Darkness Falling

by David Niall Wilson

  It didn't take too long to get started, considering how many days their equipment had lain idle. Damon had already tuned his guitar, being the only one in the band who'd practiced every day without fail. Once Peyton had taken a few dozen rolls across his drums to limber his wrists, they were ready.

  It felt strange, going back to that song after everything that had happened. Sebastian had been convinced, as had Klaus, that they'd played it for the last time on the mountain. It had been so dramatic and felt so final. Now that night was like a dream, and the song like any other song.

  Sebastian's hands drifted easily into the solo on the keyboard, moving with familiarity over the notes. Damon's guitar eased in as though they'd played this music all their lives, and Peyton was right on time with the cymbals. Sebastian felt the odd, almost warped sensation that accompanied the music rising to fill the room. Melissa sat across from them, a one woman audience, and she was entranced from the start, eyes and ears tuned to every nuance of harmony.

  Sebastian was a bit surprised when Klaus began to sing. The words were different. Not every word, but enough of them to subtly change the rhythm and the harmony. Then he realized, suddenly, that Klaus must be singing the original words, the ones that Rosa had taught him on the mountain. It didn't matter. The song was the same, maybe a bit more beautiful than before, and it transported them to a new creative level that they were just beginning to believe they might be able to maintain. It was no longer so frightening, but it was exciting.

  The song died away, notes echoing from the walls and ringing in their ears, and the room snapped back to its mundane reality. Melissa shook her head and couldn't speak. She just stared at them, awestruck.

  Klaus, however, seemed to have become impervious to the strange spell the song could weave. As soon as the last notes had left his mouth, he was looking about, ready to move on to the next. His attitude was almost one of impatience as the rest of them "came down" from the music.

  With a huge effort Sebastian was able to get his fingers moving again, and he spent the next few minutes going over the progressions of the new song. It was tricky, but not nearly as difficult on the keyboard as it was on the guitar. His thoughts wandered, as the notes flowed more easily. It was beautiful, and now that it had been imprinted in his mind, it was a logical, reasonable progression of notes, though the pattern had been initially incomprehensible.

  Logic told him that there would not be many completely new concepts left in music. Why, then, did this seem so alien? There were no notes involved that had not been available to him before. The only thing he could think of was that although it seemed to sound best on a stringed instrument, they didn't have the proper one.

  Most rock music, what they'd spent their careers perfecting, was based on the guitar. Obviously, then, this had not originally been meant for the guitar, but for some other more obscure instrument.

  Damon had joined in, and with the electric guitar he was able to keep up, growing stronger each time he played the new chord, until they had the basic structure of the music down. This song, though no less magical than the other, was progressing more along the normal tracks. It was actual work to play it, and they were able to concentrate on that work, improving slowly, discovering new twists and harmonies as they went and slipping them in on the next attempt.

  Peyton had the least trouble of any of them. The rhythm was fairly straightforward, and before they knew it, everything but the lyrics was basically together. They weren't ready for a real audience yet, but they'd be able to get a good track of it down on the recorder before the day was out.

  Meanwhile, Sebastian saw that Klaus had gone to sit in a corner, where he sat hunched over his notebook and scribbling furiously. It was somewhat of a novelty to watch him write. Usually he would lock himself up in a room alone somewhere when he worked, claiming that he was unable to concentrate with others around him. This was different, though. It was more like he was trying to remember something and to get it down in writing before it could slip from his mind.

  They took a break, finally, and Sebastian walked over to peer across Klaus' shoulder at the notepad. There were several verses already down, with a scratched out and revised refrain between, and he was working on yet another. It was a long song, by popular standards. Another argument, Sebastian knew, looming between Klaus, the producers and the record company.

  "Too long," they'd say. "Won't fit a proper radio slot, now will it? Have to be trimmed."

  "You writing a book or a song?" Sebastian asked, smiling. It felt good to be working again, and he felt the ill will of the past week melting away rapidly.

