Dreams and Shadows (21 page)

Ewan swallowed hard. “Okay. Just don't stop.”

Nora stopped. “Oh, too late.” She turned, continuing to walk across the bridge. Ewan shook off the daze and followed her, wearing the daffy grin of a lovesick schoolboy.

“So how many times have you been to the club?”

“Enough,” Nora said. She was seemingly aloof now, as if she'd lost interest in him—but only in jest. She wore a funny smile, clearly expecting him to follow, as if dangling from a string tied to her waist.

“I don't know how I've never seen you.”

“Well, I might have looked different at the time.”

“Really?”

“You never know.”

“Well, why haven't you ever spoken to me before?”

“Because, silly,” she said, wrinkling her nose. “I was waiting for
you
to notice
me
. It's no fun if it's the other way around.”

“Fun?”

“Yeah. Fun.”

Ewan narrowed his eyes playfully. “You're trouble.”

Nora smiled big and bright, then slid her arm around his waist, pulling herself close. “Yeah, but I'm your kind of trouble.”

“You sure about that?”

“Yeah, but you'll have to trust me on that one.”

They walked aglow, in silence for a moment, neither saying anything to spoil it.

Then, as if they'd never stopped talking, she looked at him. “Have you ever been in love?”

He shook his head. “No. Never.”

“Really?” She crinkled her nose a bit. “Never?”

“Nope. Never met the right girl.”

“The
right
girl?”

“All right, smartass. I've dated before.”

“But not successfully.”

He opened his mouth to speak, expecting something witty to fall out. Instead, his gaping maw sat mute, unable to form a single syllable. Then he shook it off, saying matter-of-factly, “No, I suppose not.”

“I didn't think so,” she said. “You have that new car smell to you.”

“It's my aftershave.”

“You don't wear aftershave.”

“What don't you know about me?”

She smiled shyly. “Less than you think.”

Ewan stopped at the end of the bridge. “Oh, really?”

“You're not all that complicated, Ewan.”

“How do you know? I could be dark and mysterious. I could be a serial killer for all you know.” He pointed to the swelling green park just off to the side of the bridge, along the banks of the lake. “That's why I brought you out here.”

“I brought
you
here, Ewan.”

“That's only what I made you think. That's how dark and mysterious I can be.”

Nora took a few steps toward Ewan, shaking her head. “You're not dark, Ewan. You're not mysterious. You're cute. And you're sweet. And you would protect me from the Devil himself if he showed up right now.” She tapped his breastbone with a single finger. “That's what's in that heart of yours. Inside you're just a little boy who feels that somewhere out there is a place where he belongs, but he's lost it and wants only to find it again.”

Ewan peered closely into Nora's eyes. “How do you know that?”

“Because I know what that feels like. I want to find that place again too.”

“Have
you
ever been in love?”

“Once,” she said.

“What happened?”

“He left.”

“Why?”

“He didn't have a choice. But I screwed it up. I should have known he was going to leave, but I was young and stupid and we had no idea what we'd gotten ourselves into.”

“What happened to him?”

“He forgot me and went on with his life.”

“And you?”

“There came a time when I realized that the only way I'd be happy was if I went out looking for happiness. So I did. That's how I found myself in Austin.”

“And me?”

She looked into his eyes, smiled, and, with alarming speed, swooped in, planting a sweet butterfly kiss on his lower lip and whispering into his ear. “You're it,” she said. Then she sprang away into the bushes, running headlong into the park. Ewan remained, speechless, confused both by the tingling kiss and her sudden disappearance. Then it dawned on him what she was doing.
Tag.
And he took off into the darkness after her.

She was quick. Every time Ewan thought he had her, she would duck his tag or slip around a tree. Once she even managed to drop under a branch that Ewan failed to see, flooring him. When he rose to his feet, he caught sight of her standing a few paces away, smiling blithely, with a twinkle in her eye. “Come on,” she taunted. “I know you can do better than that.”

He bolted at her like a charging stallion.

She turned too late to get away, his arm wrapping around her waist as they tumbled together to the ground. They rolled around in the thick grass for a moment until he found himself on top of her, looking into her big brown eyes, his hand holding hers.

“Why do I feel like I already know you?” he asked.

“Do you believe in past lives?”

He shook his head and laughed. “No.”

“Neither do I,” she said. Then she kissed him deeply. Their lips met and fit together as if they had been molded as a set. He wrapped his arms around her and held her tight, one arm around her back and the other cradling her head. His body jolted to life, electric. This wasn't his first kiss, but it sure felt like it. Everything in his body tingled, his mind drifting away, floating in felicity. Ewan could feel lips and the light brushing of tongues and a thousand tiny explosions swarming over every inch of his body—but there was nothing else in the universe. Nothing at all. For the first time in his life, he felt as if he was exactly where he was supposed to be.

