Shadow & Light

by Stephen Ayer

  The chamber was circular in shape, with multiple stairways of polished pitch stone branching off onto a balcony that encircled the ground floor. In its middle arched two mirrored crescents, their tops straightening off into tapered tips. Deeply etched primordial runes ran along both their lengths, dark and dormant.

  Vazim’s men fanned out behind Frank, keeping out of the center while the Emir walked straight up to the portal. “My most treasured relic. The Shadow Gate.” He ran his hands along one of the crescents, taking in its rough texture and deep grooves.

  Frank regarded its stone control panel just in the foreground and picked out its inhuman markings in the shining gloom of the chamber. “What’s it do?”

  “Get you out of here.”

  Frank’s eyes narrowed. “Anywhere I want to go?”

  “If there are shadows... it will take you. Just be very sure of the destination...” He turned and looked at the empty space between the two crescents. “It has a way of reading desires, taking you where the heart needs rather than what the head wants.”

  “Head and heart agree: I need to get the fuck out of here.”

  Vazim backed away from the portal, hands behind his back. Frank noticed how his shadow seemed to stagger behind him, delayed in mirroring the Emir’s motions for a breath of a moment. “Well then, all I need is...” a smile stretched his face and his eyes glittered like black diamonds, “your end of the bargain.”

  Frank eyed the Gate still, and watched how fibers of shadow hung between the two crescents, dripping darkness like strands of raw meat streaming blood. “Yep. I’ll give her a talk beforehand.” He lowered his gaze back onto Vazim. “Little sand princess is probably pulling her hair out by now.”

  The Emir grinned and shook hands, his heated flesh moved the chilled blood in Frank’s palm. “Very good. While you retrieve the girl, I’ll have my men ready the Gate.”

  ***

  Frank followed the sound of djinn music back into the club proper. Past writhing bodies and slithering shadows, his red eyes picked out a nubile silhouette, outlined in the amber glow of curved lamps. The vampire moved through the crowd, and felt the fire of their souls settle on his own, invigorating dead passions and memories, times of happiness and drink, when he had friends and friends had him.

  It faded as fast as it had begun, quickly forgotten, no matter how much the vampire tried to hold on. His scowl of disappointment cleared bystanders just as much as his strapping frame.

  He offered the barkeep a curt nod and stepped outside. He slid the massive tinted glass door behind him, muting the world of dance, string progressions and strange flames under a layer of glossy black. Basima rested her arms on the balcony railing, her eyes focused on the sable firmament of the sky, the seams of golden fire that threaded and sank beneath its velvet contours.

  “There you are. Was wondering where you went.”

  “So did I!” she said, Frank’s voice having yanked her from the realm of dreams and back into the realm of shadow. She turned to him and the vampire could not help but notice a certain gladness in her expression. “Is he dead?”

  Frank laughed harshly and pulled out a cigarette. “Yeah... that’s not happening.” He lit up and the silvery snakes of his smoke tangled with serpentine shadows. “Got a better deal.”

  “From who?”

  “Vazim.”

  Basima choked. “Why!?”

  “Told him he could die or get me out of this freak show.” He took a long, savory drag of his cigarette. “Best decision he’s made so far. Foppish little shit.”

  “Are you insane? You must be insane. You kill Navras’s brother and then spit in his face when he offers you a way out?” Pretty much, yeah. Basima turned away, her eyes moistened and face reddened. “I can’t believe this... just can’t...”

  Frank grinned and looked up into the pitch sky, constantly rent with light, and constantly mended with shadow. “I do what I’m gonna do. If someone has a problem with that they best start holdin’ a gun to my head... and that’s just for a start.”

  The music inside the penthouse ebbed and Basima’s heavy breathing grew quieter... silence gained in the vampire’s ear. And then the unmistakable click of a gun. “Here’s the start. The end’s still in the chamber.”

  Frank slowly turned. “Oh... you.”

  “Me.” Issam and three lackeys stood in front of him, guns drawn. “Here’s what you’re going to do.” The djinn’s eyes burned redder than even Frank’s, like blood turned to flame. “You’re going to leave Basima here. Then you’ll go right through that fucking door and do your job... or I end this right here.”

