Burns Night

by Amy Hoff

“You ate his liver, didn’t you,” asked Leah in a flat voice. Yoo Min nodded again.

  “I didn’t mean to!” she protested. “This is – all I have left of him. A part of his rib bone.”

  Leah drew back.

  “You – that’s his rib bone and you’ve been wearing it since –“ Leah asked, hardly daring to hear the answer. God, she needed a drink.

  “Yes,” she said. “You’ve got to help me! It’s my greatest regret, he didn’t deserve it – “

  “Not like my brother does, you mean?” Dorian demanded. Yoo Min stared at the floor.

  “That’s enough,” said Chief Ben. “Dorian, punishing your brother for what he did was your own idea, and his punishment was decreed by the Selkie King. You know that.”

  Dorian nodded, a sharp gesture.

  “My apologies, Yoo Min,” he said. “Go on.”

  “Chief, Tae Pyeong died…a very long time ago,” she said. “He was solid. Not a ghost. It couldn’t be, could it?”

  She gazed up at him with hopeful eyes.

  “He couldn’t have survived?” she asked. “Maybe I didn’t…maybe I’m getting a second chance!”

  Chief Ben was loath to extinguish the hope in Yoo Min’s eyes. He glanced over her shoulder at where Sebastian stood.

  The man was looking straight at them. Ben turned his attention back to the group.

  “Thank you for telling us, Yoo Min,” said Ben. “I don’t know what this means, but we’ll handle it from here. And for now, stay indoors, and away from the windows, okay? We don’t know what we’re dealing with here, and you can never be too careful. You understand?”

  Yoo Min nodded, and with a last wistful look, she took her leave of them. Ben sighed, watching her go, and turned back to Leah and Dorian.

  “That can’t mean anything good,” said Chief Ben. “You two know the most about Sebastian, and I feel like these things must be connected. Sebastian’s your remit, especially as Leah seems to have a special relationship with the man.”

  Leah rolled her eyes, but she knew there was some truth to what he was saying.

  “He’s clever, Chief,” Leah said. “Clever and dangerous. This has got to be a trap.”

  Sebastian turned to stare at them from across the office as if he could hear them, although that was impossible. Leah stared right back. She was tough, that was certain, but she was mostly irritated at anything that got between her and a drink. Currently, Sebastian was doing just that, and Leah found that she worked best when she thought she wouldn’t see the other end of her hangover.

  “Of course it’s a trap,” growled Benandonner. “What I want to know is, what would scare a man like that enough to turn himself in?”

  Considering the idea that Sebastian might keep her from the pub even longer, Leah’s gaze turned murderous.

  “Let’s ask him,” she said.

  Sebastian’s grin widened when Leah approached. She was so very tired of the shit-eating grin that always seemed to be on his face. Eternally hungover, Leah was just about never in the mood for anything except more whisky, and least of all this milquetoast arsehole giving her grief. Dorian trailed behind her, looking just about as stiff upper lip and intensely British as anyone can, an absolute master of the art form.

  “What’s this all about?” she asked, crossing her arms.

  Sebastian looked confused, as if he hadn’t expected her question. Confusion was a brand-new expression for him, and Leah couldn’t help but feel an inward smug satisfaction that she wasn’t planning on letting him see.

  “Don’t you people ever leave this office?” Sebastian asked, changing the subject. “Haven’t you seen what’s going on outside? You’re safer in here than you are out there, believe me.”

  “I’ve no idea what you mean,” sneered Dorian in his best sneeringly British voice.

  “You’re the detectives,” Sebastian sneered right back, leaning forward and pulling at his cuffs, still securely in the hands of the wulver. “Why don’t you go...investigate.”

  Dorian and Leah exchanged glances. They drew back, and Leah nodded to the wulver who had been holding Sebastian. The wulver nodded back, to reassure her that he would remain vigilant.

  “Well?” Dorian asked, leaning close to his partner so they would not be overheard.

  “Trap. Obviously,” Leah replied curtly. “Still want to look into it? He sounds sincere, for once.”

