“Krishani,” she seethed, righting herself and putting the chair beside the table. Her tailbone hurt and she rubbed it as she settled behind the table, gingerly taking the fat white candle on the right side of the table in her hands. She brought it to the large one on the left side and lighted it, then set it down. She picked up the deck, a very old thing and shuffled idly while Krishani turned a fraction of an inch, his eyes cast to the floorboards.
“I don’t know that name,” he said, his tone lethal. A shudder rippled through Shimma but she didn’t stop shuffling.
“What do you want?”
He looked at her and she saw the madness in him. His host had messy black curls, round face and pointed nose. He looked to be in his twenties. He wore modern clothing, khaki pants and a black polo shirt, small white lines crossing the breast and sleeves.
“How long?” he asked, his voice catching.
Shimma put the cards down. She didn’t need them to answer this question. By the sweat on his brow and the way his eyes looked lazy and dead, she could tell. “Hours … days …” They’d done this so many times before it was tedious. He knew where she was and she didn’t move as much as she did before. Contrary to popular belief, a gypsy in Romania in the twenty first century didn’t bode well for any of the wannabes out there. She’d gone through her fair share of being the old witch at the end of the lane, the troll under the bridge, the wicked witch of the west, and even the crazy cat lady, but she preferred mysterious shaman over all those titles. In India people sought her for guidance, and there was a level of respect that came with her work. In Europe men wanted both her skills and her body and didn’t care to pay a thing for either.
She was disgusted by it.
Krishani on the other hand had it worse. He was a pawn in their games, property of Morgana until she bit the dust, and currently, Darkesh’s pet. She didn’t want to see the Prince of Darkness anytime soon. She steeled herself, crossing her arms, feeling the rivulets of her corset digging into her arms as she glared at Krishani. “Coming to me won’t keep you off his radar forever.” Her tone was flat.
Krishani’s eyes blazed with anger but she had seen this look too many times to count and wasn’t in the mood for it. “How … long?” His hands came down on the table, his face hovering near hers. She didn’t flinch or sit further back in her chair, if anything she leaned in a little closer, curious if he’d place those lips on hers for a change. In nine thousand years he hadn’t. Not with her, not with anyone.
“So … the usual then?” she chirped. He pulled back, crossing his arms and showing his back to her. Shimma resumed shuffling, part of her mind on Darkesh and the other part on the Vulture in her house. What he had become in nine thousand years was gruesome. These interludes were his vain attempt at a life no longer his to live. She’d seen him twenty two times since that storm in Scotland, each time his desperation to cling to human life more exasperating than the last. She tried to tune out her thoughts, leaving her millennia of plights in the past. She didn’t need to think about her problems, if any of these so-called humans thought they had it bad, they should meet her, or Krishani or any of the elders that fought in a war they lost. She was never entirely faithful to Tor when he was the High King, or to her father, Istar of Avristar, but things were different with the Valtanyana. If you weren’t with them you were against them. They rotted Nimphalls from the inside out, her sisters narrowly escaped. She wasn’t particularly fond of being around them. She stopped shuffling and put the deck on the table, prepared to answer Krishani’s incessant question.
“Cut the deck,” she instructed. Krishani put a hand on the deck and cut it without looking.
Shimma stared at the cards; little sparks of her inherit abilities filling the shack. She pulled the first card and turned it over. A gasp escaped her throat as she thrust the card away, knocking the candle on the floor. It landed upside down, snuffing itself. She grabbed it and stamped the burn-stained floor with her heavy boots before regaining her composure. Krishani whipped around but the card she drew was face down. Before he grabbed it, she scooped up the cards. Krishani looked at her with question marks in his eyes.
“I did something wrong,” Shimma said, a blush creeping into her cheeks.
“You’re never wrong.” He sounded angry and homicidal. She wanted to curb his attitude but in thousands of years he continued to be a prick.
She grew to hate her weakness against him, that girly bubble of emotion presiding over her chest whenever he was around. She was thousands of years old; she didn’t want to feel like a lovesick puppy. She squared her shoulders and cursed herself for the card she drew.
“This time I am,” she forced out, resuming shuffling. Her mind focused on Krishani, the body he occupied, the monstrous thing he became after Kaliel killed him. She thought about the Tavesin court and watching them dance and cursed herself again for reveling in old times. She tried to focus on the other bodies he kept, one in the eighteenth century with a funny name and a penchant for inventions that lasted two years. One in Persia, only it wasn’t called Persia anymore, it was Mongolia, a barbarian. A ripple of energy shot through her and she stopped, placing the deck on the table.
