Chapter Nine
"All happy families resemble one another, but each unhappy family is unhappy in its own way."
-Leo Tolstoy (1828-1910)
Everett, Seattle
July 13, 2059
7:46 am
The ache of stiff and cramped muscles was unbearable. Nightsky felt like his back and shoulders were holding the weight of a stone pillar. Trying to move brought uncooperative shorts from his body. The idea of lifting his head was a monumental task. Somewhere in the back of his mind he realized that he had been hanging from shackles for several hours. Getting loose would be wonderful, but every time he tried to ponder a way out he was bombarded by dreamlike images of the things he has been through.
"Ouch, that must hurt. I'm sorry about that." A soft voice called from the darkness.
Nightsky fought to focus his eyes as an elegant woman stepped into the light. She was tall, easily over six feet (perhaps seven). She walked gracefully on two long, slender legs. Her jet black curved around her waist. Her piercing eyes steadied on him as her hand lifted his chin. The touch she gave was as gentle as a mother to a child. So warm and comforting, like a big blanket.
Nightsky's mouth dropped open when he saw her face. Surprise and shock flooded soul. His mind screamed in recognition, but quickly shut down in frozen awe. "Glow?" Nightsky blurted, glancing around frantically. "Glowlady? Is this another hallucination?"
She smiled. "Why does it have to be?"
"Because you died a long time ago when I was a kid. They got you. The vampires got you."
"You're still as silly as ever." She sat next to him. Around Nightsky's neck hanged a small emblem on a strip of synthleather. Glowlady fingered the small artifact. "You still have it. I gave this little thing to you a long time ago. I don't remember if I told you what it was for."
"It means dragon." Nightsky supplied. "It was suppose to keep me safe. It's funny because I always believed that it had some kind of mystical power. It was suppose to make everything right like my own little guardian angel. It doesn't seem like that long ago."
"How much to you remember of that time?"
Nightsky shut his eyes at the memories. "Enough."
"My name is Imira, but you knew me as Glowlady then. You started saying that to me when I worked in you're family's shop a long time ago in California. Do you remember why you've always called me that?"
Nightsky nodded. "When I was a kid I saw you working in my parent's shop. You played with the talisman's my mom made. You made them glow when you picked them up. I thought it was pretty and started calling you the glowing lady."
"That's right. You remember." Imira, the glowing lady, said. "Then gangers broke into the shop. They tied us all up and took us to the old manor outside the city. They took us to the vampires. It was the vampires that took you're parents, but the we survived. We got out and we ran without ever looking back." Imira's words brought the old events back with more clarity than before. "We had to get out of Sacramento so we went North."
"To Redding." Nightsky supplied, remembering the trip from his childhood well. Redding was a small city close to California's border with Tir Tairngire. It was a place that was well known for its hard feelings towards elves because of the frequent border skirmishes.
"Redding wasn't a very nice place for us to stay. My ears didn't make it any better." Imira fondled her pointed, elfish ears. "So we slipped into the Tir aboard a smuggler's convoy. Tir Tairngire has always been tough on immigration. We were only there for a few weeks until they deported us."
"We went north again." Nightsky mumbled. "To Seattle."
"That's right. We were going to Seattle. To start a new life away from California."
Nightsky afforded a small chuckle. "Some new life." He said sarcastically. He lifted his eyes. "Only one of us made it."
Imira didn't say anything.
"Those same vampires from California, the ones that burned my home and took away my family, were waiting for us outside Seattle." Nightsky's words carried an edge. "But I thought-"
He cut himself off, searching for the right words. "I thought that got you?"
Imira smiled. "Do I look dead to you? I'm breathing, sitting here talking to you."
Nightsky shook his head. "This doesn't make sense. I saw you fall."
"Awe, Michael." She used his real name, brushing at his hair. "It's been so long. I thought that you would have been happy to see me."
Nightsky pulled back from her hand, sensing something wrong.
"What's the matter? Don't you trust me anymore."
Nightsky shook his head slightly. Trust was a strange word to him. The idea of putting his fate in someone else's hands always made him uneasy. He had been forced to do such a thing many times since he began running the shadows. Nightsky idly thought about the trust that he put in Lenny and the others. Unwittingly he realized how he often followed Lenny's instructions blindly without a thought for himself. He was trusting that Lenny knew what he was doing.
"You trusted me before." Imira said as if she were reading his mind.
Nightsky pushed the warm and fluffy side of his personality under a rug. The cold, logical portion of his mind took over. He drew on the reasoning that had kept him alive for so long on the mean streets of Seattle. "I thought you were dead, Glowlady. How did you escape the vampires?" The question was blunt and too the point. It ignored the mutual history they shared.
Her face slacked, making it obvious that she wanted to save this part of the conversation for later.
Nightsky wouldn't have it. He wanted an answer now.
"What happened?" He insisted.
