Shadow & Light

by Stephen Ayer

  The journey to the city had been filled with wails in the dark, the false reassurance of light from the pale and distant stars in the universe and the sense that he had passed through some thing, so mammoth and alien that even the radiance of the angel went unnoticed.

  The cracked roads reminded him of a Roman aesthetic, though the oval shapes of the cobbled stones told him it must have originated from an even earlier time. On either side of the street were abandoned buildings, their wondrous red and gold marble edifices cracked and dimmed within the timeless void the city found itself.

  Spires replete with writhing ornamentation leaned into the buildings to which they were attached, with the upper most chunks completely broken off from the rest of the spire but hung in crumbled suspension above them. Shattered crystalline windows, browned and dusty with abandonment peered at the angel. He did his best not to glance inside the darkness beyond and ignored the scuffling sounds and cold whispers within.

  Only his footsteps and the odd fall of rocks filled the deathly silence. He had journeyed to many abandoned realms in his travels but none of them were afflicted with such primordial stillness. Looming monuments, chipped and splintered in their faded glory cast midnight blue shadows across the ground.

  When Peter looked up for the light source his heart jumped. “Interesting.” Contrails of wispy white light spun out in whorl formation, surrounded by glittering cosmic jewels studded into plush abyssal darkness. Paths spun of celestial violet and sapphire fire threaded along spiraling stars, surrounding a luminous center like the limbs of some slumbering star beast.

  The Milky Way. He had seen his Father’s majesty before, but at this angle... he was confronted with all that wasn’t His. Irregular and chaotic nebulae rent apart with wild twilight flame and sickly viridian light. Across the black, starry sea lay galaxies set down with more order but with just as disturbing design.

  These were not the hexagonal patterns of snowflakes or bee hives, nor the divine proportions of a double helix or even the Milky Way itself. Unnatural geometry ran rampant in these most eldritch of constellations. The ever moving arrangement of stars could neither be described as holy or unholy, simply that these foreign bastions of alien light swam with the pure stuff of madness and primal darkness entwined with vistas undreamed of and the dead hopes of all who dared pursue them.

  The angel looked elsewhere, having grown weary of the gnawing despair that chewed on his spirit. Along the spiral arms of the Milky Way drifted crystalline spires of darkness. Hardened for void existence, Peter could not tell if these swarming masses of black were ships or the entities themselves.

  They hung around humanity like stalking predators but no matter how close they came to the galaxy they turned away as if forced by the strongest of compulsions. Others waited, like pulsing masses of seeping yet stony cosmic flesh, watching as far away as from another galaxy, riddled with their unearthly touch.

  “Expressions of insignificance.” said a voice from street corner. “Yours.”

  The angel looked back down and realized his neck had grown stiff from looking up for so long. “No... just the opposite.” he said to the tall man in black. “Out of all the creation and destruction of these... things from outside space and time, His creation stands resolute, like a beacon in the darkness.”

  The man walked forward into the dim and sickly ghost light, smiling a crooked smile. “For now. We are patient.”

  “So is He.” Peter walked over to the prone form of Frank, his hand maintaining a death grip over the Black Star fragment. “You must be the man that came to William earlier this week.”

  The man walked up to the other side of Frank, looking down at his body. “The same. Employer insists pale one comes across fragment. He has.” He gestured to the palm of Frank’s hand. “Supposed to be bigger.” He looked to the angel. “He will be disappointed.”

  The angel remembered he had lost his gun and his thoughts drifted to how much easier things would be if he still had it. “It’s not yours to take. That’s Templar property.”

  The man smiled and his beady eyes gleamed the more he stared at Frank’s hand. “Servant knows nothing.”

  Peter cracked a smile that a glorified errand boy derided his holy service. “Enough to know that the stone is better off with them than you.” He tilted his head when he saw the man flicker like a faltering light. “You’re not real, are you?”

  The man narrowed his eyes. “I am a man. And I am real. Like you. Like him. Like witch.”

