Ian Rogers
She had many names.
The first one she got when she was born, the second she received when she was reborn. The others came after that.
She didn’t remember her first name; she’d forgotten it, much as she’d forgotten the life that had gone with it. Her only memory of that time was a city of lights and cold winds that blew down mercilessly from the north lands. The second name—the one she thought of as her true name—had been given to her by Baphomet, the Baptizer, the one who made Midian.
Now Midian was gone, destroyed by fire and hatred, and she found herself, suddenly and inexplicably, back in that city of lights and cold winds. She thought it might be time for a third name but there was no one here to give it to her. No one except Causwell, and he wasn’t giving anything to anyone these days.
So, for now, she remained Luna.
Luna of Midian.
Luna of the Nightbreed.
* * *
She was watching for the blue man.
Since returning to the city of lights and cold winds, Luna had discovered that if she sat on the sidewalk some people would give her money. Coins mostly. She rubbed them between her fingers, feeling a combination of cold metal and distant sympathy. It was, she came to learn, the sensation of an impersonal transaction. They paid her to ignore her.
One time a man offered her paper money, a pink bill with “50” printed on it. Unlike the others, he didn’t leave the money on the ground in front of her. He held it out to her in his hand, and when she tried to take it, he gripped the bill tighter until she raised her eyes to his. She could tell what he wanted, but not from the look in his eyes. She knew the moment she touched his money. She let go, lowering and shaking her head in refusal. When she looked up again, the man and the money were gone.
There were a lot of people out tonight. She was stationed on the sidewalk in front of a large stadium. Larger even than the tabernacle in Midian. Inside, men in different-colored uniforms pounded away at each other in order to control possession of a brown ball. It was funny in a way. Also a bit sad. But it drew a lot of people, and some of them would give her money that she used to buy food.
She had to be careful, because a few times a man in another uniform, a blue one, would chase her away. She didn’t let other people bother her, but the blue man was different. He wore a gun on his belt. Luna didn’t know about guns until the fall of Midian. She had learned all about them, then. The loud, barking power they possessed. The damage they could inflict. Even a little one like the one the blue man had on his hip, always close to hand.
A couple walking past stopped suddenly. The man tried to pull the woman on, but she held him back. She looked down at Luna with something in her eyes that might have been pity. She held out a blue bill. It made Luna think of the blue man, and she didn’t take it at first. The woman noticed her reluctance and held the money out farther. “Come on. It’s okay. You can take it.”
Luna reached out quickly and snapped the bill from her hand. It had “5”s all over it. She only had a little math, but she knew the bills were worth more than the coins. “Thank you,” she said, with a small nod. “You’re very kind.”
The woman gave her a sad smile. “Do you have a place to stay?”
Luna responded with another small nod. She kept her head down, afraid to meet the woman’s eyes. She stayed like that until the man succeeded in drawing the woman away.
Luna raised her head when she was sure they were gone.
It was then that she saw him. The blue man. He was sauntering through the crowd like he was the master of all he surveyed. Perhaps he was. He was the only one she’d ever seen with a gun.
Luna stood up abruptly, pockets jingling with the coins she had acquired that evening. She turned to put her back to the blue man and started away …
… and walked right into a wall.
At least that’s what it felt like. Hard and … wet? Then the wall let out a grunt and a curse—“Fuck!”—and she realized she had collided with a man.
He was a brute, large and broad-shouldered, with a thick neck and a wide forehead. His face was a congestion of anger; squinting, unfocused eyes, sneering nose, and gritting teeth. He was wearing a jacket with a galloping horse over the left breast. He smelled foul, as if he existed in a personal cloud of pollution.
“You li’l bitch.”
Her face was buffeted by his rank breath. She lowered her eyes and saw a plastic cup in his large hand, crinkled into a dripping, shapeless mess.
“You spilled my fucking beer. Li’l bitch.”
The man’s hand sprang open, dropping the mangled cup, and snapped out to clamp onto Luna’s upper arm.
“Let me go.”
She didn’t scream, didn’t even raise her voice above its normal register. There were two reasons for this. One, she didn’t want to draw the attention of the blue man, who would surely side with the foul man and join him in this assault. The second reason was that she didn’t need to raise her voice. She never had to.