And then gently, lovingly, she pulled away. Together they smiled like goofy children, lost in each other's eyes. Then she whispered softly, “I have to go.”

“No you don't,” said Ewan. “Stay here.”

“No, I really do need to go.”

Ewan sat up. “Did I do something wrong?”

“No!” she said. “No, you did everything just right.”

“Then why are you leaving?”

“Because I have to go.”

“Where?”

“Can I tell you next time?”

“I get a next time?”

“Yes,” she said with a nod. “You've earned yourself a couple of next times.”

“Can I call you?”

She shook her head. “I'll find you.”

“What?”

She stroked his cheek delicately with the backs of her fingers. “Trust me,” she said. “I
will
find you.” Then she jumped to her feet, adjusted her clothing, and took a deep breath. “Good night, Ewan.” Before he could protest any further, she was gone, sprinting off into the dark. Ewan rolled onto his back and stared up at the stars.

“Nora,” he said quietly. And as he thought of her, he could hear music spring from his heart and poetry spill off his tongue. Words became phrases and notes became melodies. Ewan smiled. He had to get home and write this down.

N
ORA RAN FULL
speed through the trees. She made little noise, her tiny feet barely kicking up any fuss. Then, when she felt she'd gone far enough, she darted around a tree, arched her back against it, and smiled dreamily. Her eyes twinkled, her skin shimmering in the blackness. For years, she'd dreamt of this evening, never imagining it would actually go so well. There was always the lingering fear that she couldn't connect, that the spark that had existed before couldn't reignite. But it had. And now it was ablaze.

Nora shook her head—curly, thick blond locks spilling out in the place of short brown wisps, a deep azure washing like a wave over the brown of her eyes; her skin stretched, filling out the contours of her face into a much slimmer, more elfin, shape; her lips puckered and swelled, becoming full and bee stung. In a few brisk shakes, Nora melted away and Mallaidh the Leanan Sidhe was all that remained. She was fully grown—a shapely, ethereal, demure woman standing naked in the shadows cast by branches in the moonlight.

Nora was an ephemeral dress she wore—woven of glamour, culled from hints of the mortals Ewan had admired at the bar. Mallaidh had probed his heart and seen what he desired most; Nora was her best approximation. After half a dozen trips, she had at long last built up the nerve to weave herself a cover. This dark, little, pixyish construct had done its job. Now it was entirely up to Mallaidh.

After fourteen years, she had finally found her hero. And she wasn't going to lose him again. No matter what.

 

CHAPTER TWENTY-NINE

T
HE
C
URSED AND THE
D
AMNED

H
idden amid the bars and shops of downtown, situated in a back alley, near a particularly pungent Dumpster fed rancid scraps of fish from a nearby restaurant, there is a solid metal door that looks as if it would take a log and a dozen strong men to break down. The door sits completely unmarked, scratched, rusty, and scuffed from years of abuse. It appears to be no more than the back loading entrance of another business, though no one claims it and no truck has ever backed up to it. If you know how—if you have somehow been gifted with the secret—a simple push on the door will open it. Otherwise, it is entirely unmovable.

Beyond that door is another door—a simple wooden one—with a small, dimly lit foyer separating the two that can accommodate no more than three people snugly. The walls are dingy, poorly kept, showing their age without the slightest attempt to hide it. Above the second door is a sign, written in whatever language the reader happens to speak:
ONLY THE CURSED AND THE DAMNED MAY DRINK HERE. ALL OTHERS MAY POLITELY FUCK OFF
.
Behind that door is a bar. And while that bar has no official name, the locals have named it for its greeting. The Cursed and the Damned.

This was a magical pocket that time forgot—a twenty-by-twenty-foot room with a shoddily assembled bar top, stray barrels and crates for seating, the walls stained, the lighting from a series of buzzing old bulbs dangling perilously from black cables and exposed wiring. There was no artwork or other decoration save for a single, cheaply framed rendition of
Dogs Playing Poker
on black velvet. Just a hollow, drab space two antidepressants shy of suicide. But the beer was cold, the whiskey Irish, and the wine a hundred years old.

On any given day a dozen or so of the same faces, all killing time, waited there for the sun to rise or set. The bar was run by Old Scraps, a wily cluricaun of indeterminate age. At twenty-three and a half inches tall, Scraps was known to challenge to a fight men three times his size and win. He wore a weathered, brown, three-cornered hat atop his wrinkled head, and a bright green waistcoat festooned with large, shiny buttons that he would unconsciously twiddle and polish while talking. When he spoke, he did so through teeth clenched tightly around a pipe, which he removed from his mouth only to wave around when making a point. His cheeks were rosy, his nose bright red, and no one could remember ever seeing him sober.

