The Night Shifters (32 page)

I didn’t look at
her. Instead I gloried in being eleven again, in boundless energy
and blossoming sexuality. I could feel all of their eyes on me, and
the power was intoxicating. The lightning began to lick the ground
around us. The air was charged; something coiled tighter and
tighter, moving toward climax.

And then I made my
mistake. I glanced at Serena.

She was impossibly
beautiful now, inhumanly so. She was the goddess I had found in the
ruined temple, the ballerina who had taken my place with One. Next
to her I was ordinary, clumsy.

“Didn’t I warn
you?” She smiled radiantly. “I’m not the girl you used to know. I’m
Serena, the Celestial Whore! I have loved a thousand daemons!”

She ran her hands
up her lovely thighs, and the dress disappeared. She was almost
naked, except for jewels that revealed more than they hid. “Silly
Hazel, do you remember now? Do you remember what happened the day
we danced, and the Hole appeared?”

I remembered. It
was a sunny day, but clouds appeared as we began to dance, and a
storm had built to match our fever. We could feel the lightning
striking around us, and we didn’t question the magic. We were
young, we could do anything. The Hole had appeared in the clouds,
and we flaunted ourselves before it.

“Hazel!” The blond
boy called to me. “Don’t look at her! Look into the Hole!”

Rain pelted my
face, mixing with my tears. I felt a terrible longing – an
excruciating need to be wanted, to be desired. The Hole bulged like
a giant eye, and I fell to my knees.

“Hazel, Dance! Just
like you did before!”

That sounded
absurd. How could my meager charms compete with the Celestial
Whore’s?

“Hazel.” His voice
was at my ear now. “Think of the Celestial Lover! How did she offer
her water? Remember how she looked!”

I felt her
presence, saw her smiling shyly. I knelt as she had – lifted my
hands in offering, looked up into the hole, and closed my eyes. My
lips parted as I waited for the kiss of the Masked Man.

Light fell on my
face, and I opened my eyes.

The Hole had
dilated, revealing the molten world beyond – and a red giant flew
down to earth in a flaming chariot. He was huge, naked, and
impossibly beautiful, the male counterpart of Serena.

And boy, was he
well-endowed.

As soon as I saw
him, I remembered the rest.

Serena and I had
danced until the rain broke, and we fell to our knees. The Hole had
opened, and the daemon came through. He was from a universe of
daemons and djinnis, gods and elementals. His eyes pierced us like
arrows. We knew that our dancing had moved him to come for us, to
take us back to his realm.

He caught Serena
first in his huge hands, then reached for me. But my nature was
more demure, and at the last moment I eluded him. I crawled into
the concrete pipe and hugged myself, giggling, waiting for him to
try again. But he didn’t. When I looked out at last, he and Serena
were gone. The Hole had closed forever, leaving me in a drab, gray
world.

“You were so
pleased with yourself when you ran from him.” Serena smirked. “Boy,
did you miss out. Daemon sex is incredible. But no, you had to play
your prudish little game. You deserved all those years of boring,
lonely, failure.”

“THAT’S ENOUGH,
Serena,” boomed the voice of the Red Daemon, and his chariot
touched to earth. His horses stamped and reared, their manes aflame
and their eyes glowing coals. His eyes glowed the same way. He
looked upon me and smiled.

“There you are,” he
said, much more softly. “I’ve been looking all over for you.”

“For me?” I
squeaked.

“I wanted both of
you. You danced so nicely for me just now, it brought back old
memories.” He smiled, and his teeth were blazing white. “Serena has
had plenty of attention from me, enough to elevate her to celestial
status. But I’ve been thinking about you Hazel, and I want you now.
Come to me.”

He reached out his
giant hand, as big as I was tall, and I touched his palm. It was
like touching hot velvet. My skin tingled with pleasure.

“Time to learn,” he
said, his voice molten – and I leaned toward him.

Until someone
grabbed me by the hand and pulled me off the pipe. I sprawled onto
the ground and saw who gripped my hand, someone with a beloved face
– one I suddenly recognized for what he really was.