With his grip on her arm, Luna saw everything inside the foul man. All the clean and all the dirty. There was so much more dirty. No surprise there. She held her breath reflexively so she wouldn’t take it in, but it was all around her. She told herself she was clean, that this was the foul man’s dirty, the two were separate, and she would be okay once they broke contact. But not yet.
With her mind, she reached out and took a piece of his dirty—she saw the foul man as a foul boy, almost as big in adolescence as the man he would become, wearing a jacket similar to the one he was wearing now. Luna saw him in a darkened room, tugging down the pants of a girl lying passed out on a bed, the muffled sounds of laughter and music coming from somewhere nearby. The foul boy climbed on top of the girl’s supine body and began to thrust into her, moving with the beat of the music. Luna took the memory and turned it around and shined it back at the foul man.
Confronted with these noxious images, the foul man let go of Luna, his hand flying off her arm as if propelled by a powerful electric shock. He stumbled away from her, legs twisting around each other, and he tumbled over backward. He landed on his back and continued to push himself away from her, moving awkwardly like a crab along the sidewalk.
“Don’t touch me!” he said in a high-pitched squeal that belied his massive size. “Keep your hands off me!”
Luna stared at him without expression. The foul man wasn’t really talking to her. He was still inside his memory. He wasn’t even himself right now. He was the unconscious woman he had assaulted. She had been passed out through the ordeal, but the foul man was very much awake. More awake than he’d been in his entire life.
As she walked off into the night, Luna knew he would never sleep soundly ever again.
* * *
The building had been a radio station at one time.
Luna knew about radio. Someone in Midian had one. It wasn’t forbidden, but you had to get close to the surface to pick anything up on it, and the elders didn’t like anyone spending too much time topside. The man who owned the radio—his name was Grazer—didn’t seem to have much regard for Midian’s laws. Luna snuck away to see him sometimes so she could listen to the music.
“Mostly country and oldies from the station in Peace River,” Grazer told her. “Reception sucks, but that’s the best you can get out here in the willywags.”
Luna didn’t understand “country” or “oldies,” but she liked the sounds that came out of the black plastic box. Plucking strings and screaming horns. Sad voices, happy voices. She didn’t always understand what the people were singing about, but it didn’t matter. She loved to listen to those sounds from far away.
She had asked Grazer where they came from, those sounds, and he said they were sent out—“broadcast” was the word he used—from a great metal tower.
“How tall is it?” Luna asked.
“Very tall,” Grazer said.
“Taller than the Strivent?”
“Yes, child.”
Standing outside the abandoned building she now called home, Luna found that hard to believe. The tower that stood atop the roof was tall, but surely not as tall as the Strivent of Midian. She should know; she had climbed the Strivent on several occasions, had clung to the top as the wind screamed and howled and threatened to pull her off.
Of course, this was not the same station that broadcast from Peace River, but she imagined they were all the same. This one had gone quiet. It sent out no songs. The building was empty now except for her and Causwell.
* * *
She found him in the basement.
That was where he spent most of his time. Huddled in his blankets, wandering around in the darkness, yelling at unseen phantoms. Or at least at phantoms that Luna could not see.
Presently he stood in front of a tall metal box with a glass window on the front. Inside were rows of candy held in place by coils of metal. She had seen devices such as these before. You put coins in the little slot, punched the code that matched the one next to the piece of candy you wanted, and the coil would turn, causing the candy to fall to the bottom of the box, where you could retrieve it from a narrow push-door.
This candy box didn’t work because there was no power in the building. Luna didn’t know much about electricity except that many things in the city of lights and cold winds needed it to work.
Causwell wasn’t about to let that stop him, though. He was hammering the window with a stick he had found somewhere. The stick wasn’t very strong, and neither was the effort Causwell was putting into each swing; he had succeeded so far in only scuffing and scratching the glass.
He stopped when he realized he was no longer alone. He turned his sleek, hairless head toward her.
“Luna,” he said in his hollow, breathless voice. “You came back.”
“You say that every time, Causwell. Why do you keep thinking I’m going to leave you?”
“Everyone leaves,” he said. “Eventually. It would be better for you if you did. This is a bad place.”
“This is our new home.”
Causwell sneered. “This isn’t home. This is a foul-smelling pit.” His eyes took on a dreamy look of longing. “I miss my old pit. This one doesn’t hold a candle to it.”
Luna nodded solemnly.
