by Dan Pearce
André and I had our big differences over the years, but I mostly allowed him to direct and recruit as he saw fit.
I don’t know if he just disliked Samantha in general when she walked onto our stage, or if he caught the brief flirtatious smile we exchanged with one another before she started her routine, but there is no doubt that he had it out for her before she even started the audition. After cutting her off mid-performance, he unleashed an ugliness that rivaled only a handful of moments I had witnessed him spew before. At the time, I had no idea just what a tough little smartass Samantha was, or it might have pissed me off even more that he drove such a strong woman to tears. All I knew was that André crossed a line, and his words would have made anyone with a beating heart literally run from the stage to escape them.
Romance with the fleeing girl was the furthest thing from my mind as I pushed past the curtains and made my way backstage to find her. I had seen her performance. She wasn’t talented enough to be in the company, but she wasn’t bad by any means; and she certainly didn’t have midget legs. I knew André would never apologize, so I just wanted to find her and give her some words of encouragement.
“Good God, that guy’s a prick,” I said when I found her. She had left the wings and was quickly headed to the dressing room to change.
She turned around, surprised to hear a voice behind her. “I don’t know. He seemed kind of nice,” she said before her chin noticeably quivered and her deep blue eyes became glossier as she fought back more tears.
“Do you want me to fire him? I’ll fire that bastard right now. I’m sure he can easily find another job lancing abscesses or something.”
“No, don’t fire him. But, thanks.”
I stepped closer. “That’s a relief, because I couldn’t do it anyway. Contracts and board of directors and bla bla bla. I just like to offer things I know I can’t deliver.” She let out the beginning of a laugh. “There it is,” I said. “Life’s not so bad. I enjoyed your audition. I really am sorry for how he treated you.”
“Is this how you get laid?” she said, catching me off guard.
“Huh?”
“Good cop, bad cop?” she giggled. “He destroys ‘em and you come pick ‘em up and charm the shirts off of them?”
“I really didn’t intend to…”
“Shut up. I’m kidding,” she said. “You’re actually very nice. Thank you for that. What’s your name?”
“I am Anthony. And you’re Samantha, yes?”
“That’s me. In the flesh.”
“Well, I can’t do anything to help you with your complete disaster of an audition Samantha,” I said with a sarcastic smile, “but I can take you anywhere in the city you like to stuff yourself full of whatever food is going to make you feel better right now.”
“I’m a dancer, I haven’t eaten in a decade.”
“One night won’t kill you.”
“What about the asshole in the third row?”
“He’ll murder the dreams of many, I’m sure, but he’ll survive without me. Let’s go. I’ll drive.”
She agreed and changed into her street clothes. She emerged from the changing room, cramming her dance attire into the opening of a backpack, which she brought with her to dinner that night. It was the same backpack I grabbed to bring with me to Peru, and which I was thankful to find tossed to the side of the trail near the pile of rocks where we had been ambushed. There were still half a dozen bottles of water inside and I downed two of them immediately. I slung the pack over my shoulder and began my hike back up the mountainside to where Dishon would soon be waking.
My skinned knee still burned a bit, but the pain was already beginning to wane. I thought back to Samantha and the ice-skating incident, and of the incredible flurry of romance that happened between that day in my theater and our date on the ice some three months later.
At that point, it had been years since I had been on a date, and a couple of lifetimes since I had last been in love. I just avoided it wherever possible. Life had become quite fulfilling on my own. While love was beautiful to me, and I knew I would likely experience love again one day, the thought of it wasn’t bleeping anywhere near my radar. I didn’t know why, but I had to know Samantha when I met her. I had to ask her to dinner outside of the dressing room. I wanted that dinner to last much longer than it did. I had to call her the next day. I had to see her again, and I had to see her soon. She felt the same way, and before I could do a thing to keep it from happening, that unbelievable woman owned my heart. I was a goner the moment I passed through those curtains.
And now I was going to lose her if I couldn’t pull off some sort of miracle. The ten years we had to be together had now been reduced to a few fucking hours. If I was being honest with myself, I didn’t know if it would be possible to break the curse at all.
I just knew I was there for her.
Fuck.
I was in fucking Peru. Getting shot with fucking arrows. Hiking up the fucking side of a fucking mountain. And hopefully I was closing in on the same fucking witch who did all this to Dishon and me twelve thousand fucking years earlier. All of this was for Samantha.
None of my curse or my lengthened existence seemed fair or made sense to me anymore and had just become frustrating. Twelve millennia, and the weight of what might be an eternity left to go, was too big a repercussion for any crime, sin, or colossal fuck-up.