  Frank mashed his cigarette into the ground, grinding it with the heel of his shoe. “Tempting offer but—”

  “That wasn’t an offer.”

  Frank’s eyes flashed upward for a second, still looking at his extinguished cigarette, “—I’ve got a better deal elsewhere.”

  Issam chuckled and stretched his neck. “I told the Emir letting you live was a mistake. Time to correct.”

  “No...” Frank’s hand shot for Issam’s pistol with a speed that surprised the seasoned Ifrit. “Let me.” He yanked the gun and Issam forward, slugging the djinn in the face with his other hand. A loud snap resounded. Issam fell to the ground, his nose a crumpled mass of blood and cartilage.

  A chorus of cracks followed as the three other djinn opened fire, narrowly missing Basima.

  Frank leapt over Issam and came upon the hired guns. Their fire went rapid and panicked at his approach, the distance closed all too quick. The vampire suffered grazing wounds when he evaded their fire, flanking them from the side like some black wind.

  In one breath he swept away the closest one’s weapon, in the second his claws rent scalding blood and life from the djinn. The man’s collar lit fire from the sheer heat spewed from his slashed neck.

  Frank was on the last two before their comrade had hit the ground. After centuries of murder, his style was informed by instinct as much as it was technique. He swept out one’s feet and then crushed his throat with his knee as he came to the ground, but not before taking the man’s weapon.

  The vampire opened fire in that instant, blinded by a bright and golden muzzle flash, each shot slamming enchanted bronze into his foe. He only ceased when the clip had ran its course, the djinn’s chest a mess of liquid metal, steaming blood and exposed bone.

  The man slumped to the ground and twitched, life blood pooling beneath his shattered chest.

  Frank exhaled with satiation only to be cut off when arms wrapped around his throat. Issam bore down on him and the two grappled across the seared, blood soaked stone. Frank broke free and swung the stock of his gun at the djinn’s head.

  Issam caught the swing and the two wrestled over it, coming into a narrow stone corridor adjacent to the balcony. Frank dropped the piece and elbow struck the djinn across the chin. Issam dodged the follow up swing and Frank’s fist went flying into rock.

  Dust blew into the pitch air.

  Issam took out one of Frank’s legs and slammed the vampire’s head into the wall. “Agh, motherfucker!” Frank wrenched away Issam’s hand and gave the man a brutal knee blow to the stomach.

  Wind flew from the djinn’s lungs but when he sprung back up, his tribal dagger came flying, its sigils flaring blood light in the dark. Frank averted the strike from his heart and it lashed across his clavicle. Another swing drew foul blood from his arm and skittered across the stone in a spray of sparks.

  Frank kicked out Issam’s knees and brought the djinn’s own hand punching through his throat in a spray of gore, the Ifrit blade brightening as ember streaked streams of steaming red fell over its edge. Die you son of a bitch. He plunged the blade further in until the djinn ceased his choking.

  Issam died with his back up against the wall, knees splayed, head low while his crisp white shirt clouded a shade more crimson and sprouted slight burn marks.

  Frank shook the smoking blood off his fingers and sighed. “Goddamn!
” Basima huddled behind a stairway descending from the manor.

  “You’ve ruined everything... we’re both dead... Navras won’t forgive this, never forgives...” she muttered, her eyes wide and tearful.

  Frank stepped over the bodies and grabbed Basima up. “Shut your mouth. We’re committed now. You wanted freedom, you’re gettin’ it.”

  She stared at the dead and ravaged djinn, her face bereft of light. “Not like this...”

  “You don’t get to choose.”

  Frank led Basima through the quieting floor, both music and life receding as the night bore onto its final hours. She was flustered and stopped many times, asking to turn back, to run. The vampire grabbed her by the wrist and pulled her along.

  You’re not fucking up a perfectly good plan.