Imira's nose twitched. "Well, you were right about one thing. I was caught by the vampires," She smiled, showing her teeth for the first time. The sharp, elongated canines were visible coming over her lower lip. She grinned, something that was disturbing with her sharp eyes. "but I didn't escape."
Nightsky jerked back, banging his against the wall and sending sparks into his vision.
"Ouch, that had to hurt." Imira smiled.
"You're one of them!" Nightsky blurted, attempting to move away even though his shackles made that impossible. "You're infected."
"Michael, you say that like it's a bad thing. Its not an evil thing to be a vampire. It's actually pretty good. The sunlight is a little annoying, but that's only a small price to pay. It is not that bad."
Nightsky glared at her, suddenly aware of the eerie feeling she caste into the room. He pulled against the chains. "Let me go. I want to go home."
"Why is that, Michael? Are you afraid?" Imira smiled warmly. "I don't think it's fear."
Nightsky held his breath. "What makes you think that?"
"I have a hunch." Imira replied. "I think its hate. Why do you hate so much?"
Those were the same words the boy used. Nightsky caught a flash from the abandoned school. He winced and shoved the thought aside. "You know why."
"No I don't."
"How can you not?!" Nightsky screamed. "How can you not know what I hate them so much? They, the vampires, all the infected, they took everything away from me! They took away my family, my home, and my life! If it wasn't for them things would be a lot different. I wouldn't have come to Seattle. I wouldn't have joined a gang. I wouldn't be running the shadows right now! I would be free, don't you see? I would have my life back before it was turned upside down."
Imira straightened. "So you think that everyone who has some form of the Human-Metahuman Vampiric Virus in their blood is infected? That it was their fault that you lost you're family? That's a lot of people to blame."
"It's true."
"Maybe it is, but what can you do about it? Hate? Is that the only thing you know."
Nightsky paused, then shook his head. "I know what I want to do."
"What's that?"
Nightsky didn't answer. He let his empty eyes do the talking for him. What he really wanted was to find the psychotic vampire called Darvish who had killed his family in the first place. He wanted revenge for the hand life had dealt him. Nightsky couldn't tell Glowlady that even though he suspected she already knew. A sixth sense told him to hold something and not tell her everything. A sense he developed while running in the shadows.
"Why are you running the shadows?"
He didn't answer.
"I think its because you want revenge, but you know that you don't stand a chance against all the enemies you've created in you're mind. So you think that if you stay in the shadows you'll get better."
"Worth a try." Nightsky admitted.
"Is it worth it? How many people have you hurt in you're petty quest? I bet more than us vampires have hurt."
Nightsky thought about the boy again. He thought for a moment that he could hear the Roomsweeper going off again.
"Being a vampire doesn't have to be wrong, Michael. When you're a vampire you can live forever. You never have to worry about getting hurt or growing old. It's the next best thing to immortality. I know that now and I'm happy with what I am. I'm only sorry that you don't understand this. I wish you could see."
Nightsky cursed. "You want me to understand what I hate?"
"You are only looking at one side." Imira said. "Yours. You don't think about the other. You don't want to know the other." She took Nightsky's head in her hands. Her grin revealed the fangs in her teeth. "I've always thought of you as my son. I want to show you what you're missing." Nightsky visibly shook at that. "But I'm not going to force you into it. You're cause a lot of pain and suffering on other people in your personal vendetta for revenge. I can help you put an end to your own suffering. I can give you a good life where you'll never have to worry. You won't have to live in the barrens or run in the shadows anymore. I have a daughter and I want you two to be together. I want a family, Michael. My family is not complete without you."
Nightsky lowered his eyes and gently shrugged out of Glowlady's embrace.
"I can take all of you're pain away." Glowlady said, her tongue touching the tip of her sharp canine. "You only have to want the peace. All you have to do is ask for it."
For a frightening moment Nightsky wanted it. Peace? No more shadows and no more suffering? Nightsky had always felt so distorted and uneasy inside. His sleep was often filled with nightmares and he hated admitting he was second best to anything, preferring to drive himself into oblivion. Wouldn't it be wonderful to just let it all go? To give in to an eternal life where there was no worries.
A life with a family? The word family had seemed to distant to Nightsky for years. It was like legend to him. To have a family again would be the greatest thing. To have people to turn to when he needed it and people that he could trust to look after him when he couldn't do it for himself.
An old monster chewed in the back of his mind. Its dark tendrils gripped his soul. The furious rage and hatred that he drew on for survival crept back into his blood. He remembered the torture that he endured at the hands of the vampires in California. Of being lost in the maze and falling into the pit.
........and the snakes.......
Nightsky was afraid of snakes. The mere sight of the slithering creatures bought a host of horrible memories of being trapped in a hole with those things with no way out. It was the Infected's fault. It was all their fault. They drove him into the life he now lived. They took away the family he once had.
......but to have a family again.......
The monster in the back of his mind hissed. A family with the Infected!
Nightsky snapped his eyes open, glaring harshly at Imira's thoughtful gaze.
"No." He answered flatly.
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