Shadow Knight

by O. J. Lowe

  “Do you know?” I challenged and he burst into a fit of giggles.

  “Why do any of us do anything?” he asked. “Why do we get up and go to work and go home? Why do some of us seek comfort in the mundane, the ordinary and some of us have to run into fire knowing full well that it’ll burn us, but that it makes us feel so alive.”

  “Human nature,” I answered.

  “Yeah,” he said, gave me a wicked grin, fangs prominent in his mouth. “I tried that once. Tasty. Didn’t take. Didn’t do me a lot of good.”

  My hands instinctively went for my silverthorn, I guess I should have realised already they weren’t going to let me keep it. The blade was the Vigilant officer’s mark of office, a shapeshifting silver spike capable of transforming into whatever weapon the wielder deemed necessary for the situation at hand, capable of carving through spells and enchantments with little effort.

  “Oh, calm your skin down, Sevo de Souca,” he said. “If I wanted to kill you, I would already have done so. Right now, you’ve got no value to me dead.”

  “You’re a vampire,” I said, my brow furrowing. Where I’d known this man from before, it wasn’t that.

  “I don’t know what I am anymore,” he admitted. “But I guess so.”

  “With those ears?”

  “Yes well,” he said, his hands unconsciously going to them, eyes wistful as he caressed them gently. “We can’t help who our parents are, can we?”

  “Aren’t you… Weren’t you a wizard too?” I asked. “Part of the Shining Council?”

  “In another life perhaps,” he said. “The face might be the same, the name might still have some meaning to me, but the Shining Council has moved on. They think I’m dead. They’ve passed on my mantle. They prefer to forget about everything I did for them, everything I could have done for them. I’m an embarrassment to their good name, such as it is.” He laughed again as he said it, the same high titter of mirth.

  “So, you joined the Sunlight Court?”

  “They saved me,” he shot back with a snap, suddenly defiant. “I owe a debt to the Sunlight Court I can never fully repay. Is it what I thought my life would come to? It is not. Is this any sort of existence? I never thought it would be. You know my heart doesn’t beat and I can’t seem to care about anything? It’s not what I had, but different doesn’t mean bad, Sevo de Souca.”

  “What’s your name, son,” I said. “I know you. Can’t place you, but I’ve seen you before. One wizard to another.”

  He let his head loll back, another laugh spilling from him, this time far more serious. “Any sort of meaning that might have had for me died a death when they tried to kill me? I take it they didn’t advertise that, did they? Is it too late to report a crime, Sevo de Souca? Too late to tell you how the Shining Council sent the Red Claw to kill me?”

  That didn’t surprise me somehow. Part of my job does involve keeping an eye on groups like that. The Red Claw were assassins, the best in the Novisarium if the rumours were to be believed. Well, the rumours and their own press machine anyway. Their leader, Cassius Armitage, did enjoy shooting his mouth off about his organisation’s superiority. And yet their prestige had hit an all-time-low courtesy of Paul Levitt, I’d been involved in the investigation of that whole fiasco and had concluded he’d been responsible, directly or indirectly for the death or incarceration of their five best assassins.

  He’d had help from people I knew quite well, the queen of the werelions, Ophelia Kiselevska, and my former apprentice, Mark Halston. I say former, I still harbour hopes that he’ll come back to me one day. He’s confused right now; he doesn’t know the truth about why I did what I did to him. When he realises it, he’s going to feel such an idiot. That day was a long way away now though and I couldn’t afford to dwell on what might be. I had to focus on the here and now.

  “You seem remarkably healthy considering,” I said.

  “Like I said,” he replied. “The Sunlight Court saved me. Did you know vampire blood can bring a man back from the verge of death?”

  I tried not to blink. “I have heard that, yes.”

  Two.

