by Lila Huff
“What do you want to see?” I looked at him with a confused expression and he clarified, “if you could go anywhere, where would you want to go?”
I thought for a moment, “I guess, I’d like to see London. I didn’t get much of a chance during my last visit.”
“That’s too easy,” he said with a smirk. “You’re already looking at London.”
I looked at the city before me again, and I wondered why I hadn’t noticed the illuminated face of Big Ben, standing prominently in the skyline.“Oh, well then, how about Atlantis. I’m sure that’s real in some form or another.”
“Yes, Atlantis is real, and I’d love to take you there someday, but it would be kind of rude to just drop in on Siris like that.”
“Siris lives in Atlantis?” I had just been joking
“Yeah, she prefers to dwell under the water.”
“Well, since my ideas aren’t good enough, you’ll just have to decide,” I said crossing my arms as though I was upset, the smug expression on my face gave away my lie.
“I’ll take you on a little tour,” he said with a smile. “For now, I want you to just close your eyes and think of coming to me.”
“As opposed to taking two steps?” I asked sarcastically.
“I’m going to show you how a Lilitu travels,” he said with a smile. “If it helps, think ‘Take me to Demetrius.’”
I was about to ask another question when Demetrius closed his eyes and he started to decompose. It was as though his body was sand that was being gently blown away by the wind and being turned to smoke as it was caught up in the air. I watched in awe and then I was alone on the balcony.
I stood there for a brief second, before I closed my eyes and clenched my fists.
Take me to Demetrius. I felt utterly ridiculous. I waited for the laughter that would soon come from the curtains in the window.
“That was rather impressive,” Demetrius said, and my eyes sprung open.
We were in an alley way of sorts and I heard people on the nearby street talking in an Asian language. A hot steam vent released behind me – though, as with the cold, it did not affect me – and it was just barely daylight out. “Where are we?” I asked, as I tried to see out onto the street.
“Beijing. Next stop.” And with those few words he allowed himself to be blown away again.
Demetrius, I thought, slightly annoyed with this game of hide and seek. I didn’t close my eyes this time and I saw what looked like a million granules as the walls around me broke apart and reassembled themselves into massive rock formations. The afternoon sun beat down on the snow covered canyon walls.
“You could have stayed in Beijing, seen the town a little,” Demetrius said from his perch in a tree that hung out into a giant crack in the earth.
“The Grand Canyon?” I asked, trying to sound annoyed. “I’ve been here before.”
“Alright then! Next stop!”
Before he had finished his exodus I quickly thought, Stay with him, and was on my way too.
We were on a tropical island, looking out toward the blue water as palm trees rustled quietly behind us. Small children were playing in the sand. One little girl who had been filling her bucket with sand stopped patting the top of her bucket and stared at us, wide eyed and mouth agape.
“Welcome to paradise,” Demetrius said quietly. “Recognize it?”
I did. I hadn’t been to Hawaii in ages, but I could still remember the beach at Ka’anapali. I just nodded, as I watched the snorkelers swimming farther out, and the sailboats anchored just beyond them.
“Good. Next.” I found myself being sucked away from the tropical sun a bit too quickly. I had just barely seen the little girl’s eyes widen impossibly.
We landed in a strange house that was boarded up and all of its furniture had large white cloths covering them. We were there for only two seconds; that’s the number of stokes the old grandfather clock in the corner – the only item not covered – was able to strike, Tick, Tock. Demetrius didn’t even say next. And the room dissolved before me.
I was a little worried when the granules showed no differentiation, and then they came together and I saw the mountainous piles of snow in front of me. I laughed at the idea of someone seeing me here, in a ball gown and nothing else.
“You’re very good at this,” Demetrius said from behind me.
“I try,” I smiled at him; taunting him, “Where are we now?” I asked, looking through the snow flurries toward the dim purple sky.
“Rovaniemi, Finland,” he said calmly, “at least that’s the closest city.”
“I’m going to vote that we no longer make trips to rural Scandinavia.” I shivered habitually as the ice and snow swirled about me.
Demetrius laughed and was gone like a flurry of snow, and I followed after. We were back on the balcony again.
“You are very quick to follow. How do you manage that?” he asked, his eyes narrowed in anticipation of the answer.
“Well, you told me that all I had to do was think ‘take me to Demetrius’, I just took it one step further by thinking ‘stay with Demetrius.’” I watched his face for a reaction.
“Clever girl,” he looked at me appraisingly. “Maybe those six months did do you good.”
I reached out and gently hit him with a balled fist. “If you’re going to keep talking about it then I can’t guarantee that it won’t happen again.”
“Fair enough,” he said, raising his hands up in surrender as he walked back into the room.
“Metri?” I asked as I followed him into the room, I decided it was easier to shorten his name, “did you have strange dreams – or I guess hallucinations, when you had your period of being comatose?”
“No, I simply sat there staring at a wall; it was like my mind shut down.” He looked at me suspiciously. “Does this have anything to do with why you were trying to beat the crap out of yourself toward the end?”
“Oh, the spiders…” I said quietly. “I had a delusion of sorts that there were millions of spiders on me, trying to kill me.”
“Wasn’t death what you wanted?” he asked in a whisper.
“I thought it was.” I confessed. “But I hate spiders.”
He just smiled, “it was all that I could do to hold you down,” he laughed now, as he remembered it. “If anyone had walked in they would have thought you were trying to fight me off.”
“Well… do you have eight legs and a thorax?” I looked at him as though I was trying to see through a costume.
I laughed as he patted down his sides. “No. I don’t seem to anyway.”
“See then, you’re fine.” I sat on the bed again and looked about the room, it was so strange to think that this room had been my tomb for the last six months, it felt barely longer than a day. “Metri, will I ever be able to see my parents again?”
I heard a book drop and looked toward the desk and saw his pained expression. I knew the answer.
“It’s just that… well, as far as they know, you’ve been dead for the past six months.”
“I went directly to dead? I wasn’t even a missing person?”
“No, you were a missing person for about two months, then they found a body in an alley way that had been so mangled there was no way to tell who it was, but she was found with your clothes.”
“How did she end up with my clothes?”
“I’d guess that she pinched them from your room at the bed and breakfast. That’s probably how she ended up with your ID as well.”
I just looked at him. I couldn’t say anything. There really was no way that I was going to be able to go back and see my parents. At least there wasn’t any way for them to be able to see me.
I shook my head, hoping that my thoughts would be erased like the lines of an Etch-A-Sketch. “So, tell me more about the myths surrounding our dreaded enemies.”
I swung my feet up to lie down on the bed and Demetrius came to sit next to me, crossing his booted feet on top of the black duvet.
“The Asakku are where the vampire myths have come from… in fact they are where a lot of myths have come from.” He said it so casually, as though he was giving a biology lecture, but this was a subject that would easily retain my attention. “The Asakku drink blood. It’s not something they need, but it gives them a hallucinogenic type of high. It is something that they are very easily addicted to.
“It is the reason that their eyes glow red. I have never seen a full Asakku last more than a few weeks before he drinks his first blood and becomes quickly addicted. They are the reason that human lore tells tales of the vampire. Most of the lore is trite and we ignore it. There have been a few that have seen an Asakku and lived to tell, most of them are quickly carted off to insane asylums. The few that have chosen to capitalize on it…” he smiled widely, “Stoker for instance, he seemed to have some selective memory when it came to composing his story, perhaps he thought he’d sell more copies if he vamped it up, pardon the pun.” The smile faded.
“Does that mean that we could become addicts?” I wondered idly if I would ever have the stomach for killing. My thoughts told me I would not. My stomach turned when I watched a gory movie. I would not fare any better in a real situation.
