Between the Shadow and the Soul

by Susanne Winnacker

  Nela staggered past it, her eyes finding her parents once more. Somehow they’d managed to pull each other to their feet. A guard appeared a few feet beside them after disabling two of her dogs, and pointed his gun at her father’s head. Nela parted her lips to scream but the man pulled the trigger and her father’s head was flung back. He tumbled to the ground and lay still, red blooming on the concrete around him. Her mother stood leaning against the car, her eyes wide in horror.

  Nela was still too far away, a group of two Wicca members and one guard in her way, when her father’s killer pointed the gun at her mother. Her breath stuttered in her throat. No! She felt for the dogs. She still had five in her control and she set them all on the man. Fury was choking her. Two dogs rushed past her, their bodies brushing her legs as if they were seeking her closeness, and three others came from other directions and they thrust themselves at the man. Sirens sounded in the distance – more guards and police.

  She looked away from the man buried under the dead dogs, instead she focused on her mother who had spotted her and was watching her with a hopeless expression, tears streaming down her thin face.

  That face became all Nela could see. She needed to get to her mother and get them away. Sharp pain sliced through her leg and she lost her balance, arms flung out to absorb the impact. She breathed harshly through her nose, her face inches from the ground. Her calf was bleeding and the fabric of her jeans around the bullet hole was turning red far too quickly. Her stomach turned at the smell of blood all around her and she threw up. She heaved herself to one knee, her vision turning black from pain for a moment. There was a rushing in her ears.

  When she opened her eyes, the blue signal lights of police cars flashed in her peripheral vision. Most of the Wicca members had either fled or were dead on the ground, lying in their own blood. Dog carcasses and dead guards lay among them. In death they were all equal.

  Nela knew she couldn’t stay where she was. Her eyes returned to the spot where her mother had been but she was gone. Panic clutched her as her gaze swiveled over the bodies. But there were too many of them on the ground, many of them mangled beyond recognition – her doing. A new wave of sickness washed over her but her stomach was empty. Where was her mother?

  “Mom?” she called desperately, not caring that she drew attention to herself. She’d come here to save her mother and probably lost both of her parents. What did it matter if the Brotherhood caught her now?

  More guards were jumping out of black Brotherhood limousines, but she still couldn’t see her mother.

  “Mom?” she screamed. Suddenly Darko was in front of her and wrenched her to her feet. Distantly she registered a sharp pain in her calf but then it disappeared behind a haze of shock. “Stop screaming,” he whispered harshly.

  Nela fought against his grip. “I need to find my mother!”

  “It’s too late. Come now!”

  Too late. Her eyes found her father once more with his eyes wide open. She let Darko drag her away from the scene, toward the alley they’d hidden in. From the corner of her eye, she could see members of the Brotherhood already heading their way, brandishing guns. A bullet hit the house inches above their heads.

  The moment they turned the corner, Darko wrapped his arms tightly around Nela, but to her it felt as if a layer of rubber foam was between them. Their surroundings turned murky as Darko drew the shadows toward them; they came much quicker than before. In a blink they’d gathered around their bodies and lifted them from this dimension. Four guards stormed into the alley but Nela and Darko were already beyond their reach and seconds later gone altogether from their view.

  For the first time, Nela could feel the shadows as if they were living, breathing things. They were snatching at her, curious, eager, hungry. Not her clothes, or skin, but at something inside her, some darkness that hadn’t been there before and that attracted them to her. As if suddenly she was more like them. Her head spun and she clutched at Darko for something to hold onto. She was falling and nothing could stop her. His lips moved but his words were swallowed by the shadows and part of her wished they could swallow her too, and take her to wherever they existed.

  They appeared in Darko’s cold living room. Nela quivered uncontrollably, her teeth clicking together, rattling in her head. Darko led her toward the sofa before heading to his stove and lighting a fire. He came up to her again and watched her. There were dark stains on his black jeans and his hands were scraped and bloody as well. Her eyes darted to her own clothes. A few red stains dotted her jeans. Before her eyes the red seamed to spread like paint on wet paper – like the pool of blood under her father’s head.

  Her throat constricted and she couldn’t breathe. There was only red. So much of it. She gasped. Darko squatted in front of her and put a hand on her chest. “Breathe,” he whispered. She focused on his eyes but it took her brain a moment to catch up and to stop showing her an ocean of red. Distantly she wondered when the tears would come. She’d cried a lot in the last few months, but now her tear ducts refused their work.

  The branches in the furnace crackled and spread their heat in the room. Nela was aware that her surroundings were getting warmer, but somehow it didn’t permeate her skin. Inside she was colder than she’d ever been.

  She glanced at her trembling hands, at their white color, and then the blood stains sprang into her vision once more and revulsion overcame her. She leaped up and started tearing at her belt and jeans, wanting to get them off. To get this feeling of being covered in blood off. The gasps returned, the tightness in her chest, the panic.

  “Let me.” Darko pushed her jittering hands away and loosened her belt and pulled down her jeans. She leaned on his shoulder as she stepped out of them. There was a hole in her calf and then the pain flooded her, shot up her leg and up her spine.

