Soul Taker's Redemption

by A. S. Hamilton

  Could it possibly be true? Had I once known freedom? And what did it matter if I had? Redemption meant a life without the hunt.

  Unlike preceding soul takers, who were adapted to gather souls, I was created specifically to hunt them while also being powerful enough to turn aside Aurealis's forces. What would I be if I were no longer a hunter? Besides, redemption would mean leaving this realm. Even though I do not like the earthly realm, at least when I am there I can shroud myself in shadow. Not that I need to, because, in general, humans are unaware that we move among them. Although, there are those who can see us for what we truly are if they have other gifts, like being able to see the future or speaking to spirits. Even so, while I am not as comfortable in the earthly realm, it is a place I can endure. Redeeming would mean going to the Light Realm, Dellen-littah, where shadows are fragile and weak, or absent entirely. I could not imagine it. Leaving Unia-littah, this realm of darkness, seemed about as impossible as not hunting.

  As far as I knew, I was brought into being here. Aurealis wanted me to believe I had a life before that— and freedom. I shook my head; I did not understand what she meant. I felt free already. Nothing was so glorious as the hunt and the kill; how could this… this notion of freedom be worth forfeiting that?

  Aurealis taught her light-dancers that we were the enemy, that our harvesting of souls was wrong. In my view, it was merely a disagreement over timing. All the gods harvested souls. Yes, they called it an invitation, but once a spirit accepted that invitation, the god did with it what they willed. Well, not quite. I should give them credit there; those gods that dealt with ascension, did, in fact, help spirits ascend. In the intervening time, though, they chose how you spent your time with them. Ceri-talen was just more direct in what he did. More honest in my opinion. His realm is one where destruction leads to new beginnings, where death leads to new life. He is one of several gods that share responsibility for creation across the realms. He just chose to do things differently.

  Could that be what Aurealis meant? Was her accusation of theft merely Ceri-talen taking my spirit before The Calling? It must be.

  But it had not sounded that way. Something about how she said it, something about the emotion in her voice, made me think I was closer to ascension, perhaps going to ascend, or already ascended.

  No.

  It was not possible.

  Those who ascended eventually became telari, which is what the dragon gods called themselves. The telari ascended to become venturi, a being greater than the gods, and who knew after that?

  No god could take an ascended spirit.

  …

  …

  Could they?

  No. No, she was telling lies. Trying to persuade one of Ceri-talen's fiercest hunters to reject a life she called wrong but was perfectly suited to me. I am a shadow being, I dwell in shadows. I am a therilgalen, a soul taker. There is no place for me amongst the light-dancers, nor do I have any need or reason to redeem.

  My life is simple; I have one task, one directive, and I follow it well.

  My purpose is to kill.

  I feel not the reins of conscience, nor the ache of regret, and am not hindered by memories of my former existence, if I had one.

  At least...

  I once thought so.

  Jay

  I clamped my jaw to stop my teeth from chattering. Despite my blue, Merino-wool jumper and a thigh length, micro-suede jacket, I was feeling the cold, but then my shivering might be part psychological. I still hadn't quite unravelled how it happened. One moment we were watching the game between the Melton Malamutes and the Sandringham Sledders, and the next a fight broke out in the crowd and had swiftly escalated to a I'm-not-kidding-you-someone-tried-to-blindside-me-with-a-chair riot. The ice rink looked like a tornado had hit it. Backpacks, high-heels, food and drink containers, support signs, and even handbags littered the stands. A portion of the barrier had suffered significant damage and debris was spread out over the ice.

  The police were going to have quite a job on their hands trying to figure out what happened. I wouldn't be a lot of help; I'd been arguing with my mother about the likelihood of Paula Meddings making another goal before the game ended, and then the crowd kind of swerved into us as people tried to avoid the fight. The violence flowed like a wave through the crowd, closely followed by fear and panic. And now three people, yes, three, were lying under old paint sheets on the ice. I almost couldn't fathom it; how had this friendly, boisterous game ended in three deaths?