Causwell came shuffling forward, looking for comfort—Luna had held him through many a night since they’d taken refuge in this place. He stopped abruptly and sniffed at her.
“You smell like beer. Have you been drinking?”
“A man spilled it on me.”
“Did he hurt you?”
Luna lowered her eyes and shook her head.
“Did you hurt him?”
“A little.”
She expected to be rebuked, but Causwell scoffed instead.
“Serves them right.” He looked away, deep in thought. “I came from a town much like this place—cattle country, it’s called. Do you know cattle?”
Luna nodded. She’d seen pictures in books.
“They have an expression there: You mess with the bull, you get the horns. Same goes for anyone who tries to fuck with the Breed. Although in your case, I guess they get the eyes instead of the horns. We may not have a home anymore, but that doesn’t change who we are.”
The quiet strength of his words reminded Luna of the way Causwell had been in Midian. The tricks he could do with his body. Making cat’s cradle with the veins in his fingers, drawing out the wet red threads to the delight of the children. The way he could extend his ribs out through his chest, the bones sharpened to points, and make them snap like a voracious mouth. He didn’t do anything now except wander this dark basement and beat his stick against the candy box.
As quickly as it arrived, the conviction in his voice departed; his shoulders slumped, as if glad to be free of some monumental weight.
“Not that it matters,” he said. “We’re the last. They’ll find us eventually and slaughter us. Drag our bodies through their pristine streets so they can show the world that the monsters are dead.”
Causwell turned away from Luna, turned back into his sorrow. She reached out and gripped his arm.
“We’re still Nightbreed,” she said. “If we are alive, then there must be others.”
“The Breed are gone,” Causwell said despondently. “Like Midian.”
She let go of him and he shuffled off into the corner.
* * *
When she wasn’t sitting on the sidewalks for money, Luna walked the streets and back alleys looking for others of her kind.
After the fall of Midian, the remaining Nightbreed scattered to all points of the compass. Many had come here, to the city of lights and cold winds; their only wish to be ignored, to find the peace they’d once known before.
Besides Causwell, Luna hadn’t seen any other Breed. But she could feel them, somewhere out there. Lurking. Hiding. She wanted to find them—she needed to find them—but the Breed were good at staying hidden, even from each other.
Her reasons were not entirely altruistic. She told herself there was power in numbers, but mostly she just didn’t want to be alone. Causwell didn’t count. He lived so much inside himself, inside his own melancholy, that it was like she lived by herself at the radio station.
So, every night she went out and searched. She moved like a ghost along the periphery of city life, drifting along the edge of crowds, losing herself in the smoke haze of bars and the frenetic light show of dance clubs. She explored abandoned buildings and stalked the city’s few green places, which at night became black places. Occasionally she found traces of the Breed—a faint scent of tombs and spices, a sigil painted or on a wall.
She thought it was only a matter of time before she found them, just as she had found Causwell. But sometimes she wondered if they were the last. It didn’t make any difference. No matter how much the dread in her heart might eclipse the hope, she knew she’d never stop looking.
* * *
No joy tonight.
Luna returned to the radio station empty-handed and empty-headed. Her stomach growled; it was empty, too. Her pockets were filled with coins again, but she hadn’t bothered to buy any food.
She felt bad that she hadn’t at least got something for Causwell. She descended to the basement and found him in his corner. He turned away guiltily at Luna’s approach.
“What are you doing?” she asked.
Causwell held something small and furry in his hands. He tried to hide it behind his back, but Luna saw it dripping on the concrete floor.
“Are you eating rats again?”
Causwell grinned a bloody, guilty grin. “I’m building up my strength.”
“For what?”
Causwell looked away. “Always good to have strength.” He changed the subject. “How is it out there?”
“Still dark,” Luna said.
“No change?” he asked. “No call?”
“If there was, I didn’t hear it.”
“I told you. No one is coming. The Breed are gone. They’re all dead.”
“Not all,” Luna said. “There is the one known as Cabal. He who…”
“Unmade Midian,” Causwell finished. “He who helped cast us out.” He spat on the floor.
Luna shrugged. “No refuge is forever.”
“You sound like Baphomet. And where is he now?”
“Don’t blaspheme.”
“I didn’t. I asked a question.”
“I have no answers. I’m tired.”
“Sleep, then. But don’t dream. There is no comfort in dreams. If we’re to find survival, it must be of our own making.”