  “Why didn’t you tell me you were shot?” Darko pushed her down on the sofa and examined the wound. Nela stared at him with a strange sort of detachment. How could she have forgotten about being shot? Why hadn’t she felt the pain? Maybe because it was nothing compared to the agony of losing her parents. Maybe it was exactly what she deserved for failing them.

  Darko turned her leg slightly and pressed his fingertips into the skin around the wound. Nela jerked from the pain but didn’t try to pull away. Her pale skin contrasted starkly with the red of the blood dripping from her shot wound.

  “The bullet went cleanly through your calf. You’re lucky it didn’t hit any important arteries,” Darko said.

  “Lucky,” she repeated, then she choked on a laugh, and for a moment she feared she would burst into actual laughter. Darko regarded her with bottomless dark eyes, then he went to pick up a satchel and pulled out a vial. “With a wound like this, I’ll need the help of a herbal tincture. It’ll sting a bit, okay?”

  She stared into his eyes, trying to anchor herself in their darkness. Did he really think she cared? She knew, as well as he did, that the Brotherhood would hunt her now. And when they caught her, they’d probably torture and kill her, like they’d done with her parents, but she couldn’t bring herself to care or to be scared. She was numb; hollow where her heart should have been.

  She winced, couldn’t stop her body from doing so, when Darko carefully applied the tincture on her calf. “Why didn’t you tell me you were shot?”

  “I’d forgotten,” Nela said. He wrapped his palms around her calf with a strained expression on his face. “I want it to heal the human way.”

  His head shot up. “Nela, you being in pain won’t bring your parents back. It wasn’t your fault, so stop punishing yourself. If you want to blame someone, blame the Brotherhood.” He resumed his treatment of her wound and slowly the bullet holes began closing up but then the healing stopped. The wounds were still about half an inch deep but they’d ceased bleeding. Darko glared at them. “I don’t know if there’s going to be a scar. I’m not good at this. The rest will hopefully heal thanks to the tincture.”

  She didn’t bother telling him
that she didn’t give a damn. She wiggled her fingers; they were cold and stiff. Darko took them in his hands. “You’re freezing.” He glanced at the blazing fire in the stove. “You should lie down and rest. Your body needs to heal.” He helped her get up and she limped toward the bed. It was a funny thing that suddenly every step hurt but earlier she’d actually forgotten she’d even been shot. Why couldn’t her body use that same trick again and make her forget today ever happened?

  Darko made her lie down and covered her with a blanket. Despite that, and the fire in the stove, and the warm summer sun outside, she felt cold. He handed her another vial with a light red liquid. “It’ll help you sleep.”

  She accepted the vial and swallowed its contents in one gulp.

  “Things will get easier,” he said, perching on the bed beside her.

  “Will they? Did things ever get easier after your sister’s death?”

  He looked away. “You’ll learn to live with it.”

  “But I don’t want to learn!” she said harshly, her words already slurring. “How can I live with my parents gone? With the Brotherhood hunting me? With a world that hates who I am? What’s left for me?”

  Darko rose from the bed. “You should rest.” Then darkness swallowed her world.

  Chapter 30

  ‘What’s left for me?’

  He’d asked himself that question so many times in the last few years, and more often than not he’d come up with only one answer: Nothing.

  Then he’d found the Master and with him a goal to work toward, a reason to live: saving his sister. And it had become his sole justification for breathing, for existing. It had become the center of who and why he was.

  And when he’d finally found the one object that would bring him closer to his goal, that would finally make his life worthwhile, that thing, that person brought with her the promise of another reason to live, the promise of something beyond darkness. Of course he couldn’t have one without losing the other.

  But that was the past, before Nela had been plunged into darkness, dragged into misery with him. He’d always only brought heartbreak to the people around him and why should it have been any different with her? Maybe this was fate’s way of having him do penance for his sins.

  He trailed his fingertips over her hair. Even in sleep her face was filled with sorrow. Losing your family in such a brutal way left you scarred, often a mere shadow of the person you once were.

  He called the shadows upon himself, let them wrap around him. There were more than usual around. His eyes found Nela once more and a deep sadness filled him, a sense of loss.

  When he pulled his Atlame out of its holder to break through the magical barrier in his Master’s lab, he froze. It was still covered in blood, now dry and dark red like the sweet cherries that had grown in his parents’ garden. The blood didn’t stop it from working. If possible the magical ward fell even faster. His Master used to say that spilled blood made a wizard more powerful, maybe it worked the same way with his Atlame.

  The Master wasn’t sitting on his stool as usual. Darko found him lying on his bed, his eyes closed, wrinkled hands folded on his chest. For a brief instant, Darko allowed himself to imagine Master Valentine’s death, and instead of sorrow he felt relief. If the Master was gone, they couldn’t go through with their plan. It would be out of Darko’s hands. Then the Master stirred and directed his cold eyes at Darko. His breathing was raspy and drawn, but he was breathing.

  Darko bowed, then approached the bed hesitantly. His Master looked weak and pale. He even struggled to sit up but when Darko reached out to help him, the Master shook off his grip, growling, “Let go of me. I can do this on my own.”

