Table of Contents
Chapter 5 - THE FIRST THING WHICH GOD’S EYE NAMED
Chapter 6 - I DON’T WANT TO SEE
Chapter 11 - THE FACE OF THE VOID
SOMETIMES
THE HUNT IS ALL THERE IS . . .
She’s
alone. I see her now, walking briskly north. She, too, has learned not to run.
I shorten the space between us too soon, pressing down need and anger. Shall I
let her hear me? No.
She
turns, sensing the darkness moving . . . Her tender heart rate is rising. Now
she knows it’s me. She struggles not to run, looking hard over her shoulder.
Does she hope for a different ending? How could she believe that? How could she
try so valiantly if she does not?
Disciplining
my strength into grace, I shadow her . . . I’m almost touching her, breathing
the slippery smell of her fear. But the thrumming beat of her, visible through
the warm flesh of her throat, summons me. My pulseless fingers reach out for
the hammering vein and feel it pound swifter against them. She makes a strange
noise and runs.
I
watch as long as I can, her strong body straining forward, before I slide in
behind her. Magnificent, striding flight, her legs stretch and mine shadow. I
rein myself back as her endurance fails. Her blazing lungs and her tearing
heart echo through me. I could so easily overtake her, drive my teeth into her
now, but she will exhaust herself soon and have to stop. And then . . .
Then
I will take her . . .
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Copyright © 2010 by Skyler
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To Scott and Molly,
who put my feet on this path
and pushed
ACKNOWLEDGMENTS
Thank
you to my parents for the education, and for their infinite patience and
inexhaustible faith. Thank you to my children for their enthusiasm,
cheerleading, daydreaming, and forgiveness; and to my sister for keeping me
honest. Thank you to my editor, Leis Pederson, for making it better than it
was; to my agent, Holly Root, for believing in what it could be; and to my
cover artist, Craig White, for seeing Olivia more clearly than I did. Thank you
to David Bradford for his unerring critical eye; to Molly for her graphic
design genius and generosity; to ARWA for the education and encouragement, the
challenge and acceptance; to Scott for editing and managing and consoling and
babysitting; and to my crit group—ladies, you’re the pitts! Thank you to
Deborah Morrison for being a mentor in writing, parenting, and adulthood; to
Steve Dutton for riding to the rescue more than once; and to Jill White (and
Scott again) for that seminal Irish trip. Thank you to Linda Ingmanson for
saying no, and Chris Keeslar for saying yes. Thank you to Alison Greco for what
she knows about psychiatry; to Sunil Sebastian for what he knows about physics;
to Beth Henson for what she knows about medicine; and to Michael DiLeo for what
he knows about writing and for the coffee.
Thank
you to the mythic damned, my friends of contradictions, with wings of stone and
hearts on fire, for the inspiration and the company.
My
darling ones, Reborn and Undead, Damned, Cursed,
and
Misbegotten—Hell calls her absent children home.
De profundis,
G.
The
apparently unendurable conflict is proof of the rightness of your life. A life
without inner contradiction is either only half a life, or else is a life in
the Beyond, which is destined only for angels. But God loves human beings more
than angels.
—C. JUNG, LETTERS, VOLUME I,
P. 375
1
WHAT YOU SEE
The
angel of desire is damned. At least that’s what my tattoo says. Okay, if I’m
honest, it just says dam, with ned still only outlined in purple
stencil. But twenty-first-century angel that I am, I don’t give a fig for
honesty. I want speed. If Ed doesn’t hurry, no lie I can invent will explain
what he’ll start to see.
He
begins the N and glances up from the black halo of letters whose
half-circle crowns my pubic mound. “So, Olivia, you wanna tell me the story?”
Tattooists
are the new priests for the fucked-up and the thrown away. They speak the
language of symbol, and administer penance in tiny metallic lashes. They hear
confession; and Ed wants mine. Or he thinks he does. And for a minute, amidst
the jumbled iconography of Celtic and tribal patterns, the pick-your-own
pantheon of Saints Teresa and Betty Boop, I want to tell this handsome
nouveau-cleric, bent in genuflection over my crotch, everything I am.
“It’s
my birthday,” I say instead.
“Yeah?
Happy birthday.” He bows back over the N, the electric drill buzz of his
pen my only indication that the needle has started again. “You just break up
with some guy?”
“No,
but give it a couple of hours.”
He
laughs, but it’s my birthday, and my boyfriend has something special and
secretive planned—a dark omen. Men can never resist giving me what they want
for my birthday, and so I’ve slept alone that night every year since at least
the shift from the Julian calendar. Probably longer.
“Wanna
tell me about it?”
“It’s
not a story you want to hear,” I tell him.
“You
can’t surprise me, girl. I’ve seen it all.” Crouched like a cobbler, Ed hovers
inches above my low-rider briefs. I like the way this new style of underwear
exposes the unblemished white of my belly for him. I like that it conceals what
would freak out even this New York City pierce-and-brand-style veteran of the
skin artist’s trade.
“My
body misrepresents me,” I say.
The
whir of the needle stops as Ed’s dark eyes take a slow tour. “I don’t see how.”
No,
how could he? He smells of clove cigarettes and filth, and against the fabric
of my unbuttoned jeans, my hips begin to swell. So Eddie likes his girls a
little plump, eh? With a nervous clearing of his skinny throat, he returns
to his work, but it’s too late. Already, my tits are filling, pushing against
the fine lace of my bra, growing under my T-shirt. My hair darkens a fraction.
Ed won’t notice I’ve changed. He’ll just wonder why he didn’t realize before
how gorgeous this rockabilly birthday girl is. I shove my hair back from my
face, inventorying the way it now falls in Bettie Page bangs. It’s okay, unless
it slows him down. I can’t risk that.
“Four
down, two to go.” He grins up at me. “You doing okay?”
“I’m
fine.”
His
conscientious, gloved fingers avoid the white cotton framed by my jeans zipper
and belt, but he rests his wrist against the inside of my now-plump thigh. His
sunken eyes glance up over the heightened rise of my breasts, and his habitual
dabs wipe blood that no longer wells from the finished D. If he notices,
he will worry. “Do the last two letters,” I whisper, injecting sexy into my
voice to hurry him.
I
can’t hate him. He is too young and can’t help the way his dominatrix fetish
molds my breasts into Wonder Woman cones. I can hate them, though. Just once,
on my birthday, I would like to keep my native form. Ed works steadily on my E,
humming along to the music grinding from the tattoo parlor’s massive speakers.
The word parlor, with its vague overtones of powdery old ladies and
prostitutes, comforts me somehow. I’m grateful for it. Tonight is likely to go
badly. I’m meeting my boyfriend of seven months for dinner, and trying not to
hope.
To
him, I am beautiful and pure, saving myself for marriage and motherhood. He
sees me as a virginal holdover from a more romantic age. He has spent entire
nights simply kissing me. But he’s genuine twenty-first-century and only faking
patience. Tonight he is likely to dispose of pretense and ruin everything with
a nineteenth-century idea. I catch myself twisting the hair-fine chain around
my wrist, grating the brass key against the lock it can’t reach. I still my
restless fingers and swallow a growl.
“I
think you’ve got a killer body.” Ed has finished the E.
I
give him a slow, midnight smile. “You’re about half right,” I tell him.
His
needle stops again. “You’re sick, aren’t you? You’ve got cancer or something,
you know, down there?” It’s cute, the way compassion wars with disappointment
on the poorly mown field of his face.
“No.
I’m perfectly healthy,” I tell him. “In fact, I don’t think I’ll ever die.”
It’s
the most truthful thing to pass my hellfire-red lips in years. “I’m just . . .”
“Screwed?”
I
laugh. “Not ever.” My, what an honesty streak I’m on.
“I
could, you know”—Eddie shrugs—“help you out with that if you want?”
“I’m
sure you could.” Better. Back to lying. “Don’t stop.”
“I
didn’t.” But now he has. The electric needle hangs above the fork of my legs,
immobile. His confusion peers across my newly fleshy belly, over the twin tit
pyramids. I have screwed up again. I force a giggle.
“Are
you high?” Ed touches the machine to me without breaking his gaze. I wince. He
grins. “You’re high, aren’t you?”
The
needle jabs again. Again I pretend it hurts me, and Ed’s black, Brylcreemed
head bows over my pubis once more. He shares that with the ancient priests, at
least—the pleasure he takes in my pain.
“You
never told me why you wanted the tat.” Ed’s long, artist’s fingers rub ointment
into my belly, oblivious to the lack of inflammation around his freshly drawn
lines. “Damned,” he reads aloud. His fingers dip below the elastic of my
panties, spreading the slick protective gel to unmarked skin. “What did you
say, your body betrayed you?”
“Something
like that.”
“What,
it go cheat on your boyfriend without you?” He winks, carefully taping gauze
over his work. His fingers are smooth as his lines, but I don’t answer him.
“What’s
his name?”
“Adam.”
“He’s
a lucky guy.”
If
Ed takes any longer taping my bandage, or running my credit card, or explaining
my wound care instruction sheet, I run a very real risk of tearing his face
off.
“And
you’ve got some good antibacterial soap at home?”
“Yes.”
“You’ve
got my phone number there. I put it on the sheet, so if you have any
trouble—any questions—you call me, okay?”
I
leave him at the cash register and walk, with as much poise as an impatient
immortal can wrangle, to the electric blue bathroom, where I yank up my shirt
and peel down the right corner of Ed’s meticulous bandage.
The
letters are already fading. I sit on the toilet lid and stare at the dirty
floor.
I
get the same tattoo every February fourteenth. It’s my little birthday joke on
myself, but today it just isn’t funny. Not with the dread of what Adam will do.
Not with my breasts inflated to a size they haven’t been since the days when my
brother Jack walked the London streets. In those days, a lady could stretch a
courtship over a year, and be thanked for the privilege. A few months of
kissing Adam, and the darling expects me to say yes tonight. Ten minutes of
kissing Ed, and the ass would expect a different acquiescence. All I want is a
tattoo—a bad girl brand on my perfect body to mark me with what I truly am. I
check it again. The first D is gone.
“Eddie,”
I call out the bathroom door, “can you come back here a second?”
I
put my alabaster hands on the stained basin of the sink and stare into the
mirror above it. I wait for Ed’s reflection to show me my face in the silvered
glass. He slouches in. I scowl at the pinup parody of myself and slip behind
him to lock the door. I lean against the flimsy wood.
“Does
it hurt?” he asks.
“Yes,”
I lie. My perfect body can’t feel pleasure or pain, can’t transmit any
sensation more acute than simple pressure. But my other senses are keen, and
his masculine smell rises over the clove.
His
hands take my waist—do they tremble just a little, tough guy? A choked prayer
of desire escapes his tight throat, and I put my scarlet lips against his. I
let him kiss me, lipstick messy between us for elongating seconds, before I
bite into his mouth.
I
don’t mean to do it, but the subtle razor surfaces of my teeth and tongue
erupt, grazing the insides of his mouth, making cuts too small for him to feel.
It doesn’t take much to feed me, microscopic globules of blood from the tiny
surface cuts my quilled teeth make in his lips and against his gums. I suck on
his mouth and he shudders against me. He’s hungry, too.
In
his blood I taste only tedious, arcane desires, but am tempted by the whisper
of the dreams that feeding full-tooth would bring. Still, I don’t strike. It’s
not his fault. He worked diligently to give me what I asked for—a word for my
flesh, a name for my body. But if his inky blood is all I can get of what I
want, I’ll swallow what I can.
He
grapples at the zipper of my jeans, and I recoil from the danger of his
callused fingers finding my tattoo gone. He mutters something about hurting me
and slides his innocent hands over my body, away from the bandage, to tug on my
shirt. I pull it over my head for him. I will give him anything he wants with
my sandcastle tits—I can’t feel them—just let me keep feasting on his stained
and smoky mouth.
His
delicate hands run up my back, the only ugly part of my body, and close over my
breasts, grinding roughly, but my tongue laps at his gaping mouth. He would
take me right here, if I let him, hard against the too-blue door. Sex is naked
in the twenty-first century, naked as Ed’s need, and it fucks its angels fast
and hungry in the nasty bathrooms where kids who find they can’t take the
needle come to puke their humiliated guts out. If I could, I would let him,
because yes is easier than no these days, and I’m not a
cock-tease or a good girl. But I cannot, because of what I really am.
“Damned
. . .” Ed’s fingertips graze the dressing again.
I
remember to pretend it hurts me, and his cock throbs against my fat thigh. All
the letters are gone, but desire still whimpers to him, and he brings his mouth
down hard over mine again. I press his thin hand against the bandage. Why have
I never thought of this before? Pain is easier to fake than pleasure. Could
this—finally—be the loophole? Could it be suffering that frees me, instead of
love?
“Look
at you,” he whistles.
“Behold,
the damned!” I make a comic little flourish and shimmy my tits.
He
groans. “You don’t really believe that, do you?”
“Yeah,
and I need you to, okay?”
“You’re
kind of messed up, you know?”
Ed,
Eddie, Pontius Edward—he will ask the questions, he will drive the tiny,
electric nails into my flesh, but all the time, he’s washing his hands. He
doesn’t want to know, doesn’t want to be involved. He’s curious, not concerned;
a voyeur, not an actor; and I scent fear beneath the cloves.
He
can’t save me, the fucker. If I kiss him again, I will taste his hesitation. I
lick my lips for lingering flecks, and he pushes his hair back with fingers
that say hate across the knuckles. I smile into his innocent eyes and
pull on my shirt. “You’re blocking the door,” I tell him.
“What
the fuck? You think you’re leaving?”
I
grip his earlobe between my forefinger and thumb. He scrambles, panting mutely
away from the door as I bring my quilled fingernails together.
I
leave him with his new piercing bleeding softly, already cobbling the story
he’ll tell about the crazy chick he made out with in the bathroom on
Valentine’s Day after he tattooed her damned. As his story ages, we will
have had sex back there.
My
breasts are already flattening by the time the tattoo parlor door slams behind
me, shrinking toward the twenty-first-century ideal of full and firm, but more
athletic than sensual. At least I won’t be hungry when I meet Adam for dinner
tonight.
I
have been a fool. Ed could never have been my salvation. Just another fig.
Adam, however, might be. If only tonight goes differently than my birthdays
always do, if only I don’t have to leave Adam like I left Ed in the blue
bathroom—blindly wanting me. They can’t help it. They all want me. I am the
angel of desire.
Desire
is an angel in hell.
“Lord,
deliver us from demons,” Dominic said.
His
two junior postdoctoral students, one depressed, one anxious, and both on high
alert, squinted at him across a peeling Formica tabletop.
“Do
you really think that’s appropriate?” the anxious one asked.
Dominic
stretched his jaw against the damage patience was wreaking on his molars.
“Professor Dysart gave the ‘Lord, Deliver Us’ speech at the APA conference last
year. ‘From ancient times,’ ” Dominic recited, “ ‘when mental illness was
treated with technologies as crude as drills to cast out devils, to today’s
arguably equally primitive psycho-pharmaceutical attempts to alter brain
chemistry, blah, blah, blah’—that one.”
Peter,
still worried, whipped a notebook from his lab coat pocket and began
transcribing. “I thought we recommended ‘Psychopharmacological Therapies and
Posttraumatic Stress Disorders’ for the APA,” he said.
Paul
shook his jowly head. “That’s too technical for TED.”
“Obviously,”
Peter sneered. “It’s the Technology, Entertainment, and Design
conference, for God’s sake. They’re not all medical doctors, much less
neuroscientists. Some of them are artists. Dominic is right. ‘Lord Deliver Us’
is perfect. What was the subtitle for the PTSD speech, D?”
“Demons
to Drugs.”
“Christ,”
Paul said, “is there anything you don’t know off the top of your head?”
Peter
continued his furious note-taking.
“I
have it on the laptop.” Dominic gestured at the weathered shoulder bag on the
seat beside him, but Peter scribbled on. Paul took a swallow of coffee, and
Dominic surveyed the cafeteria again. It was a garish, uninteresting space, the
only spot on the MIT campus he had not yet photographed. He squinted, mentally
experimenting with focus and filter, and resolved to bring his camera in over
spring break, just to challenge himself.
“Dysart
won’t go,” he said, returning his attention to Peter and Paul. “His last flight
had mechanical trouble, and he’s seventy, for Christ’s sake. Why don’t you two
put in a joint travel request?”
“To
speak at TED?”
“Both
of us?”
Despite
the union’s peppy color scheme and the energetic noise of undergraduates, it
was the eagerness arcing between the two postdoctoral students that reminded
Dominic how tired he was.
“You’re
the senior research fellow, Dominic,” Peter said. “And the best speaker.”
“You
wrote that speech,” Paul added. “You’re the one—”
“If
you boys worked this little skit out ahead of time,” Dominic interrupted, “your
script sucks.”
The
two snorted but relaxed, only to bolt back upright again. “Hello, Professor
Dysart,” they chorused.
“Gentlemen,
I have exciting news.” A meaty hand landed on Dominic’s shoulder. “Peter, be a
good chap and bring an old man a coffee?” Dysart handed over a crumpled bill
and sat heavily beside Dominic, dropping a strategically folded newspaper
before him. “Take a look at that,” he wheezed.
Madalene
Wright, the article announced, had just withdrawn her funding from UCLA, the
only other American university performing advanced research on brain chemistry
and mental illness without pharmaceutical industry money. Dominic flashed a
predatory grin and pushed the paper across the table to Paul. “Do we have a
battle plan?” he asked Dysart.
Peter
returned with a steaming mug and a jelly doughnut, which he placed before his
idol. Dr. Dysart was not supposed to eat doughnuts. The distinguished scientist
did not request them when he dispatched his underlings for coffee, nor did he
send money enough to buy anything but the coffee he never touched. Without
acknowledging its existence, the professor sank his yellow teeth into the
forbidden offering. Dominic took the opportunity to change topics.
“We’ve
just been discussing the TED conference next month. Since you’re cutting back
on travel, Doc, why not send the Ps in your stead?”
“Paul
and Peter?” Dysart regarded Dominic through gray barb-wire brows. “I thought
you would go.”
“I’d
rather not.”
“You
spend too much time in the lab for such a good-looking young man. An escape to
warmer climes might do you some good. Besides, I hear from Alfred in Chemical
Engineering that the TED conference, to a hotshot young scientist, is like
spring break to a buxom undergrad.” The professor winked lewdly. “The
gratification of all your earthly desires, my boy! ”
Peter
writhed in suppressed anguish, and Paul sank deeper into his ample flesh, but
Dominic held his athletic body motionless, leaning back in his chair. “The
advancement of knowledge is my fondest desire,” he declaimed.
Dysart
and acolytes laughed. The tension eased. “Very well.” The doctor nodded,
sucking his fingers for jelly. “I don’t suppose you fellows could tear
yourselves away in March?”
“Professor,
I—”
“I
think we’d—”
“Happy
Valentine’s Day, Dr. O!” A petite blonde with a heart-spattered T-shirt peeking
out from her hoodie waved shyly to Dominic.
“Hi,
Jessica,” he said, and swallowed against the sudden, unwelcome but familiar
bitter taste in his mouth.
The
Ps waited just until the girl turned the corner. “Dr. O?” they sneered
gleefully.
“From
my last name,” Dominic explained. “O’Shaughnessy.” But the sounds and faces of
MIT were fragmenting into liquid shards, flying apart slowly, as Dominic’s
memory seized on an image of the pretty coed as vivid and clear as it was
impossible.
“What
about ‘the advancement of knowledge’ and all that, my boy?” Dysart’s voice was
a distant echo.
“I
said it was my fondest desire,” Dominic struggled to joke, “not my only one.”
But
it was too late. Already, a memory that could not be his had captured him. He
was running, stealing away from his village with that girl—a girl—on a festival
day six hundred years ago. Ghita tripped, and he tumbled with her willingly
into the smell of grass growing. He rolled her under him, blond against the
green. She tasted like mead, and he cupped her breast, pale and still panting,
spilling from an undeniably medieval kirtle. Ridiculous, for him to have
medieval memories.
“Parlan
d’amore,” he whispered. Her delicate eyes crinkled in joy, but from Ghita’s
beautiful lips came Dysart’s coarse laugh.
The
hallucination flickered. Dominic shoved his fingertips hard against his eyes.
“I
think the message that D.O.”—Dysart put a heavy emphasis on Dominic’s
first initial—“was trying to convey, is that he can celebrate the rites of
spring without the aid of an academic conference’s bikinied bacchae.”
