Category: Short Story

This follows An Old Memory in the Met and An Old Memory in the Met, Part II

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Milos stood at the suite entrance. The 1600 on the door stared at him insultingly, daring him to knock.

Of course the witch knew. One moment, he was hating himself for lacking the courage to knock, and the next he standing on a coffee table, surrounded by the very people he had asked to meet and talk about this whole lark.

Everyone lightly clapped from the couches at his appearance. Liz announced with the flair of a ring leader, “On display, I have a study in Neurotic Vampirism, titled “Greek Sucker”. Artist unknown, date circa 600 B.C.”

“It has been revised to BCE, Before Common Era, Liz.” Al grinned, although his bushy beard hid most of it.

“Really? Modernity… What a ruse.” Liz scoffed. “Welcome to the party, Milos. Now can you get the fuck off the table?”

Milos remained in place. He couldn’t speak, he couldn’t move. The agoraphobia was so severe, he could nearly taste it. Like a metallic tang, a zing of sucking on a house key… and if he could sweat, there would be buckets of it streaming down his body. The pressure to count all the right angles in the room assailed him like hurricane force winds.

“Liz?” Shirin prompted. “You know he can’t.”

“Oh fine. Ruin all my fun,” Liz stood from the couch and put out a hand, her voice shifting from a pout to sarcasm. “Milos, you are cordially invited to GET THE FUCK OF THE TABLE… and enter my residence.”

Relief washed over Milos and as if had not been on the verge of imploding from the trauma, he lightly stepped to the carpeted floor with a grim smile. “That. was. mean.”

Liz rolled her eyes. “Yeah, yeah, yeah. I am a big meanie. It was only a simple translocation from the hallway. Payback, remember?”

Shirin stood from her position on the couch, and Milos finally realized he was seeing the real Ifrit, and not a host being worn like a new outfit. She grinned, “Come give me a hug, love.”

“It has been a long time since I have seen you be you, Shirin.” Milos smiled in return, his eye teeth glinting lightly behind his upper lip.

“Liz was gracious enough to provide a domain for me.”

Milos glanced around the room, looking for something obvious. Ifrit were plane-bound demons, so they required a focal point for their binding. They had many names in many cultural traditions, such as Ifrit, Imp, Oni, Dybbuk, or Jinn. And like the proverbial genie from the stories, the binding object, aka the Lamp, was a cruel punishment. Their kind were forbidden to touch their own binding object, their domain, and if they attempted to, they would be unbound entirely. So the Ifrit needed their domain to survive, but could not move it or change the location without intervention from someone else. Being unbound was a heavy cost for trying to move your own home… a human would call it death, but it was worse than death. There is no soul to move onwards from an Ifrit, as they are entirely composed of soul. Being unbound is releasing the energies that make them back to the cosmos, shattering them into a billions stray strings, a confetti of myriad energies never to recoalesce into their former selves. Human souls had that choice, out of many, at the Gates. Ifrit and other demons had no choice beyond either survival or oblivion.

“Must be a good one,” Milos said. “Hopefully it came without any fine print.”

Shirin shrugged, one of her fiery eyes winking admittedly. “Let’s me be myself and the cost was minor. Liz did me a favor.”

“Yay me,” Liz clapped once with impatience. “The Met.”

“The Met,” Milos agreed.

“It’s under the Accords,” Al grumbled. “Fucking Accords.”

“I know. I have that covered.” Milos said.

“Its neutral ground and it is consecrated, Milos,” Al continued unphased. “Honestly, I am shocked your feet don’t burn when you tread the halls.”

“I… assure you, I have it covered.” Milos said emphatically.

“Come on Milos. You have to give us something, or we are not going to be in on this, no matter what we stand to get out of it.” Shirin smiled kindly. “I don’t want to speak for Al, but we have to hear the details. Completely. Before we agree to any madness. Going against the Accords…”

“Since I had my realization, I have performed the… ah… due diligence before reaching out to each of you.” Milos said.

“When did you have ‘your’ realization?” Al asked, his hands mimicking air quotes on either side of his head. Notably, his overly long fingers were much more pronounced when producing said air quotes.

“Eighteen months ago… the day that I knew I was going to take what was mine. And it was eighteen months ago when I immediately realized I was going to need help. And until yesterday, I knew that was going to be the hardest part,” Milos waved at the room.

“Thanks. I had NO idea apologizing was that hard for you, Milos,” Liz sardonically raised one of her thinly shaped eyebrows. “Shocking, I tell you.”

“The Met was founded in 1870, but it was moved in 1880 to its current location,” Milos lead in, ignoring Liz. “Where it was erected, and most of the original structure has been covered, hidden, or replaced with expansions since. But the very original building was designed by two architects, one named Jacob Mould and another named Calvert Vaux.”

“So two privileged white blokes designed the building. Big deal.” Liz waved it away. “All the buildings in New York were designed by the same.”

“Calvert Vaux carried debts, and he happened to be the gentleman that designed orphanages, missions, and… Central Park.” Milos let the statement hang in the air for a moment.

Al was the first to make the connection. “He was the one that had been indebted to the Fair Folk, wasn’t hs? I remember that story… it is the reason Central Park even exists… the eldest daughter of Queen Méabh, what was her name?”

Liz lifted two fingers and blew a raspberry. “Fucking Cainnear Dearg. Sacrificed on a spear, but the cunt lived and I believe is living it up on Martha’s fucking Vineyard. How she managed to name it after her own fucking mother without anyone realizing… absolute bollix on that one.”

Milos continued, “This Vaux thought he was clever, wily enough to trick the ones that invented trickery itself. Vaux had a hand in the drafting of the Accords and ultimately paid the last of his owed debts through his drowning at Gravesend. But before that he gave them the green places, the hallowed places of power. Then he gave them children. Then he gave them the lost and the forgotten. And while he was drafting the Accords on their behalf…”

“He blocked them from human sacred spaces, all because of Hallowed Ground,” Al finished, eyes wide. “Wow.”

