Nina Smith's Blog: The Gothic Chicken

<< Rhymes with Bite Me Part 1

“You shouldn’t let her bully you like that, you know.”

Vlad shrugged and kicked a rock down the street. It bounced off a broken cobblestone and into one of the few intact windows adjacent to the street. The glass splintered.

Vlad and Dave picked up the pace, even though there was nobody around to see. Not that Vlad blamed the fairies and pixies for staying inside. The streets

of Shadow City were not safe at night, not even with vampires everywhere trying to keep the peace by oppressing everyone in sight.

“Hey Dave.”

“Yeah Vlad?”

“Do you think Parthenia’s punk?”

“No way. Punk is sticking it to the man, man, and Parthenia, well, she’s even scarier than the man!”

“Whoa, don’t freak out man.”

“I’m not freaking out, you’re freaking out! How come you keep talking about punk all the time?”

“I dunno, I just-” Vlad stopped at the corner. Shadow City Theatre lay ahead, lit with flaming torches and filled with noise. It might be the City’s cultural heartbeat, but it was mostly just Pixies complaining about being forced to make up numbers in the chorus and he didn’t like it one bit. “Do you ever wonder what it’s really all about, Dave?”

“What what’s really all about?”

The doors of the theatre burst open, and a young woman dressed all in black stumbled onto the street, screaming. She bolted straight toward Vlad and Dave.

“Life, man,” Vlad said. “All this.” He made a sweeping gesture, and accidentally grabbed the young woman’s shirt as she ran by. “Oh sorry, Miss Pixie. Are you alright?”

“Please help me!” Black makeup smudged under her eyes as fresh tears flowed. “Don’t make me go back! They’re trying to make me – make me –”

“Make you what?”

“Sing a happy song about the king! I hate the king! And I hate happy songs!”

Booted footsteps thumped toward them, and the young woman struggled in Vlad’s grip.

“Which king?” asked Vlad in some concern.

“The muse king you grass eater, what other king is there? Let me go, please. I won’t do it!”

A third Moon Trooper marched up to them and gave Vlad and Dave a stiff nod. “Well done soldiers, that’s my Pixie.”

Vlad shrugged and shoved her toward him, as gently as he could.

“You’ll all pay for this!” She screeched. “I will not be happy! And the king can bite me!”

“See, that’s the sort of thing I’m talking about,” Vlad said, as the Moon Trooper dragged the protesting Pixie back to the theatre. “Is that all life is now, Dave? Is this what we signed up for when we agreed to join this army and fight for our glorious vampire king? Nobody even knows who he is anymore, and that Pixie doesn’t deserve to be oppressed. And as for the muse king, what’s he ever done for us? We’ve never even seen him!”

Dave nodded thoughtfully. “It’s interesting you say that, Vlad. I have to admit I can’t help but feel like we’re the bad guys in this war.”

“And not in a punk way.”

Vlad and Dave both sighed, and resumed walking toward the theatre.

“You know Vlad, sometimes I wonder if we’re the bad guys because we’ve sided with evil, or if we’re the bad guys because we’re vampires. Like, does being vampires automatically make us bad? Can we like, transcend that? Because I feel like if we really put our minds to it, vampires could be a force for good.”

“I mean, the fact we have to drink blood to survive is what makes us bad,” Vlad replied, after thinking that through for a moment. “How do we balance those two things? How do we, I don’t know, repay fairies for their blood in a way that benefits them too?”

“Bit difficult when fairies are so hard to come by.” Dave sounded a little morose behind his mask. “Might have to be pixies.”

“Ugh, that’s like eating boiled potatoes.”

“I wish I could eat a potato. If you hadn’t gone and let Maria Celestina in that night, we could be eating chips right now.” The vampires tramped up the steps of the theatre and pushed open the door.

Inside, Moon Troopers on their night off crowded the rows of red velvet seats, silver masks paying rapt attention to the stage at the front. Fat red candles lined the walls, their warm glow jumping and flickering at the opening of the doors.

Vlad eased the door shut behind them. He and Dave moved into position on either side, since they were supposed to be guarding the show anyway, presumably from runaway pixies.

Far to the front, a tall moon Trooper dressed in a long red cloak dramatically threw out his arm. “And that is why the king must never die!” The declamation reverberated throughout the hall. “Long live the king!”

“Phew,” Dave whispered. “It’s nearly finished.”

“I see Kevin’s still leading up the dramatic society,” Vlad whispered back.

“Yeah, I heard he was a newsreader before he got vamped. Did a lot of voice training. Great that he’s not letting it go to waste just because someone made him a bloodsucking fiend and dragged him into a hell dimension.”

Vlad stared. “Seriously Dave, are you alright?

One of the Moon Troopers in the back row turned his mask toward them. “Shh, the last song is starting.”

Twenty Pixies trooped onstage, their unrelieved black making them almost invisible against the backdrop. One of them stepped to the front; she wore so much white paint on her face that she looked like a ghost. Her black-painted mouth turned down at the corners. Her black-smudged eyes made morose holes in her face. “I’m so happy the king is not dead.” Her gaze cut through the audience like a scythe, her lip curled up, and she returned to the chorus line.

“You suck!” Someone yelled from the middle seats.

“Yeah!” Yelled another one. “Make me believe you’re happy!”

The pixie chorus took a deep, collective breath.

“I don’t like it,” Vlad hissed. “This is just torturing Pixies for fun, and it’s not right!”

He didn’t hear what Dave said in reply, because at that moment a piercing shriek erupted from the roof, right before a young man wearing mostly leaves and hooves for feet ran onto the stage bearing a flaming torch stolen from out the front. “We’re the Invisible Army and this is a rescue!” he yelled. “Freedom for the Pixies!”

Watch this space for Rhymes with Bite Me Part Three!

You can also check out more Vlad and Dave in Shadow Book 3: Shiny Things

Vlad the Moon Trooper dropped the fairy he’d been drinking from and gave a deep sigh.

