The Lights and Sounds of a Chaotic Death

Paintings hung upon the walls. Faces. Blank, empty faces. Expensive foreign rugs on the floor, weapons over the doors, and animal heads over the fireplaces. Normality. This was how it worked. These people were normal in every respect. No one noticed anything odd about them.

They had visitors. A party, in fact. Everyone complemented them for...whatever it was they noticed – sometimes clothing, sometimes food, sometimes alcohol – and then they nodded, and danced on, to the tuneless tunes of Tudor England.

Tuneless, at least, to the ears of one guest, who had heard far older music than this. True music, with melodies none can describe without elaborate hand gestures. No words are sufficient. Whereas this music was merely music. Nothing special.

But of course, everything was special here. Even this era's music should sound more musical. The intruder, who hid among the crowd in plain sight – for who would notice an extra face – looked at the musicians. And he saw what was wrong.

The instruments were not quite instruments. They looked and sounded like them, but they were not. Whatever they were, they kept everyone's minds distracted, away from...away from what? What was it? The itch at the back of the guest's mind drew his eyes from one place, to another, to another. He saw everything, from the intricate stitches on a scarlet gown, to the tiniest detail on a gentleman's hat. He saw men with those stupid beards the king made fashionable, ladies with waists so small he could snap them in two, and, generally, nothing odd.

People. People created normalcy. It was artificial, it was created, it was like...like a trap. That was it. A trap. But who were they after? Not him, surely, because no one knew he existed. No. And not the hypnotised crowd of dancers, because their minds were nothing, nothing compared to the people pulling the strings. He licked his lips, tasting the air. It tasted of flowers, sweetness and honey. How nice, how lovely, how wrong. In a room full of this many people, none of whom had ever washed in their life, he should be able to taste sweat, dirt, and what came with it. What a beautiful trap, whoever it was for.

He joined in with the dancing, smiling at the young, unmarried women, dancing with them, and noticing nothing special about any of them. Except the host's daughter, whose eyes were dark, too intelligent, too odd. She was a pretty girl, fashionably pale, with black hair, covered modestly, wearing clothes that were both too simple and too complex, a dress of a dark, ominous colour that fascinated the visitor greatly. Those stitches looked ordinary, but they should not have been possible. Not without some kind of mechanism. And who had ever heard of mechanised sewing?

The girl – if it could really be called a girl, a proper girl, a human girl – saw him staring at her, and raised her head haughtily. He raised his eyebrows, and she frowned. No one should be able to question the reality. No one should be capable of the smallest twitch out of pattern or out of place. And that jerk of the eyebrows, the lazy movement of one just the slightest bit higher, that was wrong. The visitor smiled. Now the girl was frightened. None of the other guests saw it, none of the other guests could. Except that one.

He was not short but he looked...condensed, like he had been compressed to fit into his own body. His hair was brown and scruffy, his eyes were...impossible. They were not just blank, flat eyes like everyone else's. They were noticing everything. There were depths in those eyes. His clothing was normal, ordinary, drawing attention away from the strangeness he gave off, almost illuminating the room, almost casting it in shadow. How could one man be so utterly bizarre, she did not know.

Her supposed parents were busy, with the trap, her family were scattered around the hall, she was young, she was afraid, and she could not get their attention without breaking something, for instance, the spell. Putting her fears aside, she approached the stranger, studying him, trying to analyse him and work out what kind of method she should use to deal with the situation.

“May I have this dance?” He said, and she relaxed, thinking that maybe, just maybe she had been wrong. “You are the Lady Theresa, I take it?”

“Indeed I am. And you?” The man, if indeed he was a man, not an illusion, smiled, and took her delicate white hand.

“Let us just say I am not, strictly speaking, on the invitations list.”

Theresa pulled away, but his grip was like iron, and he grinned, spinning her around as he did so. Her heart sank. Everything was wrong. People did occasionally turn up uninvited, but when they did, they obeyed the rules, they had no choice, it was just what happened. They did not raise eyebrows. They did not break pattern.

“Who are you?” She whispered, pressing herself a little closer so no one could hear.

