Alchemy of Shadows

by David L Burkhead

  “Studying?” I tilted my head and stared at the leather strip over his eyes. “But...” I shut my mouth and pressed my lips together before any further words could emerge.

  The preacher’s smile widened. “But how could I read the Good Book, let alone study it?”

  He reached behind his head and unfastened a buckle, removing the strap. In the dim gloom of the chapel, lit only by the sunlight leaking past shuttered windows, his eyes were two black pits.

  “I am not blind,” he said. “My eyes are just unusually sensitive to light. Perhaps that is why I appreciate darkness in a way that many others do not.”

  I shivered. I did not then know what those eyes and their appearance signified, but I knew that something truly was amiss.

  #

  Widow Smith met me at the door to her boarding house. She was strangely solicitous as she led me to the dining room where dinner, more properly a late lunch, was laid out.

  “The servants have the day off,” Widow Smith said. “The Sabbath is, after all, a day of rest.”

  None of the other tenants were present, just the two of us.

  Dinner led to dandelion tea which in turn led to dandelion wine, a surprisingly pleasant drink in which I could see certain alchemical possibilities.

  We sat in her parlor, sipping from delicate wine glasses that must have cost a fortune as far as we were from any respectable glassworks.

  She refilled my glass.

  “So, what is it like spending so much time out in the wilds? My husband and I came by ship last year so I didn’t see much of it. And then he was taken with a flux this past winter and...” She ended with a heavy sigh.

  “One stretch of woods is much like another,” I said. “Sometimes you go days, weeks, without seeing another human being. And when I do it’s the Erie natives, or maybe Kikapoo, sometimes Mingo.”

  “You spend all that time and never see a white man. Or a...white...woman?”

  I shrugged. “I’ve had time to get used to it.”

  “Really?” She laughed, as delicate as crystal bells, but also as brittle. “You’re awfully young to sound so cynical.”

  I kept my face still. She could not possibly know just how cynical I had become.

  The sun had passed beyond the eaves and began to shine into the house.

  “My, that’s bright,” Widow Smith said. She went to the window and drew closed the drapes. She then picked up the bottle of wine and refilled my glass. Instead of returning to her seat, she sat on the settee next to me.

  “It must be very lonely out there, by yourself, so very long.”

  She took the glass out of my suddenly nerveless fingers and set it on the small table.

  “It must be very lonely out there with no one around.”

  She leaned close to me.

  “Very lonely indeed.”

  Her lips brushed mine.

  I hesitated. One of the reasons I had stayed in town, rather than completing my trades and moving on was a desire for intimate company but this seemed wrong. I had not expected a respectable woman to be so...

  Her lips pressed harder. Her mouth opened, her tongue prodded my own lips, and all thoughts of hesitation fled.

  I opened my mouth to allow her tongue entrance and met hers with mine. Her arms snaked around my neck and I placed my hands on her waist, stroking and caressing. I stroked up her sides to her arms. I pulled away from her slightly and let my left hand run the length of her right arm until I took her hand in mine. I turned her palm upward and leaned down to brush my lips against it, unbuttoning her cuff as I did so. I repeated the process with her left hand.

  Enough light leaked past the curtains that I could see her face, a pale oval in the dimness, her shining eyes bored into mine.

  She leaned into me and I let my hands slide around to the front and caress their way up her bodice. I paused for a moment, cupping her breasts, waiting for her objection but she pressed tighter to me, deepening the kiss. I continued to run my hands up her body until they found the button at her throat.

  I had the button undone in a moment. I broke the kiss, only to turn my head and press my lips to the side of her neck. I nibbled at her neck and let my tongue lave her throat as my hands continued their work of unfastening her bodice.

  Widow Smith moaned and brought her own hands forward to work at the lacings that secured my waistcoat, my buttons having long since been lost in the wilds. She released the knot and began pulling the laces back through their holes.

