The breath of the men betrayed their nature. They wore the right faces, but those yellow sulphurous exhalations belonged to no mortal. In black suits, with dark glasses, they stood with their arms folded looking in on the girl lying in the hospital bed. The monitor blipped in time with her heartbeat and their chests rose and fell with the same rhythm. The antiseptic smell made their nostrils twitch.
“My daughter was like this, once,” said the first.
“Karrigan, you never had a daughter.”
“Full well I did,” Karrigan replied. “And for the record, Farrad, she was quite the charmer.”
“Really? How many men did she ensnare, then? Did she do the rounds?”
Karrigan turned away from Farrad and huffed. “It’s not about that.”
“The lords would disagree.”
“Yes, they would.” He reached up to tap his index finger against his cheek. “How was your journey?”
“Cramped. Gates aren’t what they used to be.”
“And your transition?”
“Ugh.” A muscle beneath Farrad’s eye twitched. “I’m not relishing the return trip.”
“We seldom do,” Karrigan sighed. “So…”
“So.”
“Her,” said Karrigan.
“Her,” Farrad agreed. “I’m not in the mood for this.”
“You’ve been wearing the mask too long.”
“Yes, well, one can hardly go down the street in broad daylight when they’re as ugly as us.”
“Haha!” Karrigan punched Farrad’s shoulder. “Do you remember Singapore? They thought the world was ending.”
“It was, for those fifty in the building,” Farrad replied, acidly spitting each word. “I don’t get how Bakkoran and the others enjoy all this.”
Karrigan walked into the room and placed his hand on the girl’s forehead. His fingernails were all three inches long. He bent close to the sleeping brunette’s face and took a deep sniff through his crooked, pointy nose.
“Business is business,” he said.
“Not for me it isn’t,” Farrad replied. He entered the room and parted the blinds. Rain speckled the window. “At least we aren’t out in that storm.”
Karrigan joined him at the window. They stared. The monitor continued to blip. He removed from his pocket a golden watch on a golden chain and checked it, tapping at the glass face. Cracks were spreading, their lengthening visible to the eye.
“You or me.”
“Oh, for… she’s a child!”
“Have you smelt her?” Karrigan asked. “That’s not just antiseptic. Don’t you feel it crawling across your skin? It was hard even coming in here with her.”
“Like diving into a pool you know is icy cold,” Farrad agreed. “My eyes are starting to go.” As he said it his pupils flashed red.
“I don’t know when it got to this point, but we’re here, and the clock is breaking. If we want to win this thing, we have to do it now.”
“No witnesses,” Farrad sighed.
“None,” Karrigan agreed. “I’ll do it.”
“I’ll speak the ritual.”
Karrigan strode across to the girl’s side and disconnected the monitor. Farrad raised his hands, over which red sparks were dancing. He bared his teeth. His breath hissed out. Karrigan knelt like a cliff falling into the sea and placed his hand over the girl’s heart. His eyes turned white and the traceries of black veins appeared beneath the skin around them.
“Before the light lived the darkness, and the darkness was peace. There was quiet in the black. Then the light blossomed and night was born from day, for before the light there was no night. And then came fire and heat, and the light began to consume the darkness, for cold always falls before heat.”
Lines appeared in the air, spiralling above the girl’s bed. They cast a pale, jealous luminescence on the walls, and within the swirling symbols were hints of meaning, vapours of almost-comprehension. They whispered, echoing as if in some much larger space.
“Into the light came new life, and the new life had no peace, but was ever restlessly alive, until it returned to darkness. And because the light feared the darkness above all things, it beseeched the Breathgiver to aid its survival. To the light was granted the Daybringers - mortals with blazing souls. But the darkness asked for nothing, because all things return to it in time.”
Karrigan closed his eyes and lifted his hand. From the girl’s chest rose a star-bright orb that turned the creatures’ skin almost translucent, and reveal the twisted skeletons of the beings hidden in those fleshy shells. Farrad was shouting now as the whispers rose to a roar, a roar that went unnoticed in the silent corridors of the hospital.
“Because the light’s rapacious hunger knew no bounds, the darkness was threatened. But still it asked for nothing, and set its own denizens stirring. And for the first time, those in the darkness were roused to anger. The Scions of Night now drive back the light, that the darkness might not be overcome. Peace will come again.”
“For peace, and darkness,” Karrigan grated, his arms starting to smoke from their proximity to the Day sphere.
“Quickly now!”
“Aaaaaaah!”
Karrigan opened his mouth. His jaw dropped – and kept dropping, widening, expanding, stretching open. He swallowed the orb whole, and for a moment it shone from his pores. Then the creature within him stirred, and clawed hands reached out of his mouth to wrap the orb in shadows. The lines vanished, the glare receded, the roar was silenced. The girl moaned softly.
Karrigan bent double, holding his chest. Farrad lowered his hands.
“The ritual is spoken.”
“It never gets any easier,” Karrigan said, his eyes screwed shut.
“Nor should it. We’re robbing her of something and she’ll never know. Her friends will think she’s just become boring. The spring will be gone from her step. Her eyes won’t shine any more.” Farrad’s voice broke. “But we have to! Look at us, Karrigan. We’re in agony because of the Light – because it couldn’t leave well alone. Because its very nature destroys us. All we wanted was peace.”
“But there was no peace in the Light,” Karrigan finished. “Let’s go and have a drink, somewhere.”
“I’m sure we can find a place that hasn’t paid their electricity bill this month,” Farrad said, helping his companion up. Karrigan reconnected the monitor, which began to repeat its mournful blip. Farrad left the room.
Before Karrigan followed, he paused by the bed and stroked the girl’s hand.
“Just like her,” he said under his breath, and brushed her hair away from her face. She stirred, mumbled something in her sleep and settled. “No more dreams,” he said.
The two creatures walked away down the corridor, each ceiling light dimming as they passed.
The End