  “He’s the head of Glasgow’s Fae criminal syndicate,” said Dorian. “Why would he be telling the truth?”

  “I’m aware,” said Leah. “Should we look into it anyway?”

  Dorian looked at Sebastian, who was staring at them. The selkie narrowed his eyes, but he could divine nothing from the man’s expression.

  Dorian shrugged slightly. “What choice do we have?”

  Benandonner had finally walked up to them, in order to find out if they’d made any progress. Leah turned to him for confirmation. “Chief?”

  “Go,” Benandonner said, waving them off as he addressed the wulver holding Sebastian. “We can handle this.”

  Dorian turned to Leah.

  “Ready?” he asked.

  “As I’ll ever be,” she replied, and they walked together toward the door.

  Leah pushed through it.

  Then –

  There was a strange sound, a deep humming in the air.

  And she was somewhere else.

  Leah stood in front of a mirror, the wounds of her scar suddenly as fresh as they were on the day she received it, a scar that had twisted and gone white many years before. Blood dripped down her face as she pulled her hair away to look at the deep, jagged claw marks put there so long ago, when she was just a child. There was that humming sound again, a drum beat. Something coming closer. She turned around and –

  Leah stood in front of the double doors, outside beneath the leafy archway of Caledonia’s main entrance.

  Dorian was nowhere to be found.

  A light shone in the crack between the doors behind her, slowly moving down.

  “Dorian?” she whispered, voice harsh in the resounding silence.

  There was no reply. She was alone.

  CHAPTER FOUR

  ROBERT

  Robert Burns lay back on his tartan pillow. His interior decorating tastes would have embarrassed anyone who wasn’t him. But if Robert Burns was anything, he was unapologetically Scottish, and earnest in his overabundance of feeling.

  Embroidered hearts graced every fabric surface, from pillows to comforters to wall hangings. Little Scottie dog couples in love, dressed up with tartan bows; Love Ness Monster cuddly toys; and of course, his surround-sound speakers playing the loudest version of My Love is like a Red, Red Rose he could find. While Robert loved love, he also loved himself, and Scotland had done absolutely nothing to dissuade him of his own personal awesomeness.

  So he lay on his bed surrounded by hearts and love and the Eiffel Tower and heart-shaped candles, chocolate boxes, and even a quote from one of his own poems on the wall, grinning to himself and thinking of Desdemona. The fact that she was technically an eldritch horror only seemed to make him believe even more in his own uniqueness and his capacity for romantic love.

  There was a knock on the door, startling him. Perhaps it was Desdemona! Perhaps there would be a magical reunion, where they were drawn to each other helplessly and there would be a kiss, with his own music as a backing track, like he’d seen on so many films and television shows and in poems he had written himself!

  Robert stood up, checking the mirror to make sure he was still handsome.

  He was.

  He threw the door open with joy.

  And found, to his surprise, a short, angry giant on his stoop.

  “Benandonner!” he said, completely knocked off-kilter. “I’m sorry—Chief. What can I do for you?”

  Benandonner stared at him. Robert noticed the music was pretty loud and snapped it off, halting the singer mid-yodel.

  “Ahem,” said Robert, trying to
approximate some semblance of normal.

  Benandonner gave Robert a look that said he’d sussed him out and wasn’t impressed.

  If Robert had the blood to blush, he would have.

  “Dorian Grey’s gone missing,” Chief Ben told him, after what the officer deemed an appropriately long and uncomfortable silence.

  “What?” Robert demanded.

  “I need to be at Interpol,” said Chief Ben, carrying on as though Robert hadn’t spoken. “Someone needs to help Leah find her partner.”

  Robert blinked.

  “Why me? I’m not on your payroll,” he said.

  “I don’t care!” thundered the giant. “Something’s got hold of this city—and all on the celebration of your birthday. Got any explanation for that?”

  Robert shook his head.

  “I assume you know Aoife, our receptionist?” Ben asked, as if he were enquiring about the weather. “Irish warrior goddess, blonde hair, tattoos?”