Luna smiled faintly. “That’s the spirit.”
“There is no spirit,” Causwell said. “Only flesh.”
He looked down at the dripping piece of rat in his hand and stuffed it into his mouth.
* * *
Luna didn’t know the girl, but she recognized her right away.
She found her under a stunted tree on the edge of a sprawling, empty parking lot. It was in the industrial part of the city, near an old warehouse whose roof was full of holes. The girl—younger than Luna, maybe twelve—lay shivering beneath a pile of newspapers. Luna thought she was sleeping, but as she pulled the papers away, she saw the girl was bleeding. She was full of holes, too.
“What happened to you?”
The girl tried to shift away, and grimaced in pain. In a low, trembling voice, she said, “Please, let me be.”
Luna touched the girl’s cheek, smeared with grime.
The girl recoiled.
“You’re Nightbreed.”
The girl turned her head to look up at Luna.
There was no question. The girl’s black hair was truly raven, not hair at all but feathers that curved down in a sleek wave to frame her porcelain doll face. Her eyes were small and brown; her nose was hooked, her mouth a lipless line that quivered with fear and pain.
“I don’t know you,” she said, but her imploring eyes held a glimmer of hope.
“My name is Luna.”
The girl’s eyes widened. “The Lighthouse! I should have known. Your eyes!” She tried to raise herself up, then slumped back to the ground, wincing. “It hurts. It hurts even to breathe.”
Luna put her hand on the girl’s shoulder, easing her down. “Tell me your name.”
“Mordryn.” She clenched her teeth, and Luna saw they were small and sharp, a mouthful of tiny fishhooks. “Mordryn of Midian.”
“Midian is gone,” Luna said.
“I know it.”
“Who did this to you?”
“Men,” Mordryn said. “Monster men.”
“From this place?” Luna asked. “The city?”
Mordryn shook her head with a faint ruffle of feathers. “No,” she said. “But they followed us here.”
“Us? There’s more of you? Other Breed?”
“Not now. The monster men got them. They hunt us.” She reached out and gripped Luna’s wrist with a yellow, reptilian hand. Talons lacquered with hot pink nail polish pierced her skin, drawing small pearls of blood. Luna barely noticed, her attention focused entirely on the words coming out of Mordryn’s trembling mouth.
“They eat us,” she said. “They tried to eat me but I got away from them.”
“Who are they?”
“Monster men,” she said. “They call themselves the Sugar Babies. They followed us from Midian.”
Luna was confused. “I thought the men who destroyed Midian were killed.”
“They were,” Mordryn said. “These were the men who came after.” She flung her head back and sobbed. “Our mistake was going back.”
Luna shook her head. “I don’t understand.”
“After Midian fell, a group of us left. We didn’t know where to go. We traveled north, into the Territories, but it was cold and we couldn’t find shelter. So we went back.” She closed her eyes and spoke the words like a mantra: “Our mistake was going back.”
“To Midian?”
“Yes.”
“But Midian is gone.”
“I know, but we were tired and hungry. We took refuge in the ruins. Then the monster men came. The Sugar Babies.”
“I don’t know who they are.”
“They look like men in suits. Do you know suits?”
Luna nodded.
“The suits are as false as the men. They’re monsters wearing other monsters. The ties they wear around their necks are alive! They move like snakes, and the men talk to them!”
“What happened?”
“We ran,” Mordryn said. “We came here, to this city. But the Sugar Babies followed us. There are others of our kind here. We saw them. Tribes on the move. We warned them about the monster men, but they found us. They killed my friends. They were saving me for last. They called me their little treat, their dessert.” She let go of Luna’s arm and covered her eyes with her hands. “Our mistake was going back.”
Luna cradled her and told her everything was going to be okay, but Mordryn died that night with the mistake still in her mouth.
* * *
The Lighthouse.
She never thought she’d hear that name again. She had gone by many names in Midian. To the trolls she was Li’l Luna. To the blind witches, the hagathas, she was Helper Girl. It was Wardent and his clan—a brave and foolhardy group of souls who went on raiding missions to Dwyer and Shere Neck for supplies—who called her the Lighthouse.
She had earned the nickname by climbing to the top of Midian’s tallest structure, a towering obelisk that the Nightbreed had called the Strivent, to stand as lookout for Wardent and his raiders.