The fairy, unperturbed, got to his feet and wandered back to the shiny, shiny light that warmed the centre of the underground cavern, its friendly glow dimmed only by the twenty of so other fairies clustered around it, all in various states of disrepair. This group wouldn’t last much longer. At least Vlad only took a little blood, and was gentle with them, not like the other Moon Troopers. He sighed again.

“You sound like a Pixie. Come on.” Dave the Moon Trooper’s voice, muffled by his silver mask, had not the least hint of camaraderie. He set off for the stairs at a crisp march.

“Hey Dave, do you ever wonder-”

“What?”

“Never mind.” Vlad didn’t really dare give voice to the thoughts forming in his head, not even to his twin.

Their heavy boots echoed in the dank gloom. Vlad didn’t particularly care for what awaited them at the top. This wasn’t what he’d signed up for when a fifteenth century nun named Maria Celestina told them she was on a recruitment drive, but there was no going back now.

“Hey Dave?”

“What?” The irritation bled through loud and clear, but Vlad didn’t care. He’d been irritating his twin from the moment he was born second.

“Do you remember the disco lights?”

“…Yeah.” Dave paused for a moment on the stairs. “They’d look radical down here.”

“Totally man! It’d give the whole place so much depth!”

“Think it’d distract the fairies from the trap?”

Vlad didn’t want to look over his shoulder at the fairies, but he did it anyway. They just stood there, staring at the light. “Nah man.”

They continued up the stairs.

“Do you ever think about getting the band back together?” Vlad burst out.

Dave stopped and turned back. “Are you kidding me? I even thought of a new name.” He leaned against the wall, silver mask staring out into the darkness in what Vlad already knew was dreamy rapture. “Lost in Shadow.”

“Wow man. Wow. That’s really deep.” Vlad had to give himself a moment to really feel the emotion the name evoked. “It’s so literal. But also so deeply symbolic. You’re amazing at stuff like that.”

“Thanks man. That means a lot.”

“Just one thing.” Vlad fidgeted with his mask. They’d given him a new one, and it didn’t fit all that well. Also it itched. And sometimes he had blackouts, which he felt like the mask caused, but didn’t want to say in case they hauled him in for evaluation. “Is it punk enough?”

“Punk is all about the attitude Vlad. You’ve just got to like, feel it to make it punk.”

Vlad sighed. “How do we even know though?”

“Know what?”

“It was 1986 when we came here. It’s been like 24 years. Is punk even still around? What if it’s different? What if something else is big now?”

“And what if we never got recruited, and we had’ve made it to that gig and been the most famous glam new wave synth punk rock band in the world?” Dave kicked the wall and started up the stairs again. “You ever think about that, Mr `Come on, how much trouble could a fifteenth century nun get us in?’”

“Look how many times have I said sorry about that? I couldn’t help it, she had a wimple!”

They started up the stairs again.

“Hey what if we called it Punk as Shadow?”

Dave glanced back. “What if we called it Fight Me?”

“Why would we call it Fight Me?”

“Rhymes with Bite Me.” Dave yanked open the door at the top of the stairs.

Vlad rolled his eyes. Dave got a little moodier every year. Honestly, he didn’t think being a vampire was a good scene for either of them, but Dave least of all. He missed the days when it was all about music and enormous hair. “Hey Dave, do you know what’s punk?”

That got a grin. He could tell from the way the mask moved as it swung back to him. Dave knew the words as well as he did: the spoken intro to the song that had so very nearly made them famous in Dream in 1986. “Yeah Vlad. I know what’s punk.”

“A rotten fish.”

“A granted wish.”

“A contaminated petri dish.”

“A vampire bite.”

“A London flight."

“Hey Dave, you think it's time to pick a fight?!”

The brothers took a simultaneous indrawn breath to launch into the chorus.

A svelte voice impaled that moment of silence. “I swear to the Blood Gods, if I find you two synth punks singing again I will eviscerate Vlad.”

“…Just Vlad?” asked Dave.

“With your third rib.” One slim hand tipped with blood red nails yanked Dave through the door.

Vlad sighed and followed. “You just don’t understand, Parthenia.”

Parthenia grabbed his by the throat and pinned him to the wall. “That’s Supreme Commander to you, son.” She towered over him by a good few inches. Bouncy golden hair added another two inches and a lot of volume around her mask.

Vlad sneezed. That hair got up your nose even through the mask. “Since when?”

“Since shut up and do as you’re told.”

“What about the king though?”

“What about him? I’m the boss now.” She dug her fingernails into his neck. “Who am I, Vladdy?”

Vlad could feel blood trickling down his skin. “Y-you’re the boss.”

“Good boy.” She let get and slapped him on the shoulder so hard he stumbled into the big iron table that dominated the room. “You two can go down to the theatre.”

Dave brightened. “Really?”

“Yes really. There’s a production of The King Must Never Die, Long Live the King on tonight, you two are on guard duty.”

Dave’s face fell. “Man, I already saw that one. It was totally bogus.”

“Get out.”

Vlad and Dave got out.

Watch this space for part two!

You can also check out more Vlad and Dave in Shadow Book 3: Shiny Things

Need a costume idea this Halloween? Why not dress like a Freakin Fairy?

If you've read the Shadow series, you may have noted that Freakin Fairies are not always viewed with favour by the varied denizens of Shadow. And maybe that's because they're a big old bunch of introverts who prefer the company of trees to ongoing war and political instability.

But there are so many advantages to being a Freakin Fairy - the main one being, you control the most prized, scarce and only viable fuel source in Shadow: Quicksilver.

So, if you're looking for a cosplay, it's this easy:

Splatter a long black tunic and a pair of pants or leggings with a bunch of silver paint Get yourself some fancy black boots with chunky buckles Grab a cart full of liquid silver to drag around (or a bucket, whatever's easy) Go play in the forest. Or, if that's not your jam, go for a stroll through the city, you're the richest fairy in town now

Have fun!

Want to see more Freakin Fairies? Pre-Order Shadow Book 3: Shiny Things !

