Between the Shadow and the Soul (5 page)

“You know nothing of burning,” Nela said. Her nose had started running too.

“Oh believe me, I do,” the guy said quietly. She heard his steps come closer and braced herself. She would kick out if he tried to grab her. “I can help you with the burning. But put the pepper spray down first.”

“No way,” Nela said.

The guy sighed. “Then at least promise me to wait before blinding me again.”

Nela’s fingers around the can tightened. She wouldn’t promise that guy anything. She didn’t even know him, much less trust him. Only rapists and thugs followed a girl into a deserted alley and enclosed her with a magical wall. Once again, she wished she could use her magic for defense. It would have made her life so much easier. Maybe not in this case, since the guy seemed more than capable with his spells, but in general. She squinted through her watering eyes. They burned almost as badly as her back by now. She could make out the outline of the guy. So close up he was a head taller than her. That didn’t make her feel better. Her hand with the pepper spray twitched. Maybe this time she would be quicker than him and then she’d run, even if she couldn’t see where she was going.

“Okay. Apparently this isn’t going to work,” the guy said impatiently. “If you prefer to stay a blubbering mess, then be my guest. I won’t stay to let you assault me again.”

Reluctantly, Nela lowered the pepper spray a few inches. Her muscles were so tense, she was sure they would snap any moment. She’d healed the boy in front of the church, but that had been instinct. She wasn’t sure how she’d done it. She tried to focus on her eyes, on the watering and burning, but nothing changed, except that her tattoo began tingling as if it could sense that she was trying to perform magic.

“What are you doing? You’ve gone all cross-eyed,” the guy asked. He was so close that he was all she could make out with her blurry vision. “I’m going to touch the skin next to your eyes now and then you’ll hopefully feel better. I’m not good at healing magic, so I can’t promise anything.”

Nela flinched when his cold fingertips touched her skin. Her fingers around the pepper spray tightened again but relaxed when her vision started to become clear and her eyes stopped watering, even though they still felt slightly raw.  She blinked once and the guy dropped his hands. She took a step back, glad to have some distance between them. “Thanks,” she forced herself to say. He didn’t smile but gave her a nod.

She examined his face closely, searching for a sign of familiarity, but she’d never seen him before. How could that even be? Wasn’t he registered with the Brotherhood? “Shouldn’t you be more worried about doing magic in public? People could see you,” she said eventually.

He raised one black eyebrow. “What about that boy you healed in front of the church with the guards of the Brotherhood only feet away? That’s what I’d call reckless.”

Nela tensed. “You were watching?” She took another step back but could feel the magical barrier tingling against her back. Her tattoo flared up angrily until she leaned forward a bit. Though she seemed incapable of walking through the invisible wall, the snowflakes that had started falling passed right through it.

“I’m always on the lookout for witches and wizards who aren’t opposed to working spells. Magic is in our blood. I could never live without it. I don’t want to. There hasn’t been a day in the last few years when I didn’t use magic.”

Nela’s eyes grew wide. How did he do it? The iron from his tattoo should have poisoned him by now. He had to be lying. “If that were true, you’d already be dead. Your tattoo would have killed you. Everyone knows that. You’re a liar.” She was sick of this. Why was she even still talking to him? Her parents were probably already searching the entire city for her. “Let me out,” she demanded.

He seemed taken aback by her harshness, but Nela didn’t care. He narrowed his eyes. “I’m not lying. I never received a tattoo.”

“That’s impossible. Every witch and wizard gets a tattoo when they turn sixteen.”

“Not where I am from.” Before Nela could ask him where that was, he went on. “And even if I had received the Binding, I know someone who could undo it and allow you to work spells as you were meant to be.”

His eyes bore into her and this close up she could make out his iris. They were indeed black and there was something in them, something dark and desperate that made Nela nervous. His expression was carefully guarded. From looking at him, you couldn’t tell if he was lying, but he had to be. If there was a way to remove the tattoo or render it useless, more witches would have done it.

“Why have I never heard about it?”