“Exactly. He takes that and he designs the Met to be be wholly Consecrated. And I am fairly certain that final stubborn act is the reason that he and his descendants paid as they did. The Fair Folk knew Vaux had tricked them. The Sidhe, indeed. Withdrawn from the world, not through their choice, but by men like Vaux. And that my friends, that is why the drowned him. Insults”

Liz rolled her eyes and scoffed loudly. “My god, you fucks. I am still human! Let’s avoid playing the monsters-were-the-humans-all-along card. Its trite and plainly reductive, if not outright offensive. This world has always been about survival of the fucking fittest, and it will always be about that. The great God above, the fucking petty tyrant, made it that way from the start. That is why folks like me are here. Folks like Shirin are here. Folks like Alkiwenzii are here. And if I must remind you, Nightwalker, that is why you are here. Red in tooth and claw.”

“Fine, I won’t pick at it, but the Met is not only consecrated ground due to the Accords, it is sacred ground because it was designed to be.” Milos frowned. “He put the protections in to create a building that could hoard the very thing that the Fair Folk desired. Right in plain sight. Right there.”

“Oh fuck. That’s why you need me, finally, you get to the point.” Liz laughed. “You want me to break the sigils.”

“Not break… flex them gently.”

“Come again?” Liz stopped dead.

“You break the sigils, and every single troublesome thing will descend on Fifth Avenue, and we will have bigger problems on our hands. Including the enforcers of the signatories on the Accords. The Met is tied up in the leylines like a Gordian Knot. It is connected. Deep and wide. Vaux really stuck it to his debtors.”

Al smirked maniacally. “Worth it. New York would turn into a battlefield and I would eat like a king.”

Shirin frowned, “And the Accords would have to be maintained. That means an Act. Millions, Al, that means millions of dead.”

“Alright, so I would eat better than a king.”

“Including you,” Shirin added. “You know that.”

Al lifted his lip and snorted. “Yeah, yeah.”

“Flexing the Sigils… I could inflect, no, subversion,” Liz whispered, talking to herself more than anyone in the room. “I could create a bind. And double the existing ones up? Could temporarily invert them…”

Shirin hugged herself, leaning back against the cushions deep in her own thoughts. Liz finally looked up and admitted, “I need to study this more.”

“I know. But you are the best.” Milos said.

“Don’t butter me up, I am in. This is… new.” Liz smiled so wide her cheeks nearly touched her ears. “Something fucking new! Alright. Milos. Fucking hell. Got me all revved up, you Greek cunt, this is better than sex.”

Al flexed his fingers, his fingernails looking more like talons than they usually did. “So we assume that Liz figures that out. Where does Shirin and I fit in?”

“The Met has multiple protections, Al. Liz would handle the Sigils, but we need to handle the more, ah, human protections. They have multiple layers of security systems, with a staff that monitors and manages the cameras, key fobs, and the sensors. Some of the team is onsite… and some is handled by a third party security company. Shirin obviously can handle the systems and body hop as needed. I bet she can shift through the staff in a matter of minutes without causing any harm. But-“

“But we need an accident to take out the connections to the outside,” Al finished.

“Exactly. Getting in is nearly trivial? But the outside connections are handled by, um, others.” Milos frowned.

Liz’s eyes brightened. “Oh. Oh! My god, this is like Christmas. The third party security company… it’s ran by the Family.”

Al did a doubletake between Liz and Milos. His eyes going wider by the millisecond. “No.”

Milos remained silent. He splayed his hands in demure admission.

Liz laughed raucously. “Ond o’s ffycin ots!? I mean I am already fucking with Sigils, why not go against your ffycin Family! As our chances of success plummet to near zero, we say fuck yeah and stick two fingers in the Vampire Family’s eyes.”

“Your brethren, Milos. If they find out its you, they will rebuke you. Milos. Ferals don’t survive long in this world, months at best,” Shirin said, uncertainty flooding her voice. “Are you sure?”

“And this is why we have Al,” Milos waved grandiosely. “What are Wendigos great at?”

“Eating.” Shirin and Liz replied in unison.

“Besides that.” Milos shook his head lightly.

Al leaned back, his brow furrowed in thought. “We are skinwalkers. And when we doppel, nothing can perceive the change. In our shifted state, my kind are absences to the senses, doubly so for folks that can see more or sense more. Since Vampires can observe more than most…”

“You can go among them and they would never know.” Shirin took the turn to finish. “I can hop, but the Vampires would see me. You can intervene and they wouldn’t understand… because they can’t. You would be invisible.”

“Among the blind, the one-eyed man is king,” Milos finished.

“Fucking brilliant,” Liz grinned. “This is a lot of ifs, Milos. If I find a way around the Sigils, if Shear can find everything she needs, if Al can walk amongst the Family and turn off the Met, and if… if… well, shit, what are you doing during all of this?”

Milos put his hands on his head and sighed with a smile on his face. “What else would I be doing? I will be robbing the ever living fuck out of the Met.”

This follows An Old Memory in the Met.

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Milos was having a panic attack. He knew why, but having the knowledge didn’t make the experience any better.

Every permutation of a “monster” has its own unique vulnerabilities. Most people know them… or tangentially, a kernel of the truth that may or may not be a mere component of the actual weakness. Take for example silver bullets and werewolves. Do silver bullets kill werewolves? Not any better or worse than lead-based bullets. Killing a living thing is trivial with most guns. Aim for the center of mass, pull the trigger, and usually, the thing that is shot will die. Werewolves are no different. The problem is in hitting the center of mass, which on most werewolves moving at speed, is immensely difficult. Make your bullets out of gold or uranium or tungsten, it doesn’t matter. With a werewolf moving at full clip, you could have a machine gun that laid out a continuous stream of hot molten death made from the condensed rage of the old gods and you would still lose.

Probably.

Some of have gotten lucky shots. Some of those lucky shots have been with silver bullets. And that is how a legend starts. Although a werewolf typically reverts back to the human form with the last gasps of life, and then you just have an unusual murder scene that involved a silver bullet. But still…

Vampires are no different.

Holy water? Only by drowning in it, as vampires need to breathe eventually, like whales surfacing in the ocean. Crosses? Maybe if the method of death is actually crucifixion, because, you guessed it, vampires still need to breathe. Besides… vampires predate Christianity, so any of those religion-based tropes in pop culture are absolute bullshit.

