Dreams and Shadows

chapter FORTY-ONE

THE PROMISE OF TOMORROW

Ewan sat cross-legged on the floor of his apartment, pike by his side, grease pencil firmly in hand. Furiously, he scribbled over a torn-out sheet of artists’ paper—a picture of a little girl. Of Mallaidh. He scribbled and scrawled, trying to scrape away the memory, but it held fast, lingering painfully, just out of reach—an itch he couldn’t scratch. The page was a stain of black grease, small patches of white paper peering out beneath it. As he finished, he crumpled the sheet, threw it behind him into a growing pile already three dozen deep, cast out his arm, and tore another from the wall.

Ewan’s eyes were growing cold, the pupils swelling, overtaking the color of each iris. His stubble sprouted into whiskers, his skin flush with color, his cheeks rosy above patches of thickening bristle.

A dull throb beat in the back of his skull. He felt feverish, but dry; restless, but fatigued. His mouth felt like it was full of sand, no amount of water slaking his thirst or chasing the leather from his tongue. Something strange paced back and forth in his gut—an ill-tempered beast clawing from inside his rib cage, raking the bars with its talons, pounding to be let loose. Harder and harder, it raked and pounded, begging Ewan to lash out, to strike the nearest thing—to break the world one piece at a time, to slit a throat, any throat, and quench his thirst on the spatter.

There came a knock at the door.

“What’s the safe word?” he grumbled loudly, relieved by the distraction.

There was no answer.

“Safe word! What is it?” he called out again, rising to his feet.

“I don’t know it,” said a quiet voice from behind the door. He recognized it immediately. It was Nora.

He approached the door, his face inches from it. “We don’t have anything to say to each other.”

“You know that’s not true,” she said.

“Fine. I don’t have anything to say to you.”

“You’re lying. I’ll bet you can’t stop thinking of things you can’t wait to tell me. Or call me. Or whatever.”

Ewan unlatched the door, flinging it open. Mallaidh stood meekly behind it, disguised as Nora. She appeared small, frail, and delicate, swallowed whole by the darkness surrounding her outside. She looked up at him, her eyes welling with tears, lip quivering at the very sight of him. His heart burst. He’d known that this would be tough, but had no idea that his insides would turn to jelly just seeing her. The pacing beast in his belly stayed its wrath, held back a few moments longer.

He swallowed hard. “Don’t you dare look like her,” he said. “That’s not you. That person doesn’t exist.”

Mallaidh shook off the disguise like a duck would water—everything Nora falling away, replaced by lithe, tender features draped in long blond hair. She nodded. “I’m sorry. I didn’t know which one of us you wanted to see.”

“Neither,” he said drily. The throbbing in his head had stopped, but the bitterness remained.

A swollen tear formed in the corner of her eye before plummeting down her cheek. This time his heart broke completely. He took her up in his arms, wrapping them completely around her, her head nestled squarely against his chest, her arms grappled as tightly around his waist as they could. Any semblance of composure she had hoped to maintain eroded, setting free a torrent of choked sobs. “I’m sorry,” she cried. “I’m so sorry.”

“Why did you lie to me?” he asked.

She looked up at him, trembling. “I’ve never lied to you. Never.”

“Yes, you did.”

“When did I ever tell you that I wasn’t a fairy? When did I tell you that we’ve never met before? When did I tell you some bullshit story about a past that wasn’t mine? Everything I told you was true; that you didn’t have all the pieces to the puzzle yet speaks only to the fact that these were truths you weren’t ready to know. I told you I was the little girl in your pictures. I told you that I would cross time and space to find you. I did cross time and space. And I did find you. And I have loved you, always. And I always will. So when, Ewan, when did I lie to you?”

“When you told me your name was Nora.”

“What?”

“You never lied about anything except who you were.”

“It’s not really a lie if you want it to be true,” she said. “And I’ve never wanted anything to be truer in my life.”

“What is that supposed to mean?”

“Nora isn’t just what you wanted me to be; she’s what I wanted to be. I want nothing more in my life than to be the girl of your dreams.”

“You didn’t even know me.”

“Are you kidding?” she asked, freeing a single hand from his grip and wiping a smear of tears from her cheek. “I’ve known you all your life. What time I didn’t know you, I spent trying to find you, trying to know you again.” Mallaidh looked around the apartment, for the first time noticing what a shambles it was. Pictures torn off walls, chairs knocked over, upturned ashtrays spilling filthy gray grit in swaths across dingy carpet. The place was a mess.

