by J L Aarne
“Thanks,” Wyatt said. He wiped his eyes with his other hand. He wasn’t crying, he wouldn’t call it that, but he was leaking a little bit of moisture from the eyes.
“Have you named it yet?” Thorn asked. “The sword, I mean. It should have a name.”
“Should it?” Wyatt asked, amused by the idea.
Only swords in epic fantasy novels had names. Novels written by Tolkien where the swords were forged by dwarves using dragon fire and wielded by warriors with pointy ears and magical powers. He looked down at the sword he had killed the shadow snake with and considered it. It was a kind of sword called a rapier, he thought, but only because he had seen swords like it in pirate movies.
“Silverthorn,” Wyatt decided. “That’s its name.”
Thorn was silent for a little while, then he said, “That’s a stupid name.”
Wyatt laughed. “I know.”
There were rhododendron bushes flanking Wyatt’s front steps and he buried Benson and Hedges in the soft soil beneath the one on the left. They weren’t blooming yet, it was too cold, but they would have buds soon. He dug one hole and placed their bodies, wrapped in soft old pillowcases, side by side at the bottom of it. Then he pushed the dirt over them, patted it down and went back inside to begin cleaning.
The cupboards where the blood had splashed and splattered were going to be stained. No amount of scrubbing and wiping was getting the red out, so he finally gave up, thinking that he would sand them later. Unless he forgot.
There were flickers of light coming from under the rhododendron bushes when Wyatt went outside after he finished cleaning the kitchen. He paused on the stoop as he was taking the trash out to the dumpster and knelt to get a better look. There, gathered around the fresh grave, stood six little gnomes. Two held tiny candles that looked like they had been fashioned from the wax of discarded birthday cake candles. All of them had removed their hats out of respect.
Wyatt started to say something, thinking to ask them where they had been because he had been looking for them, but he was struck silent by the solemnity of their faces. They stood around the grave with their heads bowed and he was touched by the scene. He hadn’t known that the gnomes knew Benson and Hedges and he never would have thought they would mourn for them more deeply than he did or with such ceremony.
“You was good beasties with playful hearts,” said one of the gnomes. Wyatt thought it might be Carl, though it was hard to tell. “Innocent ones as should not be dead for no good damn reason. We is sad and sorry you be no more. Say their names, friends.”
The gnomes all softly said Benson and Hedges’s names. They repeated them three times as they stepped forward to place small, colorful pebbles onto the grave. Then the two gnomes holding candles blew them out, everyone put their hats back on their heads and began to walk slowly away.
Wyatt sat down at the top of the steps beside the bag containing the trash from the kitchen and stared down at his hands, which he clasped and unclasped between his knees. Out of nowhere he felt like he was going to cry and some of it was because Benson and Hedges were gone, and they had been sweet and innocent, just as the gnome said, and he had loved them for it. He had loved watching them play and wrestle, he had loved holding them in his lap while he watched TV. He had even loved scolding them and fighting them off when they tried to steal his food and sat begging like puppies while he ate dinner. They were there whenever he was alone, and when he came home from work, they were waiting. Now they wouldn’t be waiting ever again. Most of his grief was for them, but some of it, a tiny bit that Wyatt was ashamed to admit to, was for himself because now he would be more alone than he had been in a long time. He had liked to talk to them when he was really talking to himself, and the cats had sometimes followed him in his pacing, while other times they would curl up on the sofa or the floor and ignore him. It had helped him through some rough times to work out his problems that way. He would have entire conversations like that (both sides) and when he was finished, Benson and Hedges would be sleeping and he would feel better about things.
He was going to miss them.
“You’re sad for the kitties,” said a small, rough voice by Wyatt’s foot.
He looked down and recognized Louie through his tears. “Yeah, I am,” he said. “And for myself,” he admitted.
Louie nodded and patted Wyatt’s leg. He was so small that his hand patted the cuff of his jeans, but Wyatt felt a little comforted by the gesture and grateful to the little creature for trying. “This is bad business,” Louie said. “Rumor is a familiar demon killed them. That true?”