Old Scraps kept the bar stocked with the finest top-shelf liquor, borrowed as part of his tribute from an adjacent bar he kept tabs on. The wine, however, was stolen from the cellars of selfish men—regularly replaced with younger, inferior vintages, knowing the owners would rarely, if ever, discover the swap. It was said that there wasn't a wine cellar within fifty miles of Austin still possessing its own original stock. Old Scraps placed that range at closer to seventy. And on nights when the wine ran low, he would drunkenly stagger out into the street, lure a stray dog close, then ride it madly through the night in search of unmolested wine cellars. He always returned on an exhausted hound with the best wine money could buy.

Colby Stevens had become a fixture in the bar. He'd begun his stint as something of a mascot and, much like the painting of
Dogs Playing Poker,
it was a delightful irony to have him there. But over time, also like the painting of
Dogs Playing Poker,
the regulars took to him. After all, Colby Stevens hadn't been truly human since he was a child, and he was certainly more powerful than anyone else—short of Yashar—frequenting the place. So not only did they let him stay, but he had officially become one of the boys. This collection of supernatural rabble was the only crowd around whom Colby felt comfortable, and who now equally felt comfortable around him. All as lost and bitter as he, it seemed as good a place as any to let his guard down and drown his sorrows.

“I have crawled through sweltering jungles,” he said one night, his voice pinched and angry from having just swallowed a shot of whiskey, and slow and slurred from the four whiskeys before that. “I have walked across arid plains. I have seen the creatures that man has created, and I, for one, don't ever want to see them again. They are not beasts of their own; they are the reflections of man cast back through a looking glass that dares not withhold a single secret or desire; they are all of man's evil and all of man's good, given material form and set loose like tiny turbulent storms to upset the delicate balance of men's lives. There is no good that can truly come of them, only heartache, heartbreak, and agony. God doesn't hide himself away because he wants each person to come to him with only blind faith; he hides himself away because if people knew the truth, they wouldn't want to believe in him at all. It would seem that God and man have very different definitions of the word
paradise
. But so be it. I know the truth now. And all I want is to be left alone.”

“Have you ever actually
seen
God?” Old Scraps asked from across the bar, his chin balanced upon folded arms.

“Shut up and pour me another drink,” said Colby.

“That's what I thought.” Scraps smiled and grabbed the whiskey. “I don't care how much of the world you've seen, kid. You're still twenty-two years old. Twenty-two-year-olds know two things: fuck and all. So why don't you shut the fuck up and drink this.” He poured two shooters for himself and one for Colby, finishing the first before Colby could reach for his.

“I do love our chats.” Colby smiled.

“Well, you better, because no one else wants to listen to your bullshit, material or otherwise.”

“I don't know about that,” said Yashar from farther down the bar, clearly as drunk as Colby. No longer dressed in silks and finery, he wore a simple pair of jeans, a white T-shirt, and a leather motorcycle jacket. “I've been listening to his shit for years and I'm still not tired of it.” Colby leaned over and the two bumped fists as a sign of solidarity.

The patronage of the Cursed and the Damned was thin but familiar that night. Bill the Shadow, in the far corner, smoked a cigarette from beneath his fedora, casting a shadow over his portion of the room. Two older pixie men, Seamus and Walter, nursed their own small beers at a diminutive table set in the back where no one would trip over them.

Lastly, Bertrand, a fallen angel and outrageous drunk, sat at his own table mumbling to himself, his hair long, blond, greasy, and neglected, his alabaster skin having seen better days. He wore white, battered armor, a large red Gothic cross painted on its chest plate, and carried both a similarly painted shield and a helmet no one had ever seen him wear. Bertrand often conversed with himself, speaking with long-departed friends in hushed, mumbled tones sounding more like death-bed tremors than the drunken rambling it was. But every once in a while he would speak up loudly, arguing with himself, making bold declarations.

“It's not like suffering in Hell is really eternal or anything,” he said through a slurred, drunken drawl. “It just feels that way.”

Heads slowly turned in his direction, unsurprised but curious.

“What?” asked Old Scraps. “What the hell are you on about?” Everyone in the bar turned to Bertrand, who now held the floor.

“Hell,” he said “It's not like you go there forever.”

“Since when?”

“Have you ever been to Hell?” asked Bertrand.

Old Scraps shook his head. “Of course not.”

“Well, it's not what you think. There are parts of Hell that are a veritable paradise. Sins of the flesh; unspeakable beauty; raw, unfiltered sensations overwhelming all five senses. It is heaven for those for whom Heaven's enlightenment holds no interest. They are patches of forever encased in immaterial amber. But the lights don't stay on by themselves, you know; they are fueled by the nightmares and torments of the imprisoned. Those perfect, dreamlike bubbles of bliss are nothing more than the coalesced memories of the punished as they beg and plead to regain their precious moments. They are stripped of them on entry and left with the anguish of their sin and the pain of their death; they are hamsters on a wheel, turning and turning until they can turn no more, just to keep the elite few undisturbed in their flawless little utopias.”

