying.