Shadow Over Sea And Sky

by K H Middlemass

  “Is this a dream?” Emily breathed, trying not to choke. The smell of him was unbearable; she wanted to gag.

  Volkov smiled. “Is it?”

  Emily squeezed her eyes shut.

  “Please tell me,” she whispered back. “Please.”

  His smile only deepened. “If I said it was, would you believe me?”

  Emily focused on the weight of him against her and how hard it was to draw a breath. His leg fit snugly between hers and her breasts were pressed against his broad chest. She squirmed beneath him, hating it, and said: “I don’t know.”

  “Best for you to believe that this is a dream, then,” Volkov said. “Wouldn’t you agree?”

  Emily said nothing. She wanted to be free to breathe and move again. Volkov’s eyes drifted down until they rested upon her collarbone. His smile widened further.

  “You didn’t wear the crucifix, I see,” he said in a mocking tone.

  He lifted himself up by the arms and Emily gasped at the sudden lightness that came upon her body. She tried to move her arms but found that old languor had seized her by the limbs and kept her still. All she had were her words and her eyes. The sound of her rapid breathing was loud in her ears.

  “Would it have mattered if I did?” Emily asked.

  Volkov took a lock of her hair between his thumb and forefinger. “No.”

  Emily’s stomach lurched. She tried to move again, desperate to be able to do something. He towered over like a dog asserting dominance over another, and it made her want to be out from under him even more. Volkov continued to play with Emily’s hair intently, but his eyes remained fixed on hers.

  Emily took a deep, steadying breath and tried to ignore the way the smell of him spread through her mouth when she did, so strong that she could taste it. It was sour and old.

  “Let me sit up.” she demanded, and Volkov laughed. It was not a pleasant sound.

  “As you wish,” he conceded, letting go of her hair and drawing back the way a cat slinks away from its prey when it wants to play with it a little longer. As he did so, Emily felt the heaviness leave her own body and, when she tried one more time, found that her arms and legs moved under her own power again. She pushed herself up until her back was firmly pressed against the wall, and for a moment the two simply looked at each other.

  “I suppose you thought that little trinket would save your mother’s life,” Volkov said eventually. “Along with the knife.”

  “How could you possibly know about that?”

  “Easily, Miss Emily. I can smell the iron,” he replied, offering her another of his enigmatic smiles. One of his hands idly caressed the bed sheets. “Though I must confess, I wondered how long it would take for the man of God to take you in.”

  “He told me what you are, if that’s what you mean.” Emily said coldly, trying to ignore the little throb of fear she felt at the mention of the reverend. “Was he telling the truth?”

  Volkov turned his gaze to Emily’s window, a bored expression settling over his features. He didn’t answer her.

  “Was he?” she had to try not to shout, though she suspected that even if she did no one would hear her. She was still unsure if she was even awake.

  When Volkov turned back to her, something altogether different had come upon his face. Even in the dark she could see the way his eyes had clouded and how heavy his brow had become. His lips stretched over a mouth which seemed too full of teeth and his skin, glowing a faint and eerie white, was more lined with age than she had ever seen, like cracked marble. She wanted to shrink back even further from the sight of it. In an instant, he had become a beast.

  “The crucifix will not save her, nor shall the knife,” he said in a low, threatening voice that instantly set the hairs on her arms standing on end.

  Emily started to quiver. “Why?”

  “I have lived too long to be repelled by petty icons and touchstones,” Volkov said. The hand that had caressed the sheets was now balled into a fist. “I am not bound by the rules of the earth or the rules of man, and I am not bound by the rules of the Gods.”

  “The reverend was telling the truth,” Emily breathed. “You’re a vampire.”

  Volkov’s eyes narrowed, as if she had used a slur against him. “Call it what you will. I am myself.”

  He grinned then, a wide and open grin that showed her all his long, white and terrible teeth, taunting her with them. Emily grimaced at the sight and turned away.

