Addressing the elephant in the room is the first step towards breaking down barriers, one mighty stomp at a time.
Brothers
I thought it would be time to visit Ábel, yet I hadn't had the heart to do so. I may have stood for an hour in front of the closed door, staring at the damned handle as if I were afraid to close my eyes in case it disappeared, but then again, it may have been only a minute.
Time is relative, and the validity of that statement was only then understood by me — at some point, I lost a point to which I could relate. All I could feel with certainty was that my eyes were dry from lack of blinking, my feet were numb, and a thousand tiny, sharp needles pricked my feet as I curled my toes.
Finally, I sighed deeply, pushed the doorknob, and stepped through the door. I didn't spend too much time with him, it seemed like barely ten minutes. I cut my hand again and filled his mouth with my blood. He showed no reaction. His body was completely healed, yet he never woke up. I pressed my lips into a sharp line, then suddenly jumped up and ran out of the ward. I did not want to see him like that.
Luna was waiting outside the door. As always, she knew what I needed. Without any greeting or question, I hugged her fragile-looking form to me. I buried my nose in her hair and inhaled the intoxicating scent of lilies. It was as if he sensed I was on the verge of a breakdown. One tender look in her eyes assured me that she would always be there for me, and I believed her. I wanted to believe her.
"Everything's going to be okay," she stroked the back of my neck.
I let go and she smiled reassuringly.
"He's never going to wake up, will he?"
Her fingers slipped between mine. She squeezed my hand.
"I'm sure he will wake up," she said comfortingly, and there was a real conviction in her eyes.
How could she be so sure? As always, I wanted to believe Luna, but I couldn't. She saw that too, but she didn't say anything.
"Come," she pulled me along behind her.
We stepped out of the stale medicine smell, and after a few blocks of walking, I saw the familiar car and trailer.
It was pleasantly warm inside, with soothing incense burning. I sat down on one of the chairs while Luna brought tea and poured it into two cups. She put one in my hand and I felt good to hold the hot cup between my palms and soak up its warmth.
She took a seat and sipped her drink.
"You're upset, but not just about Ábel," she stated quietly. "What happened?"
Being near Luna, I had to learn that I could not keep secrets from her. At first, it was really scary, then it became annoying, but sometimes it made things easier. Even though I hated being an open book, sometimes it was easier to just share my thoughts with her instead of torturing myself with them.
"During the war, I made a deal with a necromancer," I announced, and she stiffened in her seat.
Every muscle in her body tensed one moment, then relaxed the next. I wondered if she would ask the question. If she dared to ask me if I had tried to bring Jo back from the dead. Damn it, I thought about it so much!
"What happened?" he repeated in her velvety voice.
We haven't said a word about the war until now. It was like a taboo. Although I could sense her curiosity and concern, I didn't think myself strong enough to talk about it. In fact, I didn't feel strong enough then either.
"I was haunted by vengeful spirits, I thought I was going mad," I explained quietly, "I needed the Necromancer's help to get rid of them."
"What was the price?" she asked.
Her voice had never sounded so serious to me before, yet it hadn't lost the softness she used when she spoke to me.
"He did me a favour and I have debt," I replied, "He asked me to find a person, but I just can't! He is like a phantom, nobody knows anything about him!"
"Shay, necromancers are cunning creatures," she said in her sweet voice, a little calmer, "The fact that he has asked you to find this person means that you are the only one who can."
I looked up at her. Her eyes reflected a certainty I've always loved in her. She trusted me more than I trusted myself. She saw my weakness, stood by me when I teetered on the razor-sharp edge of breaking and accepted it. She knew full well I was not the powerful person people think of when they hear the word 'king', yet she stayed by my side. I wasn't sure if I deserved this blind faith, or if I liked it or hated it.
She settled into my lap so that her face was over mine. She leaned down to my lips and kissed me. Her lips moved softly over mine, sweet, inviting, and brazenly seductive. She smiled as we kissed. She knew I wanted her, and that made her happy. And when she was really happy, she became a bit too brazen.
