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An ancient entity, trapped and suffering; a girl who inexplicably hears cries of anguish in her dreams.... What’s their connection?
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CHAPTER 1
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The wind under our wings exhilarates as a host of small fires dance beneath us—an ocean of light in the darkness of night.
The one we seek is here. We can feel him. His image draws us.
His death is nigh.
We circle unseen, our body as black as the air around us. Tents now become visible, illuminated by the myriad flames. Inside, they sleep. Some mill about outside, attending to armor and weapons for the battle ahead—a battle they are more likely to lose if we can complete our bargain. No matter; we care little for the concerns of these petty and insignificant beings.
There! That one! One tent looms larger than the others and is guarded by three sentries—the number of talons on one of our hands. A challenge.
The material of the shelter is heavy, too difficult for us to cut through or lift, too noisy to tear or shred. We need surprise when we flee, encumbered as we will be with our burden—our prize.
Our spoils.
The entrance to the tent is the only way, and those who monitor it must perish—silently.
The first is easy. The blood from his throat kisses the barb at the end of our tail as we sail by. The second, we seize from behind as our hooves contact the sandy ground. With a twist, his neck snaps and he collapses.
The last of the trio turns. Light from the nearby fire dances on our ashen form, and we sparkle like countless diamonds. Shock is our ally, our visage inconceivable and terrifying. Before he can raise his spear or call for help, we are upon him, forcing him to the ground, our talons over his mouth and nose. He begins to buck and kick for breath.
Suddenly, a sharp jab pierces our side! A dagger! He stabs and pulls, creating a jagged gash from which loosened ash pours. It pains us, but the loss is too small to matter, an unavoidable outcome of our dangerous task. Slowly, his grasp on the knife loosens and his eyes go dull. We pull the offending weapon from our torso, furl our wings, and rapidly slink through the tent’s entrance.
Inside, the dull glow emanating from a brazier lights the space. We see some furniture, a table strewn with maps... nothing of concern to us. Instead, the cushions and throws along the tent’s wall capture our attention. He slumbers there with a female by his side—an additional obstacle, but nothing can be done, as time is short.
We launch into the sleeping man and grab his mouth so he cannot cry for help. He flails and thrashes, but we are too strong. We rip him from his bedding and turn toward the doorway.
Again, pain assails us, this time from behind—a fierce slash across the top of our right wing! The trauma causes us to lose our grip, and our captative whirls to strike at us with his fist. Again, surprise and terror work to our advantage and the man briefly freezes, dumbfounded by what he sees. We pummel him in the jaw, and he collapses at our feet, hopefully not dead.
Not yet.
We crouch just in time to avoid a second blow from behind. It slices the air right above our horns. We sweep out with our tail and catch the culprit unaware, entangling them and pulling them to the ground, and we turn to face our assailant.
It is the woman. She is nude, and a short, straight sword lies beside her as she struggles to regain her feet—but we have her hopelessly immobilized. She is about to scream, so we reach out and silence her.
Our eyes meet, and we can taste her panic.
‘Do not fight me!’ we say. ‘Stay silent.’
They are both commands and requests. She cannot understand our words, but her mind will grasp the meaning, just as ours will allow us to understand her tongue.
We feel the deep wound on our wing. The structure is compromised, and we will not be able to fly without her aid.
‘You must stoke the fire in the brazier. We will release you to do so, but call out and you shall die.’
“I am dead in either case!” she spits. “I am a slave. If you take him, they will think me an accomplice. This is why I tried to save him!”
‘Do as instructed, and we will give you a chance to live.’
“Are you a Jinn?” she asks, her dread partially giving way to wonder and curiosity.
We chafe at the word, memories of the torturous captivity rising unbidden into our mind. ‘Speak not of such things! If you wish to see the warmth of day again, do as we say.’
She complies, adding fuel to the smoldering embers, and soon there is flame.
Hopefully enough.
‘Flee from here,’ we tell her. ‘Go toward the hills in the direction of the rising sun and hide. When the attackers come, give yourself over to them. Tell them you have information for the Sadat Alnaar. There, you will find shelter. It is risky, but it is your only chance.’
“I have little to lose. I know not how to thank—”
‘Thank us by going now. Time is precious.’