Emerald of the Green Dragon Dancer Tribe. Yeah, you've seen her. She's that girl lurking in the forest, all blonde curls and curves and big shiny axe, mercilessly hunting down any vampire foolhardy enough to set foot under one of her trees…

Wait, what's that? You haven't seen her? You weren't looking? You'd never presume? Darn right! She's deadly.

Born twenty seven years ago under a red moon in the crack of summer, Emerald became a problem the moment she could walk, run, and throw rocks at outsiders. At the age of five, she found a fetch eating her favourite doll. Within five minutes she'd turned it into a cloud of methane smoke; and within five years she'd waged such a vendetta that no fetch dared fly within a mile of Green Dragon Forest.

Emerald and her playmate Pan went on to wreak so much havoc during their teenage years that a general warrant was issued for their arrest - and never acted on, even when they broke into the Shadow City Theatre at age 16, disrupting a Guild production of The King Must Never Die Long Live The King by swinging from the chandeliers into the audience.

Of course the Chief then confined them to the forest, and a few years after that, a very bored Emerald decided it was time to get married. Or else.

For someone already quite dexterous at making bad decisions, it was, perhaps, not one of her finer moments...

Emerald bursts onto the scene about halfway through Shadow Book 3: Shiny Things, and stays in the action until...well, no spoilers.

Shiny Things is available for pre-order here!

Let's talk about monsters. Because like, Halloween is the perfect time to talk about those, right?

There are a few monsters in the Shadow series. Some nicer than others - but the ultimate monster (at least for now) is Pierus, King of the Muses. I mean, he's old, he's grumpy, he talks (at least in my head) in a ridiculously inappropriate posh English accent, sure. But it's more than that: he single-minded and driven by a purpose that nobody even Shadow could even guess at, because nobody else is old enough to remember things that happened at the beginning of Shadow time. (And given that muses are immortal unless they get killed, you think about why that might be.)

So let me tell you a secret about Pierus, and why he is the way he is.

I'll set the scene for you: It's about 3,000 years ago, in a place called Thebes, Greece. He's a doctor, living in a dark and closed up room with his brother, who is so ill he cannot even look at the sun. It's a miserable and hopeless time, until two things happen: One, Pierus meets a woman and falls in love. Pity she's already married, sister to a demigod, and totally out of his league. Two - and this is the critical moment - he goes to see an oracle who is famed for her 100% accurate predictions, but not so much for her integrity when she's busy.

That little interview went something like this:

~~

Pierus strode through the curtains. His short, belted tunic was crisp and clean, but his hair was awry and his face turbulent. He knelt before the table and fixed his eyes on the oracle. “Great Melissa, tell my future.”

She raised her eyebrows. His manner was definitely not normal. There was no trace of his usual disdain, but neither did he plead like she might have expected from a man looking like he did right now. It was a demand. She couldn’t even be bothered with him. She laid a hand on the gourd and said the first thing that came into her head. “Your future, son? You’ll be a king, and gain immortality. Now bog off.”

Pierus stared at her, open-mouthed. He rose slowly to his feet, backed away and disappeared through the curtain without a word.

A long moment of silence followed, then a burst of high pitched giggling in the outer room from both Ianthe and Oinone.

“Melissae!” Melissa spoke the word sharply enough for them both to hurry in, still giggling.

“What’s so funny?”

“We heard what you told him,” Ianthe said.

“And he believed you,” Oinone added.

“You should have seen his face! You know you’re awful sometimes.”

Melissa snickered. “That ought to keep him occupied for a while. Now if anybody else wants me, they can bog off too."

~~

What kind of a person could Pierus have been, if that had not happened? Well to be honest, probably still of a sour old grape. But perhaps he might have lived and died like anyone else, instead of spending millennia raising havoc in a world created to be his prison...a world where he called himself king, and nobody knew how to argue.

So how does a monster convince a fairy to help him obtain a ridiculously powerful chaos weapon? Check out Shadow Book 1: Bloody Fairies >>

<< Not A Soul Part 2

Flower screwed up her nose. “Approved for transport to – what? Oh.” She lurched to her feet and tore the paper in two. “I’ll give them containment centre. You just wait till the king hears about this!” She marched over to the door and flung it open.

A Moon Trooper standing on the other side turned and barred her way. “Remain where you are.”

“Oh, I’m so sorry to bother you,” Flower said. “I just wondered when the other one was coming back? I’ve got an appointment and I don’t want to be late.”

The Moon Trooper glanced down the hall, which he shouldn’t have done. If Flower had seen one of her muses taking their eye off a prisoner during the Vampire Wars, she’d have had them bumped down to cadet so fast they’d have forgotten their own family tree. She grabbed the burning torch she’d left by the door and jammed it into his face.

The Moon Trooper yelled and stumbled back.

Flower seized the lightning rod right out of his belt, and with the still-smouldering torch in her other hand, bolted back down the hall to a half-forgotten anthem of raised voices that would soon become pursuit. Honestly, the indignity of suddenly finding oneself a fugitive in one’s own city could not be understated.

She ran from the precinct unmolested and ducked around a corner to catch her breath. A decent soldier would have caught her before she’d even got this far, but –

A pack of Moon Troopers ran down the street right past her, shouting. She caught the word champion. Oh, well that made more sense. Nikifor must have woken up high on Vibe and started a fight. This night just got better and better.

She sighed, stalked back to the precinct, closed the double doors on whoever was left inside, and shoved her smouldering torch through the handles to lock it. That should take care of any reinforcements for a while. She presumed they had a back door to escape through when it caught, but at least they’d be distracted.

Then she headed down to the thoroughfare, following the sound of shouts and blows, now sticking close to the shadows she’d avoided earlier.

Nikifor cut a ragged figure, alone on the cobblestones, brandishing a naked sword to the black, moonless sky while a ragged ring of Moon Troopers closed in around him, lightning rods already sparking in anticipation of their victim.