  My mother works for the police and, even though she was both off-duty and a member of a taskforce focused on child protection, she had offered to help them sort things out. She's well respected for her success in the field and the awards she's received for bravery, but her place on the taskforce is more due to her ability to speak Vietnamese than her other skills because they suspect a Vietnamese gang is helping a drug trafficker branch out into child slavery. Mum's actually pale-skinned with blonde hair, but her mother fostered and then adopted a mixed-race Vietnamese girl, my Aunt Tien. Tien and my mum are very close, and they joined the force together. I speak Vietnamese too, along with a smattering of Spanish, French, and Russian, but I'm not nearly as fluent as Mum and Tien. My mother's the kind of person who emerges from fires with puppies and infants— so's Tien, actually— and I didn't want to compete with that, so I got my MBA and eventually set up my own café, Fixated. It has a steampunk theme and I even go so far as to dress in steampunk clothing like an overbust corset with a striped shirt underneath or vest and velvet, embroidered coat. My staff like it and my customers love it, so it works well.

  As the police didn't need me to stay, I could have left Mum and gone home, but we'd come together so I told her I was happy to wait. I didn't tell her the rest, which was that the wait also gave me time for my nerves to settle.

  I looked over at the woman sitting next to me and realised she was shivering. She was around forty years old and too thin. Without her jacket, lost in the chaos she'd told me earlier, her light-brown skin had taken on a decidedly bluish hue. I wanted to offer my jacket but couldn't really; too much stuff in it. I'm the kind of woman who prefers pockets over a handbag, so I couldn't replace it easily if it didn't find its way back to me. I could offer her my jumper though, so I started to shrug off my jacket.

  Something about my movements made the woman realise what I was doing. 'Oh, no, dear. It's not necessary. I'm about to leave, my daughter's just arrived.'

  She nodded towards the open emergency door where a young woman with dark hair pulled back into an impressively long ponytail was pointing us out to the officer monitoring comings and goings. The mother smiled and murmured goodbye as she moved past me, leaving me to gaze out onto the rink alone.

  We didn't go to many sports events, but when the Australian Women's Ice Hockey League pledged a percentage of their ticket sales to a cancer charity Mum decided it was worth giving it a go. Dad had died from cancer and Mum had started donating to cancer charities in his name as a way of supporting other families who had to go through a similar experience. That, and Mum wanted to see an ice hockey game played by women. Mum's not a hardcore feminist but attaining her rank and respect in the police force had been, in her words, 'bloody hard work', so she supported anything that made things a little easier and equal. I had similar values, no surprises there considering my mother's influence. That said, we were both surprised at the level of ass-kicking the two teams were capable of doing. It had promised to be such a good night…

  I glanced over at the three bodies. It sure didn't turn out the way we imagined. Shaking my head, I focused on the ice again. I'd had to dodge a few punches and took a chair on my back when I put myself between it and a young boy. It was only plastic, but it'd still hurt, and I knew I'd be covered in bruises by morning. I'm not even sure where it'd come from as most of the seats were a part of the 'stands'. The seats were attached to high concrete 'steps' that ran the length of the row, although that had not fully protected them. I'd se
en a group of men jumping and stomping on one set until it'd broken free. They'd been pretty determined to get the thing off, but I was still surprised they'd managed it. Many other sets of chairs were also twisted and bent out of shape as a result of similar, less successful, efforts. I realised how fortunate I was that the chair that came at me was plastic. If I didn't know better, it was almost as if some higher power had conspired to create a tragedy.

  The back of the seat I was sitting on was aggravating my bruised back, so I stood up. I paused, not sure of my next move, and then I found myself walking over to a handbag that was lying between the rows of seats and retrieving it, moving slowly as my back objected to bending. I made my way over to a swatch of red leather-like fabric that turned out to be another handbag. One scarf, purse, and small messenger bag later, I leaned on a gate that was used to give the ice machines access to the rink. It didn't have the plastic partition that topped the rest of the barrier, which allowed me to lean over it.