  He could do it on his own, but it took him almost two minutes to bring himself into a sitting position and drag his legs out of bed, so they hung limply over the edge of the mattress. Darko knew he could have killed him. The Master was too weak to defend himself. He could have ended it all in this moment. He could have saved Nela…and doomed his sister.

  “Are you alright?” Darko asked.

  “Does it look like I’m alright?” The Master glowered up at him. Almost all of his hair had fallen out and age spots covered great parts of his hands and face. “I heard what happened today.”

  Darko sank down on the stool, even though the Master hadn’t invited him to. He felt bone tired despite it being only early afternoon. “Her parents got killed.”

  Master Valentine watched him like a hawk. There was something in his expression that made Darko nervous. “I told you that your plan was unlikely to succeed. The odds were against you.”

  “Did you also hear that Wicca was there? Nela’s father must have asked them for help.”

  “Yes. Very unusual for them to support our kind in such an obvious breach of the law. The Brotherhood will be even more vigilant in the future and Wicca will be hunted, no doubt. A high risk. I wonder what they were promised in return.”

  “Maybe they were just doing what they thought was right,” Darko said. The Master cackled, then coughed. “People are rarely altruistic. It’s not in our nature.”

  Darko wasn’t so sure that was true. On the other hand life had taught him that his Master was right. Even love wasn’t altogether altruistic. People didn’t want to be alone.

  “I have to say I was quite angry when I heard about the outcome of this day. It made me realize how close I’d come to losing not only you, but also our medium. This foolish plan could have ruined everything.”

  “But we didn’t die. Nela is fine. Physically at least.”

  “I’m fading fast,” Master Valentine said. “Summer solstice is one week away. I fear I won’t last much longer. But after the girl’s sacrifice I’ll be restored to my full health.”

  “She lost her parents. She went through so much. She’s broken. How can we use her like that?” How can we kill her, he added in his mind. Even if he couldn’t admit it to Master Valentine, deep down he knew he didn’t want to lose her.

  The Master hauled himself up and shuffled toward Darko. He put a hand on Darko’s shoulder. “As you said, she’s broken. Do you really want to see her like that? Do you want to go through the same thing again? See her wilt and fade away until she ends it herself. You know it’ll happen. It did with your sister. And Nela has a disposition for darkness and depression. All necromancers have, it’s what makes them so perfect for communicating with the dead.”

  “But maybe I could help her. Maybe I could stop her from spiraling out of control.”

  The Master’s fingers dug into Darko’s skin before he loosened his grip and patted him. “You couldn’t help your sister, even though she was your blood. Nela’s only a girl you’ve known for a few months, how can you expect to get through to her? In the end you’ll lose not only her but also your sister, and your guilt over having betrayed your own family would kill you.”

  It would definitely annihilate him if he lost them both.

  “It’ll be a kindness to Nela to release her from this existence now that she’s lost everything that matters to her. It’ll be a relief. I’m sure she would gladly give her life to save your sister. And her grief will be a powerful draw for the demon.”

  Darko nodded. “She won’t suffer?”

  The Master shook his head with what was probably supposed to be a fatherly expression, but in all the time Darko had known the man he’d never perceived him as anything close to family.

  “The girl’s desperation will be to our advantage. The demon will use her energy to allow him passage into this world before he tethers himself to me. The darker her emotions, the stronger her necromancing will be to the surface and the faster the process will be. She’ll be gone before she knows what’s happening. She won’t feel any pain, only sweet oblivion.” The Master paused to put his second hand on Darko’s other shoulder. He smelled like something stale and rotten, as if his body had already started decaying. “Once I have the power of the demon at my hands, I’ll bring your sister back. Then you can fi
nally make everything right.”

  “You never told me how exactly you’re going to bring her back. Her body will be too far gone to use, won’t it?”

  The Master drew back and took a few sips from the vial with ox blood. “Don’t you worry. I’ll make her a healthy, new body. You’ll never know that she was dead.” His face became business-like. “So everything is ready?”

  Darko knew the question was mostly if he was ready. “Yes.”

  “The girl will have to enter the pentagram willingly. For that night only I’ll remove the magical barriers, so you can materialize where I need you. The girl needs to be aware that harm could come to her, but she doesn’t need to know the details.”

  Darko wondered dimly how the Master had expected him to lure Nela into the lab knowing that she could get harmed without her feelings for him. Or maybe Master Valentine had foreseen that Darko and Nela would fall in love. Shock shot through him. Love?

  “Nela trusts me. She’ll follow me wherever I want to go. She’s selfless. She won’t mind being in harm’s way if it means helping me.” He wondered if that feeling of being the lowest creature on earth, the most disgusting monster in existence would fade once he was reunited with his sister.

  “Good. Now leave. I need to rest,” the Master said already turning his back to him.

  Darko returned to his apartment. For a long while he stood beside the stove, unable to go anywhere near Nela who was still lying sprawled across his bed. She was mumbling in her sleep. Slowly, he approached her. She lay on her side, her lips parted and face tear-streaked.

  He lowered himself beside her and pressed his hand against her cheek. She was warm and soft, and he would take that from her. She whimpered and twisted in the sheet. But it would be for the best, as the Master had said.