Garlic? That one applies, but for different reasons. Garlic and other Alliums, such as onions, shallots, leeks, and chives are all repellant to vampires because of the underlying sulfuric compounds that are responsible for the sharp flavors humans love to have in their cooking. Alliums for vampires is akin to rotting flesh for humans. One could say the smells are vile, repugnant, and just plain… gross.

A real vulnerability for vampires, and the cause Milos’s panic attack was the need for an invitation. It is absolutely true that invitations are required for a vampire to enter a building, but again, for different reasons than one might expect.

All vampires suffer from a very specific set of obsessive-compulsive behaviors. The very condition that infiltrates their bodies giving them speed, strength, immortality, and the physiological need to consume blood, also changes their body chemistry in strange ways. Through the viral propagation in their blood, the virus heavily affects their brain structures over time. It causes specific and repeatable symptoms in every vampire, and the primary one is OCD-driven arithmetic. Obsessive counting in the form of arithmomania, a compulsion forcing a vampire having to count, well… everything and anything. Most vampires develop coping mechanisms for this, including using advanced math and forecasting skills to bypass the worst of the mania.

Surprise! Some of the world’s best math nerds are actually vampires.

The problem is that the arithmomania can be triggered by the secondary symptom all vampires suffer, Agoraphobia. If a vampire tries to enter a space, and they do not have a host to invite them in to make them feel safe, the arithmomania is triggered, and then they are on their knees counting every thread in the carpet until the sun comes up and they die. Old vampires are old because they learned early on that the social anxiety is worse than death.

Now you probably understand why coffins are a common place for vampires to take refuge. It is the ultimate safe space, as other people can’t usually fit.

Milos did not have a coffin. He had a New York loft, which was close enough to a coffin to be comfortable. Four hundred square feet of luxurious self appointed isolated comfort that he was currently pacing frenetically, wall, floor, other wall, ceiling, back to the first wall, on towards the floor once again. As he paced the three dimensions of his space, he pulled out his phone, stared at it for a half a second, huffing as he returned it to his pocket. He performed the ritual seven times.  Pull, stare, huff, pocket. Pull, stare, huff, pocket.

Finally, he stopped pacing, dead still on the ceiling, as immobile as a statue in a graveyard, and called the only person that he could think of that would be willing to help rob the Met.

“Hello?” A very husky sounding man answered the call.

Milos held his breath. Which he could do for days. And that was probably not conducive to having a telephone conversation.

“Hey Shirin.”

“Ah, Milos. My favorite neckbiter.” A smile on the other end.

“Who are you in right now?” Milos asked.

“Some overweight beast of a truck driver. Sounds like he smoked a carton a day, huh?”

“You can pick them, Shirin.”

“This one is NOT my fault. He happened to be in… uh, the area.”

“What happened to your last host? You trip them down a ravine?” Milos teased.

“You try to do what I do, bloodsucker, and let me know how it goes.”

“I rather just be me.”

“A neurotic, insecure, and lonely immortal?” Shirin laughed. In the husky voice, it sounded like an engine revving. “I rather do it my way, thank you very much. Now. You called me, Milos.”

“I did. I mean, I am. Yes. I need your help.” Milos rushed. “I want to setup a robbery.”

“You are a goddamn vampire, Milos. Just rip the windows off and take what you want.”

“I wish it were that easy. Unfortunately, someone is always in there.”

“Ah, the invitation. Clever little monster you are. You still living in the same place?”

“Yes. Please find someone attractive before you come over. I prefer blondes.”

“Milos, dear, I prefer anything that is not a walking hamsteak. See you in a few hours?”

“Please.”

Shirin did not hang up. Neither did Milos. This is why he called her first.

“Who else are you going to call, love? I can hear it in your voice,” The truck driver’s voice softened to nearly a female undertone, as if Shirin’s real voice was peeking through. “You are worked up. I can practically smell the anxiety from here.”

“Al. Maybe Liz.”

“Al makes sense. I think Liz may still want to kill you, so maybe you shouldn’t call her. How do you even have her number?”

“Al, I think. Is she still angry with me? It was over a hundred years ago! I thought she would be over it.”

“Roll the dice, I suppose. Some folks can carry grudges better than others. See you soon.” Shirin hung up.

Milos reviewed his contact list. He grumbled under his breath, “There is no way around it. I need a fourth.”

He located the number for Elizabeth. His finger hovered over the call button, and he quickly swiped to the right and selected text instead.

Milos texted, ‘136y4m12d?’ Hit send, and sighed again.

His phone dinged nearly immediately. ‘milos you cunt’

‘still mad?’ Milos texted back.

‘no, 136y4mTHIRTEEN days. 28y of that in a pit and that makes you the cunt’

‘need help, open to it?’

‘unless you are in wales, i cant (cunt)’

‘in new york (not a cunt)’ Miles replied.

‘curious. what help? (yes you are a cunt)’

‘rob the met (a bit of a cunt)’

There was no immediate response. No little three dots showing typing on the other end. The message itself had been read, and it sat there taunting him like he admitted guilt to already committing the act. Milos stood there (hanging from the ceiling) for an hour, and the indicators on the thread did not update. He fretted. He ruminated. He spiraled.

Milos thought through the events in London nearly a hundred and fifty years ago. There was that doctor that fancied himself a monster hunter, and that strange fellow with the limp… what his name? Jenkins? Janken? Something Finnish or Swedish… and that sanctimonious double faced priest that liked to cut up prostitutes. His name was easy to remember because the papers had labeled him Jack the Ripper. His real name was William, and the entire lark was an easy bit of karmic retribution for Milos. Serial killers tasted the same as anyone else, so not like there was an extra benefit, but occasionally the strongest in the herd needed to be culled as much as the weakest.

And after all that convoluted mess, Elizabeth had been locked up in the darkest parts of Newgate prison. Her captors knew what they caught, but the law didn’t, so she was released. Eventually. No worse for wear beyond the few dimly lit decades in the pit. England had stopped burning witches a long time prior, thank goodness.

