Borne By Fire

Nathaniel knows Gaby vaguely, in the sense that all small town highschoolers know of each other; it’s this peripheral awareness that dims the holy shit of fear down to reasonable panic when the girl rushes down the hall, all floral prints and barely contained premeditated murder, and shoves him into an innocent row of lockers.

“You saw,” Gaby says without clarification, without a bright smiled greeting. Nothing.

“Okay—rude,” Nathaniel replies. Smoothly. So Smoothly he should be sliding down the hallway like the slick nobody he is except Gaby. Who is, yes, grip tightening, still pressing him against the locker with surprising strength for such a small young woman.

“Don’t fuck with me!” Gaby growls. Actually growls what the hell—

“I’m not-not fucking anything, or anyone,” Nathaniel motions to his body with flailing hands, “at all. At any coming time, thank you. And also please let go, I can hear the fabric of my shirt ripping which is both inconvenient and mildly terrifying.” Nathaniel’s hands move to grip Gaby’s wrists but the other teen moves quickly. She lets go, moves back a few scant inches from Nathaniel.

“You saw last night, at the cemetery. I know you did, for a fact,” Gaby holds out a hand, silencing the other quickly, “because I heard your shrill screams from, like, six feet away, and saw you impale one of the dudes with my stake. Which, good for you! You know, with the not dying and all that. Oh, and the existential crisis. Or actually staying after, that was great.”

Nathaniel doesn’t know if he should be worried at the blasé way she says all that, or the fact that she isn’t wrong. Existential crisis, indeed. I killed a dude last night. Like, stabbed a wooden spoke into his chest holy crap I’m an accessory to murder, no I am a murderer Jesus-Christ on a cracker I’m going to prison and Gaby is a sociopath she just told me she saw me kill a guy and she sounds so damn calm what the shit, really—

“You’re doing that face,” Gaby says, tilting her head curiously, “the kind of face saying you just got hit by the fact that you killed a man and are currently panicking. I was so glad, too, you were so close to skipping that whole,” she makes an all-encompassing gesture with her hand, “crisis of morality, or whatever you want to call it.”

“I like to call it ‘I woke up from an ill-planned nap at my sister’s grave, woke up to a bunch of dudes attacking you, killed a guy with a stake like some Buffy the Vampire Slayer-esque heroine except where I screamed like a banshee, ran home and fainted right after’ but I mean, if you want to call it a crisis of morality you wouldn’t be wrong, either.” Nathaniel croaks out and he’s honestly surprised he managed to word any of that. To be honest, he’s more surprised of the string of words that comprised that entire little diatribe. At least he knows he’s probably the first person in the multi-verse to ever say those words in that specific order. Hopefully.

“You’re taking this fairly well,” Gaby says after a lull in the not-conversation. Confrontation?

“Did you forget the part where you attacked me and shoved me into the locker or that we’re talking about how I killed a man in, irony of all ironies, a cemetery?” Nathaniel groans and lets his head thump against the closed locker door. Of all the small mercies he’s been owed, he’s glad the hallway is mostly empty now; a full hour after school is over. Only one or two curious souls spared glances their way when the teen was harassed, thankfully.

“Would it help if I told you the guy you killed was already dead?” Gaby smiles sweetly, head still tilted in an oddly reptilian fashion.

“Fuck off,” Nathaniel blurts. “No, seriously, fuck off right now, that shit isn’t funny.”

“Did you not notice a lack of blood pouring from the wounds? Or, you know, that they were bloodthirsty vampires? Have you never watched a single horror movie in your life?” Gaby says, annoyance painted across her features like she’s tired of keeping up a sweet, charming mask. She looks—mildly hurt, too. Huh. “You’re like a straight to Netflix D-list horror movie victim.”

“I–” He actually, really, didn’t notice. “I barely woke up from a four-hour nap. In the sun. Cut me some slack?” Nathaniel sounds plaintive, now, like he’s trying to both get pity and forgiveness with a single whiny excuse.