  Robert nodded.

  “And you know that her boyfriend was murdered last night? Under mysterious circumstances?”

  Robert very carefully schooled his expression. The point of Caledonia Interpol was to keep monsters from overstepping their bounds, and his behaviour wasn’t quite as noble as he usually liked to pretend.

  “No, I didn’t know that,” Robert said.

  “Is that so,” the chief continued. “Well. There have been a lot of mysterious attacks around the university lately. Just around here, in fact. Have you seen anything strange lately?”

  Ben gave him a pointed look. Robert shook his head, an unwilling partner in this dance.

  “I sure hope you’re telling me the truth, Robert. It’d be a real shame if I had to arrest Scotland’s favourite poet. Or maybe it’s someone else you’re covering for? Word on the street is that you were seen with Desdemona tonight,” said Ben, a note of the detective creeping into his voice.

  Robert opened his mouth, then closed it again, crossing his arms defensively over his chest.

  “Yes, I was,” he said, feeling like a bairn caught out after curfew, “and what of it?”

  “She’s gone missing too,” the giant said, and Robert froze, fear taking hold of him.

  “All right, I’ll help,” Robert relented. “But only for Des.”

  Benandonner nodded, as if this was exactly the outcome he had expected.

  “I have to get back to the station. This is Leah’s address,” he barked, slamming a folded notepaper into Robert’s chest.

  “Okay,” said Robert looking down at the slip of paper, and then nodding a farewell. “Good night, Chief.”

  The giant turned to give him one last suspicious look before vanishing into the shadows. Robert sighed, sagging against his door.

  Not again, he thought. Not this time.

  ***

  Across the city, in another bedroom, Leah Bishop was dreaming.

  The door to her room opened, and who should walk in but Robert Burns.

  The empty whisky bottle next to her head rolled underneath her pillow as she stood up.

  She smiled at Robert, who had just appeared in her bedroom like a vision. She grabbed his shirt and pushed him up against the door with a lascivious smile. There was something different about this dream, but she wasn’t about to look a gift horse in the mouth. In the back of her mind, Robert’s horrified expression and stiff body language began to piece themselves together as the probable difference between previous dreams and this one.

  “Leah!” Robert yelped, wide-eyed. “Are you out of your mind?”

  “What, you’re not still carrying a torch for Desdemona?” mumbled Leah, puzzled. “This isn’t usually how these dreams go.”

  “It’s not a torch,” Robert told her seriously, “That will never change so long as I live. And what do you mean, dreams?”

  “Why?” she asked, ignoring the question.

  Robert was so unlike her usual dream-Robert – so like the real Robert she had met in the Highlands, with his intense whisky-coloured eyes and gentle manner – she realised that something was wrong.

  “Because in an eternity I am all she has ever had,” he said, looking out of the windows as if something were coming after them. Knowing them, something probably was.

  “She doesn’t love you, Robert,” Leah said petulantly. This was her dream, and dream-Robert was never so concerned about his vampire friend.

  “Does it matter?” he replied, sounding so like the actual Robert Burns she sighed.

  “You sound depressingly like the real Robert Burns to me,” she mumbled.

  Then she was suddenly wide-awake as if a bucket of ice water had been poured over her head. She stumbled back from him in horror.

  “It’s really you, isn’t it?” she asked, sitting down heavily on the bed. She hid her eyes behind a hand and felt embarrassment flush her cheeks.

  “Aye,” Robert agreed, and then grinned. “Why? Do I often visit you in your dreams?”

  His eyebrow quirked as Leah studiously looked in another direction. There he was, the Robert Burns she’d read about during all the years of her schooling, the sneaky little sex-loving bastard. Nobody, of course, had recorded Robert Burns’s passionate one-sided love affair with a vampire so deep he had thrown himself into damnation alongside her, but he’d had plenty of other conquests across the length and breadth of Scotland for historians to write about.

