When someone says, "It is dark," there are many different things that they may mean. Is nighttime under a gibbous moon dark? Some may think so. The kind of person who does a sort of business that thrives under the bright cleansing effects of daylight, the kind of person who closes their eyes for the day shortly after the sun sets, for such a person, the half-light of the moon sets their nerves on edge. The decay that festers in the night, even though that decay is necessary for the growth, is repulsive.
Another sort of person may say a moonlit night is, just that, lit. They might consider a night sky speckled with stars to be dark. On such a night, when it is hard to see the ground beneath their feet, when a hand held in front of their eyes can only be seen by the star-light it obstructs, such a person would feel the dark.
There is another sort of darkness, a darkness that is velvet soft and thick, a darkness that encases, wraps, surrounds. In such darkness, there is nothing to see, nothing to hear. It is complete, seeping into the hearts of anyone who dares venture into it. This is the darkness where Silas stalked, preying on the unspeakable that thrived in its depths.
Sated for now, flush with the thrill of the hunt, Silas walked unevenly through the enveloping darkness. Ordinarily, he would slip through it with the ease of a fish moving through water, but the battle for his meal tonight had been fierce. He had not yet recovered from being thrown like a rag-doll and there was a dull grinding pain deep in his hips.
Someone, something, was following him.
After a while, he said, "I can hear you." His voice sounded flat and dull, without echo, lost in the vast unseen of the chamber he travelled through.
There was a sound that might have been a chuckle or maybe it was a growl from deep in the throat, curdling its way upwards.
Silas walked on.
The other presence stayed near, sometimes lagging a bit behind, sometimes catching up.
"What do you want?" he demanded of the darkness.
The darkness did not answer him.
The creature was closer now. Its footfalls were soft, nearly inaudible, but when the ground beneath its feet grew hard, the gentle padding sounds were accented by quiet clicks.
A whoosh as leathery wings beat their way through the cavern. Silas looked up, but of course there was nothing to see.
"Who is there?" he asked again.
Silas was not the sort to be nervous in the dark. Darkness was where he thrived.
He was not used to being hunted.
He was used to stalking his prey, letting the occasional tap of his foot be heard before he lunged. The unseen creatures, for now he was sure there were two, were causing a feeling to rise up his spine, a feeling he had not felt in some decades and its unwelcome tingle was setting him on edge.
Without warning, there was a flash of bronze light, dazzling to the eyes. The air erupted in a burst of sulfurous smoke. With a snarl, he stepped back, his cloak billowing around him.
As his eyes adjusted, he saw that the fire held the shape of a person. The flames licked around the contours of its body. Tendrils of fire danced and twisted into arms and legs, settling and solidifying into a dark skinned man with long hair that hung loose around his shoulders. His eyes were creased and ancient and held flickering embers in the pupils.
He held a ball of fire in his hand.
The light from the flame reflected and sparkled against the glittering gold collar he wore, sending motes of light into the darkness, illuminating the distant skull-lined walls of the cavern. Suddenly, thousands of empty eye sockets were watching, witnessing.
To his right, a voice spoke. "We have been watching you, Silvanas."
He turned and saw a large, snow-white wolf in the flickering light. In contrast to her fur, the shadow she cast across the ground was long and pitched black. She spoke, not as a wolf, but in a woman's voice.
"It's Silas," he corrected. "It has always been Silas. Euodius thought Silvanas sounded better."
Behind him, a gravelly voice said, "What kind of a night person hunts the catacombs when they could eat from the endless buffet overhead?"
He turned again and blinked in surprise. The creature was wrapped in cloth, from the ends of its arms to the top of its head. Great leathery wings erupted from its back. It cradled a tiny brown rabbit in the crook of its left arm.
"The question," the deep voice of the fire-being said, reverberating through the cavern, "is why did you kill the Nephelim?"
"He did not kill her," the wolf-woman said.
"It will be decades before she reforms. It is near enough."
"The question," the woman said, "is why did he kill the child?"
"The question," the mummy said, "is why is he here? This is his third city in ten years."