"Command me, my king," she whispered against my lips.
I growled warningly, and she chuckled.
(...)
I got home about twenty minutes after nine. Alex was waiting in the kitchen with his hands folded, and Rolo was sitting at the table solving a puzzle.
I entered the room with a frown, but I shouldn't have. Alex's eyes bored into mine and saw the disappointed desperation I had managed to conceal until now. But who could have expected that when I was about to steal a snack from the fridge, he'd be standing guard?
Now he knows, and knowing his persistence, he won't stop until he finds out what my problem is. And he really shouldn't find out. He really, really shouldn't.
I sighed bored and sat down on one of the chairs.
"Where have you been?" the wolf asked me, and Rolo closed the puzzle, carefully putting it away.
I was then confronted with two searching eyes. What, are they ganging up on me or something?
"I was in town," I replied, "I sat down for a hot chocolate in one of the cafés."
I could barely suppress a cruel, devilish chuckle that came to my throat. I wasn't even lying! I knew Alex would have sniffed it out, but then, once I tell the truth, there's nothing to sniff out, is there? I was almost certain of my victory, but he must have guessed something because the wolf's eyes narrowed.
"You're hiding something."
Damn, he got me now. I can't answer no, because then he'll know that I'm lying.
"What do you mean?" I deflected.
"I can tell you're not telling me something..." his eyes were like a spotlight.
I was seriously beginning to feel like being in a police interrogation when the evil policemen were trying to burn out the accused's retinas with a lamp to get him to confess. And I've never had an interrogation like that... But if I had, it would have felt like this!
"Come on, you're imagining things..." I continued.
"So, are you telling us that there's really nothing you're not telling us?" the kid interjected, "Yes or no?"
I really wanted to slap the traitor. Rolo is sneaky, very, very sneaky. It was seriously a below-the-belt punch, a question that can't be avoided.
"Damn it, are you seriously going to interrogate me now?", I snapped, "I'm starting to feel like the protagonist of a crime thriller. You know, the evil kind that kills people."
I certainly wasn't lying, because I was beginning to feel an inexplicable compulsion to kill someone. I could start with the annoying cat kid.
"Exactly as you say," Rolo agreed.
You'll pay for this one day — with interest! At this point, I realized that there was nothing I could do to avoid this conversation.
"Okay, there's something I haven't told you" I shrugged, "And I don't plan to change my mind..."
Alex fixed his gaze on mine. In case things didn't go his way, his golden-brown eyes were shooting lightning bolts of anger. A vein was dangerously bulging on his forehead, so much so that I dared not tell him that he was in no position to demand anything — no one orders me! I feared that in that case, either he would have a stroke or I would be bagged in a body bag.
I could bear this smoldering stare for almost half a minute.
"All right, damn it, I'll tell you," I blurted out.
He then relaxed for a second, just long enough to take the other chair at the table.
"It's not that I don't trust you or anything," I added, "It's just that, you know, informants are the best keepers of secrets and I'm a prominent one, so you shouldn't be angry with me, it's in my nature..."
"To the point," the wolf filtered through his teeth.
At this point, winning time was no use. I didn't have enough time left to come up with a story that made sense and could even be reasonably said to be true. I sighed deeply.
"Remember the Necromancer?", I asked, "The one who helped me with the vengeful spirits..."
They nodded slowly.
"Well, he didn't work for free," I said, not failing to notice the barely perceptible tremor in Rolo's hand.
I leaned back in my chair and crossed my legs as I continued the story.
"So, I owed him one, and now he had called in the favour."
"What did he ask for?" asked Alex, concerned.
"Don't worry, nothing serious, I just need to find out the exact whereabouts of a person in town," I shrugged, "His name is Dorián Vincze."
Rolo's eyes widened for a moment, barely perceptible, and then his impassive mask slid back into place.
The wolf sighed. "Then this is not that serious..."
"Well, it's complicated nonetheless," I interjected, "I've been trying to track him down for three days, but he's like a phantom or a ghost."
