Shadow & Light

by Stephen Ayer

  Frank pulled at his chains, forcing his bare arms to ripple and striate to the intense strain. It had been an hour since he woke and not once had he stopped trying to break free. He grunted and screamed like a caged beast robbed of its wide open plains. Cuffs suited him no more than coffins. Who the fuck are these people?

  Every time he pulled against them and let the steel dig into his wrists, the hiss of searing flesh filled the air. Feels like fire on the bone. Won’t break me. He had strained against them so tirelessly that his body had given up trying to heal his wrists and let bands of charred flesh ring around them. I’ve already been broken. He pushed himself with one final effort, screaming into the darkness as he launched himself forward. Every muscle in his body strained and the essence of his black soul flooded through him.

  Unholy strength exploded through his arms and chest.

  It was to no avail. He pushed himself to his limit and collapsed back onto the dusty floor below. His chest heaved for air, a left over impulse from mortal days. Eyes brimming with rubescent light stared into the black abyss, thinking and plotting on how best to escape. He slowly brought himself back up, readying his will for another bout of thrashing and straining.

  “A lesser man would have died of shock.” said a voice from one of the corner cells he had spotted earlier. It hadn’t been occupied.

  Frank scrutinized the bare cell more closely. “I’ve been dead for a while.”

  The voice laughed. It was a womanly laugh. “Yes... you look very dead but very strong. What a puzzle.”

  He ignored her bait. The less they know the better. His vampiric eyes roved over her cell and saw a slight shimmer of warm light through the trembling shadows. “What are you in for?”

  Slowly, pin pricks of light dotted the shadows, growing larger, holes of effulgence in the dark. Frank watched the amber stars drift and float until they began to flow into the center, the stars fattening with light and color until they became embers.

  The sparks twirled like petals of fire, floating as if cast off from some incendiary bloom. They outlined a shadowy silhouette, clinging to it more and more as they came down in a gentle shower of flame. The shape of a lush and nubile woman grew into prominence.

  When the drifting drizzle of light reached the ground, the fire wreathed beauty shed her radiance, embers turning to flesh, shadows to hair. This is new. Steam sizzled off an immaculate mahogany complexion, and without the scorching luminescence, her facial features came to fore.

  Frank looked at her with a blank stare. He had seen many strange things in his long life, but they were always far away glimpses of a world that lay beyond his. A ghost here, a witch there, sometimes vampiric blood magic, and now this.

  Witchcraft. Professional. The old hags could never pull off something like this.

  Even in the inky darkness, he could make out her features. Ringlets of sable black hair framed an oval, beatific face straight out of Scheherazade’s flights of fancy. Eyes swirling with currents of orange and red met Frank’s steely crimson gaze. Supple feminine lips curled into a smirk.

  His eyes drifted down her neck, and noticed how well-dressed she was for a prisoner. Diaphanous, blue black silk clung to her voluptuous physique like an ethereal second skin, refracting light in hues of gold and red. That her dress was not in any way dirtied aroused his suspicions. Must have been nabbed from a cocktail party. His eyes narrowed when he saw ancient tattooed script scrolled down the outside of her sleek, well-defined thighs. Or an orgy.

  He looked back up into her smoldering eyes, still filled with that unsettling look of amusement. “What?”

  She shrugged and put a finger to her lips. “Oh... if only my captors regarded me as you do now... how different things would be.” She pressed her body to the bars and Frank noticed the veins along her arms pulse with luminescence, like rivers of lava racing underneath her skin. Her fingers curled over the bars with grace and a coy smile widened her face. “We could be friends. I’d like that.”

  Frank’s face remained stoic. “Yeah. Not in the long run.” He focused his willpower and pushed against them and the tempting woman to the back of his mind. The supports on the wall did not budge.

  “Not if it took a thousand years could you break those.”

  The vampire stopped and chuckled. I’m very patient. He stared into her eyes, ignoring her blatant attempts to show more skin. “Look lady, this ain’t gonna be like all the other shows you’ve run. No secret bonding. No pretending to be my friend. What there will be is me ripping these goddamn chains off, strangling the ones who put ‘em on, and then... ” the shadows under his eyes darkened, his smile cold and vicious, “and then, I’m gonna have one hell of a drink.”