  “It’s just this way and...” Frank opened the door. “Ah, here we go.” The Shadow Gate loomed, Vazim’s men waiting above in the rafters and below the raised platform. Vazim turned and smiled when he saw Basima.

  The Emir’s eyes then flicked to Frank’s disheveled appearance, the nicks in his jacket and speckles of blood across his shirt. “Was... everything alright?”

  “Went out for a smoke. Took a tumble.”

  “Ah...” the djinn said with certain knowing, well acquainted with how lively Rashalba’s nightlife could be. “Everything’s in order. All that awaits is your step... and her hand.”

  Basima’s brow furrowed in confusion. “What is he talking about...”

  Frank turned to Basima and placed a hand on her shoulder. “You stay.” She tried to pull away but his grip would not be denied. “I go.”

  “I don’t understand... why?”

  “I need my freedom more than you do.”

  Tears welled up in Basima’s eyes, her cheeks reddened with rage. “YOU! I’ll kill you for this! I swear I will! What gives you the right!? What gives you the right to sell me like common chattel? Do you know who—”

  Frank ended her rant with a slap across the face. He stepped closer and whispered in her ear. “What gives me the right? The same thing that gives the wolf the right to hunt sheep. Because I can.”

  Basima calmed, her breath grew more measured. “I am not going back to this life, Frank.” Her soft eyes adopted a steely glint that gave the vampire pause. It was a look he had never seen from her before.

  “Yeah well tough—” Her sudden movement was too close to be restrained by her captors and she yanked Frank’s gun away from behind his belt. Shit.

  Basima blew Vazim’s brains out across the darkness, setting the stone ground asteam while the cinders in his blood glowed like stars in red oil. Vazim slumped to the ground, twitching. Basima dropped the smoking gun at Frank’s feet.

  Shouts resounded in the darkness and the click of weapons echoed in the vampire’s ears.

  “Goddammit.” The djinn in front of him opened fire on him out of instinct, throwing his shoulder out of alignment and cracking his rib cage with high impact molten rounds.

  Frank bounded up the stairs, instinct bending his body low to the screaming muzzle flashes. Most rounds missed. Some scored his sides and arms. His scything claws rent the first djinn’s weapon in twain and his long fangs plunged into the djinn’s neck like ivory derricks drilling for the reddest resource of all. As the mercenary’s precious lifeblood spewed into his mouth, there was no flash of memory, no rush of feeling or emotion. Only horrific, searing pain.

  Fiery and terrible, the djinn’s dark reddish gold blood flowed like the scalding rivers that bubbled below the world’s peaks. The vampire choked and spewed the ember flecked blood from his lips. Heated rounds burst against Frank’s prey, sploshing more scalding blood against the vampire.

  Frank ripped his fangs out of his victim’s throat and kicked him into his comrades, throwing their gunfire into every direction but his. “Come on!” roared the vampire, his eyes incensed and red, pale muscles pumping and desperate for new blood. Flames still licked his body and whipped the darkness in glowing strands as he darted forward, claws outstretched for any and all.

  Other mercenaries took positions, he took necks. Their screams and gurgles gratified. The feel of their bodies beneath his feet inspired.

  His deafened hearing caught sporadic shouts in their strange language. He turned and saw one djinn pointing. His eyes followed the gesture down below where another djinn worked inscrutable runes on the stone tablet below, each one lighting up in tones of fiery gold. More and more the confusion around him died down, the men still shouting, but their voices not reaching his ears.

  He heard his own ragged breath and saw darkness bleed down the walls and bloom from the sweeping curvature of the room. What in the hell...? He looked back down the steps and saw the curved pylons of the Shadow Gate alight with searing sigils, a starless abyss stretching out between the two posts.

  Before Frank could even think next he was gone—swimming in silence, drowned in the void.

  He stood in that void for an interminable time before the faintest of glows danced before his eyes, swirling like a borealis, illuminating stone walls and tablets.

  He stepped forward and heard a crunch. He looked down and saw his feet, but not the ground, covered in a murk so complete not even his sharp eyes could penetrate. Another step, another crunch. He came to the wall and ran his fingers along the strange and frenzied etchings, many looking more like crazed scratches than any glyph.