“Cut.”
Krishani pivoted, but a hacking cough erupted from the fragile body. He stumbled into the living room, bent over, every muscle tensing. Shimma winced. So it was beginning already. Her original idea of hours was accurate. She rose and rounded the table, pushing the cloth out of the way and watched him. He glanced at her, his face contorted in pain.
“You like this don’t you?”
Shimma winced. “I like your attraction to me.”
Krishani heaved, spitting blood. The fit seemed to be over, his body smoothed out and he stood; the look of death in his eyes. Shimma took a shaky step back but he stalked her until she was sitting at the round table and he was leaning over her, his face inches from hers. What she said was a mistake, it was always a mistake when she offered to heal his pain, or help him forget. Krishani didn’t want distractions, he didn’t want help and he certainly didn’t want her. Only … he did want her, or a part of him did, a part as pure dark as the things controlling everything from one end of the sky to the other. The part of her brain that monitored sanity shut down for a second and she grinned.
“Tell me what you want to do to me, Krishani.”
Krishani’s mouth went tense. “I want to devour your soul, Shimma.” She realized a second later how close his lips were to hers and how all she had to do was lean forward and they’d be kissing. He backed up, making his spine ramrod straight and flexed his hands out, working out the kinks.
Shimma laughed. “You can’t resist me forever.”
“You disgust me,” Krishani muttered.
“Oh hush, you can’t have me, I’m immortal.” That usually ended the argument. Krishani’s shoulders slumped and he turned to her, nothing like the Vulture he was and everything like a broken boy.
“And I’m going to die again. How long?” He said through clenched teeth.
Shimma waved her hands over the cards. “Cut the deck.”
Krishani forcefully pulled some of the cards off the pile. He slapped them down and turned, looking at the ceiling. Shimma sometimes wondered why he did that, why he wasn’t more interested in unveiling the results. Half the time he lingered, or fidgeted with the surroundings as she told him what the cards meant. She didn’t have half the knick-knacks she used to so he stood there, hands behind his back, eyes on the curtain.
Shimma turned the card over, a gasp passing her lips, her eyes wide.
“How bad?”
“Um, it’s impossible.…” Shimma trailed off, her eyes glued to the card. At first she thought it was a mistake. It couldn’t happen, in thousands of years, it hadn’t happened. She pulled her whole body taut, feeling like wires running through her muscles.
Krishani dropped his gaze to the table, and she saw the shock in his eyes, followed by that terrifying glare she’d never get used to. “You did it wrong.”
Shimma shook her head, tears in the corners of her eyes. She was hurt by the past too; hurt by the one girl who did everything wrong and still got Krishani’s love. She looked at the card: The Star, a symbol of hope, change, and one of the only cards in the Tarot that meant wonder, enchantment, and innocence. “I did it twice, I’m not wrong … Krishani … Kaliel is alive.” The words passed her lips and she could barely believe they were true. She hadn’t said the girl’s name out loud in so long it sent pain to her chest.
Krishani’s brow furrowed, arms across his chest, squeezing tight. “I don’t care,” he spat. Smoothing over his expression with blankness, he punched the curtain, moving into the living room. Shimma stayed put. The corset constricted her chest and she couldn’t breathe. Idly she turned over the next card: the Nine of Swords. Painted on the card was a blindfolded girl crossing her arms, swords stabbing her clean through from different angles.
Krishani returned, seeming composed until he glanced at the Nine of Swords. It happened all at once, one minute he was fine, the next he was convulsing, coughs shattering his frame. Sweat trailed down his face as he buckled under the pressure and sunk to his knees.
Shimma twisted the beads on her necklace with her thumb and index finger, a river of emotions inside her, all threatening to dominate. “She’s not safe.”
Krishani writhed as he fell on his side, spasms raking over his flesh. Shimma stood, bracing herself as she moved to Krishani’s side. She didn’t crouch, but Krishani looked at her, something grim and indescribable in his expression.
“She’ll never be safe … not until she’s dead.” He wretched and the sound of bones breaking pulled Shimma out of her stupor.