Alex was surprised, but Rolo's face remained impassive.
"But how could that be?"
"I know he can use dark magic, he's probably hiding," I said.
For a moment, silence settled over the tense atmosphere.
"How will you find him?" the wolf asked again.
"There is no one I can't find in this city," I said confidently, then turned to Rolo, "I'm listening."
The boy looked surprised, he was acting quite impressively, but I was aware that if someone looked surprised for more than a few moments, they were faking it. Alex, on the other hand, was looking at me with genuine puzzlement — what can I say, he wasn't as much of a genius as I was.
"What do you mean?" asked Rolo back.
"Even if you're really proud of the mask you've painstakingly made over the years, just because you hide it so well doesn't mean you don't have any feelings. I notice every twitch you make, Rolo, it's my job," I explained, "So you might as well tell me how you know this guy!"
Rolo folded his hands and squeezed them. "I..."
"You have the choice not to tell me," I stated. "But you must be aware that I will do everything in my power to find out your secret. I suppose you know what that means."
We stared at each other for what seemed like an eternity, and then suddenly he led his gaze down to the table.
"I... I've never talked about this..." his voice sounded very uncertain and a little desperate.
I sighed deeply and stood up. "Like I said, you don't have to talk about it. I'll find out for myself."
With that, I headed for my room to finally lie down after a tiring day. Suddenly, I felt his fingers digging into the material of my shirt. I glanced behind me as I raised one eyebrow — though I didn't need to because the kid had his head down so his hair covered most of his face.
He'd barely covered two short meters, yet he was panting like he'd run the whole marathon, although he was nevertheless extremely calm.
"All right, I'll tell you."
I could barely keep a devilish grin from creeping across my lips. Beware the power of reverse psychology! It's amazing how the more you tell a person they don't have to do something, the more compulsion they feel to do it... and the pressure only increases... The soul is just a fascinating thing.
Even after ten minutes of saying that, we were still sitting quietly at the kitchen table. No one spoke. I knew I didn't have to, Rolo would tell me, he just needed time. A cat like him can be a thief, yet he would never break his word. Once he swallowed hard, I thought he was finally ready to speak.
"Dorián Vincze is my brother."
I expected everything, but not this. I would have believed him more if he had said that they had been locked up together in the juvenile prison, or maybe they had been roommates in an asylum. But no, he's his older brother.
"I didn't know you had a brother," I said.
He shrugged. "You never asked."
He didn't seem like he wanted to tell us more about the black sheep of the family, so I started asking. "Was he also raised by the old man?"
He shook his head. "Most people don't even know he exists anymore. He's erased all memory of him with a spell. It's very similar to the magic vampires rent, he just enhanced it and used it on monsters."
"Then how do you remember him?" I raised an eyebrow.
"I hardly count as a monster anymore," he said.
Alex was shocked silly.
"What happened?", I asked with tension in my voice.
He was silent again for a while, and neither of us dared to speak to him. His eyes seemed so far away as he walked among his memories, his whole being so fragile that I feared that if I spoke and broke the silence of the moment, he himself would fall to pieces before my eyes.
"I told you about how my parents were killed and I ran away..." he said, and I gave the puzzled wolf a look that I would explain it later, "My brother... wasn't home that night, as was his custom, he stayed out all night. He found me later."
He took a shaky breath and continued, "He was never normal. I mean... he didn't really have emotions. At first, he would just set things on fire, then I'd see him drown the pet rabbit of a little girl next door and hang the cats laughing with amusement. When I was a kid, he pushed me off the top of the jungle gym and broke my arm. I knew he only stopped hurting me because our parents were angry with him — our mother was the only one he loved."
Rolo paused again to gather strength to tell me the story.
"When he found me, I lived with him for a while. He was particularly kind, I began to think our parents' death had changed him. As I got over my grief, I began to find happiness again, because he was there for me and always supported me. After a year he asked me a question: would I be happy to see our mother again? He asked me in all seriousness. After that, he started telling me about the cursed volumes, more than one of which he already had at the time," he said.