  I've had to deal with the occasional drunk or aggressive customer, but the kind of violence that happened tonight was out of my experience. This, I thought, was something my mother had dealt with, probably on many occasions. For the most part, Mum and I don't discuss her work. We'd been target shooting together a few times, but when I got into archery in high school, I decided I preferred that and hadn't gone shooting with her for several years. I wondered how she did it. How do you hold a gun, point it at a person, and be prepared to pull the trigger? I shook my head. Thinking about it depressed me, I needed to focus on something else.

  I started to push away from the barrier, intending to take the bags I'd collected to the officer monitoring the doors, but then stopped. I'm not sure what caught my attention. It wasn't a sound or movement, it was more of a feeling, like a change in the atmosphere. You know when someone says, 'the air became tense'? Like that, but 'tense' wasn't the word I'd use. Actually, I wasn't sure how to describe it, but it put me on alert.

  I looked up to see an oval of air across the rink, shimmering, kind of like a mirror. A moment passed and then an angel stepped onto the rink. I should sound more surprised, I guess, but this isn't my first time encountering one. I'd been six then, and my grandmother had just had a severe heart attack. Of course, I didn't understand how weak she was, just that my parents were upset. Gran was in the guest bedroom, and my mother spent a lot of time in there. It had been unusual for Mum not to be at work, and I guess she'd taken some kind of leave. One morning my mother left the door open as she moved between the kitchen and sitting with Gran. I wandered in to say hello. Gran always had a friendly and bright personality; she made me laugh, I remember. It was disconcerting seeing her amongst all those pillows, looking so… grey. She managed a smile and patted the bed. I climbed up, using the wooden frame of the bed base as a step. Gran told me she'd been sick, but she was getting better and secured a promise from me to be on my best behaviour because my parents were very busy. Gran had pale blue eyes, just like mine. I remembered they looked sort of clouded over as she drifted off, my little hand still in hers. Then the angel appeared.

  She was just suddenly there at the end of the bed. White wings with silver-threaded feathers arced behind a kindly face with a golden-toned skin that reminded me of sunlight. She had silvery hair and wore a filmy dress that reminded me of a doll Gran had given me that Christmas; a fairy princess with her hair held back by an intricately woven crown. In fact, the angel seemed to be wearing exactly the same crown.

  Naturally, I thought she, too, was a fairy princess and said so. Her laugh was high and melodic, like the crystal windchime hanging from the curtain rod in the kitchen. She explained that she was an angel and that my grandmother was very tired, so she was going to take her spirit to a place full of sunshine where she could rest, which I thought this was a great idea. My mother was horrified to find me by Gran's lifeless body. I could never work out why. I was happy to have been able to say goodbye and Gran simply seemed asleep, her face at peace.

  Back then, my parents perceived my talk of an angel as my way of coping. The next time, eight years later, the same angel came for my father. Since then, I see them every now and then, usually when I visit hospitals, but once I was on the scene where a truck accident happened and I saw one then, escorting the driver's spirit to the place of sunshine I guess, like my gran. So, the angel walking through that odd oval of air in the middle of the ice rink like he was stepping out of a vertical pool of water wasn't all that alarming.

  What intrigued me was that everything about him was the exact opposite of the angels I'd seen so far. Where they were white, silver, and seemingly sunlight itself, this one was darkness, shadow, and blood. The great wings were black with dark red in the feathers, and his hair, though black, had two rivers of dark red streaking from each temple. His bare torso was marked with what I first thought were tattoos, the blood-red markings emphasising the starkness of his pale skin. It reminded me of marks on a tiger, but more intricate. They didn't cover his whole body, just the parts one might consider his underside, running from his underarms down his sides. Strangely enough, this creature of another realm was wearing very modern, black, hiking-style boots and pants. A harness held a long sword so that it rested between his wings. The hilt was as long as his forearm and the pommel held a black stone that seemed to swallow light rather than reflect it. Black bracers on each forearm looked like armoured scales taken from something fairly formidable, but that was hardly surprising, because he moved like a predator. Upon closer inspection, I realised, they weren't bracers, those scales were a part of him, which made him seem even more menacing.

