Anthology.The.Mammoth.Book.of.Angels.And.Demons.2013.Paula.Guran (47 page)

The stranger paused in mid-step. He regarded John with surprise but waited for him to cross the street and join him. John introduced himself and put out his hand. The man hesitated for a moment, then took John’s hand.

“Bernard Gair,” the man said in response. “Pleased, I’m sure.” His look of surprise had shifted into one of vague puzzlement. “Have we met before . . .?”

John shook his head. “No, but I do know one of your colleagues. She calls herself Dakota.”

“The name doesn’t ring a bell. But then there are so many of us – though never enough to do the job.”

“That’s what she told me. Look, I know how busy you must be so I won’t keep you any longer. I just wanted to ask you if you could direct me to . . .”

John’s voice trailed off as he realized he wasn’t being listened to. Gair peered more closely at him.

“You’re one of the lost, aren’t you?” Gair said. “I’m surprised I can even see you. You’re usually so . . . insubstantial. But there’s something different about you.”

“I’m looking for the gates,” John told him.

“The gates.”

Something in the way he repeated the words made John afraid that Gair wouldn’t help him.

“It’s not for me,” he said quickly. “It’s for her.”

With each step he took, the sounds she made grew more piteous.

He stood directly before the archway, bathed in its golden light. Through the pulsing glow, he could see the big sky Dakota had described. It went on forever. He could feel his heart swell to fill it. All he wanted to do was step through, to be done with the lies of the flesh, the lies that had told him, this one life was all, the lies that had tricked him into being trapped in the city of the undead.

But there was the infant to consider, and he couldn’t abandon her. Couldn’t abandon her, but he couldn’t explain it to her, that there was nothing to fear, that it was only light and an enormous sky. And peace. There were no words to capture the wonder that pulsed through his veins, that blossomed in his heart, swelled until his chest was full and he knew the light must be pouring out of his eyes and mouth.

Now he understood Dakota’s sorrow. It would be heartbreaking to know what waited for those who turned their backs on this glory. It had nothing to do with gods or religions. There was no hierarchy of belief entailed. No one was denied admittance. It was simply the place one stepped through so that the journey could continue.

John cradled the sobbing infant, jigging her gently against his chest. He stared into the light. He stared into the endless sky.

“Dakota,” he called softly.

“Hello, John Narraway.”

He turned to find her standing beside him, her own solemn gaze drinking in the light that pulsed in the big sky between the gates and flowed over them. She smiled at him.

“I didn’t think I’d see you again,” she said. “And certainly not in this place. You did well to find it.”

“I had help. One of your colleagues showed me the way.”

“There’s nothing wrong with accepting help sometimes.”

“I know that now,” John said. “I also understand how hard it is to offer help and have it refused.”

Dakota stepped closer and drew the infant from the sling at John’s chest.

“It is hard,” she agreed, cradling Dolly. Her eyes still held the reflected light that came from between the gates, but they were sad once more as she studied the weeping infant. She sighed, adding, “But it’s not something that can be forced.”

John nodded. There was something about Dakota’s voice, about the way she looked that distracted him, but he couldn’t quite put his finger on it.

“I will take care of the little one,” Dakota said. “There’s no need for you to remain here.”

“What will you do with her?”

“Whatever she wants.”

“But she’s so young.”

The sadness deepened in Dakota’s eyes. “I know.”

There was so much empathy in her voice, in the way she held the infant, in her gaze. And then John realized, what was different about her. Her voice wasn’t hollow, it held resonance. She wasn’t monochrome, but touched with color. There was only a hint, at first, like an old tinted photograph, but it was like looking at a rainbow for John. As it grew stronger, he drank in the wonder of it. He wished she would speak again, just so that he could cherish the texture of her voice, but she remained silent, her solemn gaze held by the infant in her arms.

“I find it hardest when they’re so young,” she finally said, looking up at him. “They don’t communicate in words, so it’s impossible to ease their fears.”

But words weren’t the only way to communicate, John thought. He crouched down to lay his fiddle case on the ground, took out his bow, and tightened the hair. He ran his thumb across the fiddle’s strings to check the tuning, marveling anew at the richness of sound. He thought perhaps he’d missed that the most.

