November 2008
Something to Do With Sebastian by Douglas Lind
A Rainy Night of Density with a Reckless Neurotic by Richey Piiparinen
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A Little Night Music
by R. S. Pyne
Dr. Rebecca Sian Pyne lives in rural West Wales near the University town of Aberystwyth and has a PhD in Micropalaeontology (microscopic fossils). Previously published work (or currently in press) has appeared in: Scribble, Apollo's Lyre, The New Cauldron, Linkway, Delivered, Twisted Tongue, Albedo One, Countryside Tales, Recruiter Magazine, Coin News (x3), Pen Cambria, Country Smallholder, Country Quest (x3), Picture Postcard Monthly (x2), SALT, Stitches - the Journal of Medical Humor & World War II Magazine. Current writing projects include preparing a large family archive of photographs and memoirs for publication: this details service on British aircraft carriers during WWII.
Her skin was pale as fine alabaster; her blazing eyes portals to the Hell awaiting anyone unlucky enough to cross her path.
Severyn stood in the moonlight and brooded. After almost two hundred years of undeath, she was the only one to make him think of ending it all. The chorus of the hours of darkness, hunting calls and the sound of their victims swelled to a crescendo, life going on all around him even in the city. He could sense the human dreams as they floated free of their sleeping owners and for some reason the opening of Beethoven’s Moonlight Sonata mingled with the chorus.
Hopes and happiness swirled together with disappointment, as they did every night. A few hours ago, Limmatquai had been busy with Friday night revelers and wandering tourists, the air fragrant with the smell of lime blossom that drifted across the streets. Hawkers sold overpriced roses to lovers whispering sweet nothings over their champagne or schooners of beer. He listened to the sounds of Zürich’s beating heart but she refused to be ignored. She repeated the words with a steel edge twisting around the childish whine. “We had an agreement.”
He had grown to loathe her voice. If he made her one with the darkness, he would never be free. If he took her life and left the luscious body to the rats – he would lose a part of himself forever. “Just kill the bitch”. A familiar voice whispered in the darkness of what had once been his soul. The one who made him would laugh at the unfairness of it all.
“Seleyne,” he spoke the name softly and fought to quell the feelings of rage and loss. Zürich would drown in blood if he gave in to the madness and the city did not deserve that. If he gave Angela what she wanted, things would change for the worst but she left him little option. “I don’t want to lose you again,” he let the words sound in his mind where only She could hear them. A flicker of irritation crossed Angela’s beautiful face and lingered in her eyes but he no longer cared. The voice spoke again. “Do you want to be a slave forever?”
Angela reached into her handbag; her movements deliberately slow as if making a point. He watched her impassively as she raised an object over her head and got ready to smash it. She pouted her perfect lips and waited for him to beg. The delicate glass contained all that remained of Seleyne, sealed in a witch bottle all too easy broken. An insurance policy, or so she said and refused to tell him where it came from. Seleyne, hunting partner and lover for over a century of drifting where the Fates blew them; dead at the hands of an amateur too new to the work to make a clean kill.
At first vengeance had been all he had left. Prague forever remained the place of her ending and he knew that he could never return. And so he kept on the move, following the elusive trail of her presence in an attempt to recapture the memories. He sat alone in the Mirabell Gardens in Salzburg or listened to Mozart drift across the squares. Something of her essence still lingered but it was hollow and weak, at best a pale imitation. Venice absorbed more of the fierce energy and he walked by the canals, retracing their moonlight hunts together.
After five years of wandering, little more than the blink of an eye, he returned to a city that felt like home.
Angela found him in the Arboretum, watching moonlight dance across the restless waters of the lake. On reflection, he should have killed her then but she had a bargaining tool. Something about that meeting six months ago haunted him: her fearlessness and self-belief as she spoke her ambition. I want to walk in the dark places of the world, the power and Glory, forever and ever, Awen.
The rented flat on Eichbuhlstrasse served as Seleyne’s shrine now; a bolt hole during daylight hours but not in the central city zone. Trams ran directly from Limmatquai to Hardplatz but they had stopped running long ago. He crossed the bridge and walked along the deserted streets with the easy familiarity of someone born there. Lengthened his stride so that the bitch had to run to keep up and saw only one of his own breed. It was a low-ranking scavenger, little more than bone and concentrated malice stalking a mangy rat in a back alley. The creature snarled a challenge in atrociously accented German and shook its fist, bolting at the slightest sign of trouble. Severyn let it go, relaxing his usual policy of killing the things on sight.
Angela was intoxicated by the fragrant night air and did not seem to care that nobody watched her dance barefoot along Bahnhofstrasse. The expensive shop windows and bank fronts stared back like silent eyes and he loped on, hoping to lose her. The plain failed and she returned to her favorite subject. “I am tired of waiting, Severyn. When will you do as I asked?” He lunged at her, in a flicker of movement as swift as the beat of a human heart. He could have ended her life in the blink of an eye but still there was no fear in her mocking eyes. His voice grated with a threat he could not be bothered to follow through. “That thing back there would happily oblige. Go back to it and let me be.”