“Shit, Krishani, you have minutes,” she shrieked. He seized, tight jolts rocking his frame. She never saw this part. He always found her and left before he died. She only told him how long. This wasn’t something she was good at. She bent, her knees finding the floor, her hands on his shoulder as his teeth chattered like he had hypothermia. She tried to touch his cheek but when her hand brushed his skin she was whiplashed by cold. The Vulture exploded out of the body and she fell on her back, dazed. The Vulture caromed through the house until it found its way through the door. Shimma followed, standing on the porch as whatever Krishani had become escaped into the night.
She didn’t know what to think or how to feel but as she turned back to the shack she couldn’t fight her curiosity. She neared the table and flipped over another card: The Tower. She sunk to her knees beside the body, reaching out and closing its eyes, her fingers trembling.
“We’re all going to die.”
***
Chapter 4
Somewhere Safe
Tor couldn’t leave.
He got as far as the sidewalk when he turned back to the hospital, a sigh in the back of his throat. Running wasn’t an option; he had to make sure she’d be okay. Presently, he tapped his fingers on the edge of the steering wheel, drumming out the beat to a Billy Idol song. Everything about his Tempo was as flawless as it had been the day he bought it, the perks of being the former High King of the Lands of Peace. He sped down the winding highway, tall evergreens, elms, birch, and spruce on either side. Sunset fell over the horizon, casting trees in an orange glow. He couldn’t keep running from the Valtanyana in the hopes he’d stay a step ahead of them. He was screwed, and his only hope of getting out alive was her, The Amethyst Flame. His breath hitched as the song hit the bridge. Tor nodded in rhythm with the drums, singing along.
There is nothin’ fair in this world,
There is nothin’ safe in this world,
And there’s nothin’ sure in this world,
And there’s nothin’ pure in this world.
It was probably a royally bad idea but he couldn’t leave, not since he released Kaliel from her golden prison. He tried not to think about the past, the war, being trapped in a human form. He pulled the car to a sharp right, taking a narrow gravel road through a bed of trees. He stopped at the end of the drive, parking in front of a beat up garage. The door was brown, big enough for a double, and slanted. The house looked abandoned, crumbling brick surrounding the porch, paint peeling in several places. He got out, slamming the door behind him. Eaves troughs were rusted and falling off, the pillars on either side of the steps were mossy. One of the porch steps was cracked in half. Considering the amount of work the porch alone was, he didn’t want to guess what the inside would be like. He sighed. It was big enough, a former mansion of sorts, probably a summer house. He opened the left of the thick oak doors, and stepped into the foyer. On his right was a rundown living room, light streaming through a bay window, casting shadows on the covered up furniture and wood flooring. On his left was the kitchen, looking severely bare, nothing but a fridge and microwave in sight. In front of him was a grand staircase leading to a small platform and two smaller staircases leading to two hallways on the second floor.
He liked it.
It reminded him of an eighteenth century manor house, but without all the Victorian architecture and class. He turned on his heel, finished with the tour and slid into the driver’s side of his Tempo. There was a hardware store in Sioux Narrows, and he’d have to go to the lumber yard in Kenora for the rest. He wouldn’t use the abilities they had left him with for the house, no those abilities were only for emergencies. He didn’t have any intention of letting them know he stopped running.
O O O
Her name.
The witch knew her name.
He wished he didn’t care.
He didn’t want to care.
Krishani careened through the air unaware of where the wind took him. He tumbled through clouds, their white wisps feigning white matter, mimicking it with unmistakable authenticity. He tried to force the hunger out of his form but it rippled across his tendrils, making him shudder.
And then it was gone.
The conversation with Shimma in the shack, the confrontation with Gemma in the hospital, the flash flood of memories crowding the human mind he held for mere hours, shattered into fractured shards and scattered across his form. He didn’t stay alive long enough. He couldn’t think of anything but the hunger and need. He swooped low, seeing triangular brown-topped houses. They crunched together leaving little room for roads. He fetched up beside a chimney, attempting to steady himself. In the distance he spotted a squat building, an H in neon plastered on a tower.
He drifted to the ground, a sheen layer of frost covering the sweltering sidewalk as he hovered, trying to get the pleached feeling out of his form. A car passed, splashing water onto the sidewalk. He glanced at the townhouses and flats, all of them a carbon copy of the last. By the smell in the air, this was England—London maybe. By the closeness of the houses and the mess of streets he was sure of it. He didn’t like London, too close to home, too dirty. The last time London was good was during the plague, for obvious reasons. He hadn’t enjoyed the introduction of modern medicine and the number of people who lived well past their life expectancy.