“I’m
not interested in the spring riots,” Peter clarified earnestly. “It’s the
girls.”
Dominic
opened his eyes, grateful to see only ugly men again. He stood up, shaking
himself, as if to shrug the delusional memories away. “Peter and Paul will do
great,” he said and slung his laptop bag across his body. “I’ll email you both
a copy of the speech.”
He
had already turned to leave when Dysart’s phone shrilled and the professor
gestured for him to wait. “My spies,” he mouthed, flipping open the slender
device.
Paul
and Peter exchanged a grin. Each man would have willingly sacrificed the other
for the chance they now both had. Dominic held his steely focus on them. He
would not return to Ghita, her skin, so richly pale, distended in black buboes.
“Acral necrosi,” they would say now, not “the Black Death,” with little
Luciana still suckling the breathless breast. He had buried them together,
mother and child.
“Confess,”
Peter whispered, mistaking Dominic’s fierce scowl. “Now you want to go, don’t
you?”
“God,
no,” Dominic said. He rested his laptop bag on the table, impatient to fire up
the machine and document the latest, spectacular failure of his clandestine
pharmacopoeia. Insomnia he could have continued to tolerate, but grief-wracked
delusions of a wife lost six hundred years ago indicated a complete failure of
the AEDvII.2 formulation. “Besides,” he explained, catching the Ps’ puzzled
stares, “there’s no way the department would agree to three of us going.”
“Dominic?”
Dysart snapped his phone closed. “I’m sending you.”
“What?”
Peter leapt to his feet, and even Paul unfolded himself in protest.
“Madalene
Wright has accepted an invitation to the TED talks. She has registered for a
number of lectures, including ours. I have a very stout grapevine, have I not?”
Dysart beamed.
“Then
it’s gotta be D.” Peter re-creased the newspaper, closing Wright’s artfully
pickled face away from them.
“If
she’s going to be there, yeah, it has to be,” Paul agreed.
“Madalene
has just pulled her funding from UCLA,” Dysart reminded them. “She’ll have a
few extra million just freed up to hand about if she decides she’d like to.”
Peter
drilled nervous fingers on Formica. “If Dominic could persuade her to redirect
even some of UCLA’s endowment to us, we might start the memory project in
earnest, start to parse which neurons are involved in a given memory—”
“Let’s
not get ahead of ourselves, gentlemen.” Dysart lugged himself to standing.
“Dominic, you look ghastly.”
“Sorry.
I’m fine. Tired.”
But
Peter was electrified. “If we can pinpoint how neurons come together to form
networks, we might find the physical representations of specific memories. And
when we understand memory learning and expression, we’re one step closer to
memory eradication . . .”
“We’ll
patent the new soma,” Paul whispered.
“We’d
be hearing from Stockholm . . .”
Dr.
Dysart waved the Ps silent. “You’ll go then?”
Dominic
released pale lips from the vise of his teeth and nodded. He didn’t give a damn
for patents or prizes, but he did care, with rigidly masked intensity, about
the neuronal signatures of memories and their identification. Even the
impossible, if found, can be destroyed.
“So
it’s D’s quest,” Paul mumbled, when Dysart had ambled off toward the lab.
“Slay
the dragon lady and bring us back the gold!” Peter gathered three empty coffee
mugs and one full one.
“Give
the ‘Lord Deliver Us’ speech,” Paul said to the table. “What was its subtitle?”
“‘Following
the Chemical Footprints of Devils in the Mind,’” Dominic said, handing the
licked-clean doughnut plate to Peter.
“You
have one hell of a memory,” Peter grumbled. “You have no idea how lucky you
are.”
“Yeah,
I’m blessed with a hell of memory.” Dominic turned down the corridor to hide a
bitter smile. “I guess it beats a memory of Hell.”
My
flesh clings too tight around my bones, at least a dress size smaller than when
I left Eddie bleeding in the blue bathroom. He wouldn’t recognize me if he
walked in the door. Not that you get many punk tattooists in swank sushi
joints. I have showered his smell from my scentless skin and traded in my
beater-T and blue jeans for a velvet vest and silk skirt which match the
restaurant’s décor—tastefully understated—although it would be difficult to
conjure two words further from my true essence.
Adam,
innocent darling, believes I am an account exec at one of the ad agencies
downtown. It’s something I could actually do, from what I read in the bookstore
careers section. Every one of these elegant and polished bodies in the
restaurant anteroom has a job to eat up their time in exchange for the titles
they feed to one another. I want one.
Can
they sense how different I am, nestled amongst them in the stylish lobby? Their
appraising eyes rank each other and compare themselves, but I am thin and
expensively dressed, and it is enough. Blind to my angelic lineage and my
damnation, they note the style of my shoes, not the state of my soul. Just as
well. They’re six-hundred-dollar heels.
“Happy
birthday!” Adam’s light touch lands on my shoulder. I stand to greet him,
quickly shrinking an inch from my native height. I always forget he’s short. My
muted terra-cotta lips yield to his adoring kiss, my teeth’s sharp edges neatly
tucked away. I need nothing from him after my inky snack. He steps behind me,
forming a warm mantle of love against my back and shoulders in the packed
lobby’s electric loneliness. I want to wrap my pulseless shell in the human
noise and heat of his heart and lungs. I want to drill my unbreakable angel
nails into this moment and refuse to let it slip. I would drain time and
swallow it to keep the two of us standing thus, my body inside the protective
cloak of his arms and love. It is enough to hope.
I
steady myself against the scent of his wanting me, and touch the fragile
answering ache of my own desire. Not for him, not for his body, not even his
blood, but for his mortality and love. If I could turn in his arms and tell him
every poisoned thing I am, and still smell desire, not rank fear—if he could
see and love me—could I slip through him, out of human flesh and time, back to
angelic wings and freedom? This is my threadbare hope.
Every
vampire is a fallen angel of desire, and we nourish our deathless beauty on
what we fleetingly inspire in mortals who live but briefly. But just as I would
break my teeth on Adam if he did not want or fear me, he must see through the
desires I create and those I embody, in order to taste my truth and free me.
But desire, like humanity, is quick to breed and quick to die, and accustomed
to do both with closed eyes.
“You
look incredible.” Adam’s lips brush my ear. He sounds excited, maybe nervous.
Is there a ring in his pocket? Has he called ahead and planned something
humiliating with a waiter? His capable hands squeeze my elbow. I look at my
expensive shoes. Red tears bite my eyes.
“Adam?”
The hostess is a luscious thing in green velvet.
“Right
here.” He twines his fingers in mine and excuse-mes his way through the lobby.
I trail him, following the hostess, winding through the lush rows of tiny
tables dotted like topiary in this garden of sensory delights. The men, women,
and tables are all draped in the same rich, earth-toned palette of wealth and
sophistication—designer skin, exotic eyes, flesh and food in artful
presentations. But my skirt is too red. It’s expensive and exquisitely
detailed, but blood-colored, and draws glances. I am forever tripping over the
human thread between eye-catching and obscene. I hate every woman I pass.
Adam
beams across our table. “How was your day?”
“I
got a tattoo,” I tell him.
“Very
funny. How was work?”
I
only want to study his strong jaw and wide cheekbones, the way his blond hair
falls into his earnest eyes—mortal beauty is so moving—but Adam’s end-of-day
reunion ritual dictates we confess our grievances using the form of the
employees’ creed. I learned the contemporary version easily, two variations on
the theme of “my betters are worse than me.”
I
elect to berate The Client, the mysterious entity who pays our salaries and
thus, in a market economy, is our superior and therefore, in American
mythology, our inferior. Adam recites his day in the Idiot Boss variation, but
I barely hear for feasting my eyes on his face, and hoping. The waitress brings
glistening jewels of fish on tiny rice couches and handleless clay mugs of tea.
Adam orders wine. Not a glass each, but a bottle. Reckless, for him.
“Olivia.”
He grasps the stem, but does not drink. “I have something I need to ask you.”
He toys with the fine rim. “I know we haven’t known each other that long, in
the grand scheme of things.”
The
scheme is infinitely grander than he can comprehend. And he doesn’t know me at
all. One man once, a few hundred years ago, almost did, but I could not sustain
even that for long. Poor Vlad, I’m not sure even he ever fully believed me.
“I
think I fell in love with you the first time I saw you,” he says. But has he
fallen far enough? Too deep to scale the sheer wall of his desire? If I can
show him everything I am—wingscars and quills—and he can stay fallen with his
fallen angel, then I might finally be free. But I’ve screwed this up every time
since the fall of man. I must watch my step.
“I
love everything about you, the way you look, your eyes, your laugh . . .”
I
have to tell Adam now, before he proposes, or the loophole will dissolve. If my
body had scent like a mortal’s, I would smell wet fear.
“I
love that you think my jokes are funny, and that you care how my day went.”
In
his infant-blue eyes, I see naked hunger glint like light off glass. He wants
me, truly and deeply. He wants me, and his desire creeps through my body like
food. I could sustain myself on such hunger, surely? Fill myself up with his
need? It isn’t love, but it is power. Almost as sweet.
“I
want you to know”—Adam leans forward, his voice a husky whisper in the crowded
restaurant—“I totally respect your intention to save yourself for marriage.”
His eyes, darting to the adjacent tables, give the lie to his professed
respect. “I would never put any pressure on you to do something you weren’t
comfortable with.”
I’m
not comfortable with the close-spaced tables, with the red of my skirt, or the
briny smell of Adam’s excitement. The waitress brings more small
plates—shimmering Szechwan pork ribs on curly lettuce leaves—and takes the rest
away.
“Olivia,
I want to wake up every morning and see your heavenly face beside me. I want to
come home every night to find you there.” His fingers convulse around the glass
and release it. His hand disappears beneath the table, reaching toward his coat
pocket. He is shifting in his chair. Will he go down on one knee here, where
there is barely space to stand between the tables? The ridiculous, antiquated,
public gesture will knock something over. It will ruin my chance.
“Adam,
wait a minute—”
“No,
don’t make me stop. There’s something I need to say.” His mouth, anticipating,
is delicious. I hate to shove truth into it, but he must taste before he
speaks.
“Just
a minute, Adam. Please.”
“I
love you, Olivia. I want us to be together.” He is still fumbling, still
reaching.
“We
can never be together.” I say. “Not the way you mean it.”
“Why
not?” His easy smile clouds over.
“I
can’t have sex,” I whisper.
“You’re
just frightened.” But he takes his hand from its pocket—empty. “It’s because
you’re innocent.”
“I’m
anything but innocent. I’m bad—wicked.”
“Honey,
don’t say that.” He reaches for my hand and strokes it. “You’re not wicked;
you’re everything I’ve ever wanted in a woman.”
As
if those two things were ever mutually exclusive.
“I
don’t understand why you don’t have more confidence. Look at you, you’ve got it
all: a great body, great job, a great guy . . .” He makes a funny little
gesture toward himself, the rational man comforting the emotional female.
“I’m
cursed,” I tell him, “ruined, destroyed . . .”
“Don’t
be silly, Olivia. You’re a beautiful woman.”
“I’m
not! I’m not a woman at all. I . . .”
Oh,
crap.
The
terror rises acrid and fast. I hear horror shrieking in his mind the single
word transvestite.
Fuck,
men are stupid.
“No, Adam, stop. Adam, look at me! You know that’s not what I mean.” His heart
thunders blood through him. I have to stop the panic.
“Adam,
I-I’m a vampire.”
Adam
is blank. He gazes, unseeing, into his plate where his forgotten food is
cooling. It will be thrown away untouched. “Why do I always fall for the crazy
girls?” he mutters to his ribs.
His
wine glass reflects an inverted table, a reverse Olivia, an upside-down world
in its yellow-white orb. “God, there must be something wrong with me. I thought
you were different. You’re so pretty, so classically beautiful, I thought . . .
Is this an eating disorder thing?”
“Adam—”
“You’re
not a vampire. That’s stupid. I’ve never even had a hickey from you. If
anything, you avoid my neck.”
“I
don’t have to feed that way. I can get everything I need just kissing you. My
teeth have quills—my nails, too—tiny, sharp, hollow spines that you don’t even
feel when they harvest—”
“Do
you mean you’ve already—”
Bad
idea to go into feeding practices right away.
“We’re
angels, actually,” I scramble, hoping he’ll find some beauty in the lineage.
“All vampires are—fallen angels.” I should shut up now. But the knot of disgust
between his brows is deepening, and I want to keep talking until it unties.
“Our parents were expelled from Heaven for something horrendous, and . . .”
“What?”
“You
don’t want to know.”
“No,
damn it, what are you saying? Can you please stop being crazy for just one
minute and let me think this through? Of course you’re not a vampire.”
“Adam,
shhh!”
“You’re
not an angel either. I just can’t accept this.”
He
can’t. Acceptance requires despair, and Adam isn’t the despairing sort. It’s a
feature that attracted me to him, perversely—his dogged confidence.
“I
loved you . . .”
“Adam,
you can’t love what you don’t know.”
“I
know you!” His voice climbs too loud.
“No,”
I whisper, raging. It is, after all, all I’ve ever wanted. And all I have
always been denied. “You don’t know me!”
“Bullshit.
Tell me something about you I don’t know.”
“Do
you know what would happen if I picked up a knife and opened my arm with it?” I
lean forward, trying to anchor his wheeling eyes to mine. “It wouldn’t hurt. I
can’t feel.” I am reckless with disappointment. “Before an ambulance could get
here, the bleeding would stop and the opening would start to close. I would
heal completely in less than ten minutes.”
“That’s
disgusting!”
Why
do moderns respond to miracles this way?
“I
can’t have sex. I can’t die,” I dive on. “I don’t cast a shadow, not that you
ever noticed. And when I’m alone, I can’t see myself in mirrors. I have no idea
what I look like without someone else’s eyes on me.”
It
isn’t working. I’m scrambling down the precipice, but his grip is slipping and
my eagerness to reach him showers rocks on his upturned face.
I
leave him sitting there. I have seen hope’s self-immolation too many times to
sift through Adam’s ashes.
Eden
Sushi occupies the last building on the block, and I disappear around the
corner as Adam explodes through the restaurant doors. I strike unbreakable
angelic nails into the mortar and scale the bricks’ rough face on talons and
heels.
“Olivia!
Come back here!” Adam yells into the night, blond and vulnerable beneath me, “I
want to talk to you.”
Shout
yourself hoarse calling for your angel, but don’t lift up your eyes to see.
“Olivia!
Where are you?”
My skirt
billows on the black breeze, the proud, scarlet flag of tattered desire. I step
back from the roof edge and from hope, listening for the pulse of my pale city
beneath its ugly electric skin. But I can only hear my sisters’ howling hunger.
“Come
on, Michael!” Adam pleads with the bartender who followed us out to say we’re
no longer welcome within. “I won’t make a scene. Dude, you know me!”
But
I am already gone.
I
should go to my sisters, but not tonight. Tonight, I will be the bogeyman, a
thing half seen, the sudden shiver crawling, ranging fast and silent through
your night, my glorious daybreak. Tonight, I will hunt with Adam’s rage on
ruined shoes, and I will feed full-tooth.
Desire
denied consumes.
Dominic
frowned at the smudgy ovals his wet socks left on the sparkling kitchen floor,
and listened. No sound came from his mercifully deserted town house. Margery
must have finished her cleaning and left while he was still out running.
Dominic smiled. He’d done an extra five kilometers in that exact hope. And in
advance atonement for the icy slices of porcine heaven he unpeeled and dropped
into an ancient cast-iron fry pan. High cholesterol ran on his dad’s side,
making six fat strips of bacon contraindicated as an afternoon snack, but
Dominic prodded his indulgence with a fork and grinned. He’d end up like Dysart
if he wasn’t careful—hand-fed death in small bites by overeager postdocs.
He
inhaled deeply, waiting on the knot that the smell of tree smoke and plenty
always untied in him. Anger let go in his chest, and he leaned against the
spotless countertop to stretch his calf muscles. The bacon’s smell was working,
and that mattered more than understanding why this scent always carried him
back to a wide-hipped woman by a massive wood stove. He smiled at the image of
her, back turned, singing to herself while he, four years old—five maybe—sat at
a flour-sprinkled table with hot rolls in an old pan, waiting for breakfast,
dressed for church.
The
familiar clatter of his housekeeper descending the stairs jostled him from his
scent-dream. Dominic bowed his head. She had not left after all. “Dr. D?”
Margery yodeled. “You makin’ bacon again?” Dominic grasped an ankle to stretch
out his quads, and nodded to the wild-haired woman standing, capable hands on
ample hips, in the doorway of his kitchen while his two cats, Hubel and Weisel,
circled her ankles.
“Honestly,”
Margery pronounced, “I don’t know why you won’t use a treadmill on a day like
this. You’re soaked through. I’ll tend the bacon, you sit down. Or go shower.
I’ll have those rashers and some nice eggs with toast ready by the time you’re
cleaned up.”
“Sit
down yourself, Mrs. L. There’s enough here for both of us.”
Margery
regarded him through narrowed eyes while the kitties went straight to their
dishes. “Things bad at the lab today?”
“No
actually, it was a good day.”
On
his twenty-first birthday, Dominic sold a stash of Civil War- era gold, paid
off his parents’ mortgage, and bought this modest town house for cash. Margery,
excessively well-paid to come in and clean once a week, represented the
singular exception to Dominic’s six subsequent years of monklike austerity.
“I’m
going to California next month,” he said.
“And
you’re not happy about that?”
“Not
particularly, no.”
“That
explains it.” Margery nodded her red ringlets.
“Explains
what?”
His
housekeeper took her usual seat at the little kitchen table, still nodding her
head. Dominic refilled the cats’ water. “You only make bacon when you’re
upset,” she said. “Otherwise it’s those dreadful boil-in-the-bag dinners.”
It
was true. To deliberately trigger a memory-like seizure for the warmth and
serenity it brought was stupid, but hardly the riskiest game Dominic played
with his bizarre affliction. He’d done it before, trying to rule out temporal
lobe epilepsies, but they generated no abnormal electrical activity. In the
EEGs and fMRIs, his brain lit up exactly the same as when he remembered first
grade.
“I
wish you’d let me cook for you.” Margery went on, propping her feet up on
Dominic’s chair. “I’ve got plenty of time on my day here. You barely move
things one week to the next. I could whip up a few meals for you. They’d cook
while I clean, and you’d have a hot dinner waiting when you come home, with
more in the freezer for the week ahead.”
Dominic
drained the bacon fat meticulously into the emptied cat food tin he fished from
the trash. “I pay you for the day, Mrs. L. You could just leave when you’re
done. You don’t need to stay until I get home.”
“You
say that every week, but I hate to think of you coming back to an empty house.”
“Really,
I don’t mind.”
“You
say that every week, too. But I have the time. Or I could start tidying the
basement?”
“No.”
Dominic put two more pieces of bread in the toaster. “No. Thank you.”
“It
just seemed a shame to leave you here alone, today being Valentine’s and all.”
“Is
it? Oh yeah, I saw Ghita in the student union. She had hearts all over her
shirt . . .” Tension coiled again between his teeth and ears. “No. That’s not
right. What’s her name? Jessica. I saw Jessica.”
“Well,
I’m sure it’s hard to keep students straight in your mind. You’ve got so many
in those introductory psychology classes.”
Dominic
cut with more force than strictly necessary into a tomato. He had explained to
Margery too many times that he didn’t teach psychology, just the neuroanatomy
portion of an interdisciplinary psych course.
“So,
no special plans for tonight, Doctor?”
“Not
unless you consider sharing a perfect BLT with the best housekeeper in
Cambridge special?” Dominic winked and put the plates on the table. “Coke or
Guinness, Mrs. L?”
Margery
blushed an alarming pink beneath her dyed-orange hair. “Oh, beer, I think,
don’t you?”
“Absolutely.”
Dominic
sank his teeth through the cool layers of bread, lettuce, and tomato to the
brown, hot crackle of bacon. If Margery had left while he was out running, as
he’d asked her to, he would have eaten his bacon from a bare fork by the stove,
or thrown it out—it was really all about the smell—but either would have earned
him a proper meal cooked from scratch if she had seen him.
“I
could run out and pick us up a bottle of wine for dinner?” Her normal color had
still not returned. Dominic considered the possibility of menopause, but
Margery was only a few years older than he.