  I’ve always been a family man at heart, I think. More children than I can count, some ex-wives I’d like to forget. I’ve lived well over ninety years now and I still feel like I’ve got the vitality of a man a third my age. Wizards do age well, something about harnessing the power of magic, most of the Shining Council claim their ages linger in three figure numbers and well, they’ve got a stranglehold on the magic in the Novisarium. Most wizards, warlocks, sorcerers, mages, whatever they want to call themselves, they end up swearing allegiance to the five families that make up the ruling body of the council, if only for an easy life. Once you’ve sworn allegiance, if you have a talent that they require, then they can call upon you at any time to provide for them and God help you if you don’t give them what they want. Someone once compared them to the mafia to me and I didn’t think it an especially bad comparison. History has always had those with power lording it over those beneath, it’s a tale older than time. An oldie but a goodie, as they might say.

  If I’d wanted to, I could have joined the Shining Council. Being one of the ultimate rulers might be beyond me, given my last name wasn’t Valentine or Commodore or Belladonna or Windemere or Nivendis. But maybe, just maybe, I could have risen to those below them, those who had the power but not the background to be a series player in magical circles. But what would that have left me? Those people are like vultures, they see an opportunity, a corpse in the desert and they’re all over it like flies on shit. No, I wanted to do something with my power, and what is nobler than joining the Vigilant? Some seventy years ago now, I first walked through the doors of the main precinct in the centre zone, Cameron Cavendish said a few words to all the new recruits, though even back then he gave the impression he’d rather be anywhere else but there.

  I’d always found Cavendish to be a mystery, I didn’t know how he’d gotten the job or even what he really was, but in truth, I didn’t dislike him. A lot of people considered him a figure of fun around the Vigilant, a token hire or a relic from an age which should have been permitted to die. You didn’t rise to be a sevo without some sort of innate cunning inside you, or failing that, an ability to survive when everyone else was losing their heads. Some thought it made him a coward. I thought it made him someone who shouldn’t be underestimated.

  Ninety years and it took me plenty of them, and several false starts to finally meet the woman whom I wanted to spend the rest of my life with. A woman named Carla.

  “I think it did slightly more than bring you back from the dead,” I remarked, he cocked his head at me like an overgrown bird, smiled like a slightly malnourished shark. It made uncomfortable viewing, especially when the ears were considered.

  “Well, whatever you want to call it,” he said. “I don’t feel any different. Freer maybe. A little more alive. I feel…” He tailed off as if considering his words. “Free. Definitely free, I know that much. It’s like, well how much more can they throw at me. They’ve tried to beat me down, I’ve tried to pull myself up and well, I’m not buried yet.”

  “Fascinating,” I mused. “I always wondered what effect vampire venom had on half-breeds. I didn’t think people like you could be turned.”

  “I always managed to hide,” he admitted. “Right back in the day, my mother, she didn’t want people looking at me funny. She took a boxcutter knife, sliced the points of my ears right off, the old short, back and sides right through my skin.” He shuddered as he said it.

  “Well, your mother sounds crazy,” I said. “Child services have gotten involved with stuff for less.”

  “She was a good mother,” he admitted. “She might not have been especially kind sometimes, but she taught me one valuable lesson, one that I’ll never forget, Sevo de Souca.”

  “And what’s that?”

  “I can only rely on myself in this world. If I expect people to be kind, they’ll hurt me. Everyone I meet i
s capable of letting me down. I need to be an island, a rock in the water unpassable by all.”

  “Sounds lonely.”

  He glared at me, I wondered what I’d said that was so horrific. Screw the son of a bitch, it wasn’t his place to wallow in self-pity. “Just because you desire the company of those around you, not all of us are weak sheep. I’ve been raised to be self-sufficient from a young age, I survived horrors that would have killed lesser men, I rose to stations that would have broken others.”

  “And yet you’re trapped in here with me,” I said. “We don’t have a way out, not unless you know something. We can’t afford to remain here.”

  “Can’t we?”

  “Something got the drop on me, trapped me, locked away my magic. That’s pretty impressive. You’re a bloodsucker, at least half of one anyway, you’re unnaturally strong, hard to knock out. Do you really want to go toe-to-toe with it for a second round?”

