Nocturne, p.1
Nocturne, page 1
part #4 of Austra Series Series
Prologue
January 1964
Dickey sat in the theater box, clutching his uncle’s hand as the stage lights dimmed and died, taking with them the last bits of applause. The singing had not impressed him; anyone in the family could hit notes far more pure than those of the star soprano on the ornate stage. But the orchestra had played so perfectly, and the color, the dancing, the drama! The audience had been bewitched. Dickey was six years old and had never shared such emotion before.
“Thank you, Laurie,” he whispered to his cousin sitting beside him.
Lawrence looked down at the boy, his expression almost as excited. “Would you like to go backstage? I could introduce you to some of the singers.”
Dickey shook his head. “I’d like to stand on the stage, though.”
“Easily done,” Lawrence said. They sat in silence for a long while, waiting for the crowds to thin before Lawrence led his cousin toward the front of the theater, past a guard who knew him well and down a narrow flight of stairs to the orchestra level. Once there, he lifted the boy onto the stage and joined him.
They wandered for a time amid the props, Dickey amazed at the backdrops hanging above them, the buildings with their secret staircases, the lights, the weights and the hidden mikes. “It seemed so real,” he whispered.
“So it was for that little time you watched it.”
“Will you take me to see your opera when they perform it?”
“If Stephen agrees to the visit then, yes.”
Dickey frowned, thinking of his flight tomorrow. “He will let me come back to Chicago. I know it,” he said.
Laurence took the boy’s hand, gripped it a moment. –Of course he will. He might even come himself,– he responded, mind-to-mind. It was a soothing touch the child was used to, and one that implied so much more. Dickey knew in that moment that Laurence would do everything he could to assure it.
“Could we walk home, down the lakefront? I like the waves.”
A frigid night, one that would drive even the hardiest humans to shelter. Laurence and his young cousin would be alone with the waves and the sky and the bright city lights the boy would likely not see for some time. “Of course,” Laurence agreed.
At the edge of the stage Laurence hesitated, looking past the open doors and into the lobby. It was still crowded and Dickey was not used to the noise of crowds or to the friendly smiles his dark eyes and silver-tinged dark hair invited. He led the boy to the back and down a narrow flight of stairs leading to the green room and rear entrance.
Near the outer door, Laurence stopped to say a few words to the conductor while Dickey went outside. The air was clear and bitter cold. Even though he was used to harsh Canada winters, Dickey caught his breath from the sudden sharpness of the wind then stepped off the exposed metal stairs and moved closer to the theater wall and the shelter it offered. Two old cars, gray with street salt, were parked alongside the theater and he rested a gloved hand on one of them while he waited for his uncle.
A sudden motion caught his eye, and he turned to see a man step into the alley and head toward him. Just a bum, he thought. Remembering what he had been told about the unpredictability of street people, he retreated between the two cars, hoping that if the darkness did not hide him completely he would at least appear insignificant enough to be overlooked.
But the man had already spied him and stood in front of him, blocking any exit unless Dickey wanted to ruin his first set of good clothes by scrambling underneath a car to escape. No need since Laurie would rescue him soon enough.
“Waitin’ for someone?” the man asked.
Not sure whether to say yes or no, Dickey said nothing.
“Sure you are,” the man replied for him and moved closer.
It never occurred to the boy to call out for his cousin, either mentally or audibly. Instead he tried to rely on his speed to duck under the man and through the door only a few yards away. But the man anticipated the move and snagged him, swinging him around and gripping him tightly.
“Laurie!” the boy screamed.
“Shut the fuck up!” the man ordered and pressed a knife against Dickey’s neck. “We’ll wait together and surprise ‘em,” he said. Dickey had little experience with an attack, but frequent advice on what to do should one occur. He followed that advice now, staying still and silent as ordered, willing the man to be calm, waiting for his uncle to come out and tell him what to do.
Laurence took in the scene even before the stage door closed, and came down the stairs to where the man stood. He knew what the man wanted, knew better than to even ask. –Don’t move. You’re doing it just right,– he told Dickey instead.
“Whatever you’ve got, I’ll take,” the man said.
Laurence reached into his overcoat pocket, realized he’d transferred his wallet to his suitcoat, reached there.
“Hurry up!” the man ordered, gripping the boy tighter. As he did his foot slipped on the icy concrete and the knife cut into Dickey’s throat.
Instincts responded to the pain and triumphed. Dickey, using the strength he had been trained to hide, gave a high pitched cry of rage then dug his teeth through the tattered cloth of his attacker’s coat, and bit down hard. The man responded by slicing into Dickey’s shoulder and throwing him away with enough force that Dickey’s body made a dent in the side of the car he fell against. Dickey bounced off, landing stunned for a moment, then backed away on all fours slowly.
With one of his own injured, Laurence struggled to remain calm. He had the wallet in his hands now but they were shaking with barely-controlled rage. As he held it out to the man, he dropped it, catching it before it hit the ground. The man misinterpreted the sudden gesture and lunged.