  Peter stepped closer and took a breath. “Ah, real... but just not right here. I was wondering what was stopping you from just taking it.” A wise man does not steal in front of an angel. The man glared at him and night silence filled the air once more.

  Behind them both watched Frank, peering through the veil of the city’s shadow world. How the fuck did this happen... he thought, watching small orbs of light float around the angel and the man in black, invisible and unnoticed.

  Their voices seemed distorted, as if they were underwater. “You’ll get...” said Peter before reality rippled, and warped the rest of his words. Frank stood right by his side and saw the man in black give him the faintest of acknowledgments, a barely perceptible flick of the eye.

  “A door... a stone... reasonable...” said the man. Peter smirked and took a step forward.

  “Don’t do it.” said Frank as he tried to pull on Peter’s shoulder. His hand passed right through him. He turned his head to the sound of laughter behind and then back to catch the angel and the man shake hands. “Ah damn it.”

  Before the vampire knew it he was drawn up into the air, his face to the celestial sky, where stars and orbs alike competed for his regard. Below, the man in black smiled at him.

  “Very well.” said Peter and took a step forward to a dilapidated shop while the man in black stood over Frank.

  “Bound by cosmic law, servant. Will collect, no matter what.”

  “Then for your sake, I hope this takes me to the witch.”

  The man laughed, a cold sound, like a buzzing swarm imitating human expression. “It will.”

  Peter’s hand tingled as he placed it around the cracked marble door handle. Blue witchlight filtered through its myriad fissures as he pulled down. The door clicked and its borders flared with more riotous illumination. The cobwebbed counters of the shop and its tarred, fleshy windows only greeted him but for a moment, washed out in a deluge of ivory luminescence.

  The light faded. A faint breeze brushed against the angel’s face.

  Well. He was a man of his word. The open sky, alive with the cold and fiery cosmos, cast their baleful eyes down upon the cathedral square. Across the scorched marble landscape loomed the city’s seat of power; a gigantic wall in the shape of a crescent.

  Its length was divided equally by three pale spires, one of which was in such disrepair it barely reached the building’s roof. On the roof itself stood a hollow pyramid, its glass long broken, though its angles were smoother and its apex higher than any pyramid the angel had seen on Earth.

  A broken palace fit for a broken queen.

  Frank’s spirit had been pulled to the stars, but he did not reach them. Only darkness as cold as his flesh enshrouded him. He caught flickering motes of light float behind the veil of black fog. Not stars. Stars don’t float, they shoot. It made no difference if he walked forward or backward, sat down or jumped up.

  The fog never cleared. The dead lights never faded.

  Is this Hell?

  “Not dead, Francis.” said a voice he had grown all too familiar with the past week.

  “Yeah I thought it was too nice for where I’m going.” He turned around.

  The man in black smiled. “Could change that. Black Star. Universal advantage. Bends rules.”

  “I’ll have to keep that in mind.” The vampire looked up to catch a pale yellow light materialize in the darkness. It faded before it ever came out of the fog. “You have a deal for me or something? Like ya did with Peter?�
�

  “Not like his. That was safe-guard. This is business.”

  The usual I bet. “Well... I’d be inclined to help... can’t kill my way out of this one—”

  The man chuckled. “No, you can’t.”

  “At the same time... I’m not in a position to give you the Black Star.”

  The man in black stepped forward and patted Frank on the shoulder. That felt real. “You can. You’re in it.”

  The dead black sun washed out the statues and spires and limned the polished stones in a hazy witchlight. Translucent skeletons of varying human and inhuman proportions clung to their stone idols in death, with as many as a dozen around each statue. Perhaps they hoped their heroes would emerge from the fog of the afterlife and deliver them from the cataclysm?

  On opposite sides of the square stood marble gates as resolute as the day they were built, their white stone only besmirched with the odd crack or scorch mark here and there. Peter noted that where a chain and wheel would be to raise the gates there were instead gigantic glass globes embedded in the gate structure itself with hydraulic pipes feeding into the opening mechanism.