  The pale-haired man studied me, the mental image of a shark superimposed across his features for a horrifically long moment, something cold and impassive studying helpless prey. Just for a moment, I wondered if I’d regret mentioning I didn’t have access to my magic. Screw him, I’d go down swinging. And even locked away, there’s nothing quite like immediate death to get the old magic flowing. A sudden shock like that might well be the best thing imaginable for my problems.

  “What do you have in mind?” he asked.

  I shrugged. “How long have you been here?”

  He shrugged in response, a gesture of his own. “Gets kinda hard to tell in the dark. You don’t need a watch when you’re dead. Time is no longer your enemy, but it doesn’t exactly do you any favours either.”

  “You look for any ways out?”

  If he said no, I was going to kick the shit out of him something royal, the idea that someone could be down here for so damn long and not even make the effort to try and escape, I personally found aggravating.

  “I searched,” he admitted. “But the thing is, it’s not exactly a room with a lot of hiding places. I don’t think there’s anything in here that could let us out. That door was locked for a reason I think you’ll find.”

  “Just because it’s locked, it doesn’t mean it’s a cage.”

  “What, do you think it’s a test? Some sort of locked room challenge?”

  “Hey, those were very popular once upon a time.”

  “So was adultery,” he said. “So was keeping slaves. Doesn’t mean that it’s a morally right thing to do.”

  I closed my eyes, opened up my Sight and the colours of the world dissolved into shades of monochrome, the darker something was, the more magic running through it. The areas of white, I knew from experience, were untouched by the stuff. I fixated on the door first, studied it to see if there were any sort of traps or tricks that I could exploit. I followed the frame first, ran my eyes in a full arch around it, didn’t spot anything.

  Yet, as I looked at the heavy door itself, the words started to make their presence known on the wood, carving themselves into the surface. I read it once, blinked and read it again, this time out loud. The pale-haired man followed my gaze towards the door, squinted himself and just for a moment, I found myself wondering if he saw something similar.

  That itself brought about more questions than I had answers for.

  Blood begets blood.

  Self alone is not enough, for two together are better.

  Weakens one, strengthens another.

  A test of trust for a wild dog never stops.

  How many will stand at the end of it?

  Okay, that wasn’t at all unnerving. Blood. It was always about fucking blood. The man in front of me was a vampire, maybe not a full one as I’d already stated, but well on the way there. One of the things that young vampires aren’t entirely renowned for is self-control. Older vamps can take a bite from you, suck just enough to nourish them while leaving you the need for a cookie or two, but otherwise unharmed. Something just turned, or on the way, they’re the sorts of beasts that’ll rip your throat out, drink everything and then use your guts as confetti. They’re weird like that.

  “Blood, eh?” the pale-haired man said. “Weakens one, strengthens another.”

  “Does that mean there’s a wild dog somewhere?” I wondered. “Or is one of us the wild dog?”

  My companion shrugged at me. “I don’t know if I appreciate being called a wild dog.”

  Already the suspicions were forming through my mind, I didn’t want to voice them aloud out of fear for the consequences. If I did, he might well decide to act on them. I didn’t want that. To a vampire, the mere mention of fresh blood sends them salivating like dogs with cheese.

  Giving blood would weaken me, strengthen him. And well, that would be the interesting thing because as I mentioned, chances were that if he opened one of my veins, he wouldn’t stop until I was a bloodless husk on the ground.

  I guess that’s why they called it a test of trust. I had to trust he’d find the control, wouldn’t rip me open. He had to trust that I’d not kill him with my dying breath. I scanned the room, didn’t find anything wooden, but I did happen across some shards of metal on the writing desk at the back.

  They’d have to do. I strode towards them, scooped one up and closed my fist around it, felt the bite of sharp edges into my palm. I didn’t wince, kept my eyes on the pale-haired man.

  “You want blood?” I asked. “Blood I can do.”