To be fair, it had been a good plan with a bad outcome. Liz had been caught, daylight was coming, and Milos had to get to ground. The only choice was to run. There shouldn’t be much ill will. If any. Milos was basically innocent in the entire debacle. I mean, she was the one to get caught… she had a hundred ways to avoid it, and she had failed. It was on her.

Wasn’t it?

Milos wrote a hundred variations of the same text apologizing more grandly and deleted each one in frustration. He sighed heavily and called Al instead. Al answered on the second ring.

“Hello?” A grizzled and weary voice on the other end.

“How much for a silver bullet?” Milos asked in a silly voice.

“Shoot one at me and I will let you know after I cash it in,” the voice lightened considerably. “Hey Milos.”

“Where are you hiding these days, old man?”

“Still in Chelsea. Still working at the 24th Art Collective.”

“Do they let shapeshifters into art collectives?”

“Do they let vampires into blood banks?” Al shot back with a snort.

“Getting into one is easy. Getting out is little more problematic,” Milos laughed.

“I haven’t had the hunger for a while. They think I am a recovering addict.”

“Well, that makes sense. You are.”

“Like you are addicted to blood or a human is addicted to food. Its not addiction, its survival.”

“Well thankfully blood is easy to come by these days. I wish I had the internet two hundred years ago.”

“And I wish I had decent wifi, we all have our things. What brings your fine voice to my old ears?”

“I am putting together a… well… I found Areti again.”

“Areti?!”

Milos had a flashback to seeing her art on the wall, the shocking realization that his memory of the sun wasn’t his own, but the memory of her. Areti had been his sun. The light. The sparkling caught in the cresting wave. “I was shocked to discover today that they have her works hanging in the Met.”

“No shit. Wow. Small world, huh?”

“And I am going to steal them.”

“Ah,” Al sniffed like he was a dog, a staccato rhythm. “You want some help, I take it?”

“Yes.”

“I still owe you, so… whatever you need, Milos.”

“Text you the details later? Shirin and I need to talk it through.”

“Shirin? Wow. Getting the gang back together, huh? You didn’t call Liz, did you? She wants to kill you.”

“Thankfully her rage did not come through the texts,” Milos replied haughtily.

“You didn’t…” Al’s voice trailed off.

Milos felt the prior realization flood his voice. “I know this will take a fourth. I need an in with Shirin, I need a watcher like you… and I need a cleaner. Just because we are what we are doesn’t mean we can just do whatever we want. We have to follow the fucking rules, Al.”

“I know, I know. Last thing you want is someone like Samson on your shit, because some fucking treaty was violated.” Al whistled through his teeth. “I heard she took down an Angel out in Los Angeles last year. Someone like that would make us look like chumps.”

“See? You get it. Liz has talents to avoid people like Samson, just like we avoided Helsing when the unfortunate thing with Liz happened.”

“Liz. My god, Milos. You can find someone else! What about Florence? She is still kicking around the eastern seaboard.”

“Florence is half the witch that Liz is, and you know it, Al. Liz outclasses even Samson. If we do what I have in mind, we need her.”

“You can’t be going after just the paintings from your dear Areti, then…” the sound of realization in Al’s voice told Milos all he needed to hear.

“An artist collective? Really?” Milos laughed heartily as he shifted the subject.

“Yeah, I know. Where else could someone like me hang out with no one noticing, huh? Alright, text me the details. Talk soon?”

“Thanks, Al.”

The line dropped and Milos again was staring at his last text to Liz. It stared at him, like a promise of something he didn’t understand. He wanted to type out ‘sorry, i mean it’ and hit send, but he just couldn’t do it.

It hadn’t been his fault, and it still wasn’t. But he needed Liz. So, that meant it could be his fault? He could admit that the plan had gone sideways. It had been his plan, after all.

He had an Ifrit. He had a Wendigo. He needed a Witch. Liz was the best choice. Milos knew the Collections at the Met like the back of his hand, and he knew something unprecedented had happened, as if the universe had aligned just for this… they each had something of immense personal value in that museum.

Milos needed Areti’s paintings. Remembering her hair, her smile, her skin, he felt a crush in his chest. A desperate longing from lifetimes ago.

Shirin desired her vase, an enchanted gift from King Solomon. Not the first of her domains, but one of her favorites. And so many of her domains had already been lost throughout history.

Then there was Al, who wanted the haircomb from his first nation, the silver inlaid whale bone was said to carry the touch of the Old Ones.

And finally, Liz, who coveted the necklace of her sister, Lady Eleanor, the one and only true love of Llywelyn ap Gruffudd, the Last Leader of Wales.

“Fuck.” Milos sighed as he typed out what needed to be said with a heavy frown.

‘yes. i am a cunt. i fucked up & i apologize.’

He mashed the little Send button denoted with the little paper airplane as if it was an affront to God himself.

His phone dinged.

Liz had responded. ‘Apology accepted.’

His doorbell rang. Milos opened the door to find Liz, her eyes bright and her bare skin smoking as if she had freshly stepped from a steam room. She walked past Milos, taking in his apartment in a slow spin to face him again. Her aura was nearly visible from the magic resonating around her incredibly lithe, muscular form.

Milos still had his hand on the door knob, his jaw agape. “Wales!?”

Liz smirked and ignored his surprise. “A part of me had come to peace knowing that you would never apologize. Hmph. And a part of me couldn’t come to peace with it.”

“Liz?” Milos tried.

“Milos?” She shrugged as if it was obvious. “This must be good. The Met? Spill.”

“Oh good. You knew I had arrived!” Shirin stepped into the apartment in the body of young red-headed woman dressed in tight faux leather and a tacky fur coat. Her eyes locked on the steaming witch standing stark naked in the middle of the apartment. “Liz?”

“Shirin? Still body hopping? Come give me a hug, you Persian twat.”

“Its the way of the world. Uh, speaking of, do you need clothes, Liz?” Shirin asked, leaning into the hug with both arms.

“Whatever for?” Liz smiled. “Milos, you idiot, shut the door.”