Certainly, at some point, this nonsense had to end. At some point, I had to find a fucking answer that could free me. At some point, I should be allowed redemption as much as anyone else. At some point, I had to get my happy fucking ending, too. Why the fuck not now? I angrily thought, as I made my way back to my healing friend.
CHAPTER 27
I must have really made soup out of Dishon’s brain when I worked the arrow loose because he didn’t regain consciousness as quickly as I expected. No longer subject to the sun’s rays, Earth’s atmosphere opened-up over my unconscious friend, and the milky way became so fat it seemed I could reach out and swirl my fingers through it. Usually, I appreciated the beauty of the night sky, but right then it was an antagonizing reminder that the clock was ticking, and we had lost an entire night and a day. Now we would lose another night on top of it. It was just after midnight when he finally stirred with the first signs of consciousness.
Earlier that day, when the back of Dishon’s head had healed enough, I rolled my friend onto his back. I sat beside him throughout the majority of his blackout, tipping hundreds of tiny sips worth of water into his mouth. At first his dry tongue and cheeks seemed to absorb it all before it could make it into his body, but eventually it reached his throat and his reflexes made him swallow the water. The four bottles I brought up the hill with me weren’t even enough to get on top of my own thirst, so I made my way back down to the river twice earlier that day before all the threats that the darkness seemed to bring with it could find us again. Once I got there, I drank until my belly became heavy and a giant swish could be heard within. I refilled the bottles and carried them back up the mountain.
That night’s darkness brought a coldness with it that seemed to chill the fresh water inside me, as my body worked to transform that water into fresh blood. Building a fire would have been easy enough, but it would be too dangerous when I had no idea if our previous attackers might see it. Instead, I gathered together armfuls of dried leaves and buried all but Dishon’s face with them in an attempt to keep him warm. I paced, and ran in place, and did occasional jumping jacks to heat myself up, but it only helped to a degree. I was in a state of constant shivering when Dishon came to.
“Damnit,” he mumbled. I spun around, not realizing he was awake. He slowly rolled over and pushed his way up through the leaves until he was kneeling on all fours. “I hoped I just might get to die this time, Cain,” he said.
I enthusiastically rushed to his side and dropped to one knee beside him. “Easy, pal. I’ve got water for you,” I said holding out one of the plastic bottles. He lifted himself
to his knees and happily took the bottle from my hands. “You’ve been out for a while,” I informed him as he chugged. I handed him another bottle and he emptied it just as quickly as he did the first.
“It couldn’t be that long,” he said. “The sun still hasn’t risen.”
I laughed. “It rose long ago. You’ve been out for something like 30 hours.”
“Shit,” he said. “More water?” I handed him a bottle. “I’m sorry, man. I know you don’t have time for that right now,” he said.
“Don’t fucking apologize. It wasn’t your fault. That’s the last of the water, by the way. We can refill them in the morning.”
Dishon gulped down half of the water and replaced the lid. He tossed the bottle toward me and flopped onto his belly atop the pile of leaves. “Well… Fill me in,” he said as he dropped his arms to his side and rested. “I don’t remember much except looking down and seeing a goddamn arrow in my gut.”
I told him everything I remembered seeing before losing consciousness myself. I told him of the men who attacked us and of the language they spoke. I told him I found the backpack and informed him of our current location up the side of the mountain. I told him of the painted arms of the warriors and of the pierced skin on their backs. I saved the most intriguing detail for last, and finally told him of what looked to have been a smaller and blacker version of Tashibag’s mark on the backs of their calves.
“Shadow Marks,” he said, as if he weren’t surprised by the news. “That’s what I’ve always called their kind. I should have known.”
“You’ve seen these guys before?”
“Yeah. A few times. We’ve talked about them, I’m sure.”
“No. I’m sure I would have remembered that.”
“Yeah, man. Hm. I guess it never came up. Them being here just means we’re close. I’ve only ever seen them when I was closing-in on Tashibag.”
“Who are they?”
“I don’t know. They’ve only been around the last two hundred years or so.”
“Can they die?”
“I don’t know.”
“Do you know anything about them at all?”
“Only what you now know. I’ve caught glimpses of them, nothing more.”
I felt a bit slighted that he hadn’t mentioned the Shadow Marks to me before that day. Dishon and I had eventually gone our separate ways, sure, but we had seen each other dozens of times throughout those two hundred years. “So, they’ve tried to kill you in the past?”
“Yep. Same way. Cocksuckers filled me full of arrows.”
“They didn’t die, though.”
“Nope.”