To Dickey the scene that followed unfolded in delicious slow motion ― the narrowing of his cousin’s eyes, the tensing of his body, the strength of his kick, the sound of the man’s attempted scream, cut off by death even before he hit the ground.
Dickey walked forward and looked down at the still form. His uncle ignored him for a moment, fighting for control, weighing what to do, caught in indecision until he saw Dickey starting to kneel beside the body.
–No!– he ordered and pulled the boy away before he left some trace of himself for the police to find and analyze. The world had gotten far too complex for simple justice.
With that sad thought dousing his own hunger, Laurence picked up the knife in a gloved hand and wiped it on the corner of Dickey’s jacket then dropped the blade in the snow beside the body. Hoping it would be enough, Laurence led the boy deeper into the alley, over the fence and through to the next street. Dickey was bruised, and while the cut wasn’t deep, he would need to feed before morning.
But not on the victim. Somewhere safe, somewhere far away.
By tomorrow, when the police discovered Laurie had used the stage door and showed up to question him about the man’s death, Dickey would be long gone, on a plane headed for Edmonton, and from there to the isolation of his home.
Laurence, of course, had long since learned how to lie.
Across the alley from the stage door, on the second floor of an abandoned warehouse ― high enough to give plenty of warning should the police get wind of his presence ― a young man shivered in his sleep and rolled over on the soiled mattress that served as his bed. His eyelids fluttered, but as he started back to a deeper sleep he heard a cry from outside and was instantly awake. Keeping low to the ground, he moved to the window. There a narrow oval had been polished in the fractured glass, allowing a clandestine view of the outside.
The alley was not lit but he had little trouble seeing in darkness. Peering down he saw one of the neighborhood junkies, his dirty knife pressed to the neck of a small child he gripped as tightly as his trembling arms would allow. The junkie faced a man in a suit ― the child’s father perhaps? No matter. The junkie needed a fix, needed it bad. Need made him vicious and unpredictable and the youth guessed that no matter how cooperative the well dressed man might be, this encounter would end in bloodshed. He ran a dirty hand across his chapped lips, pressed closer to the glass and watched.
It was over as quickly as it began ― a second cry from the child, not one of pain or fear, but of rage. Then the child bit hard into the arm that held him while he pushed the knife hand away. The junkie broke free, sliced the boy with his knife and thrust him away. A moment later he turned on the man as well.
The speed of the defense, the quick and lethal kick and, most of all, the way the child stood there as if he knew beforehand how the fight would end, convinced the youth that he was witnessing something more than a human struggle. Then, as quickly as the encounter had begun, it was over and, after a quick upward glance from the child that made the youth back away from the window, his heart pounding in fear, the pair vanished into the night.
The observer bit back a cry of triumph. He had heard rumors that an old one had been seen at this theater more than once. He thought he had only found a secure place to spend the winter. Until now he had only half believed the old tales. Now he knew they were true.
Pushing himself to his feet, the youth stretched his cramped legs and drew the blanket more tightly around himself before going down to the alley where the body lay. The scent of the child’s blood hung in the air, sharp as the smell of onions and cayenne in the casseroles his mother used to make. He bent down beside the body and looked at the crescent shaped wound on the neck, the only apparent damage. As he brushed his hand across it, he noticed that the skin was broken, the bruise seeping blood onto his fingers. He rai sed them to his lips for a taste. He risked one more, larger sample ― such a marvelous treat! ― then considered the consequences of the corpse.
There would be trouble when it was found; a lot of trouble. It would not affect the old one and his son; no, they were beyond being affected by the concerns of men. Instead, it would likely descend on him if he remained upstairs.
He glanced up at his window and sighed. After the body was found, it would be the first place the police searched. It had been a good winter home but he would need a different shelter for at least a few weeks.
Falling deeper into the shadows, he followed the alley to the next street and headed south toward the abandoned buildings on the edge of the slums. There were always shelters there, though he might have to share them.
Along the way, he stopped at an all-night diner and treated himself to a hot chocolate, throwing in five creams from the dispenser. He sipped it thankfully, letting it take the edge off his hunger as he continued on.
Part One: Richard
Chapter 1
Richard
I often feel that my twin brother and I were raised not by my own, or by our short lived friends, but by wolves. I kept the thought to myself until recently then shared it with my cousin, Laurie.
He grinned, something we rarely do even when we are only with each other because it fosters bad habits. “It wasn’t wolves,” he said. “No matter what parents may like to think, all children raise themselves.”
It’s the sort of thing he often says, and why he is my favorite relation. Stephen, my father, believes that with only half a century separating us, we would feel a bond of youth the others cannot understand.
But we share a different bond as well, one Laurie and I have never spoken of because there is no need. We both know it is real.
It can be seen clearly in my brother and me, twins but so very different. Patrick is small with that deceptive Austra delicacy, his mind nearly as powerful as my father’s and full of hellish mischief that he has always managed to compel me to share. I, on the other hand, am stronger and larger. Nineteen now but with five years of growth ahead of me, I am already over six feet, with my strength obvious in my broad shoulders and thicker limbs. My hair is different as well, coarser textured, with silver tinge on deep brown rather than the true black. My mother tells me I resemble the human uncle for whom I’d been named though Patrick prefers to think me a throwback to Mother’s Magyar heritage. As to my mind, it is like my cousin Laurie’s, with just enough power for me to get by.