“Nobody in particular. If you want to call me anything, call me...” He paused, racking his brain for something suitable. “Lord Adam Light of Somewhere or Other.”

“You are no Lord.” Theresa spat, as they danced on.

The man shrugged, another movement that made her wince. She hoped one of the others had noticed so they could save her, but they were too busy keeping up the pretence. “I was. But my name certainly was not Adam. Just as yours is not Theresa.”

That got her. “I...I don't know what you are talking about.”

“Keep going. You're doing well.” He murmured, surveying the room as he spun her again. “I almost want to believe you. But I can tell what is wrong here. People are going along with everything. It's just as a party should be, no sadness, no discomfort. No eyebrow-raising. There should be people who refuse to be near one another and bicker and bitch all night long, but they are missing. Replaced by this lot.”

“This shouldn't be possible!” Again she tried to get away, but he did not let her go. “What are you?” Her voice was low, as if any of the other guests could notice. The music drowned her out, to them at least. The so-called Lord Adam Light looked at her and laughed.

When he at last composed himself, he shook his head and smiled. “The music isn't very musical. It's a hypnotic...something, and it's part of what is keeping everyone stupid. They never notice what is really going on here. It's a trap. No...traps are never quite this fun. It's a hunt.”

Theresa screamed. The guests danced on, oblivious. But the others looked at her, and at the man she was dancing with. Two of them, whose aliases she had forgotten and whose real names she dare not think, made their way through the crowd towards them. The stranger dropped her hands suddenly, and put his arms into the air.

“You've got me. Just tell me...who was this trap for?”

“It doesn't matter now. He's gone.” Came a cold, almost female voice, and a cold, almost female thing walked into the room. It looked a little like Theresa. It was not. “You alerted him and he escaped.”

“I did not even know he was here. I still know not who he is. But that's not the problem. The problem is, who are you?”

The woman-thing stared at him viciously. “You are human. We are not. We are the Hunters. And we hunt all the humans with any wits at all. Like yourself.”

“So the ones who notice things?” The woman-thing nodded. “The ones who do not age?” Again, it nodded. “The ones who cannot be killed?”

“All humans can be killed.” It said, puzzled. “They can stop themselves ageing with their funny little secret magics, but they cannot stop us from killing them.”

“Except me.”

The Hunters laughed and moved in for the kill. Theresa relaxed, she knew this part. She knew how to kill. Claws grew, for convenience, teeth also. Still the music played and the people did not notice. It was amazing how the trap kept working even when the victim had changed.

The lead, the chief, the not-quite-female pounced, raking her claws down the man's face. He threw her off, and the Hunters watched in horror as the skin casually resealed itself. The man drew his sword.

Theresa closed her eyes as she heard the screams start. The music stopped as the musicians threw aside their instruments. The impossible technology was holding it together, but only because their other leader, the not-quite-male was managing that. But it was collapsing in on itself, everything was dying, and the effort of maintaining the illusion alone was surely killing him.

“Who are you?” Theresa asked again, before he got chance to kill her.

There was silence. He stepped closer. “I am human, just human. More human than you are, whatever you call yourselves.”

A fire started for no apparent reason, a sure sign of her supposed father's death. Chaos descended. Or didn't. Because the people still weren't noticing anything. Someone was keeping things going, just for a minute. Someone outside. Someone more than just powerful, someone dangerous.

The sword swung, the head fell, and the entire pack were dead.

And that was where it began, sort of, when you consider all the possible places before that this story could begin, even though all those beginnings would very much spoil the middle and the end, so it begins here, with a slaughter.

After that the people left and agreed it had been a very good party. It was a shame about the family, lovely people weren't they, what a shame they died in the flames that must have started after the departure of the visitors. The other packs of Hunters came looking, and found no evidence, so went back to hunting ordinary immortals, of the sort who can, theoretically, be killed. They remained unaware of Adam, now his name was Adam.

He remained very much aware of them. Sometimes there were accidents, Hunters died, sometimes groups of humans found, in their midst, fighting alongside them, the one who cannot be killed.

And almost five hundred years passed.