Every time before they left on a run, Wardent would curl one of his claw-tipped fingers under Luna’s chin and tilt her head up to him. His pale yellow eyes, slit by triangular pupils, would stare into her glowing blue ones, and he’d say, “Keep a watch, little one. Climb to the top of the Strivent and show us the light. That’s what you are, the Lighthouse of Midian. Show us the way home.”
Luna was certain that Wardent and the others could find their way back without her, but she was glad to be included. With their excited howls still echoing through the night, she would climb the Strivent, digging her fingers into the cracks in the cold stone while the wind tried to pull her off and fling her to the ground. Once she reached the top, she would open her eyes as wide as possible, and even though she was far above Midian, and the Breed so far below the ground, she could see them, her people, her family, down past the graves and tombs, deep within the catacombs, thousands of darkling souls. She’d stay up there for hours, eyes blazing out into the night, until Wardent and the others returned with their pillage.
She knew they didn’t really need her light. But they wanted her there, and that was more important. That was what made them family. What made them Nightbreed.
* * *
There was something different about the radio station.
Luna couldn’t tell what it was at first. The building looked as decrepit as ever. A yellow-brick box with a metal tower sprouting from the roof. Smashed-out windows glaring like black, blind eyes. The pavement cracked and frost-heaved, sprouting weeds.
She stepped through the glassless front door and called out in a timid voice, “Causwell?”
No answer.
She started down the stairs to the basement … and froze.
Something different, right there. A ragged curtain hung across the entrance at the bottom of the stairs. Luna approached it slowly, warily, swept it aside—it was dry and thin, like very old paper—and stepped through.
As she stood there looking around, a series of emotions coursed through her; surprise, sadness, dread, and finally, fascination.
Causwell wasn’t in the basement.
Causwell was the basement.
He had done something with his body, extended it, stretched it, spread it out across the walls and floors. His flesh and bones had been transformed into a structure that infused itself with the building’s architecture. The previously sagging ceiling was now supported by beams of bone. The cold concrete floor was carpeted in warm, soft flesh. Luna looked over her shoulder at the curtain she had passed through. Not a curtain, she saw now, but a diaphanous sheet of skin.
This was unlike anything she had ever seen Causwell create before. And yet she knew it was him. His body, his smell, was unmistakable. But why had he done it? If he had grown tired of life, he would have killed himself. He had talked about it enough. But what she was looking at wasn’t the result of suicide. Quite the opposite.
She found his head in the corner where he’d taken refuge so many times before. His skull seemed to grow right out of the Sheetrock, his blanched face peering at her like someone sunk almost completely in quicksand.
Luna leaned down to cradle his cheeks. “Oh, Causwell, what have you done?”
“I built it for them,” he said in an airless voice.
“For who?”
“The others,” he gasped. “The ones who will come.”
Luna brushed her fingers across his forehead. “You said they were all dead. You didn’t believe.”
“I believe in you,” Causwell said. “You’ve always been able see further than I can.” His eyes darted around the room, admiring the sanctuary he’d made. “But it’s not finished. I’ll need more…” His gaze fell to the floor.
Luna looked down at the desiccated rat carcasses scattered about.
“I’ll bring you more,” she said. “As many as you need. And I’ll bring them, too.”
Causwell smiled. “I know you will.”
* * *
She went up to the roof.
The cold wind caressed her, blew her hair around her face. The light in her eyes ebbed and flowed.
She went over to the broadcast tower and began to climb.
Her mind drifted back to the day of her baptism in Midian. The cold fire of Baphomet’s touch, his enormous hands raising her up, his words searing into her mind, branding her brain.
You will light the way. When everything goes dark, when all ways are lost, you will be the beacon. You will guide them.
She reached the top of the tower. She couldn’t tell if it was as tall as the Strivent, but it didn’t matter. There was a light at the tip, but it was dark. That didn’t matter, either.
She opened her eyes—opened them wide—and her light shone out across the night sky.
It was not a light for all to see. It was a private light. Only the Breed would see it. Only the Breed would know it. She hoped Wardent would be the first to come. If he was still alive. If he was out there, somewhere. She wanted to feel his claw-tipped finger tilt her face up to his. She was his Lighthouse. Now she would be the Lighthouse for all the Nightbreed. She would guide them here to the House of Causwell.
She clung to the tower with her legs, her arms flung wide, her eyes blazing.
And she waited for them to come.