The Den of Shadows Quartet (5 page)

Aubrey’s servant has run from my home, and I sense him leaving my town. He fears for his life, with good reason. Had he stayed I would have killed him. He knows I would, and he knows I can smell his fear.

I may have been changed against my will, but I do not fight what I am anymore. There is no greater freedom than feeling the night air against your face as you run through the forest, no greater joy than the hunt. The taste of your prey’s fear, the sound of its heart beating strong and fast, the smells of the night.

I stand in this small town, so near to the dead and almost as near to the faithful in the church across the street, feeling the fear of the human running from my home. For that is what I am — a hunter. I learned long ago that I could not deny that fact.

Every instinct tells me to hunt this running, frightened
creature. I am a vampire, after all. But I am not an animal, and I was once a human. That is what makes my kind dangerous: a hunter’s instincts and a human’s mind. Humanity’s cruel way of toying with the world, laced with the savage, unthinking hunt of the wild animal.

But I do have control, and I will let this human live to tell his news to Aubrey, whom he fears even more than he fears me. He is the bearer of bad news, and Aubrey does not like bad news.

I refuse to allow Aubrey to rule me, but only because it is the way of my kind. I fear Aubrey as much as this human does, perhaps more, for I know exactly what Aubrey is and what he is capable of.

I am restless. Despite the rising sun, I am in the mood to do something.

After making a quick check to make sure there is no blood on me from the previous night’s hunt, I leave my house. I walk, partly because I am not leaving Concord and thus not going far, but mostly because I have a craving to move.

Occasionally I visit cafés like Ambrosia, which cater to my kind. But more often I become a shadow of the human world. Human lives, which seem so complex to those who are living them, seem simple from the perspective of three hundred years.

The coffee shop has just opened when I slip through the door.

The girl who works there is human, of course. Her name is Alexis, and she has worked there for most of the summer.

“Morning, Elizabeth,” she greets me, and I smile in return. I often visit this place in the morning. Of
course, I did not give Alexis my real name. I do not allow myself to grow close to humans. They have a tendency to notice that I never age.

I buy coffee, not because I want the caffeine or even like the taste, but because people will stare at someone who is sitting in a coffee shop without anything to drink.

A few minutes later the prework traffic begins. For about half an hour the shop bustles, and I sit in the corner silently and watch people.

Though I have worked to distance myself from human society, I enjoy watching humans as they go about their business.

The principal of the nearby school hurries in, already late for work, dressed in a somber suit that makes her look even more tired than she is. A minute later a middle-aged man opens the door, stopping in during his morning jog. Two women, sipping their coffee at one of the small tables, get into a quiet argument over an article one read in the newspaper. A teenage girl meets her boyfriend and then is horrified as her father walks into the coffee shop.

I smile silently, watching the various dramas, which will probably be forgotten by evening.

Business slows as the customers depart, many complaining about their destination.

Humans are often this way. They go about their lives, constantly working, complaining of boredom one minute and overwork the next. They pause only to observe the niceties of society, greeting each other with “Good morning” while their minds are somewhere else completely.

Sometimes I wonder what my life would be like if I had been born into this modern time. Sin and evil no longer seem as important as they did three hundred years ago. Would I have been as horrified at what I have become, I wonder, if I had not been raised in the church, with the ever-present threat of damnation?

The two women in the corner who have been arguing about politics now stand and depart together, laughing. I watch them with an ounce of jealousy, knowing their worries are far away and that despite everything they know, they are still innocent.

Innocence … I remember when the last of my innocence died.

A
THER LED ME
from her house, and I saw no choice but to follow. The moonlight cleared my mind slightly, but my vision was still red around the edges, and my head was pounding.

I did not have specific memories of who I had been, but I knew what a town was, and what a house was. And everything I saw around me was somehow not
right
.

Ather’s home was at the fringe of a wood, set far back from the road. After a moment I realized what was bothering me about it: the house was painted black with white shutters, as was the one next door. I had an impression of inversion, like the black Masses I had been told of at which Devil-spawns spoke the Lord’s Prayer backward. It was the same, and so very wrong.

“Where are we?” I finally asked.

“This place does not exist,” Ather answered. I frowned, not understanding. She sighed, impatient with my ignorance. “This town is called Mayhem. It is as
solid as the town you grew up in, but our kind owns it, and no one outside even knows it exists. Stop thinking about things you need not worry about, Risika. You need to feed.”

You need to feed
. I shut my eyes for a moment, trying to blink away the burning sensation. I shook my head, but the pain refused to dull. Would I need to kill to sate it? I did not want to kill, but I did not want to die, but I did not want to kill…. What happened to the damned when they died?

“No,” I said again, though this time it meant nothing in my ears and nothing in my mind. Thinking was impossible. I only knew I did not want to kill, but all I could think about was blood … red blood on black petals, and thorns and fangs like a viper’s….

The pain was intense, pushing my reason away from me, and my thoughts were no longer coherent. Ather sounded so sure, so calm.

“Come, child,” she said soothingly “You can feed on one of the witches waiting for death, if that would appease your conscience. They are already doomed to death and worse.”

A shiver wracked my body, and the pain in my eyes and head grew. My hands were numb.

I am not sure whether I nodded. I believe I may have.

The next instant I found myself in a cold, dark cell with two of the accused witches. I did not consciously know how I arrived there, but part of me knew that Ather had used her mind to move us both. She appeared beside me a moment later.