“Presumably,” Demetrius answered, looking to the floor, absently memorizing the pattern in the carpet most likely. “I don’t plan on finding out personally,” he looked up at me then, with a look that added, and I’m not going to let you find out either.
“Nor do I,” I said to pacify him. “Ok, so the sun doesn’t kill them, they don’t need blood to survive, it’s just an addiction, what else? What about holy water and wooden stakes?”
“Both myths, holy water just gets them wet, and a stake won’t do much to them, you saw the effect that letter opener had on you.” He smiled at my attempted suicide. It was rather comical now.
“Splinters?” I guessed. He just nodded, so I asked, “What other legends have the Asakku had a hand in creating?” and what was the truth? I wondered.
“Well… you saw Hephaestus.” He said with an errant laugh. “Your description of him would be similar to some accounts of werewolves. Would it not?”
“That’s true I guess. Do they all look like that?”
“No, they each have different forms they take. Hephaestus likes the jackal because of its wolf-like appearance, and because of its connections in lore.”
“You mean its relation to Anubis, the Egyptian god of embalming and the underworld?” I prodded.
“Yes, Hephaestus may be Greek by birth, but he has a great fondness for the ancient Egyptian culture.”
“If you wanted to inspire fear into the hearts of your victims, adopting a god-like persona would be one way to do it,” I said absently. I shook my head a little to shoo away the thoughts of mummies that had crept their way into my mind. “What about the others?”
“The only others I’ve encountered that are still around still take the more menacing of creatures as their likeness. Aleksandr, usually takes the head of a jaguar, Giancarlo who takes the head of a dragon and Miguel prefers the black bear.” Demetrius smiled. “But unlike the popular human beliefs, the moon doesn’t control them, nor does a silver bullet affect them.”
“I gathered as much.” I smiled back.
“And I know that you noticed the eyes,” he said with a strange smile. “That accounts for the myths about demons with glowing eyes.”
How could I forget? “Yes, well I would have thought that I was being stalked by a demon.” I shook away the skin-crawling feeling that came with my thoughts of that night.
“There are some things that are not lore or myth that have been unaccredited to the Asakku… or namely to Hephaestus.” He sighed, “it is amazing the terrors that the human race thinks its people capable of.”
“Like what?” I was curious, after all of the names that they’ve incurred, what name would not have found its way to them?
“Did Lilith tell you that Hephaestus tends to like to go by the nickname of Jack.”
“Yes, she told me about that.” I thought back to her reference, but only for a second. “What significance does that have to myths and legends?”
“Well, Jack had a little bit of fun in the latter half of eighteen-eighty-eight, down in White Chapel.”
“Are you saying that Hephaestus was Jack the Ripper?” I was pretty sure that he was pulling my chain, but he simply nodded. A small laugh escaped my lips and I smiled at the irony of being killed by Jack the Ripper.
“We almost destroyed him then,” he had a look of disappointment on his face. “Jack is one of the worst of the Asakku. He’s severely addicted and seems to have no moral compass. He’s also the cleverest of his kind that we’ve ever encountered.”
“The Asakku have moral compasses?” I asked teasingly. “I thought they all lost their souls in the transformation.”
“Don’t let what I said fool you. The Asakku are an unchangeable evil.” His face grew dark with concern.
“So there’s no hope for rehabilitation?” I was teasing again, hoping that he would not take offence.
He was not in a playful mood. “None.” He responded coldly as he turned to look out the window.
“Ok. So, Haphaestus is Jack the Ripper, and he’s started up his spree again. Why aren’t you going out after him?”
“It’s not that simple,” he sighed. “Gallu doesn’t know about you or me, about the existence of hybrids. If she did, she’d be looking for a way to build up an army of her own half-breeds.”
I was annoyed by this. “So Father expects us to cower here when we could be of use out on the streets of London? Saving people from fates like ours – or ones that are worse?”
