by Jonah Hewitt
“Um…yes,” Nephys said a bit surprised by her reaction. “The Greeks called it the skia, my people called it the sheunt, but whatever you call it, the shadow is whatever’s left after the heart light has gone out and they lose their akh.”
She looked up at him.
“You know, their higher selves?”
She said nothing. He could tell she still didn’t understand. He tried again.
“They lose their nous, their sense of self. Once the flame is gone, the shadow is the only thing left. It consumes them. They’ve lost their minds, their very essence. All they are is sadness and misery. Those lost souls are consumed by their final moments until that’s all they are anymore. That’s why they are attracted to sadness and despair.” Nephys looked out over the swamp and shuddered. The shades terrified him.
“What about anger?” she asked in a distant voice.
“Anger?…Well, anger attracts worse things,” Nephys replied.
“Worse things?”
“Yes.”
“Like what?”
“Like him.” Nephys pointed to Hiero who was sitting in the dust repeatedly stabbing his knife into the ground dejectedly. “Only they won’t be content just to suck you dry until you’re an empty shell. No, they’ll leave you conscious enough so that they can extract their daily full measure of pain out of you.” She looked at Hiero and he flicked his barbed little tongue at her and hissed like a cat that had been stepped on. “That thing, that crazy, bat-eared, giant-chicken-leg tree, metal death-cart monster, out in the swamps, remember that? YOU made that happen. It probably took a small part of you when it left. Your horror brought it to life, and if we hadn’t taken you away, it would have been after you for all eternity.”
She looked down like a whipped dog, but Nephys had to finish.
“So, if you want to go on, if you want to hold on to your flame as long as possible, hold on to what little is left of you, then emotions are forbidden. You can’t be angry, or sad, or happy…”
“Happy?!” she interrupted at last, somewhat indignant at this new restriction, “Why can’t I be happy?!”
“Gwarnt,” snooted Hiero in derision. She really was clueless.
Nephys thought for a moment then it struck him, “Do you remember what I told you about Elysium?”
“Yes.”
“Do you want to know why it fell apart?”
She nodded meekly.
“It’s because they burned themselves out. We only have a little flame left here and anything out of the ordinary burns it up faster. They wasted their afterlives building, thinking, working out the perfect formula for a three-act comedy long after everyone had forgotten how to laugh. Some come here and try to live like they used to, but it doesn’t work down here. They burn up their lights creating things, making things happen, and soon they’re just a shade or worse. If you want to last…if you want to make it…you have to control yourself. Make the light last as long as possible. Remember who you are and say your name to yourself 10,000 times a day…because without that, you just won’t be you anymore.”
There was a deep stillness and even Hiero fell silent. Then she nodded weakly once.
It had been an eventful morning. It was already getting late, not that there was any objective way to tell time, but the streets of Limbo were already empty; the children had passed up to the scriptorium to begin the day’s work and to the gates of Erebus to relieve those who had catalogued the thousands that arrived by night.
“I have to go to work. You should stay here. I will come back for you tonight. You can stay at my tomb…I mean house.” He didn’t want to panic her. “Hiero, here, will show you the way and look after you.”
“BUH-PlaaaaaarrGANTKPH!!” Hiero almost dropped his knife.
“No arguments, Hiero.” And, for once, the diseased sheep’s bladder stopped it’s bleating. Nephys turned back to the woman.
“I have to go, but I will return, I promise, just go to the house and try…” he chose his words carefully, “to stay calm.”
Nephys got only five steps away when the woman called out after him.
“What’s your name?”
He stopped and turned around slowly. “Nephys,” he replied.
“Neth puss?” she tried to pronounce it.
“No, Neph-ys,” he tried to say more didactically. He was well aware his name hardly existed amongst the living, and no one spoke his language anymore. No one ever got the “pf” sound right.
“Nep-fus?” she tried again.
“Close enough,” Nephys replied.
She paused and looked away and then looked directly at him. “My name is Maggie. Maggie Miller.”
He nodded and almost turned to go when she called out again.
“If you hadn’t come out there to get me, I would have turned into…into one of them, one of those shades, wouldn’t I?”