“I think so,” Wyatt said. He didn’t know, but Thorn had called the shadow snake a familiar. “I killed it.”
“We know,” Louie said. “There will be consequences. Already, the earth is rumbling.”
“What do you mean, rumbling?” Wyatt asked.
“Rumbling,” Louie repeated with a shrug. “Means rumbling.”
Wyatt nodded like he understood. Then he said, “I was looking for you guys.”
“When?”
“All week. And last week.”
“We were hiding.” Louie watched his companions crossing the grass and frowned. “We will go back to hiding now. Why were you looking?”
“It doesn’t matter now,” Wyatt said. He stood up and hefted the garbage bag, which smelled strongly of blood and whatever slimy magic the shadow snake had turned into after it was dead. “I guess I’ll see you guys around.”
“Maybe,” Louie said. “Gnomes are not fighters. We hide. You fight. You lose; we also lose.”
“Okay, well, I’ll try not to lose then,” Wyatt said.
Louie smiled and hopped down the steps to the grass. “Good idea,” he said. Then he disappeared into the unmown grass, leaving nothing behind but a trail through it like something made by a mouse.
Wyatt stood at the end of the walkway watching the little trails cut through the grass as the gnomes disappeared into the night to hide before the sun came up. He had nearly forgotten the bag slung over his shoulder as he stood there thinking. He hadn’t wanted anything to do with this fight, whatever it was. It hadn’t been something he went looking for. He hadn’t even gone looking for Silas, that had just happened. Unless Silas had been looking for him at the time, which seemed more likely the more he learned. Still, it had surprised him, fallen into his lap even, and now his father was dead, his body snatched by some sort of nightmarish monster, and his pets had been murdered while he was sleeping by a messenger demon sent to threaten him and intimidate him into doing… what, exactly? He didn’t know, but he thought he knew who might and it was time he paid the man a visit.
Chapter 17
The Blue Crane Dojo was closed when Wyatt arrived at 4:00 a.m. but Silas was not asleep. There were lights on in the apartment over the dojo and music playing inside. The staircase up to the apartment was outside the building in the back and Wyatt went up the steps on the lookout for Amarok, but he didn’t see the giant wolf anywhere.
He knocked, and no one answered, so he knocked again a little harder. The door was yanked open and his fist knocked on air. Silas stood in the doorway, the light behind him so that Wyatt couldn’t see his face clearly, and for a little while he didn’t say anything. Then he stepped back, and he was smiling, and Wyatt experienced a familiar, but forgotten sensation of falling low in his belly at the sight of that smile.
He’d had a real thing for Silas, he admitted to himself then. He couldn’t very well lie to himself about it when his pulse had picked up a few beats just at the sight of his smiling face, though he wished he could. He wished he could lie to himself until it wasn’t a lie anymore because he didn’t want to like Silas that way, he didn’t want to have some silly, embarrassing crush on Silas. His life was about to get a lot harder without that to further complicate it into a snarled knot of hell and confusion.
Stop it, he ordered his skipping pulse and that annoying falling elevator sensation in his stomach. Stop it right now. It’s not
happening, it’s not an option, so quit it. He’s a floor lamp as far as you’re concerned. A dust mop. A bookshelf.
It helped a little.
“You coming in or we just going to stand here in the door?” Silas asked.
Wyatt walked into the apartment and Silas closed the door. Then Wyatt stood there and looked around, not sure what to say.
The apartment was nice, though spartan. The living area was mostly open, with a couple of easy chairs, a table, lamp, and television to one side, and bookcases along the wall on the other, leaving the center of the room bare except for an oval shaped rug. A counter was all that separated the kitchen from the living room area and the kitchen was similar; clean, silver appliances, marble countertops, stained wood cabinets, with no clutter and nothing out of place. There was a coffee cup in the sink and a plate and a few utensils in the drainer, but that was all.
