Eternal Dawn

by Kerrion, Jade;

  His eyes flashed open. Reality smashed his vision into pieces, but enough fragments remained to keep the smile on his lips. “It’s beautiful out there.”

  A flicker of guilt danced across Tera’s face. Her gaze darted to the pale glow that encircled the uppermost level of Malum Turris like a bracelet.

  Erich’s eyes narrowed. Why?

  He returned his attention to her. He opened his mouth to ask the question, but his voice trailed into silence. Once again, his breath caught at the flawless perfection of her features. Tears stung his eyes. Compared to her, the most stunning human was scarcely more than a gargoyle. He quashed his curiosity. He did not need answers. The magnificent beauty of nature lay beyond the dome, but the greater beauty stood in front of him. “It’s far more beautiful in here.”

  She turned back to him. After several moments of silent study, she said, “You are content.”

  “Why do you sound surprised?”

  “No human has learned to be content, not in the seven hundred and fifty years of Aeternae Noctis’s existence.”

  He laughed. “There’s always a first.”

  Her expression remained skeptical.

  He waved his hand to encompass his surroundings. “I have everything I need here. Quill, parchment, the quiet of the night, and inspiration.”

  “You love the night.”

  Erich nodded. “Yes, I do.” Acknowledgment of that simple fact flooded him with peace.

  She smiled, radiant beneath the moonlight. “Be blessed by the night.” Her wings spread, beat down, and lifted her into the sky. For a moment, she hovered above him before turning away, darting like an arrow toward Malum Turris.

  After that first midnight encounter, Erich saw Tera often—at least once each night of the full moon. She did not offer reasons for her presence in the city. Surely it could not be to watch over the vampires’ activities; his people feared the vampires too much to put up a fight. She seemed approachable, even friendly, but her reputation warned him to keep his distance. Vampires gave her a wide berth, though Erich sensed their distance was inspired by respect rather than fear. Regardless, she lingered for an hour or two by the fountain in the city square, reading his poems, or far more often, watching him draw.

  Even she, he realized with a self-mocking irony, had no appetite for his poetry. Apparently, no one—human, vampire, or icrathari—did. He was obviously as fine a poet as he was a skilled warrior. Yet who needed poetry when his muse was present? When she was with him, words failed him; he could not write. Instead, his quill danced across parchment in an attempt to immortalize her. He ached to touch the silver strands that escaped her braid to frame her face. Was her skin as soft as he imagined in his sleep each night? What would her voice—the now-familiar breath of silk over steel—sound like when roughened by desire?

  Erich could not get her out of his mind and lived only for each night of the full moon, when he could see her again.

  He had only hours to wait, he realized when he glanced up at the sky late one night—or whatever passed as night in a city of eternal darkness. With a smile, he looked down at the parchment in his hand. He had never fancied himself an artist, but perhaps, he had lacked only the right inspiration. A detailed image of her face with its solemn eyes and unsmiling mouth stared back at him. It was beautiful because it was too flawless to be otherwise, but her expression made it enchanting. It married hope with despair, a poignant reminder that the heights of one could not exist without the depths of the other.

  It still fell short of the indescribable expression she habitually wore, but it was close. He would, he knew, spend the rest of his life attempting to capture it.

  A flurry of motion skimmed across his peripheral vision. Strong hands seized him and dragged him to his feet.

  His parchment fluttered to the ground.

  “What is this?” a deep male voice taunted. Gerald, the blacksmith, picked up the piece of paper. “It’s the icrathari.” He tossed the parchment aside and spit on it.

  Erich twisted but could not break free from the unyielding grip of the two men who held him. “Give it back to me.”

  “You’re surprisingly coherent, for a blood slave.”

  His eyes narrowed. “Blood slave?” He shook his head, his denial frantic. “I’m not a blood slave.”

  “The demon didn’t force its blood down your throat and turn you into an unthinking, worshipful zombie? Of course it did. Why else would you consort with it?”