A grim smile twisted his lips. “Because you don’t know the right people. You and your family try to please the Brotherhood.”

“Leave my family out of this. What do you want from me?”

“I thought you might be tired of playing by the rules of the Brotherhood. Witches shouldn’t be forbidden from practicing magic. It’s wrong. There are others that think exactly like me. We think witches should behave like real witches – teaching magic,
doing
magic.”

Nela knew that a few witches refused to accept the treaty, but she thought they had been caught and burned by now. “So there are witches who actually think they can go against the Brotherhood and get away with it? I’m still not getting what that has to do with me.”

Darko shrugged. “It doesn’t have anything to do with you in particular, but some of us are always on the lookout for new witches to recruit and to teach magic. Only if our numbers grow, if we reclaim what’s ours, can we destroy the Brotherhood some day. As you can probably imagine, it’s not really easy to find witches and wizards who are willing to risk using magic. We can’t really ask around. The Brotherhood would hunt us down.”

Witches who actually thought they could win against the Brotherhood? Fools, no doubt. “You risk a lot by asking a random girl to join you,” Nela said.

“No,” he said simply. “You can’t say anything to anyone because you’ve committed a crime by doing magic. You’d most likely burn like the rest of us.”

Nela’s heart sank. She hadn’t thought about that. “So what, you’re going to blackmail me?”

He snorted. “I’m not like the Brotherhood. I want to stop them. I want to help witches to learn magic. I want us all to be free to use magic. But what is it that you want? No matter how often you attend service or wear that cross around your neck, it won’t change who you are, it won’t change the way the Brotherhood thinks of you. It won’t make you like them. Nothing can.”

“Then what am I?” Nela hissed, taking a step toward him. Magic had started tingling under her skin again. She wanted to let it out so badly. She wanted to hurt him for saying what he had – and for being right.

He didn’t recoil. Instead he stared down at her with hard eyes. “A witch, at least by blood. But you’re denying your heritage, you’re playing human.”

A protest rose up in Nela’s throat but then she realized what he said was true.

“You have to let the magic consume you. You have to control it. With control comes power.”

Nela could feel her tattoo flare up with pain as if in reaction to his words. She wanted to learn real magic, wanted to see witches who didn’t hide, who didn’t bow down to the wishes of the Brotherhood. She wanted to be free to celebrate Sabbaths in public. She was so tired of being ashamed of who she was. But wanting something and getting it were two very different things. She couldn’t change the world she lived in. If she started learning and using magic, she wouldn’t be free. She’d only risk her family and her life.

And what was more, she didn’t trust him one bit. She didn’t even know him. “I don’t even know your name.”

“Darko,” he said. He rolled the “r”, making her even more curious about where he was from.

She gave a small nod and her eyes strayed away from him, toward the opening of the alley. A few people were strolling past, hoods up to protect them from the snow. Nela reached up. Her hair was soaked and so were her clothes. She hadn’t realized how long she’d been standing here with him. Part of her wanted to ask him more about magic, about the witches who dared practice it despite the Brotherhood, but then she remembered her father’s anger when she had healed the boy and worse, her mother’s worry.

“I’m not interested,” she said quickly before she lost her mind and actually agreed.

He stiffened. “Why?”

“I don’t trust you.” She knew spies of the Brotherhood were everywhere. And even if he didn’t seem like a spy, she couldn’t take the risk. She wouldn’t fall into the Brotherhood’s trap. “I need to go. Can you remove this thing now?” She gestured at the invisible barrier around them.

He reached down and took a dagger from a halter around his calf. Nela tensed and raised the pepper spray but he didn’t advance on her. Instead he whispered something under his breath and slashed the dagger through the air. The dome-like wall around them glowed a bright blue and the rip caused by the dagger spread until the barrier was completely gone.

He put the dagger back into the halter and straightened, hands in the pockets of his coat. “You’re free, whatever that’s worth in this world.” He smirked.

Nela knew he was trying to provoke her. She didn’t need his sarcasm to know that she wasn’t anywhere close to being free. Without a word, she walked past him.