“What are you doing?” Dakota asked him.

John shook his head. It wasn’t that he didn’t want to explain it to her, but that he couldn’t. Instead he slipped the fiddle under his chin, drew the bow across the strings, and used music to express what words couldn’t. He turned to the gates, drank in the light and the immense wonder of the sky, and distilled it into a simple melody, an air of grace and beauty. Warm generous notes spilled from the sound holes of his instrument, grew stronger and more resonant in the light of the gates, gained such presence that they could almost be seen, touched and held with more than the ear.

The infant in Dakota’s arms fell silent and listened. She turned innocent eyes toward the gates and reached out for them. John slowly brought the melody to an end. He laid down his fiddle and bow and took the infant from Dakota, walked with her toward the light. When he was directly under the arch, the light seemed to flare and suddenly the weight was gone from his arms. He heard a joyous cry, but could see nothing for the light. His felt a beating in his chest as though he were alive once more, pulse drumming. He wanted to follow Dolly into the light more than he’d ever wanted anything before in his life, but he slowly turned his back on the light and stepped back onto the boulevard.

“John Narraway,” Dakota said. “What are you doing?”

“I can’t go through,” he said. “Not yet. I have to help the others – like you do.”

“But—”

“It’s not because I don’t want to go through anymore,” John said. “It’s . . .”

He didn’t know how to explain it and not even fiddle music would help him now. All he could think of was the despair that had clung to him in the city of the undead, the same despair that possessed all those lost souls he’d left there, wandering forever through its deserted streets, huddling in its abandoned buildings, defying themselves the light. He knew that, like Dakota and Gair, he had to try to prevent others from making the same mistake. He knew it wouldn’t be easy, he knew there would be times when it would be heartbreaking, but he could see no other course.

“I just want to help,” he said. “I have to help. You told me before that there aren’t enough of you and the fellow that brought me here said the same thing.”

Dakota gave him a long considering look before she finally smiled. “You know,” she said, “I think you do have the generosity of heart now.”

John put away the fiddle. When he stood up, Dakota took his hand and they began to walk back down the boulevard, away from the gates.

“I’m going to miss that light,” John said.

Dakota squeezed his hand. “Don’t be silly,” she said. “The light has always been inside us.”

John glanced back. From this distance, the light was like a heat mirage again, shimmering between the pillars of the gates, but he could still feel its glow, see the flare of its wonder and the sky beyond it that went on forever. Something of it echoed in his chest, and he knew Dakota was right.

“We carry it with us wherever we go,” he said.

“Learn to play that on your fiddle, John Narraway,” she said.

John returned her smile. “I will,” he promised. “I surely will.”

Elegy for a Demon Lover

Sarah Monette

Whether a supernatural being who entices humans into their realm, an incubus or succubus, a mysterious seducer who damns the beloved’s soul, or simply a dangerous human whose love ultimately destroys – the motif of the demon lover is an ancient one. Mortals who encounter such demons are sure to suffer. But the virginal Kyle Murchison Booth in Sarah Monette’s story is not exactly a typical human himself. As demonstrated in other Booth stories, he is not only an eccentric, socially awkward museum archivist who frequently finds himself in the midst of the most unsettling supernatural experiences and strange necromantic mysteries, he’s also the last of a most unusual family. The result is poignant tale with an atypical outcome for such a theme.

I first saw him at the corner of Atwood and Haye.

It was dusk; I was on my way home from the museum, standing at the crosswalk waiting for the light to change. Even now, I do not know what made me look up. I only know that I did look, and I saw him. He was standing on the opposite corner, a tall, slender figure in a gray overcoat. His hair was a shock of gold over his pale face, and even at that distance I could see the brilliance of his blue eyes. I looked away at once.

