The Devil's Shadow | The Empty World Sequence

Four

Alexandria circa 22 AD, being Nephillim Spawn.

Paris had been gone a whole day when he came staggering into the villa wearing someone else's clothes. He wasn't seen until Ariella looked up from her couch in the reception room, having heard his dragging steps. Her face was red, tear streaked, trembling as her whole body was. Athen stood, a toddler at her feet, holding onto the couch, trying to keep his balance. It was Lily who came forward and stepped under Paris' arm.

Paris walked until he was standing at his wife's feet and then he collapsed and lay his head in her lap. She bent double, blonde hair covering both of them. "Where were you?" She asked.

"The dreams, Nymph, the dreams...I woke up and I wasn't with you..."

Everyone in the house knew that he had changed. But they did not think he had actually become different. They only thought that he had seen something, something that couldn't be good, something that made him appear less strong, less fearless. And so they were half right.

The women took care of him, waking nights themselves, as he couldn't bear to look on things by light of day. He wanted shadows, they said to each other. Shadows to hide the truth, the flaws. He wanted the darkness of the womb.

Paris would lie in bed during the days, drapes pulled over every window, shivering in the heat, clinging to Ariella, head pressed to her belly. Sometimes Athen was in bed with them, small limbs wound around his father, waking on the night with big green eyes, stroking his father's face with his tiny fingers.

And then Paris would wake, kiss them both, leave the house for a while, and come back a little wounded looking but more full of life than he was on any morning. In the hours of night Paris seemed unchanged from the man he had been before. He made love to his wife. He spoke about business or matters or personal philosophy with Lily. He seemed OK at night.

And for several years, things went all right. Ariella carved blocks of marble right in the bedroom as Paris lay in bed laughing at his son who sat naked in a nest of blankets with a small bow and quiver tied to his back. Lily taught her two young nieces to read. Things seemed all right.

Then suddenly it stopped. It just stopped working. Paris was lying in bed with his wife, he kissed her, and she pushed him away from her, crawled backward to the wall and sat staring at him, wide-eyed, blanket pulled to her chest. "What are you?" She asked.

"I am still your husband, the same person I always was."

Ariella dove at the table beside their bed and lit the oil lamp there as she kept her eyes on Paris. She held it up so that the flickering light shone on his face. "You are not the man I married! Oh if I had Psyche's fortune, but you are a beast, those are the fangs of a beast!"

"Stop living in fancy tales, Ariella! I'm your husband. I love you."

She shook violently, eyelids puckering strangely. "You wanted the shadows to hide from me, to hide the truth from me!"

Paris edged toward her, extending his hands. "Please," he said.

Ariella darted away from the bed, one hand holding the lamp, the other holding a sheet up before her body. She spit on the floor between them. "I should have stayed a Nymph, never let you touch me!"

"Ariella, listen to me, I wanted to tell you, but I don't even understand it myself. You don't need to be involved in this. Don't you see I was protecting you? I'm immortal, I don't age, and you do...I'm afraid of your power."

"May the gods strike you down for that, my husband that comes to me in the night forbidding me to look on his face by light of day! What of Athen? You monster! What of my son?"