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The alley where I found my her was ripe with dirty people lined along the brick walls and sleeping under wet cardboard, on mattresses of trash, with rats and feral cats and dogs for pets.

Covered with the filth of life and the cruelty of people, I saw my Liandra in their midst, and in the rank wetness and soft patter of rain, I held her as the blood tears dripped. Everything in me wanted to scream my rage at the Council that banished her, but I did one better, and issued a challenge to the vampire king.

I took Liandra back to the catacombs, cleaned her, dressed her in a fine gown, and styled her hair; I would carry her in to my audience with King Edron, and have my day of reckoning.

He made me beg for her life, and granted it, but in a cruel mockery of my anguish, sent her away from me.

I didn’t know how she actually died, but the banished weaken in power, and they’re forbidden to feed.

She thought I would rescue her, but as her powers faded and they held me confined I could no longer track her scent to follow.

He was the King; he would know those things.

****************

The throne room was full.

I heard the others gasp as I carried Liandra’s corpse to our sovereign, and saw the quiet rage move the muscles in his face, like a shark skimming the surface of an ocean stirred to storm.

The paleness of her lifeless skin was a stark contrast to the persimmon light of sunset splashing the colors on the floor in jigsaw shapes, a kaleidoscope with veins of marble running through its patterns.

He leaned forward, his anger unhidden now, and everyone’s eyes were riveted.

My eyes never left his.

“I should burn you for this,” he growled. “You profane my throne room.”

I took my time, gently laying Liandra’s corpse on his royal rug.

“You profaned my wife.”

He spat, then laughed. The others laughed too, nervously, in the shadows.

“Wife, did you say? Our kind can’t marry. We take flesh, not wives.”

“We were committed. I made her.”

He sat back, steepled his fingers. “Ah, there was your first mistake. Your second was to love your creation.”

I was trembling with contained rage, but he might have taken it for fear.

“I would make allowances for your youth in being one of us, but you said you understood the rules.”

“I did. You shouldn’t have banished her.”

“She spurned me.”

“And I just told you why!”

He came toward me so fast that I flinched. “And I say that is not a reason!”

Up close, his rage was a palpable force, and his eyes held my death in them.

He looked down at Liandra, then up at me. “Yet, I am a merciful king. I will give you an opportunity to put this behind you. Keep in mind that your decision, whatever it is, won’t bring her back to you.”

The shadows shifted, and the slayers came into the last of the sunlight as a servant lit candles.

“A torch!” he called, and another attendant scurried to bring one.

He held it out to me. “Kneel, and set her corpse alight, and I will consider the matter closed.”

It was my turn to spit and laugh.

He wiped his face, then struck me with the torch, the fire licking my skin like a demon lover; then he tossed it, as one tosses a flower on a coffin, on top of her body.

I fell, and scrambled back to protect her, but I was too late, and it caught like pitch.

I screamed as he called his slayers forward, and they pressed me hard against her as the fire caught my own robe and started to blacken my own flesh.

Liandra…

The room full of sycophants slowly emptied as my screams faded, and King Edron’s laughter set the sparks to dancing, leaping and whirling in the gloom above us.

At least we, my love, we are now together.

I knew even then, in all my horror, what a bloody, evil thing she was.

Knew it, and went still, knowing what she would do to me, with me, if I couldn’t defeat her.

I couldn’t defeat her.

In this cold, post-midnight silence, looking at the setting crescent moon cleave a path down the sky for the burgeoning sun, my blood steaming on the hard, snow packed soil, I try to feel regret, sorrow, and anger.

I don’t.

I close my eyes and try to pray, and the cold flicks my ear like a seductress, renders my prayer a moan as blood spurts when I try to speak.

I stop, and roll onto my back, and the pain grows worse when she smiles, her mouth red from rending me.

“Soon, lover,” she whispers, but her red mouth never moves.

The night, and everything about it, seems brighter, sharper, clearer than before.

They said there’d be fire. Why is there no fire?

My exhalations into the freezing cold leave in white, tattered ribbons, and the effort to draw air is taking a toll.

She reaches for me, pulls me close, but there’s no warmth in her, no tender flesh, just a corrupt perfection.

I didn’t want this.

Even as I think it, I remain uncertain.

We were walking, hand in hand. She said she loved me, I felt her arms around me…

She’s cradling my head against her cold shoulder, and I turn to look at her face, and see the gates of mortality closing, see the fire there in her eyes.

Ah, there it is. Who’s screaming? Who’s crying?

I see a vortex of screaming, burning souls in her irises, and my own is swept up with them; a sudden wash of blood floods them over, and the fire flares beneath it, burning the image away.

The screams stop.

My breathing stops; if my soul was tossed into the fire, I never felt it.

Is it a shadow of life, or just a different one? I’m the same, yet I’m changed.

Her cold fingers trace my lips, her lips open, and her gore-speckled fangs gleam.

I kiss my maker, my lover, my demon-bride, and my own red mouth smiles against her neck.

Death leaves me, a petulant child whose parents ignore him; he will gather his toy soldier hunters and send them for us one day, one by one.

And one by one, we will gather them to us.

But tonight I bleed, and watch the red fires burn…

*art by Vintion

The mist comes early tonight.

That means they’ll be here soon; they hide in the mist.

The last of the day revelers seeks shelter from the chilly night, and I take my lantern, its little light a small but comforting protection against the things that walk in the starlight.

It allows me to see their eyes, which is only less terrifying than not seeing them at all.

They greet me now, some with sibilant whispers, some with solemn nods.

Why they stay, no one knows. They wander, lost, soulless, fleshless, without a destination. All their plans rot alongside them with whatever remains in the old graves, the headstones crooked and faded, broken teeth knocked out of nature’s mouth.

The tip of the ladder clacks against the cobblestones as I walk, tapping out a dirge to my own eventual demise. The ladder gets lower with every passing year as my strength to carry it fades, but they still expect me to do my job.

I must light the streetlamps.

The scrape of my own worn shoes gets swallowed up, the echo choked off by the thickening veil of fog.

It gets difficult to see, so I must hurry while the lamps are still visible; painted black, I will lose them in the darkness.

I walk a little faster.

They’re here now. Soft laughter, whispered conversations, arguments and vows of undying love, the laughter of a child, the song of a musician, sung in a language I don’t know, all swirl through the streets like autumn leaves caught in an eddying wind.

I hear my name, called in greeting as I climb to the first lamp, and open the creaky gate.

The wick sizzles and pops as the oil catches, and the flame grows and swells with its greedy need for air.

Satisfied it will survive the night, I close the creaky gate and descend.

Walking against the traffic of ghostly strollers, I feel the feather touch of ethereal bodies brushing against me, the hair on my arms wet, even as they stand on end.

The lamps, not at all high above, have gazed on these streets for time untold, and the people, long past and forgotten, still remember living life in the night because of those who came before me.

Long lost is the name of the first, but I am the last, and when I go, they will doubtless convert them to something more modern.

I don’t know what these wandering spirits will do then; indeed, I may walk among them.

For now, they rely on me to keep them from being completely obscured, however slight, and for now, I can oblige them.

Clack, clack, clack, creak, creak, clack, clack, clack.  The lullaby with no words awakens them, and I see them taking comfort in the small fires. I see them glowing like souls with memories against the misty onslaught of Time, who will reach down to scoop them all away again when my aching bones make the morning rounds.

And the small fires, like the distant stars, will be snuffed out one by one by one, until the day comes when Death places the bell over me, my own light pushed into darkness, and I join the midnight miasma of melancholic souls.