“I
wouldn’t know what to pair with bacon,” he grinned.
“Dominic,
this isn’t dinner, surely?”
“I
have a lot of work to do . . .”
“And
you’re planning to gobble this up and go back down to whatever it is you do in
that awful basement of yours, aren’t you?” Dominic glanced toward the locked
door. “On Valentine’s Day! I swear, sometimes I think you keep your heart down
there.”
Dominic
laughed. “Now Mrs. L, you know you’re my only love.” She flushed again, and
Dominic carried both their empty plates to the sink.
“Your
heel’s bleeding.”
Dominic
craned his neck over a shoulder to see the brilliant red staining his white
running socks.
“I’ll
get you that calendula I bought.”
“I’m
not sure it works,” Dominic rinsed the plates. “Wish I had a blister on my
other foot, too, for a control.” Margery shook her head, but allowed Dominic to
steer her to the front door and help her into her winter coat. “The house looks
wonderful, Margery. Thank you.”
“Well
it’s not hard to keep it clean when you don’t seem to use but the bed, the
bathroom, and the microwave.”
“How
can you say that after my gourmet masterpiece tonight?”
“I’m
just saying you could use a woman around, is all.”
“Are
you ever bothered by night sweats, Mrs. L?”
Margery
shot him a puzzled glance. “No. Why?”
“Nothing.
Just wondering.” Dominic’s jaw tightened uncomfortably. “Good night, Margery.”
From
the correct side of his front door at last, Margery’s bright unblinking eyes
studied him. “You just can’t wait to get back to your work, can you?”
“Is
it so crazy that I enjoy what I do?”
“It’ll
make you crazy.” Margery turned away and cautiously climbed down the
town house’s icy front steps, grumbling, “Staying in every night, denying
yourself all life’s pleasures, no dinner, no love . . .”
“Drive
carefully,” Dominic called after her. Then he locked the door, shrugged off his
coat, and trotted down the basement stairs. Margery had it exactly backwards.
Dominic’s irregular hours had nothing to do with self-denial, and everything to
do with love. He walked briskly through his small darkroom and unlocked the
door in its back wall. To a curious man, every mystery was a challenge, every
puzzle was a dare. Dominic worked all night because he relished the contest.
Because
he loved to win.
Whether
he was crazy or not was a different question. And the hunt for its answer was
more than his passion or his work; it was a pitched battle to the death.
Dominic slid into the worn chair behind his microscope and booted up his
laptop. His crusade against the mysteries of the true final frontier—the human
brain—had made his body a secret battlefield. And no less than Nature itself,
or God, as his opponent.
2
WHAT YOU HUNT
As
human morality trended away from slavery and caste, a few vampires began to
question our hunting practices. Modern forensic science persuaded more of us
that it was too dangerous to feed full-tooth from strangers. Thus Sylvia, our
Irish sister, founded a series of clubs to protect us—the beautiful, incestuous
children of angels thrown from Heaven—from a similar expulsion from the world
of men. The Quarries offer ethical consumerism and identity protection in
exchange for eight thousand dollars and our once-potent solitude. I wonder what
we’ll find to fear next.
I
wash up on Manhattan’s most exclusive doorstep before twilight on Saint
Patrick’s Day, beneath a snot-colored sky. The New York Quarry is introducing a
new redhead in honor of the occasion, but after a month of hunting rogue, I
don’t give a fig for novelty. I have come here to play it safe. I am weary, and
seeking a familiar sin.
I
slip the small brass key around my wrist into the club’s blood-red door whose
matte black letters absorb all the sparkle of the city’s light. The door swings
silently inward, and I step into a small reception room. It is comforting, at
least, to be out of the electricity again.
A
young man stands behind a desk bathed in unsteady candlelight. “Welcome,” he
whispers, and with reverent hands presents a velvet-lined box to me. I take the
ring from it and slip it over my right thumb. I turn its jewel to face him. He
tenses, watching the band spin. The swirl of my damnation, like smoke in a
bottle, clouds the red stone black. Why must our most basic rites be embroidered
thus? Why can’t I still draw a curved line in the dust and be known?
The
boy milks the retractable spike into a silver vial and wipes away the excess
with a Kleenex. I am not meant to see him slip the tissue into the pocket of
his tailored coat. “Okay, then.” He smiles too brightly. “The Quarry debuts a
fresh fig at midnight, so in addition to the standard agreement, there’s a
proviso page to sign, okay?”
He
smells like the outside, like grass, or dill, fresh and green, with a deep
masculine red beneath, the too-cheerful smell of blood and fucking. I hate him
and his sunshine smells in my night city. He disappears behind his desk, and
pops back up holding several printed pages, which he tidies and stacks before
me. He twists his head at an unhealthy angle to read aloud the page facing me.
“While
there is no additional fee for freshness”—I could help his neck to twist around
a bit farther; vertebrae break quietly—“society members are reminded that
evasion skills are learned over time.” He holds out a black fountain pen.
“Initial please.”
I
inscribe an ornate O where he points.
“I
understand that there are initiate connoisseurs,” he whispers, “but for what
you pay, I’m sure you want at least an hour of pursuit to work up an appetite.”
He leans over the desk with a conspiratorial wink, and my fingers twitch to
snatch the flicking lashes and rip. “No guarantees with the new recruits! Last
month, Evelyn caught a debut male in ten minutes.” He shakes his head sadly.
“That one didn’t return.”
I
should go see Evelyn. Maybe she could cheer me.
He
turns over another page of small type and blank lines. “This document allows us
to auto-deduct the eight thousand dollars per hunt from the credit card you
have on file, plus any fines that you incur. Initial please. Thank you.”
Another
piece of paper defiled.
“This
is the standard guarantee of disease- and drug-free blood, initial please,
thank you. These are your restrictions, initial by each line please. To take no
more than two quarts per fig per hunt, thank you. To leave no marks beyond a
maximum of three sets of punctures, thank you. And to call the Quarry Recovery
Line within an hour of first draw, thank you. Here’s a card with the Recovery
Hotline phone number.” I take the card.
Modernity:
Abandon all choice, ye who enter here. I push the door open and step inside.
The
Quarry’s lounge is decorated like an old-world bordello, deliberately ironic
but genuinely antique. Flocked crimson wallpaper and polished brass diffuse and
glow in the flickering light of wall-mounted gas sconces. All the human smells
are gone. Soon it will teem with the Undead, but it’s early still. I’m the only
one.
Amidst
the Victoriana, in the center of the lounge, lush, backless velvet sofas ring a
huge, sleek, one-way glass aquarium. Behind its soundproof glass, six naked men
and women await their hunters. But I see only the delectable Latina woman
inches away. I push my marble fingers against the cool, slick glass. “Hola,
Maria.” She can’t hear me.
I
force myself to see the others in the covert. Opposite Maria, the new girl is
easy to spot, rabbit soft, hair like a dying fire. She is the only one trying
to conceal her body, hopelessly vulnerable. I walk around the covert to where
she sits, trailing lifeless fingertips against the cold glass.
She’s
terrified, but even the veterans like Maria are nervous every time. They never
know who hunts them, and some of us like to play with our food, drawing out the
pursuit as long as we can, or amusing ourselves with the unconscious shell,
tasting the cooling body, the pliant muscles and unresisting apertures, the
smells still clinging, the vigor of having fed building in us.
I
ring for the quarrymaster.
“Get
me Maria,” I tell him.
She
is not redemption. I only drink her fear. But it is familiar, almost the same
as love.
As
my Maria is summoned and descends, I watch a powerfully endowed, muscular
younger man leaning back in his chair with his deep-set eyes closed. A
Rubenesque raven girl massages his meaty shoulders. Her full, red-tipped
breasts roll rhythmically with her strokes. His hands curl loosely on his
corded thighs, making no attempt to cover his long, exposed, but flaccid sex.
Her fist-size nipples spiral hypnotically, and I wonder what it would take to
make him hard. Maybe he would rather be hunted than massaged. Some desires
require that.
The
quarrymaster returns to say that Maria is dressed and ready. I follow him into
the pen. Only its thin walls separate her mortal body from mine now. She waits,
delicate chin resting in a cradle inches away. The bar slides back revealing
only her green eyes. She does not blink. Her eyes fix deep in me, locating her
within. I cannot fail to find her now. The window slides shut from the other
side. Someone tells her “Go!” And she is gone.
The
farther she can run before I follow, the longer the hunt will last; but I’m
restless, and the quarrymaster smells of fried chicken and fear. I circle the
building scenting for the exit she used. I sense her eyes again as I pick up
her trail and follow it, holding myself to a walk. I am hungry.
The
Quarry is on the edge of the restaurant district, and she’s gone deeper in,
mingling with the club-goers and first dates, scenting sex and anxiety. She’s
learning. I pass the bar where I cornered her last time. She had hidden in the
back, near the kitchen, trying to mask her fear-scent in the smells of food.
Tonight, she has gone toward the busier streets. But she misunderstands; it’s
not an olfactory scent we take when the bar slides back between our eyes.
Hunger
heightens my angelic senses, and I isolate her trail amongst the hunters who
seek only a human connection, flavored with a longing she does not possess. I
follow, trying to shorten my powerful stride through my growing anticipation
and rage. Adam will be among these throngs tonight.
The
entertainment district ends abruptly at an elevated highway, despite repeated
civic attempts to reclaim the darkness on the other side. Car exhaust and dirt
on the ascendancy, blood and anticipation declining. Maria, where are you?
The rules require that she stay on foot. I reach out for a trace of her. I’ve
overshot, and retreat.
I
track her to an all-night service station. She’s gone inside and vanished? No.
Here’s a trace, terror masked in gasoline, moving north. She’s taking risks. A
human woman walking alone under the overpass at night tempts devils who have
signed no contract. I will kill anyone I find threatening her. I almost run,
but stop myself, like choking back a laugh.
She’s
alone. I see her now, walking briskly north. She, too, has learned not to run.
I shorten the space between us too soon, pressing down need and anger. Shall I
let her hear me? No.
She
turns, sensing the shadows moving. She’s wearing a mechanic’s greasy coveralls.
Clever girl. But her tender heart rate is rising. Now she knows it’s me. She
struggles not to run, looking hard over her shoulder. Does she hope for a
different ending? Does the Quarry hint that the hour we have to hunt them is a
limit on us, a chance of escape for our prey? How could she believe that? Could
she try so valiantly if she did not?
Disciplining
my strength into grace, I shadow her beneath the overpass. I’m almost touching
her, breathing the slippery smell of her fear. But the thrumming beat of her,
visible through the warm flesh of her throat, summons me. My pulseless fingers
reach out for the hammering vein and feel it pound swifter against them. She
makes a strange noise and runs.
I
watch her strong body straining forward for as long as I can, before I slide in
behind her. Magnificent, striding flight, her legs stretch, and mine shadow. I
rein myself back as her endurance fails. Her blazing lungs and her tearing
heart echo through me. I could so easily overtake her, drive my teeth into her
now, but she will exhaust herself soon and have to stop. And then . . .
Then
I will take her. Let her run until she no longer can.
But
she’s very fit and can’t bring herself to surrender, so I touch her again,
circling a fragile wrist, giving her a focus for her fear. She flails, and I
step behind her, pulling her against me. She can’t breathe from running. Fear
spikes, mindless struggles, held to my still body. My lips graze the place of
first puncture, across the last hunt’s wounds healed to bare bruises; and I
taste her with my tongue. She’s not allowed to scream, but can’t throttle the
half cry. She fights to control the impulse, which would end her career with
us, even as I whisper to her.
The
cars fly over us rhythmically carrying their own light, but only their shadows
spread beyond the highway, down the concrete, to me. I transfer Maria’s wrists
to one hand and glide the other across her hip bone, pressing into the softness
it encircles. Her breasts are small, tapering into her chest below a collarbone
that I can’t see without wanting to snap and suck. My fingers press hard into
it, not to bruise, no, I can’t leave even a finger-mark in the flesh there, the
castrating bastards of the Quarry all be damned for their godless fear and
mortal caution.
She’s
motionless against me now, except for the ragged breathing. Dragged from
collarbone to jaw, my cold fingers finally tip her chin up. She shudders,
knowing. My lips open against yielding flesh. My mouth stretches even wider,
and I allow my tongue to stroke her pulsing skin again. A warm release, deep in
the bones of my jaw, presses the sharper teeth through, lengthening as my lips
and tongue work until, at full extension and achingly hollow, my feeding teeth
catch against her. I force myself through a single ragged breath, pressing my
lower lip hard against her human warmth. Then I flex, pulling my mouth away. My
upper lip curls, my jaws unhinge, and I strike. I pierce, and sink into her
full-tooth. The blood strikes the back of my throat in spasmodic cardiac bursts
until I can pull and swallow, draw her into me. Maria is rigid, locked in pain,
or horror, or ecstasy. But she will soften.
Beneath
the freeway, time groans and gives way. My throat is slippery with the
distortion of seconds into years, and I pull myself from the rising blood
dreams to turn her toward me. Her face is extraordinary, pale stealing the
flush of her running. Her swimming eyes lose focus, meet mine. I shouldn’t, but
I let her look, cradling her head with my warming fingers, holding her against
me. She gives the weight of her body into my hands. Below my lips, her scent is
fading, heart slowing.
I
strike again. My mind deepens and I drink the flood of images and moments that
aren’t mine across my tongue. Her mother—black hair, outdated clothes, a lover,
a wasteland, a child. The sweet blood dreams. I drink her, am her. I am open to
the whole thrum of thought and life and desire, of things made and things
dreamed, of each person unique, each droplet alone in its current. And none of
them mine.
Dominic
pierced the hotel’s cocoon of wealth reluctantly. Any place, temple or tearoom,
where the rituals of rank and riches were strictly observed brought out an
ancient, impudent impulse in him. He wanted to take off his shirt and stand on
the furniture. He wanted to run. On the pillowy hotel lobby carpet, getting his
bearings, Dominic stood full Bengali despite his stylish jacket.
His
rogue imagination was swift to provide a rich contextual history behind
physical sensations as simple as lushness underfoot, but he had learned not to
challenge these unwelcome fantasies too closely. He was, in some indisputable
way, tiger hunting. He shifted his laptop bag to his left shoulder and began to
track silently across the luxurious rug toward the restaurant, but his elbow
was immediately captured.
“Dr.
O’Shaughnessy, I’m Megan, Ms. Wright’s personal secretary. Thank you for
coming.”
“My
pleasure, Megan. Did I speak with you on the phone?”
“No,
that was Tibby.”
Brisk,
blond, and competent, Megan steered Dominic away from the restaurant where he
had been asked to meet Madalene Wright, and down a broad flight of marble
stairs. “I’m Ms. Wright’s personal secretary. Tibby is the foundation’s. Ms.
Wright heard you speak today at the conference. I believe she has some
questions for you.”
Megan
brought Dominic to a wary halt before an unmarked but highly polished wooden
door. “Are you surprised to hear that?” she asked, and rapped at the door.
“I
was surprised to hear from Ms. Wright at all. She has a reputation for being
more difficult to meet with than the Wizard of Oz.” Dominic tugged the cuff of
his jacket self-consciously. Megan’s slender hand had pulled it up enough to
reveal the tattoo that bore an embarrassing testament to his tumultuous
adolescence.
“I’ll
let Ms. Wright know you’re here.” Megan turned fluidly toward the equally
stunning woman who had opened the door. “Lucy, will you show Dr. O’Shaughnessy
to Ms. Wright’s table?”
“With
pleasure.”
Dominic’s
elbow was transferred from one silky hand to another, and Lucy escorted him
deeper into the belly of San Francisco’s most exclusive dining room. He felt,
with every cushioned step, less like a predator and more like prey.
Dominic
had been seated only moments when Ms. Wright, elegant and ageless, swept into
the dining room in a crimson dress, flanked by her two vestal secretaries, and
trailed by a cantankerous-looking man a few years younger than himself. Dominic
rose, grateful that the fabled Ms. Wright triggered nothing in him. He grinned
too broadly at the grande dame out of sheer relief.
“Dr.
O’Shaughnessy, how very nice to meet you.”
“Ms.
Wright, I am honored. Call me Dominic, please.”
For
once, Dominic’s aberrant knowledge of historic minutia proved useful. He did
not extend his hand and recognized the flicker of approval in the regal face
across from him. Nor did he take his seat again until she, smiling now, invited
him to.
“This
is my son, Harold.” Madalene nodded toward the hulk of resentment settling
itself into a chair. “Harold, unfortunately, did not hear you speak this
afternoon, but I very much enjoyed your lecture.” Madalene ignored the flurry of
radiating activity as secretaries and waiters, sommeliers and servants poured
and fetched. She fixed her keen gaze on Dominic. “So, there’s been a changing
of the guard at MIT? My old acquaintance Dysart stays home and sends forth his
brave young Turks. Need I fear for his health or his dedication?”
“An
old general knows the value of young blood,” Dominic replied.
Tibby’s
mouth contracted as though her teeth had turned to salt. Megan transmitted a
subtle frown, but Dominic caught the flicker of a smile in the glittering eyes
of their mistress. “I thought I caught a whiff of something,” she said. “So
tell me, Dominic, are you really as good as the journals say?”
“You
read the Lancet article?”
“I
have more than a passing interest in neuropsychiatry, and I try to keep abreast
of developments in your field. I fund quite a lot of them.”
“I
am well acquainted with your generosity.”
“You
are not.”
“Then
I should like to be.”
Tibby
blanched.
Madalene
arched a sculpted brow. “My, you are quite the young tiger, aren’t you?”
“My
mother is a businesswoman, Dominic.” The lumpish son heaved himself forward to
interrupt. “She invests our foundation’s money in promising enterprises that
are likely to win big.”
“I
was under the impression that the Wright Foundation took advantage of its
unique position as a private fund to support the kind of radical research that
makes corporate sponsorship gun-shy,” Dominic replied. “You have a reputation
for poaching the big ideas that hover on the outskirts of mainstream science.”
“So
you admit that the mainstream takes exception to Dysart’s work?” Harold
smirked.
“I’ll
admit it’s exceptional.”
Watching
the junior Wright’s face deflate, Dominic was reminded of the antique medical
notion of the four humors. Presented with such a perfect example of an excess
of bile, Dominic suppressed an impulse to inquire after the younger man’s
spleen.
“Are
you hungry, Dominic?” Behind her elegant, erect back, Madalene’s matching
secretaries discreetly shook their manicured heads no at Dominic with a fearful
symmetry.
“Very.”
“Ah.”
Ms. Wright paused, unperturbed. “Please order something.”
A
waiter materialized from the staff orbiting Ms. Wright like bees drawn to the
golden pollen of wealth. He hovered, waiting for a command he could obey, but
Ms. Wright’s menu remained untouched. “At a certain age, women’s bodies lose
the ability to metabolize food at all and convert it directly into thigh,” she
informed Dominic. “I am too old to eat.”
“Ms.
Wright, I find myself in an unenviable position,” Dominic confessed. “I’m
afraid that if I don’t eat something, I shall be very poor company, too addled
by hunger to think clearly or answer your questions accurately. You will be
forced to form an impression of me as a well-mannered young fool. On the other
hand, I’m the son of a southern lady who raised me to eat with good manners or
starve—Sparta, Georgia’s ‘with your shield or upon it’—so I cannot order if you
do not intend to eat.”
Madalene’s
laughter surprised everyone but Harold, who clearly ate whatever he wanted whenever
he wanted, metabolism be damned.
“My
mother never takes dinner,” he said, enjoying Dominic’s predicament, while his
mother’s attendant bevy swarmed uneasily.
“Do
you take tea, Ms. Wright?”
“That
sounds lovely.”
“Tea,
please,” Dominic said.
“With”—Ms.
Wright inclined her precision coif slightly toward the waiter’s napkined
forearm—“perhaps some of those nice little quiche and a few finger sandwiches?”
She smiled frankly at Dominic, the first authentic expression he had seen on
her expensive face. “Mustn’t disobey Mother?”
“Never.”
Dominic returned the smile and took a risk. “Tell me what kind of work you’re
interested in supporting, Ms. Wright,” he asked bluntly. The doyen across from
him enjoyed toying with her food, but his tea and sandwiches would be arriving
soon on starched white waves, and Dominic wanted time to digest both food and
information.