Then she noticed the pile, the collection of crumpled, tattered pictures of her, all smeared, scratched, and scribbled to pieces. Some were merely blotches of black, while others were mutations—little girls baring teeth and wicked claws, slobbering foam and blood into the peaceful creeks and ponds beneath them. She reeled; these nightmarish representations painted her far more redcap than Sidhe.

“No!” she cried, pushing away from Ewan, shaking her head. “That’s not me! That’s not what I am, that’s not what we are.” She walked over, picking up a particularly brutal scrawl of the little girl gripping a decapitated head, her once virginal smile carved into a raging snarl. “This isn’t me.” She looked Ewan dead in the eye and repeated herself. “This isn’t me.”

He stared back coldly, unconvinced. “There’s one thing left to ask,” he said.

“Anything,” said Mallaidh.

“Did you know?” he asked. “That they were coming?”

She shook her head. “No!”

“I looked for you, but you were with them.”

“They lured me out. I had no idea what I was walking into.”

“Then who is he?”

“Who? Knocks?”

“Yeah, him.”

“He’s your changeling.”

“I don’t know what that is supposed to mean.”

“You don’t remember?”

“It’s all fuzzy. And I don’t know if I ever knew who he was.”

“He’s Nixie Knocks, the one they left in your place when they took you away.”

“And why does he want to kill me?”

“Because he thinks you killed his mother.”

“His mother?” Ewan thought deeply for a second, summoning from the depths a single, powerful memory that washed over him like a tsunami. “He’s the boy,” he said, his jaw slack. “The night with the goats the size of horses. He’s the little boy.”

Mallaidh nodded.

“And you were there,” he said, pointing at her, memories piecing together like droplets pooling into a puddle.

“You saved my life,” she said through a sniffle and a tear-stained smile. She wiped her cheek with the back of her hand once more.

“I did?”

“Yeah. And I fell in love with you right then and there.”

Ewan gave Mallaidh a confused look. “Why?”

“It was the way you held me,” she said. “The way you’ve held me ever since.” She took Ewan by the hand. “I love you. And I’ll do anything for you. Anything. Just say the word.”

The two stared longingly, passionate confusion brewing between them. “So what now?” he asked.

She stepped forward and stroked his cheek, running her finger back to push his hair over his ear. “Now you kiss me as hard as you can,” she said, “and we pretend, for as long as we can, that none of this ever happened—that none of this matters. That none of it ever mattered. You kiss me and it all goes away.”

“What if it doesn’t?” he asked.

“Then you kiss me again. And again. And again, until it does.”

Ewan looked at Mallaidh with great sadness, shaking his head. “They’re never going to stop coming for me, you know that.”

“I don’t want to believe that.”

“But you know that, don’t you?” he asked. Once again, the tears welled up in her eyes. She nodded, crying, tears streaking down her cheeks, unable to say it aloud. “Then what do you imagine we should do?”

“Run away,” she sobbed.

“That’s what I did last time. All I did was forget. I don’t want to do that again. I don’t want to forget. Not now, not you.” He looked at the floor, his eyes wandering to the pike beside him. “This time I need to stay and fight.”

“No! No, no, no,” she protested. “They’ll kill you.”

“I’m not so sure of that.”

“I am. These are creatures that live only to kill—to kill and cause suffering. That’s not who you are. That’s not who you were meant to be.”

“I might be more capable than you give me credit for,” he said, mildly offended.

“It’s not about how capable you are; it’s about how far you are willing to go. These creatures will chase you to the ends of the earth to get what they want. They will kill anyone who gets between you and them. They will hunt you till they draw their last breath. Are you willing to hate that much? Can you chase them for that long?”

“You never know,” he answered.

“I do. I’ve seen what’s in your heart.”

“So you want me to run?” asked Ewan.

“Not just to run, to run away with me,” she said. “To L.A. Like we planned.”

“But they’ll come after us.”

“I’ll talk to the council. If I tell them we’ll leave, never to return, they’ll have to grant us passage out. They don’t want trouble any more than we do.”

“So they’re afraid of me?”

Mallaidh shook her head. “Colby. Everyone’s afraid of Colby. No one knows what he’s going to do. And nobody wants to find out.”

“Colby . . . ,” he sighed.

“He’s our best hope. As long as they’re afraid of him, you and I can get out of here.”

“What about him?”

“Colby? Ewan, Colby’s been taking care of himself since he was eight. He’s the last person in this world we need to worry about.”

“When do you want to leave?”