She grabs a garment from the ground near the cushions, and scurries through the doorway without looking back.
We squat by the fire and let the damaged portion of our wing dissolve into the flames. An ashen cloud swirls around us, and when enough has collected, we call it back. It reshapes what is broken, remakes what has been undone. The joint is weakened, but we can now fly. We inspect our victim, who still breathes—merely unconscious.
We lift him, slip through the opening in the tent, and vault into the sky back toward the outskirts of this city they call Heliopolis. There our Mistresses await us. They will be as pleased with the elimination of a Byzantine General as we shall be to consume his energy and return to our realm.
The vista of fires recedes behind us, and we are once again free in the cool air of night.
The cool.
The cold.
The perpetual chill that cannot be warmed.
The thought of this numbing bitterness breaks our reverie—the spell of this ancient memory, of times long past, shattered once again by the piercing reality of frigid captivity.
Our consciousness grudgingly returns to this icy and unbearable prison. How much longer have we now wallowed in this frozen place, separated from the warmth of the Eternal Flame?
Why have they abandoned and betrayed us? We honored all the bargains and did exactly as they wished. Why have they forsaken us?
Why will they not set us free?
She embodied darkness.
She wore heavy black Doc Martens, black leggings, a tight-fitting black miniskirt and a black leather jacket with chrome studs—which Eric found incredibly stylish, in a kind of scary way. The only splash of color appeared on her old, black, low-cut t-shirt, which sported a pink-faced woman with jet-black, punkish hair, defiantly smoking a cigarette. Under the scary-cool black leather jacket, he could read some of the faded white letters across the hair of the woman on the shirt.
Band, he figured, though it could have easily read Bad. Nina Hagen certainly looked bad, in the naughty sort of way.
He turned his attention from the t-shirt to his subject’s ultra-straight, jawline-length, uber-black hair. Her natural color? he wondered. It shone a deep purple in the morning sunlight.
The pièce de résistance had to be her eyebrows, though, or more the lack thereof. She’d shaved them off, and now artistic and exaggerated squiggles of black eyeliner marked their place. He’d seen some other girl do that, a singer in some weird band that he vaguely recalled was local to his home state of Massachusetts, but he couldn’t remember their name.
Whatever.
Offsetting all this was her pale skin, like a full moon on a bitter and cloudless New England winter night. Only the apparently obligatory black lipstick and the truly scary-looking black circles under her black-mascaraed eyes made any mark on her otherwise porcelain complexion.
She has to be German! he bitterly thought. She couldn’t be from a normal place like Spain or Italy, or even somewhere bizarre like Estonia or Burkina Faso. He briefly wondered if Burkina Faso was even a country before dismissing the thought for more urgent concerns.
Sadly, she was indeed from Germany, and as such, one thing leading to another, Eric now had to talk to her. Well, he didn’t have to, but Mr. Meier, his German teacher, had strongly recommended it when he’d approached him after yesterday’s German class.
“Herr Schneider,” he’d called from behind as Eric was leaving the room. He always called him “Herr Schneider,” which he found annoying for some reason. “You know we talked about your grades at the end of last year, and that you’re behind your classmates. You told me then you’d try harder, work over the summer.”
Yeah, summer. Where did the time get off to?
“The year is young yet,” Mr. Meier continued, “but we’re not off to the start for which I was hoping.”
Even with his German accent, his English grammar was better than Eric’s, which Eric also found quite annoying. He tried to look nonchalant, and waited for what would come next.
“I’d like you to ask the girl who’s new to the school this year, the girl who moved with her father from Deutschland, if maybe she could help you a bit. You could certainly use some extra help, and it looks like she’s having some difficulties transitioning to her new environment. Maybe she could use a friend, who at least has a little German?”
Difficulties?
Eric almost laughed out loud, thinking a vampire would be having an easier time transitioning to daylight than this girl was transitioning to Southby High School.
A friend? Are you kidding?
Lots of kids had tried to be nice to this girl, and she’d uniformly rebuffed them in no uncertain terms.
Does Mr. Meier know everyone calls her the “Sour Kraut?” Eric knew how wrong that was, but.... Hey, sometimes, if the Doc Martens fit....