“My
foundation supports innovation,” Ms. Wright said. “Your lecture today suggested
the possibility of a psychiatric cosmetic surgery. If I understood correctly—and
you may correct me if I did not”—Dominic nodded polite assent—“you’re
postulating a technology to identify the locations of specific thoughts or
memories, with the ultimate goal of disrupting only those targeted neurons to
functionally erase the memory.”
“We
believe that memory is basically a change in synaptic strength or
organization,” Dominic explained. “It’s a genetic adaptation with enormous
benefits to creatures needing to recall precisely where they stumbled across a
den of tigers, or a poisonous snake. But it’s a lot less helpful against
contemporary dangers.”
“Hence
PTSD.” Madalene nodded.
Dominic
watched the tea things land with profound gratitude. “The brain can’t tell the
difference between the memory of an old trauma and a fresh instance of a
recurrent one,” he said. “The pathway is reinforced every time an event is
relived in imagination or experience, but we’re learning to identify the memory
trace—the specific grouping of neurons that represent a memory—and we’re
finding these traces aren’t simply the environments in which a memory is
formed, but actually hold the memory itself.”
“That’s
fascinating, Dr. O’Shaughnessy.”
Madalene
Wright did not look fascinated. Dominic poured himself a deliberate cup of tea,
playing for time. Something she had heard in his morning lecture had intrigued
her enough to summon him to a hotel they didn’t share for a meal she didn’t
eat. What did she want?
“We’ve
found beta-blockers which, if given within a few hours of the inciting
traumatic event, can almost eliminate the risk of PTSD,” Dominic said. “I could
imagine similar therapies for phobia, monomania, and OCD.” Not a flicker of
interest from across the table. Ms. Wright sat, demure hands in her lap,
expressionless.
“Can
you foresee a benefit for delusional patients?” she asked.
Dominic’s
body’s pulsed an adrenal alert. He glanced at the old lady’s son. Young Harold
rolled his piggy eyes in weary disgust and tucked his chin into folds of neck.
He had heard this before. Dominic relaxed and ate a finger sandwich.
“Delusion
is different from memory,” he noted neutrally.
“But
would a delusion or a false memory create a similar memory trace?” Ms. Wright
leaned forward until the table pressed into her silk-clad arms. She reminded
Dominic of a puppet, the way her upright body leaned and turned without ever
releasing her hands from their place beneath the table.
“Delusions
are thought disorders, but there’s certainly a larger confabulatory component
to memory than courtroom lawyers would like us to know about.” Dominic grasped
for levity but missed. “And we remember the past and imagine the future from
subsystems of the same core network.”
Ms.
Wright’s wealth and influence were massive. She leaned her tailored torso
against the table, and the gravity of her power inexorably drew Dominic toward
her, accreting his intellectual prowess and scientific skill to her private
purpose. Eager to capitalize on this first sign of interest, Dominic dug into
his private research for an illustration, and whether low blood sugar, the
adrenal burst of grant money slipping away, or the manifest failure of his
endocannabinoid experiment was to blame, made the only reckless mistake of his
logical, calculated adult life.
“Now
this isn’t neuroscience, just psychiatry, but let’s take, for example, an
outgoing, imaginative child who believes in monsters,” Dominic extemporized.
“Maybe this girl is involved in a traumatic car accident. Her parents are
killed, and she is thrown from the car.” Now he had Madalene riveted. “The
child recovers physically, but the emotional pain is so severe that she begins
to dissociate. She might pretend to be incapable of suffering.” Madalene nodded
encouragement. “The girl might start to believe she’s a monster and
responsible, somehow, for the death of her parents.”
Madalene
was pale, and even dull Harold looked alert. Dominic’s rouge imagination
stretched itself. “The little girl, guilty and frightened, remembers being
thrown from the car and the taste of blood, and she imagines herself a
powerful, flying, insensate monster.”
“A
vampire . . .” Madalene whispered.
“Sure,”
Dominic took the suggestion readily. “This confabulation, tied to a
trauma-related identity disruption, could become so foundational to her
self-image that she might lose her ability to taste food. She starts sleeping
in a coffin, develops a phobia of mirrors or crosses or wooden stakes, and
becomes immune to physical pain, all in service to this explanatory story that
helped her escape intolerable suffering as a child.”
“That’s
nuts.” Harold collapsed back into his cushioned chair. “Immune to physical
pain? Bullshit.”
“Actually,
pain insensitivity in patients with psychosis isn’t unusual.” Dominic dissected
a miniature quiche, sheltering in the formal, clinical language of his work
like a eunuch in a power suit. He was rattled. What was the cost, he wondered,
of having fallen within Madalene Wright’s heady orbit, her public event
horizon?
“In
fact,” he lectured Harold, “schizophrenic patients have died from a common side
effect of clozapine without ever complaining of pain from the constipation that
killed them.”
The
fat man shuddered, and Madalene’s hovering assistant flock seemed to sink,
their wings weighted by such unspeakable language.
“Schizophrenics
can hear things that aren’t there, but can’t feel things that are,” Ms. Wright
quipped.
“Something
like that.” Dominic returned her intelligent smile. He could not tell how old
she was. Her lineless face, the territory of age, from which all landmarks had
been removed, was taut with surgery and glistened with unguents.
“I
would like to speak privately with Dr. O’Shaughnessy.”
To
cover the turbulence this announcement caused in her support staff field, Ms.
Wright sacrificed a secret. She reached a jeweled hand across the table and
poured herself a cup of tea. Dominic repaid the confidence by looking away. Her
hands would betray her age. He did not even steal a glance.
When
the lumbering son, the secretaries, the waiters, and their minions had all
dissolved, Madalene leaned toward Dominic again, eyes twinkling. “You’ll have
to excuse Harry. He has what I call ‘chauffeured child syndrome.’ ”
“He’s
been driven all his life?”
“That
is correct. He has no drive of his own at all.” Madalene made a subtle
beckoning gesture toward the back of the dining room. “While you, I hear,
walked to our little rendezvous.”
“The
convention hotel is just on the other side of the hill,” Dominic shrugged. A
waiter materialized beside them.
“Bring
me your best Syrah and whatever Chef Humm feels Dr. O’Shaughnessy might enjoy with
it.” The waiter vanished. “We’re alone, Dominic. No need to stand on formality.
I’m sure your mother would say exactly the same as I.”
“My
mother,” Dominic said with complete sincerity, “has never said anything
remotely similar to anything you’ve said tonight, Ms. Wright.”
“Call
me Madalene.”
She
acknowledged the arrival of the sommelier, whose experienced hands trembled
with the honor of serving such a bottle to such a patron. His private ecstasy
shone undarkened by the cloud Dominic had conjured of everything unspoken
between a parent and a child. Madalene savored a sip.
“For
such an energetic and ambitious young man, you have extraordinary tact. I can
see why Dysart dispatched you in his stead.”
“I
wasn’t aware that you and the professor knew one another.”
“I
know him as one knows anyone to whom one entrusts a significant sum.”
The
woman seated across from him had the kind of money that could open almost any
door and discover any secret. Dominic reached for his wine, but stopped
himself. He would not betray his discomfiture, despite a mouth of sand and
stone. He was well trained against acting on impulse. Reason and science
revealed the correct path, not instinct. He needed to think.
Madalene’s
expensive face gave nothing away. “Let us just say there are questions I would
be interested to hear you address,” she said. “But this is not the time.” She
raised her glass. “To the present,” she toasted. Dominic gratefully mirrored
the gesture and drank.
“Herb-roasted
Saddle of Elysian Fields Farm Lamb with Gnocchi à la Parisienne,”
murmured the starched gentleman who appeared on Dominic’s left. For a moment,
the underpinnings of Dominic’s world loosened. Whispered descriptions and
artfully arranged plates swirled and eddied. When the human tide receded,
Dominic glanced up at Madalene again.
“You
have quite a feast there, Dominic. May I suggest that you dig in?”
Dominic
happily complied.
“I
am prepared to write six- and seven-digit checks beginning tonight and
proceeding indefinitely, if you can convince me that your research is
applicable to my needs.”
Dominic
glanced up, but returned his gaze to his lamb at once.
“Don’t
misunderstand me.” Madalene continued, “I am interested in the public weal, but
I have a very specific personal interest in your work as well. A very private
personal interest. Do you understand?”
Dominic
rested his knife on his plate’s edge. He met Madalene’s piercing eyes and
nodded.
“I
suspect you have some skill with secrets?” Although pronounced like a question,
Dominic recognized the threat.
“You
have already complimented my tact.” He reclaimed his utensils meticulously and
began to eat.
“Let
us return, for a moment, to your illustrative example of the unfortunate child
who is thrown from a car and subsequently cherishes the delusion that she is a
vampire. Could you, conceivably, surgically or medically remove that memory?”
“Theoretically,
in time, if we’re right. If a memory is made with a specific network of
neurons, and we can parse out which neurons are involved in a given memory, and
selectively delete those specific neurons, then yes, we’re talking about memory
erasure.”
“And
if you were able to pinpoint and remove the memory of the accident, would that
destroy the vampire delusion?”
Why
did Madalene keep returning to his ludicrous vampire example? Way to go, D.
Couldn’t have used alien abductions or dead presidents, could you?
“Ms.
Wright, I think I chose a poor example.”
“And
I think you chose an uncanny one. What do you know about Renfield’s Syndrome,
Dominic?”
Dominic
registered the familiar constellation of sensations that indicated activation
of the sympathoadrenal system’s four Fs: fright, flight, fight, and sex, the
old neuroscience joke went. She had lured him with his department’s financial
future and snared him with his personal past. Rage pricked Dominic, but he
ruthlessly suppressed it. “Why do you ask?” he said with brutal neutrality.
They
eyed each other, the tea twisting in his stomach. Dominic felt his center of
gravity drop, his weight collapsing in on itself, as his mind prepared for
combat.
“Empty
your mind, be formless, be shapeless,” a nasal whisper hummed below the
conscious level of thought. “The hands do not leave the heart. The elbows do
not leave the ribs.”
“My
goddaughter is ill.” Ms. Wright interrupted the instructions Dominic dully
realized had been thought in the Yueh dialect of Mandarin. “A few years ago, I
moved her to New York to be with me. Now she spends all her time, and a good
deal of my money, in the city’s goth bars and boutiques.”
Dominic
relaxed. This wasn’t about him, only another of his bizarre coincidences. A
warm relief bathed him. He took another sip of wine.
“At
the moment,” Madalene continued, “the tabloids are treating it like a fashion
statement and a novelty. They’re having quite a lot of fun with the ‘virgin
vamp.’ But I’ve spoken to her, and I’m afraid it’s quite a bit more serious
than lifestyle. She believes she is a vampire.”
Madalene
shuddered imperceptibly. Dominic picked up his knife again to spare her the
discomfort of being observed. His appetite had recovered from the terror that
had momentarily killed it. His body was still a young man’s.
“She,
of course, doesn’t recognize this as a delusion. I’ve tried to convince her to
seek help, but she’s not interested. She’s convinced that she was born this
way—a sanguinarius she calls herself!
“I
need you to learn as much as you can about this sort of delusional thinking and
use all your research and science to develop a treatment. I’m happy to support
whatever additional research MIT wants to pursue simultaneously in order keep
the vampire component invisible to the media, but Dominic, I can’t run the risk
of dying while my only two heirs are both insane.”
Dominic
drained his glass. Poor Madalene, it must be terrible to lose a child to
madness. He had, at least, spared his mother that.
“And
her parents?”
“They
died some time back. I adopted her to solve inheritance difficulties. I would
like to write two checks tonight, Dominic.” Madalene was more beautiful as a
suffering mother than she had been all night, through her various incarnations
as aging socialite and influential power broker. “I would like to underwrite
Dysart’s new Brain and Memory Lab, and I would like to fund some fieldwork. We
must start with clinical and laboratory studies right away.
“You
will need research subjects, but you cannot recruit in New York or Boston. Any
hint that my money is at work in that subculture would risk undoing the
progress I’ve made reestablishing a relationship with the child. There are one
hundred and thirty-eight so-called vampire covens in the states, and only
twelve in Western Europe, so I think the UK might be the best place to acquire
test subjects for our purposes. You would have to contend with a language
barrier anywhere else. Or do you speak French?”
“Yes,
but Madalene, I’m not a sociologist. I’m not even a trained clinical
psychiatrist. I’m a researcher, a scientist. I work with brain chemistry,
neurons—the tiniest parts of people. I would be a terrible choice for
fieldwork.”
“And
yet you are my choice.”
A
soundless beauty surfaced to refill his wine glass, and retreated into the dark
periphery of the dining room. Could it be that his recent experimentation with
dopamine reuptake had raised his monoamine oxidase levels enough to decrease
risk-aversion? He was stronger now than when he first dropped out of school at
eighteen to chase memories he thought he had of an ancestral home, but was he
actually considering, for Christ’s sake, re-exposure to Ireland’s insanity and
hell?
“London
has six covens, the highest concentration of such places.”
“Ireland
might be better,” Dominic said softly. If he could study the institution and
its inhabitants clinically and dispassionately, if he could stay sane in that
insane place, then he would know—and perhaps, for the first time since he
turned thirteen, really know—that he was not ill. That he would not be a
danger to anyone he loved.
“I
have people in Dublin,” Madalene said.
“The
place I’m considering is not in Dublin,” Dominic answered. “And it would
require me to check myself into the asylum of an eccentric, aging billionaire.
As a patient.”
“An
asylum?” Madalene smiled. “That’s a very old-fashioned word.”
“It’s
an old-fashioned place. The hotel—that’s what he calls the place, ‘the Hotel of
the Damned’—is literally underground, and everyone is required to profess some
sort of terrible ancient curse to gain admittance. I’m not at all certain I
could even get in there again.”
Madalene
was too skillful to show surprise, but her momentary silence betrayed her.
“This is very interesting. You’re already familiar with a remote society of
vampires so well hidden even I have not learned of its existence?”
Divining
that he wouldn’t eat again that night, a legion of waiters swept plates,
glasses, and crumbs from the table. In the few seconds it took them to return
the pristine tablecloth to an unbloodied battlefield between him and a woman
who unbalanced him like nobody since his last visit to Ireland, a cold, sober
certainty seized Dominic. No amount of expensive wine or false fund-raising
confidence could shield him from the full biochemical cascade preparing him to
fight or run away.
“Not
all the residents are vampires,” he said. “And my association with the hotel is
years out of date. It may have closed. I haven’t kept in touch—”
“Dr.
O’Shaughnessy, you’re prevaricating. It’s decided. Dysart will get his new
laboratory, international press, and a chance to make a significant difference
in the lives of others. I will rest more easily knowing that everything in my
power is being done to help a child who is like a daughter to me, and you,
Dominic, will have landed a tremendous fund-raising coup. Don’t think that
won’t be a factor when you apply for tenure.” Madalene held his eyes and took a
deliberate drink from her glass. “I’m curious,” she said. “What ‘terrible
ancient curse’ did you invent to gain admittance?”
“I
cobbled reincarnation to the Prometheus story, except my progenitor stole not
fire, but pattern recognition.”
Madalene
laughed, a pleasant, honest sound. “Dominic”—she shook her elegant head—“ever
the scientist.”
“I
guess so. I claimed to be from a race of titans who gave humanity the ability
to see the kind of patterns that make constellations out of stars. The
recognition that showed us that all living things die, and, if we are alive, we
will surely die.”
Madalene’s
smile wavered.
“So
as punishment for introducing mortals to their mortality, my race lives and
dies and is reincarnated lifetime after lifetime. At adolescence the memories
of all our past lives wake up and we start experiencing the horror of the
never-ending cycles of living and dying, of loving and losing, keeping forever,
lifetime after lifetime, the memory of every lost love, every past death.”
Madalene
looked at Dominic from eyes that could see into horror. “And now you are going
back for me.”
“Let
me make myself clear, Ms. Wright . . .” Dominic’s fingers reached for the strap
of his shoulder bag beneath the table.
“Let
me be clearer, Dominic.” Madalene’s keen eyes shot into the dark reaches of the
room and returned to hold his. “I have told two people about my predicament—my
personal psychiatrist and you,” she said. “I have no intention of telling
another soul. You must go back to Ireland. It is the only way that I can keep
my secrets”—Madalene Wright stood—“and that you, dear boy, may do the same.”
Madalene’s
tribe of aides materialized around her. Tibby, slipping her fingers into the
hollow of Dominic’s elbow propelled him behind the exiting retinue. At the very
spot where Megan had picked him up, Tibby released him.
“Here’s
my card, Dr. O’Shaughnessy.” The pretty foundation secretary smiled, but when
Dominic couldn’t make his fingers take the paper rectangle, she slipped it into
his jacket pocket. “Ms. Wright departs in the morning. You can call me anytime
between now and nine tomorrow morning. I’m very glad you’ve signed on to help
the Wright Foundation.”
“I
haven’t signed anything.”
The
girl smiled indulgently. “Are you always so literal, Doctor?”
3
SAUCE TO MEAT
With
their painted-on pentagrams and plastic skulls, these vampire metal bars still
mirror the introverted nature of the genuine beast. Elaborately dressed,
artfully constructed presentations of personality, every one of us here eats
alone. Vampires are inherently solitary creatures.
“Everyone
you don’t love tastes the same,” I complain to Evelyn.
Maria
will have been picked up from beneath the overpass by now and taken back to the
Quarry’s recovery lab for an infusion and a snack. I’ve come to one of the
city’s darker bars for much the same, hoping to lose the fresh pain of
isolation in the familiar curse of family.
“Subtext
is flavor,” Evie says and yawns. She slips her arm through mine, cuddling on
the nightclub’s wretched sofa in a grotesque of sisterly affection. Bold
glances cling to her every movement, but courage extends no further. No one
meets our eyes or approaches. Every vampire is an exhibitionist, but between
the Internet and reality TV, voyeurs are increasingly absorbed in other fare.
When money and time are inexhaustible, attention is the only commodity left.
I’ll trade my vain sister a little of mine so she’ll owe it to me to listen to
my new despair.
“We’re
cursed, my darling,” she purrs against my shoulder, tempting our unsubtle
onlookers with glimmers of vampire lesbian kitsch. “We can never get what we
want.” Her hand runs over the hills of my lap. “Our daddy told us no.” She
thrusts her lower lip into an alluring pout and scans the club’s front room.
It’s
red as a new bruise, and crammed with kids burning time and tobacco, waiting
for the band my pale blond sister, and now I, the raven, have come to see. “If
Adam could have loved me after I told him the truth, if I had showed him the
wingscars, told him the curse ...”
“Why
isn’t it enough that he wanted you?”
“He
didn’t want me,” I tell her. “He couldn’t even see me.”
“He
saw the outlines of you; that’s enough for men. They fill in the rest with
their own desires.” Evelyn waggles her fingers at a skinny tattooed kid across
the room. A chain runs from his thick wrist to a choker-mounted D-ring worn by
one of the club’s few mortal females. “He wants me,” Evie whispers to me. “He
wants to possess me. Don’t you just love that?” She giggles. “I love being
wanted. I love the joke. I am desire. They all want me. But I’m the one who
takes them.” Evelyn’s laugh is shockingly carefree in a room heavy with
shouldered darkness. “I drink them in, possess them, and they never know it,
drunk on their hunger and their dreams of possession. What fools.”
“You
hate them,” I say.
“They’re
so blind and their desires are so strong—of course I hate them. Don’t you?”
“No.”
“Well,
you should.” Evelyn flips her hair back from her bare shoulders. “It makes it
easier to kill them.”
“I
don’t kill.”
“Ever?
Really? I thought that devil had claimed all my sisters.” Evelyn pats my black
latex leg again. “Cheer up. Maybe tonight’s your lucky night. You look primed
for it.”
She
cocks her head and listens to the protracted shouts from the far room. “That’s
the end of their set, the bastards. I’m glad they’re done. The next band is
worth seeing though. I’m hunting their singer.” I can barely hear my sister,
but Evelyn isn’t talking to me, just telling tonight’s events on time’s black
rosary beads. Evie has never visited the Quarry. She’s poacher to her blighted
core.
Her
lips touch my neck, just below the ear. “Why do you suffer so much in search of
your loophole,” she whispers, “when it may not exist at all?” Her fingers are
in my hair. Her voice is in my head. Why do you think you can trick God out
of the curse he put on us all? she psycasts into my mind.
“I
only want impossible things,” I whisper back to her inclined ear.