  “Tera’s not a demon.”

  “Tera?” a female voice cut in. A young woman in her mid-twenties, scarcely older than Erich, pushed past the men who surrounded him. A cascade of flame-colored curls framed her face. Her green eyes were narrow slits. “And so it has a name. Does it know yours? Will it come when we make you scream its name?”

  “Yuri,” Erich pleaded with his cousin. “Don’t do this.”

  “Don’t do what? Don’t fight back? It’s better than cowering. Better than living with guilt. I couldn’t protect them.” Her voice cracked with pain. “They took Jana and Jack last month. They took my babies.”

  “Oh, Yuri…” His heart broke for her and for her bright-faced twins who had just turned five.

  “The vampires and the icrathari…they’ll pay. I’ll make them.” Her lips twisted into a grimace. “And you’ll help me.”

  Against Tera?

  His affection for his cousin, for family, warred against his instinctive need to protect his muse. Tera was not human, but neither was she a demon. She was not the monster they believed her to be. Turmoil churned through him. He shook his head. “No.”

  A sneer crossed Yuri’s face. Her chin tilted up, and she glanced at Gerald. “You handle Erich. I’ll make sure the others are ready.”

  Erich caught a glimpse of several men holding a net, its corners weighed down with stones.

  An image of Tera, coiled helplessly beneath a net, flashed through his mind. Fear surged adrenaline through him. “Yuri, no!” He lunged forward, breaking free, but Gerald’s companions pulled him back and tightened their grip on his arms.

  The blacksmith leered at him. “Yuri wasn’t too specific on what not to do to you. By the time we’re done, you’ll be singing anything we tell you to.”

  He gritted his teeth. Like hell he would.

  Gerald drew back his heavy hand and backhanded Erich. Bone snapped from the impact. Pain exploded across his face. He gasped. Tears swam into his eyes, blurring his vision against his tormentors.

  If only it were that easy to escape the agony that followed. He did not cry out when Gerald drove ham-sized fists into his face and stomach, or when the repeated blows bludgeoned him face-first to the ground. The blacksmith’s voice boomed through his aching head. “You’re not so pretty anymore. Go on, Erich. Scream for the demon. Maybe it will come to save you.”

  No, don’t come. He bit down on his lip until it was bloody.

  Gerald scoffed. “Stretch his arms out. Both of them.”

  Dazed with pain, Erich stared at the ground as Gerald’s massive shadow loomed over him. A gray mouse scurried across the pavement, darting from light into darkness. Shadows shifted into the distinct shape of a large hammer. Gerald swung the hammer over his head. “Your last chance, Erich. Call for her or you’ll never write—never hold anything—ever again.”

  Erich closed his eyes. Blood dripped from his nose and mouth to stain the streets. The cobblestones felt smooth and cold beneath his fingertips. His voice trembled, but he spoke without hesitation. “Go to hell.”

  The hammer swung down. Iron smashed against stone, crushing fragile bones between them.

  Anguish—raw and brutal—shredded him. Erich screamed then, only once. He was scarcely conscious when Gerald brought the hammer down on his other hand. His eyes fluttered open. As if in a dream, he stared at the bloodied, mangled pulp where his hands had been. Oh, God. No…

  His gaze traveled beyond his ruined hands to lock on the parchment carelessly tossed to the ground. Tiny spla
tters of his blood marked the edges of the parchment, but his precious drawing of Tera’s face stared solemnly back at him. Despair and hope. In that moment, he knew only despair. Don’t come. It’s a trap. Don’t save me.

  An inhuman war cry—part siren, part harpy—pierced the night. The people cowered, reflexively huddling into fetal balls. Four silver-haired icrathari, pale against the dark walls of Malum Turris, streaked down into the city square. Their black wings stirred the air into a vicious vortex. Claws and fangs ripped through the humans. Blood sprayed. The water in the fountain turned crimson.