"Ten years is nothing to him," the wolf-woman replied.
"The question," said the fire being, "is what do we do with him?"
Silas turned from one to the next as they spoke, shifting his weight and wincing when he tried to settle on the injured leg. Finally, under the crushing gaze of the three, he asked mildly, deliberately keeping his voice quiet and disinterested, "May I?"
The fire being nodded.
"I am what I am. I am a hunter."
"And yet you do not hunt the living."
"Most of the time," the woman-wolf added.
Silas shrugged, a fluid motion. "There is no challenge in that."
The wolf padded closer, stalking around him in a circle. Her nose wrinkled and sniffed at his feet. "So, night-person. Explain yourself."
He looked at the fire-being and the wolf. The gaze of the thousand empty eye-sockets watched. When he turned back to the cloth-wrapped mummy he found himself speaking more than he usually would. "I keep apart from the society of my kind. I move from place to place, staying out of their sight."
He looked at the fire-being, "I do not know what you mean by the Nephelim, but the child," he said turning to the wolf, "was not a child, even if that is what she looked like. She had been turned, one of my kind, and she preyed on children of the living. The outbreak of the wasting disease that had been such the talk of the city, that was her doing."
"That was not the child I was referring to," the wolf said.
The mummy interrupted her. "So you hunt your own kind. A cannibal. No wonder why they do not tolerate you."
"Not a cannibal," the wolf-woman said. "A vulture. An eater of refuse."
Silas again shrugged. "I must hunt to live. You are no different, werewolf."
The wolf's hackles rose. "I," she said proudly, "am a Hound of God, not one of those poor cursed creatures."
"Enough," the fire-spirit said. Suddenly the thousand empty eye sockets drilled into Silas. "We are not here to bicker with the broxa. We are here to render judgment."
Spinning, Silas glared at him. "And who are you, to render judgment on me?"
"We," said the fire-spirit, his voice taking on a reverent tone, "are the Honor Guard. We enforce the Covenant."
Silas frowned. The Covenant. Something about that tickled a memory…something he had heard, during his apprenticeship perhaps. Back when the word meant something different to him.
He looked at the fire-being. "Tell me of the Covenant."
The wolf answered him and he looked at her. "It is said, when the Creator made all that there is, He made it of…" she added a word in no language Silas had ever heard, and he had learned many over the years. It was sung, a syllable that rang out in a clear note, like a bell. "There is no word for it in this language. Or any language except His."
Silas felt the memory stir in his mind. He had been new, confused, still in the young one's thrall. The full moon had turned blood red and, in the way of his kind, they had gathered in a clearing. A bard of the People had told stories, one of which, he seemed to remember, was the story the wolf was telling now.
"When He was done, there was still some of the," she sang the bell-like note again, "left. His creatures soon learned to use it – to heal, to grow, but most of all to fight. To grow tooth and nail, to forge rock into swords. They fought and battled to control what was left of the Creator's work, until abomination occurred: brother turned on brother, mother turned on daughter. In this great war, some adepts learned to harvest power released in the moment of death. Twisted and corrupted, it no longer healed, but instead could be wielded to warp the minds of thousands."
"Seeing what was happening, the Creator shouted Enough! Great waves swept through the oceans and mountains tumbled to sand. He gathered all that was left and withdrew from the world. Without the sparks of Creation, the creatures grew sick and desolate. Some turned their back on the Creator who had abandoned them and cursed His name. Many died. A few took a long journey and begged the Creator to give it back. And that is when He spoke His Covenant. He would let the," she sang the word again, "back into the world, so long as abomination did not again occur. He called forth five of His creatures: a dragon, a sphinx, a living man, a ghost and a water spirit and said to them: You are my Honor Guard. Add to your numbers as you will, but keep my Covenant. Guard the boundary of what is from what must not be. "
"So what does that have to do with me?" Silas asked. "I have neither turned on brother nor taken more than was my due."
The mummy answered, "Tell us about tonight's kills."
