Masquerade Night
Alex Shvartsman
The first time Harat saw Ada was when she was dancing with the goddess of death.
It was masquerade night, and Club Rhythm was full of monsters. An orchestra blasted the latest European tunes at their highest volume setting, filling the cavernous dance hall with music. Dance beats reverberated in Harat's temples. An engine rotated an enormous lantern of painted glass suspended from the high ceiling, which cast shards of colored light across the hall. It was the glint of light against the lapis lazuli amulet that drew his attention.
The amulet reminded him of the jewelry once worn by the women of his tribe, but the smoke and glitter of the club swallowed up the details of the trinket—much like the depths of time had long ago swallowed all memory of his tribe's existence, leaving him alone, an abandoned godling devoid of followers. It was a fate shared by most of the celestials who frequented Club Rhythm.
Once upon a time, creatures like him had ruled the world, lording it over the terrified humans. But the world had changed, the humans had multiplied, had unlocked the secrets of bronze and iron and steam. They took over, and their one-time gods, stripped of much of their power, were now confined to the shadows.
By the 1920s, they could mingle with humans freely only on rare occasions. All Hallows Eve, Purim, Mardi Gras—the holidays of masks, when gods and spirits could work the streets of New York City in their true form without anyone giving them so much as a second look. Then Jumis bought the nightclub and came up with the weekly masquerade night—costumes required—a place and time where someone like Harat wouldn't stand out despite his feline eyes and pointy ears.
Harat tapped into his Leopard aspect, using the cat vision to study the amulet from across the hall, noting the subtle differences in the design. It was not a lost artifact of his people, merely an inexpensive trinket. He felt a pang of disappointment, but then his gaze traveled upward and zeroed in on the face of the woman who wore it. She was stunning.
Her face was flushed as she danced not so much with the goddess of death, as around her. Enthralled by the celestial's power she circled ever closer, almost touching the celestial and then shrinking back, like a moth fluttering around a light bulb. The little moth would eventually get too close, and her life would be extinguished, all too soon.
Normally, Harat would not interfere. He didn't prey upon humans, but for many of the other gods the club was hunting grounds. It wasn't his business to impede the natural order of things. But this time—this one time—he was compelled to act.
Harat strode across the dance floor, pushing past the writhing bodies, human and celestial, until he was face to face with his target. Miru, the Polynesian goddess of the underworld, was tall and very thin, and her skin was of reddish hue. She could have almost passed for a severely sunburned human were it not for her shark teeth—several rows of sharp, jagged white daggers.
Harat stopped right in front of the goddess, interjecting himself into the enthralled woman's orbit. The tall celestial scowled at him and Harat threw the contents of the glass he was holding into Miru's face. Before the other celestial could react, Harat turned around and headed toward the coatroom. The confrontation was coming, and it wouldn't do for the humans to witness it. Miru roared in frustration and pursued Harat, taking on her Shark aspect as she moved. The enthralled woman stopped dancing, and was blinking rapidly, like someone who had been suddenly awakened from deep sleep.
When Miru burst into the coatroom, empty for the summer, Harat was ready for her. The Leopard aspect took over and he jumped his opponent in a blur of claws and fangs. The two primal forces clashed, Shark against Leopard, tearing into each other, cutting and slashing, and moving faster than a human eye could follow. The thumping dance beat concealed the sounds of their struggle.
When it was over, Harat limped outside. He was bleeding from several long gashes on the side of his torso just below the shoulder, but could still move under his own power. What was left of the Shark covered the floor, the walls, and some of the ceiling of the coatroom.
Harat searched the club, but the woman wearing the lapis lazuli amulet was gone.
§
“What were you thinking?” Jumis, the Latvian god of the harvest, stared Harat down. “I've got a good thing going here. I don't need you muddying up the waters.”
“It won't happen again,” said Harat. His bandaged ribs ached pleasantly, reminding him of the battles past.
“It better not,” said Jumis. “Do you have any idea how much the repairs are going to cost me?”
Harat was envious of the other celestial. Pudgy and graying at the temples, Jumis looked human, ordinary enough to intermingle with mortals without having to pretend he was wearing costume and makeup for a masquerade ball. For that alone, Harat would trade places with this lesser god, if he only could.
“You still owe me, from when I aided you in Constantinople,” said Harat.
