Of Light and Darkness

by Shayne Leighton

  “That’s all you have to say?” she pried, following him.

  “Yes,” he answered. She could see the muscles in his neck tense as his hands wound into fists. His nostrils flared and she could tell he stopped breathing, probably in pain from the onslaught of the coming morning.

  “Valek, why won’t you answer me?”

  His lips peeled back over the tops of his incisors, which instantly made her recoil away from him. He wrapped his arm tightly around her middle, leapt up the thin, dark shaft of dirt and exploded to the main floor of the house. The hallway was empty. He quickly pulled away from her.

  She grimaced at him. “Dobrou noc.” Her “good night” was sour.

  “Dobry den,” he offered back to her, a loving and light “good morning”. He gazed at her a few moments longer and grabbed her shoulders, but only kissed her very lightly. “Do not be angry with me,” he acknowledged finally, before jumping back down to the basement, leaving her standing there alone.

  Too late, she thought toward the basement below.

  The dust in the white morning light settled across the lavender shadows on the floorboards behind her. She turned. Light. Warmth. Her fingers itched to grab the brass doorknob, to let it in the house, and on her skin. She hadn’t seen it in days. She walked slowly toward the frosted door window that made the morning light look like it was in a foggy dream—as if it wasn’t really there. She pressed her right hand up to the glass, feeling it just on the other side. But winter was nearing. And the warmth she thought might have been there was not.

  “What are you doing up here?” A small, irritated voice chirped from behind her.

  Charlotte jumped and spun around to see Sarah standing there. The Witch’s shoes hadn’t made a sound on the dusty wood of the enchanted house hiding in plain sight in the middle of the mortal city. “Where’s Evangeline?”

  “In the study. She has not shut up all morning!” Sarah leaned on one hip, clearly frazzled. Her bun, which was still intact, had small frizzing wisps flying out from the sides of it.

  “Apparently my housekeeping skills—or any other skill of mine for that matter—do not keep up with her ridiculous standards.” Sarah leaned closer to Charlotte and whispered, “She complains about everything!” She grabbed tightly at Charlotte’s hand and pulled her quickly down the hallway to the study, grumbling things like, “At least you’re here now. You can deal with her while I focus.”

  In the den, Evangeline sat cross-legged in front of the fire. Various volumes of spells surrounded her on the floor. She kept one of them in her lap. “Sarah, how do you even practice at all? These grimoires are five generations old at least!” She thumbed through the pages.

  “Evangeline….” Sarah sputtered and shoved Charlotte out in front of her. “Charlotte is here. She wants to help.”

  Evangeline turned and lifted an eyebrow at Sarah. “And what will you be doing?”

  “I just need to run a few errands for Master Francis.” She grinned sarcastically and spun on her heels. “And I need to get away from you,” she muttered, and trotted back to the other parts of the house.

  “Dobry den, Charlotte,” Evangeline grumbled into her book.

  “Good morning,” Charlotte said quietly from where she stood, eyeing her.

  Evangeline turned once more. Charlotte was still lingering at the edge of the study. “What are you doing? Come in!” She waved her hand at one of the small, wooden stools in the corner and the thing came alive before Charlotte’s eyes. The legs of it ran over behind her, scooping her up in an instant and bringing her over directly next to where the Witch sat. “So, you want to help.” Evangeline licked her index finger and flipped another page.

  “In any way that I can,” Charlotte responded gingerly. She wasn’t letting her guard down just yet.

  “And what way is that?” Evangeline squinted at her.

  “Well, you tell me.”

  Evangeline looked up from her book. “It is not what I can tell you. It is what you can tell me.” The Witch grabbed Charlotte’s left hand and held it out in front of her face. “What of these spectacular lines I’ve been hearing so much about?”

  Charlotte tried to pull her hand back. “Why do they matter to you?”

  Evangeline smiled when she found what she was looking for. “Ah. Valek’s line. There it is.” She picked up an already inked quill at her side and scribbled something down in one of Sarah’s texts.