“Sir John!” I
cried, “ – Dad!”

“There’s no time to
waste!” said Sir John, and the world erupted with light.

* * * * *

The light was
golden, it filled my eyes without burning them. But it effectively
blinded me, too. I felt Sir John’s hand in mine, yet it was a
goddess who spoke in my ears. “Not so fast, Sir John. Do you think
you can thwart the will of a daemon?”

But Sir John was
not intimidated. “You don’t know me very well, Serena.”

“And he is not her
only ally,” said another voice, one I loved just as dearly as my
father’s. “Masked Man...” I said, barely breathing his name
aloud.

Serena answered
him. “Why should you trouble yourselves? The Red Daemon will take
this little Nobody out of your hair.”

“
Little Nobody
?” the
Masked Man said. “She drank from the fountain of the Celestial
Lover. You chose the Celestial Whore, Serena – you never even saw
The Lover.”

Serena’s
voice sounded like the finest instrument. “The daemon reached
for
me
first. That drab little thing was
second choice, she shall
always
be
second choice.”

“The second choice
is usually the best choice,” he said, fondly. “I was made to love
someone like Hazel, not worship someone like you.”

She laughed,
scornfully. “You love
Hazel
?”

Her tone ticked me
off, big time. But I also recognized it (and finally the entire
conversation), because I had heard bits and pieces of it before, in
the little maze of streets outside the patio apartments. I
remembered enough to put it together now, and I liked it a lot
better this time around – or at least the Masked Man’s part of
it.

“Hazel and I
competed the whole school year,” said Serena. “But she was never
quite good enough to beat me. The dancing contest proved once and
for all who was the best. She lost that contest!”

Now it was his turn
to laugh, scornfully. “Lost it? Not in my book. All you won was the
right to be raped by the Red Daemon. Hazel’s instincts were sound,
Serena. You were both far too young to consent. His interest in you
was grotesque.”

“
I’m a
goddess, silly. Age is completely meaningless.” But a trace of
flawed humanity had crept into her voice for that last part, making
her sound less than certain. “You tried to keep me at arm’s length
– and you as well, Sir John, with your old man disguise. But
even
you
succumbed in the end. You thought
Hazel was me when you gave her the Crystal Heart. “

“True,” Sir John
admitted. “But you outwitted yourself with that little trick. You
underestimated Hazel, and in doing so you made certain she would be
part of these realms, forever.”

“
So what?”
her laughter rang like tiny, perfect bells. “
My
realms are Celestial. And so should yours be, Masked Man.
Unless you’d like to step down – is that it? You’re tired of being
a god?”

“
I am what I
have always been,” he said, “what I always
shall
be, until time itself winds down.
You
are the one obsessed with climbing and with descent, because
you are the one who
has
to be. You never
would have been noticed by the Red Daemon if Hazel hadn’t been
standing beside you. It was her heritage that generated the magic
that got you here in the first place. You have played with the
Night Shifters because you think we’re no different from the
ordinary mortals you have always manipulated so easily – but you
are wrong. Grow up, Serena. That’s how you earn our
respect.”

The golden
light evaporated in one spectacular flash. I could see again, and
what I saw was entirely puzzling. My eyes focused on walls carved
out of living stone. It was the Masked Man’s house, but Sir John
stood with me on the marble stairs. He was dressed in his usual
Gentleman Casual style, and he smelled like good pipe tobacco. Only
now Sir John looked young and handsome, like he did in
Who Is The Man
(1924) and
The Clue Of The New Pin
(1929).

But he wasn’t
really Sir John Gielgud, I could see that now. He looked a lot like
him, but nothing more than that. “You’re my father,” I said
wonderingly. “You met my mother that one night she was here.”

“
I loved your
mother,” he said, and when I looked into his eyes I realized who he
had reminded me of. His eyes were like
my
eyes; I saw them every time I looked in the
mirror.