“It’s slightly more complicated than that,” he said in a whisper. “I think I need to tell you about how I came to be here.” He looked at me with a strange sorrow in his eyes and swallowed loudly before he whispered, “follow me,” and disappeared as if blown away again.
I closed my eyes and felt myself sink through the bed.
“My tragic story starts here,” he said quietly.
I opened my eyes and looked around me. It was the same room we had been in for those brief seconds when we had gone on our ten minute world tour. We were in the boarded up house. The furniture still covered by their white cloth shrouds, all mourning the death of the house that sheltered them.
10. Reaper
-Paul-
Gallu sent for me shortly after Carlo and I returned from my unsanctioned visit to my parent’s house and our joy ride. I wasn’t sure what to take from this visit. I hadn’t seen Gallu since my first few hours here. She didn’t tend to condescend to socialize with us. Well, me at least.
The gold room was illuminated once more when I entered; Gallu and Jack were standing atop the high throne platform. They seemed to be deep in discussion, perhaps he was telling her of my questions about Ellie. I no longer had any reason to place any faith in those that surrounded me. From what I could tell they were murderers and thieves. But I would have to blend in with them long enough to discover which one of them it was that took her life. I could hope to stay alive long enough to take their flame, after that I had no qualms about my fate. If I was destroyed, so be it. I had died once already and frankly this seemed like Hell.
Jack stiffened slightly when he finally observed my presence in the room, but Gallu turned to me as fluidly as ever. “Paul,” she said with a bright smile as she waved Jack away. He walked behind Gallu’s throne and I heard a click. We were alone before she continued, “come here Paul. Let me get a better look at you.”
I was suddenly reminded of my great grandmother, but Gallu didn’t have the half-moon glasses – that would have been suspended around Gran’s neck by a beaded gold chain – and so she didn’t bring them to her eyes to inspect me.
I felt like a dog, but I had no choice but to obey. Blend in, I thought. I needed to act the part. Be an Asakku to the very depth of my being though my nonexistent heart wasn’t in it. I
had to do all of this for Ellie, and I knew that that would be the one thing that would allow me to get through this.
I ascended the stairs slowly, deliberately taking each step one foot at a time. Everything I would do from now on would be in an attempt to remain calm and focused. I wouldn’t give any hint to my misgivings, or my seditious thoughts. But those seditious thoughts were extinguished for a moment, as they gave way to the memories of that first day, the day that Gallu had been so interested in my love life, and my anger flared.
I hadn’t made the connection until now, and I suddenly wondered if I had somehow been the proverbial final nail in her coffin. Had I told her Ellie’s name? No I hadn’t, but her involvement would mean that her death was definitely tied to my being here, and for now, I was willing to assume that she had called for Ellie’s death. It only made sense if she was, as she claimed, charged with the collection of souls. She knew my name before I had told her, why wouldn’t she have been able to discern Ellie’s just by her connection to me?
“You look so pensive Paul,” she said in quiet condescension. “I haven’t called you here to be punished.”
I slipped back into a relaxed pose, doing my best to maintain my cool. All that I could see in front of me was a conspirator in the death of my friend.
“It is time for your first collection,” she continued, and the fire in her eyes flashed at the word collection. “Come, take my hand.” She held her pale hand with its long slender fingers out to me, palm up.
I had not noticed before, but her skin was covered in marks. They were similar to those that were slowly darkening to charcoal grey on mine, but hers were gold and the swirled around her limbs in a much more delicate pattern.
I covered the last three steps in a moment, placed my hand in hers, and I suddenly saw a girl’s face. I pulled my hand away and shook my head, trying to figure out what had just happened. Gallu was still waiting, her palm still upturned, with a patient look on her face.
“It can be a little disorienting the first time,” she said with an apologetic expression.
I replaced my hand in hers and the girl’s face returned. It showed me exactly where she would be, where I could collect her soul, the only unknown was the time.