She calls him hopeless, then, but the look in her eyes isn’t exasperated but fond. Nathaniel doesn’t know what to do with this—any of it. He doesn’t understand what he’s done to deserve such a look, and he turns his head to the intensity of Gaby’s gaze. He stutters through his question, asking, wondering, contemplating the idea that maybe—there wasn’t blood, was there, he saw it, or rather the lack of blood, and the teeth, sharp incisors, gums swollen, lips blue, skin frozen in rigor mortis…

“I’ll explain as I drive you home,” Gaby sighs, “and answer whatever questions you have. Ya’ kind of dived in the deep side on this one. You’re in the old ‘Yaga house, right?” She doesn’t wait for his conformation; instead, Gaby turns with a flourish and bounds away, expecting the other teen to follow.

It’s late. The sky is the light steel color of a storm not meant for their little town; the hallway is getting cooler with the passing wind. It takes Nathaniel a second to make up his mind and follow the billowing skirt a few meters away. A ride is a ride, not to mention the cold and the promise of a ride through the thirty minute walk Nathaniel is accustomed to.

Gaby’s car is a sleek beauty in the near-empty parking lot; she unlocks it with the click of her keys and the two enter silently. Nathaniel has questions, so many questions he doesn’t exactly know where to start. He imagines his sister sitting in the back-seat drawl “start at the beginning, idiot” and knows he really did jump in the deep end on whatever this is, but he was already drowning anyway. He picks nervously at the bag pack on his lap, the tattered hole on his jean’s knees, the skin of his nailbeds.

“You keep picking at stuff,” Gaby warns, “and I’m going to think you’re some sort of drug addict. Or have some serious anxiety issues. Stop it.”

“It’s just how I am,” Nathaniel says and Gaby recoils at how he sounds, so broken and tired and just–“I can’t stop this as much as you can stop checking corners for the chupacabra or dark spaces for strangers in the night, okay.”

“Okay, point,” Gaby nods, turning into the long stretch of road leading to the forest. “Sorry. You cope however you want and if someone tries to mess with that then you eat them up and spit them out.” She bites her lip and slides her gaze to the other teen. “Figuratively speaking, of course.”

“How do you do that?” Nathaniel asks at last, trying to be angry but failing. He lets his forehead thump against the side window and watches the trees zoom by in a blur of dried, dead grey bark. “I have, like, a billion questions and I’m not even the one going out there and doing this. Half of me is convinced you’re lying to me,” Nathaniel ignores Gaby’s low utterance of only half? and turns to her again, “or you’re planning to kill me and dump my body in the woods in a pagan ritual for Odin or something.”

“That’s ridiculous,” Gaby snorts, “Sacrificed to Odin need to be a threefold death, tied to a tree. Not already dead then dropped in a forest.”

Nathaniel reviews the count in his head and settles for 97% probability of imminent death. He mourns the cheesy one-liners he will never get to deliver. All the bad puns no one will hear. He can see Ami now, sitting in heaven and laughing like crazy, applauding her older brother’s survival instincts for allowing him to think that getting into the car of the young woman he witnessed murder three men the night before was a good idea.

“Do, uh, the police– you know, the law enforcement; the ones that get people for, ya’ know, murder, for example– uhh… do they know about what you do?”

“Of course they do, Nathaniel.”

“Nat is fine,” he mutters. “No– wait, seriously?”

“Yes, Nat,” Gaby says all exasperation and rolling eyes. “Obviously, or there would be a lot of questions about bodies. Why does no one ever think the police know, they’re detectives and shit. They should be able to piece together a vampire killed a family if the family is drained of blood. They have their incompetent moments but they’re not complete idiots.” She slows at the approaching small driveway road that leads to the old Yaga house.

They didn’t know why it was called that. The previous owner was a kind old woman the town was sad to see pass over and her last name was something in Russian only she could pronounce, but Nat felt the nickname fit the lonely cottage-style house. Apparently the town did too because the nickname had stuck for a good handful of centuries. The house was known for its seclusion and had been on the market a few years until his mother and father had no choice than to buy it or struggle in a dark time to find another house somewhere near, somewhere far, anywhere.

The house was old, and it showed in a well-worn, familiar kind of cottage facade. It was welcoming in a comfortable way that couldn’t help remind one of Hansel and Gretel and render it, then, slightly unnerving. It was disconcertingly inviting to Nat, who watched the peeling face of the house peer over the ridge of the slight hill that hid it.