He couldn’t wait.
The hunger and something greater than the hunger gnawed at him. He couldn’t remember what the latter feeling was about, his memory like shredded paper. He drew the pieces together but they came in a heap of memories—some his—some belonging to the souls he’d taken. His mind whirred and he felt dizzy and heavy. He clenched his imaginary hand and transported from the hamlet to the nearest dead body.
The old man wasn’t dead.
His tired blue eyes regarded Krishani with a sense of fear and knowing. His body wrinkled, skin sagging, chest heaving up and down with the support of a respirator. Krishani neared him, touched his hand, sending muscle spasms through the body. He turned the man’s wrist over, peering at the hospital bracelet: Pierre LaForge. He regarded the balding head, white tufts of hair and puckered mouth with disdain. He desperately needed to pour himself into a body so he could remember. He hated the feeling something important was happening and he wasn’t aware or awake enough to recognize it.
He slithered up Pierre’s arm and covered him in a sheet of darkness. Pierre opened his mouth in a cry but no sound came out. Krishani pushed his darkness down Pierre’s throat, and the white matter, syrupy sweet and dripping with purity exploded into him. It tasted as good as a hundred year old wine, Pierre having held on for decades. Krishani pulled the white matter into himself and carefully pressed his darkness into the sternum.
He opened his eyes, a shock rippling through him the moment his fragmented memories pulled themselves into coherency. He remembered everything Shimma said, the cards on the table, the star, the star, the star. It couldn’t be true, Shimma was a devious little trickster, but she did it twice, the same card appeared.
Krishani ripped the buds out of his nose and the IV off his hand. He stood and realized he was near naked in the hospital gown. He set his bare feet on the linoleum and cringed. The tiles were warm when they should have been cold, meaning, he was dead. He felt for a pulse, waited, waited, and there it was, slow and methodical. He flexed out his rough wrinkled hands and stood, knees buckling under the pressure of his upper body. He gripped the bed rail and cleared his eyes of the goop in the corners. He hated old bodies, the way they smelled, tasted, and moved.
He glanced at the end table, a vase with daffodils, and a framed photo of a family, a woman with the same eyes, Pierre and their three kids, all boys. Krishani gulped, Pierre would never rejoin them, not in this life or the next. He shoved himself to the doorframe and held on, his fingers gripping it hard. He shook his legs out to make them work and pulled his posture taut when he had control. He walked with purpose, ignoring that his butt was on display and for once in his miserable existence, he wasn’t invisible. He fled down the hallway until he reached a door reading ‘storage.’ There had to be scrubs somewhere amidst the medical supplies neatly organized on the shelves. If not, maybe another gown. Krishani didn’t want to bend down for fear of crackling out of the form like lightning and bolting into the fluorescent lights. Instead he poked the bottom shelves with his foot and eventually came up with a pair of greenish blue slacks, no shirt. He left the gown, continuing down the hallway towards an exit. The linoleum was warmer and Krishani felt for the pulse again, counting the seconds between beats.
Reaching the double doors, he shoved them open, pain skating across his forehead. He stumbled down the shallow steps and hastily held his hand out for a cab. Rain misted on his pants and he rubbed his arms from the heat. They stung like acid as a yellow cab rolled to the curb and Krishani swung the door open, sliding into the backseat.
“Five pounds,” the driver said, looking into the rear view mirror. He had a thick middle-eastern accent and sat on the right hand side of the car. Krishani inched to the front and put his hand on the Plexiglas between the front and back seats.
“Drive south,” he instructed, his voice sounding warbled. The glass spider webbed with cracks and the cabbie’s eyes widened. He pulled the car into traffic. Krishani watched houses go by, rain streaking the window, streetlamps causing reflections in the glass. He was trying to remember exactly where it was, but his mind was a buzz of activity. He couldn’t get the image of the star out of his mind.
If she was alive he had to find her.
“Where?” the cabbie asked. After a half hour of weaving through narrow streets and passing dilapidated districts Krishani was tired. The body was quickly losing temperature and rigor mortis was settling into the bones. He couldn’t twist his left foot anymore, and his right hand was stuck to his side. He deeply regretted taking Pierre’s body but he wasn’t about to give up. He crunched his facial muscles together, fighting the stiffness and concentrated hard on the last time he had been to the apartment on Adelaide Avenue, Lewisham. He repeated the info to the cabbie who swung a violent left, leading them past a cemetery, hedge bushes aligned with the sidewalk, black wrought iron gates pulled across the entrance. They were locked. Krishani stifled the urge to vomit as they rolled past it, the cabbie slowing to make a left turn onto Adelaide.