  “Not even prayer can touch you,” she said without looking at him. “It didn’t save Hugo.”

  Volkov shook his head. “Nothing more than hollow words with hollow promises.”

  “Did you kill him?” the words fell from her mouth quickly and before she could even think. She had to know, had to hear him say it.

  “He was old and weak,” Volkov said dispassionately. “I ended his suffering.”

  “But you caused him suffering too,” Emily persisted. “You drove him mad and took his home away from him. You took everything.”

  “You only know one half of a whole,” Volkov replied. “Though he called himself a man of God, your Hugo was afraid to die and go to Him. Did you know that? What true man of faith doubts the certainty of his creator? Your Hugo was already sick on the inside. He knew that he would be dead soon, and that frightened him deeply.”

  Emily wrapped her arms around her knees and hugged herself close, a small gesture that made her feel a little safer. “We’re all afraid to die.”

  “And some people allow that fear to drive them forward,” Volkov countered before continuing. “That was how he came to find me. He was more intuitive than I had expected, perceptive to the ways of my kind, but this would be his downfall. He thought that he could bargain with me and that I would grant him eternal life, so I promised him that I would help him on one condition, that he would rewrite his will and leave Fairbanks Manor to me. I cannot remain in one place for too long, not anymore, and the time had come for me to move on from my old resting place. I convinced him that he could not remain here once the change had come upon him. Of course, I never had any intention to give him what I had promised. It did not take much for me to break him. It rarely does.”

  He looked at Emily pointedly. “By the end, he prayed for death. I gave him that release.”

  “Why are you here telling me all of this?” Emily whispered desperately. She felt colder than ever. Leaning forward on her knees, she forced herself to look directly into his eyes again, knowing that tears had begun to stream hotly down her face but making no effort to wipe them away. She had barely any strength left to do anything other than plead and beg. “Why won’t you just kill me?”

  Volkov’s fingertips brushed the wetness of her cheek and she remembered the dream that was not a dream, when he had licked up her tears like a man dying of thirst. She shuddered at his touch but did not dare pull away from it.

  “I will not kill you because I do not wish for you to die, Miss Emily.”

  The words were surprisingly plaintive and imbued with a rare honesty, but she felt only anger when she heard them.

  “I can’t listen to you say that when my mother is lying in the next room so weak that she can barely move!”

  “You misunderstand me,” Volkov said patiently. “I said I do not wish for you to die. I said no such thing about your mother.”

  A hard lump formed in Emily’s throat that no amount of swallowing could remove. She did not know what to do with her body, but every nerve and muscle was suddenly alight and vying for attention, anger coursing through her veins with such strength that she could hardly see. She was completely aware of herself and unable to do a thing. All she could do was clench and unclench her hands repeatedly, wondering if she was visibly trembling. She had only ever felt this way a few times before, when she was a teenager still grappling with new and confusing hormones. There were days when she’d felt so frustrated that she could have happily thrown herself against the four walls of her bedroom until she passed out from ex
haustion. She thought that she was finally done with such feelings.

  Volkov, of course, was as still and calm as an undisturbed river. He stood up and began to walk around her bedroom in that same smooth way, stopping only to inspect things here and there that seemed to interest him. Emily realised that a room like this might be something strange to him; her house was not a cold, unfeeling place. He picked up an old toy of hers, one that she had kept out of a sense of nostalgia and sentimentality, and turned it over in his hands. It was a small and raggedy dog that she had, for a brief time, loved intensely. She had creatively named it ‘Doggy’, and for a while she never went anywhere without him, but in Volkov’s hands Doggy was nothing more than a worthless old rag doll.

  “I don’t understand,” Emily said. She got off the bed and went to him, wishing that she was taller so she could face him on the same level. “Why did it have to be her?”

  Volkov contemplated her question for a moment, eyes still fixed on the toy dog that he continued to turn around in his hands. After a moment, he moved toward the window and sat upon the sill. He placed the dog down beside him, where it rested against his hip in a way that was almost companionable.

