I could breathe! And there was this beautiful woman, smiling at me, her hair flowing all around her like sea foam. Like the very water itself. She took my hand and we swam together, deeper and deeper into the depths of the sea. I saw the tops of a sunken pirate ship, and thousands of sparkling jewels that littered the sand below, like stars in the night sky. I saw a sleeping leviathan, its one eye as large and bright as the Moon. We swam, this mermaid and I (for I knew she was a mermaid; she had a tail like a fish, like the stories say) until we came to her abode. It glimmered bone-white in the deep blue...
They say that women are bad luck. Bad to have on ships. Because women like me anger the sea gods and cause bad weather. But of course, I’d never seen any bad weather whenever I walked onto these boats, with my hair shorn close to my skull so I looked like a young man. Not any more than usual, anyway. Old sea dogs are funny like that. They notice a lot of things. The way the wind blows, for example, or the positions of heavenly bodies. Who’s got the bigger share of sugar, tea, and rum. But they don’t notice when a young man doesn’t have an Adam’s apple, or isn’t quite shaving enough to have such a smooth face....
So Elior stood before the Court of Heaven, charged with the highest treason: loving a mortal woman and putting her above the Supreme Being Itself. The voice of the Feriluce rang out like a thousand insanities: “Elior. Prophet, Diviner, Keeper of Time. You have been charged with the highest treason. With the fraternization of a daughter of Addis. What say you?” “Guilty,” he said, his bright head hung low. And so the Order of the Feriluce, cast him out of Heaven, bound him with chains under the earth, and burned his true love on a pyre. But the story goes: the Priestess uttered a promise before she breathed her dying breath. She said that she would return, and free her love...
In a time before time, winged Feriluce lived in the Heavens far above the chaos of the newly-formed earth. Their work was to watch the world and teach its denizens the art of magic, and alchemy, and agriculture, and more, and instill the Supreme Being’s order upon all the land. Among these Feriluce was Elior, the Feriluce of Prophecy and Divination. He was among the most powerful of the Feriluce with the ability to see the course of Fate and Time itself. Elior descended unto the earth and stayed with mankind for five centuries, merely a blink of his eye. On their 499th year on earth, he met a woman—a seer, whose name is now lost to time. Elior was...
The stranger from the nightclub says his name is Valentine. He says he knows an even better party somewhere in the middle of the city, and won't you and your friend give him the pleasure of your company? By now you know he's a vampire, because who else talks like that? He looks like a vampire is supposed to look, too. And you know you're putting not only yourself but Jennie in danger when you say, “Sure!” But Jennie's game, and it's Halloween in July. So why not? And besides... you're hungry. Maybe you'll get a good snack out of this. A cheeky little nibble. Valentine leads you and Jennie into a car, shaped suspiciously like a hearse (because, duh),...