  Charlotte ignored the thought that Sarah probably wouldn’t like Evangeline writing in her books and asked, “What’s the big deal?”

  “Well, don’t you already know? It says you are Valek’s soul mate.”

  Charlotte smiled. She couldn’t help it. “I know.”

  “It is significant to know when I’m making spells to protect you once you are inside the Regime walls.” She eyed the whistle around Charlotte’s neck. “That little thing will hardly accomplish anything.” She grew silent for a minute. “But wait….” Evangeline caught sight of something else on Charlotte’s palm. “There is another line here.”

  “Yes. I know.” Charlotte frowned, thinking of Sarah’s vision.

  “You have Aiden’s line as well.” A thought flickered through her eyes. She continued. “It crosses directly over Valek’s. But there is something different about Aiden’s line.” She kept Charlotte’s wrist in her hand, but turned her face back down to the book.

  “I have never seen that before.”

  Charlotte panicked. “What do you mean it looks different?”

  “It just looks deeper, somehow.”

  ***

  “It’s more vivid than the other one.” Evangeline was genuinely confused. She could tell it was not a natural line in Charlotte’s hand, but rather a scar purposefully carved there by someone. Aiden made Evangeline aware of most of his plans, but never mentioned anything to her about this. At some point in Charlotte’s life, one of the creatures, perhaps Aiden, scarred her when she must have been too young to remember. It looked to her like he did it by magic. Evangeline even recalled the act being illegal in most Occults. But the fact was, it wasn’t a real fate line at all. It was put there by force.

  Evangeline thought of just leaving then. This didn’t seem worth it anymore. She could see now that Aiden and the others were truly the dark ones. He had been planning this for a long time. Perhaps if she hid like the Vampires did, the Regime would forget about her. She looked back up at Charlotte’s fearful eyes and realized she had better calm the expression on her face. “You know what? I think I’m just tired. I think the shadows of the firelight are playing tricks on your hand.” She let Charlotte go.

  “So what do you think it means—that I have two fate lines? Sarah said that wasn’t normal.”

  Evangeline needed to think of something quick. “I’m not sure. The fates are tricky. It’s beyond me, Lottie.”

  “Don’t call me that,” Charlotte said quietly.

  “Charlotte.”

  Sarah walked back into the room, Edwin in her arms. “Any progress?”

  “What is that?” Evangeline looked up at the grotesquely shaped hunk of burlap and yarn.

  “That would be your friend, Edwin.” Sarah tossed the little pile to the floor beside Evangeline.

  A horrible memory flashed before her eyes. It made her soft features twist into something else. “T-there is no w-way for you to fix him though?”

  Sarah looked to Charlotte. “We’ll figure out a way.”

  The three grew quiet. The two Witches flipped through their books as Charlotte stared into the crackling fire. “I’m glad you are alive, Evangeline,” she whispered.

  The Witch stopped reading but did not look up at her. “Me, too.”

  “It’s hard to imagine it’s daylight outside right now. There are hardly any windows in this house,” Charlotte mused distantly, balancing her chin on her hand.

  Sarah pulled her enchanted needle out of her hair and waved it in the air above Charlotte’s head. To her delight, a small bewitchm
ent mimicking a glowing sun began to grow against the ceiling, casting another warm glow about the room.

  “Francis asks for this bewitchment a lot,” Sarah said as she flipped a page.

  Still smiling, Charlotte looked again at the little enchanted sun. “Could you leave it here for Valek tonight?”

  “Absolutely,” Sarah chimed.

  “Well, Sarah. It appears Charlotte is indeed fated to Valek, just as you guessed.”

  Evangeline flipped another page in her book.

  “I didn’t guess. I knew it.”

  “Good. You succeeded. Now tell me what you used to enchant that rusty, little whistle?”

  “The warts off your mother’s a—”

  “Hey!” Charlotte interjected. “We are never going to get anything done like this.”

  “Charlotte’s right.” Sarah stood up again. “I’ll take care of everything. I’m done pretending to like you.” She stormed out.

  The study was quiet again. “Evangeline?” Charlotte started again.