“They call it Istanbul now, and not any more I don't,” said Jumis. “You better believe this little temper tantrum of yours makes us even. Next time you feel like a fight to the death, perhaps when your sparring partner's friends decide to avenge her, you take it outside.”
Harat leaned against the wall. “No one is coming to avenge her,” he said. “Relics like us have no friends.”
§
Harat tried to forget the incident. He had lived for too long and fought too many battles to remember the details of each kill. But, every time he closed his eyes and tried to sleep, he saw the enthralled woman's face, her eyes as blue as the amulet she wore.
He'd been with human women many times in the past. He sought some kind of connection, a balm to soothe the pain and anguish, the grief he still felt over the loss of the mortals of his tribe. None of those other women made him feel the way he did when thinking about her.
Harat came to the club on the next masquerade night, and the one after that, but there was no sign of the woman. She must have been scared off by the experience—some deeper part of her mind subconsciously recognizing the peril even if she had never learned first-hand how dangerous her dance with the Shark should have been.
Having existed for thousands of years, Harat knew patience. He came to the club every week and roamed the hall, a glass of absinthe in hand, watching the humans who were dressed like monsters, and the monsters pretending to be human.
His persistence paid off. He finally saw her, not on the dance floor this time, but sharing a small round table with Qarib, the Persian god of serpents and poison.
She sure knows how to pick the winners, thought Harat.
He approached the table and hovered over the diminutive form of the Persian poison god.
“Leave,” he told the Snake.
The smaller celestial hissed at him, but didn't wish to fight. The word of what happened to the Shark had spread quickly among the club regulars. He scooted from the table without saying a word. Harat pulled the chair back and took the seat across from the woman. For several moments, they contemplated each other.
“That wasn't very nice of you,” said the woman.
“He isn't a very nice fellow,” said Harat.
She pouted. “Maybe so, but he was going to buy me a drink.”
“You wouldn't enjoy drinking anything he might have offered you. Regardless, that is an easy fix. I'll buy you a drink instead. My name is Harat.”
“Ada,” said the woman. She continued to study him with those big, blue eyes. “And are you a nice fellow, Harat?”
“By the standards of this place? I should say so,” said Harat.
She smiled at him. “In that case, I will have to consider letting you buy me that drink, sometime.” Then she picked up her purse and walked away, without turning to look back even once.
The Leopard god wanted very much to pursue her, but centuries of experience had taught him both patience and the wisdom of knowing when not to push his luck.
§
It was many months later that he saw Ada again. She wore a flowing green dress and covered her face with a handheld Venetian half mask, but Harat knew her scent now, and could find her in a crowded club, regardless of whatever disguise a human was capable of using.
He approached just as Silenus, a satyr with a taste for human flesh, was trying out his pickup line on her. Harat inserted himself unceremoniously between the two of them at the packed bar counter.
“Hello, Ada,” he said. “You've had a long time to think about that drink. Have you reached a decision?”
“You are very persistent,” she said, and she nodded toward her cocktail glass. Harat motioned for the bartender to mix another. “And also very consistent. You're wearing the same costume again?”
“It suits my nature,” Harat brushed at his whiskers. “I like leopards.”
“I'm more of a dog person,” said Ada, but she didn't refuse the drink, or another after that.
The evening wore on as they spoke about architecture and dead poets, straining their vocal chords to outshout the music. For the first time in his very long existence, Harat was beginning to fall in love.
She asked him to walk her home, and he almost refused. He cared about her, and he was afraid of what would happen if he went with her now, and she found out that the whiskers and the fur didn't come off. He never really fretted about that moment of truth with any of the other women—some denied him, some were excited by what he was—but Ada was different. So he nearly refused to go with her, but then he saw her moving unsteadily on her feet and thought back to the Shark, and the Snake, and the Satyr, and dozens of other predators that surrounded them, and he had no choice at all.
He offered his arm and the two of them left the club together. They walked the midnight streets and their two shadows, cast long in the dim light of the streetlights, merged into one.
The walk was over all too soon—it turned out that she lived only a few blocks away from the club—and she invited him to come upstairs. He looked into her big, blue eyes and, despite his concerns about losing her when she learned the truth, he followed her inside.