The light changed. I stepped down into the street. I had no intention whatsoever of looking at him again, but as I neared the middle of the street, my eyes rose of their own accord. He was perhaps five feet away, and he was staring at me. He walked like a conqueror, like a lion. He could not have been more than twenty-two or twenty-three. His eyes were not merely vivid blue, they were intense, blazing, as if they were lit from within, as if this young man was burning with a flame that no one else could feel. His mouth was twisted in a mocking smile. He had known that I would look. I looked away at once, my face reddening, and then we were past each other.

I went home. I locked the door behind me and then circled the apartment, nervously checking the windows, the door to my postage-stamp balcony. But when I asked myself, I did not know what I was nervous of. It is a wonder I did not burn myself badly as I made dinner, for all the time I was listening, although I did not know for what. I ate without tasting anything, and as I washed the dishes my mind was so far away that I was washing the same saucepan for the third time before I noticed what I was doing. And all the time I was listening without knowing what I listened for and fearing when I did not know what there was to fear.

I did not attempt to go to bed that night. I picked a book at random from the shelves and stayed reading by the fire. Eventually, I did sleep, although I only realized it when I woke, my head thick and my neck stiff, to the knowledge that I had been dreaming of his blue eyes and beautiful, arrogant face. I looked at the book, lying open on my lap like a dead bird, and discovered that I had spent the dark hours staring at the pages of Wells-Burton’s
Demonologica
without taking in a single letter of its dry, disturbing text.

It was four in the morning. I put the
Demonologica
back on the shelf, showered, shaved, and changed my clothes. I met no one on my way to the Parrington, and I did not see the blond man, not even in the darkest shadows where my nerves insisted he must be standing, watching me. I was so overwrought by the time I reached the museum that it took me three tries to open the door and two to lock it again when I was safely inside. I do not know why or how I knew that the blond man would not find me inside the museum, but I did know it; the knowledge was at once reassuring and disappointing.

I was distracted all day, without quite knowing why, unable to concentrate on anything. The people I talked to in the course of my duties looked at me strangely. Mr Lucent asked if I was ill, and I did not quite know how to answer him. I did not feel ill, but I did not feel normal; from the look on his face, I knew that the febrile shimmer I sensed in my blood must somehow be showing through.

As I knew he would be, the young man was waiting for me on the steps of the museum when I came out at sundown. It was he, indisputably, the man who had stared at me in the crosswalk the day before, the man whose face had haunted my thin dreams. He was leaning against one of the great stone sphinxes that flanked the portico and smoking a narrow, foreign cigarette. There was no scent of smoke, although I could see it wreathing his head, only the sweet, strong scent of viburnum. His blue eyes were full of fire and darkness.

I knew that I should walk past him, go down the stairs and into the city, to a theater or a restaurant or even the house of my former guardians. I knew that, but I could not do it. I stayed where I was, as if I had been turned to stone, a new column for the portico, ugly and graceless.

He dropped his cigarette and ground it out with his left foot. He looked at me, his eyebrows raised in enquiry. “Are you Lot’s wife, that you can only stare at me and not speak? What is your name?” His voice was warm and rich and smooth, like the scent of viburnum that surrounded him. He had a trace of an accent, though I could not place it.

I opened my mouth; the hinges of my jaw seemed corroded with rust. “Kyle Murchison Booth.” My voice was deeper than his, husky and rasping, like the caw of a crow.

“Kyle,” he said and smiled. I stood transfixed; no one had ever smiled at me like that in my life. “My name is Ivo Balthasar, and I hope you do not intend to stand here all night.”

*    *    *   

We went out to dinner. Ivo said he was a stranger to the city, but I knew most of the restaurants near the Parrington, and I took him to the best of them, a bistro run by a fat, cheerful Parisian. We talked through dinner; Ivo did not seem annoyed by my stammering inarticulateness, and he listened to what I told him without the faintest hint of boredom or impatience. When at one point I apologized for talking too much, he said, “Don’t be silly. I think your problem is that you don’t talk enough.” I found myself telling him things I had never told anyone else, things about my parents, about the Siddonses, about prep school and college, even about my friend Blaine, who was dead. Ivo sat and listened, the look in his blue eyes enrapt, and I knew, though I could hardly believe it, that he was not bored or uninterested, that to him I mattered as I had never mattered to anyone in my life.