The music was Van Morrison and it was coming from a record player against the wall between two windows. While Wyatt stood looking around, trying to decide what to say and how to begin, Silas walked over to it and took the needle off the record, cutting Van Morrison off in the middle of the chorus of ‘Into the Mystic’.
“You ready to talk or are we just going to stand around quietly in each other’s company until the sun comes up?” Silas asked. “Seems like a big waste of time, but I understand you’ve been through some hard shit lately, so if that’s what you need to do… okay. I’ve got a spare room if you need to crash in the back for a while.”
“No,” Wyatt said. He thought that sounded ruder than he intended and added, “No, thank you.”
Silas put his hands in the pockets of his jeans and Wyatt watched him, more aware than he liked that Silas was barefoot and shirtless and, scarred up or not, in fine shape for a guy who was nearing forty.
“Wyatt?” Silas said.
“I know, okay?” Wyatt said. He ran a hand through his hair and looked out the windows, which gave a near-panoramic view of the street below. “I’m sorry. I’m not sure where to start. There’s… a lot.”
“I’m sure there is,” Silas said.
“Wait, you said ‘I understand you’ve been through some hard shit lately’, that’s what you said. Just now,” Wyatt said. “How do you know that?”
Silas shrugged. “I know things. I know a lot of people,” he said. “Like that guy Peter who told you where to find me? I know that guy.”
“Fine, so you know everything,” Wyatt said. “I guess I don’t have to talk after all.”
“I do not know everything,” Silas said. “I know a few things. Like I know you’re not getting on with your sister anymore. Something to do with your mom and dad, but I don’t know what. I know you went to see your aunt. I know your cats died last night because something came after you. I expect that’s why you’re here so early in the morning. I know you have to work tonight so you should start thinking about winding down to take a nap soon, which means we don’t have the time right now to really get into it.”
“I killed it with the sword, did you know that?” Wyatt asked. He stuffed his hands into the pockets of his jacket. It felt defensive, but he didn’t care. He had known, or at least suspected, that Silas was keeping an eye on him, but even though he didn’t know everything, it still felt like being spied on. “Did you know I named it?”
“You named the sword?” Silas asked, his lips quirking into a reluctant smile. “Of course, you did. What did you name it?”
“Hey, names are important,” Wyatt said, thinking about what Thorn had said. “Names are powerful.”
“Yeah, so what did you name it?”
Wyatt didn’t want to tell him; it had been funny when he told Thorn, but it seemed embarrassing to tell Silas. “Silverthorn,” he mumbled.
“Cool,” Silas said. He wasn’t making fun of him. He was relaxed, in his own environment, and they were talking, that was all. No judgement, at least not yet, he was merely interested to hear whatever Wyatt had to say. “Though for a name to be really powerful, it should be a secret.”
“All right,” Wyatt said. “Forget I told you.”
Silas laughed. “Man, I missed you,” he said. He started toward the end of the room where the chairs sat in front of the TV. “Come on, sit down, let’s talk for a minute before we both need to catch some sleep.”
They sat, and it was awkward and quiet for a while. Silas seemed to be waiting for Wyatt to begin the conversation and Wyatt didn’t know what to say. What he wanted to say was that he was mad as hell at Silas and pretty pissed off that he had somehow been put in the middle of some sort of end of the world monster mash, but he knew without saying it that it would not be helpful, that it would solve nothing, and that at worst it would start a fight. He wasn’t there to fight with Silas.
“You knew me before we met that night out on the road, didn’t you?” Wyatt asked.
Silas looked surprised. “Why do you say that?”
“Just… stuff you’ve said,” Wyatt said. “You said I still don’t know anything about anything. That night. I thought it was weird, but it was a pretty weird night, so I forgot about it. Then I remembered. I think you said it right after I asked you if you were a rapist.”
Silas sighed, and Wyatt thought he was probably going to lie about it. He waited to see what Silas would come up with.
“I knew Tallulah when you were a little kid,” Silas said.
“Oh,” Wyatt said. He thought about it, but he didn’t remember Silas. “You would have been really young then.”