  Claps resounded in the darkness. Frank turned, trying to place its location. Passages glimmered around him, drenched in rotten jade-blue light.

  The clapping stopped.

  Standing before Frank was one who seemed like he could have aged with the rest of the stones, going by the dust on his suit. But Frank knew that to be impossible. Beady eyes gleamed in the ghostly light, black hair shined with the luster of a powdered corpse. You again.

  “Good to see Francis again.” he grinned and sat down on a pile of tumbled stone.

  Another asshole in a nice suit. Collecting too many of these.

  “Where am I?”

  The man continued. “You have best questions. I have best answers.”

  Frank smiled coldly and then stepped forward. Alright fucker, I’ll play. “And the answer is...?”

  The man patted some of the dust off his thighs. “On road to Shahajit... but not in Shahajit. Fire children are not only masters of shadow.”

  “Get me back to the Shadow Gate.”

  “Back... there? And not world outside?”

  “I don’t like unfinished business... loose ends, if you get what I mean.”

  The man smiled toothily. “Always. But... there or there... there is always price.” He gestured behind and the dark seemed to open up with more ethereal light, shining down a labyrinthine passage full of jutting walls and downward slopes. “Door is down there... truth is down there... and so much else...”

  “Like?”

  “Like things... dark things... hunter things.”

  Frank peered past the man’s shoulder and saw the air bend and glimmer, the shadows at the end throbbing like a beating heart. “Why don’t you just call them off?”

  The man chuckled. “That would make things easier... but acceptance of offer would be easiest. How unfortunate I am not a god. I am a man. I am a man that wants you alive. What comes for you, not from master. Will not heed master.”

  “Better add me to that list too. Unless your offer’s changed, mine hasn’t either.”

  He sighed. “Unfavorable. Shame.” He tugged back his sleeve and looked at his watch and then to Frank. “Time’s up. You did not take offer... you will pay price. Hope you can afford.”

  The man slid down from his perch and walked passed Frank’s line of sight, into the dark. Only silence hung in the air. And then Frank’s laugh.

  The vampire stepped forward, heading towards the passage that promised so much doom and freedom. When he came under the hall’s darkness, the light behind him rippled, as if the air had been water disturbed by a stone.
>
  Interesting.

  He walked on and on in total silence, the path never curving, the ground never inclining or declining. Chips and cracks in the stone walls repeated themselves with such exactitude that the vampire swore he was walking in a circle... but that his road was completely straight.

  Only the flanking walls began to tell of his progress. Step by step, little by little, the air grew colder and the vampire picked up on the sound of his own breath rebounding off the rocky passage. When he finally looked down, the cave walls were at arms-length and closing.

  He sprinted forward, a silent shadow among still shadows.

  Like a bear trap snapping around its prey, so too did the tunnel spring to life.

  Frank felt strange winds wash over his shoulders, damp fur pass beneath his palms, smelled stale blood in the air and when he looked up, felt a wound deeper than any blade or bullet.

  The ceiling was no more, its roof so high up that the creatures manifested a hole awash with pallid light just to show how far away escape truly was. He could no more ascend that height than Babel could Heaven.

  Hope flagged in the vampire, but his will to live burned on.

  Fuck ‘em.

  A silvery cerulean fog crept around his legs, making his flesh tremble as if he had come down with some mortal sickness. Chilled, gummy things pulled at his wrists, but he yanked back, taking their lives and keeping his.

  Walls closed in around him, the shadows below his feet pulling him down with ragged hands, their wails like brittle ice dragged along cave walls. A lesser man would have been dragged under, but Frank soldiered on, his thighs raw and his feet like stiff, leaden weights.

  The vampire felt multiple forces try and tackle him down into the dark below. The invisible things had the strength of wild bears.

  Even with his keen senses he could not see them. But his large, corded muscles felt them, the pressure so great he thought his biceps might burst out of his skin. Their icy drool fell over his brow and trickled down his battered back. He heaved the monstrosities into the void below where the hands dragged his foes under.