Mr. Meier went on. “Her name is Liselotte, but whatever you do, don’t call her that. It’s a very traditional name and, apparently, she hates it. She goes by Lotte.”
Great. Her name rhymes with lotta, like a whole-lotta trouble for me. Do I have-ta? Gee, that rhymes too.
“I’m asking you to do this, Eric, both for you and for her. I’ll look favorably on you if you at least try, and believe me, I’m looking desperately for ways to look favorably on you. You can’t fall much further behind. Maybe private tutoring, but please, try this first, ja?”
Eric got the drift.
The most utterly annoying thing about Mr. Meier was that he was actually right. Eric was at the bottom—and it wasn’t even close—of his fourteen-student German class, most of whom he’d been with since he started taking the language in eighth grade. Middle school had been easier, but the stakes got higher last year in ninth grade and the move to high school. Mr. Meier demanded much more than his old teacher, Mrs. Henry, and the difficulty of the curriculum had increased. Eric’s ability to coast by with minimal effort hit the wall.
The problem was that he didn’t really like German. His parents had pushed him into it because his family, on his father’s side, had been German immigrants in the nineteenth century. His grandfather had served in the U.S. military in Germany at the end of World War II, where he met Eric’s grandmother. They got married, moved back to the States, and settled in Southby.
Three years ago, after Grandpa’s death in 2002, Grandma moved to an apartment downtown, and Eric’s family became the center of her world. His folks thought it would be nice if Eric could speak some German with her.
Nice idea, but he had little to talk with Grandma about in English, let alone German. Plus, German was so fussy... with so many rules, three genders, what felt like a zillion ways to conjugate verbs, and the goddamned verb always came at the end.
Like that makes any sense!
Somehow, he’d survived ninth grade. Things weren’t getting any easier, though, and despite basically good intentions, he wasn’t cutting it.
Now he was stuck. He couldn’t drop the class this year, so he had to find a way to squeak by. Apparently, that way was through this emanation of darkness now before him.
Liselotte, oh, excuse me... Lotte! The Sour Kraut.
He didn’t even know her last name.
The time for observation was over. The bell would ring soon for first period, which today for Eric would be fucking Wind Ensemble. The clarinet case in his left hand felt like a boat anchor, not because it was particularly heavy, but because he’d come to detest the instrument. If he could leave the miserable piece of wood in some forest somewhere, he would. Let it return to its natural state—silent.
He bit his lip and approached Lotte, who sat on a low stone wall, reading a book clutched in fingers crowned with black nail polish. She hadn’t noticed him spec’ing her out at all, so he figured he’d hit her with some German, hoping maybe that would soften her up.
“Uh-hum.” He cleared his throat when he got close, but not so close he might be physically sucked into the black hole.
She deliberately raised her eyes and met his gaze straight on.
“Goo-ten more-kin,” he sputtered in the same shaky voice that plagued him in German class. “Ikh hie-ssuh Eric. Vee hie-ssen zee?”
She flinched. Her eyes widened ever so slightly, as if trying to oversample the air to verify what she saw was real. The silence lingered a little too long, actually became uncomfortable, before she finally spoke.
“Wie heißen Sie?” she scowled. “So formal. ‘Wie heißt Du?’ would have been fine, unless you think I look so old that I’d be your elder. Then again, maybe you think I’m your superior. Given your atrocious accent, that probably isn’t far off the mark. I could hardly understand what you were saying!”
Shit, she’s right. Wie heißt Du? would have been much more appropriate for asking someone’s name in this situation. He kicked himself. I knew that. Brain freeze! She’s also right about my stupid accent. German pronunciation is definitely not my strong suit. Actually, nothing German is my strong suit. Great start, loser.
Lotte’s voice contained an odd mix of German tones mixed with an English-from-England type accent. She spoke surgically, each word a little scalpel on her tongue, which Eric found oddly soothing. At least he knew where he stood.
“In any case, I’m Lotte,” she said with a dismissive tone. “What do you want?”
“Hi, Lotte. Yeah, so... like I said, I’m Eric, and I’m, like, in German. I mean, like, I’m taking German... as a class.” It occurred to him that he should have figured out what he wanted to say before approaching her, instead of contemplating her darkness for the past however many minutes, but that ship had sailed. “Anyway, I’m not doing too well in the class.”