  His people, bleeding and dying, faded into his peripheral vision. Their screams became white noise. Erich crawled forward, dragging his injured body an excruciating inch at a time across the cobblestones. He had to protect Tera’s portrait. It was all he had left, the last work he would ever produce.

  He placed a shattered hand on the edges of the parchment and held it in place against the panic and terror flooding the city square. Heavy, booted feet trampled over his body in desperate haste to escape the fury of the vampires and icrathari. Frequently, a dying gasp heralded the low thud of another body falling lifelessly to the bloodstained streets.

  Erich closed out a world pulsing with pain and withdrew to a place in his mind where he could share the night—quiet and peaceful—with Tera. They exchanged no words, but none was needed. They were united by a love for beauty in its myriad shapes and forms—both human and icrathari. It was the only world he understood, the only world he craved.

  He lingered in that dreamlike state when delicate yet strong hands turned him around and gathered him up. The touch was gentle but he fought it, reaching down for the portrait on the ground. Another pale hand picked up the parchment, folded it, and tucked it into his shirt. With a quiet sigh, he pressed his crushed hands against his shirt, against Tera’s portrait, and closed his eyes.

  “Erich,” Tera’s voice recalled him. “Focus on my voice.”

  She was moving, each rapid step jolting shards of pain through his broken body.

  He did not want to move. He just wanted to stay with her until the end. It would not be much longer.

  A chill, colder than anything he had experienced, shivered through his body. The steady rhythm of Tera’s booted feet tapped against steel, not stone. He forced his eyes open and stared without comprehension at the black walls closing in around him. Straight lines of corridors flowed into perfect curves of corners before straightening once more. Seamless construction. Smooth, flawless surfaces.

  Was he in Malum Turris? It was like no place he had ever seen. Its use of steel, its impossibly perfect construction, and sterile, otherworldly appearance placed the tower beyond human skill and knowledge, beyond their time, perhaps even beyond their world.

  Tera stepped over a threshold. Steel whispered against steel. In front of her, the floor yawned apart. Hot air rushed through the opening and thickened into steam as it collided with the cold air within the tower.

  Nonchalant, she stepped into the void. Moments later, he was falling, though still cradled in Tera’s arms. Her wings flared out, controlling the speed of their descent. Uncomfortable warmth enveloped him. Even the air smelled different. It grated in his lungs, as if infused with a million tiny particles.

  His lips trembled as he tried to shape words, but injury and exhaustion stole his voice. Where are you taking me?

  The searing breath of heated air became near unbearable, and he closed his eyes.

  Hell. You’re taking me to hell.

  But the heat passed. When he opened his eyes, he lay on parched soil. Tera leaned over him, her lovely face cast into shadow by the massive domed structure that hovered several hundred feet above the ground, carried aloft by powerful gusts of air. Within the curve of the dome, he could see the cathedral, the city hall, and the buildings of Aeternae Noctis. Beneath the apex of the dome, seemingly anchoring the dome to its platform was Malum Turris.

  His mind reeled. It was impossible! Aeternae Noctis was built on the ground. How often had he pressed against the curve of the dome and stared at the unchanging splendor of the world outside the dome. The eternal mountains, the endless cascade of the waterfall over pine forests and lush fields?

  Erich closed his eyes slowly, deliberately, and willed his senses to return. He willed the nightmare away.

  When he opened his eyes, the domed city of eternal night was farther still, racing away from the distant glow on the horizon.

  But how? And why?

  He recalled Tera’s guilty glance at the ring of light emerging from the uppermost floors of the black tower. The unchanging perfect world outside the dome was an illusion cast and sustained by Malum Turris.

  It did not answer the question why.

  He looked back at Tera. His lips shaped the word he no longer had the strength to utter aloud. Why?

  “Trust me,” she murmured. She turned his face to the side, exposing the length of his neck. With a slither of bone against flesh, her pearlescent fingernails extended into curved talons, and she drew its sharp edge against his tender flesh, severing his jugular vein.