Flower supposed he’d been approved for a containment centre too, but she didn’t think it would do the Moon Troopers much good. After all, this was the Muse Champion. High or not, they hadn’t the slightest hope. She wondered if Nikifor’s shouting bothered them as much as it bothered her. Probably. She couldn’t understand half of it, and didn’t want to think about the rest, that same old claptrap about lightning and ghosts. He was going to have to give it a rest when they got out of here.

She hadn’t realised, until that moment, that she knew exactly what to do next. Sure, she’d settled in very well to her life as a diplomat, but she’d spent too many decades at war to shrink away when the need for flight became apparent.

The Moon Troopers attacked. Nikifor met them with the same ferocity he’d once turned on a battlefield of a thousand vampires.

Flower ran her finger along her lightning rod until she found a round metal button that made it spark. With one sharp nod, she walked to the back of the line and the nearest Moon Trooper waiting his turn to attack. “Excuse me,” she said, and jammed the lightning rod into his rib cage.

The Moon Trooper convulsed violently and fell. Flower confiscated his lightning rod too, jammed that one into the gut of the next one to turn his blank silver mask her way, and then attacked another.

The field had thinned considerably. Bodies littered the street, and Nikifor engaged in a ferocious battle with the last three left standing.

Flower waited politely for them to fall before she cleared her throat. “Nikifor?”

He turned to her with a shout, sword raised, eyes wild.

“Nikifor it’s me. Lower your sword.”

“Flower?” The sword lowered, and his eyes focused behind her. “What’s that light?”

She turned in time to see a warm glow one block over burst into a wall of flame with a sound like a sonic boom. “Ah.”

He came to stand beside her. He shook all over, but otherwise seemed to have regained his senses. “Is that the Council Hall?”

“No, it’s the Precinct.”

“Why would they-” He looked at her, and his eyes widened. “Did you just set fire to the precinct?”

“Honestly Nikifor, you make me sound like quite the vandal. Come along, we have to go.” She hurried down the thoroughfare.

He sheathed his sword and kept up. “You’ve had your moments. I mean, there was that time you snuck behind enemy lines and set fire to the trebuchet, but they were the enemy.”

“The Guild are the enemy, Nikifor.”

A short silence. “I know.”

“And you are back on Vibe. What have I told you about that stuff?”

“I’m sorry.”

“Sorry’s not good enough.”

“Where are we going?”

She hadn’t actually thought that one through. They should probably go home and get some supplies, but that was the first place the Moon Troopers would look for her once they’d put out the fire. Best to make a clean break. Yes. “We’re going to get you some help.” She picked up the pace, eager to reach the gates and put as much distance between them and the city as she could.

“Nobody can help me now.”

The words, loaded with utter misery, made Flower scowl. She turned to him, right in the open gate, in the night, and pushed him in the rib cage. “Now you listen to me, Nikifor of the Rolling Backbeat with the Deceptive Cadence, you’re our Champion. It’s your destiny to protect the Muse Nation, and do you know what? You haven’t done your job. The entire Muse Nation is missing, except for us! So when I say I’m going to get you help, that’s exactly what’s going to happen, because once we’ve sorted you out, then we’re going to find the king, and find out what’s happened to everyone else, and fix it. Do you hear me?”

“I hear you, Flower.”

Even in the dark, she could tell from the grey and faded words that his burst of being in his own senses wouldn’t last much longer. He’d either be ill soon or go off again.

“But who can possibly help me?”

She softened her tone. “The Freakin Fairies.”

“Fairies?”

She put her hand on his arm to stop him walking right back into the city rather than go and face a bunch of Freakin Fairies. “Yes. We’re going to find the Freakin Fairies and ask them for a cure. Now come along, we need to get out of the city.” Without waiting for an answer – or letting go of his arm – she plunged into the night.

Want to know what happens next? Look out for Shadow Book 2: Shade Struck, out late 2022.

The shadows were so deep now she had to weave a path through them, out of the tenements, and then quickly down the thoroughfare. The cold bit. She slipped into the council hall, relieved to find the welcome foyer empty, and down the winding passage to her office.

But the door wouldn’t open. Her key no longer fit in the lock.

Flower kicked the door and yelled in frustration. The echoes of her yell up and down the hall died into the gathering gloom, and met with only silence.

She rested her head on the door for a moment, taking deep, calming breaths. Think. She had to think, and fast. What had changed since yesterday? Hardly anyone even came into this building except for her, the Guild all worked out of the Precinct now.

Right. The Precinct. She’d just march herself down there and demand to know what in the Darkness they thought they were doing, locking the King’s Chief Representative Diplomat out of her own office.

Flower turned on her heel, retraced her steps, seized the single flaming torch burning by the door, and marched into the night. A dark street took her down to the Plaza, where she skirted the trickling fountain with its travesty of a statue – a Moon Trooper, for Mnemosyne’s sake – and headed for the precinct. She walked right in and hammered on the Superintendent’s door.

The door swung open. For the sake of politeness Flower put her torch into the sconce on the wall there, then strode in.

The Superintendent sat behind a desk piled with papers, writing with a quill that flowed across the desk. A red ink pot rested at hand. Blonde hair fell across her face, hiding it in shadow.

“Yes?”

“I demand to know why I’ve been locked out of my office!”

The Superintendent didn’t answer right away. First, she picked up the silver mask lying face-down on the desk and put it on. Then she turned the familiar blank silver gaze to Flower. The one eye carved into the forehead seemed more startling than normal after having almost seen her face. “And you are?”

“You know perfectly well who I am,” Flower snapped, trying to recover her composure. It had not once, until now, occurred to her that Moon Troopers were people. Had the king brought in a contingent of Fire Elves?

“Name, please.” The voice turned a trifle chill.

“Flower of the Great North Island Beyond the Night-Flickered Sea. Chief Representative Diplomat of the King.”

“One moment.” The Superintendent rifled through a file of papers, glanced up, and then read the paper in her hand again. “You say your office is locked?”

“Yes.”