“Astonishing,” she flatly replied.
That stings. He fought to stay focused. “Yeah, well, anyway, my German teacher said you were new to the school. I thought maybe you’d be willing to help me out a little, like, studying and stuff. German, that is... studying German. Maybe I could help you with anything you might need. This must be a big change for you, huh?”
Whew! That’s it. Now it’s up to her.
He readied himself for the inevitable rejection. He watched as her eyes, thoughtful and bright in spite of their darkness, looked upward while she brought her hand to her chin. She was about to speak when, from behind, Eric heard his name.
“Yo, Schneider! What are you doin’?”
He recognized the voice—everyone at Southby High knew the voice of Colton West, captain and quarterback of the Southby High Engines, named in honor of the rail engines and cars built in Southby back whenever things like that happened. The “Big Man on Campus” was generally a despicable douchebag. Eric turned and saw that four members of Colton’s “posse,” as always, accompanied him.
“Hi, Colton,” he feebly responded. He didn’t have time for this. He needed to get an answer from Lotte before German class.
“What are you doing with her?” Colton curtly replied, gesturing at Lotte, who hadn’t moved from her perch on the wall. “Is she your girlfriend, Schneider?”
The posse all guffawed at the whiny tone Colton used to say “girlfriend.”
Yeah, that’s super funny. Actually, this is Lotte, as in whole-lotta trouble. This is exactly what I figured was gonna happen. Still, you didn’t fuck with Colton West—that would have major repercussions.
“No, Colton, she’s not my girlfriend.” He heard Lotte release a snort of disdain behind him. “I’m hoping she’ll help me with my German. She’s a new student who moved here from Germany.” Stupid! And in other news, the sky is blue. The whole school knew she was from Germany. Eric definitely knew he had a tendency to say dumb things when put on the spot.
A puckish grin spread on Colton’s face. “Achtung, Germany,” he said in a phony German accent, which Eric figured was still probably a bit better than his own.
Then Colton stood stiff at attention, smartly clicked his heels, and raised his right arm upward.
Even the posse appeared dumbfounded. All sound and motion seemed to cease as Colton West stood in his mock salute. Eventually, the puckish grin returned, and he glanced over his shoulder at his “peeps,” anticipating their adulation.
Eric felt, as much as he saw, Lotte brush past him from behind. Seemingly in one motion, she crossed the distance between herself and Colton and, as he returned his attention to Eric and Lotte, smacked him with all her force.
Before he could recover, she grabbed him by the collar and dragged his face to hers.
“You’re no monster!” she spat, the little scalpels on her tongue slicing the air and leaving invisible clots of blood at the pair’s feet. “I see monsters in my dreams, and you don’t scare me at all. You’re just a stupid boy who craves attention any way he can get it. There’s a lesson here for you, but you’re too absorbed in yourself to learn it. Never talk to me again, and never make that sign around me, or anywhere... ever!”
With that, she shoved the still slightly reeling Colton aside, marched past Eric without looking at him, picked up her black leather shoulder bag, shoved her book into it, and walked away.
“What the actual fuuuuuuck, dudes! Did you fuckin’ see that?” Colton rubbed his jaw as he spoke, not hurt badly, but obviously baffled and slightly dazed.
The posse remained silent until a reply came from a most unlikely source, Da’Von Newhouse, six-foot-three and who-the-hell-knew-how-many-pounds, who anchored left tackle on the Engine’s offensive line. One of the few black students at the school, he was truly a gentle giant. Eric had found him an amiable and capable partner for labs in science class last year, and he seemed to have good relations with just about everyone. Why he hung with Colton like this was a mystery to Eric.
Must be a football thing.
“Colt, man,” Da’Von said, “you know I love you and I got your blind side, but that was not cool. You had that one coming.”
Colton immediately shot back. “Oh, come on, man! She knew I was just fuckin’ around! It was a joke! Does anyone not get a fucking joke anymore?”
“Not funny, my brother. It’s like you calling me the N-word. You can call me lots of shit, but you can’t call me that, and you know it. That shit is not cool with German people.”
Colton considered for a moment. He looked like he had more to say, but when he’d made up his mind, his attention returned to Eric.