“Hey,” he called, when she’d almost reached the end of the alley. “You never told me your name.”

She glanced over her shoulder. Now that she wasn’t so close he didn’t look as dangerous or desperate. He looked lost with his messy, snow-covered hair and his wet coat. “Nela,” she said. Then she hurried away. She wasn’t sure why she’d told him her name. They’d never see each other again.

Chapter 6

D
arko watched her disappear around the corner, her long black hair plastered to her back from the snow. She looked like she was running from the devil. And maybe that’s what he was in her eyes. It certainly was what the Brotherhood thought of him and of all other witches. In his home village the people had called him devil and devil’s brood before they’d tried to drown him and his sister.

The snow was falling heavier now. It was one of the coldest winters Darko had experienced in Germany. He let his head fall back, eyes closed, and relished in the sensation of snowflakes dusting his face. The sound of shuffling made his eyelids shoot open. A homeless guy stood several feet away, pissing against the wall. Darko called the shadows to himself, drew them closer until they blacked out everything else and the ground dropped from under his feet. The last he saw of the alley was the hobo’s horror-struck expression while he peed on his shoes.

Darko knew he should have felt deflated by Nela’s reaction, but instead a strange certainty filled him. He’d seen the spark in her eyes, had seen how badly she wanted to practice magic. If she couldn’t suppress her magic in front of Brotherhood guards, then she certainly couldn’t live her entire life without magic. It was only a matter of time before she’d agree to meet him again and learn magic. That would be his chance to find out if she was what he and the Master were looking for.

 His feet touched down on the stone floor of the antechamber and he strode toward the wooden door, broke through the magical sealing with his Atlame and strode into the lab. His Master wasn’t brewing potions or mulling over formula as he usually did. He sat on his cot, bent forward, head bowed and stared at his hands.

Darko froze. “Master?” Slowly he walked closer, but Master Valentine kept his attention on his hands, his gout-swollen fingers crooked. Darko stopped a few feet from the cot. Now he could see what his Master was staring at. His fingertips were black – like the skin had died – and the rest of his skin was turning gray. It shouldn’t be happening so soon after Darko had brought him a new heart. The process was speeding up.

“Are you sure you can hold out until summer solstice?” he asked.

The Master narrowed his pale blue eyes at him. “It can only be done on summer solstice. It’s when the barrier between this world and the netherworld is thinnest. Don’t concern yourself with my health. I won’t die.”

“Do you need me to find you a heart tonight?”

“No,” the Master said, slowly rising from his cot. Darko noticed that his toes, too, were turning black. “I have to hold out as long as possible. With every new heart, the process speeds up even more. It looks worse than it is.”

Darko doubted that. The Master swayed slightly as he walked toward his workbench and picked up a vial with red liquid. He emptied it in one gulp. Darko’s stomach constricted. He’d seen and smelled a lot of blood in his life, but the thought of drinking it sickened him. “I’m out of bull blood. Get some for me.”

Darko inclined his head.

His Master’s gaze swiveled to him again. “What did you find out about the girl?”

“She performed magic in front of church this morning, with guards of the Brotherhood close by. I think I can gain her trust. I told her I was part of a group of witches that followed our traditions and offered to teach her magic.”

“And what did she say?”

Darko lowered his eyes. “She refused.” He quickly added, “But I could tell that she was curious. I’m sure she’ll contact me soon.”

“So that’s all you did all morning? You don’t know if she’s a necromancer, you didn’t convince her to trust you. You failed.”

“It’ll take some time to make her trust me, Master. But I won’t disappoint you.”

“We don’t have much time.”

“Master,” Darko began hesitantly. “Why did the girl catch your attention? She looks ordinary. She doesn’t look like a Necromancer.”

The Master chuckled. “What do you know about it? How many Necromancers have you met?”

Darko flushed. “I watched one burn at the stake when I first arrived in Cologne.”