“I have patrol tonight,” Gaby says, effectively dragging Nat back to the passenger seat of her car. “It’s– it’s not required that you have to keep up on this, but it does me, us, people like me, to have others that aren’t the Chief of Police or paramedics in the Know.” Gaby looks unsure again, her eyes too bright with emotions Nat can’t understand to play off as nonchalant. “Like I said, you don’t have to. But. Yeah.”

It’s such a weak finish to her previous smarmy tone Nat feels awkward until Gaby hands Nat, yup, his phone as if he should have known she had swiped it from his butt-pocket at some point and it was a normal parting gift. He hesitates before grabbing the device and opening the door. he pauses, one foot out, and speaks without turning to Gaby.

“I-I can’t promise you anything,” Nat confesses. He hears Gaby sigh behind him, and pretends not to hear when she whispers I figured into the empty space he leaves in his wake.

Nat hurries into his house, escaping and he knows it’s weak, it really is, but he can’t be there for people; his emotional range is limited in it’s capacity and he is bad at showing even those he is capable of acknowledging. How can he even feign to be someone’s anchor to normalcy? Hell, he hadn’t even known Gaby personally until he stabbed a vampire with her the night before.

And that was an actual thought he had. Those words stabbed a vampire with her last night reverberate in Nat’s head until he manages to walk to his room and lie on his bed without bumping into his mom.

Obviously the answer to his troubles and current predicament is sleep; sweet ,sweet slumber from reality.

☀

“You’re kind of pathetic,” Ami says, one hand absentmindedly running through Nat’s flattened hair. He makes an intelligible noise and pushes his cheek against her jean clad thigh. He doesn’t need to look at his sister to know her eyes are crinkling at the corners as she looks down at him. “A pathetic boy-kitten.”

“I’m not pathetic,” Nat murmurs. He’s hoping this dream lasts, though. He knows it’s pathetic. He is pathetic.

“You’re hopeless,” Ami says, and she places something in her brother’s hair. “And you’re pathetic, you were never a leader or much of a fighter, but you.” Ami’s hand tightens minutely on Nat’s hair and he turns slowly to look up at her, cautious in a way he has never been before. Her eyes are cast off into the distance, as if she’s remembering some far off truth. Nat feels apprehensive, feels his hackles rise as the energy changes; static courses over his body, lighting up his nerves and setting him on edge.

Ami’s lips start to purse, and her body begins to heat up. Nat feels it through her pants, a boiling temperature that begins to char her skin from her cheeks, peel the flesh and muscle from her arms, and even as she’s burning her hand moves, rubbing his scalp with burning fingers, and she’s placing something in his hair.

Nat shuts his eyes to the heat licking at his skin; he tries to breathe but smoke blackens his lungs until all he exhales is ash, ash, ash; there’s light in his eyes, behind his closed lids, flickering in his retinas until all that remains is darkness.

Beyond the moonlit glass the trees are whispering to each other in low, rustling tongues; above the wretched shadows of the thicket, the endless abyss of the aging night sky is shot through by careless stars.

Nat gasps and the sudden intake makes his head spin. Outside, the grey skies of the afternoon have been devoured by nighttime; starlight and moonlight stream in through his window in ghostly wisps of dull yellow-white light. He lays, subdued and beaten for a few beats before letting go.

He sobs and moves his arm to cover his tears from the world; swallows thickly as if he can stomach it all—the moon, the stars, the trees, and the darkness. His forearm brushes against something soft, something fragile; with shaky hands he pulls the culprit down and with tearful eyes he sees them:

Scattered Amaranth bundles intertwined in rosy-amber laurels. He imagines Ami, little Amitiel as he remembers her last, saying “scaredy-cat” in her sing-song voice, teasing and loving and dead dead dead.

Nat sits up suddenly, decision made, grabs his phone and dials the most recent addition to his address book.

“Hey, I didn’t think you’d call so soo–”

“Is it possible to be haunted? Like, are ghosts a thing, and if they are how can you tell if it’s a ghost or a demon or some-shit?” Nat interrupts quickly, voice tinged with only a fraction of the hysterics he’s feeling. The dreams are not uncommon– he often dreamt of the forest, of sitting on his little hut with it’s impractical chicken-legs, of feeling the trees and the creatures sustained by the earth and being felt back. He’s dreamt a lot of Ami, too, since the fire and since her death. He’s talked to her in dreams but this was the first time he’s had to watch her burn away like that and it wasn’t pleasant.