Bertrand rolled his empty glass back and forth on the table, fumbling it a few times, making sure Old Scraps knew it was empty. Scraps hopped up on the bar and, grabbing the bottle, marched over to Bertrand's table.

“That doesn't make any sense,” said Colby.

“What? You thought he was collecting souls for some war at the end of time? There is no end of time. There was no beginning. There just
is
. It's all just energy. Nothing is forever. One day even Hell will be gone—dried up and spent, floating through space and time as a lifeless hulk before it is consumed by whatever the next thing is. It is just another star in the universe that will one day burn itself out. That's just the way things work here. Nothing is permanent, but everything is never ending.”

“So who gets to see this paradise?” asked Old Scraps, pouring the angel another glass of whiskey.

“Whoever brings in the most souls gets a garden of their own, I suppose,” he said.

Colby shook his head, confused. “Wait, so the most evil men in the world get a pass?”

“What do you mean evil? What
is
evil? Do you mean sin? No, the greatest sinners don't get a pass. But the greatest persuaders do, the men who lead others into willful oblivion. They build the pyres upon which their furnace will be heated.”

“Like who?” asked Colby.

“Hitler.”

Old Scraps removed the lit pipe from his mouth and waved it around wildly. “Wait, wait, wait. Are you saying someone like Adolf Hitler is in this hellish paradise of yours?”

“That's exactly what I'm saying. Why wouldn't Adolf be dead center at the Devil's party? Millions upon millions of people committed atrocities and sins of all sorts in his name, at his behest, or in opposition to his influence. All of their own free will. Don't kid yourself; it's all about free will, every last bit of it. He never forced those people; he gave them the chance to become the people they always dreamt of—at a price. And that price filled the coffers of Hell for two generations. Krauts, Ruskies, Yanks, Brits, Japs, Guineas, Frogs, Polocks, Protestants, Catholics, Jews. They all did unspeakable things in the name of righteousness. More coal for the fires! But did you ever hear a whisper about Hitler pulling a trigger or flipping a switch and gassing a room full of people himself? No. You didn't. Because he always convinced someone else to do it.

“No one is born damned; you have to damn yourself. Hell's fires are fueled by the stuff of dreams and stoked with man's attempts to grasp them. Few men set out to damn their fellow man; those that do have a special place carved out in the brimstone of the underworld. The Devil loves a self-made man.” Bertrand threw back the remainder of his whiskey, swallowed it hard, and with a grimace looked around the bar. “Fuck this place,” he said. “Bring on the next thing.”

The angel rose to his feet, stumbled toward the door, careful enough not to get his wings caught but not so much so that he didn't spill a few drinks along the way. Pushing the door open, he managed half of a polite bow before falling through, picking himself up, and making his way out into the street.

“Such sad creatures,” said Old Scraps.

“Angels or drunks?” asked Colby.

“Pfff. Drunks are God's chosen few. Angels are just his messengers. Can you imagine? Being one with everything, born with a purpose, getting told everything you need to do to make the world a better place, only to have it all torn away, to be cast down, and left to experience creation alone on such limited terms? No wonder they're all drunks. This place sucks.”

“Aye,” mumbled the room, drinks held high, toasting misery.

“Why doesn't he drink with his own kind?” asked Colby.

“Bertrand? He does. But they have the decency to throw him out before he gets this drunk.”

“And you don't?” asked Yashar.

Old Scraps laughed. “Ain't a cluricaun born that can so much as spell
decency,
let alone appreciate it.” The door opened once again. “Another whiskey then, is it, Berty?” he called toward the door.

“No,” said Coyote. “But I will take a beer.”

The room fizzled and all fell quiet. Coyote stood at the entrance, smiling back at the looks of shock and disdain.

“
No
. You.
Out,
” said Old Scraps, struggling for the words, pointing angrily out the door, refusing eye contact.

“You're not going to tell me that you don't serve
my kind
here, are you?” asked Coyote.

“If by
your kind
you mean foul trickster spirits, then no, we most certainly do not.”

“Oh, but I'm quite thirsty,” said Coyote. “Just one drink?”

“First rule of bartending: never let a trickster speak.” Old Scraps pointed a stiff finger toward the door. “Out!”

“But I've already spoken. If you kick me out now, you might be doing exactly what I want you to do.”

“That's a chance I'm willing to take.”

Coyote leaned back out the door and looked up at the sign. Then he leaned back in. “What if I assure you that I am quite damned?”

“Of that, I am most certain. Still won't get you a drink. Out! Out, out, and
out
.”

A moment of silence gripped the bar; a standoff, a stare down. Coyote dared not take a step farther without permission, as only a fool angered a drunk. Nevertheless, Old Scraps was equally as cautious; if Coyote wasn't there for him, there was no need to earn his ire.