“What
you need is a drink.” Evelyn springs up and pulls me to standing without making
space for me. Our marble bodies come together hard, and she closes her lips on
mine in a deep display kiss for her no-longer discreetly peeking audience.
But
she kisses me almost gently. She does it for them, the gawkers, but she keeps
her feeding teeth sheathed. Although our secret edges are so keen only the
quills of our sisters can hone them, she does not use me for this now. It is
the most generous thing she has offered. I take it.
“Now,”
she whispers, “let’s get you that drink.”
My
skin crawls with the eyes creeping over it, but Evelyn tugs me deeper into the
ocean of black-clad, kohl-rimmed, multiple-pierced, barely suppressed rage. Two
boys lean their narrow backs against the fetid corridor that links the cramped
front room to the packed performance pit and platform. The boys’ delicate
wrists are bare of the paper bracelets that mine sport to show I am of age to
buy alcohol. Yeah, twenty-one and some zeros.
In
the corridor between the red room and the stage space, smoke-stained mirrors
reflect us—blurred amalgams of the desires pinned to us. Our white skin glows
weirdly in the hallway’s electric black lights. Evie winks at one of the boys.
He looks left, then right, to see who the tall, large-breasted (ah, even
larger-breasted) woman is looking at. Nonplussed, he frowns at her and points
at himself. Evie licks her lips. He elbows his scrawny friend. His knees look
unstable.
Still
holding my hand, Evie approaches the boys. The club won’t admit kids under
eighteen—this could be their first time. He straightens up, wipes his white
hands on his filthy jeans, and glances around and back at the stunning women
advancing. Even reshaped by his desire, Evie is taller than the boy. She
releases my hand to slide her long fingers up his skinny face, depositing me
before his dumbstruck friend.
He
stares at me, and then at Evie, and does not blink. Evie closes her mouth to
nibble at the boy’s virgin lips in soft, sucking kisses, while his friend just
gapes before me. They are both immobilized. Evie runs her hands down her fig’s
narrow shoulders to take his work-roughened hands. She carries them by their
wrists to her high, swollen breasts. It connects a wire to a battery. His
hands, mouth, and body convulse to wild activity. He gropes her breasts,
presses his gangly body against hers, and thrusts his tongue into her mouth.
Across
from me, his wide-eyed friend manages to produce, “Urm. Hi?”
I
can smell the cheap meat his mother feeds him. The hinges of Evie’s jaw
stretch. The razor edge is out; she is feeding.
“I,
ah . . .” The boy makes an awkward gesture toward Evelyn. “I like your friend.”
My
sinuous sister is twined around the boy, her gray eyes closed. I watch her
swallow. “She likes yours,” I say.
The
oils of hamburger and crispy fish glisten blue over acne boils, and in his lank
hair, but under it, his blood, a delicate hammer where vein crosses bone,
pulses sweet and virginal. “What’s your name?” I ask him.
“Jake.
Jacob.”
To a
man-child already schooled in the indignity and dearth of dating and possession
amongst the disposed, sexy older women who appear out of nowhere to proposition
him must seem like a godsend. So I ask, “Do you believe in God?”
The
unfortunate gapes and stammers. Finally he shakes his head mutely, no.
Why
would he? God doesn’t really send women like me.
He
really doesn’t.
“You’re
not going to . . . ?” Jake shrugs toward his ravenous friend wound over Evie’s
sculpted form.
“No.”
He
had not hoped, but still, I can almost hear the door shut within him. He
looks—not crushed, not even disappointed. He looks like a condemned man who
hears the prison gate slam—unwelcome, inevitable. I step against his gently
shaking body and touch my flawless cheek against his ruined one. “Did you think
I was your loophole?” I whisper.
His
brown eyes are sunken from poor nutrition, and desperate out of both habit and
need, but in their darkness I see hope glint. I am his way out. He nods. His
coarse, cautious hands touch my slender waist. Deep in my gums, my feeding
quills throb.
Evelyn’s
fingers snake through mine. She shakes out her blond hair and unpeels the
hungry child from her body.
“See?”
she says, pulling me from Jacob, “don’t you feel better after a drink?”
Evelyn
has impeccable timing.
She
leads me away from the two lost boys into the stage hall at the moment the
crowd erupts in a thundering roar. It is answered from the darkened stage by a
bass drum concussion. Again, and then again. The pounding pummels me. Speakers
stacked high as bell towers force rhythm against my blasted chest and up
through the soles of my feet. I close my eyes and pretend it is a native pulse,
not the kick drum, beating my ribs. We are pulled forward with the screaming
surge driving toward the stage.
The
singer, perched on a speaker bulwark, stretches his arms over the crowd, whose
inarticulate howls he goads on like Hell’s cheerleader. “Make some fucking
noise!” he screams. They bawl back at him, mouths splayed, fingers raised in
devil’s horns or clenched into fists. They punch or prod at the stage. The
singer shouts back, “Louder!”
In
pockets around us, the bizarre ritual of mosh pits opens the crowd in rings of
stylized violence. Shaved, pierced, sweat-drenched, and suddenly shirtless men
barrel their way to the perimeter. They stand, forming the circle, arms crossed
over chests, preening biceps, waiting their turn within.
I
study the man my sister hunts. His unnatural voice claws my bones like memory,
alternately a shrill shriek and base growl, but it won’t change the shape of
anything. Maybe no voice still can. I close my eyes to feel it grate. He might
well nurse a demon seed within him. He knows he is not innocent, but for all
his accessories, I know he is not evil. He is, at worst, a minor imp.
In
the press of people and the stifle of desire, rage squeezes. The sounds and
pressures rake my marrow, scratching Adam’s sincerity and faith to bleeding
inside me. Evie is right. I am primed to kill. My faith in loopholes is only a
poorly buried attempt at supernatural sleight of hand. I had cloaked Adam in my
hope, but men no longer wrestle angels, and the cheap magician’s cape falls to
the dust. No man will ever know me, actually and biblically. God never blinks.
I
turn to leave, but Evelyn is snaking through the mass again, leading me deeper
against the pulse of sound. We stop behind a man whose colossal height eclipses
the singer and invites fights. Bodies surge stage-ward and drive Evelyn against
his massive back. He turns, fists balled. His black scowl reveals a true
demonic lineage, but when he finds only a lithe blonde rippling under leather,
the grimace vanishes. Evelyn has scented fresh prey.
Eternity
is forever, but humanity is infinitely fresh. Made and remade new, each life
born unique. Every mortal heart, even the hard and broken ones, beat blessed,
while my immortal hope lies dirty underfoot in the spilled beer and roach ends.
The concert is over.
Wait, Evelyn psycasts, seeing me
turn to go. She dangles from the blunt elbow of her muscle-bound fig.
I
will wait with you, my sister, I reply, and we will feed together. Eternity
drinks the moment.
Evelyn
rolls her gunmetal eyes. Rock on Nosferatu, she psycasts back at me.
“The singer will send somebody out to find us and bring us backstage,” she
shouts, too squeamish to risk contamination from my black mood by further
touching my mind. She gestures toward the unsmiling immobile force beside her.
“I’m taking Thor here, and I need you to come keep the singer occupied until
I’m done with this one, okay?”
Without
pleasure, Sister,
I stubbornly push into her mind.
Evelyn
grins and shrugs. “It’s this or go mad from boredom.”
Can
we go mad? I
ask, but a pudgy troll-like man with a lanyard is approaching.
“We’re
angels, my darling, perfect in every way. Madness is unattractive. Smile!”
She
inclines her perfect head and whispers to the roadie. His squinty eyes dart to
the towering column of compressed rage who wears my sister on his elbow like a
hoop from a pierced lobe. The pig-troll shrugs. If the gorgeous blonde he was
sent to fetch wants to bring that bruiser with her, who is he to stand in her
way? He is not made for courage or independent thought.
I am,
but I follow Evelyn anyway, across the sticky floor, through a locked door, and
down a fire escape to two buses parked behind the club. The troll, with
unbreedlike flourish, taps a secret knock on the first bus. The glass and metal
doors fold back and Evelyn, Goliath, and I step into the band’s enclosed
ecosystem.
Between
the low-hanging canopy of smoke and the undergrowth of cigarette butts and
Doritos, half a dozen sweaty and exhausted men lean like fallen trees against
parallel rows of upholstered benches. The singer wears synthetic fangs and a
silver ring in his nose, but he is beautiful, with eyes that dip gracefully
downward at the nose. A black fae sprite more than demon, I decide. He extends
his tongue and waggles it in greeting.
Evelyn
reaches into her pocket and extracts a silver flask.
“Absinthe,
fellows?”
She
is greeted with a cheer that even I join. This once-illegal, herbal liquor
offers vampires our only intoxication and suddenly, terribly, I want to lose
myself in its licorice caress. Anticipation bites the back of my throat. How
had Evie secreted her antique flask past the metal detectors at the entrance? I
don’t care. I only want to taste it in their blood.
Evelyn
produces slotted silver spoons from her thigh-high boots and the full theater
of the vampire’s intoxicant unfurls. The bassist finds glasses, but the timid
drummer, unwilling to partake of something so storied and so strange, retreats
to the second bus.
We
balance diamond-shaped sugar blocks on the holes of flat-bladed spoons and trickle
water over them until the absinthe louches, a pale, milky green. Evie raises
her cup to me, the brass key, which hangs by a hair-fine cord from her wrist,
clinks against the glass. We drink, but it is wasted on us. Not yet, not
this way.
The
secret rhythm bangs against the bus doors again. “Anyone want to go eat?”
Evelyn
and I exchange a secret smile. Yes, thank you. But inside the bus, men
are standing and moving. The pairings are obvious: me with the singer, Evelyn
with the behemoth. The remaining band and crew, amid jeers and punches, exit
for the all-night diner.
Evelyn
doesn’t know about my month of rogue hunts, or she might not trust me so. She
pours another glass for the singer I am meant to toy with until she wants to
feed, and one for me, but not for herself or the hulking man next to her.
His
heavy brows collide with confusion. “Hey—” he begins, but Evie turns on the
narrow sofa wedged lengthwise into the bus, and kisses him hard, jaw flexing.
He pulls away, hands on her small shoulders, all the lines of his harsh face
replaced by a bruised look of wonder. Then the hunger catches him and the deep
lines hatchet his face again. His strong body twists her under him, clapping
her against his powerful chest, kissing her with force and rage and terrible
need. Evelyn pulls at his shirt and he sits back to shrug it off. He begins to
say something, to make a confession, to ask her name, but she pulls her own
shirt over her head and he is lost again at the sight.
“Poor
bastard,” the singer says. His beautiful sapphire eyes run over Evelyn,
bare-breasted and mauled. “She’s going to eat him alive.”
I
can’t help smiling. “You have no idea.”
“So,”
he asks me, eyes still on my delicious sister, “who the hell are you?”
“I
am the eternally damned.” I grace him with a benign smile. “Mine is a tortured
soul, cursed by God through my immortal parents for a grave sin on their part.”
“Cheerio!”
he toasts, handing me my glass and raising his to it. “What did ol’ mum-n-dad
do to the Godman?”
“They
seduced him.”
I
have all his attention now.
“A
kinky trinity?”
“Indeed.”
I nod gravely, although the smile tugs hard.
The
singer snorts. “Yeah, that father-son-and-ghost thing never struck me as the
model of mental health!”
At
this, I laugh outright. “The original family values!” “Tossed out of Eden, were
you?”
“I
have been denied any direct union with my God.”
“Bastard,”
he says.
From
the sofa, my sister cries out her impatience with her consort’s attention to
her breasts, and drags his hungry mouth back to her own.
The
singer takes my limp hand. In mockery of a courtly gesture I had not realized I
missed, he brushes my white knuckles with soft lips. He meets my eyes, running
a pink tongue across his perfect teeth. “Mmmm,” he murmurs, “brimstone.”
Vampires
have no scent and no taste to our bodies, but this makes me giggle anyway.
“And
will you taste of fire?” I whisper. My deep feeding teeth pulse, and I turn his
hand in mine to take the tips his fingers in my scarlet mouth.
“I
taste like sin,” he growls with the deep voice he sings in.
He
tastes human, salt sweat and blood. I run my tongue over his rounded fingers,
flicking at the callused places, hard from guitar strings. But the razors break
through and, without fully intending it, I pierce the delicate web between his
index and middle finger. He flinches, but I can’t help the reflex to suck hard
where I taste blood. He yanks his hand away.
“You
don’t like to be bitten?” I am wide-eyed innocence.
“I
will give you my throat, Lady, if you will give me yours.”
It
is a game for him, but he plays it well.
I
pull my black hair away from my neck and raise my chin. The white length of my
angelic throat shines exposed for him, and he bows his black-and-blue
dreadlocks over my marble flesh. His kisses are surprisingly tender and deep,
and utterly sincere. I let him kiss my neck, open the brass buttons of my
velvet vest, and claim my swollen breasts in his hungry hands.
Then
I kiss him.
He
smells of liquor and desire, and I struggle to savor only his human kiss. His
lips, warm and eager, close over mine, grow bolder, probe deeper until, with a
little shudder, my drinking quills erupt. Now, as I kiss him, and as he kisses
me harder and deeper back, microscopic serrations slit his lips and tongue. The
clean green of absinthe clings in his mouth, and I suck at it for the wormwood
and the iron, the mingled herbal and metallic threads in blood.
Biting
deeper into his absinthe-numb lips, I lose any knowledge of where his agile
hands travel over my less-sensate body. There is only his mouth. Then only his
pulse, dragging time slower. The blood dreams begin to trickle, swift peeks of
memory, not deep, because I do not strike into him full-tooth, but fascinating
glimpses—audiences and guitars. His rich taste is tainted with a welter of
forbidden flavors and ideas, and I draw deeply from his mouth, craving the red
strength, seeking the green high.
A
masculine strangling noise tears my attention. Evelyn’s fig is ashen. Some
primal fear has awakened him, stretched prone beneath her, tiny puncture marks
on his thick throat. Evelyn slides her nimble hand between his legs, and works
her strong fingers over his cock in rhythm with her mouth sucking his again.
The fallen colossus groans and pushes his hips against the wringing fingers.
Evelyn has taken quite a lot from her first fig. She will want mine soon.
The
singer turns my face back to him, away from my feasting sister.
“Where
were we?”
“We
were comparing our damnations,” I say.
He
nods. “My damnation is darkest when I am not angry or afraid, when I cannot feel
God damning or the devils tempting. Then, I am only pain.” Despite the flippant
delivery, it is the first pure truth he has spoken.
I
owe him the same. “Mine is darkest now,” I say and meet his kiss. I taste fear.
And absinthe. It climbs inside me, an emerald velvet unbalance of delectation.
I close my eyes and taste floating, am lifted, needed. He pulls me closer, and
I see acutely—only tinted green—the magic of desire. I ride the wave of his
lush hunger, rising verdant and new, pressing up within me. What is the taste
beneath the absinthe? Beneath the fear? Kiss deeper. Kiss of death. Kiss of
blessing. Tastes of love.
“Ollie,
sweetheart, didn’t you need to be going?”
The
singer and I blink at Evie, sitting flushed but composed, beside the pale and
barely breathing giant. “Some people have a bad reaction to absinthe.” She
shrugs and gives the singer a slow smile.
“We’re
busy,” he says.
Evie’s
eyes flash from the singer’s to mine and back. If vampires could have strokes,
Evie would seize up and fall over. Does he deny her? Does he want only me?
Without
his desire or fear, Evie cannot feed from him. It would break her teeth to try.
But I know she will kill him barehanded before she’d leave him with me, so I
stand.
Let’s
go, I
psycast. She will not feed from him. Not this night. Stunned, but already
well-fed, she gathers her things. I turn my back and bite deeply into my lower
lip to fill my mouth with blood. Over my shoulder, I wink at my satiated
sister, and turn to my starving man.
Our
mouths meet a final time in a communion of stained souls. He swallows what he
cannot taste, kissing hungrily, trying to ask me to stay, knowing I am gone.
His lips are slippery with my ichor. Tomorrow, he will blame the absinthe for
his omnipotence and strength, the heightened smells and taste, the penetrating
insight and angelic health. Evelyn’s fig will blame the same for leaving him
drained and weak, tired, ill, and more than damned.
4
INTO THE FIRE
In
my midnight midtown apartment, the demon of despair regards me in the red wink
of my answering machine. Adam called again while I was out. I watch the
diabolical electric blinking. Modernity is keen to alert us to what we’ve
missed: calls, turns, TV programs. The city is ablaze with missed connections.
I pull the blackout drapes closed against mine: Maria, Evie, Adam . . .
The
death that comes with each new day, the pulseless, breathless sleep of angels
has shuttered my race in the sexless bed of coffins out of simple convenience.
But shadow can always be found or made. This is not true of light. Darkness
clings in the corners and insides of things, but with blackout drapes and a
little planning, the modern vampire can make her entire home a tomb. Handy
that. Since 1962, I have kept my stone coffin, with my shadow and my wings, at
home in Ireland.
I
meet the answering machine’s small, steady stare. “What do you do when God
tells you no?” I ask. But it doesn’t answer me, so I undress for bed. We are
all pitch-black in the belly and the lungs; light reaches no deeper in than our
closed mouths and eyes. The blackness without and the night within, barred only
by flesh, longs to merge, fold on fold, into itself, touching both sides of my
senseless skin. No other light, no other thought reaches me, and the green
blush of tonight’s absinthe is swallowed by blinking, red-eyed despair. Who am
I to deny that demon’s desire?
Without
my loophole, without even its quest to scaffold thought, and unable to escape
even into tumbling madness, I must still fall. It’s who I am. All I have left
is my truth. I liked the taste of it in my mouth tonight. I want to go home.
“I’m
going home,” I tell the unblinking red bulb.
Home
is where you always tell the truth, even with your lies.
“Damn!”
The water bath had just reached a hundred degrees, but the pounding on
Dominic’s back door continued. He took a deep breath to calm himself, inhaling
the familiar, pungent scent of developer and bleach. It was Paul, he was
certain. The dogged postdoc would keep up the steady tattoo of fist-on-wood
until Dominic came to the door. He looked balefully at the precise, ordered
rows of tanks in his sink line, grunted, and marched up the basement stairs.
“Hey,
D.”
“Hello,
Paul.”
“Your
car was in the drive, so I knew you were home.”
“I
could have been out running.”
“You
would have come back eventually.”
Dominic
regarded the lumpy man whose bulk filled his back door. “Come in,” he said. “I
was working downstairs.”
Paul
walked across Mrs. Lovett’s clean floor in muddy boots, took a beer from the
fridge, and squinted at Dominic. “In your darkroom?”
Dominic
nodded.
“I
don’t think I’ve ever seen your darkroom.”
“Not
much to see,” Dominic smiled briefly. “What with it being dark and all.”
“Built
it yourself, I bet?”
Dominic
nodded again. “It really wasn’t too hard. Little bit of duct tape, some black
silicone caulk. It was a fun project.”
“Can
I see?”
“It’s
not that much to look at, Paul. Have another beer.”
“But
I’ve interrupted you. You can finish whatever you’re working on”—Paul popped
the top off another Newcastle—“we could hang out.”
Dominic
watched Weisel wind around Paul’s ankles. Even though he shared a back fence
with Paul, the two neuroscientists never “hung out.” The sullen man appeared at
Dominic’s back door several times a semester with a concern he would worry like
a chew toy, growling and slobbering, but for the most part, they saw more than
enough of each other in the lab. Dominic got himself a beer and allowed Paul,
Weisel, and finally Hubel to follow him downstairs.
“Your
basement is backwards,” Paul observed, squeezing himself through the darkroom’s
narrow door. “The furnace is out there on its own, and the rest of the space is
walled in.”
Dominic
laughed and moved a large trash can full of rejected prints, film ends, and
empty chemical packets outside the darkroom door. He pushed the stool from its
place in front of the enlarger into the trash can’s empty spot, and Paul
plopped down on it while the cats curled up before the metallic warmth of the
exposed furnace.
In
the brown shadows of the safelight, Dominic rechecked the water bath temperature
and began loading film onto reels. He loved the smells and rituals of
processing, the precise gestures and times, the slow discovery of what was
hidden, but the darkroom itself was just a false front. Dominic refused to
glance at the door in the back wall that led to his private lab. That, he
wouldn’t show even to the cats.
Paul
surveyed the darkroom’s interior—a study in utility over aesthetics. The small
space was not drywalled, and blue electrical boxes capped with timers, dimmers,
and switches clung to the bare studs like snails. Wires, tubing, and PVC pipe
ran precisely, but exposed.