They came up the stairs of the townhouse and into her home, and she poured him a glass of red wine. They sat on the couch in her living room and they talked some more, until the world began to swim in front of Harat's eyes. He tried to get up but he lost his balance and tumbled onto the thick rug, the wine glass rolling out of his hand and leaving a trickle of wine that looked like blood drops in its wake.
Harat tried to shift into his Leopard aspect, but he could not. He couldn't move at all, his ageless body betraying him utterly. All he could do was to move his eyes, following Ada as she stood above him, frowning.
“Why?” he tried to ask, but all that came out were some guttural sounds.
“Poor kitty-cat,” she said. “You should have known your place. You should have stayed away from me.” She walked out of his field of vision, but her velvety voice continued on from elsewhere in the apartment. “You weren't my intended prey. I only hunt the really bad ones, the murderers, the monsters.”
He concentrated on her voice, zeroed in on it to stay awake, stay focused, and he reached deeper and deeper within himself searching for the Leopard but finding only the abyss, its darkness inching ever closer, enveloping his mind.
“You were too persistent for your own good, kitty-cat, scaring away the game.” She returned and bent over him, still wearing the flowing green dress with the blue lapis lazuli amulet gleaming against the silk. She was holding a large carving knife. “So, you forced my hand. Nothing personal, but a girl's got to eat.” She shrugged and smiled at him one last time, and plunged the knife deep into his chest.
As the cold steel bit deep, his consciousness reached desperately into the furthest corners of the abyss and found the Leopard aspect. His body transformed around the blade stuck hilt-deep in his midsection. The Leopard twisted around, swatting at Ada, and his claws connected, leaving three deep gashes on the side of her neck and her shoulder.
Ada gasped in surprise and stumbled back, letting go of the knife. The great cat pounced, pinning her down on the carpet, his fangs and claws ripping into her, causing as much damage as possible before the knife wound sapped away his strength.
She pushed him off with surprising strength, throwing him toward the couch. His feline body twisted and he swatted at her one more time. She moved away with impossible speed, but the claw snagged at the string that held the amulet, and ripped it from her neck.
The blue stone set in silver flew across the room and hit the wall with a clang. As soon as it left Ada's neck, her body transformed. It changed almost instantly, the visage of a woman replaced by a thing made of teeth and tentacles, an ancient horror from long before the first humans created the first gods by worshipping the fire and the stars and the predators around them.
Harat faced the nightmarish creature and roared in pain and anger. The thing that used to be Ada roared back, and her war cry sounded like a mix of distant thunder and crumbling gravestones. The two beings, forgotten by history, came at each other.
§
Harat woke up naked, lying in a pool of blood and grime and ripped tentacles. The sun was beginning to set outside—it had been at least a day since the fight. His fingers brushed against the crusted blood and scabbing skin, where the knife wound used to be. The wound hadn't fully healed yet, but it would in another day or so. He wasn't much of a god anymore, but he could still heal much faster than mortal men. He would survive.
He got onto his feet and limped across what was left of Ada's living room. He found the bathroom and climbed into the cast iron tub, turning on the shower and letting the room-temperature water cleanse his body. He caught some water into his mouth, trying to wash out the taste of the ancient god's blood. He ran the shower until the container suspended above the tub ran out of water.
He emerged from the bathroom and stepped carefully around the worst of the mess in the living room until he reached the other side and picked up the lapis lazuli amulet. He turned to the shard of a mirror that remained on one of the walls and put the amulet on, the silver setting cold against his skin.
He watched his reflection as his cat irises expanded and rounded out, his fur disappeared, revealing smooth skin, and his ears lost their sharp feline tips. Soon he was looking at the reflection of an average young man. Even his own Leopard nose sensed only a human.
Harat rifled through the apartment's closets until he found some clothes that would fit him left over, no doubt, from one of Ada's previous victims. He got dressed and left the apartment, walking to the front door downstairs.
Although the sun was slowly setting, it was still daylight. He watched from the doorway as throngs of people walked past the townhouse, cars and horse-drawn carriages competed for road space, and street vendors called out to the passerby, advertising their wares. It was the world devoid of masks and camouflage. A new world that he hadn't been privy to, that left him and his kind behind, masquerading in the shadows. A world meant for humans.
He took a deep breath, opened the door, and stepped outside, joining them in the light.