  The woman backed away from her bars at his glare. The gleam in her eyes took on a new cast and she looked down to the ground. “It’s not a show. Not yet.” She looked back up. “And you won’t want to be here once it gets started.”

  What about when I get started? Frank sank down to his knees and relaxed his arms, grinning. “What do you want?”

  “Freedom.”

  He loosed a bitter laugh. “Oh that’s a good one. Knew some who wanted that. Bit ‘em in the ass.” Those double minded... disloyal... sons of bitches. Blurry impressions of blacksmiths and farmers came to mind. Their faces were indistinct, but he could still hear their words, their passions... their screams.

  “All my life I’ve been in chains. Taken from here to there. A pawn for many hands.”

  Frank looked back at her. “Might’ve been for a damn good reason. I’d never trust a witch myself.” He had darkened the light of many a heathen during his reigns of terror in the past, and while they had never been as beautiful as this one, he was certain she was no different.

  She lowered herself to her knees, meeting his eye level. “I’m no witch. I am of al-Khalnur.”

  “Not ringing any bells.”

  Her eyes flared with indignation. “In your tongue... we are djinn.”

  “That ain’t my tongue either.” He looked into her face, eyes that had beheld happiness and rage, murder and pillage, deceit... and truth. “Maybe you’re not full of shit...” Purity enhances the taste.

  Hope rekindled in her expression. “Thank you! My cousin. He wants to—”

  A door behind slammed open, throwing the cool glow of electric light across his back. “That will be quite enough out of the serpent’s mouth!” boomed a voice from behind. The djinn woman backed away from the bars and retreated into the darkness of her cell.

  Frank grimaced, feeling the warm hand of the intruder rest on his shoulder. “Her lies... very pretty to listen to, oh yes... Issam! Loosen his chains!” the voice said. He sensed more men file into the dungeon, walking in silent step. After a grinding of the chains, his arms fell to his sides and the stranger walked in front of him.

  The gentle glow of amber lights bloomed in the darkness, lending further definition to the group before him. The stranger was dressed in a refined and tailored black business suit. The shirt underneath was some sort of high sheen fabric and even with benefit of the overhead lights, could only muster a dark golden hue. Cropped, jet hair complemented a sharp, aquiline face. Altogether he looked like a time-lost Sultan, one who had adapted to the trappings of modern luxury with ease.

  When Frank’s eyes drifted over his retinue, he found them not as easy to analyze. To the stranger’s right, was an equally well dressed man but of towering height, bald and riddled with cross hatched scars across the face. And there’s the bodyguard. There was something odd about the man. His cheek bones too angular, his irises showed reddish black under the light and his nose... looked off, as if some other creature wore his ill-fitting face. Nice knife too. The thing was old, its hilt wrapped with twisted leather, the blade pitted but inscribed with strange runes.

  He turned his gaze to the other men who had entered the room. Who else we got here? The majority of the back-up looked like any other Arab, but for the odd glint in their eyes and the conspicuou
sly inconspicuous ‘contractor’ looks that had Frank had come to know well during his service under Bill. Mercs.

  The stranger smirked upon seeing Frank’s scrutinizing eyes.

  He pulled out a cigarette and just as it went between his lips, the end ignited. “A night walker in my city... and just the one I wanted to see.” He brushed lingering smoke out of his face, but faint trailing wisps caught on to his fingers like fishhooks and seeped into his hand. “I’m a gambling man and not even I would bet on odds like this.”

  Frank stared through the man. “Sometimes ya get lucky.”

  “Luck? Luck!?” The man maintained his smirk and took another drag of his cigarette. And then broke the peace, knee slamming Frank in the face. “Don’t make me laugh.” The aftershock of the blow ran through the vampire’s dead flesh and stung his bones, his nose dripping like a bloody faucet. “We are both of that age where the symmetry and irony of events cease to be coincidence... and more like fate.”

  “What?”