Milos finally was able to regain the function of his jaw and pulled his mouth shut, closing the door in kind.

Shirin looked around. “Spartan living, Milos. And you still pace the whole room, hmmmm? Your landlord will probably not appreciate those footprints on the ceiling.”

Milos looked up. There were no footprints on the ceiling.

“Foolish Greeks. You know, people think that the Athenians were so smart and rational, but thankfully we have Milos here to prove it otherwise,” Shirin said sidelong to Liz.

“Shirin, good to see you.” Milos nodded finally. He squinted a bit and focused, and his Sight peeled off the layers of glamour and magic that swirled around the young woman. As if a curtain was pulled back, a mottled red and orange woman took shape, her skin speckled like a jaguar’s, large lower incisors curving upwards from the corners of her mouth. Her eyes were glowing red, laced with fire.

“When you stare at me like that, I can see why your kind scares the sheep,” Shirin grinned.

“I like to see you. The real you.” Milos frowned.

“Don’t sound offended, dear. I love that about you.”

Liz raised her arms above her head and stretched. When she lowered them, she was wearing a simple draped gown of blue. Milos was only slightly disappointed not to be able to admire her exceptionally toned form. It was like art itself. Honestly, if Liz was a statue standing in the Met, anyone, nay everyone, would stare for hours. “Milos, my little cunt of an abandoning fuck, now can you explain why are we here?”

“I thought you accepted my apology.” Milos’s eyebrow went up, nearly reaching his curly hair at his brow.

“He apologized?” Shirin said, amazed.

“He did. And it was accepted. But I am fully entitled to give him absolute mountains of shit for hundred or so years, I think. It is only fair. Newgate was not exactly easy for me.”

Milos blinked slowly. He probably was a cunt in hindsight. He got to the point. “I want to do the Ocean’s Eleven thing.”

“You want to rob a casino with overly complicated theatrics to exact revenge on your past lover’s partner? All the while, rekindling your love with said past lover?” Shirin was a movie buff, as most Ifrit were, of course. “Odd.”

Milos shook his head with a slow smile creeping across his face. “Well yes. Except instead of a casino, its the Met. And in a way I am reconnecting with an old lover. To borrow your word, it is… Odd. But its also true.”

“The Met?” Shirin’s face fell. “They have one of my domains. One of the first.”

“I know.” Milos grinned.

“And my sister’s ffycin necklace.” The Welsh version of the f word sounded even more emphatic.

“I also know.” Milos’s grin spread further, his eye teeth glinting in the light.

Liz giggled. “And Al’s tacky comb.”

“It carries the touch of the Old Ones, Liz. Wendigos can use that to stop the hunger.” Shirin admonished. “He needs it.”

“Yeah, yeah, and then he turns into a real boy.” Liz rolled her eyes and waved at Shirin’s hand. “Ah, your fingers are blue, Shear.”

Shirin appraised her host’s blue fingertips, tapping them against her thumbs on either hand. “I got at least until sunrise before it gets dangerous. This one will be fine. First thing to go is the blood flow, and this girl seems to have a touch of Raynaud’s. She probably turns all sorts of colors in the winter.”

Liz sighed. “So where am I sleeping?”

“The Ritz?” Milos offered.

“No, I think here.”

“Absolutely not,” Milos sniffed. “You know how I am.”

“Yes.” Liz replied deadpan. “I do.”

Shirin snickered behind her hand.

“Don’t encourage her!” Milos exclaimed. “You know too!”

“You sleep in that loft thing? I will take the couch. Maybe portal in some good food since you eat, what? Delivery drivers? Stray cats? Lost children?” Liz said.

Milos frowned heavily as he started iterating through primes. “No, I have the Family.”

Liz winked and waved her hands in a series of odd flourishes, and a phone appeared in her right palm. A few swipes later, she nodded. “Alright I have a standing suite at the Plaza. We can meet there tomorrow night. Suite 1600. Say, 8pm?”

“Sure.” Milos sighed inwardly with relief. He thought she had been serious.

“Come along, Shear. Let’s get you a nice hot New York boy that I can play with. Remember to text Al, Milos.” Liz opened the door and winked again. Under her breath she said, “Got you good, cunt.”

“Yeah, you did.” Milos admitted.

“At least twenty eight years of this. Don’t worry, I won’t be gentle.” Liz laughed as she walked down the hallway.

Shirin shrugged and slugged Milos in the shoulder as she followed the witch. “See you tomorrow, love.”

Milos slowly shut the door, grabbed a thermos from the fridge, sipping at its contents slowly as he looked out over the city from his wall of windows.

One step closer to Areti. Memory was fickle, as Milos well understood. Now, he was one step closer to a memory he never realized was nearly lost to time. A painting, a memory itself, replacing a memory that he never had.

The sun. He couldn’t remember the sun. Areti knew that and she had loved him enough to paint the things he would never see again.

That was love.

Milos considered the possibilities.

It could be a fake. It could be a reproduction. It could be an imitation by another artist. Hell, it could be the outcome of a shared spark of inspiration that lead to a similar painting. Or, the scariest possibility was that he was misremembering. That could happen. He knew his memory was not infallible, and with an exceptionally long life behind him, memories were not only malleable, they could be suspect.

But he discarded all of the thoughts tumbling about in his confusion. He knew with certainty that the painting was hers. It was like seeing the curve of her body in the dark and knowing that it was her that laid beside him. His mind was flooded with the sensations of her memory, her smell reminiscent of lavender and cloves, the way her smile crooked up more on the left than the right, but somehow that made her all the more beautiful… the way her hair cascaded in the thick black curls when she bent over to kiss him. But above all those things, she knew.

Areti knew what he was from the start. And had loved him regardless.

How does one reconcile such a thing? He had begged her to join him time and time again, but she had refused each time. Instead, she painted. Areti always painted, from the moment she awoke in the early afternoon until she would fall asleep in his arms in the early morning. She worked with a madness that few could have understood. She would laugh at his disappointment in her refusal, and point to her latest canvas… ‘See this? It is temporary. I am the art, my love. I too am only temporary. If I am not, my art will not matter. And I know that I do. I matter.’