  The last button on her bodice came free and I brushed the front flaps aside, revealing the corset and chemise underneath. My hands had to cease their exploration as Widow Smith finished removing the laces and pushed my waistcoat back off my shoulders. I allowed it to drop off my arms then in my turn helped her out of her bodice.

  She wrapped her arms around my neck, returning to our interrupted kiss as I began to feel for the hooks securing the back of her skirt.

  Already I could feel the pressure of my growing length against my trousers. It had been a long time.

  Her corset and chemise soon followed her bodice, adding to the pile of clothes on the floor.

  She sat for a moment, letting me revel in the glory of her luscious skin, her exposed breasts, milk-white even in the dim light of the shadowed room. I reached out a tentative hand and ran my fingertips along the soft skin over left breast. Her nipple stiffened.

  She twisted her hands in the edge of my tunic and pulled upward. I lifted my arms to allow her to slip it over my head and off.

  When she pushed me back into the settee, the fabric scratched pleasantly against the bare skin of my back. Her naked breasts pressed into my chest. I went to work on her bloomers.

  We kissed, pressed close and reveling in the contact of bare skin to bare skin. When we came up for air, I gently pushed upright to a sitting position, then bent down to unbutton her shoes. The shoes came off, followed by her stockings.

  All that remained were her bloomers and my trousers.

  A moment later we were both naked. As she pulled herself to me, bare flesh to bare flesh, the almost frantic haste that had motivated us to this point dimmed. I could take the time to savor the feeling, the first real touch I had felt since...since Paul. I had avoided contact with anyone for so long, seeing even the natives only at a distance. Only the need to establish a laboratory to make my elixir would have driven me back to civilization now. But now that I was here with another person, a woman in my arms, all the feeling came rushing back. The feeling, the need. And it was clearly a need she shared.

  I gently ran my fingertips up her back, caressing and massaging her shoulder blades. Her own hands worked their way under me, burrowing between my back and the settee, creeping downward until she cupped my buttocks. In response I brought my own hands forward, over her shoulders and down until I felt the swell of her breasts in my palms. I moved my hands in slow circles. Her nipples hardened further under my caress. She pulled her head back to look down at my face.

  “Erwin.” She breathed in tortured gasps. “Take me, Erwin.”

  I freed one hand from her breast and laid a finger across her lips.

  “In time. We have time.”

  She opened her mouth and nipped at my finger. I laughed and squeezed her breast, eliciting a squeal.

  I tugged softly at the finger between her teeth and she released it. I pushed myself to my elbows against her weight and she responded by sliding down to the settee, the soft skin of her belly rubbing against my erection.

  It was so hard to resist pushing her back and entering her right there, but it had been so long I wanted this to be special. For her, and for me.

  We shifted positions. She lay back and it was my turn to straddle her. I kissed her, teasing her lips with my tongue but then drawing back when she opened them to allow me entry. She gave a small groan of disappointment but I kissed along her jaw line, then to her neck and throat, and worked my way lower.

  My mouth found her right breast. I kissed the
milky skin, letting my tongue just peek passed my lips in tiny flicks. I moved to her nipple which I gently took into my mouth. I held her nipple with the barest touch of my teeth while I blew air past it. My right hand caressed her left breast, the thumb flicking the nub at its end. My left hand drifted lower, down her side, across her thigh, seeking the warm wetness between her legs. She sucked in a sharp breath in response.

  She grabbed at my arms and tugged me upward.

  “In me. I need you in me.”

  I smiled. “Not yet.”

  “You’re killing me.”

  I moved down from her breast, kissing her stomach. I paused a moment to tongue her belly button. She groaned.

  I moved lower. She responded uncertainly as I used my hands to gently move her thighs apart. My head dipped. My tongue flicked out.

  Looking up, I saw her head thrown back, her mouth open in a soundless scream. Her whole body shuddered as she climaxed.

  “Oh, God, Erwin. George had never...had never...” She shuddered again.