  Were the vampires really damned? Leah wondered. The baobhan sith certainly predated Christianity, so perhaps they were an exception to the – Damn it, this was supposed to be her dream! This was no time to be considering the implications of folklore!

  She looked up, and there Robert was, salacious look still written across his face.

  Leah was not prepared for either Robert’s scrutiny or to Deal With This Shit At This Hour.

  “Something’s broken in Glasgow,” Robert relented, toning down the charm. “I think you were having a nightmare.”

  “Why the hell would you be in my nightmare?” Leah demanded.

  “I thought I’d been in your dreams before,” said Robert.

  “Those were more ...” Leah chose her words carefully, “pleasant dreams.”

  Robert looked excessively pleased with himself.

  “All right, you pervert,” she snapped.

  “I’m the pervert?!” Robert demanded, incredulous. But still pleased.

  “Shut up! Why are you here?” Leah asked, swiftly changing the subject.

  Before he could answer, there was a strange sound between a growl and a snarl.

  The two of them looked at each other, trying to fathom where it was coming from.

  The sound resonated through the room again, and this time its origin was clear:

  It was coming from underneath the bed.

  Sleepiness forgotten, the usual hangover-headache present and accounted for, Leah launched into action. She shoved him toward the door.

  “Run!”

  “What?” Robert asked, startled. “Why?”

  Leah yanked the door open and pushed him into the hallway, following suit.

  “Just trust me. Go!”

  Leah slammed the door shut behind them and raced down the stairs, with Robert close behind. She stopped for a moment to catch her breath at the bottom of the stairs.

  “What the hell was that?” Robert demanded, eyes wide and bright in the dim light of the landing.

  “The monster under my bed?” Leah offered.

  “What?” asked Robert, but Leah didn’t respond.

  She took off again, leaving Robert no choice but to chase after her.

  CHAPTER FIVE

  AULD FRIENDS

  There was a room somewhere high above the city of Glasgow, or deep below, or in another universe entirely.

  In that room stood a table.

  On top of that table sat a chess set.

  Two wooden chairs faced the table, awaiting players.

  There was nothing particularly special about this room, or this
chess set, not to look at, anyway.

  What made it special were the participants.

  The air in the room changed, and a svelte figure appeared.

  The beautiful woman sat down in one chair. She was draped in exquisite raiment of crimson and gold. Her red nails matched her dress and her lips also matched the crimson deep of her nails. There was no one in this universe or the next (that would be Faerie) who was more put-together than she was; if Faerie had fashion magazines she would have been on every cover. The woman, or woman-shaped creature’s wide dark eyes seem to hold a flickering flame in the pupils, deep enough to masquerade as a reflection of the light.

  The other chair was pulled out. Another figure sat down, also woman-shaped, but never woman. White as bone and red as blood, emerald eyes and talons like hidden daggers in each hand. She was not beautiful, or at least not as humans reckon it; she was beautiful like the temptation of a precipice, like the deepest secret impulses of the soul, like the venom of the serpent’s tooth. Like a long night, walking alone along a lonely road in the Highlands, and the shadows that follow you home.

  The room was cavernous and dark. In fact, neither of them had ever known the size of it. They could not see the ceiling or in fact the floor. But the table had always been there.

  “Hello, Desdemona,” said Nour, golden-bright, to a being that had gone by thousands of other names in the past.

  “Hello again, Nour,” drawled the ghostlike one, gravel-rough and whispered, to a being that had always been called a variation on the word fire, sliding into her usual seat.

  The game of chess sat in front of them. None of the pieces moved, nor had moved, since the beginning of time. Prior to chess, it was another game, now forgotten. This game, played between two of the oldest beings in the universe, had always been won or lost via their conversation.

  “I went to the Antipodes and saw the sunset last night!” Nour chirped. “It was amazing, you should have been there!”

  Desdemona raised an eyebrow at Nour, whose effervescence always surprised and amused her.

  “Yes,” breathed Desdemona, in a voice that dragged over rocks. “I would have burned into smoke and vanished forever, and then who would you play against?”