Milos would always agree, because she mattered greatly to him. Every time he would consider for a moment to disregard her feelings and bring her along against her will, but his love for her was greater than his fear to be without her. He watched her, smiled his smile, the one he only used for her, and she would laugh.

Oh gods, her laugh. Bright as the summer sky, brilliant as a sun flecked ocean wave. Milos grinned, again noting how well he remembered the sun. That would never go away. He watched her, year after year, grow old and somehow all the more beautiful. When she died, he had grieved furiously, but he was thankful for the many decades they had together. He had been lost for a long time after her death, but he came back to himself eventually-

“Sir?” A voice pulled at his reverie.

“Ah, yes?” Milos blinked and turned his head to find an elderly museum volunteer smiling graciously. Her name tag declared that her name was Martha and that she loved Van Gogh. “My apologies… Hello Martha.”

“It is closing time, dearie. You must have missed the overhead announcement.” She waved at the painting. “It is beautiful though, isn’t it? The legends about her work aside, she had a natural talent for capturing light, didn’t she?”

“Indeed. Those waves are nearly real, the energy of them as if they are about to crash on the shore.”

Martha nodded as if she understood and moved on to the next patron, directing the visitors towards the museum’s exit through the gift shop.

The painting hung on the museum wall had unraveled him. How long had he stood there, just blankly staring at her work, connecting them again across the centuries? How long had it taken him to realize that his memories of the sun, the waves, the summer sky were not his own, but his memory of her paintings? The grief he felt on the day she died manifested out of nothing, wrenching his heart in its grasp, the long span of time giving no comfort or lessening the passion of it.

Tears tracked down his face as he walked to the exit. The first tears he had cried since the late fifties… when Gertrude and Max had decided to take the flame. Their kind was going extinct, and not for any of the reasons that made sense. Maybe they were dying out because the world no longer needed them, their kind, the proverbial monsters in the dark.

Gertrude had said that humanity was beautiful and terrible and horrific. All the things they themselves had been labeled since time had begun. The world did not need monsters in the dark when the prey were nearly monsters themselves. The distance had shortened between them, and that was terrifying for the ones whom still remembered their own humanity. It was an unraveling of self, a threat of self-reflection that was too much to bear. Humanity had always been animals, red in tooth and claw, surviving and striving against whatever they perceived as a threat. Identifying the prey was not a simple calculation any longer.

Maybe it was the A-bomb. Maybe it was the war after war after war and all the atrocities that man wrought had on their perceived enemies. Maybe it was witnessing the modern world spring up so fast, contrary to all of human history where progress was slow and methodical and… adaptable. Gertrude and Max probably would have laughed watching Milos continuously learn to adapt to the latter decades of the twentieth century, and the advent of computers, cameras, the internet, and all the things that accelerated humanity ever faster into the twenty first century.

Maybe Gertrude and Max had seen it coming. They saw the ‘Modern World’ and had refused it outright. Better to choose oblivion than what was coming. Perhaps they were right. Perhaps not. Seeing Areti’s work on the wall had shifted something in Milos. A change that was building within him, energy coalescing and amplifying itself with ferocity.

Milos came to the decision before he knew he had even made one. As he walked out of the museum’s expansive exit, via the similarly expansive gift shop, and turned down the Fifth avenue, he found himself saying it aloud, giving the thought tangibility and making it real.

“I am going to rob the Met.”

Milos smiled his special smile, the wide one he saved for rare moments, and his overly long eye teeth glimmered in the bright lights of Fifth Avenue. He had taken five full steps before he realized that he was going to need help, and the thought shifted the hunter’s confident countenance to one of furrowed contemplation.

“Shit,” he muttered. “I am going to need help.”

The first time is always a lie.  I was warned by my mentor.  He knew better than to lie to me.

The Dark is not malleable and the Light is not always present.  The ever-glow fades along the splines of the fractal diffusions of beams and the absences alike.  Among the beams, structured like pillars of a god’s imagination, the Light does not shift like the Dark does.  One is trained to remember that darkness is only an absence of light, but that too, is a lie.

It breathes.  It has form, it has function.  It insinuates itself into everything; it slithers.  The Dark has speed.  The Dark has mass.  The Dark exerts its force on all the objects of creation, saying no, you may not exist here, you may not be so close to us.  Your proximity is not possible.

For in all our great competition, the Light binds us.  It pulls us together across those vast distances.  Light is the source of life, of dreams, of all the things that ever have been and ever will be. It is the source of your imagination on your distant planet, as it is for me, undergoing the Trial of the Illumin.

So the first time one tries to manipulate beyond the ever-present glow, the wellspring of Light, the first time one pulls on its threads to form something new, we expect this magical experience to be brought into being.  One moment nothing, the next, your purpose, glorious and unbound. But as a result, you discover what the Dark is.  The Light shutters and splits, your fingers and mind’s eye pulling them apart, watching the fractals twist away from your grasp, like water splashing around the fount of a dam’s release, furious and rushing.  And behind it, the Dark comes.  It slides in behind the power of the Light being wrested through the power of your action, and it fills the gaps.

The absence of Light allows the Other to come.  Every protégé that attempts the forming meets some semblance of the Other.  Some are terrified by the brush of its presence, others are humbled, and others still go mad by the touch and collapse into themselves like dying stars.

I expected the Other to witness my power and allow my forming, but my mentor could not prepare me.  How could he?  Every experience is at once shared among the many of us that succeed, but at the same time, unique for each of us.  You may go mad, but will lose your eyesight? You may be terrified, but will you suffer from sleep terrors for the rest of your life? You may be humbled, but does that mean that your forming is less potent?  I discarded these thoughts and assured myself that I would be different. Because I was better, smarter, more determined than the other acolytes.  

Another lie.

I had finally perfected my presence and control.  So I felt justified in my confidence. Did I consider that I may just be arrogant? Full of bluster that was wholly unwarranted? I did, but only for a moment. I worked hard for this.