  “Why did it have to be Sarah Wilson? Why does it have to be anyone?” Volkov said. He gave a nonchalant shrug, as if it wasn’t even worth considering. “I must be sustained as you must be sustained. You would not ask the same question of the animals that are beneath you. You would not lament the death of cattle.”

  Emily went to speak but found that she had no words to give back to him. Her mouth hung open like a fish gasping for air, appalled.

  “I do not wish for you to die because I have chosen you for something else,” Volkov said matter-of-factly. “You are a rare thing, someone meant for more than death.”

  “I’m cattle,” she sputtered. “You said so yourself. I’m the same as Sarah Wilson, the same as her husband and her son, the same as my own mother and father. I should be nothing more to you than your next meal.”

  “My kind could not exist without yours,” he replied. “Some of you must become as we are, mustn't you? It is not unheard of for humans to be exceptional.”

  Emily’s legs felt slow and heavy, and she lowered herself down until she was sitting at his feet. She held her head in her hands, pulling at the skin under her eyes. “This has to be a dream. It has to be, none of this can be real.”

  Volkov reached out and cupped her chin in his hand, pulling it up so she would look at him. This time, he did so with an eerie gentleness. Emily bit her lip as she met his eyes.

  “I’m losing my mind,” she whispered.

  “No, Emily,” Volkov whispered in return. “I have opened your eyes.”

  “This isn’t the first time you’ve come,” Emily breathed, suddenly emboldened. “The first night I met you, you came to me and you did something terrible. Is that what you call opening someone’s eyes?”

  Volkov released Emily’s chin and stood up again in a fluid movement. He crossed his arms over his chest and turned his gaze towards the window, where he watched the dark surging of the sea beyond. Emily remained sitting, staring defiantly at him even though he would not meet her eyes anymore. His air was of someone offended and defensive, but she didn’t care.

  “Was that real, what you did to me?” She tried to keep her voice steady, wary that it would quiver if she allowed it to. She wrapped her arms around herself, cold and vulnerable, and touched the goose bumps that had erupted along the skin. She could feel her anger unfurling and growing larger from within. She wasn’t willing to let him toy with her anymore; she’d had enough. “It felt real.”

  He was silent for what felt like a long time. “Dreams can be strange things.”

  “Don’t play with me like that. Don’t try and twist this around the way you twist everything. It was either a dream or it wasn’t, but I know what happened. You came to me and you bit me and I felt pain, pain like I’ve never felt before and hope to never feel again. And you didn’t just hurt me,” Emily said, words growing louder and faster as her heart beat quickened in her breast. “You raped me. You came into my dream or whatever the hell it was and you raped me! I didn’t want it, but you made it so that I couldn’t even say no. I couldn’t move. I couldn’t do anything. You did that to me, didn’t you?”

  “Miss Emily, you speak with such certainty and yet you cannot differentiate between what is real and what is not,” Volkov said coldly. “Dreams, after all, are just that.”

  “How can I believe you after everything you’ve said?” Emily could feel her anger turn into rage, brewing inside her that dominated the fear she felt. “You got into my head and made me forget things and do things that I didn’t want to do. I can’t forgive you for that, or for anything else that you’ve done. You want to make a game of me and I won’t let you do it.”

  Volkov smiled indulgently. “I have already made a game of you. You see, that night when we first met, I admit that I was curious about you. You have a perceptiveness that intrigued me, like you saw things no one else could whilst being blind to yourself. I was that way too, a long time ago, and it was then that I realised why you had come to me in the first place. It was the sign that I had been waiting for ever since I became as I am.”

  His voice had taken on that smoothness and sensuality again, like a particularly savvy salesman trying to sell that which could not be sold. For the first time, Emily found herself able to resist it, as if the sheer strength of her anger protected her from his artifice.