  “Yes?”

  “How did Valek become what he is? How did Francis do it?” she asked.

  “Is that what you and Valek were arguing about?”

  “We weren’t arguing.” Charlotte lifted her eyebrow.

  “Please, your aura is putrid.”

  “It wasn’t really an argument,” Charlotte huffed and dropped the conversation.

  “All I know is Valek was living alone in the Bohemian Occult years before I was alive. Most Vampires are like Francis. They’re moody, overtly sexual, and extremely conceited. Valek was always different. He kept to himself most of the time.”

  “So Valek never told you he had a wife?” Charlotte asked.

  “No,” Evangeline concluded abruptly and turned another page.

  Charlotte gathered up her burlap friend in her arms. “I wish there was a way to save Edwin.” She fiddled with one of his loose button eyes.

  Evangeline stayed very quiet. Her eyes shifted along the book in front of her, but she was not reading. She noticed Charlotte yawn. “You don’t need to stay up here with me all day, Charlotte. If you’re tired, why don’t you try and sleep?”

  Charlotte got up from the uncomfortable, wooden stool and collapsed into Sarah’s oversized green armchair with Edwin still in her arms. “I’ll be fine. You might need me for something.”

  Evangeline snorted. “Like what? You can’t wield magic.”

  “Yeah…but what if you need my sacrificial blood for something? Everyone needs my blood around here.” Still holding Edwin as though he were a teddy bear, Charlotte curled up with her knees to her chest and closed her eyes.

  Evangeline turned her head back toward the fire. The sweat was cold on her face. The guilt so palpable she could have held it in her hand—a bloody dagger. And Valek was Caesar.

  Chapter Twenty-Three

  The Fates

  When Charlotte opened her eyes again, expecting to find the room as she had left it—Evangeline studying by the fire with books open all around—she saw instead she had, in actuality, slept the whole day away. Evangeline was gone. Instead, Valek stood in her place. He was staring at the small, circular ball of light burning overhead. Just standing there, staring in complete captivation. Charlotte wondered what it must have been like; not to see something he had yearned to see again for such a long time. Something so glorious taken from him. Something, given the choice, he probably wouldn’t have ever given up.

  “Breathtaking,” he mused.

  Charlotte lifted her head up off of Edwin’s. She had been using him as a pillow. She rubbed the sleep away from her eyes. “Sarah left it there for you to see.”

  “I know,” he whispered. “Almost as good as the real thing.” He reached one finger delicately to the ball of light, but upon touching it, the thing shattered into a million crystal pieces, softly fading away to the real cobwebs of the room. “Almost.”

  Charlotte pushed up on one side. “Where is everyone?”

  “Sarah and Evangeline went out hunting,” he explained. “You were screaming again,” he said sadly.

  “I don’t remember my dream.”

  “Why must you when it is your reality?”

  She changed the subject. “What are they hunting for?”

  “For anything that will keep us pacified for the night. Rats. Ravens. Dogs.”

  Charlotte shuddered. “They are…all downstairs.” By they, she meant the coven.

  Valek shoved his hands in his pocket and looked at the floor. “Crowbarred, you might say.” His fangs flashed once in a dark smirk.

  Charlotte’s stomach lurched. “What?” She leapt off the couch and ran out of the study.

  When she got down the hallway, she saw Valek was already there, leaning against the wall by the trap door. Sure enough, a long, iron crowbar had padlocked the entry from the coven’s basement to the upper floors of the house. She could hear the murmurs of the coven from beneath the hollow under the floorboards.

  Valek pushed off the wall and glided over to stand in front of her. “They have become addicted to the taste of warm, human blood now, after not having any for so long. It has made most of them mad this morning.”

  Something unseen slammed against the wood just in front of Valek’s feet and howled otherworldly. Charlotte jumped and clung to Valek’s shirt.

  “The iron is enchanted,” Valek assured. “Somehow, Sarah knew this would happen. They won’t be able to get through.”

  “Will they be okay?”