“Do you not possess a key?”

“The lock has been changed,” Flower said through clenched teeth. “I was just there-”

“On what business?”

“On my own business, it’s my office!”

“On what business?”

“I went there to do my job, which while we’re on the subject, I’m finding exceedingly difficult. How do I represent the King as a diplomat when there’s nobody left in the city?” Flower leaned forward and planted both hands on the desk. “But I don’t suppose you’d know anything about that?”

“If you have a complaint, please submit it to the complaints department,” the Superintendent said.

“I did, three times. I don’t think you appreciate the gravity of this situation. There are thousands of muses missing, many thousands more fairies, and the Guild is doing nothing. You might as well be making it happen for all the good your presence is doing.”

A second of silence went by. A small part of Flower died a little inside, and whispered she should probably sit back down and live, but Flower never usually listened to that voice anyway. “I could go to the Shadow City Chronicle,” she said into the silence, “And blow this thing wide open. Is that what you want?”

“I think the material point, ma’am, is what do you want?” The Superintendent sounded bored now. “I’m a very busy woman.”

“I want to get into my office!”

“Very well, I’ll see if I can track down that key for you. We did have a lock replaced, but I can’t guarantee our tradespeople upgraded the correct door. Wait here please.” She rose to her feet in a sharp, military movement, left the room and closed the door behind her.

“Yeah, you probably made them all disappear,” Flower muttered. She leaned back in her chair. Then she tapped her fingers on the table. The prickles of the back of her neck became exceedingly annoying. She leaned forward and pulled over the paper the woman had been reading to distract herself.

Flower of the Great North Island Beyond the Night-Flickered Sea, it said, alongside an illustration that did her no favours at all. Then, in savage red letters, approved

for transport to containment centre, and a scrawl that might have been a signature...

Not a Soul Part 1

Stay tuned for Not a Soul Part 3 soon!

Flower delayed a moment before she put down her quill. A year ago, she’d never have dared write such a letter, but now desperation drove her. With an irritated hiss, she sprinkled fine sand over the paper to dry the ink, rolled up the parchment and poured wax from the red candle that burned by her hand to seal it. She firmly depressed her own seal in the wax. There. She did not trust the Guild an inch – not that she had dared to write such a thing – but even they would not interfere in the affairs of the King’s own Chief Representative Diplomat.

The late afternoon sunlight that filtered through her window made the room warm and golden. She’d conducted her affairs from home today, she didn’t care for echoing silence of the Council Hall, or the way the Moon Troopers insisted on blocking out all the windows to keep the building cold.

But she must find a messenger, and soon, and that meant going back now. She swiftly bound her long brown hair into a single plait, and fastened a heavy overdress over her clothes. Night would fall quickly, and she cared neither for the chill it would bring, or to be caught out in it too long. For all their proclamations about keeping order, for all their nightly patrols throughout the city, the Moon Troopers had not nearly slowed the rate of disappearances. Muses, fairies, she’d be surprised to find a soul left soon.

Flower tucked the letter into her belt. The shadows in the house lengthened around her; she hurried down the stairs, through the sparse foyer, and then locked the door behind her and hurried across the cobblestone road that divided her house and garden, right on the edge of the Muse Quarter, from the labyrinth of tenements that spread throughout the rest of the city.

Sunset soaked the tall, narrow buildings a deep orange, and made the eye-like windows gleam. She had only to traverse two streets to reach the thoroughfare. A door slammed at her approach. A stray cat slunk around a corner.

Flower wrapped her arms around herself, comforted by the presence of the scroll in her belt. Not, she hoped, her last hope, but close to it. The king would come. He would put things right.

She almost walked right past the pile of tattered rags in a recess in the wall, one of the old street-stores the Guild had closed down a year or two ago, but something made her stop. Not a good idea, stopping in the street. Not now.

Flower looked up and down the empty road. Not a soul in sight. Perhaps some eyes, peering from a window high above, but she didn’t mind that. There was some little comfort in being seen by an ordinary citizen. She returned to the recess, crouched down by the rags, and cautiously pulled some aside.

A man slept under there. Her breath caught. Not just a man, a muse. A muse. She hadn’t laid eyes on her own kind in months! Flower leaned closer, checking for signs of life. Yes, he breathed, thank Mnemosyne, although his skin felt like ice, and he smelled as though he hadn’t seen water in weeks. He was in such a state, it took a full three minutes for recognition to not only sink in, but immediately ruin an already troubled day.

The Champion. She could see a lock of blonde hair under all that dirt, and something of the man she once knew in the sallow, too-thin face. She’d not seen him for years, and the last time – she clenched her jaw. He’d been brought to her five years ago, raving about lightning and ghosts. She’d picked him up, dried him out and sent him on his way, but the Champion, the man tasked with defending Shadow at all costs, had already been addicted to Vibe then for twenty years.

Flower peeled back the blankets a little more, and removed a slim, empty glass bottle with two fingers. She sniffed it and recoiled. “Damn you, Nikifor!” She didn’t often give in to displays of temper, but some things just called for it. She flung the bottle at the wall, and felt good about the resulting smash of glass.

He didn’t stir.

Flower replaced the blankets around his shoulders and glanced nervously at the deepening shadows. “At least you’re alive,” she whispered, and as the anger drained away, a deep-seated horror replaced it, for his presence just made the disappearances all the more real. “I have to go send a message to the king,” she told the sleeping man. “Before dark. Then I’ll come back for you, you can’t sleep here.”

(Part 2 coming soon...)

The Beginning (Part 1)

They crept down the stairs, tense and wary. Rainbow leaned on the brothers heavily after wrenching her ankle mid-climb out of out the hole she’d fallen through. None of them spoke. They didn’t need to. Nikifor’s thoughts pounded inside his skull, shouted louder than they had any right to. Every damned hair on his body stood on end. Every shadow they passed lurked, alive, waiting to reach out. He needed to get to the library, where it was safe, and hide in a corner amongst the books to re-read the last words of Magnus and figure out how he could write such lies, or if...