  “I followed you home that night, when you had believed me to be gone, and when you were asleep I made myself incorporeal and appeared before you. My kind is not unlike the succubus, in some ways. If we wish it, we can manipulate and change the world around us in some small measure. We can make ourselves dreams and do as we please. This is what I did on the night that we first met. You were not supposed to remember, but then I clearly underestimated you. Your memories were more than my power, a sign that I have chosen well.”

  Emily could feel her shaking becoming more and more uncontrollable. She tried to breathe steadily but found that it kept hitching in her throat when she tried. The blood rushing in her ears was almost deafening. “Just tell me why you did it.”

  “I am unlike men in almost everything, but I sometimes share in their desires,” Volkov purred. “Though I already had other plans for you, I admit that I was weak in the face of temptation. You are more beautiful than you realise, Miss Emily. I had to taste you at least once.”

  Emily went numb. The sound of the blood in her ears was replaced by a high, tinny sound that seemed too far away, and she wondered if she would crumple. An expression of condescension crossed Volkov’s marred and horrible features for a moment.

  “Do not fear,” he said in a mocking voice. “It was all in your head.”

  “Get out!” Emily cried, suddenly energised by the anger that came crashing forth like a wave breaking over the rocks. With tears pricking hotly at her eyes again, she got to her feet and stood with her fists clenched on either side of her. “You’re a monster! Get out of my room and get out of Caldmar. Leave us to our own lives again!”

  “Ah ah ah, not quite yet,” Volkov chastised, a self-satisfied smirk on his lips. He reached out and grabbed Emily’s hands before she had the chance to react, and she gasped at the icy touch his hands always brought. He crushed her fists in his own, holding on so tightly that she feared her bones would shatter beneath the pressure, but she held in the cry of pain she longed to let out. He pulled at her forcefully and she fell forward, crashing into his chest and losing the certainty of her footing along with it.

  “There is the matter of the painting to be dealt with yet,” Volkov said slyly.

  He lifted Emily’s hands, still wrapped up in his closed fists, and held them close together so she could not struggle against him. It occurred to Emily to spit in his face, to do anything, but she also sensed that it would be pointless to even try. Instead she hissed at him through gritted te
eth: “I won’t finish it.”

  “I said to you that you were meant for more than death,” Volkov said, pulling Emily closer until he was whispering the words into her ear. His dead breath brushed her skin, making her shudder. “I was told the same thing. We are kindred spirits, you and I.”

  What little there was left in her stomach turned, and she shook her head violently, obscuring her face with her curls. She wanted to scream with frustration, infuriated that she wasn’t strong enough to fight him.

  “We all resist it, at first,” Volkov continued, unfazed by her increased thrashing. He knew full well that he was stronger than her; her actions were a drop of water against a huge, implacable stone. “It is natural to fight against such things.”

  He sent a single shake running through her body, eyes burning with malevolence.

  “But rest assured,” he said. “If you do not finish the painting, your mother will die.”

  Finally, he released her. Emily stood in silence, still staring, feeling the hatred pulsing from her skin like a heat source. Her mind turned to her mother sleeping in the next room, somehow undisturbed by all of this, and felt the flames of her anger rise again.

  “I won’t let you,” she whispered. “I’ll die first.”

  Volkov smiled at that and shook his head. “You think that I would just let you die? You understand so little, Miss Emily.”

  “That’s your fault for keeping secrets from me,” Emily retorted without hesitation. “This is what happens when you tell the puppet that it’s being controlled by strings.”

  Volkov laughed and clapped his hands with delight. “Your wilfulness is very amusing, but your role is already set into the course of history. Fight it if you wish, but you will lose.”

  His words were like an anchor dragging her into the depths of the ocean. Emily felt herself falling into sudden and terrible despair, felt her powerlessness in the presence of him and hated it so much it hurt. Her body relaxed against her will, the muscles and joints giving up the fight and slumping into defeat.