Silas frowned at the change of subject, but something about the mummy's tone made him reconsider the dismissive retort that came to mind. "I have been stalking him for days," he began. "When I first saw him on the street, hurrying along in the small hours, I could smell the blood on him. He reeked of it even though he was impeccably groomed." Silas turned and looked at the wolf, who had sat back on her haunches and was watching him with a peculiarly intent expression. Her ears were perked forward and her eyes glowed in the flickering light from the fire-spirit's hand.
"The blood caught my attention, as it does, and I followed him. Nothing much happened that night and I lost him with the dawn. When I found him again…" Silas frowned, turning to the fire-spirit and then looking back at the mummy who was stroking the tiny rabbit. He stared at the rabbit and asked suddenly, "Why do you have a rabbit?"
"For luck," the mummy said. "It is good luck."
Silas raised an eyebrow. "The foot of a rabbit is good luck," he said. "Not the whole animal."
The mummy shrugged, stroking its fur.
"Enough, Silas. Go on with your tale" urged the fire-spirit.
Silas turned to him. "There are rules for my kind, you know that? Keep the secrets. Stay in the shadows. This man, he was not of my kind but there was a witness to what he did, a child."
Silas looked away, meeting the empty eyes of the skulls that lined the wall. "There is nothing that he did that I have not done myself over the years." He turned back to look at the mummy. "But not anymore." Silas set his jaw as he looked at the wolf. "He killed the man slowly, painfully. In the end, it was the man's cries that led me to them. When the man was dead, he snapped the child's mind. You know this? The snapping of a mind?"
The mummy nodded. "Of course. The power is only uncommon amongst the living."
"Then he let the child go." Silas shook his head. "I can not abide by that kind of cruelty. Kill the boy or not. Do not leave him in the half state."
"And that is why you killed the child?" the wolf asked.
"It was a kindness," he said, looking at the wolf. Silas looked back at the fire-spirit. "I fail to see what this has to do with you, or why I am being judged for it. Killing the boy, killing the man. How does that matter? Surely the world is better without …"
The fire-spirit interrupted, his voice light and amused, "Think again, Silas. What did the man do? What did you feel? What did he say to the child, before he turned him loose?"
Silas angled his head, trying to remember. He had been so incensed, so angry, he had not noticed the details. Thinking back, he saw the man stand before the boy. He saw the man touch the boy's chin, lifting the tear-stained face until their eyes met and locked. He felt a surge of power, electric. Something he had not felt since... How had he not noticed this? Silas's eyes widened. "He said….he told the boy, 'Go tell my brother.'" He looked at the fire-spirit questioningly. "His brother?"
The fire-spirit smiled, the flames in his pupils flaring up. "He was exactly the kind of adept that the Creator called us forth to eliminate. Warring with his own kin, harvesting power through death, using it to twist, warp, destroy."
"And I took your kill?" Silas hazarded.
A low growl erupted from the wolf's throat. "He still does not understand, Haroun. Are you sure about him?"
"You grew up with the legends and you did not understand when we came," the mummy replied.
"Enough Snow-runner. Enough Kandar," said the fire-spirit. The wolf and the mummy paused and looked at the fire-spirit. "Silas," he said, "we are going after the brother. Would you fight with us?"
Silas looked from one to the other, hesitating. "I hunt alone," he said.
The wolf prowled around him, the low growl coming from her throat again. "No, you do not, you have not. Not for a while."
"Yes, I…" Silas started to protest.
"Do you think you found this man on your own?" the mummy demanded. "After daylight stole him from you, who do you think put you back on his trail?"
Silas frowned.
"You are fierce, but you were no match for a Nephelim on your own," the fire-spirit said.
Silas turned to the fire-spirit, his eyes narrowed.
"Since my mother's mother was a pup," the wolf said, sitting on her haunches directly in front of him, "you have been doing the work of the Honor Guard. We'd like you to join us. It has been a millennia since a night-person has been in our ranks."
Silas's eyes widened in surprise. He looked from one to the other.
"Well?" the wolf demanded.
"I will think on it," he said, a trace of a smile on his face as he looked at the wolf. And then his smile widened, the toothy, feral smile of a hunter. "After we kill the brother."