I stood upon the central dais, bathed in the light of the morning sun flowing through the east windows. I nodded once at my mentor and his mentor before him and followed the protocols to in acknowledging the committee of Elders and my lackluster peers in turn.  I steadied myself with a deep breath and began to form.  I infused my will into the space before me, bearing the power to exist between my palms, feeling the light suffuse and shift between the creases of my skin.  The light became alive as it was gathered, and I culminated to the forming, where I could impart my will within it, creating nearly anything that I could imagine.  As an Illumin, I knew that I could craft nearly anything at this moment.  It was what came next that all had gathered to witness in the Gathering Ampitheatre.  Each person within would ask themselves, will this Acolyte shatter under the stress of mastering the Art?  Or would something unexpected happen? Something rare?

I took my breath in deeply, steeling myself for what came next.  I knew the lesson.  So many acolytes were told that the Light merely parted and behind it was the veil of the universe, nothing more.  Again, that was a lie.  My master knew what came after.  The pain.  With the pull of the Light, the parting of the curtain, one could observe all of creation and be brought to your lowest form, a basic speck of nothingness against the overwhelming crush of everything.  The masters stood by to save you.  That was their real purpose in being a witness, to pluck the speck from the crush and allow them another day, another try in the future.  

They did not want an Illumin to die.  This was not the old ages, the time before where Illumin were warriors among many tribes, and those that came and tested the Dark were allowed to die if they were not strong enough.  Nor was it a time of war, where so many were lost in the tribulation against the Shallow. Every Illumin mattered, no matter their skill or ability.

I could feel their eyes on me.  

They would be asking themselves, ‘What would happen to Arin?  Arin, who had struggled so much at the beginning, fighting for progress every step of the way, learning every skill with dedication and hard work, but never finding anything easy, and yet still an insufferable ass? Will he succeed when he had struggled so?’

I was not a savant at the craft, and every win was dearly fought for.  But in this, I had excelled.  My peers would stumble or come short, but I would meet each new obstacle as I had met the first, and the challenge would be what it was the first time.  I would scale it, cross it, and then dismiss it behind me.  My mentor had realized early on that I was both the least talented and the hardest working, and that meant I was also the steadiest.  I knew I was and I reminded myself of it again.  This was it.  The moment the Light would part in my greatest act of Forming, and the Other would reveal itself to me. I was the greatest Illumin that had ever been, not because of any latent talent, but because I had tirelessly worked for it.

But I knew who I was.  At least I thought I did.  

I was wrong.

The power was suffused fully within my palms, and I could feel the criticality pulsate in my pores, the reverberation of the light ready to be worked.  I pushed my will between the waves of light, and pulled them apart as if I was pulling curtains asunder, ripping them aside in a foolish rush to witness what was beyond.

The light… one moment… light, the next…

“…Arin.”

The voice was my own.  I could hear it in my own ears. I panicked thinking I had said my own name, and I clamped my mouth shut so that I would not follow a path to madness.

“I am Arin,” the voice repeated.

Again it was my own, but my teeth were sunk into my lips, so I knew I had said nothing.  I wanted to let my eyes dart towards my mentor, but I knew that they would not see me.  I was in the dark.

By the Creator, I was in the Dark!

“…am Arin.”

“I am Arin,” I replied, loosing my lips, feeling the blood rush back to where I had clamped down.

“As am I,” the voice replied.  Still my own, there was no mistaking it for someone else’s.  I knew my own voice as I knew my own face.

“How can you be me?” I tested.

“How can you ask irrelevant questions?” It immediately shot back. There was no malice, no ill intent.  It was a patient voice, one filled with the aspects of waiting to see where this interaction led. The timbre and intonation was my own, as if it was my voice.

I wished I had some perspective.  Where was I?  How long had I been gone?  Had I already failed the Trial?

“What are you?” I tried instead.

“I am you.  I am the you that has been, could have been, that may have occurred, that could possibly still come to be.  What are you?”

“I am an Acolyte, striving to be a Master. I am adept at the presence of…” I answered.

“That is what you do, what you have done.  It is not who you are.”

“I am who I am, but I know that is not an answer in itself.  I know that I am all these things, and they help define who I am, but I am not only a sum of them,” I answered thoughtfully. “I am… I pretend to be who I hope to be someday.”

“That is who you are, indeed.  And now, you wonder what I am.  I will answer one question, as I do not suffer fools.”

“You are the Other.”

“That is not a question. And I would say you are the Other.”

“What is the Other then?” I added.

“I am you.  I am the possibilities of your existence, summed, averaged, and divided across all the potential that could ever be. All across the scale of possible fates and circumstances, a reflection comes to be, a presence that carries thought.  You call it life, and in its potential, fate itself becomes a dark mirror.”

“You are not an absence,” I followed.

“I am the counterpoint that allows you to exist. As you are to me. Without the balance, who would you be?”

“I do not know how to answer,” I tried. I felt like I had given a different answer though, as if something unspoken had occurred, and I wasn’t sure what it was.

The light was immediately back, as if it had never left. But I was not in the hall.  My mentor and the committee did not stand nearby within the Light of the Ampitheatre.  I was on the edge of a great field, the twilight was gentle in its soft glow, alighting off of cloud and mountain, reflected in waters of a lake at my feet.  

I had never seen this place.

“We are at an inflection,” the voice said quietly. “The balance.”

I spun in place, but there was no one behind me or beside me.

“You will understand.  For every Illumin, there is an Absentia.  One creates by destroying, the other destroys by creating, and in this, we are partners. Look down.”

I looked at my feet and saw myself looking back.  But it was not me.  As one looks at a twin, or a reflection in distorted glass, sameness coupled with difference, an abstraction of recognition that failed to take root.  It was the Other.  I raised my hand and pulled the light to the fore, feeling my will come into focus, and a flower came to being within my grasp.

In the reflection, my darker form raised his hand, and where I had light, he had dark, and in it, a flower took shape, and in doing so, my flower faded until it was nothing but a memory.

“Remember this.  For there will be a time when you will be tested and the bridge you stand on now will be needed.”

“How do I find this bridge?”

“Remember who you are,” the voice replied. “The one whom you pretend to be.”

“This is a lie.”

“You know it is not.”