  I looked up at her. She was older than I appeared to be and would continue to age while I...There would only be so few years before the apparent difference in our ages caused people to talk.

  Yet, could I love this woman? I wondered. Looking beyond the passion of the moment, I thought I could. I saw no reason why I could not build my laboratory in this small town. The port meant I could get equipment I needed.

  Lifetime monogamy was not something a man in my situation could consider but for a time...for a time I could find love.

  She tugged at my arms again. “Please, Erwin. Take me.”

  I kissed my way up her body, pausing for a moment to tease her breasts with kisses. Then, my mouth found hers. Her legs wrapped around my hips. Slowly, cautiously, I slid into her.

  “Oh, Erwin...yes.”

  I began to move within her, slowly, trying to temper my own need, a need sharpened by nearly a century of abstinence. A few minutes and she began to shudder again. Her arms clutched tight around me. I thrust once more, hard, and emptied myself inside her.

  #

  I sat on the settee, Widow Smith curled up next to me, my arm over her shoulders. I had retrieved and put on my trousers and she her chemise and bloomers. For a moment the thought that I still did not know her Christian name bemused me and yet it seemed awkward to ask.

  The rest of our clothes lay scattered where we had tossed them in our lovemaking.

  “How long will you be staying in Portsmouth?”

  I ran my hand up and down the length of her upper arm. “How long would you like me to stay.”

  “Mm.” She snuggled her head in the hollow between my neck and shoulder. “What will people say? What a scandal.”

  I frowned at her words. In the passion of the moment I had not considered the practical challenges of our positions. She was a respectable widow of some means. I was a trapper just in from the wild, or so everyone would see. I was hardly penniless. The money from the sale of the furs would cover until I could “retrieve” my stash of gold. I had learned long ago to conceal my knowledge of the transmutation of metals. Serving as a slave to produce gold for another held no appeal to me.

  Money would be no problem. Social status was another matter entirely, not insurmountable, not here on the frontier, but a challenge to be approached carefully.

  “What’s that?” Widow Smith’s words broke into my reverie.

  I looked in the direction of her gaze. Darkness moved in the dimness of the room.

  I froze. It had been so long that I had half convinced myself the Shadows had been some fevered dream.

  “I have been waiting for you, Johann.” The harsh voice came from nowhere.

  My immobility lasted only an instant. I leaped to my feet, dragging Widow Smith with me. I pushed her behind me.

  “You care for this one?” The voice came again.

  “What is happening, Erwin?” Widow Smith pushed past me before I could stop her. “Who’s Johann. What is that...”

  A tendril of shadow reached out and wrapped around her throat.

  She convulsed. No sound emerged from her throat, but I did not delude myself into thinking her agony was any less than Paul’s had been so long before.

  I grabbed her arm and pulled her toward me but the Shadow, for all its seeming lack of substance, held her fast.

  My mind raced. What had stopped them before? Light. Light had held back the Shadows.

  I leapt over the settee and sprang to the window. With a jerk, I pulled the curtain aside. Light flooded the room.

  The shadow reared back, releasing Widow Smith, who fell to the floor bonelessly.

  The shadow faded into the cracks between wall and floor. “Another time, Johann. You will be ours.”

  I dropped to my knees beside Widow Smith. She still breathed. I pressed my hand to her chest, between her breasts. Her heart still beat. I knew that nothing I could do could hasten recovery from the Shadows’ touch.

  With difficulty I managed to get her up across my shoulders. She was not large for a woman, but I was small for a man. Carrying her this way, I stumbled to the stairs. One thumping step at a time I climbed to the upper floor. Down at the end of the hallway, past the rooms on either side that she let to travelers, the master bedroom stood open.

  Somehow, legs shaking, I crossed the distance. I lowered her to her bed. For a moment, I held her hand.

  I knew then what the future held for me. I could never get close to anyone, never have anyone that these Shadows could use as a weapon against me. While light drove them back, it did not seem to harm them. I could do nothing to stop them, nothing but run, disappear, until the next time they found me.