“Well, sometimes there are shades, but those are harmless, and if a person has enough emotional energy then they can become more functional ghosts; poltergeists are typically malevolent spirits, but demons tend to pretend to be people in order to trick the living, and depending on their status in the demonic hierarchy they can feed off of different stuff.” Gaby sounds like she’s reciting an essay and Nat can’t help but find himself grudgingly impressed. “In your case, I’m guessing it’s because you’re sort of, not a conduit, exactly, but there’s a little myth in all of us, I guess you can say.”

Nat pauses, lets the words stew over in his head a bit. “What is that supposed to mean?” The phone line goes quiet, but Nat knows Gaby is choosing her next words carefully.

“There are stories,” she starts, “of creatures with human faces and monsters that go bump in the night. There are stories of things we should fear, and rightfully so. There are monsters that go bump in the night, but we should be worried about what taught them how.” There’s a slight pause and then Gaby sighs across the line. “You might not be a leader or a fighter, but you’re something, and it’s up to you to figure out what that is.”

“This…” Nat inhales and closes his eyes, “that was super vague and unhelpful.” Gaby laughs on the other end. “I still don’t know what to do with all this,” Nat whispers like some confession, “but I won’t be an accessory to murder and will not accept being murdered, myself, or there will be very bitter words and I swear I will haunt your ass so hard you’ll find nonsensical bloody messages saying things like ‘I watch you when you masturbate’ scrawled on every wall of your room for all eternity.”

“Alright.” Gaby says, all sober-seriousness. “It’s a dangerous thing, knowing though. It’s like once these things know that you know, they try to make up for the years you ignored that part of the world for so long.”

They chat for a bit after that, about beautifully normal things like English and Calculus and how he forgot his books before she assailed him, and when they hang up it’s still late enough to be dark outside but early enough to be conducive to productivity. Heaving a sigh and listening to his mother cooking in the kitchen, Nat prepares himself for a few hours of homework, dinner, and some dawdling before things get weird again.

☀

“If I kill these things, like, they were human b4” Gaby texts the following Wednesday. “Does that make me a monster?”

“You’re human, too.” Nat types out then looks back up at the board where his professor is trying to explain differentials in something akin to English.

☀

“cant make it 2 English, get my hw 4 me plz” Gaby sends Friday. Nat looks up from his rubbery cafeteria food at the message, looks around the room. Sure enough he catches the tail end of today’s flowy skirt as it ruffles out the double doors.

“Alright.”

☀

“Do teachers know?” Nat finally sends on Sunday.

“Principal, some cops, some meds. Y?”

“Just curious. Are they OK wit this?”

“Not really.” Chime! “But it’s not like they can help.” Chime! “This ain’t an exclusive hunters club or chosen one bs but let’s just say I have a little more mythology in me than should be intended”

Nat thinks this sounds like an innuendo, and in lieu of a reply simply goes back to watching TV.

☀

“How much mythology?” Nat asks at last on Thursday as he takes the vacant seat beside Gaby in their shared English class. “And, like, what mythology?”

“It’s not some warrior kind of stuff, Nat,” Gaby says with a vapid smile, curling a piece of hair around her finger. Right, appearances are to be kept at school. “Just something Irish, my family has been tied to this town for centuries. I guess I was born into it, too.”

“Something Irish– like a changeling or something?” Nat wonders out loud as he gets up to find his usual seat.

“More like ‘or something’,” Gaby breathes as he leaves.

☀

“Do u patrol tonight?” Nat sends, wary but tired of seeing the draft icon beside Gaby’s name on his messaging app. It’s been three weeks of pretending to forget that everything isn’t normal and he’s sick of it– of knowing, of this uselessness gnawing at his consciousness like some social parasite.

“Yea y?” Gaby’s reply is almost instantaneous.

“Come get me.”

☀

“My bright dawn! My red sun! My dark midnight!” Nat croons at Gaby as he approaches her car. With the absence of even the clouds to keep what little heat there was, Nat shivers in his thickest peacoat. The other teen is sitting in the idle car, bundled in sweaters with a wrapped bundle on the dashboard.

“You’re ridiculous, you get that, right?” Gaby snorts.