  The glass globes on the left side of the square were shattered whereas the two on the right remained intact. Within the globes sloshed silvery blue fluids that harbored a dim glow, like absinthe. The angel imagined them to be as bright and glowing as the club he had escaped from when the city was at its height.

  He continued across the square, ignoring the glass like crunches of the crystalline dead, some of whom appeared ‘melted’ into the stone, their torsos and arms extended over the pavement while their spines terminated into the cobbles. Whether their bones were like that before or after their doom, the angel did not know. His days had been spent skewering and purging the lower forms of heathens and was not keen on dissecting the higher ones when he came across them.

  An unfamiliar chill settled over his body as he came into the shadow of the cathedral and began his ascent over its gold laced and blood stained steps. Torn red and violet banners fluttered listlessly at the top of the steps from cracked arches. The end point of all heathen glories.

  “Walk all you want. Will never get out.” The man in black followed behind the vampire, keeping step in the formless abyss.

  “Then you’ll have no problem with my walking.” I got in the stone. I can get out of it. He spotted a new light through the fog and dashed after it. His legs moved fast... faster than they should have. The fog too grew lighter, enough for him to see what lay on the other side.

  He saw a withered body, drawn and lean, float through the air. Thin as a willow. Brushed with light as soft as the moon. Her eyes were closed, her face serene. When the vampire grabbed her she fell straight into his arms, as solid as anyone else.

  “She’s dead.” said the man in black.

  “I can see that.” The vampire’s tall pale form and her luminous corpse stood in silence. “I can hold her.” Pretty solid for a spirit.

  “You’re not. She’s already gone. You caught what you want to catch. Held what you want to hold.”

  Frank stopped peering into her dead face and inclined his head to the man. “Sounds like bullshit.”

  “Mind is a generous master, Francis. Even without Star. With it, reality must bend to desire.”

  Frank chuckled. “Probably shouldn’t be telling a man like me shit like that.”

  “I tell you what I want. This isn’t reality. Your fantasy of my death... is fantasy of my death.”

  The vampire dropped the corpse into the fog and turned around. His ruby red eyes met the man’s oily gaze.

  “All dreams of escape, just so. A dream. Here, many dream a better prison than lead better life. Master offers better servitude than freedom.”

  Frank clenched his fists and became aware of a sudden wind in the fog. “How convenient for you.”

  “Seems so. But I don’t make rules.” Only bend them. “Shall I inform Peter the Servant - if still alive – that vampire will now be sleeping vampire?”

  “Tell him whatever the fuck you want. I don’t want what you’re selling.” Frank turned around to see a patch of fog burn away, revealing a window into the world below. He had an aerial view of Peter making his way through a wreckage strewn square. Shattered crystalline corpses glittered like diamonds from above. The main palace was battered but its shape was undeniable. Like a moon.

  His eyes roved over the roof, taking in the ruined pyramid. Something below it drew him as it drew in the stellar light. Once he settled on it he felt the pull around his spirit again. Oh shit. It was so strong it nearly brought him to his knees, but he willed himself to stand. The sensation was unmistakable.

  There’s another Black Star down there.

  Echoes of long past life still resounded in the cathedral’s halls, ashen memories of golden glories. The angel passed through the place’s circular inner courtyard, filled with dead yellowed grass. He puzzled over the broken fountain in the center. The fountain depicted some sorcerous nymph, nubile and contorted, her palms and eyes served as spouts.

  Peter watched it, unnerved by the sound of sloshing water right in front of him despite their being none before him. He put the place behind him fast and moved on into the main chamber.

  Great ceiling arches greeted him as he entered, their cream stone intermingled with veins of regal crimson. The vaulted ceilings hung high, though how high, he could not tell. Every time he looked up its height varied.