Silas smiled. “Tallie was young then too,” he said. “You were about nine last time I saw you.”
“So, what happened?” Wyatt asked.
“We disagreed—disagree—about some things,” Silas said. “Things we couldn’t get over. There are things about me that she couldn’t get past once she knew. I don’t blame her, I guess. Still, we couldn’t be friends anymore.”
“Okay,” Wyatt said. He decided to let it drop because it sounded like Silas and his aunt had been together and he didn’t want to hear the details of that, nor did it seem to be relevant. “But you knew about me? Back then, you knew?”
“Of course, I knew,” Silas said. “Tallie knew it too, though she would deny it back then. I think she thought if she refused to believe it, it wouldn’t be true. You’d grow out of it.”
“Yeah, well, I didn’t,” Wyatt said. “Peter says people like us are disappearing. Is that true?”
“Yes,” Silas said. “Some are dying. I saw the first one on the news—the first one I knew was a night person—killed by some unknown poison. He was a defense lawyer out of Portland. Nice guy. Well, nice for a vanguard.”
Wyatt sat forward. “I’ve heard that word before. I looked it up, but what does it mean? I mean, to us?”
“It means about the same as it means to everyone else,” Silas said. “The biggest difference is there’s usually only one or two in any given area instead of an entire division of troops. The vanguard is the leader in a fight and he—or she, sometimes—stands as the first defense against the darkness and its creatures. They dedicate their lives to that purpose. They defend the night-blind. Not all of us do it. Like anyone else, we have interests and passions that turn us away from that kind of responsibility, and that’s okay, but that’s what the vanguard’s for.”
“You’re a vanguard, aren’t you?” Wyatt guessed.
“I am,” Silas said. “By day I manage the dojo for the owner—he lives in California—and I teach Krav Maga Mondays, Wednesdays and Fridays and self-defense Tuesdays and Thursdays. By night, I keep the peace with the creatures of darkness. You’re a fry cook. Are you going to stop being a fry cook if you take up that sword I gave you?”
“No, I… maybe. I’d still have to have a job though,” Wyatt said.
“Exactly,” Silas said. “You won’t have much of a social life.”
“I don’t have a social life now,” Wyatt pointed out.
Silas nodded. He couldn’t argue with that, h
e had been Wyatt’s friend, so he knew that he didn’t have any others. “So, you’ve named the sword, you’ve killed with it, you’re here now… Are you going to use it?”
“I don’t know how to use it,” Wyatt said. “I wouldn’t have even been able to kill that thing except…” He still hesitated to mention Thorn, so he thought and said, “Except I got lucky.”
“I can teach you,” Silas said.
“I know,” Wyatt said. “Can I ask you something else?”
“Sure.”
“That shadow snake thing I killed… it said something. It said that I am of the blood. It said the blood is the key. Then it said that I am the key. It was trying to take my blood, I think.”
“What’s your question?”
“What the hell does that mean?”
Silas looked away from him out the window and frowned. Wyatt had almost decided he wasn’t going to answer him, or worse, he was going to tell him a lie, when Silas sighed and turned his attention back at him. “Have you read the bible?”
Wyatt’s eyes narrowed on him suspiciously. If Silas was about to launch into scripture and tell him that night people or vanguards or whatever they were had been chosen by God, he suspected he was about to lose his temper with him, and if he did that, they were finished. “No,” he said. “My mom and dad go to church, but not regularly, and I’m not religious. I guess that’s abnormal for someone with the mental problems I’ve been diagnosed with, but I’m not. Why?”
Silas held up a hand and said, “Hey, now, I’m not preaching at you. I’m just using it to make a point, okay? Even if you haven’t read it and you’re not religious, you’ve heard of it. Anyway, the seventh book is the book of Judges. Before there were kings, there were judges, who mostly served a military role during times of crisis, protected and rescued their people from their enemies and established order and justice. Tribal leaders. There’s a theory among some of our scholars that we are descended from them. That many, if not all, of those first leaders were part human and part something else.”