“I am lovable, and there is a difference,” Nat corrects as he enters the car. “Is there anything in particular that you have to go out and slay today, oh Buffy?” Gaby looks at him, unimpressed. “What? Not to your style? Should I call you Miss Winchester or–”

“We’re heading to the cemetery again,” Gaby curtails. “The last of the nest of vampires I was after last night sent a message to the Chief that they want to finish it where they can easily bury me, so we’re going and you’re staying in the car. I have the ER on speed dial number four, so just in case they manage to get me I need you to be support.”

Nat tries not to think of how Gaby went out before, hell, even the night before, without any support. How many times had she managed to call the hospital ahead of time so they could be prepared while she was injured and alone?

The ride to the cemetery is quiet. Gaby had tried to talk to him during the drive over, how had his mother let him go, did he sneak out, her mother knows, of course, and drinks herself into a stupor almost every night without fail so she can sleep at all without worrying that her daughter was out there with those things. There’s police, she tells him, stationed outside of her house just in case someone wants to get personal, are you friends with Kali? Gaby blushes and tells him, well, she’s really cute, but relationships are hard for people like me, people that can die any moment, and we don’t want to put others through that.

He doesn’t answer, and thinks instead of how he’s going to be sitting in the sidelines again as someone goes out with the chance of never coming back again, and all he can do is dial four and let others help.

They park across the street, giving Gaby and Nat a perfect view of the low slung gate and three people– two women and a single man, standing before the main sepulcher. Gaby inhales once, twice, reaches for the wrapped contents on the dashboard with shaking hands, and pulls out a serrated hunting knife she slides into her boot, two stakes she tucks into her belt, another she keeps on hand.

“I’ll be back. If you see things start going down for me, then run in or get help, but I need you safe, okay?” Nat nods. Gaby nods back, takes another loud breath to steel her nerves, and gets out of the car.

Nat watches Gaby as she climbs the small black gate, getting the attention of her visitors almost instantly. He’s waiting with baited breath as they exchange words then one of the women dart forward, hands extended in stiff claws; she manages a quick swipe at Gaby’s side, and even from afar Nat can tell the woman’s unnatural strength has managed to rip through the two sweaters Gaby wears.

The man tries to approach the teen from behind as Gaby clenches her side, but as he grabs Gaby’s arm in a single tight grasp she swings with the other and impales the stake through his chest. Nat lets his gaze slide over to the other two women now circling around Gaby, lips pulled back in twin snarls. They speak some more, banter, and Gaby slides down to avoid another swipe of claws and pulls her knife from the boot, twists her body and lets the knife sail through the air to kill another vampire.

Nat’s panicking distantly, he knows, feels his lungs burning, but it’s finally coming clear that this is actually real; that the blood in these people’s veins is coagulated already to the point that they don’t bleed. They’re dead. Dead. Dead.

The other woman is stalking backwards. Gaby matches her step after step and then– sways. Stops. Sways harder and falls, still holding her steak. The woman is frozen in place.

Nat’s out of the car and running, trying to scale the gate and fumbling, nicking his arm against the pointed spear-tops. He ignores the sudden throb of pain where he knows blood is probably welling, and rushes to Gaby as the woman begins to approach once more.

“Leave her alone!” Nat shouts, skidding to a stop with his body perched over Gaby’s. From this angle he can see the blood clearer, sees more than he thought was seeping through the teen’s wounds.

The woman snorts then stops, jerks back, and begins to scent the air. She pulls her lips back into a snarl, and Nat would panick over the gnarled teeth and blue-bleeding gums any other time but right now he’s more worried of the amount of blood a person can lose before they’re seriously in danger.

“You are lucky,” the woman sneers, “tell this little girl that she’s spared for now, but my nest will recover and we will be back.” She turns and sprints towards the interior of the cemetery.

“Learn new lines you Scooby-Doo villain!” Nat shouts back on instinct, already pulling Gaby’s phone out of his coat pocket. He’s going through the motions with the Emergency room clerk, taking off his coat to drape it over Gaby’s prone form, applying pressure on the wound with the strips of cloth that had been torn, and it’s all instinctual, how to help.

The ambulance that arrives is so quiet Nat doesn’t know it has arrived until the paramedic is checking him for bites and applying alcohol to his arm. They rush off together in a hurry, and the paramedics don’t question a single thing: just work with scary efficiency to cut through the sweaters and shirt, apply pressure to the wound and get them away from the Cemetery.