Her eyes grew wide and, for the first time since arriving, she smiled. This conversation was really happening; she wasn’t dreaming it. “Tonight.”

“Then go. Do what you need to do. Buy us some time. If you’re not back by dawn . . .”

“If I’m not back by dawn, what?” The ominous sound of that broke apart her smile, crumbling it before him.

He paused. “Just be back by dawn.”

She grabbed him tight, kissing him, cradling his head with her hands while ruffling his hair with her fingers. “I love you, Ewan.”

“I love you,” he whispered back.

She turned and left without saying another word, breezing out the door—which Ewan immediately locked behind her—and disappearing into the night.

Ewan slumped onto the ground, propping his back against the door. She was gone, and with her the soothing presence that had held the beast at bay. His heart was pounding, his head was throbbing, every molecule in his body was thundering to the same, painful rhythm. Everything beat in unison. Thumthum thumthum thumthum thumthum. Then came the whispers—soft at first, steadily growing, a white-noise static against the background of his thoughts. He reached up to grab a fistful of his own hair and realized he wasn’t wearing his cap. He needed his cap; he was suffocating without it. What at first he had confused with the weakness of his broken heart, in truth was the drying blood of his cap across the room.

There it was, draped over a chair, drying in the midnight air. He wobbled to his feet, his knees buckling, just strong enough to stand him up and stumble him across the room. His fingers swept the chair, snatched the cap off with the sharpened end of a fingernail. Ewan breathed a sigh of relief as he slipped it on, but it proved to be little comfort. Something was wrong. His cap was almost dry, only the tiniest bit of dampness remaining.

He’d only splattered it with blood; he’d never soaked it. His cap was drying out. And that meant he was losing his strength, strength he’d need if Mallaidh didn’t return on time. He needed blood. But that meant he needed to kill and Ewan didn’t want to kill anybody, not anyone human, at least.

His chest tightened, he swallowed hard, choking on cotton. This had gotten very bad, very quickly. He wouldn’t make it to morning. The pike whispered to him from the floor. Ewan gazed at it, his mouth watering like a starving man smelling his first cheeseburger. Meat. The smell of sizzling meat and dripping juices wafting in from outside. He could smell the blood and beating hearts all around him, warm, fresh, waiting to be spilled from their sagging bags of skin.

Now he paced his apartment, clawing at the walls, knocking over furniture, pounding his fists against his skull. The whispers had become braying voices, shouting angrily what he needed to do. It was only minutes since she had left, but it weighed upon the clock as if had been hours.

There was little choice left. He grabbed a blanket from his bedroom, wrapped it around the pike and slunk out the door into the harsh, dry darkness, chasing the smell into the city. But he couldn’t bring himself to kill—not a human being. So he followed memories, scraps and fragments of stories, things said in passing; he followed unfamiliar scents across streets, through backyards, cut across alleys, until he found himself miles from home, standing on the banks of Ladybird Lake, staring out into the dark water.

He stood there, listening to the cicadas chirp along the shore, smelling hints of female flesh swimming out in the lake.

He stripped off his shirt and waited. There came the gentle sound of a BLUMP from the water, like a fish jumping out of it for a fly. Ewan knew it was no fish. Then two more. BLUMP. BLUMP. Few would have noticed the sounds, but in his sanguine state, his senses were extraordinarily oversensitive. He could hear insects mating, smell Korean food cooking at a restaurant five blocks away, knew with absolute certainty that the sounds he was hearing from the lake were those of women rising from its depths.

The first swam sluggishly toward him, lagging so her sisters could catch up. He caught sight of her taut, naked body, dog-paddling silently on the surface, her hair slicked back with lake water, tangled with sea grass, her large eyes batting at him. She was gorgeous, seraphic, looking as if she posed no threat to him at all. It was, of course, a trap, and he knew it.

Never agree to swim with a beautiful woman, that’s what Dithers had always told him. Dithers. That’s where the name came from. He missed him, and for a moment, he almost forgot his purpose. Then the two others approached, their forms hovering in the dancing reflection of a thousand stars.

“Hey, handsome,” one of them called. “You here to get wet?”

“Yes,” Ewan answered. “Yes I am.”

“Would you like some company?” asked another.

Ewan smiled. “I think I would.”

He dropped the blanket, his hand firm around the shaft of the pike. With a speed he had no idea he possessed, he tore forward. The nixies had little time to react, enough only to exchange startled looks. Ewan smiled as he sailed through the air, time standing still, their slowed expressions awash in confusion and horror.

He could taste them already. It wouldn’t be much longer now.