  “Never mind that. You’re a blood soaked bum. You have the reek of the condemned.” He tapped the ash from his cigarette. “You’re the perfect man to kill someone.”

  “You’re not the only one to think so.”

  “I wish I were. My competition hires blood drinkers further east- Issam!- what were they called?”

  The burly and bald bodyguard answered, his lips twisted into an unintentional snarl. “The Sahir.”

  “Sahir! That’s right. Wakeful Ones. I have not seen them alive. I have not seen them dead. I have not seen them at all.” He emphasized his words with repeated jabs of his cigarette into the air. “Yet, my bodyguard insists he killed one to save my life.”

  Frank swung his head up. “Might be payin’ too much if your man is killing people that don’t exist.”

  Issam booted Frank’s face down with a lighting quick step, cracking the vampire’s lip and jaw.

  “And now we have you, Frank.” The man continued, accustomed to speaking over beatings. “You seem just as rough now as you were then. That’s fine.” The man’s face widened into a smile as he made a gun with his fingers at Frank. “My enemies need a little bit of rough in their lives.”

  They know me? Frank hated to ask anything of anyone, but how he had raised the ire of the djinn intrigued him. “Who the fuck are you?”

  The man sighed with irritation and raised a languid hand at the vampire. “Issam.” The bodyguard slugged the vampire on the untouched side of his face, sending a speckle of black blood into the dust. It’s alright, couldn’t feel shit anyway. “Who am I?” The man stood up out of his chair and handed his cigarette to his towering bodyguard. “Who am I? I’m Emir Navras. I have a whole host of titles but the title you will come to know me best by... is Boss.”

  Yeah you wish. Keep pushin’ motherfucker.

  Frank eyed Issam. “You’re gonna need a bigger stick than what that potato faced son of a bitch can bring to the table.” Issam frowned.

  “Oh. We do. Don’t do what I say... and I kill you.” Navras put a hand on Issam’s shoulder and looked back to Frank. “But don’t worry. There’s a fair amount of carrot too. Do what I say... I don’t kill you... and I let you free.”

  And then I kill you like I kill Templars.

  Frank exhaled and his pale face rose into the light. “Who do you need dead?”

  Chapter 16: Masters

  Agatha took in a breath of fresh morning air, taking in the shape of verdant sycamores, golden under the early sun. Her breath was interrupted and her chest seized up. It was not the seasonal cold, having borne the chill of Baltic winters without incident, but the writhing ice that came from worlds beyond.

  It was the cold that came from nothing.

  A great void breathed within her, and with its exhale came a storm of whispers.

  Xik uw irnel kroth amon kar’krosh alar corxar rvdagdar YLIN-AMAR VAR KETHOTH!

  Agatha gulped and balanced herself against her balcony. Her head was light, her breath shallow and the urge to vomit the shadows that now twisted inside became overwhelming. Emerald light bloomed in her pendant, like green fire under rocky black waves. Her blue eyes went as pale as crystal, her pupils dilated.

  Her fingers left burn marks on the marble balcony and guttural sounds erupted from her lips. “Bircil venar kyhnic xoth akar—” She clutched her stomach and slunk low, forcing her mouth shut. Her throat throbbed with pain while the taste of blood skimmed along her tongue. Her lips quivered, desperate to open once more, but the witch’s will was iron.

  She focused on the Black Star around her neck and pushed against the foreign will that had rooted deep in her flesh. The power of the will was near as strong as the artifact. Trillions of voices strangled her sanity for attention.

  She found her own thought, her own self out of the din. And then screamed back.

  Sound collapsed in her head and she collapsed to her knees, her skin a shade paler than usual.

  Aphon trailed in under an archway, coming out onto the balcony. His face stayed impassive through the witch’s ordeal. His ears perked up at the sound of her bizarre whisperings, but he, being a master of all the tongues of Man, could not place her speech.

  He placed a hand on her shoulder when her suffering came to an end, breathing deeply and relishing the sweet air. “Suddenly I know why... why you give your witches to me but not yourself...” he extended a finger and caught one of her anguished teardrops. “Because you are taken. I would not treat you so harshly.”