By the time they get to the hospital it’s almost four in the morning and Nat is waiting on a barely cushioned chair in the hallway. He’s sent a text off to his mom so she won’t worry in the morning, and his eyes are drooping with weariness before he can even uncurl from his tightly coiled position and get comfortable.

☀

They’re sitting on the wild porch of the same cabin; the wooden planks at their feet are bone-dry, earthy and rough beneath them. There are vines crawling through and around the pillars holding up the roofing, twining around the wood. Beyond the porch, a gate of white– bones, maybe, grainy and cracked but still standing, are the trees, the forest. Beyond that, that night is holding it’s breath.

“You’re still afraid,” Ami says, folding her legs beneath her. “Always so afraid.”

“Well– yeah.” Nat accepts bluntly. Ami’s head jolts up from the hands on her lap and the overflowing bundle of chrysanthemums she’s toiling with. “That’s, like, good though. Shows I’m still, you know,” Nat taps at his temple, “still all there.”

“So fear is healthy?” Ami supplies, looking away from Nat and towards the treeline.

“It’s– well, in doses, yeah.” Nat shrugs, still gazing at his sister. “Fear means you still want to survive.”

He thinks of Gaby, bruises on her arms, stitches on her side.

“You’re gonna really suck at this, you know,” Ami says softly, looking back at his flowers once more. “And this is coming from me, it’s like a holy message.” Nat can’t help the hiccup of laughter that breaks through his control. He shifts to lay next to Ami on the soft wood of the porch.

“It’s insane,” Nat finally replies.

“You are insane; a little Baba Yaga, alone in his chicken-legged hut,” Ami teases fondly. Nat hones in on the monicker, trying to add it to memory. “People will die. Are you sure this is a smart idea?”

“People are dying,” Nat pauses. “But she needs someone, like I needed someone after… after you-you died, and this is something I can do.” It’s the first time he’s accepted it out loud since the accident, and Ami’s gentle features reflect the same thoughts. “I didn’t have that– our parents had each other, had this idea of how the fire went down, how you died, but I–” Oh, he still can’t say it.

Nat’s throat constricts.

His parents had this illusion that Amitiel had died with smoke inhalation as she slept, but he had heard her voice, thick with ash and smoke, whispering from beyond the door. He had heard her and yelled her name as they hauled him out of the house, gasping, grasping and failing. And he had; he failed her, and all that was left was a marker in a graveyard that would someday be forgotten.

They had their illusion, but he had the truth.

“Oh, Nat,” Ami whispers, “you did what you could and I accepted that. I think you know it’s time you accept it, too.”

“I know.” Nat sighs.

“So, about Gaby–”

“Total lesbian, I will try my hardest to be wingman but I am on the negative end of the attraction spectrum, like no one dies if for me, Ace all the way, platonic love is the way to go.”

Ami laughs. “You’re no Don Juan,” she concedes, “but you’re no Socrates, either. She’s gonna need guidance, you know. Lots of support.”

A breeze blows through the porch. The house shudders and Nat shudders with it like a skeleton someone forgot to bury. He closes his eyes and it’s like he knows what’s going to happen, all the fights, all the victories, and where this inevitably ends; he sees it all like some film, but he knows nothing at all. These are all blunders to make, failures tohappen; it’s not set in stone but he knows the ending will always be the same.

“I’m helping someone’s emotional health.” Nat grumbles. “God help us all.”

“Ready to crash and burn?” Ami says with a bright smile.

“You know what?” Nat says, sitting up abruptly. He looks over at Ami with a half smile, and knows that it’s crazy. This is crazy. It’s a dream, just a dream, but waking up is no less coherent or realistic than talking to his dead sister on a house that walks and feels. Even the truth isn’t realistic anymore. “Everyone always remembers how Icarus died. No one ever stops to remember that he actually flew, too.”

☀

He wakes up slowly this time, still balled up on a chair in the hallway; there are aches and pains across his body, and a weird stinging sensation where he clipped his arm got nicked by the gate. He ignores all this to pull out his smartphone and go onto the web browser. He types in “baba yaga+myth” into the search bar, straightens his back, and prepares for a long night of searching for more information.

Time to see how far they can fly before reaching the sun.