“Have
you had this place inspected?” Paul asked.
Dominic
looked up from his reels and spindle rods. “Nope. I’m sure I’ve violated city
codes all over the place. But I figure I know a thing or two about electrons.
It’s safe.”
“It
doesn’t look it.”
“Paul,
I know you’re not here out of concern for my safety.”
“No.
That’s true.” Paul studied his feet. “I hear you’re going to be gone all of
next month.”
“Yup.
I fly out on April first. I don’t think that should be allowed.”
“Because
you just landed five million from the Wright foundation, or because you want to
be a part of setting up the new lab?”
“Because
it’s April Fool’s Day.”
“Oh.”
Dominic
chuckled and set a timer. He placed his film into the first tank with precise,
familiar movements. He would need to agitate it every few seconds, but he fixed
Paul with a hard stare. Time to make the fat man ’fess up. “Why do you ask?”
Paul
fidgeted. “I just thought . . . It just doesn’t seem like you, to be away from
here for a whole month. And Dysart hinted you might be going far?”
Dominic
turned back to the film.
“Like
Europe? Maybe Ireland?” Paul’s irritating adolescent habit of curling his
inflection up midsentence got more pronounced when he impressed himself with
his own cleverness.
Dominic
kept his eyes on the clock, counting off the resting and agitating time,
waiting for the information to spill out of the man perched on his stool like
pudding on a lollipop stick.
“Ireland
is where Trinity is,” Paul observed in a conversational tone so tortured
Dominic was grateful neuroscience required no acting. He said nothing. Paul
jerked his sagging body straight. “Oh my God, are they recruiting you? I
already know they’re after Dysart. . . .”
“Are
they?”
“It’s
part of my job to open his mail!”
Dominic
glanced over his shoulder at the fidgety man and moved his film into the
bleach.
Paul
executed a neat fade from frightened to affronted. “I pre-screen his
correspondence for him. The faculty at Trinity’s Multisensory Cognition Lab has
been trying to recruit Dysart since they got their fMRI machine. He’s
considered the expert on fMRI localization on anatomical images, you
know.”
“I
know.”
“Yeah,
you would.” Paul rolled his cow eyes heavenward. “But if they’ve gotten their
mitts on a MEG scanner,” he pondered, “you’re the one pioneering an integrative
fMRI-MEG approach—Oh God! You’re going to end up full faculty at Trinity and
I’m going to spend the rest of my life counting neurons!” Paul made an anguished
noise. “Is that why you’re going to Dublin?”
“I’m
not.”
“But
Dysart said you were.”
“I’ll
bet he said I was going to Ireland.” Dominic transferred the film to the first
wash tank and turned around to study his almost-apoplectic audience. Dominic didn’t
like to lie, but Madalene had made it very clear that the primary condition of
her additional grant to MIT was the secrecy of Dominic’s Irish fieldwork.
“I’m
going inland,” he said.
“The
country?” Paul was incredulous. “What the hell is in the country?”
“Fields?”
Dominic turned his innocent back to Paul.
“You’re
taking vacation?” he spluttered. “You never take vacation. And a whole month?
That’s”—he groped angrily for a word that captured his anxiety and
suspicion—“weird.”
Dominic
moved the film into the fixer. Paul was all cortex—no primitive territorial
awareness, no love of battle, but his flaccid body registered as a physical
encroachment in Dominic’s private space and tweaked a limbic violence in him.
Paul sat stolidly outside Dominic’s holy of holies, scheming how to position
himself for the coveted Senior Researcher title in the event that Dominic
accepted a nonexistent offer elsewhere. He and Peter had been out-maneuvering
each other over that feather for years. Paul sat up so abruptly he slipped off
the stool.
“Who’s
going to pick up your classroom hours?” he asked, re-situating himself.
Dominic
turned back to hide a chuckle. Paul didn’t move quickly often. It was a good
thing. “I don’t know,” he said. Dysart had asked him which of the Ps he thought
should take over his teaching duties for the next month. Dominic had promised
to decide, but hadn’t yet. Peter was good with students, but enjoyed his office
hours with the female ones just a little too much. Paul hated people.
“I
bet Dysart will be deciding in the next week. Damn.” Paul mashed his doughy
fingers together. “You’d let me review your lecture notes, wouldn’t you, D?”
“Sure.
I’ll email them to you tonight. Or you could look them up. They’re on the
department website.”
“No.”
Paul clambered off the stool. “I should look those over now, before I go, if
you don’t mind. You’ve got a printer, don’t you?” He was reaching for the
doorknob. Dominic’s hand closed hard over the spongy wrist. “Ow!” Paul whined.
“What did you do that for?”
“Sit
down,” Dominic said. “I have seven more minutes in here before you can open the
door.”
“I’m
trapped?” Paul’s voice, abnormally high for such a large man, climbed into
soprano. “I think I’m claustrophobic.”
“You’re
fine,” Dominic said, lifting the film into the final wash tank. He had dodged
the Ireland question, but his laptop was on the wrong side of the darkroom’s
back door.
“When
can I print those lecture notes?”
“You’ll
have to use the website. I left my bag on campus.”
Paul
gaped. “You what?”
“I
left my laptop in my office.” Dominic put the film into the stabilizer and
turned a blank face to Paul. “Almost done in here.”
“I
have never seen you with that bag beyond arm’s reach.” The flaps of Paul’s face
quivered in agitation. “What the hell is going on? You’re taking a month off.
You’re forgetting your laptop. Are you sick?”
“No.”
“Mysterious
trips, erratic behavior . . . You’re going to rehab!”
Dominic
sighed and hung the film to dry. It wouldn’t matter what he said now. Or what
he did next. When he came back from Ireland, everyone on campus, with the
possible exception of Dysart, who had been told a portion of the truth by
Madalene, would believe he had returned from inpatient treatment.
“Drugs
or alcohol?”
“Neither,”
he said draining his beer.
“Ah,”
said Paul knowingly. “I bet it’s that fancy place in Tipperary.”
“You
can open the door now,” Dominic said.
“It’s
a long, long way to Tipperary . . .” Paul sang with a wicked grin.
“You
know, for a scientist, you’re remarkably unattached to evidence,” Dominic said,
leading the way upstairs. “You want another beer?”
“Sure,”
Paul said, “but maybe you shouldn’t have one. I’ve heard—”
But
a delicate tap at his front door rescued Dominic from further theories of the
more-probable alcoholic standing before his fridge.
“God
damn it!” Paul roared, then clamped a meaty hand against the rolling flesh of
his face. “God damn it,” he whispered. “I’ll wager your five-million dollar
grant that’s Peter at your door! Isn’t that just like him! The rumors of your
vacation just came out today and already that fuckwad is over here, sniffing
around for an advantage while you’re away in rehab. I don’t want him to see
me.” Paul set off through the back door at a heavy scurry and squeezed through
the fence into his overgrown backyard.
Dominic
checked his watch. He’d missed his next dose by half an hour. He knocked a
capsule from the bottle in his pocket and swallowed it as he reached the front
door. He had less than a week to prepare for this trip, and he was running out
of time. He was confident he could get packed, fill enough capsules, and secure
his lab before then. But he was equally certain that no amount of time could
ready him to face the old man and his godforsaken hotel. The thought dropped a
cold iron fist of terror into his gut. Dominic swallowed hard and opened the
door to begin Peter’s scene in the afternoon’s farce.
“I’m
going to Ireland,” the passenger wedged beside me grins.
You’re
going to Hell,
I psycast, but her mortal ears can’t hear me. “Yes,” I say aloud, “we all are.”
The flight is JFK to Shannon, but the idiot traveler beside me just grins.
“You’re
going on business,” she guesses.
“No.”
“You’re
on vacation then! Me, too. Have you been before?”
“Once.
A long time ago.” I stuff my ears with iPod plugs.
This
is the closest I get to penetration—art, music—the frisson shock of the perfect
new. The first chords of Undertow twisting into me, Van Gogh’s riotous
blue night. I turn up the electric Stravinsky, and look down on the ocean. We
are traveling into time, burning two hours for every one I endure beside this
babbling, cursed child of Greece. I see them all the time, these bastard half
children of stories and mortals, trapped between worlds, the genetic lineage of
myth reasserting itself across the inextricable ages. Helen of Troy is born the
socialite child of a partial Zeus mated to half of a swan-loving Leda, the
mythic DNA in each of them dormant until they breed and damn their offspring with
its expression. It would be easier for her if she understood, finally, who she
is, but I can’t be bothered.
“. .
. and then we may go west, Galway, Sligo . . .” The Persephone beside me
prattles on, flying east into the night. Does she think this trip out of Hell
will be any different? “. . . see Yeats country . . .”
“Of
course.”
I
will hire a driver to take me inland, to Cashel, to Gaehod, and there I will
stay forever.
“What’s
your name?” Demeter’s daughter asks me.
“Olivia
Adies,” I say and finally meet her inquisitive gaze. I could take her home to
Hell as my captive wife. The bare desire in my smoldering eyes silences her at
last and I look instead into the ocean under me.
From
this height, the waves form black hills, motionless and dead, but I know otherwise.
Distance makes a topographical map of the ocean—a snapshot of the waveforms as
they stand in a moment, frozen in time. But I know how movement below—and even
on—the surface, unseen at elevation, is definitive at sea. The water roils, and
the waves rise or vanish. You cannot map the sea.
Years
ago, I sailed across these heaving, howling waters in the soft, feminine arms
of my closest-to-love, my most happy days. In my darkest night, I fly above
them in push-button electricity. The ocean is unchanging as I am. And as
bottomless and cold.
Thousands
of gas flames springing, without intervening glass or metal fixtures, from the
naked stone walls lit the vast, cavernous space with a flickering blue-orange
glow and gave the impression that the rock itself was burning. Dominic would have
liked to investigate, but his jetlag-eroded attention kept being torn and
refocused by the sheer, enormous scale of Hell.
Beautiful,
doll-like women and dark, brooding men flocked across the rich, carpeted floor,
or stood sniffing the air. They spread like nightmare crows around him in the
foyer and above him on the sloped balconies that spiraled inward like an
inverted conch shell toward the vast empty space of L’Otel Matillide’s central
hall.
That
the ruined stones of Cashel stood stolidly in tower and spire somewhere above
them all became unthinkable to Dominic. The weight of all the earth bore down
on him despite the sailing brass buttresses and ornately wrought, cantilevered
platforms. He looked up. Graceful folded metal webs of glass and carpet, brass
and hewn stone flew into a slowly closing dome unreachably high above him.
Jetlag and low blood sugar added to a vertigo so overwhelming Dominic shut his
eyes.
Just
before crossing the county line into Tipperary, Dominic had stopped for the
night. From his window at the bed-and-breakfast, he had looked out over the
rooftops of a small, remote Irish town and marveled at the climbing vines that
draped every structure in flowers. In this land, Nature aggressively reclaimed
her own from any incursions by the work of merely human hands. Dominic was
determined not to be so swallowed.
He
drew himself up to his full height, testing his own strength, closing his fists
into hard rockets of compressed anger. Already, nothing made sense. Corsets and
hoopskirts swayed beside prowling latex and dog collars. There was nothing
extreme or profane enough to elicit censure in this great hall of the damned.
Dominic was the only ordinary, unremarkable man, eccentric in jeans and a
jacket. Even so, he felt no shadow of judgment in this alien den of freedom and
perversion. Normal was invisible. A hot prickle of shame snaked across the back
of his neck. He was the outsider here.
He
was curious about the light. It seemed to have no central source, and gave a
strange, live quality to even the shadows. Dominic touched the camera pocket of
his laptop bag unconsciously with fingers that itched for the F-stop dial. The
light was so diffuse he could probably shoot straight up into the gigantic
globe of brass-veined glass that capped the space. He wandered toward the
center of the lobby, looking up, wanting to frame a shot from dead-center below
the dome.
“A
very different sort of laboratory for you, I believe?” The old man smiled
serenely, arms outstretched in greeting, walking toward Dominic like Fate
itself.
He
dodged the embrace by taking an ageless hand to shake. “Hello, Gaehod,” he said
stiffly.
“I
must confess I am surprised to see you back so soon, Dominic. You were quite
angry with me when you left nine years ago.”
“I
need your help.”
“Indeed?”
The old man kept both irony and surprise from his supple voice, although either
would have been understandable.
Dominic’s
eyes, uncomfortable being held by Gaehod’s keen gaze, scanned the hall. A vast
network of corridors wound through every artery of the hotel’s Byzantine
complex of madness to spill into this central meeting space, each marked with a
sign above the passageway.
“Are
you interested in our different branches, Dominic? I would be happy to take you
on a walking tour tomorrow, once you’ve signed in and updated your vita.”
Dominic
recoiled, barely masking his horror. That damn thing.
“I
believe you’ll be impressed, my old friend,” Gaehod beamed. “We’ve made quite a
few updates. There’s a computer terminal in every room now. Your eight vitae,
as well as what we had of the one in progress have been scanned and put online.
No need to face the scriptorium again. Your most recent incarnation date is
your log-i n. You just pick a password, and jot down what you’ve been doing
since you visited here last. At your leisure of course.”
“I
have no intention of doing that.”
“I’ll
have your diary from your last visit delivered to your room, then.”
“I
won’t be checking in.”
“No,
of course not.” The innkeeper gestured toward a delicate Victorian settee on
the far wall. “Let’s have a seat, my friend.” Dominic followed the old man’s
graceful back to a discreet sofa masked by a potted fruit tree that flourished
strangely in the firelight. Here they could talk unseen. Nobody noticed
Dominic, but Gaehod, in his subdued pinstripes and graying auburn hair, drew
everyone’s eyes.
As
the old man settled his coattails with a magician’s elegant flick and seated
himself, Dominic watched tiny ball bearings in the settee’s legs spin down into
channels that scored the floor. He had forgotten the bizarre ecology of Hell,
where each expenditure of energy is harvested. He shuddered and plunged in.
“Gaehod, I’ve come back here to study—and I believe to help—your, ah . . . the
hotel’s guests?”
“My
children.”
“Fine,
your children. I know you believe you’re helping them with your record keeping
and storytelling, diaries for the reborn, dances for the Bacchae, but I am
working on more concrete ways to improve these people’s lives.
“You
told me once that I would return here when my desire for truth outweighed my
fear of it. I’m back. I would like to administer some standard psychiatric
tests to your . . . children, and interview a few of them. I have arranged to
have some detailed chemistry work-ups done, particularly on the vampires, and
by incredible good luck, there’s a magneto-encephalography lab in Dublin. They
are willing to let us use their fMRI machine for a half-dozen brain scans.”
“You
have returned to understand the nature of your curse.” The calm old man nodded.
“I’m
not damned, Gaehod. I’m ill.”
“You
appear to me to be in perfect health.” The old man scanned Dominic’s athletic
frame with crystal eyes that almost lingered.
“I
don’t mean physically ill.”
“Are
you now willing to admit a distinction between body and soul?”
Dominic
suppressed a shudder, tired from travel and irritable with fear. “Actually, the
connection of body and mind is exactly what I’m interested in. What
pathologies in thought can be traced to abnormalities in brain structure . . .”
“You’re
looking for the line between your physical health and your spiritual illness?”
Dominic
drew a slow breath. “It’s a mental illness,” he said.
The
confession hung between the two men like an insult, heavy in the soft and
fragrant air.
“Bringing
your vitae up to date may help you feel well.”
“Damn
it!” Dominic sprang to his feet, his voice too loud in the underground
birdcage, but the innkeeper did not move, did not startle, and the resplendent
clientele decorously ignored the agitated man by the potted plants. Gaehod patted
the seat beside him.
“I
can’t keep a journal.” Dominic’s voice was fierce. “Certainly not here. Not for
you.” Gaehod’s assigned exercise was an absolute trigger for visual and
auditory seizures. He remembered its iterations in completely
unacceptable ways. He remembered pages beneath his drying brush, scratching
quill, and flowing ballpoint. He remembered its vellum and paper, hundreds of
years filled with the same flat script. “It almost broke me last time.”
“You
almost believed.”
“I
almost snapped.”
“We
are all broken, Dominic, all of us—cursed, or damned. Our fragile minds cannot
span the paradox. We wish to stand out and fit in, to be unique but not alone,
one with God and still ourselves.”
“I
don’t believe in curses, Gaehod. Or God. I believe in reality.”
“Reality
is only half the story.”
“Fine.
Maybe. But I intend to work in the half that I can prove. The half that makes
sense.”
“Science
can prove much that does not make sense.”
“That
just means we’re not done. Gaehod, let me come back and study your children. If
I can find a physiological source for their feelings of damnation, maybe I can
cure them. Think what it would mean to free them.”
The
innkeeper’s eyes pierced Dominic’s for a brief but unnerving moment, in which
Dominic held the fleeting conviction that nothing could be hidden. “Very well,
my son. Register and update your vitae, and you may have unfettered access to
every hall and quarter. I can, of course, give only my permission. Any subject
you select must also give his or her own informed consent. We do not lie
amongst the damned.”
Gaehod
froze as though summoned. His keen eyes shone eerily, and Dominic, even through
his agitation, recognized the signs of the entranced. Did Gaehod have auditory
hallucinations?
“There’s
a bed-and-breakfast just bordering the rock,” Dominic interrupted. “I’ll stay
there, and work and study here.”
A
warm smile creased the old man’s features. “I’m afraid it is impossible.
Legends is a charming establishment—I know the innkeeper well—but you cannot
work here and stay on the surface. You must sign into your room or stay in our
nonresident rooms. But they will not meet your needs, I fear. Limbo is
comfortable enough, but you would be unable to . . .”
Gaehod
glanced toward the center of the hall. “You must excuse me,” he whispered and
vanished from Dominic’s side.
The
typical manhole cover in Cashel boasts an ornate Celtic tri-spiral bordered by
knot work. I have come to loathe these ancient Irish glyphs for being such
fitting symbols of modern Irish inefficiency. Surface navigation here, no
matter what lies the map tells, is never a matter of intersecting roads and
steep-angled turns. The only approach is oblique, a slowly closing spiraling-in
on a destination.
The
driver I hired to bring me from Dublin traced his country’s arcane pathways
with native contempt, but I feigned sleep during most of the twisting, turning
drive. His youthful hunger made me itchy. The surfaces of my peasant’s body
prickled as they paled to match his nationalist preference for fair-skinned
girls.
The
eyes of men, the smiles of women crawl across my flesh like maggots. The woman
on the plane smiled larvae. The driver leered worms. I told him my name was
Olivia Patrick and paid him cash, slipping a fingertip along the outside of his
hand. Without hunger, I sucked the nicotine and whiskey blood from beneath my
unbreakable nail as I watched him drive off. He would believe he had a paper
cut, if he noticed the scratch at all.
I
spent what remained of the day searching the forsaken roads for the one manhole
cover upon which serpents form the twisting border knots. I found it on the
fourth of five lanes which terminate at the base of the towering limestone
acropolis known, with typical Irish understatement, as “the rock” of Cashel.
I
have returned to it now, at night, a dull matte bruise on the shimmering
blackness of wet street. It does not glint or reflect. It is as invisible as
the black sky, invisible as I am, standing rigorously casual nearby. I push an
organic smell from the leaves that stick to the boundary of metal and asphalt
with the toe of my boot. No need for expensive shoes now.
At
four in the morning, the narrow streets of Cashel twine solidly silent.
Certain, at last, that no one is watching me, and swiftly casual no more, I
drop to my knees, shift the black metal sewer disc, and drop without a sound
into the darkness. I crouch beneath, grating it—too loudly—across the asphalt.
It clangs into place above my head like an inverse halo, absorbing all the
light. Dark envelops me like water, touching every surface all at once. I am
black as you are wet, diving into a summer lake, as suddenly and as totally
immersed. Drying out takes longer.
I am
less than an hour away from the old man. Underground now, I can almost sense
him. I stand inside an iron pipe, metallic like blood and as cold. I touch the
walls with the white tips of my fingers. Revolving, I explore the rough
surfaces until I find a colder vein of silver. This I trace down the wall to
where it bubbles into a spherical indentation. I grip the key I wear on my left
wrist with my right hand and slot it into the crevice, pushing until my flexed
wrist presses against the stone. Deep in the rock, I hear the mechanical whir
of lockwork come to life. The sound radiates from the insertion point like
fractures across glass. Reluctantly, I lean my scarred shoulders against the
wall. It gives without a creak or whisper, easing open against the force of my
senseless body pressing into it. Not much farther now.