As we age, our strengths will determine our destiny. I may become a master craftsman in Chaves or Ireland working to create the colored glass or design the windows that still provide a major share of our sustenance. Or I may find some special art to excel in and be loved by all as Laurie is. But most likely it will be Patrick who one day leads our firm and, if the first born are willing to allow him the honor, fathers our children. These things are denied my cousin Laurie and me. I understood the necessity of this, but not the justice that conceived us the way we are.
But no matter what my strengths or weaknesses might be, I was the instrument for the most important event in the history of the Austra family; one that has altered our future as much as the course of my own life.
Though our family history is by necessity oral, Laurie suggested that I write my story as I recall it now. He said that my memory of these events will remain perfect but that my interpretation of them will alter as I age. He believes my youthful perspective will be valuable to those of my kind born after me. He is right, but this is not just my story. There are entire portions of it that I did not live and other pieces that I feel I cannot write objectively. Patrick will set those down. And we have decided that we do not write this just for our own, but in the hope that someday others who are not family may read it. After so many changes, so much seems possible.
There are many places I can begin. I have memories of lying beside my brother in the crib and of nursing at my mother’s breast. Memories even of the time before birth, the contentment of warmth and the comforting movement of breath and heartbeat. Memories of my first hunt in the wilderness surrounding our wilderness home ― the matte silver of the moonlight on the forest mists, the whisper of the pines. The taste of my first kill; the musk of the animal’s fur, the heat of its blood, the wolf that watched me with a detached sort of pride as if I were its kin, not a potential enemy.
Patrick and I were born in the Canadian Rockies. Our births were registered there, so legally we are citizens of Canada. But when we turned five, no official came to discuss our attendance at the local school. I suppose that the books my parents had been ordering since we were toddlers and the intelligence we displayed on our rare visits to town allayed local concerns. And the isolation of our little cabin made travel to any school impossible once the winter snows began to fall. And so, my brother and I were home schooled, in a way no human child could ever hope for in this far from perfect world.
Dry words from our books alternated with the perfection of my father’s mind. All we need do was shut our eyes and he would take us to the streets of his past. Through his memory, we saw Versailles at the height of its glory, heard the Sun King’s voice, saw the poverty outside the palace’s beautiful walls, the revolution that followed. As he moved his memories forward in time, Father accented the conflicts and the carnage, the increasingly efficient methods that humans use to kill.
“Why do people kill each other?” Patrick asked, not an unreasonable question when we are incapable of any real aggression against our own.
“Perhaps because there are so many of them,” Father replied, almost absently, his hand moving east across the globe on our worktable, fingers brushing Toronto and New York, London and Berlin, Istanbul and Tokyo, those crowded centers of the human world.
I stared out the north windows at the snow-covered wilderness. Our numbers were less than thirty and the world grew more crowded every day. It served as a reminder that our most important lessons were in learning to hide.
That education began soon after we began to walk. We were instructed in how to stand with our arms slightly bent to hide their length. Later we were trained to smile with our lips closed to conceal the long rear teeth, to move slowly and carefully to give no hint of our speed or strength, and especially to avoid any situation that would arouse our instinctive need to attack.
As we aged, our parents would drive us into Dawson with them. We were beautiful children, and people watched us, but though they commented on our looks, they did not see the differences behind them. We passed those early tests, and well.
When we were older, Patrick and I were sent to stay with others in the family. Patrick loved being with Elizabeth in New York, while I was drawn to my uncle, Laurie, and his apartment on the lake in Chicago and the music that always filled his rooms. But other than those excursions, we were raised apart from humans and from our own.
All the changed the winter after we turned ten, and traveled to our tenyears ceremony to be held at our first family gathering. This was held, as it is each year, in the mountains near Chaves, Portugal, the site of the current headquarters for the company the firstborn had founded some eight centuries before Patrick and I were born.
I could describe the view of the Cantabrian mountains as I saw them from the air or my first scent of thick pine and cedars which grew on the peaks. I could describe the corporate lobby with its soaring windows of colored glass, the firm’s alpha/omega symbol inlaid in teak on the marble floor, the paintings, the sculptures ― all done by family. But there are coffee table books for that, so I will only say that I was in awe as I saw it all for the first time with my own eyes.
Our firm shuts down from the day before Solstice to the weekend after Epiphany to allow those in exile to return for a week with family. Our workers were happy to go home for the holidays with pay, but there were always a few who stayed, close friends who understood what we were. For those few, our difference made no difference.
There were even children, though not many because children are too impulsive to be fully trusted. Conscious of the importance of tonight’s ceremony, I stood apart from the games they played on the sunlit lawn behind the firm, trying to act older than my years. As it grew late, I watched parents come to claim the young ones, and smiled when I saw my mother coming for me. For a moment I was caught in the fantasy of being a human child.