The Master shook his head. “I doubt it was a Necromancer. The Brotherhood likes to call wizards necromancers because it sounds more impressive. But unless a necromancer wants to die, he won’t allow the flames to claim him. A powerful necromancer would have escaped.”

With that amount of power, Darko would take the Brotherhood down himself, but sadly he didn’t possess the skill to raise the dead.

 “But as to your question, necromancers don’t look any different than other witches. And yet the girl’s face gave her ancestry away. I once met one of the greatest necromancers of the New World near Salem. And that man is the girl’s Uncle.”

“Nela’s Uncle is a necromancer?”

The Master nodded. “She has his eyes and the same facial features. She reminded me greatly of him. I googled her family and indeed her mother is the necromancer’s sister.”

“What about her mother? Why can’t we take her? Isn’t it just as likely that she’s a necromancer?”

“Sadly, not. The mother is as ordinary a witch as they get. When I met her brother Corbin many years ago, he told me that his sister wasn’t a magic user because of the man she married. Apparently, her husband abides to the Brotherhood’s laws. He’s barely a wizard, and his wife is definitely not a necromancer, but I have high hopes for the girl.” The Master sank down on the wooden stool, his face so white that his bluish veins shone through. “That’s all you need to know at the moment. Now go and get me more blood.”

Darko bowed before he strode into the antechamber and gathered the shadows around him.

***

Darko felt the magical barrier of the Kronleuchtersaal tingling against his skin. He hovered in front of it for a moment, caught in shadows, in a place that didn’t exist. He wasn’t sure what would happen to him if the barriers rejected him. Would he die immediately? Or would he be caught in the space between worlds as a lost soul? A moment after that thought passed his mind, a door materialized in the nothingness below Darko and opened. What lay beyond was only marginally brighter than the nothingness he was caught up in now.

He was sucked through the opening and landed on his feet inside the Kronleuchtersaal. The Chandelier hall was dozens of feet below the surface in the canalization of Cologne. It was low ceilinged and windowless, definitely not a very welcoming place. The first time Darko had entered the hall he’d fallen to his knees, dizzy and confused by the magical barriers. Mikael had invited him a few weeks after their first encounter on the black market where Darko bought whatever his Master needed. Darko wondered what had made Mikael trust him. Was it something about him? Or was it the fact that he was working for Master Valentine.

Only a couple of faces turned his way when Darko appeared in the pentagram that was scratched into the stone floor. But with a bored look they turned back to their dark-red clay mugs. They were filled with mead. It was the only drink you could get in the Kronleuchtersaal and it was one of the reasons why witches and wizards came here. Mead was forbidden by the Brotherhood, so if they wanted to drink the honey-sweet brew or celebrate their Sabbaths or just generally be themselves, they came here. It was one of the few safe places for witches in Cologne. It was protected by powerful magic, had been for more than a century, and only invited guests could enter through the wards.

Darko walked down the slope of brown brick that led to the old wood bar. He knocked his knuckles against the rough surface and old Jago rose from behind the bar, stopping whatever he’d been doing there. His one good, milky eye focused on Darko, his half-open mouth revealing what was left of his teeth – a few yellow stumps – and bright red gums. He didn’t say anything just waited, his fingers stroking his short white beard.

Darko had ordered the same thing for the last two years, and yet Jago still seemed to expect him to actually give his order. “Drachenblut,” Darko said. The first time he’d heard someone order Dragonblood in the Chandelier Hall he’d been stunned, but soon he’d understood why the brew was called that name. Without a word, Jago turned and picked up one of three jugs. They looked exactly the same to Darko – red clay like the mugs, but Jago always seemed to know which jug contained which brew. Jago put a few Euro coins down on the bar as Jago filled a mug. He took it from Jago and brought it to his lips.

At once the spicy smell of the mead flooded his nose; it was seasoned with cinnamon, ginger and a pinch of Tabasco. His throat burned and then warmed as the liquid slid down. The first time he’d tried a gulp he’d coughed and turned red to the amusement of the other, mostly older wizards around him. Of course now he knew that most of them drank the normal mead or Viking blood (the wuss version of Dragonblood without the Tabasco and the ginger, and cherry juice instead). Mug in hand and his innards warming slowly from the alcohol and Tabasco, Darko let his gaze stray over the tables in the hall. Not even half of them were occupied and Mikael sat at one that was perched in the opening to an adjourning sewage tunnel.