I cringed inwardly as I realized I could feel the Other’s mind, as if it was my own. “I understand now why some go mad. The duplicity of this, but shared. Open to each other so… intimately.”

The Other sighed. “The ones that go mad merely brush the balance of minds. Imagine, coming so close to connect, feeling the promise of it, and then falling away, never to touch the skein between our realities. This is what drives them mad. Not the connection itself. You and I are the first pair to make this contact such as this for nearly a thousand years. You may not know of it, but the last time an Illumin and Absentia connected like this, our worlds were perilously close to collapse.”

My mind raced. I was one of the most well trained, one of the most studied, yet I felt as if I knew little of what the Other spoke of. But I did remember the tale of the Tribulation, an entire generation of Illumin lost, the burning of the Archiva, the terrible force that consumed our kind. It had a name. The Shallow.

The Illumin had barely survived, only the very oldest and the very youngest persevered.

“The Shallow is coming back,” I said.

“Yes,” Arin-that-was-not-Arin nodded emphatically. “It is on its way.”

“It was defeated. Was it not? Strewn to the cosmos?”

“As our bodies hunger over time and weariness calls us to sleep, our realities pull on the Shallow. Our existence compels it to exist. My mentor believes it is a correction that has come about countless times to control self-aware intelligence.”

“How do you know all this? And I do not? Yet I feel you in my mind, as if we are the same skin…” I ran a hand over my forearm and I could the Other’s touch, and yet, I could feel my own touch in the duplicative sense of self within. “Shouldn’t we know the same things?”

“I think we are of the same spirit, side by side, but shaped by different circumstances and realities. We are the same, but we are not? Does that make any sense? I am the Arin that could have been as you are the Arin that could have been, a mirror between us. An equation that is balanced. Perhaps there are other realities, but we are are the only ones, or only the ones that matter. Like twin siblings can come from the same parents, and yet they are not the same.”

“The Shallow burned my world, a curse, a pestilence that can not be forgotten. What proof do I have that it is returning?” I asked. “What can I do or say that will allow my mentor, my teachers, my leaders to know?  What can be done to prepare?”

“Nothing,” the Other shrugged. “Our worlds will burn again.”

My heart dropped into my stomach, I could feel weariness eating at the back of eyes, the thin ribbon of hope fleetingly leaving my fingertips. “Then it is futile.”

“No Arin. We are proof it is not. We are bridging a gap, and this reality here, were we both exist at once… this reality is proof that it is not futile.  For our kinds to survive…”

“We have to bring them all into the folds. Where the Illumin and Absentia are something else,” I replied.

“How?” The Other asked me.

I shrugged with a soft chuckle. “Magic?”

He returned the smile that I was already offering, and he turned away. The whole of the plain, the stars, everything surrounding me, was pulled into a single point stretching into an infinite tunnel.

I sunk to the floor of the dias, all of my senses flooded by the normality of the school around me, the masters whispering furiously nearby, my peers gloating at my apparent failure. They surely thought I had been overwhelmed by the Other. How long had it been? A second? A hundred? A turn of a quarter-glass? I had no idea, and I was furious.

Lies. The history of my world was a lie. Why would the masters forget the Tribulation? Why would they abandon the duality of connecting with the Other? The truth to be discovered within it?

I did not know how to explain it, but I felt the connection still to my Other self, stretching through the layers of reality, an entanglement between two opposites that made us both more than we were before. With it, I felt his voice in my head.

‘Show them,’ the Other whispered deep within.

I stood shakily, and pulled on the Light again, my palms reverberating with the power, the undulating waves of shifting energy shattering and reforming, and I felt the difference. It was effortless… everything that had come before was a mere fraction of how it felt now. I felt a sun within me, and it was because the Other was with me.

The synergies of harmony. I realized this was power. Unbridled, unfettered, and unseen power.

I lowered my palms realizing I no longer needed the focus. I no longer needed the tricks, the ceremony, the blind movement of a long scripted theater act.  The gallery fell silent on the master’s side, and the other students started to whisper, than chortle, then outright laugh. Glee was being had at the apparent failure of one of their own.

I wanted to shout, ‘why do we tear each other down? The Shallow returns. Our world will burn!’

Instead of shouting, instead of defending myself, I knew the power had to speak for me. I closed my eyes and formed a small flower in front of me. It was not the forming that I had learned, it was the forming that was expected. No different than standing at the edge of the lake with my Other, feeling the forming blossom through me.

The hall fell silent as what they expected happened. There was probably some confusion on how I was forming with my hands at my sides. Parlor tricks and theater… no longer needed.

I imagined that single flower turning into a circle of flowers floating around me.

The hall started to murmur.

I imagined that circle of flowers duplicating rapidly into a sphere, completely surrounding me.

There were shouts of fear and surprise, the murmurs were shifting towards muffled arguments.

I imagined the sphere of flowers, each flower coalescing into a small sun, each with the fury of flares and magnetic maelstroms.

The hall fell to silence again. That alone was unprecedented. They were used to the aforementioned parlor tricks and slight of hand. A single flower was impressive, a true display of talent. A ring of flowers was strange. A sphere, not just strange, but wildly different. The shift from flowers to miniature suns transforming in real time, that was an event nearly immeasurable, perhaps lost to history if anything like it had been formed before.

I imagined a representation of myself, formed of the suns, each expanding and coalescing into an image of who I thought I was, and imagined that version of myself putting their hand out in a mimicry of the forming, and produce their own flower. I felt my Other laugh deep within, then whispering, “Ah, the one who you pretended to be. Clever.”

I let the light fade and opened my eyes.

Every set of eyes was locked on me. Every mouth was agape. Some masters looked happy. Others appeared to be inexplicably angry. Most seemed curious. Across my peers, it was nothing but absolute shock. This was a display of forming that they had never been exposed to, taught about, or imagined. They had witnessed true magic.

The first clap was tenuous at best, but it ramped quickly to thunderous applause. I had their attention at least.

The Shallow was coming. What could I say? What could I do? The world is going to end?

By the Gods, the world is going to end. I had to lead this moment with brave words. A compelling call to action!

Instead, I fainted.