No. The alternative was simply unthinkable. The king could not possibly be evil.

Finally, finally, they made it to the bottom of those forbidden stairs. They stopped a moment in the passage, listened for voices, but no ambush awaited.

“We should find you a medic.” Nikolai’s words were subdued.

“No,” Rainbow replied, sounding testy. “Then we’d have to lie about how I hurt myself, and then we’d have to keep our story straight. Help me to my room, I’ll just strap it up myself.” She turned her piercing, unsmiling eyes to Nikifor. “Carry me. It’ll be faster.”

Nikolai’s eyebrow quirked, but he made no other comment.

Nikifor shrugged, picked her up awkwardly, and tried to ignore the moment she buried her face in his shoulder and shuddered. Vulnerability never seemed quite real in Rainbow, but he wouldn’t judge. He went as quickly as he could down the three halls that led to the women’s wing, relieved to encounter nobody along the way. Nikolai opened the door for them; he went in and lowered her onto the nearest couch, then stretched his aching arms.

“Thank you Nikifor.” She opened her mouth to say something more.

“I have to go.” Actually, he couldn’t stand to be around either of them another moment. Nikifor turned on his heel and almost ran from the room, out of the women’s quarters, down the stairs and left through the twisting passages that led to the library. Only then could he slow, breathe, begin to calm. The shelves of dusty books worked their magic. Nobody else wanted to look after this treasure trove; they’d been quite happy to hand it to him, and since then, he’d made it his domain. The books were cared for and ordered and returned to the shelves every time a student moved them. He’d read hundreds, and had thousands left to read yet. There were twenty volumes of philosophy by Magnus.

He stumbled down the stacks, turned into a dark corner that held a scratched-up divan and table for studying, and collapsed. With trembling hands, he lit the candle on the table, took the leather he’d hidden in his sleeve, and spread it out.

This is the last word of Magnus of the Wild Blackthorns at the Mouth of the Screaming Cave. I am not prey to the madness they speak of me...

He closed his eyes and laid his hand on the leather, let the ancient ink and the shadows whisper to him. He didn’t know if he was supposed to. Muses were supposed to focus on candlelight and hone their control. They were supposed to walk amongst the humans in the world of Dream while they slept, and inspire them. Most of all they were supposed to adhere to millennia of tradition and love their king and respect the law.

The darkness shuddered. The king is evil.

Magnus whispered around him, trod the ground around him like smoke. One by one, he will kill us all.

Purple lightning flickered behind his eyes. A glimpse of blood, a stone knife.

He didn’t know how much time passed like that, and he didn’t hear the footsteps at all. It was only when a bony hand landed on his shoulder that Nikifor started to his feet in fright.

“They said I’d find you in here.”

“My king!” Nikifor almost fell over at the wave of sick horror the familiar face made him feel, but he managed to turn the stumble into a deep bow.

“Did I catch you sleeping? Sit down, my dear boy, I have some news for you.” King Pierus paced around him and sat on the opposite side of the table.

Nikifor sat heavily. His hands trembled. The candlelight flicked over the gaunt face of the king, turning it to a frightening, hollow skull. He thought he could still feel the dread ghost of Magnus hanging over them both. He reached out for the leather, hoping to draw it out of the line of sight of the king.

“What’s that you have there?” Pierus removed it from his hand in one smooth motion, tilted it to the candlelight and read. Lines deepened on his face. If there had been any warmth before, it went ice cold. His mouth thinned.

Nikifor wanted to run, but he dared not move.

Pierus’s grey eyes glinted silver when he looked up. “Where did you get this, boy?”

He opened his mouth, but could not make any words come out.

Pierus’s lip curved at one corner. “Did you make it yourself? Is this a plot against me?”

He shook his head.

The king rose to his feet and took two steps toward him. He leaned down, placing a hand on either side of Nikifor’s head, pulling his hair until it stung. “Of course it’s a vicious lie. You know that, don’t you, boy?”

Nikifor nodded.

“And you are loyal to me?”

“Yes my king.”

“You would die for me.”

“Y-” he couldn’t finish the lie, not with those eyes boring into him.

“That was not a question. You will die for me. So I give you leave to speak freely. Ask me the question that burns in you.”

It was terror that burned his very marrow, not a question, but one tumbled out anyway. “Did you murder Magnus?”

“Oh yes, everybody loved Magnus, didn’t they?” Pierus jerked away from him and paced the tiny space. “It is not a muse’s place to speak pretty words, only to inspire them. That’s why he went so wrong. Did you know he once spent a whole moon living up a tree and reciting backwards sums to birds?”

“No he didn’t.”

“What was that?”

Nikifor raised his voice, amazed at his own temerity. “No, he didn’t. That’s a lie.”

“That is a lie.” Pierus pointed at the leather.

Nikifor rose to his feet. Every part of him went quiet. He fear did not vanish, but it went somewhere else, and a smouldering anger replaced it. “Did you murder Magnus?”

“Don’t challenge me, boy.”

“Did you murder Augustus?”

Something inside Pierus’s eyes cracked, and he grabbed Nikifor’s face in bony fingers. “Do not speak that name to me.”

“Who was Augustus?” Nikifor forced the words out, even though Pierus had almost forced his mouth shut.

“Enough.” Pierus laid his other hand on Nikifor’s forehead, and for a moment, Nikifor could see right through to a soul as rotten as the corpse that lay under the stairs four floors above. “Has anybody else seen this?”

Nikifor tried to break free of the grip, but it only tightened. The fear returned, and the words ripped from him unwilling. “Only Nikolai and Rainbow.”

The king raised an eyebrow.

“M-my king.”

“Good. Now forget.” The fingers bored into his forehead.

A moment of blinding pain. Nikifor fell to the ground. Darkness wrapped around him, and he thought someone kicked him in the ribs.

When he came to himself again, he sat on the scratched-up divan tucked away in a remote corner of the library. His favourite hiding place. He rubbed his temples and wondered where such a headache had come from.