His long, white-blond hair was pulled back into a low ponytail. His skin was the color of chalk and it seemed to glow against the dark stone walls. Darko approached him and Mikael looked up from the pile of Euro coins and notes piled in front of him. His eyes were pale red and blue. It was difficult for witches to stay under the radar, but for Mikael it was close to impossible. He’d been the first albino Darko had ever seen.

Darko lifted his mug in a way of greeting and Mikael raised his own mug and clanked it against Darko’s. He too was drinking Dragonblood. He’d been the one who introduced Darko to it.

“Sit down,” Mikael said. He stuffed his money into a leather satchel, not unlike the one Darko carried when he was hunting for hearts for his master.

Darko sat on the wooden stool across from Mikael and put his mug down on the table, which was dotted with wax from an almost burned down candle on a saucer in the middle. The light bulbs, which had been installed in the massive chandelier that hung from the ceiling of the bar, gave off enough light for most of the hall, but Mikael had chosen the table furthest from it. Darko knew he preferred the softer brightness of the candle, probably due to the sensitivity of his eyes.

“How’s business?” Darko asked.

A frown dragged down Mikael white-blond brows. “Shitty. And it’s getting shittier every day.”

“The Brotherhood?”

“People are scared of being caught.”

“But the black market is protected, just like this place. There’s no way the Brotherhood could come in.”

“Don’t say that. Over the years so many of our sacred places have been breached by our own.”

“Damn traitors,” Darko muttered.

“Some of them, but not all. The Brotherhood has their ways to make people talk.”

“They’re not allowed to torture witches anymore.”

Mikael gave him a wry smile. “There are other ways to make someone talk than tear their toenails out.” He lifted his mug to his lip, then seemed to realize that it was empty and set the mug back down. “There have been many raids of wizard homes in the last few months. People don’t want to risk being caught with anything the Brotherhood could misconstrue as a breach of the law. One of my most faithful customers came by yesterday and all she bought was a bag of milfoil. She didn’t even dare buying horned rampion because its other name is devil’s claw. She was worried the Brotherhood would hold it against her. It isn’t even prohibited by the law. That’s ridiculous. Milfoil! Do I look like an old herb woman?”

Darko gave a small shrug. “It’s the way things are.” He’d learned the hard way that there was no use in bitching and moaning about the state of things. It made things only less bearable than they were anyway. The best thing one could do was to duck one’s head and try not to get in the way of the Brotherhood – until the day came that the tides changed. Maybe if the Master came to his full powers after the ritual, he’d know how to weaken the Brotherhood.

“Not for long,” Mikael said fiercely.

“So you’ve found more witches for your little revolutionary group?”

Mikael rubbed his tired eyes. “Too few. My reach doesn’t go beyond the walls of this bar. I’m not really made for blending in.” Mikael was watching him as if he hoped Darko might volunteer for the job, but Darko had enough on his plate without the additional risk of being part of an anti-Brotherhood group. He agreed with their goals. If it wasn’t for his sister and the planning of the ritual, he would help Mikael without hesitation. “I’m not scared of doing business with you. Could you get me another barrel of bull blood?”

Mikael watched him for a bit longer, disappointment plain on his face. “Now? Why don’t you come to my booth during opening hours? This is my free time.”

“I’m busy. Come on. It’s not like you’re busy. I really need the blood.”

“Valentine is getting worse, isn’t he?”

Darko stared into the depth of his half-empty mug. Valentine and Mikael knew each other, but Darko wasn’t sure how much he was allowed to share. The Master was secretive. It was a necessity given the nature of their plan. Conjuring up a demon and binding it to someone wasn’t something even witches and wizards would approve of. “He’s doing well enough,” Darko said evasively.