"I didn't know that a shapeshifter could use magic," the wolf remarked.
Rolo nodded slowly. "Isn't it magic how we change into a different form? Magic is not something that only mages can do."
"What happened in the end?" I asked, "Did you bring your mother back?"
Rolo shivered and wrapped his arms around himself. His teeth clenched, his eyes squeezed shut.
"That night, a terrible thing happened."
He took deep breaths to calm his frantic heartbeat and gasping. At that moment, it was finally certain that the kid had experienced something no one should have to.
"We prepared the ceremony and my brother started casting the magic," he continued, "Did you know that any creature can become a necromancer? A necromancer is reborn as soon as he has completed his first ritual. Except that, to revive someone, a necromancer must sacrifice another person. It's the principle of equalization," he explained gloomily, then paused for a moment, "That night, my brother designated me as the sacrifice."
The air turned cold in the kitchen. No one spoke for a while, we just listened, stunned.
"During the ritual, I discovered the true meaning of the spell," he declared, "Necromancers, though they play God, cannot give new life or bring someone back from the dead. It is merely a cruel hoax."
"What do you mean by that?" I felt like he could not surprise me more.
Finally, I had to admit that I was wrong.
"Have you ever heard of the Mirror World?" he asked, and I glanced at the wolf in confusion, but he shook his head.
"Mirrors are gateways between dimensions," the kid continued, "No one knows how many parallel dimensions there are, or what world the door they open leads to. All I know is that the so-called Wraiths of the Mirror World are desperate to escape and cross over to this world at any cost. The necromancers simply open a gateway for them, and then trap the disembodied shadows of this world in the chosen body — that is where they get their power from. Because they favour the denizens of the Mirrorworld, they receive great power in return," his fingers clenched into fists under the table. "My brother knew he was not getting our mother back, yet he was willing to sacrifice me!"
Rolo laughed hysterically. "But he failed!"
He took a few more breaths before continuing.
"I could feel the cold biting into my bones, paralyzing me, so I couldn't even resist. I could feel the invisible hands on my skin, pulling me inexorably towards the mirror. They had tiny fingers, like those of a small child or baby, but their strength was too much to bear. I could hear their screams, more horrible than anything in this world, they kept calling me, screaming my name, and I thought my eardrums would burst. Then something happened and they let me go," Rolo paused for a moment.
It was only after many years that Rolo told me exactly why the Wraith didn't drag him away. Something quite chilling and yet reassuring had happened. Rolo heard the whispers of Death that night. That night, Rolo heard the voice of the Night God telling him that his time had not yet come. The voice of the god of passing was deep yet velvety, like the night itself, and though Rolo could not understand why, he knew he would not die.
"My brother was so preoccupied with the wonder of our awakened mother that he didn't even notice my presence — and I just shivered in the corner, where the hands had left me. They then grabbed my brother and dragged him towards the mirror. He screamed, begged, and even tried to force the hands on me again. They wouldn't listen. I distinctly remember his look of first incomprehension, then hatred. Before the mirror swallowed him up, he looked only at me, and with his last words assured me that he would return — and I believed him. I was sure he would find a way."
Rolo swallowed involuntarily.
"Sometimes..." he said hoarsely, "Sometimes when I concentrate hard, I can see things I shouldn't. Since the ceremony was done by the two of us, something changed in me afterward. I was no longer a simple shapeshifter, but I hadn't become a necromancer either. I think I was stuck somewhere between the two."
After that we remained silent for a few minutes, trying to digest what we had heard.
"You weren't running from the vampires, were you?", I asked but it sounded more like a statement, "Your brother came back to find you."
Rolo nodded slowly, and I realized that I was getting into something again that I shouldn't have. Lately, I've been getting into things I shouldn't. And the Necromancer knew about it all along — that's why he gave me the job. He knew exactly that Dorián Vincze was Rolo's brother, and that his brother was hunting him.