Nephys shrugged and then nodded yes.
“Thank you,” she replied.
Nephys felt flushed for a moment. No one said “thank you” here. Things were what they were and that was that. Nephys glanced nervously from side to side and didn’t know what to do or say. The woman shifted her position and straightened her back, raising her chin a little, and stuck her hands into her back pockets. Suddenly, a subtle transformation came over Maggie Miller. She looked sterner, and if there were any trace of sadness in her left, Nephys couldn’t see it. She suddenly reminded him of what he hoped his mother must have looked like – dark-haired, beautiful but mature, resolute yet comforting all at once.
“Well, you best get along, Neppy,” she said suddenly, “I’d hate to think we’d lose some timeless classic because you didn’t get to work in time to copy it.” When she said that, Nephys suddenly wanted to stay, but he turned and walked down the dim, grey, sepulchral street. As he turned the corner, he heard Maggie Miller talk to Hiero, “Well, you bloated, little sack of nightmare fuel and flat notes, let’s see how bad this place really is, shall we?” The frustrated little bleat that came from Hiero after that was the most priceless sound Nephys had ever heard the evil instrument play and it buoyed up Nephys all the way to work.
class=Section12>
Chapter Nine
Miles and Schuyler
From there I got away, My spirits never failin'
Landed on the quay As the ship was sailin';
Miles Killam sang idly beneath his breath and kicked a can down an alley in the early morning hours, somewhere in the dark streets of Chester, Pennsylvania. He was looking for something to eat, a passed-out drunk or addict would do.
When I jumped aboard, a cabin found for Paddy.
Down among the pigs, played some hearty rigs,
He wasn’t having any luck tonight however, or on many nights lately. Widener University often had a few drunken frat boys passed out on weekends, you could always count on that, but some dumb girl had passed out at a frat party and nearly died of alcohol poisoning a few weeks back, so everyone had assumed a greater measure of self-imposed austerity. Fine for co-eds, lousy for vampires though.
The murder rate in the Philly area was high enough to mask a few unusual deaths here and there, but you couldn’t just run up to a drive-by victim and suck him dry before the cops showed up. So you took opportunities where you could, taking a little here, and a little there, the odd drunk or runaway, someone who wouldn’t be missed or noticed. You could get by quite well that way without killing too. Killing was just too messy. It drew too much attention. Any second-rate vampire could dodge a wooden stake, but twelve-gauge buckshot from a shotgun was another matter, and everybody seemed to have one these days. Vampires were fast healers, but they weren’t as fast as they were in the movies. Even if it didn’t tear your head clean off you couldn’t walk around with gaping holes in you. Even in the middle of the night, a walking piece of human Swiss cheese would be noticed. South Street was pretty wild, but it wasn’t that wild.
For all the vaunted advantages of being a vampire – greater speed, streng
th, agility – you just couldn’t beat the law of averages or dodge bullets forever. Sure, living people were scared of vampires, but they were also bloody crazy, and tended to run in mobs with torches and pitchforks. You can step on a single ant, but you can’t stomp out a million. And today the ants didn’t just have torches and pitchforks; they had shotguns and four-ton Escalades. No, it was better just to lay low.
It was easy to lay low for a good vampire, an ancient vampire that knew all the dark arts and tricks. He could take a life, be stealthy, hide in the shadows and disappear into the night like a dream disappearing from memory when one wakes at dawn, but Miles wasn’t exactly a good vampire. He’d been at it more than a hundred years and he still tripped over garbage in dark alleys. Miles was lucky if he could stumble upon a heroin addict passed out in the alley, take a quick nip and be away. No addict ever noticed another couple of extra holes when they woke up anyway.
Tonight was different though. Wallach wanted fresh meat. Wallach was Miles’ bloody master. Nearly all vampires had clans, safety in numbers you know, but democracy hadn’t exactly penetrated vampire society. They were all ruled by ancient and imperious masters – aristocratic, terrifying and barking nuts. Miles had been slacking of late, so tonight Wallach had up and demanded a token of Miles’ loyalty. He wanted him to pick up some take out and bring it back alive. Miles had been out all night and found nothing promising, and dawn was coming. So he was shuffling down his last favorite hunting ground hoping for a lucky break before daylight.