A
narrow stone pathway slopes down into a damp, subterranean darkness. I trail a
hand across the rough walls, stepping down and down, looking for the dull
metallic faces, eyes shrouded, blind and mute, which mark the way toward the
hotel and the old man. A brass gargoyle grimaces. His tarnished automaton’s
eerie face contorts in greeting. I turn left. The underground damp travels up
my fingers, shivers along the bones of my arm, and worms its way into me like
terror.
Will
Gaehod be happy to see me after so many years? No, I don’t care. His
buried hotel is the closest thing I have to an ancestral home. He has to take
me in. I will sign his fucking registry and trade him my last angelic blessing
for the freedom of being fully damned. My fingers brush another contorted face
whose tiny, machine teeth snap at me. I turn toward it, searching for the
hidden door. My fingers crawl the surface, my cheek against the moist chill,
legs braced, for the subtle flinch in the stone. I push my body against the
naked, scraped rock.
Nothing
shifts, and the very immobility shivers me against the implacable stone. The
iciness seeps, stone to flesh, into me, in tiny quivering tendrils, melding
with me, absorbing me, nerveless, hard, and creeping. I begin to shudder in
frissons down my arms and up my legs until the shaking in my frame translates
to the wall itself and, with a low rumbling resonance, the stone vibrates with
me and dissolves. The old man might have engineered this new-style threshold
just for me, but of course not. He has no way of knowing I am on my way home.
I
walk the ancient tunnels now, not the temporary, shifting labyrinths of mingled
path and sewer intended to misdirect and confuse the uninitiated. No, I am
headed straight toward the belly of the rock, straight down, straight to him,
still shivering.
The
brass elevator-call button houses a glowing red fire trapped in glass. I push
it without fear or hope. I have come back to surrender. Crawling, like a
wounded warrior who expends his last, failing strength to drag himself from the
field of battle to die in the shadow of the medic’s tent, I have come home.
A
single word crowns the door, but I can’t read it. I memorize the Greek sigils
as I wait, and step into the elevator car when the doors slide apart. My only
goal, my last effort, has been to reach this place and turn myself over to the
tender cruelties of my sisters and the old man who will surely be waiting for
me on the other side of these elevator doors when they open.
Bright
metal and firelight shine inside the elevator capsule. All four walls look the
same, two glittering polished brass panels sealed with a black gasket at the
center. There’s nothing to push, no buttons or dials, no speaker grille or
telephone receiver. I listen instead to the machinery of the thing, gears
engaging, cogs spinning. I revolve, looking for, but not finding, myself
reflected, rippling golden in the gleaming surfaces. But I am being watched.
It’s a familiar awareness, the sense that I am being scanned, but for once
without the attendant subtle shift in my shape and hair. My body is not
reforming to please the eyes that touch me. I am only being seen. Seen for what
I am—damned.
I
am a vampire.
The carriage moves imperceptibly. I am the Undead. I cannot sense the
direction it carries me, but I know I’m moving. I am desire without hope.
The elevator carries me, but more than that, it encases me, senses me,
transports me. I am impulse without promise. And although nothing
changes, I know that I have reached my destination. I am instinct without
life. All four metal doors slide apart soundlessly to become four shimmering
lamp posts in a lush, Victorian salon. I am home.
A
brass capsule rose, twisting from the center of the reception hall. It
corkscrewed from the earth’s core, to deliver a woman onto the carpeted floor.
Her black hair, sunglasses, and vinyl coat made it seem as though pale cheeks,
forehead, and jaw had spiraled, disembodied, through the floor, and for a
moment Dominic froze. Had full-blown hallucinations joined his repertory of
dysfunction?
Gaehod
swept up to the apparition, and as she bent to embrace the old man, the
supernatural illusion passed. Dominic saw simply a sleek and stunning woman
whose pale lips barely moved in the innkeeper’s ash and auburn hair.
“She’s
smokin’ hot, yeah?” a throaty chuckle issued from behind Dominic.
He
scanned the parlor unsuccessfully.
“Down
here, yo.” A nicotine-stained hand waved from beneath the sofa where Dominic
and Gaehod had sat. From under the drooping upholstery, a disturbingly familiar
face pillowed its unshaven cheek on the carpet.
“Are
you okay?” Dominic asked.
“You’re
pretty fucking stupid for a medical genius, huh? Do I look okay?”
“No.”
Dominic straightened and returned his attention to the slender, latex-clad
woman standing with Gaehod. Sin-black hair and virginal skin, the newcomer
offered such a stunning exemplum of her type that Dominic registered a grudging
admiration.
“Hell’s
full of gorgeous girls,” the ruined voice croaked from under the sofa. “And
they’re easy, most of them. Fucked up and angry and ready to work out their
insecurities on your cock, if you know how to play them.” Dominic looked down
with distaste at the tumble of legs and hair rolling out from under the sofa.
“But even by our standards, that girl’s awesome.”
“Do
you know her?”
“Nope.
Just saying. But I don’t know you either, and I thought I knew most of the
fuckers registered down here.”
“I’m
not staying.”
“Sure
you are. Hell’s the only game going that isn’t about location.” The emaciated
man fished a pair of goggles from the pocket of a filthy bathrobe and fitted
them over his stringy hair. “That’s better,” he said looking up at Dominic. “So
you’re a shrink, eh?”
“No,”
Dominic said.
The
tilting man on the ground righted himself by sticking his scrawny legs straight
out in front of him, a dirty tube sock hanging on one foot, the other one bare.
“You’re not a shrink, but you want to do brain scans and shit? How come?”
“Were
you listening to my conversation with Gaehod?”
“You
were sitting on me.”
“You
were sleeping under the sofa?”
“Shit
man, I don’t sleep.”
Dominic
wasn’t aware of staring at the striking woman talking with Gaehod until she
glanced across the room at him. He scanned everything he knew about
chronobiology, but couldn’t find anything to account for the sudden spike in
heart rate he suffered when their eyes met. Was it possible that beauty alone
had physiological repercussions? She was extraordinary, with an eerie grace to
her movements that entranced him. Then Gaehod took her black-gloved hand in
his, somehow both soft and strong, and led her across the room.
Exhausted,
Dominic sat on the little settee and rubbed his sleep-starved eyes. The air
around Gaehod’s newest conquest had seemed to shimmer, giving her a momentary
illusion of ghostly wings behind her slender back. Dominic needed to get some
rest before he ended up babbling on the ground beside his new acquaintance.
“. .
. can’t figure it out,” the rambling drunk concluded.
“Can’t
figure what out?” Dominic asked, holding his focus to the collapse of a man at
his feet.
“Jesus.
I thought shrinks were supposed to be good listeners.”
“Shrinks
are good listeners when they’re paid to be,” Dominic said. “Besides, I’m not a
psychiatrist,” he clarified. “I’m a neuroscientist.”
“What’s
the difference?” The pale man was tipping again.
“Neuroscience
is science. It deals with objective reality. Things you can prove and test.
Real things. Brains, chemicals.”
“That’s
bad shit.”
“What?”
“Brain
chemicals.” He nodded gravely.
Dominic
decided not to argue, although the statement was absurd. The brain was
chemicals. Chemicals and electricity and very little else.
“You
wanna scan my brain?” Craning his neck over his sagging shoulder, the
dissipated ruin eyed Dominic through thick bronze lenses. What flesh was
visible behind his goggles, hair, and stubble was pale and bruised. Everything
about him, from his poor muscle tone and slurred speech to his disheveled
bathrobe and smell of gin, indicated a state of chronic physical crisis, but he
was still vaguely, irritatingly familiar to Dominic. At least he triggered no
taste aura and no memory-like seizure.
“Do
I know you?”
“No,
I’m famous. I’m Alyx—Alex with a ‘y.’ It’s just my rock star name. I can’t
remember the other one.”
“Oh.”
Dominic was relieved. “Are you ill?”
“Nah,
just fucked. Like the rest of us.”
“What
has Gaehod told you about yourself?”
The
tilting head nodded.
“Did
he tell you you’re damned?” Dominic pressed him.
“Just
cursed.”
Dominic
stifled a grunt of rage. Gaehod was a menace to the mental health of anyone he
got close to: this wreck of a man on the ground beside him, that intriguing,
beautiful woman he’d just led off. Moral outrage twisted in Dominic’s empty
stomach.
“Gaehod
has taught you to think of yourself as cursed,” he said with a calm held
between gritted teeth, “but you don’t have to think of yourself that way. You
can learn to challenge that kind of thinking, to interact with more compassion
toward yourself.”
“Damn,
so that’s neuroscience, eh?”
“Well,
no.” Dominic drummed his fingers on the strap of his laptop bag in irritation.
“Changing thinking habits is more the work of therapy.”
“You
said you’re not a shrink.”
“I’m
not. I just want you to know you don’t have to think of yourself as cursed.”
“Don’t
you?”
“Think
of myself as cursed? Absolutely not.”
Dominic
was here to do Madalene’s research, but there was nothing saying he couldn’t do
a little evangelizing on his own while he was underground. Gaehod wouldn’t like
it, but if Dominic registered, there would be nothing to stop him from reaching
out to people like this poor, muddled man and that captivating proto-vampire.
He could study and influence. Observe and persuade.
“Damn,
I can’t imagine what that would be like—to feel all squeaky clean.” Confusion
played over the rock star’s lax face like shadows over mud. He hiccupped. “Must
be nice. It’s not me though, I’m cursed all right. Everything looks like
bullshit to me.” Alyx hugged the halves of his bathrobe closed across his
emaciated chest. “I can’t believe in anything, so I got no meaning. And I can’t
do shit about it. No power.”
He
tightened the frayed bandanna that served as his filthy bathrobe’s makeshift
belt and curled up on the floor. “The curse of modernity, Gaehod calls it.
Meaninglessness and powerlessness—the ‘twin horsemen our alienated and
depressed apocalypse.’ ” Alyx chuckled. “Gaehod says that if Armageddon is
headed our way, it’s all going to end in a shrug. Smart fucker, that one.”
I
watch the beauty in the gaslight. The damned swarm in elegant trios and couples
around me chatting and laughing. Graceful brass beverage carts circulate
smoothly in the floor tracks, their whirring gyros easily correcting for the
shifting weight as full glasses are lifted and emptied ones returned. The
perpetual movement of the damned and the machines that serve them soothes me.
“Olivia!”
I
recognize the touch of the old man’s eyes from the elevator. Now they reach
into mine, searching. I had drawn myself to standing tall and proud within the
gilded box, but in the open space of the lobby, his clear eyes pull me, bending
toward him, into the stooped embrace the healthy young bestow on the infirm
aged. The momentary taste of my smoky homeland makes me close my burning eyes.
“I
give up,” I whisper into his hair of fire and ash. “I’ve come back. I can’t do
it. Can’t fake it. I’m ready to sign your damn registry and be home.”
Gaehod’s
flawless hand, with long fingers tapering to perfect teardrop-shaped matte gold
nails, takes my arm. He’s speaking softly to me, but my attention wanders over
the eddying beauty of the hall. But a dam of stillness in its unending stream
arrests my lazy survey. A solitary man stands across the lobby from me. He’s
tall, and so still amidst the commotion that I suffer a momentary vertigo.
Eyes, blue as a gas flame, in the tangled heat of a redhead’s
complexion—purple, russet, pure pale white—meet mine. I taste, for the first
time since I mated the devil with the blinking red eye, the shiver of hunger.
“Who
is that man?” I ask Gaehod as he steers me through reception.
“One
of the Reborn.”
“What’s
his name?”
“He
has not registered. But come and see me tomorrow for tea. Perhaps I will be
able to tell you more then.”
Gaehod’s
graceful hand holds open the arched door of the Registry Turret and I step
alone into its small, circular reach. The book is ancient. The ink is red. I
can no longer lie or hide.
I
slip the waiting rings onto my left thumb. The first one slides all the way to
the base, while the second one stays on the top joint. I connect the delicate
metal hosing that bridges them at their jewel’s domed center, and stick my
thumb-tip into the inkwell. There’s a low clicking as the rings’ bands begin to
spin. I watch the stone blush deep red. When the rings are still and silent
once more, I take them off and nestle them back into their velvet box. I dip
the waiting black quill into the inkwell, and inscribe my one, true name,
“Olivia,” on Gaehod’s magic list with my crimson ichor.
“Dominic,
you haven’t moved.”
“Jetlagged,
I guess.”
“Ah,
of course.” The old man sat beside Dominic.
“Who
was that woman you just took in?”
“Like
you, she has returned from a long absence.”
“What
is the nature of her, er, curse?”
“She
is among the Undead. She can feel neither pleasure nor pain. She is not truly
dead, nor can she be fully alive.”
“A
vampire, right?”
“Her
vitality depends on others.”
“Gaehod,
is she a vampire?”
The
old man inclined his rust-and-ice-crowned head. “I thought you did not believe
in such things,” he said, rising. “Would you like to meet her? She’ll be at
Pandemonium tonight, I should think.”
Dominic
stood and pulled his battered laptop bag over his head. Its strap rested like
familiar armor across his chest. “What’s Pandemonium?” he asked.
A
bark of laughter erupted from the floor. “It’s my home!”
“Good
morning, Alyx.” Gaehod beamed down at the heap of fabric and bone. “Pandemonium
is our exquisite and divine retreat,” he said to Dominic, “a place to gather,
to debate and dance.”
“It’s
a kick-ass bar.” Alyx said, pulling himself up. He stood swaying behind Hell’s
dapper innkeeper. “All kinds of girls there, if you know what I mean.” He tried
to elbow the old man in the ribs, but missed and staggered against Dominic.
Dominic
hefted the reeling man onto the sofa behind them. The momentum of Alyx’s fall
was redirected through the sofa’s legs rather than being absorbed and wasted.
Distant cogs whirred. “Gaehod, I’m willing to register, but I’m not interested
in bringing my life story up to date for you.”
“I’m
sorry, Dominic.”
“Nobody
is only a little damned,” Alyx noted, face planted in the sofa.
“Dominic,
what threat could writing pose to you? Ideas are not so contagious, my friend,
that mere exposure can infect the well indoctrinated—I mean inoculated.
Damnation is not viral.”
“I’m
not so sure of that,” Dominic said grimly.
“Come,
Doctor! An epidemiology of sin?”
“I
don’t believe in sin.”
“Then
how could you be at risk here?” Gaehod rolled Alyx onto his narrow back and
lifted his lolling head onto the arm of the sofa, sending shivers of black
metal balls cascading into tracks. “Young Alyx here is making himself sick
trying to change his perception with anything he can get his hands on”—Gaehod
tucked the hem of Alyx’s stained bathrobe around the frail body—“while you
worry that simply being here might alter yours without your consent?”
“It’s
not that.” Dominic shrugged and followed the old man away from the unsleeping
wreck of man on the sofa. “I’d just rather live on dry land than in a swamp.
This place is not conducive to health.”
“You
have your quinine, I believe?”
Dominic’s
jaw gripped. There was no way Gaehod could know he was self-medicating. “I have
a strong physiological constitution, if that’s what you’re implying,” he said
icily.
“Precisely.
Which is why you can allow your curiosity to lead you, even into Hell, for
answers.” Gaehod beamed. “I think you will not be disappointed. Come to
Pandemonium tonight, and I promise I will help you.”
“What
about the woman who just checked in?”
“She
would be an ideal subject for your research, I should think. And she’s newly
returned, just as you are, and likely to be at Pandemonium tonight as well. But
I am afraid, Dominic, that it is a very exclusive club.”
“Members
only?” Dominic grimaced. “All right, you win. I’ll sign your damn registry.”
“And
update your vitae?”
“Vita.
If you insist.”
“I’m
afraid I must.”
“Lead
on.” But they had already arrived. Gaehod opened an arched door for Dominic,
but did not follow him into the room. It was no larger than a closet, but
perfectly round. On a podium, in the center, a massive book, a scalpel, and
fountain pen waited. Despite everything he knew about self-mutilation, Dominic
picked up the blade with untrembling hands and opened the cephalic vein of his
left hand. He positioned the precise cut over the brass-rimmed bone pot on the
podium and looked away from it. The room appeared to have no ceiling, reaching
upward infinitely. If he could scale the walls, he would arrive, not on an
Irish street, not atop the ancient ruin, but in the sky itself, among the
stars, in Heaven. Dominic scowled. Already his imagination was becoming tainted
in this place. Despite the calm and confidence he felt, he was in grave danger.
He
mashed a gauze pad over the incision and pressed it against his thigh to apply
pressure. “Never again,” he whispered to the boundless ceiling before he picked
up the fragile glass fountain pen and dipped it in the bone inkwell. The
weathered page before him bore a list of names in handwriting too similar to
his. Shambhu, Bel-nirari, Gnith Cas, Antonius Musa, Huáng Z?ngx?, Venerio lo
Grato, Ambrose Wellesley, Nat Love. He signed on the last line: Dominic
O’Shaughnessy.
5
THE FIRST THING WHICH GOD’S
EYE NAMED
Ophelia
rolls onto her delicate back, grinning at me. Her tiny body writhes on the
velvet sofa as the long wail of spriek tears through her. Head back, mouth
gaping, feeding edges quilled, my youngest sister screams until her lungs are
emptied, airless. The next inhalation makes the spriek. Inaudibly high, it
strikes as an almost-pain in the sockets of our jaws. This is the way we summon
one another. She should not use it now, no matter how long I have been absent
from our ancestral home.
“What
the fuck?” The door of L’Otel Matillide’s Quarry bursts open behind me and
Sylvia sweeps in, red hair flying, cheeks flushed in outrage. Seeing me arrests
her. “Oh, hello, Ollie,” she purrs.
“Hi,”
I say.
“Ophelia,
that was completely inappropriate.” Sylvia’s voice is harsh even through her
lilting Irish accent.
“I
know, Sylvie. Sorry?” Contrite Ophelia perches on the couch edge, her kneesocks
slipping, but Sylvia stays near the door, beside me—her long-straying sister.
She studies me a moment, then wraps her porcelain, adamantine arms around me
and kisses both my cheeks. Together Sylvia and I walk over to the bank of low
velvet sofas and join our younger sisters. But Sylvia doesn’t glance my way
again. Her steel eyes are plowing the one-way glass that separates our luxurious
lounge from the sparsely furnished covert where our naked victims wait.
L’Otel
Matillide’s Quarry is newer than New York’s and decorated in the same eclectic
style that the old man uses elsewhere in his opulent hotel, a blend of modern
high style with priceless antiques. No electricity or plastic. Hell is built to
be self-sustaining.
“Only
six?” I ask, counting naked bodies in the covert.
“That’s
the rule, even here. I must wait. Mine is not available.” Sylvia leans back
against the overstuffed sofa arm and stretches her stocking-clad legs on the
soft cushions. She turns to our tall, muscular sister whose short-cropped blond
hair accentuates her ridiculously high cheekbones. “Vivian, why don’t you go
ahead and pick one so they’ll let another up?”
Vivian
re-cinches the shiny vinyl straps across her chest and rings for the
quarrymaster without rising. A weird tension spikes the room, which I hadn’t
sensed when it was just me and the younger girls. Sylvia, and her obvious
impatience, has changed something.
Ophelia
walks up to the glass. “I think you should pick the baby-blond fig,” she teases
Vivian, tracing the outline of a very young, exquisitely pale girl who leans
against the pane. “Or maybe I will take her”—Ophelia grinds her delicate
features in a lewd wink toward me—“to spare her sweet pussy the shaving.”
“No.
I hunt the redhead tonight,” Vivian says with no expression on her marble face.
Sylvia doesn’t even blink. She’s still watching the covert.
“Vivian’s
insistence on hairless women is well gossiped, if not fully understood,”
Ophelia prattles in the gaping silence. She looks like a Victorian schoolmarm
gone bad. “But I know her secret desire to incise just over the pubic mound so
that what she has begun between the legs of her prey with her lips and tongue,
she can continue at puncture. It is her endless quest to cause simultaneous
blood release and orgasm.”
The
quarrymaster peers into the room from a door in the back wall.
“Release
the tall female, with hair like my sister’s,” Vivian tells him, running her
tapered fingers through Sylvia’s Irish tresses. I have a moment of pity for the
masses of luxuriant copper hair that will fall to the razor tonight.