“Why not?”
“I don’t know.”
“A fat wad of good you are.”
“Thank you,” he said. “So, I assume we’re stuck up here until morning?”
I sighed. “Yep.”
The stars disappeared around five and the sky began finding color soon after. It was still dark where we were on the ground, but morning surely was close enough that we could get going without too much risk of peril.
I hadn’t slept, although I had been so cold that I’m not even sure I could have. To be safe, I took a couple caffeine pills as soon as I felt the first signs of sleepiness. Dishon wasn’t tired, and so he stayed awake with me. We talked through the night of so many things we had yet to share with each other since the last real time we were together. It was the first time since arriving in Peru that I felt our old friendship truly come together again, as it always had so many times had been.
As soon as I noticed the sky growing brighter, I nudged Dishon and said we should go. He was just as cold as I was and asked if we could first build a quick fire to warm ourselves. “The sun will be beating down on us very soon,” I told him. “Please, let’s get moving. If we don’t find what we’re looking for, I have to get back and see Samantha before I lose her.” He agreed.
I somewhat regretted not lighting the fire before we made our way down the mountainside. It was a far more difficult descent than it had been the day before since our limbs were locked-up and fingers hurt too much to grab onto protruding shrubbery. We made it to the road, though, without too much extra struggle. The treetops in the distance had welcomed the incoming sun by reflecting that same ocean of yellow shine I had seen the morning before. We filled our bottles in the river, and continued on the road through Ausangat, in search for the discreet turnoff which would lead us to Chapuin.
According to our print-outs, we were still a couple miles out, and then it would be a few more miles into the heart of the mountains to find the ancient village where we hoped to find Tashibag.
We passed the turnoff at first but backtracked and found the well-disguised trail which led off the main road. That was when it suddenly sank in that I might actually be close to seeing the witch. In a matter of hours, I just might have the answers I had desperately wanted for so long and getting them suddenly scared the shit out of me. After all this time, was I ready to die? How long would I have left if I lived to old age? Fifty years? Sixty at best? God, that wasn’t much time at all. Was love worth this? Was Samantha worth this?
“She’s worth it,” Dishon said.
I hadn’t said anything to him. “Get out of my head,” I laughed.
“I know what you were thinking.”
“She is worth it. I wouldn’t be here if she wasn’t worth it.”
“It doesn’t mean you won’t find yourself greatly doubting it, should you find yourself faced with the decision.”
“I know.”
We walked in silence after that for some time, both of us lost in our own thoughts. I knew why I was there. Dishon had never stopped looking for Tashibag, though, and had never loved and lost a woman to make that an ongoing motivator for him. I began pondering what his greatest motivation might actually be but realized I didn’t actually know. I finally broke the silence and asked. “I want more than anything to know what love with another is like when I grow old with her,” I said as we walked. “Why have you always been so determined to find Tashibag, Dishon? It isn’t for love. So why are you here?”
He became visibly pensive. “Who is to say it isn’t for love now?” he finally responded.
“But you’ve never loved another, have you?”
“Yes.”
“What? You have? When? Who?” I demanded. “How have you never told me about it?”
“Because,” he said quietly. “It has never mattered.”
“It matters to me now. It always would have mattered to me. Surely that should be obvious.”
“A great part of the reason I am here, Cain, is because I want to free myself of that love. It was never requited and has been a burden for so many lifetimes now. I want to taste death and be free of this fucking thing called love once and for all.”
“Wow.”
“Yep.”
“At least tell me what she looked like.”
Dishon snorted. “You make too many assumptions, Cain.”
“What does that mean?”
“It means shut the fuck up. I don’t want to talk about this right now,” he said as he sped his pace to walk ahead of me for a while.
I gave him his distance, and for the next half hour we walked without the exchange of words. The trail was becoming less worn the deeper we hiked, and the growth around us was slowly closing-in compared to how it was when we first left the road. A general feeling of quiet eeriness began to settle-in as the sounds of nature became sparser and the trees grew so thick that sunshine rarely reached the trail.
My thoughts eventually went to the Shadow Marks and I again wondered who they might be. Now that I thought about it, we were probably neck deep in their territory. “Dishon.”
“What?” he said, his former irritation having seemingly faded.
I nervously looked around me, expecting to suddenly see arrows flying through the air at us. “If these Shadow Marks are with Tashibag, isn’t this path as dangerous as hell?”
> “Yep,” he replied indifferently. “But I’ve never heard of them coming out in the light of day.”
“They’re not vampires. We’re probably marching to their front gate. They might make a day-time exception.”