“She was a Dreamer
of rare talent,” he said. “Most mortals pass through our realm as
shadows, but she was different. The time she spent here was one
night for her, but far longer in the City of Night. Long enough to
win my love. And long enough for you to be conceived, Hazel. But I
didn’t know that had happened – she was gone before she could tell
me.”

“Why didn’t she
stay?” I wondered, remembering Mom’s sad, wistful smile that I had
seen so often when she thought I wasn’t looking.

“She couldn’t. She
was mortal. Eventually her world called her back.”

“
So why
didn’t it call
me
back?”

“Because of the
crystal heart beating in your chest – and because you’re my
daughter.”

He presented the
crook of his arm, and I laid my hand on it. We began to climb the
stairs together.

“How long have you
known I’m you’re daughter?” I wondered.

“Since we rode the
train together. Really, I began to suspect when you were sitting in
my den. You have your mother’s smile.”

“
When we met,
you looked like you could be my father – but you’re my age now.”
Then I remembered that maybe I
wasn’t
that
age, or hadn’t been the last time I checked. But when I looked down
at my boobs, the dent they made in the fabric of my catsuit was a
definite size B. “Yay!” I cried.

He smiled.
“No one has to tell
you
to grow up, you’ve
always recognized the wisdom of that advice.”

“I hated being a
kid,” I admitted, as we steadily climbed the stairs. “I remember
most of that now. Serena always had some game going, and the goal
of the game was to boost her up and knock me down.”

He nodded.
“Because she thought she had to get you out of the way to get what
she wanted. But she couldn’t achieve her Celestial status without
you, Hazel. It was the two of you dancing
together
that drew the attention of the Red Daemon. She has
finally figured out that if you hadn’t been the daughter of a Night
Shifter, she would never have escaped the World of Day.”

“But she’s the
Celestial – um – Naughty Lady.” I couldn’t quite bring myself to
say what she was in front of my father.

He patted my
hand. “And
you
are the Celestial
Lover. That is your mother’s legacy.”

I didn’t tell him
how much it surprised me to be the Celestial Lover. After all, I
had been so wretched at finding love. But what he said about my
mother made sense.

“She anchored you
to the World of Day,” he said, “And so I’m guessing – she has
passed away. Otherwise – you would not be here.”

The sorrow in his
voice pained me. “I’m sorry, Dad.”

We climbed for a
while in silence. I felt comforted by his presence, just as I
always did.

Now I understood
why I had longed to spend time with Sir John. I had known who he
was, instinctively.

Finally he spoke,
musingly. “The Masked Man is not the only one around here who finds
masks useful. I needed one that would give me a chance to get to
know Serena without being the focus of her most dazzling charms.
She has that phobia about old age, as you recall.”

“She’s nuts,” I
said, indignantly.

He winked. “But you
have to admit, it was a useful weakness – possibly the only one she
has, unless you count her jealousy for you. If she hadn’t made the
strategic mistake of sending you to fetch the crystal, I might have
eventually fallen farther into her snare. We must never
underestimate the powers of a high-caliber Whore.”

“Not to mention the
letter-writing abilities,” I said, ruefully.

“
One thing
surprises me,” he said. “She continually underestimated
you,
no matter how many times you foiled her. If
she hadn’t done that, she might have succeeded with her plot to
bind you to your old life.”

“If she hadn’t done
that,” I said, “she wouldn’t have been Serena. And maybe we
wouldn’t have had that dancing contest in the first place, we might
have been real friends, instead.”

“Ah, but it wasn’t
your dancing that won the day. It was your ability to love. Serena
could never do that. Don’t look so surprised, surely you know
it!”

“I do now.” But I
had trouble finding my confidence that first time around, when we
really were kids. She taunted me; I had to dig deep to find
something in myself I didn’t know I had. Funny, I had dug many
times before, only to come up with hands full of mud, only to miss
the football and fall on my face just like poor old Charlie Brown.
But like him, I just kept hoping I could kick it out of the
ballpark – and this time I had succeeded beyond my wildest
dreams.