“You tell your little girlfriend, or German instructor, or whatever the fuck she is, that she better watch out!” With that, he gave Eric an indecisive shove, waved his head, and walked toward school, his posse in tow.
Da’Von shot Eric a look as they walked away, as if to say: What the fuck, dude, I’m sorry!
Eric tried to process what had just happened, but then survival instinct kicked in: he still needed some kind of reply from Lotte. Reluctantly, he ran after her, his stupid, useless clarinet case occasionally banging painfully against his left leg. He caught up with her just as she left the main lobby down one of the classroom corridors.
“Hey, Lotte!” he called, and she turned to face him. “Listen, I’m really sorry about what happened back there. That was just... man... so wrong. That was just wrong.”
She gave him a puzzled look. “You have nothing to be sorry for. You did nothing.”
Considering the double entendre, he wondered if she’d expected him to stand up to Colton on her behalf.
As if reading his mind, or more likely the troubled look on his face, she said, “I’m sorry, I didn’t mean it like that. You didn’t make Colton do what he did, and confronting him would have had consequences for you. For me, it’s different—at least this time.”
“Colton is pissed. He said you better watch out.”
She rolled her eyes. “Tüddelkram! Such pathetic nonsense. He says this to look tough in front of his Droogs. He doesn’t scare me a bit.”
He smiled. “Hey, Droogs! A Clockwork Orange! I loved that movie! I’m really into old sci-fi and horror films. You too?”
“No,” she replied with obvious distaste. “Not in the least. I read the book... but I suppose the movie is good too. Listen, Eric, I have to get to class.”
“Yeah, of course, we both do. I just really needed to know if you were interested in what I asked you. You know, about some help with German?” He didn’t want to push it too hard after what had occurred, but he really had no choice.
“Ah, ja, it totally slipped my mind. Mr. Meier mentioned you might be talking with me about this. I wanted to see if you really had the guts to do it. He said you were timid. Was that ever right!”
Ouch.
“He also said to be nice even if I didn’t want to help.”
Seriously? That was nice?
“There’s kind of a lot going on right now, but I thought it over. Yes, Eric, I’ll help you. Do you have a mobile phone?”
Stunned at the positive response, he just nodded.
“Good. For now, let me text you my number, and we’ll figure out details later.” They both flipped open their phones, and she rapidly thumbed out a quick message.
Wow, just like that.
“Okay, contact me later. Tschüss!” And with that, she strolled off.
He called from behind as she walked away. “Hey, Lotte, what’s your last name so I can enter you as a contact?”
“Schwarz!” she said over her shoulder, her ultra-straight, uber-black hair briefly exposing the black squiggles of her un-eyebrows.
Schwarz! He laughed to himself. Black! Of course, it is!
Darkness!
CHAPTER 2
With time eternal, we often consider how it is that such an end befell us.
To truly understand, one must return to the beginning—or at least a beginning.
Imprisonment was interwoven from the onset of our association with this bleak and inhospitable place. Ever, it seems, have we been held captive by forces beyond our means to resist, including those we so mistakenly internalized.
Born of fire, he claimed.
We knew this to be a lie... but at first, it did not matter. Later, our silence lessened the misery.
Only we are born of flame. Yet even in this simple statement, there are falsehoods. Implied is an inception, of which there is none, at least by the standards of mortal minds, and at the time of our conception, we were yet not... we. Through the passage of centuries and so many changes, we hardly remember such a primordial condition.
No... forged would have better described him—fused in the midst of a conflagration that oh-so-briefly brought three realms into contact with one another for the first time. It was the way of his kind—infiltrating the mind of one of these weak creatures as they slept, at their most vulnerable. This was the only way an entity with no form could remain in a dominion of form.
Some jerk and spasm as they resist the invasion, and on this occasion, the one he had chosen kicked over a lamp that softly burned nearby. Flames quickly engulfed the body, and as the mortal flesh he had seized seared, his consciousness was branded with a biting and exquisite agony, awakening his febrile intellect to forces hitherto unknown and inconceivable.
He smiled his formless smile, and in the blaze he saw us... and we him.