  Before I left, I gathered up Widow Smith’s clothes and returned them to her room, placing them neatly in her wardrobe. There was no need to leave her to explain the scandal of an illicit affair with a drifter.

  I looked down at her, lying pale as death on her bed. I only hoped I had left her with no other signs of scandal.

  But better that than the Shadows.

  CHAPTER SEVENTEEN

  Present day

  “Adrian?”

  I jerked out of my reverie at the sound of Becki’s voice. “Sorry. Woolgathering.”

  I stirred sugar into my coffee. So many years ago I had learned the hard lesson of not to get attached to people. Only casual acquaintances. Only brief and purely physical affairs. Nothing the shadows could see as an attachment. Nothing they could use as a weapon against me.

  And here I was sitting across a table from two people I called friend. Friend and...friend.

  “Adrian,” Becki said, her voice more insistent this time.

  I forced a smile. “Sorry. When I get to reminiscing, there’s a lot to reminisce about. Where were we?”

  “You said the Shadows were vulnerable to light,” Becki said.

  I nodded. “They can hide in a person. They can...take control I think. I’ve never studied them, being too busy running from them.”

  I took a sip of the coffee, grimaced, then reached for the sugar packets. “They keep asking me to join them. I don’t know, but I think they require permission to enter someone’s body.”

  I tore open two packets and dumped the contents into the coffee. I stirred while I collected my thoughts. “They’ve tortured people, people close to me, to try to force my compliance so I guess they don’t have a problem with coerced permission.”

  I took another drink of coffee. Better this time.

  “That’s why I want you two as far away from the Shadows as possible. I don’t know what the Shadows want with me but it can’t be good and I can’t risk...can’t risk you.”

  “Wait a minute!” Becki said loud enough that several heads in the restaurant turned. She raised a hand in apology, then continued more softly. “How dare you try to make that kind of decision for us. I had enough of that from Chuck.”

  “Becki’s right,” Jeff said. “We’re both adults. And it’s not just you this ti
me. Other people, our friends, are being hurt by these things. You saw. Finding you was chance. They weren’t hunting you. They were there for their own reasons.”

  “And we’ve got to stop them,” Becki said.

  “I’ve never been able to do more than...”

  “Maybe not before,” Becki said. “But you drove that thing out of Chuck, maybe even killed it.”

  The waitress bringing our food provided an opportunity for me to consider my response. In the end, I nodded.

  “Chuck did seem to be free of the Shadow after the flare burned out, but Becki, remember when I said they need permission?”

  “I know,” Becki said, her voice subdued. “I saw.” She sighed. “I always knew Chuck was...determined to be a star but I never thought he’d make a pact with the devil to do it.”

  “I did,” Jeff said.

  Becki rounded on him. “You never liked Chuck. You...”

  “No.” Jeff ran over whatever Becki was going to say. “I didn’t. I thought he was a self-righteous bastard who would do anything, say anything to get his way. And I thought he didn’t give two figs for you, not really. And I was right, too.”

  Becki slumped, deflated, in her seat. She sat silent for several seconds before looking up. “I know.”

  “You should find a nicer guy,” Jeff said. “Someone like Adrian here.”

  My jaw dropped. “Hey, what?”

  “Don’t be ridiculous,” Becki said.

  My heart clenched at Becki’s words but I told it firmly to keep its own counsel. I would not get involved with this young woman more than I already was. I would not. I should be glad that she felt the same way.

  “No, think about it,” Jeff said. “He’s always been there when you needed him, whether it’s been help with your calculus...”

  “I bet that’s not the first time he’s studied calculus. I bet he studied with Isaac Newton.”

  I sighed. “No, never met the man. Nor Leibniz nor Gauss nor Laplace. I’ve lived a long time. That does not mean I’ve met every famous figure in your history books. I was conscripted for the Civil War. I did not, however, meet either General Grant or Abraham Lincoln.”