"Shadows of the Past"

Shadows of The Past
“Shadows: Stories of a Hunter”, Part Six

The wind whistled through the tall buildings with a loud shriek. Above the rooftops of Atlantia, the moon glowed a pale color, its silver light a stark contrast to the black shadows.
Inside the shops down along the street, employees and owners locked the doors and pulled covers over the windows. Then, after gazing into the deepening darkness for a moment, they left the safety of their shop fronts to venture into the night.
Through the windows of homes and apartments you could see people and families preparing to turn in for the night. People returning home from late-night work shifts sat at their dining room tables and in their kitchenettes, eating their dinners. Men and women sat before their televisions, watching their late-night soap-operas and crime shows. Young women on the upper floors changed in front of their windows, unconscious of who might be watching and exposing themselves in all their striking beauty.
Mothers and fathers tucked their kids in their beds and turned out the lights. As the parents left the rooms, the children pulled the covers up tight and stared wide-eyed into the darkness.
One mother in particular, after switching on her baby girl’s nightlight and softly shutting the door, went to stare out of her fourth-floor window into the pale heavenly crescent.
Her gaze was sad, lonely, and wistful. A question was permanently stamped across her features; a question that would never be answered.
A sudden prickling of her spine caused her to bring her eyes to earth and peer into the darkness of the buildings around her. Seeing no one, she turned away from the window. She glanced over her shoulder once more before disappearing into the darkness of her apartment.
Across the street a dark figure stepped away from the building to stand on the brink of the fourth-story ledge. Dark jeans, black t-shirt and leather jacket, and with dark hair, his very persona seemed to blend into the darkness around him.
His eyes, however, shown from under his lids with a literally burning intensity. The two smoldering orbs followed the woman as she faded into the shadows of her own room, then further, making use of an unnatural night vision.
The face remained impassive, and though the eyes appeared emotionless, they carried more than their weight in emotion. The man’s glowing eyes stared out, mirroring the woman’s pain and loneliness. The answer to her question was locked somewhere in the man’s hollow stare.
“Who is she?”
The man looked to where an amber-haired woman had come to stand next to him.
“Amelia.”
The woman’s violet eyes flashed seductively. She was around five-feet tall and her body was toned in a way only years of physical activity could bring about.
“Aye, it’s me. Been a long time, ye ken. How long, ye think, Nick?”
Nick Shadow didn’t take his eyes off the window across the way from them.
“Since Scotland? I don’t know. Time does not interest me like it does you.”
Amelia raised a lip, revealing her sharp wolf’s teeth in a grin.
“Aye, bein’ nigh immortal, makes sense. Now answer ‘me question, who is she?”
“She is… was, my wife.”
The woman’s eyebrow shot up and she looked at Nick in surprise.
“Ah’ didn’t ken ye had a wife.”
“I don’t.”
Amelia used a claw-like fingernail to scratch her scalp in confusion.
“Ah’ donna… Wait... ye mean from before?”
Nick nodded slowly, “Yes. Before.”
“Ah’m sorry, Nick. Ah’ did’nae ken, ne’er even suspected… All that time huntin’ the bloodsuckers in Scotland, ye ne’er even implied…”
The Vampire hunter grunted dismissively, “No, I did not.”
“You don’t wanna talk about her.”
“No. I don’t.”
The Werewolf looked at Nick, the confusion growing.
“Why?”
The glowing eyes of the Hunter blinked twice, as if to blink back invisible tears.
“When I was bitten by the Vampire and made into the Half-breed I am now, what seems like forever ago, I lost much. I lost my humanity, I lost my connections with the world of the living, and I lost whatever life I had. But of everything I lost, it is my family I miss the most. But I cannot go back to them, not as I am now. I can no longer love, I can only regret the loss of love.”
Amelia reached out and put her hand on his shoulder, “Ah’m so sorry, Nick. Ah’ve ne’er had a family, Ah’ve never felt that kind of loss before.”
The Half-breed glanced at her, “Be glad of that. There is no greater pain.”
“Ah ken this. But ye can’t let the pain make you what you are.”
Nick laughed harshly, “No, it does not make me what I am. I am a Vampire/Human Half-breed, I am death to those who are evil, a protector to those who are not. I am a creature of the shadows, of the darkness. I am Nick Shadow, nothing more, nothing less.”
With that, Nick stepped off the ledge and dropped to the street far below them. He landed in a crouch and, rising to his feet, strode off to disappear into the night.
Amelia remained, though, and sat on the ledge for a time. She watched the window of the woman who had once been the wife of the man who used to be Nick Shadow. And she wondered, how either of them lived after such a deep and profound loss.