With capabilities we could not comprehend, he pulled, and some portion of us was... swept away—away from the Eternal Flame and into the dreary realm we so fleetingly glimpsed beyond.
Into him.
Into what he was about to become.
For a great time thereafter, we knew only silence.
Eric gave Mr. Meier the thumbs-up in class that afternoon. The teacher smiled in return, and miraculously didn’t call his name on any questions, or force him to embarrass himself in front of the others. He hoped this meant he’d have some breathing room to catch up, but he knew that whatever leeway he now enjoyed, it wouldn’t last forever.
He also figured Lotte was done with him for today.
He texted her the next morning on the bus ride to school. He rode the D bus, and he knew she was on the E, because he’d seen her get off, usually last, and invariably alone. That meant she didn’t live far from him, but probably across Pleasant Street, a big enough road to separate the bus routes. To his surprise, she texted him right back and said to meet her, same spot as yesterday morning.
His bus arrived at school first, so he sat on the low stone wall and waited. Eventually, the E bus pulled up, and he watched as kids streamed out. He’d assumed she would come out last, but when the bus doors closed, she still hadn’t appeared.
“Moin!” Lotte said from behind him.
He almost jumped out of his skin.
She presented the same study in darkness as yesterday, except her decaying black t-shirt sported a black and white photo of a man about to annihilate a bass guitar. Faded letters in white, pink, and green announced:
Eric hoped they were calling collect so he could refuse the charges. “Holy crap, you scared the shit out of me! I was looking for you on the bus.”
“Ja, I decided to walk to school today. The weather is still nice, and I was up anyway.”
“That’s like an hour’s walk. That’s a long way.”
“It’s good to walk. I walked everywhere in Bremen. There was so much to see and do. Things are more spread out here—more time in the auto. So, I walk when I can.”
Wow, he thought with amazement. He’d ridden his bike to school a few times, mostly years ago during the summer to play Little League games on one of the high school’s softball diamonds, but he’d never walked. He wondered if Doc Martens made good walking shoes.
She interrupted his musings. “In any case, let’s talk about a schedule. You obviously need intensive help.”
Ouch. True, but ouch.
“After school is possible, but I have... well... other things I need to do then. Do you have a free period?”
“Yeah, C period.”
“Verdammt! My open period is E, but wait, I have sport during C period. Maybe with Mr. Meier’s help, I could switch sport to E period. I doubt it would make any difference to them if I stood around like a fool during C period or E period.”
“Don’t you like gym? I thought you liked exercise.”
“It’s not that I don’t like gym, as you call it. It’s just the things we do are so stupid, so disorganized. Take Fußball, oh, I’m sorry, you call it soccer, which is just as well because what you do has no bearing on the game I know. Everyone runs after the ball like a swarm of bees. It’s foolish. I just stand in the back and if the ball comes near me, I try to handle it a bit before finding an open teammate to pass to. Then they call me a ball hog and say I’m showing off.”
He absorbed her words. She wasn’t wrong, but she also kind of didn’t get it. “Yeah, I hear you. You’ve got to understand that our gym class isn’t really like that. It’s more about just running around and getting some physical activity. They won’t get into technique and strategy and stuff like that unless you do an extracurricular sport.”
“Well, it’s not like that where I’m from. All my classmates knew how to play Fußball. I suppose it’s different here.”
“We have a pretty good girls’ soccer team at Southby. You’d probably be great. You should try out.”
She narrowed her eyes, and he feared the return of the scalpels, but then a worried and distant look replaced her burgeoning anger. “I... I can’t just now. Too many things... well... on my mind.” Shaking her head, she refocused on their conversation. “In any case, I’ll try to switch that class. In the meantime, after school it will have to be... for a while, anyway. Want to start today?”
He stumbled with a reply. He hadn’t expected to kick things off so quickly, but couldn’t really think of any reason to delay. “Uh, yeah, sure... I just have to text my mom, tell her I’m staying and why.” He’d only told his parents last night about the tutoring arrangement, not wanting to dash their hopes if she’d said no. They’d actually been thrilled, so he didn’t anticipate a problem. “I’ll let you know what she says, and if we’re a go, we can meet in the cafeteria.”
“Sounds like a plan,” she replied with unusual enthusiasm as she turned and walked away.
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