“I seem to have caught you sleeping,” a low, serious voice said from across the table.

Nikifor started to his feet, and almost fell into a graceless bow. “My king! I’m sorry, I didn’t know you were here!”

“Sit down, my dear boy. I’m afraid I have some grave news for you.”

Nikifor sat, a little dazed. The king had never sought him out before, not alone.

Pierus leaned forward. The candlelight made him face gaunt, like a skull. “Nikifor, the Bitter Tower has fallen, and the vampire army invasion begun. The Champion is dead.”

“The Champion?” The words fell from numb lips.

“Yes. Your father died at the hands of the Vampire King, as did your mother, and nearly every muse defending the border.”

Nikifor fell to his knees. He buried his face in his hands, horror creeping across every inch of his body.

The king continued, merciless. “You are the Champion now. At the moment of your father’s death, the priceless gift passed to you. On your shoulders now falls the destiny and the burden. You must protect Shadow. You must lead the war against the vampires.”

“I cannot,” he whispered.

“Of course you can. You must.”

“But – I’m a librarian.”

“Go and get your belongings,” Pierus said. “We leave for Shadow City within the hour.”

Nikifor remained on his knees, frozen in the library he loved, the library that kept him safe, the library he wanted to fade into right now, to draw comfort from, to grieve the father who’d never loved him and the mother who had, a little. He needed to hide from all of this.

“Now, boy.”

The sharp words drove him to his feet.

“And send me your brother,” Pierus said softly, just as he left.

“Yes, my king.” Nikifor took three more steps away.

“Send Rainbow to me as well.”

“Yes, my king.”

Nikifor walked softly, slowly, into the stacks. The shadows whispered around him, but he couldn’t hear what they said.

Need more Shadow?

The war seemed very far away.

The chapel of Mnemosyne, warmed by a crackling fire in the black stone hearth, glowed with the flickering lights of candles. Student’s heads bent studiously to their tiny flames, peaceful eyes resting on each of their own hidden worlds.

Nikifor let out a long, slow breath. Normally the peace of the chapel, the kindly blank eyes of the statue of Mnemosyne, calmed him after a long day. It had done so the entire thirty years of his education here, and all the following year too, as he sidestepped into the role of assistant librarian, more than content to hide in the shadows for as many years as the muse nation would allow it. And they would, for as long as his father could hold a sword. A child of barely forty, the Champion’s Heir held little consequence in the eyes of those in power.

But he couldn’t find peace tonight. The war seemed very far away, although something had been off for days. He wished, somewhat irritably, the students would feel it. He shouldn’t have been the only one losing sleep.

A cold gust of wind flickered through the chapel and blew out his candle and the two closest to him. A perceptible shift went through the bodies, and students opened their eyes, stretched, sighed.

Nikifor had purposely seated himself in the shadows nearest the door. Now he retreated silently from the room before the Priest of Mnemosyne could ask the students about what they’d experienced during their meditations. He hadn’t been in the mood for participating in that for about two years now, and since nobody particularly liked him, they chose not to notice his absences. Clinging to the deep, cold shadows, he hurried down the long stone hall.

“Nikifor.”

Nikifor tensed, but stopped and turned back. “Nikolai.” He tried to sound reproving, because not being a student almost made him a teacher, and his brother still had a good ten years of college left yet. “Go back to Chapel.”

Nikolai caught up to him, put a hand on his shoulder and kept walking, with one backward glance and a snicker. “You go back to chapel. Or, come with us.” He leaned closer and dropped his voice to a whisper. “Rainbow found it.”

“Rainbow found what?”

“Weren’t you even listening last week? You weren’t seriously buried in some dusty old book ignoring us?”

“That dusty old book, brother, was a vivid account of the life and philosophy of Magnus of the Wild Blackthorns at the Mouth of the Screaming Cave, and I most definitely ignored your inane prattle.”

“Not Magnus again. Did that book mention the time he chased a goat down the main street of Shadow City naked?” Nikolai bumped them both down a dusty passage, in the opposite direction Nikifor wished to go.

“That never happened!” Nikifor tried to stop and go back, but the younger muse just kept steering him. He didn’t feel like starting a fight, so he went with it and resolved to try logic instead. “Magnus wrote that to walk in the world of Dream and inspire our human artists is like skipping rocks across a calm ocean.”

“So?”

“So I want to go and find a calm ocean, I don’t want to look at some stupid haunted hole in the wall!”

“So you were listening after all.” Nikolai chuckled. “Look, there’s Rainbow.”

Rainbow waited halfway up the broken, dusty staircase that led to the abandoned wings on the fourth floor, where students were forbidden to go. She had a face that looked as though it were carved by a fine sculptor, soft blonde hair lying over her shoulders, and a straight, slightly pointed nose famous throughout the student body for how very deeply she considered it her best feature.

Rainbow ran lightly down the stairs, and stopped a little too close to him. She toyed with his shirt collar. “Hi Nikifor.”

Nikifor could almost hear Nikolai’s eyes roll. He took a half step back. Rainbow frankly terrified him. “Hello Rainbow.”

Her mouth twisted into a pout, and she sighed. “I’m surprised you came. I told Nikolai you didn’t have the stomach for it.” She climbed the stairs, hips swaying.

“And I told Nikolai I’d rather read a good book.” Nikifor followed.

“Not that awful Life and Philosophy of Magnus?” Rainbow tsk’d loudly over the clatter of her footsteps. “Didn’t he live in a barrel for a year and piss through a hole he kicked in the side?”

“No, he did not!” Nikifor turned around, ready to storm back to the library he should have gone to in the first place.

Nikolai barred the way behind him, smirking over his stupid little dusty blonde goatee. “They put the barrel on display at the Council Hall. With a plaque.”

Nikifor grunted and continued up the stairs.

“In here.” Rainbow stopped on the landing and shifted a board leaning up against the wall.

Nikifor halted at the sight of the gaping hole behind it. “We are not going in there. That’s definitely against the rules.”