  Blood spilled out of him and vanished, sinking into the thirsty earth, leaving dark stains. A deep chill expanded from a place deep within him and crept out to his extremities. His vision shrank as darkness closed in. The sound of his slowing heartbeat thumped between his ears, the gap between each beat longer, each beat softer.

  He would die in her arms. No better place. Erich was too weak to smile, but he sank with gratitude into her embrace and closed his eyes.

  He was not prepared for the flood of thick liquid into his mouth—like honeyed wine, but richer and far more intoxicating. It flowed without resistance down his throat, driving the chill and the darkness away.

  His eyes flashed open as Tera pulled away. Blood, the color of gold, trickled from a cut in her wrist. As he watched, her pale skin closed flawlessly over the cut. Her eyes were far more troubled than he had ever seen her.

  Her lips shaped a soundless whisper. “Live. Live forever.”

  Bright lights flashed through his head, blinding him. The slightest sound seemed to echo in his skull and ring through his bones. Tera spoke of life, but the scent of the earth, pungent with death, rose to fill his nostrils.

  His senses reeled from the bewildering and dazzling overload, spinning his mind into panic.

  What is happening to me?

  She turned away.

  No, Tera. Please don’t go. Don’t leave me.

  His body sweated and trembled. Everything…too loud, too bright. Too much.

  Tera returned. Desperate, he reached for her, the anchor of his dissolving sanity. Her presence held the terror, the fear at bay. His mental voice sobbed with relief. You came back. I knew you would.

  Gently, she picked him up and deposited him into a shallow opening she had dug in the soil. It took him a moment to realize that it was a grave.

  For a moment, her hand lingered on his face before she pulled away. The wrenching ache in her eyes steeled into resolution.

  She stood and stepped back. Dirt flew into his face. It covered his body, burying him.

  A voice, animallike, devoid of sanity, maddened by terror, rent the night.

  His voice, he realized stunned. No, no, no! Don’t leave me! I need you!

  His unheard screams went on and on, roiling through his skull, even as the world around him fell silent.

  Minutes passed. Hours. Perhaps even days.

  Time had little meaning beneath the earth. When Erich finally found the strength to push the dirt aside and drag himself from his shallow grave, he rose to a world that was nothing like the world he had seen from within the safety of the dome. No lofty mountains graced by crashing waterfalls. No pine forests or fields blessed with an abundance of wildflowers.

  Instead, a barren wasteland welcomed him—a world without water. The parched earth cracked into jagged lines that widened into crevices.

  The truth of the world beyond the dome
d sanctuary of Aeternae Noctis—a city of limited resources, where children were regularly culled for the sake of the community’s survival—was like a stake through his heart. Above him, stars glittered in a cloudless sky growing light with impending dawn.

  He stared at the brightening glow on the horizon. Fear pitched in his stomach. He was a creature of the night—he had been even as a human—but he had never feared the light before.

  Now he did, his terror instinctive, primal.

  Transfixed, he watched as the band of sunlight consumed all in its path, wringing pitiful drops of moisture from the soil and setting aflame anything that could still burn.

  His only salvation lay in the domed city of Aeternae Noctis, which raced through eternal night, but it was nowhere in sight.

  Day crept closer, ushering death in its wake.

  Erich drew in a shuddering breath. Despair crushed hope. The sunlight for which his people had yearned was the source of death. The paradise beyond the dome of which his people had dreamed was hell.

  His muse had cursed him and abandoned him to eternal life in hell.

  His bloodcurdling scream rose to the heavens, but could not drown out the sound of his breaking heart. Erich Dale, once human, now a vampire, turned and ran from the light of day. There was nothing left to do, nothing more he could do, except mourn the eternal night Tera had stolen from him.

  Continue reading ETERNAL DAY.

  Aeternae Noctis

  ETERNAL NIGHT

  1st place, Fantasy, Royal Palm Literary Award 2014

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