  But I would take your tongue.

  Agatha’s tearful eyes opened. “I am not... taken. I am in control. Otherwise I would not be speaking to you now... and you would not be hearing me now.”

  Aphon chuckled. “Oh, you know how to intrigue me. Tell me about him.”

  The witch shook her head. “I can’t... to even speak their name is to invite them in. And I can’t handle that... not now.”

  Aphon eyed her pendant with a gleam in his eye. Could you handle me now? “But I could. Call them and they will be received.”

  “You f-” More coughs seized the witch and she clutched her chest, the blood from her raw tongue speckling white hands. She moaned piteously and drew back up, inhaling another lungful of air.

  The demon’s chest rumbled. “Mmmm... such pain.”And for so little. “Do you ever think... what comes after the end?”

  Agatha smiled, forcing a smirk through her shakes and aches. “That’s all I think about. The past holds only pain, the present only nothing, but the future... it holds promise.” She got to her feet and looked to Aphon. “Before you found me, I held onto nothing but ice and of what could be. I knew I had to come back. It is more than my people that need this.” She turned and overlooked the rolling green hills, the bright cloudless sky. It was beauty, but of the most mortal sort, never to inspire tears or blood, only praise.

  “The world needs this. The return of wonder... of magic. Once Man looked to us as gods, and were better for it. Then they grew haughty, and like a plague, all the magic they touched withered and died. It is their nature to gray their souls against the colors of the world, and for that they cannot be entrusted to rule it.”

  Aphon regarded the landscape, and the more he took in her words, the more vivid it became. The sky seemed to subtly harden, transformed into a high vault of sapphire and just as lustrous. Melodies that could never be remembered by ears mortal and immortal filled the sky, at once lulling him yet leaving him anxious. The leaves of trees turned so green they seemed to glow, the branches more like jagged bars of light, brimming with a chromatic spectrum that would both madden and gladden.

  The demon struggled to bring his eyes down, compelled by some hidden force to behold the witch’s dreams, which grew more nightmarish as her voice colored more deranged. The harmonies in the air corrupted into long wails, frigid slime rolled down stone like blood, and strange shapes played around the trees before them. When Aphon’s eyes fell on her Black Star, he saw the thing pulse and throb, like an iris aga
inst her neck.

  Does she bewitch me? Or is it the Star?

  When her words wound down and her passion ebbed, so too did the hallucination falter and flights of fancy recede before the demon’s eyes.

  “Now they look to the mud, and for all their telescopes and trackers... they are more blind than ever. It is a darkness that no incision or seeing glass can correct.” She breathed with elation, her eyes bright with triumphs to come. “Their ignorance cloaks us better than any spell.”

  Aphon laid his hands on her shoulders and looked out over the Italian vista, his breath hot against her neck. “Stirring... but if all you hope for comes to pass... there is another who claims this world, another who would call himself Creator—”

  “I’ll cross that bridge when it comes.” she said curtly and turned away from the balcony and headed back inside.

  The demon followed her. It might be sooner than you think.

  Agatha glided into the dining room and poured herself some tea. Morning light filtered through murky glass in dusty beams. “And what of you, demon? What’s at the end for you?”

  Aphon regarded a passing witch with a lascivious glint and then turned his head to Agatha. “There is no end for me. There is only eternity... an eternity of joys. Joys that Man abhors and calls terror.” He chuckled lowly to himself. “But no more than any other. Here time passes, people change and I am... disconnected... from what I am, my purpose.” He looked past the witch, his eyes distant. “I wish to get back to eternity. Where things are forever and I am forever.”

  “And your crown.”

  Aphon blinked and moved his gaze back to Agatha. “Yes... and the crown.” How many exiled dukes come back as kings? Such a return might catch the eye of the Morning Star... His eye drifted to the Black Star around Agatha’s throat, hanging like a smooth, lightless tear against her pale skin. But with that I could take the eye of the Morning Star. Snuff out the angelic shit’s light, finish what Michael could not.

  “Come.” she said and got up from her chair. “We have business to attend to.”