  "What?" Klaus said, looking up, startled.

  "It's pretty long, isn't it?" Sebastian repeated. "How many verses are you planning?"

  "Oh, I don't know," he said, his voice and his concentration trailing away. "We may not have to use all of it, you know. I'm just trying to capture it the way I remember it. There was so much, and there are so many images to capture."

  "I thought you said you couldn't understand the words," Sebastian reminded him. "Seems like you've gotten quite a lot down, considering that."

  "I didn't understand it, exactly," he said. "But I could see things while she played. It was like a classical piece, the kind where the composer is telling a story with the music. I'm sure my lyrics will fall far short of what I felt."

  Another first; humility was not one of Klaus' strong points. Sebastian shook his head and returned to the keyboards. It was getting kind of late, and his stomach was already grumbling to be fed.

  "What do you say we take what we've got and get it down on tape," he said. "We've done about all we can with this in one session, and I'm starving."

  "Sounds good to me," Peyton grinned. "I need to get back over to that Inn and see if I can't straighten things out with Claudia. All this work's made me thirsty, as well."

  "What do you say, Klaus?" Sebastian asked. The others didn't even wait for him to answer, but instead grabbed their instruments and took their places. Damon set the tape machine to record and hit the pause button, checking the level on his guitar quietly.

  "It does sound quite good," Melissa said shyly from where she'd been sitting near the door. "One of your best, I think. I can hardly wait to hear the words."

  Klaus rose to his feet and moved to the microphone without a comment. He was so quiet, so agreeable to everything they were doing, that it was unnerving. Sebastian had known him for too long not to know that something strange was going on.

  Klaus looked up, and Sebastian launched into a short, impromptu solo that led Damon into the main progression. Guitar and keyboard played a couple of bars and Peyton joined in with a sudden flurry, adding a new dimension to the sound.

  Klaus was in no hurry. He let two full stanzas pass before he began, eyes intently focused on the notepad in his hand.

  And then his voice was there, blending in with customary surety and almost magical precision. Afterword, Sebastian would admit he hadn't caught more than a few of the words that first time through. It was about the mountain, the trees and the stone, and all of the men who'd come before. It was a song about Klaus, a twisting of what he remembered of the original lyrics to fill in the gaps of what he wanted desperately to remember about his own life.

  Sebastian frowned slightly. He again got the eerie, detached sense that Klaus' singing was just too perfect and effortless. There was none of the struggling with transitions the band had just hammered back and forth on their instruments. If anything, they were struggling to keep up with Klaus. It was uncanny.

  When they'd finished, he walked quickly to the recorder and snapped it off, then stared at the machine for a long time without moving. The rest of the band shed their instruments, almost in relief, and stowed gear in a quick bustle.

  Peyton and Damon looked no more comfortable with what they'd just accomplished than Sebastian did, and Klaus ignored them all as if they weren't there at all. It was a turning point of some sort, and he seemed to feel it as we
ll as they did.

  "I'll skip on supper," Klaus said, not surprisingly. "I want to finish working on these lyrics before Rosa shows up. With luck, I'll pick up one or two more ideas before tomorrow."

  "This is all great," Peyton said, a look of concern crossing his face, "but are we going to write any of this music ourselves? I mean, a good drunken roll-in-the-hay song would do me good about now, or even a plain old love song."

  "You think you can do better then?" Klaus snapped, suddenly taut with anger. "What we're doing transcends anything we've ever done. You want to go back to playing crap for teenagers?"

  "I'm sorry," Peyton said, backing up a bit in surprise. "I was only asking. Jesus, Klaus, lighten up."

  Klaus' tension melted as quickly as it had appeared, and he walked over to lay his hand on Peyton's shoulder. "I'm sorry," he said. "All of this has just started to get to me, is all. We'll talk about the music more tomorrow. Not too early, though."

  The grin he left them with was almost the Klaus of old. He slipped out of the door and was gone, headed for his cottage at a rapid pace, leaving them to stand and stare at one another in consternation.