  “Once they drink something, I think they’ll be fine enough not to want to kill you.” He chuckled, though something dark resonated behind it.

  Charlotte gulped as the trap door continued to bump and rattle. The awful screeching would not let up either.

  “Come back to the study. Standing this close seems rather inhumane.” He pulled Charlotte by the arm in the direction she came.

  “Why aren’t you affected like them?”

  “I am. But what I want from you isn’t the same as what they want from you. And you are right next to me, so I suppose I’ve already gotten what I wanted.” He flashed a bigger fanged grin at her as he drew her back into the study. He sat in Sarah’s armchair. Charlotte climbed into his lap. “I apologize about earlier.”

  “So how did he do it?” she asked again. She was never going to ease up.

  He sighed. “It’s a process. I let him drink from me. I was walking home from the hospital one evening in December. It was snowing so hard a man could barely see the street in front of him. I remember how freezing it was. I found Francis then. In the night, he looked like a homeless man in the gutters of the city. But when I drew closer, I saw the truth of him. I recognized the pale skin—mostly the fangs.”

  “You weren’t afraid?” Charlotte’s mouth fell open. “But how could you have known what he was if you were mortal?”

  “Because back then, there were no such laws as there are now. Monsters ran rampant in mortal cities. Granted, humans didn’t believe we existed then either. But there were a select, very superstitious few, like my father, who did. When I was a boy, he used to put me to bed every night on stories and legends. I cannot fully explain it, but I just knew.”

  “What happened then?”

  “I approached him. I was very careful. He spoke French to me, but I barely understood a word. You must know he did not carry the gallant image he does now. His black eyes were sunken and hazy. His skin wasn’t pearly, but rather pallid, like an onion. For whatever reason, he had not fed in a very long time. I knew he was starving.

  “I sat down next to him on the curb, and rolled up my coat sleeve. I remembered how he looked at me, unsure. But I nodded at him. ‘It is all right,’ I said. ‘Do it.’

  “He bit down on my wrist. It felt like shards of glass, ice in my veins, pulling the blood out of me. A few seconds went by, but they felt like hours. I was getting weaker and weaker as I cried out in pain in the street. I tried to fight him off, but it was too late. He had taken too muc
h for me. I was nearly dead.

  “Francis panicked. I blacked out after that, but remember waking up in an apartment somewhere. There was a fireplace. I was warm. I was still mortal, but I was so close to death. He was there, hovering over me, speaking in English then. I understood pieces of it. He was asking me a question, giving me a choice. ‘I’m sorry,’ I remember him saying to me most of all. He repeated it over and over.”

  “He was giving you a choice to die or be like him,” Charlotte concluded.

  His eyes flickered to her face once. “Yes. I was not ready to die. I answered ‘yes’ to whatever he was asking me. Then I remember him slicing open his own neck and having me drink from him. He clutched my head to him as though he were a nursing child.”

  Charlotte swallowed. Valek stayed lost in his memories.

  “But the process wasn’t complete until I drank from a human. I would be in limbo until I committed the ultimate act.”

  “Your wife?”

  “No.” Valek’s gaze dropped to the floor. “No, I couldn’t bear it. Of course I wanted her to be with me. I only revisited our apartment, unbeknownst to her. I watched over her. She was in mourning. She thought I was dead. There was no way I could face her as I was. I preferred she thought I was with God, than with Lucifer.”

  “You aren’t, Valek.” Charlotte touched his cool cheek. “You are more good than anyone else I know.”

  He glanced at her again, a pained smile coloring his features. “Everyone you know is damned just as I am, Lottie. It is the truth. I have come to terms with it.”

  Charlotte frowned and rested her head on his collar. “How did she die, Valek?” This woman had existed a little under a century ago, but Charlotte empathized with her more than she had with anyone before.

  “She died later that same winter. Pneumonia. I probably could have helped her.” He absentmindedly brought his hand to his chin, eyes swelling a bit. “But it was just easier for me to watch her go. She had no one. Her heart was broken, as mine was. Somehow, it seemed better to just let her go.”