Danced some hearty jigs, the water round me bubbling;
When off Holyhead I wished meself was dead,
Miles stopped singing and looked around. He was sure he had heard something, but the alley was dead silent, not even a stray rat. Vampires had more enemies than humans, usually other vampires, who were as good at killing bloodsuckers as they were people, but there hadn’t been a turf war in Philly in decades. Miles paused and looked up and down the alley but saw nothing. He went back to idly kicking at the rubbish.
Or better for instead on the rocky road to…
WHAM! Something from above knocked Miles hard to the ground and then swept him aside as if he were an empty jacket. Miles scrambled to find the wall and pull himself up in the narrow alley, blindly swinging, but hit nothing. He stood up and looked around, but saw nothing, and heard only laughter.
“You stupid mick. You never look up, do you, Killam?”
Miles just sighed and leaned back against the alley wall, closed his eyes and thumped the back of his head on the wall in frustration.
“Schuyler!! Saints and angels!! Ya scared the livin’ piss outta me!” He looked all around and up this time but still saw no one. “C’mon out for cryin’ out loud!”
Instantly, a tall, thin and handsome boy dropped out of the early morning sky right in front of him. He had windblown, shoulder-length blond hair and a handsome, boyish face, aged permanently seventeen years. He wore crisp white jeans that never seemed to get dirty, checkered Vans sneakers (no socks) and a black silk blazer over his otherwise naked torso. He never wore a shirt. He liked to show off his lean and toned, hairless physique at all times.
“Geez, Miles, you’d think you’d learn something about being a vampire in what…a hundred years?” the vampire sneered around a large sucker. Schuyler always had a large lollipop everywhere he went, but he never put it in his mouth the regular way. Instead, he reached around the back of his head and stuck it in the side of his mouth. He had a lot of weird affectations like that. He thought it made him look cool or something.
“Hundred and two,” Miles said flatly, “And what in the blue blazes are ya doin’ here?! This ain’t your huntin’ ground!”
“No, I don’t usually go slumming, it’s true,” Schuyler snidely remarked, “But luckily I wasn’t far. I got this honey up at Swarthmore College. Y’know, the lonely, bookish type? Freshmen get real homesick, just dying for someone to listen.” Schuyler thought of himself as quite a ladies’ man. Miles just sighed and endured the tedious monologue of Schuyler’s exploits. “…I tell you, every teenage girl out there today has daddy issues. My dad used to beat me every night as a matter of routine, but one of these rich brats doesn’t get a pony on their sixth birthday and they have to spend the rest of their lives as grad students in Gender Studies to work it out in their head.”
Ugh. This was going to be a long one. Schuyler went on and on. Miles ignored most of the recitation until he heard something new.
“So after I give her the story of how my dad disowned me because I wanted to go to art school…”
“Art school?!” Miles interrupted, “You never went to art school!”
“Yeah, but she doesn’t know that.”
“But you can’t even bloody draw, Schuyler!”
“So what?! Neither can anyone else these days. Besides it’s not about rote mechanical draftsmanship anymore but inner expression.” Schuyler had spent a lot of time around Logan Square and the all-girl’s art colleges near there so Miles figured that’s where he had picked up that meaningless bit of lingo.
“Anywho, so after the sob story I give her the quiet, far-off stare.” He pursed his lips and widened his eyes to model the stare for Miles, then he went back to his banal smirk. “It totally sold her. I’m telling ya, I’m gonna be milking her for months.” He took the lollipop out of his mouth in his usual backwards way and passed it under his nose like smelling a fine wine.
Miles nearly retched. Schuyler always had some girl on the hook, but it never seemed to come to much. Still, Schuyler wasn’t drudging around alleys for passed out addicts. Schuyler didn’t play as well as he talked, but he was rarely on the outs with Wallach and Miles had to admit, even though Schuyler was more than fifty years younger than him, he was a much better vampire than he was.