I heard a beating that filled the room, and it took me
a moment to realize that it was the heartbeats of the two women who were in the cell with us. One of them had screamed when she saw us, and the other had crossed herself. The smell of fear was sharp, and though I had never smelled it before, I recognized the scent the way a wolf does.

The accused witches tried to move away from us, one reciting the Lord’s Prayer, the other still screaming. But the cell was too small for them to go far. I hardly heard the prayer.

I was aware only of their heartbeats and the pulses in their wrists and throats. I heard nothing else, saw nothing else. My vision was red-hazed, and my head was spinning.

Feed freely
. I recognized Ather’s voice in my mind. She smiled at me, and I caught a flash of fang. Absently I brushed my tongue over my own canines and realized that they were the same — too sharp, too long, they did not belong in a human mouth. I could feel the tips, vicious as a snake’s, pressing into my lower lip.

I saw Ather walk toward the still screaming woman, who quieted and went limp, as if she had fallen asleep. Ather pulled back the woman’s head, exposing the pulse in her neck. Ather’s razor-sharp fangs neatly broke the woman’s skin, and the scent of blood entered the room.

I lost all ideas of sin and murder then.

I lost all that had once made me Rachel.

I turned to the other woman, whose prayer had become a babble.

I fed.

I tasted her life as it flowed into me. Ather’s blood had been cool and filled with the essence of immortality. This human’s blood was thick and hot, boiling with pure life and energy. It wet my parched mouth and brought down my fever, and I drank it like a healing ambrosia.

Flashes of thought came to me, too fast for me to realize at first that they were not my own. After a moment I gained more control and discovered they were from my victim. I saw a laughing human child. It called to its mother to show her a flower. I saw a dinner cooking in a hearth. I saw a wedding. I saw morning services. My mind focused on this last image.

I could see this woman’s mind clearly, and she was innocent of any form of witchcraft. This thought, more than any other, caused a complete change in me. This woman had been sent here to die as a witch, and she was innocent of the crime. Why had her own people accused her? How many more of the accused were innocent?

I tried to draw away quickly, but I moved as if under water. It was so tempting to drink for just a moment more, and a moment more than that, and just a moment more …

And lead us not into temptation.” I had spoken those words without faith so many times. If true belief had backed my prayer, would the words have been rewarded? Or would I still have been in that cell, feasting on the blood of an innocent woman?

All I knew at that time was that I did not want to kill, and yet I could not draw away. Even as I heard her heart stop and felt the flow of blood slowing, even as
she died, it was hard to stop feeding. My vision returned as her vision faded, and I looked at the innocent woman, now pale as chalk and empty of blood.

Beside me Ather licked her lips and dropped her prey to the stained, dirty floor of the cell. She looked as satisfied as a kitten with a bowl of cream. I was horrified, but not simply because of the killing. I had been unable to draw away as an innocent woman died, even though I could have saved her life.

“It is easy to kill, Risika,” Ather told me. “And it gets easier the more you do it.”

“No,” I answered. How many times had I said that word in the past day? What meaning did it have anymore? I was not as sure as I wanted to be.

“You will learn,” she told me, taking the woman from my arms and dropping her to the ground with the other innocent. “You are a predator now, and survival is the only rule of a predator’s world.”

“I will not be a killer.”

“You will,” she said, walking behind me. I turned to keep her in my view. She sounded so sure, and I felt so unsure. “You are above the humans now, Risika, above even most of our kind. Will you let them rule you because that is how the humans taught you?”

I did not answer, because I could not do so without agreeing with her.

“The law of the jungle says ‘Be strong or be dominated.’ The law of our world says ‘Be strong or be killed.’”

“It is not my world!” I shouted. I did not want to belong to this fierce world of hunters who fed on the blood of innocents.

“Yes, it is, Risika,” Ather insisted.

“I won’t let it be.”

“You have no choice, child.”

“You’re evil. I won’t kill because you tell me to —”

“Then kill because it is your right.” She snapped each word off, impatient with my refusal. “You are no longer human, Risika. Humans are your prey You have never felt sorrow for the chickens you killed so that they could grace your plate. The animals you raised so that they could be killed. The creatures you put in pens so that you could own them. Why should you feel differently toward your meal now?”

She put it in a way I could not disagree with. “But you can’t just kill humans. It’s —”

“Evil?” Ather finished for me. “The world is evil, Risika. Wolves hunt the stragglers in a group of deer. Vultures devour the fallen. Hyenas destroy the weak. Humans kill that which they fear. Survive and be strong, or die, cornered by your prey trembling because the night is dark.”

I
LEAVE THE COFFEE SHOP
and return to my home before the sun rises too high for comfort.

I go to bed, fall into a deep sleep, and awaken that evening in a foul mood.

I allow myself to hide in fear. Even as I say I will not let Aubrey rule my life, I let him keep me from the one thing in this world that can still bring me joy: Tora, my tiger. My beautiful, pure-minded tiger, who was once free and is now caged.

Aubrey has stolen so much from me. I have sworn to avenge the lives he has taken, but every time I have been too much a coward to challenge him.

My mood is as dark as Aubrey’s eyes, black without end, and I want to fight back. So I deliberately hunt in Aubrey’s land — the dying heart of New York City, where the streets are darkened with shadows cast by the invisible world.

I see another of my kind, a young fledgling, in one of
the alleys. She senses my strength and cowers, blinking away like a candle flame in the night.