The Den of Shadows Quartet

In the Forests of the Night

Demon in My View

Shattered Mirror

Midnight Predator

I
RELINQUISH MY HUMAN FORM
for that of a hawk as I leave the zoo, which has been closed for hours. The security guard fell asleep rather suddenly, as many do upon meeting my eyes, so there is no one to witness my departure.

I could bring myself to my home instantly with my mind, but I enjoy the sensation of flying. Of all the animals, the birds are perhaps the most free, as they are able to move through the air and there is so little that can stop their flight.

I land only once, to feed, and then arrive back at my house in Massachusetts close to sunrise.

As I return to human form, I catch a glimpse of my hazy reflection in my bedroom mirror. My hair is long and is the color of old gold. My eyes, like those of all my kind, became black when I died. My skin is icy pale, and in the reflection it looks like mist. Today I wear black jeans and a black T-shirt. I do not always wear black, but that was the color of my mood today.

I do not care for the new, quickly built towns humans are so fond of scraping up out of plaster and paint, so I live in Concord, Massachusetts, a town with history. Concord has an aura — one that says “This land is ours, and we will fight to keep it that way.” The people who live here keep Concord as it was long ago, though cars have replaced the horse-drawn carriages.

I live alone in one of Concord’s original houses. Over the years I have made myself the long-lost daughter of several wealthy elderly couples. That is how I “inherited” the home I live in.

Though I have no living relations that I know of, it is not difficult to influence the thoughts — and paperwork — of the human world. When mortals do begin to question me too closely, I can easily move to another location. However, I make no human friends no matter how long I stay in an area, so my existence and disappearance are rarely noticed.

My home is near the center of Concord; the view from the front windows is the Unitarian church, and the view from the back windows is a graveyard. Neither bothers me at all. Of course there are ghosts, but they do no harm besides the occasional startle or chill. They are usually too faint to be seen in daylight.

My home has no coffin in it; I sleep in a bed, thank you. I do have blackout curtains, but only because I usually find myself sleeping during the day. I do not burn in sunlight, but bright noonday sun does hurt my eyes.

The vampire myths are so confused that it is easy to see they were created by mortals. Some myths are true: my reflection is faint, and older ones in my line have no
reflection at all. As for the other myths, there is little truth and many lies.

I do dislike the smell of garlic, but if your sense of smell was twenty times stronger than that of the average bloodhound, would you not dislike it as well? Holy water and crosses do not bother me — indeed, I have been to Christian services since I died, though I no longer look for solace in religion. I wear a silver ring set with a garnet stone, and the silver does not burn me. If someone hammered a stake through my heart I suppose I would die, but I do not play with humans, stakes, or mallets.

Since I am speaking about my kind, I might as well say something about myself. I was born to the name of Rachel Weatere in the year 1684, more than three hundred years ago.

The one who changed me named me Risika, and Risika I became, though I never asked what it meant. I continue to call myself Risika, even though I was transformed into what I am against my will.

My mind wanders back the road to my past, looking for a time when Rachel was still alive and Risika was not yet born.

T
HERE WAS ASH
on my pale skin from helping to put out the fire. As my sister, Lynette, had been preparing the evening meal, flames had leapt from the hearth like arms reaching out to grab her. My twin brother, Alexander, had been standing across the room from the hearth. He was convinced this accident was his fault.

“Am I damned?” he asked, staring past me at the now cold hearth.

How did he want me to answer? I was only seventeen, a girl still, and certainly not a cleric. I knew nothing of damnation and salvation that my twin brother did not know as well. Yet Alexander was looking at me, his golden eyes heavy with worry and shame, as if I should know everything.

“You should ask these things of a preacher, not me,” I answered.

“Tell a preacher what I see? Tell him that I can look into people’s minds, and that I can …”

He trailed off, but we both knew what the rest of the
sentence was. For months Alexander had been trying to hide his powers, which were just as undesired as the fire had been. Shaking with fear, he had told me everything. He could sometimes hear the thoughts of those around him, though he tried to block them out. If he concentrated on an object, he would make it move. And, he had added, if he stared into a fire, he could make it rise or fall. Despite his efforts to control these powers, they were sometimes stronger than he was.

Lynette had been cooking supper. Now she was at the doctor’s with our papa, being treated for burns.

“It is witchcraft,” Alexander whispered, as if afraid to say the words any more loudly. “How can I tell a clergyman that?”

Once again I could not answer him. Alexander believed far more than I in the peril of the soul. Though we both said our prayers and went to church without fail, where I was skeptical, he was faithful. In truth, I was more afraid of the cold, commanding preachers than of the fires of Hell they threatened us with. If I had the powers my brother was discovering, I would fear the church even more.

“Maybe that is what happened to our mother,” Alexander said quietly. “Maybe I hurt her.”

“Alexander!” I gasped, horrified that my brother could think such a thing. “How can you blame yourself for Mother’s death? We were babies!”

“If I could lose control and hurt Lynette when I am seventeen, how much easier would it have been for me to lose control as a child?”

I did not remember my mother, though Papa sometimes spoke about her; she had died only a few days after
Alexander and I were born. Her hair had been even fairer than my brother’s and mine, but our eyes were exactly the same color as hers had been. An exotic honey gold, our eyes were dangerous in their uniqueness. Had my family not been so well accepted in the community, our eyes might have singled us out for accusations of witchcraft.

“You are not even certain
Lynette’s
injuries are your fault,” I told Alexander. Lynette was my papa’s third child, born to his second wife; her mother had died only a year before of smallpox. “She was leaning too close to the fire, or maybe there was oil on the wood somehow. Even if you did cause it, it was not your fault.”

“Witchcraft, Rachel,” Alexander said softly. “How large a crime is that? I hurt someone, and I will not even go to the church to confess.”

“It was not your fault!” Why did he insist on blaming himself for something he could not have prevented?

I saw my brother as a saint — he could hardly stand to watch Papa slaughter chickens for supper. I knew, even more surely than he did, that he could never intentionally hurt someone. “You never asked for these powers, Alexander,” I told him quietly. “You never signed the Devil’s book. You are trying to be forgiven for doing nothing wrong.”

Papa returned home with Lynette late that evening. Her arms had been bandaged, but the doctor had said there would be no permanent damage. Alexander’s guilt was still so strong — he made sure she rested, not using her hands, even though he had to do most of her work. As he and I cooked supper, he would occasionally catch my gaze, the question in his eyes pleading:
Am I damned?

W
HY AM
I
THINKING
these things?

I find myself staring at the rose on my bed, so like one I was given nearly three hundred years ago. The aura around it is like a fingerprint: I can feel the strength and recognize the one who left it. I know him very well.