Rainbow struck a match with a hiss that cut through the darkness of the staircase and the space inside the wall. “Going to tell the Principal?” She lit up a torch, lifted it from the sconce on the wall, and ducked delicately into the hole.

He’d be in more trouble if he let a student get hurt in there than for going in there himself. Nikifor swore softly under his breath and followed, Nikolai close behind.

A staircase climbed the inside of the wall. Black with age, broken, possibly burned, but a staircase inside the wall. Nikifor stared, dumbfounded. “Do not go up that staircase. It’s not safe.”

Rainbow glanced over her shoulder. “Did you read that in Magnus too?”

“Rainbow I mean it. It’s at least a thousand years old, look at it.”

She went up two steps. “You know what I heard?”

“Rainbow-”

“I heard that Magnus died after he swallowed some bees, right here in Muse College. They said he marched right up to the hive, ate a handful of bees, ran screaming up these very stairs and disappeared. Nobody ever saw him again.” She went up two more steps and shot him a grin.

Nikifor went up a step, reaching out to try and drag her back, while also trying to ignore Nikolai convulsing with laughter behind him.

“...But exactly one year later, a teacher was passing by the place he vanished, and they heard the sound of scratching inside the wall. Scratching and buzzing. And ten years after that-”

What happened ten years after that was lost in a crack and a shriek as the step gave way under her feet, and Rainbow disappeared from sight. Nikolai swore loudly.

Nikifor froze, but only for a second. Then he tentatively climbed those steps, leaned over the hole and looked down. “Rainbow?”

The light she’d been carrying flickered. He could see her pale face looking up past the flames. She sounded shaken. “I hurt my ankle a bit. You two need to come down here.”

Nikifor pushed on the edge of the hole. It cracked a little, but held. He dropped down through it, dangled for a moment, then let go and dropped to the floor. Nikolai followed on his heels, with considerably less snickering than a few moments ago.

“You should probably watch out for-”

Nikifor promptly tripped over something on the floor and fell on his face.

Rainbow snorted. “-the body. As I was saying.”

Nikifor shuddered in revulsion. It was less a body than some very well-preserved bones, grey skin still stretched across a face frozen in a moment of horror.

“Are there bees?” Nikolai whispered.

“What?”

“Are there bees? Is it Magnus?”

“Don’t be stupid.” Rainbow limped closer and bent over the body, casting firelight across it.

“Magnus died centuries ago, the bees are long gone.”

“Do bees rot? Or just turn to dust?’

Nikifor wished the two of them would shut up. His hand bled where he’d landed on it. The worst part of it was, for all the stupid stories about Magnus they liked to taunt him with, the philosopher had died here, and this could be him. He rose to a crouch and pressed his head into his hands. “We have to tell someone.”

“Shut your mouth,” Rainbow hissed. “Leave Old Magnus in peace. Nobody needs to know we were here.”

“I mean, if you want us all expelled, sure,” Nikolai added. “Not that I’d personally be sad to leave early, but did you want to be sent back to the Bitter Tower and explain all this to Father?”

Nikifor grimaced. He didn’t. He never wanted to go back to that place in his life. He stared into the flickering, jumping shadows, thinking. “Fine. We’ll have to lift Rainbow out and lie about it. How bad is your ankle?”

“Don’t tell me what to do.” Rainbow tossed her golden hair over one should and limped a few feet away from the corpse to poke amongst the clutter in the shadows. “What is all this stuff? It’s like someone used to live down here.”

Nikifor’s eyes strayed back to the corpse. Live? Not quite. At least, not by choice. The unmistakeable remnants of a shackle still clung to Magnus’s foot. He looked up and around, but could see no other exit in the leaping shadows. His skin crawled. Who would think to do such a thing? Wall a man up in the Muse College? The king would never allow it. He would know. Nobody could possibly get away with such a horrendous crime.

Rainbow’s light flicked across Magnus’s skeletal hand, laying flat on the ground in front of Nikifor, protecting something.

Leather.

A book?

Tentatively, Nikifor reached out and slid the leather out from under the dusty finger bones.

“Watcha got?” Nikolai crouched by him. “Don’t tell me you’ve found the last philosophy of Magnus. Mnemosyne’s eyebrows, you’re hopeless.”

“It’s not a book.” Nikifor very, very, gently unrolled the leather and ran his hands over the letters carved into the inner surface.

“Rainbow bring that light here.” Nikolai beckoned her back.

Rainbow bent over them, and the light made the letters jump and shine, inscribed in a precise, swirling hand, each groove filled with solid silver. “Wow it’s pretty,” she said. “What’s that about a curse?”

Nikifor couldn’t control the tremor in his hands. He clutched the leather harder and read aloud.

This is the last word of Magnus of the Wild Blackthorns at the Mouth of the Screaming Cave. I am not prey to the madness they speak of me. I am in my right mind, and I speak this truth.

Pierus, King of all Muses, has imprisoned me here in these walls, to starve and die. My only crime is to know a secret. He has reigned a bloody curse on all the Muse Nation. He has unleashed slaughter in the walls of the Muse College. I am soaked in their blood every moment of my long death, just as he soaked his hands in the blood of Augustus so long ago, of his wife, of every muse slaughtered on that bloody night for a sacrifice to what manner of horror I know not.

I am not prey to the madness they speak of me. I speak this truth: Augustus lives. I have seen him with my own eyes. I have seen the ruin of his face, and the half life in which he exists. I listened to his story, before he ran like autumn leaves before a gust of wind.

The king is evil.

One by one, he will kill us all.

The last word died into the darkness.

Rainbow gave a nervous laugh. “That’s not real.”

The silence smothered them. The corpse lay silent. Nikifor carefully rolled the leather again, but did not put it back.

“I think we should go.” Nikolai stood, put an arm around Rainbow’s shoulder, and helped her back across to the

hole in the roof.

Nikifor followed. The corpse’s accusing gaze burned into his back the whole way.

,Need more Shadow?