  He licked his lips nervously as I opened my fist, took one of the shards and slashed my palm open, groaned in dismay as the fire spread through my skin, hot blood sputtering out of the wound. He licked his lips again, blinked and then he was on me, clamped his jaws onto my hand and was sucking away like an out of control addict, guzzling and groaning in sheer unadulterated bliss as the fluids entered his mouth. I’d never heard moans like it, and like I said, there’s a number of ex-wives and one very satisfied current wife.

  He wouldn’t be the first vampire to feed from me. Hell, he wouldn’t be the first to do it with my consent. He was lucky to have it. Those who’d tried opening me up in the past discovered just how flammable they really were.

  I groaned, the pressure on my palm immense, my heartbeat quickening as the blood gushed out of me and into the vampire’s mouth, he showed no signs of stopping, his tongue working the wound on my hand faster and faster, his teeth scraping the wound, threatening to cut it open further, make it bigger, let more flow out…

  My breath caught in my throat, he’d suck me dry given the chance and I couldn’t let that happen. I’d shown him my trust; it wouldn’t be my undoing. I’d palmed another shard, gave him a final look, a final silent beseech to stop. My voice caught in my throat, strangled down by a shudder, my skin going cold. Much more and I risked going into shock.

  He didn’t see the shard coming until it was too late, hard metal sank into his eye and the pressure on my hand subsided, he recoiled away, screaming in agony, a hand over the afflicted area. Fresh blood and ocular fluid gushed from him, spattered around his grip and he swore viciously.

  “Sorry,” I muttered, looking for something to wrap my hand in. The moment my magic worked again; I’d be healing it. For now, I couldn’t let the wound fester in open air, it’d drive my bloodthirsty companion potty.

  “Son of a bitch, that hurts!” the pale-haired man growled. “Aww, man, not the eye. What is it with that lately?” He groaned, rocked back against the wall behind him. “Ouch!”

  “Lately?”

  “Someone burnt them out recently,” he admitted. “Never felt fire like that. I got better though.”

  “We frequently do,” I said. “Sorry.” I was surprised to find I meant it too, I hadn’t wanted to hurt him, I just hadn’t really wanted to die more. He’d heal that wound, eventually. A little reminder for now that he couldn’t push me around, that even if I didn’t have my magic, should he try to do something towards me, he’d regret it. I’ve lived in the Novisarium all my life. Those who survi
ve inevitably learn a dirty trick or two, it’s the nature of life here to pick up the art of aiming low or going for the soft bits. Didn’t mean you couldn’t regret it afterwards.

  “Man though,” he muttered. “The blood… There’s something in you, huh? Tasty. What is that, my man?”

  I narrowed my eyes at him. “I’m sure I don’t have any sort of idea what you’re talking about.” Maybe I did. Maybe I didn’t. I believed in myself just enough to convince him. This was still enemy territory, confiding in him more than I had to would be a fatal mistake. I didn’t trust him, not considering he’d still to offer me his name. I’d work with him, at least until I found a way out, but I wasn’t going to forget what he was. And my true purpose here trumped everything else.

  That was the one truth in all of this I couldn’t afford to forget. People were relying on me. Every time I went out into the field, I had the hopes and safety of the Novisarium on my shoulders. This time, it was different. I was fighting for myself, for those who I loved. The stakes were higher than they’d ever been. If I failed here, well the consequences would bury me. More than that, they’d sink the woman I loved.

  Her face swam across my memory, the sight I couldn’t afford to forget. Not many would willingly put themselves through hell for love. I would. Hell, I’d damn near jumped.

  What else could I do?

  Three.

  Carla Bailey. The light of my life. All my earlier loves and losses, trials and tribulations, marriages and divorces, they’d been tests, I realised that the moment I met her, tests that’d been preparing me for the moment that I’d meet her. I’d suffered and fucked up or been fucked over before all those times, so I simply didn’t screw this one simple thing up. If I did, I wouldn’t get another chance at happiness.