  He didn't slip or slide on the ice, and the air about him seemed darker somehow. As he crossed the rink, he must have felt my observation because he turned to look directly at me. His gaze was cold and unsettling, his irises were light red with black, cat-like pupils. His head tilted slightly as he assessed me, the pupils narrowing, though his pace never slowed. I counted myself fortunate that he wasn't interested in the living.

  Just as he dismissed my presence to focus on the shrouded bodies, three new vertical, shimmering pools appeared between him and the bodies. For the first time, the dark-angel showed hesitation, slowing to a halt. Three angels stepped through, two women and one man. These were the angels I was familiar with.

  The dark-angel sneered as he slowly drew his sword. None of the light-angels had a weapon. They just stood passively in the dark-angel's path. After a long moment of consideration, the dark-angel shook his head, as if he couldn't understand their futile stand. Then he hefted the sword and started to charge.

  The light-angels didn't move. I don't think they even blinked. I wondered if they had some sort of unseen shield or whether they might just disappear at the last moment. Perhaps they were like those superheroes who never use weapons that kill and instead rely on martial arts to disable their opponents… or perhaps I'd been watching too much TV. I'd been having trouble sleeping, lately.

  Out of nowhere, roiling clouds of what I can only describe as shadows descended from somewhere near the ceiling like a storm rolling in. I heard a crash as the dark-angel collided with whatever was in those shadows. There'd been no shimmering pool this time, at least not one I saw.

  When the shadows coalesced into a distinct form, I was surprised to see another dark-angel. He was taller and more sharp-featured than his opponent. And where the other had blood-red colouring, this one had gold. There was something enigmatic about him that eclipsed the presence of all the rest. It was a captivating quality, something intangible that I wasn't sure how to describe, but none of the other angels had radiated anything like it. Physically, he wasn't much larger than the first dark-angel, but he seemed... greater, somehow.

  The gold dark-angel fought with two short swords, which seemed almost inadequate in size to the broadsword his rival used, yet he defended, and even attacked, without showing any disadvantage. In fact, he was very effective in driving his opponent back.

  The light-angels
turned nonchalantly from the confrontation to focus on the bodies. They were completely still as they stared into the air above them. At first nothing seemed to happen, and then I saw a silvery light coalescing around the bodies made up of thousands of pin-points of light. The pin-points started to gather, forming a thick mist above each person. I recognised it from my encounters with Gran and then Dad, they were gathering the spirits.

  While the light-angels collected the spirits, the dark-angels were trading blows, attacking and defending in turn. At one point, the red dark-angel got the gold one in a hold that exposed his neck and went to bite him, revealing long, sharp fangs that looked like they had venom dripping from them. Before he could bite down, the gold dark-angel managed to wrench out of the hold. The red dark-angel then saw that the light-angels had started gathering the spirits and made a more concerted effort, backing the gold dark-angel up several paces. He feinted one way and then delivered a forceful kick, knocking the gold dark-angel sideways. He made a dash towards the light-angels, who were completely oblivious to anything behind them.

  The gold dark-angel spread black wings threaded with gold, displaying a wingspan several metres wide. I could not believe how far they reached, they looked so compact when they were up against his back. He sheathed his short swords and, with just a few great thrusts of those wings, he was in the air and swooping towards the red dark-angel. For a long moment, I couldn't tell whether he'd reach the red dark-angel in time. They looked so vulnerable, the light-angels, presenting those silver-white wings to a threat they seemed to have forgotten.