  "I guess we should be happy he's up and about," Peyton said finally, "but I'm damned if I can feel too good about it. There's something strange about the way he's acting, and I'd bet a keg of beer that this `Rosa' is behind it. Do you suppose Klaus could be in love?"

  "I don't know," Sebastian answered, heading for the door. "Somehow I don't think that's it, or not all of it. Everything he does seems different now, like he's moved to some new level of thought, or something. I mean, maybe you all are just getting used to this business of writing songs on the spur of the moment and didn't notice, but he didn't spend a full hour on those lyrics, and I didn't hear him so much as hum the tune before we recorded that tape. To listen to him, though, you'd think it was Klaus that had spent the past three hours sweating over that music. It's starting to give me the creeps."

  Nobody commented on that. They just headed out to the Flagon and Barrel to eat, and to think. Sebastian was beginning to hope that they could finish with what we were doing and leave the mountain and the village behind them soon. That very moment, in fact, wouldn't have been soon enough.

  Chapter Twelve

  Time had become a blur for Copper, a surreal progression of new sensations and fragmenting concepts. Everything he'd known, everything he'd been comfortable believing, seemed suspect all at once. His body was now completely dead to the mundane world he'd lived in for so many years, adrift in an ethereal miasma of strange metamorphoses and shifting states of consciousness.

  Even perched as he'd been on the verge of transformation, half human and half – something else– something more and less in subtle ways, even then he'd had no idea the depth of the change he sought. He'd been as far removed from the reality of what was offered as he'd thought he'd been beyond the humanity he'd left behind…maybe farther.

  As his body changed, so did his perception. Light affected his sight in different ways, as though he were viewing an entirely different spectrum. Everything appeared more vital and intense. He felt more at one with the air that surrounded him than he did a separate being moving through it.

  Alicia was as delighted as he was, spending hours showing him new things, sharing the night with him. They avoided Alex, who was proving more and more aggressive in his attempts to assert himself and his superiority. The man's taunts and veiled threats made Copper's mind whirl with anger and frustration. Another new thing to experience, the intensified emotion that came with deeper perception.

  Rosa sensed the tension, and though she occasionally became impatient with it, she did all she could to keep Alex busy. The two of them hunted together, leaving Alicia and Copper to their own devices.

  It was the second night of his "rebirth" that Alicia took him out. There was no instruction on the change; she merely said, "Come," and slipped through the cracks of the door without thought. Before he could voice his surprise, he found that he had followed, though he had absolutely no idea how he had done so.

  His senses reeled under the onslaught of new sights, sounds and smells. It was confusing – even frightening. There was nothing truly "new" to be seen. Trees still lined the trail at the bottom of the mountain, the village was still lit up with a dim glow of lanterns against the darkness, and the few villagers still awake moved about their mundane tasks just as they had for as long as he could remember.

  Even when Alicia had shared her hunt with him, it had not been like this. The glaring, vivid reality of it was staggering, almost blinding. One moment he slipped down and away from himself, and the next he stood erect, shadowed by the side of the building, and Alicia was grabbing his arm to support him. He didn't speak, what would he say?

  There was a deep beauty to the scene, a memory he knew would be etched in his mind forever, and somehow she knew not to spoil it. A sheen of moonlight coated everything like some mystic aura. Where life existed, the trees and the occasional living thing that passed, there rose quivering, ethereal threads that bound one to the other. It was like a giant neon tapestry, woven against a backdrop of ebony velvet. He moved forward, walking out into the street, and she pulled him back gently.

  "No," she said quietly. "You must avoid the village. Have you forgotten what you are? The mountain is ours, let us go."

  And just like that she was no longer standing beside him with her long, raven tresses blowing wildly in the wind, but was once more the wolf, moving gracefully off into the shadows. His upright, human form dissolved with as little effort or thought as it had passed beneath the door. This time, instead of being trapped in Alicia's mind, he ran beside her.