“And you just happened by my alley, did ya?”
Schuyler put the lollipop back in his mouth in an equally odd fashion and spoke around it. “Actually, truth is, Wallach told me to check up on you.”
Miles shoulders just slumped. In the clan hierarchy, Schuyler wasn’t exactly an A-lister, but he at least had proper vampire pride and ambition. Still, to have to be checked up on by Schuyler was pretty low.
Schuyler took out the lollipop and pointed it sternly at Miles, “Frankly you’re lucky he didn’t send Ulami or Forzgrim after you. They’d just as soon tear you apart as babysit you.”
“I don’t need anyone to babysit me,” Miles said sullenly.
“Really?” Schuyler put the lollipop back in his mouth, raised his shoulders and turned slowly from side to side. “Well excuse me, I guess I had a hard time seeing that through the enormous pile of victims at your feet.” And with that, he did a graceful back flip landing perfectly on the edge of the dumpster across the alley and looked down on Miles like a smirking cat. Miles had to admit it was an impressive move.
“Shut up,” Miles muttered.
“No you shut up. I’m not the one schlepping around alleyways at three in the morning, trying to sneak a bite out of passed-out junkies. I mean…come on! What’s the matter with you, Killam?! You’ve been at this fifty years longer than me and you still don’t know the first thing about being a vampire. If you come back to Wallach empty-handed he’s going to stake you out ‘til dawn and use your charred corpse to roast marshmallows.”
Schuyler was right. Miles was almost out of time, and if he didn’t come back with something…someone…then he might as well be dead…well…dead again. Wallach didn’t take kindly to disobedience. Running wasn’t an option either. Wallach and his goons, Ulami and Forzgrim, had run down every vampire in the Mid-Atlantic from Baltimore to Newark and inland as far as Pittsburgh. Those that didn’t fall in line, he had staked out ‘til sunrise or worse. There just weren’t that many vampires anymore, and Wallach was the oldest and scariest on the East Coast. Most vampires could expect to someday master stealth, mind hazing and enhanced strength and agility – well, most vampires other than Miles – but he’d
seen Wallach inflict pain on a minion with a glance, enthrall a victim from across a crowded room with just his voice and leap so far he could practically fly. It was rumored that Wallach could even change forms. Wallach scared the living heck out of Miles and everyone else in the clan, including Schuyler. It was Schuyler’s dearest wish to reach the upper echelons of Wallach’s lackeys. “He’d make it,” thought Miles. He had the looks, the natural grace. Plus, he was a royal suck-up.
Schuyler hopped down from the edge of the dumpster quietly and crossed over to Miles. “Look…you need help, that much is obvious, but it doesn’t have to be a drag. I know you and I haven’t exactly been friends, but we’re in the same boat.”
Miles narrowed his eyes. “Really?”
“Really!” Schuyler said enthusiastically, “You think I want to come back to Wallach and tell him I couldn’t help you?”
Miles wasn’t so sure about that. He thought Schuyler would push you in front of a trolley if he thought you were between him and moving up the vampire hierarchy. Still, Schuyler had nothing to fear from Miles. Miles wasn’t exactly on the ladder ahead of him. Miles wasn’t even on the ladder at all.
“Look, man,” Schuyler began again, “Whatever it is that’s holding you back, we can work on it together.” His tone got soft and quiet, and he placed a hand on Miles’ shoulder and looked right into his eyes. “I want you to know I’m here for you, guy.” He took the lollipop out of his mouth without any of the usual gymnastics and gave Miles a friendly smile.
Was Schuyler serious? Miles let down his guard and decided to open up to him, “Ok, thanks brother… I really…” but before he even got two more words out, the friendly face turned into a smirk and Schuyler contorted with restrained laughter.
“You don’t think I really care, do you?” Schuyler snorted.
“Bloody idiot!” Miles pushed Schuyler away from him in disgust and Schuyler laughed uncontrollably for a second. Miles started skulking off down towards the exit of the trash-strewn alley. Schuyler caught up with him and tried to put his arm around Miles’ shoulders.