He dropped her and walked away. She refused to be left behind, purposefully making it impossible to hunt. He looked up at the night sky and saw that dawn was not far off.
Angela resorted to more threats, persistent as ever. Her voice was like a slap in the face, calculated to cause as much pain as it possibly could. She stood with her hands on her hips, eyes blazing and her hair falling in a heavy curtain on her bare shoulders. “Now what would your lost love say if you threw away her one chance of resurrection? Just give me what I want and I will return her remains. A Lazarus Seer could call her back and there is a very good one in Whitby.”
Whitby. The town called out to him with a siren song but the Articles of Banishment had been very specific. North Yorkshire was off-limits for a decade, all because of Angela’s behavior at the last Synod. She did it to prove a point.
She stopped, bathed in the soft glow of a streetlamp, and struck a pose. “Why can’t you admit it? You are attracted to me so do what comes naturally and let instinct take over.” The silk dress, red as newly tapped blood, was expensively cut to leave nothing to the imagination. She had the figure for it and a vein pulsed in her white throat but, for some reason, she repelled him more than ever. “Not in the street.” He could see Frau Wolf watching through her lace curtains. The old woman had binoculars trained on them, poised to record an infraction of the tenancy agreement.
If only she knew. He checked his mailbox and pocketed the next rent payment slip and a hand written reminder. It was his turn to sweep the leaves from the pavement outside the flats and Frau Wolf waited like a patient spider on any excuse to make trouble. The last thing in the metal box was a letter from the police to say that his residency permit needed renewal. The trip to the zone station had become a ritual marking the slow passage of time. A contact in the department ensured that he could go at dusk and he had always preferred to stay within the law when it suited him. The photograph on the folded card bore a strong resemblance to its bearer but, for obvious reasons, Severyn paid a skilled forger to take care of such details.
He opened the main door to the block of flats and took the stairs to the first floor two at a time, irritated by Angela’s impatience. The painted door of his rented flat represented sanctuary as the first light of dawn colored the sky. She was on him in a flash, not caring that the sparsely furnished box still held something of Seleyne’s essence.
“Take me,” the red dress slid to the floor with a whisper of silk. “ Keep your promise and make me immortal.” As Angela stretched out her long swan neck and waited for the Kiss, the barely-there whisper of his lost love reassured him. “Do you want her round your neck for all eternity? I will always be with you in spirit but that bitch expects to be looked after. Do you think she will hunt for herself?”
He did what he had to do and a smile spread across the angelic face even as his teeth pierced her throat. Her blood was fragrant as night flowering jasmine and she responded greedily. When it was done, she lit a cigarette and broke another of his tenancy agreements.
“Give me the bottle.” He had no reason to believe she would keep her word. She shook her head and let it drop to the floor. It smashed into a thousand pieces and the gray ash blew away, dispersed in the draught from an open window.The window that, he noticed, was already beginning to show the light of a fine morning without cloud. If he concentrated, he could hear the first commuters queuing for trams at the Hardplatz terminal and smell the fresh ground coffee from the little street-level bars as the city began its day. Bahnhofstrasse would soon open for business, the banks and expensive shops as well as the tiny kiosks.
Zürich’s heartbeat quickened and he sent his mind out to experience all the sights and sounds of daylight.
“So much power,” Angela’s voice interrupted his wanderings. “I can feel it growing inside me.”
“Why did you do that?” He forced himself to react as she expected, when all he really felt was a release. Seleyne would always be with him and that was enough.
“We don’t need her anymore.” She made a dismissive gesture and crushed one of the bone fragments under foot. Ground it to powder as the fire kindled in her eyes. Her triumphant laughter skirled high and bounced off the painted walls as the Darkness descended.
It filled her with the Power and the Glory, forever and ever, Awen.
She made the mistake of turning away, not yet granted the speed of reactions and instinct that might have saved her.
He lunged forward and grabbed her around the waist. “What are you doing?” She screamed and tried to pull away but the transition always took time. Not that she had much time left now. “Put me down. You can’t do this to me!” Her crimson painted nails raked down his face to leave a bloody series of scratches but he did not release his grip. This was his one chance to be free of her forever.
Incandescent with rage, her voice had risen to a pitch too high to be heard by the human ear; just as well because Frau Wolf was sure to be listening.
Angela writhed but saw only death with her newly made eyes. She still clung to the old fashioned notion that there was something in the rulebook against killing your own kind. Some of the modern fiction writers had a lot to answer for, spreading such a rumor. After a few years of circulation, people started to believe it. Perhaps it had been like that once in an earlier age: all very well in theory but not at all practical in these days of survival of the fittest.
“Nothing personal,” he said and shoved her out of the window without another word.
Where the morning sunlight rushed eagerly up to greet her.
A Little Night Music is copyrighted 2007 by Rebecca Sian Pyne and may not be reproduced under any circumstances without the author's permission.