  As they moved, he noticed that there were other, more subtle threads that bound him to her. They were silvery and beautiful, and they gave him a sense of security he couldn't have explained. As he hit the side of the mountain he let loose a howl that shook the trees and shimmered through the tapestry that was the night like ripples across a stream.

  They glided over the ground in unison, ignoring its covering of brambles and stones, crossed the path that wound up the mountain and headed deeper into the forest. He knew they would hunt less enticing game than men this night, but it didn't matter. He knew from long experience that the urge to feed did not come upon them nearly as often as the urge to kill. Though his hunger was always with him, it was not all consuming, more like a throbbing ache that rode in the pit of his stomach.

  They passed up the mountain, and he heard sounds on the breeze, sounds that did not seem a part of the forest. He hesitated, stopping atop a large fallen tree to listen. Alicia listened as well, and they heard the music, lifting up and onto the breeze, joining into the song of the night. Dimly Copper recognized it as Rosa, and Alex, the pure voice of the one and the crackling purity of the flute from the other were sounds he'd lived with, off and on, for long years.

  It was mesmerizing now, tugging at his heart. He almost turned from their path, wanting to be closer, to be a part of the sound. Suddenly he understood Rosa's love of the music, even Alex's seemingly uncharacteristic mastery of the flute. It was as though it held a power over him, drawing him nearly as strongly as the scent of blood he'd been tracing moments before.

  "Come," Alicia's voice cut through his thoughts again. "They will be there when we return. Let us hunt."

  Spinning gracefully, he followed her into the shadows, running easily. So much to learn. So much to love. Playfully, he nipped at her tail as they went, chasing her into the night.

  ~*~

  The clearing wasn't empty when Klaus reached it that evening. Rosa was there ahead of him, sprawled out on the stone steps with her lute, and there was another, a tall golden haired man with eyes that burned like fire. He held a flute loosely in his hands, and his manner had the haughty arrogance of royalty.

  "Klaus," she said as he approached slowly, "I want you to meet Alex. Alex, this is the young man I've been telling you about, the vocalist from the concert."
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br />   Alex nodded disdainfully, a strange animosity evident in his eyes. Klaus' presence obviously offended him, and at the same time seemed to fascinate him. Setting his guitar case down, Klaus reached out to shake the man's hand. Alex didn't move an inch, only stared at him with the same cold expression.

  "Don't mind Alex," Rosa said, rising and wrapping Klaus in a quick embrace. "He's not really good at meeting people, are you?"

  "I bore easily," he answered with a sneer. "It's a fault."

  Klaus felt his temper flare, and he said "So, you're a musician too? Or is that flute an affectation?"

  Alex started, nearly leaping forward at the insult, but a gesture from Rosa stopped him in his tracks. "Now, now," she said, smiling. "I want us all to be…friends. We may be spending quite a bit of time together, after all."

  Alex shook the shaggy hair from his shoulders in a shrug of disgust, but he didn't make any further move toward Klaus. "Perhaps," he said finally, "your young friend would like to see just how well I can use this." He held up the flute so it glittered in the moonlight. "I'd much sooner play than listen to him, in any case."

  Rosa nodded and picked up her lute, and Klaus moved forward to sit on the stone at her side. She began with a small trill of notes, like the rippling of a brook; Alex turned his back on the two of them, brought the flute to his lips and joined her.

  Shock was the only word to describe how Klaus felt in the next few moments. The music was beyond beautiful, beyond anything in his experience. While Rosa contented herself with an intricate rhythm of odd minor notes and lingering chords, Alex was transcendent.

  The notes of the flute rose like the song of a great bird, not following the rhythm of the lute, but somehow matching it note for note in ethereal, syncopated harmony. Klaus shivered as the notes cut through him and filled him with the sensations of flight, and the hunt, and battles in far off places. It was as if the instrument were singing, as if words fell from it and not the raw, beautiful notes of the song. His jaw dropped, and his eyes were locked to the glittering length of silver in Alex's hand, mesmerized.