  He walked down circular steps and noted how similar the throne room was built like a coliseum but laid out with the trappings of elegance and civilization unlike those bowls of brutish bloodletting. Black and violet silks, now tattered, overlaid the bottoms of the audience seats and each one was built with a high back, with every seat being placed lower than the preceding row until it reached the ground level of the throne.

  The throne itself sat high and proud in the marble ring. Demonic talons extended from the arm rests, the nails bejeweled with turquoises and the tips dipped in untarnished gold. The back of the thing was padded with an opulent ebony and velour cushion, with the surrounding stone carved in various bird motifs, their swooping lines scaled in pale silver. The very top of the throne was crowned with raven wings wrought in lightless black marble, the individual blades of the feathers studded with silver plated eyes, the irises made of fine gold filigree.

  It was a throne fit for an emperor, not the pathetic wrack that lay slumped, brooding and half-dead within its seat, looking as if the throne itself would consume it for daring to assume it was worthy. Peter knew who it was, who it only could be.

  His voice was as clear as a judgment from Heaven. “Baba Yaga.”

  Frank willed the ethereal portal away and turned back to the man in black. At once the influence of the second Black Star fell into nothing. The man in black’s face had not changed one bit. Guess he didn’t feel it.

  “Francis. Very valuable. Rare age for blood drinker.” continued the man, “Star is already mine.”

  Frank scoffed. “Says who?”

  The man waved his right hand. “Deal with Peter the Servant says who. In return for witch meeting. But...” The black fog receded. Wisps of light turned into a gray sun. “If Francis gives more... we will give more.” Dark misty plumes solidified into trees. And far behind the man a square cottage came into being.

  Frank frowned. “I’ve only got one thing worth having... and it ain’t got a price tag.”

  The man in black put his hands behind his back. “Your Star piece is meager. Still makes veil between life and death thin like silk.” It’s always been thin, no matter what’s in my hands. “I can bring love’s soul back across void... only need body. And service to master.”

  “No. I don’t need to live that shit again.”

  “This time is different. This time you can turn her.” He smiled. “Master knows your heart of hearts.”

  “You need new a master. I moved on.” I can thank my memory for that.

  “Francis?�
� said a new voice, one that sent a faint thrill down the vampire’s spine. “Is that you?” Frank turned around. Ena stood just outside the cottage’s door. Our old home. She was clad in a humble blue cotton dress, overlaid with a white tunic that seemed to glow in the ethereal sun. “Oh... you looked like someone I know... knew... Francis...”

  “Shut up.” said Frank as he stepped forward. He looked to the man in black. “Is this your master plan? Throw an old farm whore in front of me and hope for the best?”

  “She is one you want most.”

  “The real Ena would have remembered me. She saw me run down deer. She saw me not age a fuckin’ day for three decades.”

  The man in black stroked his chin and gave a slight smirk. He stepped closer to Frank and laid a hand on his shoulder. “Your soul... very damned. Her soul made it high, into pearl, into worlds above. There is no sadness. Memory of loves doomed to Fallen Son’s kingdom cannot exist.” He looked to Ena. “She remembers you as much as first breath of life.”

  “You just have an answer for everything, don’t you?”

  “My job.”

  “Or maybe your little illusion isn’t as detailed as you thought.” The vampire looked to his oldest love. She looks so real. Her face bloomed with a radiance he never remembered she had. Her long locks were loose and unbound, and glowed in flowing streaks. She would never wear her hair like that outside. Frank looked to her one last time, her dainty nose and clear gray eyes, framed by rolling waves of lustrous reddish auburn. Her gentle smile, as unnatural as the world around Frank, still managed to give him pause.

  And then he closed his fist.

  At once her head jerked to the side with a loud snap. She slumped into the grass, her fall kicking up dandelions. “That’s what I think of this bullshit.” He exhaled deeply, clenching and releasing his fists.

  The man in black stepped away from him. “Unexpected. You killed her. In here. Doubt ability to bring back now...”

  Can’t kill ghosts. Frank laughed. “You can’t bring people back from the dead you fucking idiot.”