Krishani forgot that Elwen lived next to a cemetery. He flexed his hands even though they were settling and tapped the glass.
“Stop,” Krishani choked, fighting with the door handle to get out of the car. The cabbie stopped on the left side of the road and Krishani shoved the door on the right side open, afraid of scooting across the seat.
Krishani stepped onto a cobblestone road and limped around the back of the cab, the sensation of the exhaust against his shins like a flamethrower. He yelped as he reached the sidewalk and the cab took off, not waiting to see if he was okay. Hedge bushes blocked the cemetery but it wasn’t enough to stave off the incessant need. Cemeteries, churches, they were all on hallowed ground, a place he couldn’t be. The only irony being that Gemma and Kazazar couldn’t step foot in those places either. He clenched his forearm, his neck pulling to the left, wanting to stay there forever. He forced himself across the sidewalk at an uneven gait until he reached the first building. It was red brick and black railing and flimsy wooden steps leading to a wide porch. He looked at the array of doorbells, each of them with letters beside them and rang them all. There was a buzz and a click, and Krishani wedged the door open. He moved up the freshly painted wooden staircase, hauling his heavy body around the bend, his knees groaning with every step.
He reached the door on the second floor, apartment B. Unable to stop the stiffness spreading through his limbs he shoved himself into the door in a full body check, rattling the thick oak. He slid onto his back, paralysis reaching his knees and elbows. His hands were clenched in claws, fingers attempting to make fists. His head hit the floor as the door opened. He stared at the baseboards, white walls, tanned floorboards.
“Find me,” he croaked before exploding out of the body, fleeing through the open window at the bottom of the first flight of stairs.
O O O
Elwen hit the doorframe—fear, anger, and disbelief coiling his muscles into tight bunches. His stomach dropped, the black void escaping the body in a crescendo of silk, and disappearing into the night. He crouched beside the old man and lifted his arm, seeing the hospital bracelet on his wrist: Pierre LaForge. He stood, and closed the door to his tiny studio flat. He grabbed the phone off the end table next to the futon couch where he slept, a beige blanket tangled across it. He dialed 9-1-1 and waited, while it rang once, twice
“911 what is your emergency?” a clear voice answered.
“A man collapsed on my doorstep, can you send someone?”
“Have you performed CPR?”
“No, he’s not breathing,” Elwen responded, tapping his foot. He needed to do something to distract the cops while he went on a search for Krishani.
“Have you checked for a pulse?”
“Yes, there’s no pulse.”
“Can I get your name, address, and phone number?”
“Tom Norton, 1776 Adelaide Avenue, Lewisham.”
“Thank you Mr. Norton we’ll send someone shortly.”
Elwen hung up, throwing on his brown loafers and adjusting the belt on his trousers. He slicked his dark brown hair back. It felt odd not being as long as it used to be, his fingers feeling for hair that used to be there. He threw a brown and beige patterned sweater vest overtop his dress shirt, grabbed the keys to his Mini, and fled the flat, stepping over the dead body in the foyer. He clamored down the steps taking them two at a time until he was out in the fresh air. He rounded the gray Mini and hopped into the driver’s seat. He didn’t need to wonder what Krishani was up to. This wasn’t the first time he’d asked Elwen for help in the past nine thousand years.
Elwen only hoped Darkesh of the Valtanyana wasn’t aware of Krishani’s impromptu excursion this time. Elwen refused to involve himself in their wars, but when High King Tor fell he swore allegiance to Darkesh to salvage his immortality. He’d changed his name once every hundred years or so, and was a master at manipulation, something that came with being so old. The Valtanyana came to him when they needed favors but Elwen hadn’t seen them since settling in Lewisham a couple hundred years ago, before the land became a breeding ground for cement and steel.
He raced down the narrow alleyways and thick interstates, heading towards University Hospital. It was the biggest and closest to where he lived and if Krishani was going to possess another human body, Elwen wanted to be there to see it. He’d been there for seventeen of Krishani’s lasting possessions, monitoring him until he ultimately found his end.
One thing Elwen was certain of: when Krishani possessed a body, the Vulture would destroy it.