“She
likes to meet them first, you know.” Ophelia giggles, nuzzling next to me.
Vivian’s
tall, freckled redhead straightens. An overly muscled man touches her hand. It
is such a tender gesture. A human one.
Vivian
flips her long, muscular legs over the sofa end and waggles an impatient steel
stiletto. “I’m a traditionalist,” she says. “I hunt with seduction. I pull up
alongside them in a car and offer them a ride. But they’re not allowed to get
into a car; that’s against the rules. So they decline. When I get out, they’re
so grateful for the company, for the offer of help, for the distraction when I
touch them—”
Vivian’s
fig walks, with as much dignity as is possible barefoot, to the trapdoor in the
floor of the covert. She bends from the waist, deliberately exposing the split
orange of her still-unshaven sex, and grasps the ring in the floor. Swinging it
upward, she turns and descends backwards from our view, pulling the trapdoor
closed.
“Angelic
charisma doesn’t hurt either,” Ophelia stage-whispers in a mock aside to
Sylvia, who ignores her, and leans forward, watching the covert eagerly.
“No,”
Vivian admits. “I touch their minds, it’s true. I calm them, lull them. I offer
the backseat. They are so unresisting. I serve them, worship breast and belly,
undress yielding arms, and open unprotesting legs. They give themselves to me
so completely. They never ask if I’m the hunter, never question the way their
fate unfolds, since it feels good.” Vivian towers over Ophelia. Our baby sister
slides sensuously to her feet, running rosy fingers up Vivian’s lean thighs to
stand, tiny and innocent, before her.
“Yes,
and you taste them, don’t you?” Ophelia whispers hoarsely, the olive velvet of
her frilly frock brushing Vivian’s slick jet latex. “You taste the soft and
salty, red and white, opening them and opening them again. How many times? How
many have you done? Gotten both?”
“Together,
at the same time? Never.” Vivian flexes her jaws and takes Ophelia by her
slender throat. “They’ll come in my mouth before they feed me. But never in the
moment that they do. I don’t know, maybe it’s the pain. Or the surprise.”
“Maybe
it’s like keeping your eyes open to sneeze,” I suggest.
Sylvia
barks a laugh—she’s listening after all—but Vivian ignores me.
“No.”
Vivian easily detaches herself from Ophelia, who crumples to the plush rug. “I
cannot find one to combine her pleasure and mine, to be both sacrament and
satisfied.” Vivian strides to the door in the back of the lounge, looking every
bit the prowling dominatrix in her latex catsuit and metal heels.
“Thus
Sister Vivian goes to seek the blood sacrifice of love,” Sylvia declaims, her
brogue stronger, but her body still unmoving.
“She
wants to taste the pleasure in their blood, I think,” Ophelia whispers, sliding
up the couch to me. She rests her ringletted head in my nerveless lap. “Already
Vivie is scenting her prey,” she murmurs. “At this moment, only a thin wall
separates her from the woman who might finally fulfill her.
“Stay
here a while,” she whispers, her swollen lips puckering. “Stay and play with
someone your own strength, who you don’t have to be careful not to break, someone
who does not fear you.”
“Fear
me,” Sylvia growls, rising. She grasps a fistful of Ophelia’s tawny hair in her
white fingers and rings for the quarrymaster.
“Open
your mouth,” Sylvia commands her. Ophelia nods meekly, the back of her head
pressing hard into my thighs, and parts her lips, pink tongue touching her
teeth tips, the edges erupting. Sylvia stretches her jaws and drops her mouth
over Ophelia’s to grind her razor points to lethal sharpness.
“Fetch
the largest man in there,” Sylvia barks at the quarrymaster, and drags the
trembling Ophelia to her feet. “Go claim your fig and never spriek in this
place again.” Her voice is a cruel whisper. She glares into Ophelia’s liquid
eyes, then throws her at the door in the back wall and sits down hard beside me.
“Ophelia
will take the strongest man in the tank,” Sylvia tells me as our chastened baby
sister retreats through the rear door, “and still be fined for damages.”
I
say nothing, and together we—Hell’s two senior citizens—stare into the one-way
glass at the four remaining figs in the covert. The downy blonde keeps glancing
at her bare wrist, anxiously.
“Are
you well, Ollie?” Sylvia reclines into the sofa’s soft cushions. In a symphony
of coursing sinews, the man who will feed Ophelia tonight sits up straight in
response to his summons.
“Ophelia
wants to give up control, or have it wrested from her,” Sylvia says, her
lilting Irish voice expressionless. “She wants to be dominated, but she is an
angel, too powerful for mortals to claim. So she breaks them.”
“It
is our legacy to desire what we can’t possess,” I say.
“Thou
shalt not,” Sylvia mimics our father, “desire to know God biblically.” I arch
an eyebrow in her direction, but she’s still staring into the covert. The
fringes of her red hair graze the delicate bow of her collarbones, and her
tailored black dress sets off the perfect whiteness of her marble flesh.
A
sly smile parts her pale lips. “You should have seen His face,” she intones,
picking up our father’s story in his voice, scrubbed of all but the faintest
traces of Eastern Europe.
“All
aflame!” I join in, and together we recite, “your mother and I—angels!—cast out
to bear you, like Eve’s children, in suffering, outside the gates of Eden.”
“Oy,
the suffering!” Sylvie puts in for Mother. “And they—given dominion over the
fish of the sea and the birds of the air and every creeping thing that crawls
upon the earth. And you, angel-born, cannot plant vineyards and eat their
fruit, or take cup and drink.”
“So
take Eve’s children, and divide them between you,” I chime in to finish my
father’s story with my sister, “and eat their blood given for you!”
“Ah—”
Sylvia sits bolt upright, pointing to the trapdoor in the floor of the covert.
It rises and she leans forward in hungry anticipation. The sight of blond hair
further excites her, but she sags into the couch again. A rippling muscular
Adonis emerges, and begins to pace the covert.
“Damn!”
“You
are waiting for someone in particular?” I ask, carefully casual.
“It
shows, eh?”
“Tell
me about him.”
“Her.
No.”
Movement
in the covert pulls her searching eyes again. She stands and presses her
voluptuous body against the glass. “Please,” she whispers.
A
blond woman climbs into view.
“Ah!”
Sylvia leaps to ring for the quarrymaster, and then sits down again by me, a
little unsteady.
Sylvie’s
fig is young and appealing, but unremarkable except for the rather shocking
paleness of her nipples and the defiant tilt of her pointed chin. She makes a
slow parade around the covert. She’s tall, with the sort of ridiculous long
legs you only see on fashion models and teenagers. She knows who hunts her, and
she knows she is already there.
Sylvia
watches her haughty fig circle, enthralled. “I always drank full-tooth. Even
before we started building quarries and paying our figs to let us. But this
girl is different. The dreams I see in her blood are so vivid, so rich.”
“You’re
in love with her?”
“I
just want to see myself in her dreams.”
“That’s
what kills them,” I say.
“I
know. And that would ruin it. I found her pole-dancing in London and brought
her here, and everything I’ve done for ethical consumerism, setting up the
Quarries, starting the initiatives and the committee, all of it has been for
this—for her.” Sylvia is rigid, watching her.
The
girl in the aquarium freezes, listening, then walks back to the trapdoor. “I
let her see me sometimes, as she slips away.” Sylvia slides the brass key
around its fine chain clockwise on her wrist until it hits the lock, then
counterclockwise away from it and back again and again. She doesn’t meet my
eyes. “We’re not supposed to, I know. But, Olivia, do you think she’s conscious
enough then to remember my face? Do you think she maybe wonders about me during
her recoup days?”
“I
don’t know.”
“I
think about her constantly in the days between. I plan our hunts, dream her
flavor, imagine her life. She is always crawling over my thoughts.” Sylvia’s
haunted eyes meet mine. “She consumes me,” she whispers. Her fig pulls back the
trapdoor and descends from view.
“Good
luck.” I say. And I actually mean it.
Alone
in the Quarry, I press my body against the covert’s cool glass. Inches away
from me, a nubile girl twists her coiled hair around a fragile ebony finger,
but no sound or scent of her reaches me. So very young and almost wild with
suppressed anxiety, she stands up and sits back down. She knows time is
passing, but she, of course, is not allowed a watch. The covert, with its
waiting room magazines and upholstered chairs, has no clock. Vampiric altruism
extended only to our own comfort.
Another
man climbs the stairs into the covert, the replacement for the fig Ophelia now
hunts. The illusion of clothing clings to his sculpted body, ruddy tan except
across the luminous white flesh of his ass where wicked red wheals stand in
narrow strips. He has been whipped recently and sits gingerly. The Quarry
recruits figs from Dublin and Cork, even Belfast, and pays them very well, but
this man, slender and hard, and lithe as a flamenco dancer, is here for his own
pleasure. He wants to be hunted. He is hoping to be attacked in the night.
I
can’t help him. Nor any of them waiting, in dread or anticipation. Even the
figs who are not summoned have sold, at the very least, their peace for
tonight. I have not sharpened my quills in so long that to feed full-tooth now
would risk killing. I leave the Quarry and return to the public rooms of
Pandemonium, rejoining those mortals who are cursed by only the will of God,
and not their own as well.
Dominic
fished in his jacket pocket for his room key to the rasping accompaniment of
Alyx’s tortured breathing. The poor bastard had followed him up the winding
central hall from the lobby to the second floor and down one of the radiating
corridors to this familiar doorway. It hadn’t been a long walk, but it had
exhausted Alyx, and he leaned woozily against the wall while Dominic flipped
past the shiny, flimsy keys for his town house, office, and lab, to the dull
iron key he’d thought of as merely decorative for years. He slotted it into the
ornate lock and pushed the door open.
The
room was unchanged, unused since he’d left it. But it was tidy, dustless, and
the potted plants had thrived. Dominic put his laptop bag down on the bedside
table, noting an aging red leather diary strategically positioned there. Alyx
collapsed on the bed, a cascade of ball bearings harvesting the energy of his
fall and noiselessly shunting it down through the floor. The hinges on the
door, the feet of the desk chair, were all the same, rigged to recycle the
momentum of every human motion. Alyx reached into the filthy pocket of his
bathrobe and extracted a pair of blue lenses, which he began to switch with the
bronze ones in his complicated goggles. Dominic turned his attention to the
computer terminal—the only change in the room since he’d left it.
An
erratic hybrid of modern science and timeless materials, the monitor used the
latest (and sickly expensive) display technology. Dominic whistled between his
teeth. He needed to see what that looked like lit up. He felt around the brass
base for a power button and pressed it. A mechanical drone muttered as the
machine’s small wooden fan blades spun up.
He
had forgotten how gracious this old room was. He had furnished his Cambridge
town house himself, and lived in it every day since he’d bought it, but it
still felt less homelike than this strange, underground hotel room that had
stood empty for the last nine years. Dominic shrugged and opened the closet.
There, looking fresh out of the box, were a pair of his favorite running shoes.
He chuckled and picked them up.
“So
you’re a runner?” Alyx had a voice like hot asphalt.
“It’s
good exercise.”
“It’s
more than that, or the shoes wouldn’t be here.”
Dominic
looked at Alyx curled up in a miserable ball on his clean bed. “What do you
mean?” he asked.
Alyx
rolled his rheumy eyes. “I’m losing confidence in your ability to solve
anything, Doc. I bet you go to the gym—big, healthy guy like you?” Dominic
nodded curtly, pulling sweatpants and a T-shirt from the heavy metal-strapped
dresser drawer. “But there’re no weights in your room here, right? No fancy
dress-up clothes in your closet either I bet. Why? ’Cause you wear that shit,
but it’s not who you are.”
“You’re
trying to suggest only things intrinsic to us are here?”
“Yup.
You don’t get stuff here, you get props. That new vampire chick we saw today?
She’ll have a closet full of latex. Viv’s got whips and ball gags. Pandora gets
a row of jars. Whatever.”
“What’s
here for you?”
“Liquor.”
“You’re
telling me Gaehod supplies you with alcohol?”
“Or
I bring my own. I never quite worked that out.”
“God!”
Dominic exclaimed, “that’s just unconscionable. I was hoping I could work with
him to make some improvements here, help some people, but he’s poisoning his
so-called children. He makes a big show of how much he loves us, and then
supplies us with exactly what we need to destroy ourselves. This is bullshit. I
came here to do research. I came here—”
“You
came here ’cause you got called,” Alyx said.
“What
are you talking about?”
“If
you’re here, Gaehod sent for you. That’s the only reason anyone gets back
here.”
“Gaehod
did not send for me.”
“Yeah
he did.”
“How?”
Alyx
shrugged. “I dunno. You ask him. That fucker can mainline the memestream.
Whatever he needs, he puts it out there, and we all just breathe it in. Might
have been a movie that summoned you, or a song. It doesn’t matter. You were
walking around on the surface, then before you knew what happened, bam! you’re
in Hell.”
“Why
would he have sent for me?”
“I
dunno.”
“You
do. You have an idea.”
Alyx
regarded Dominic’s ceiling studiously. “I thought maybe he brought you here to
help me.”
Clearly,
the man needed help. “I don’t think Gaehod would like my way of helping you.”
“How
come? What would you do?” Alyx pushed the goggles onto his forehead and
struggled to focus his bleary eyes on Dominic.
“Well
first,” Dominic said, “I’d recommend you eat more and stop drinking.”
Alyx
made a coarse, derisive noise. “Alcohol is not my problem.”
“Look,
Alyx, I don’t know what Gaehod has told you about alcoholism being a symptom of
a deeper spiritual problem, but it’s bullshit. What the hell difference does it
make whether it’s demons or drugs that’s possessing you? You still don’t belong
to yourself. Something else owns you, and that’s no way to live.”
“You
sound like Gaehod. ‘Alyx, stop giving your power away.’ But maybe it’s just my
brain chemistry, right?” Alyx adjusted his blue-tinted lenses over his
blood-tinged eyes. “Like you were talking about. Maybe there’s something
screwed up in my head that makes me this way. Maybe you’ve got some pills—”
“Did
Gaehod tell you I had medication?”
“No,
but you’re a doc, right? Even just something to help me sleep . . .”
“You
followed me up looking for drugs?” Dominic towered over the wreck in his bed,
grinding his fingers into his palms to keep from grabbing Alyx by his sticky
bathroom lapels and pitching him out of his room. “You think I’m going to write
you a prescription?”
“I
don’t give a shit. Whatever you wanna try on me, I’m game. Drugs, scans,
tests—bring it on. I’m your goddamn guinea pig. You can’t fuck me up any more
than I am. If there’s a chance, man. If you can figure it out . . .”
Dominic
turned away, investigating his computer terminal to save Alyx the humiliation
of being seen so close to tears. The warm yellow light of the monitor undulated
softly, and Dominic picked up the slender metal pen beside it and touched the
screen. A swirl of liquid color opened from the contact point and letters
materialized from the patternless soup. {Hello, Dominic. Login, please.} He
looked around for some other input device.
“It’s
the roll,” Alyx said from the bed.
Dominic
untied a satin bow and unrolled a thick velvet rectangle with letters painted
on the fabric in gold. He placed it on the desk before the monitor and sank his
wrists into the pillowy softness. He touched his fingertips to yielding bubbles
beneath the letters and typed in his birth date.
He
glanced over his shoulder at Alyx, motionless, eyes peeled and riveted to the
ceiling above him, a look of stark terror on his ruined face.
Dominic
called to him, but the man stayed frozen—suffering some sort of seizure?
Dominic touched an emaciated shoulder gently. “Alyx?” he said again.
“Oh
shit. Thanks, dude.” Alyx blinked and shifted on the bed. “I was having a bad
dream.”
“Oh.”
Dominic stood up and looked back at the glowing monitor. “Did you know you
sleep with your eyes open?”
“I
don’t sleep.”
“Sleep
paralysis,” Dominic explained. “You’re awake but you can’t move. It happens
sometimes coming out of REM sleep. You probably just dozed off without knowing
it.”
“I
don’t fucking doze off. Told you already. You can’t hear much but your own
theories, eh? I don’t sleep. At all. It’s why I’m following you around like
Hell’s fucking puppy dog. I want you to help me. I’ve taken so much shit, coke,
meth, ket—whatever was around to keep me going—that my fucking body has
forgotten how to sleep. Or believes I don’t need sleep. Or some stupid shit. I
have to have my nightmares awake.”
“Alyx,
I don’t know much about sleep disorders. I don’t think I can help you. Have you
tried a sleep clinic?”
Alyx
rolled into a fetal ball facing the wall and said nothing.
Dominic
turned back to the beautiful monitor. A photo of eight bundled packets, some of
parchment, some scrolls, some tanned skin, filled the screen. Dominic shuddered
and toggled the monitor off. He turned for the bedside diary just in time to
catch Alyx as he stumbled.
“You’ve
fucking got to have something to help me, man!”
It
occurred to Dominic that Alyx’s erratic movements were attempts at fighting
him.
“You’re
taking something, right? Give me some of that.”
“It
wouldn’t help you.” Dominic tried to steady the man’s flailing body.
“Cut
my head open, fix it that way. I don’t give a shit. I just need something.”
“You
need to get a fucking grip.”
“On
what! There’s nothing left. Nothing holds still.” Alyx reeled wildly, fists
flailing at the air. Dominic allowed him to land a punch against his ribs to
save his dignity. Then he bent from the waist, picked Alyx up, carried him to
the bed, and dumped him on it. “You have to change what you’re doing. Nothing
else, no drugs, no operation, nothing is going to make it better if you don’t
change what you do.”
“I’m
too fucked up to change.”
“You
don’t have to change what you think, just what you do.
Decide
to do something different, then don’t change your mind back, not matter how bad
you want to.”
“Fucking
New Year’s resolutions?”
“Make
any resolution and refuse to reconsider it in the face of desire.”
“My
will power’s broken. Got anything for that, Doc?”
Dominic
started to explain why this wasn’t a medical issue, but caught the laugh choked
in Alyx’s throat.
“Let’s
get drunk tonight.” Alyx pulled the halves of his bathrobe together and pushed
himself up against Dominic’s pillows. “The vamps hang out at Pandemonium most
nights, and I know you’d like to meet that new gal. She’s gotta be one of them.
There’s this other one, Vivian, you gotta see her. Smokin’ hot. Wears all this
leather and bondage gear. Now that’s a woman who could make a man behave.”
“I
want to run,” Dominic said. “And I’ll need to shower after.”
“All
right. I’ll come get you in a couple hours then.” Alyx staggered to his feet,
and sat down abruptly.
“I
need to change,” Dominic prompted, shrugging off his jacket.
“Oh
right.” Alyx stood up again more cautiously. “You’re going to run.”
“Yeah.”
“It
won’t help, you know.”
Dominic
held the door open for Alyx, who slouched through it. “I’ll see you tonight,”
he said. “We’ll go look for Vivie and the new girl downstairs.” He gave Dominic
a wicked grin. “When you’re done with your exercise in redundancy.”
Pandemonium
is crammed with the meat of sex, the bone and blood of human hunger. It pulses
with the endlessly throbbing, indifferent drone of every nightclub in every
city. The smell of blood and desire rub against my spine, vibrating with the
painless, rageless music. Beautiful bodies flow around the bar in delicious
bloody excess, pumping dance and talk. They stand in clots, or bind one to
another in corpuscular pairs and trios, men and women, men and men, homocytes
and heterocytes. I slip into the stream like nicotine.
“Hiya,
honey.” A cocoa-skinned Amazon dances up to me. Her hair spirals in fat dreads
across her muscular shoulders, and her low-slung jeans bump my hip bone. I
should have keened my quills on Sylvia’s before she went to take her blood
communion. Soon my edges will be too dull even to make the tiny cuts that go
unnoticed, but tonight, my surgically fine nails slid up slender brown arms and
draw the sweet, sweat-tinged droplets so subtly that the dancer, focused where
our belt buckles grind, does not feel their acute caress.
Her
blood is slick. She has taken something. Another taste will tell me what. She
turns me by the waist, grinding my compliant hips against her own, the forks of
our legs spread like the webbing of fingers. Her long black lashes veil eyes
that have not met mine. They could be brown or green. Her hair falls over her
throat. I could push it back and kiss her neck, sample the slickness of pot or
pills. Hell, I could puncture her and strike, feed properly and full, tear her
supple body open with my dull quills. It will be the only way I have left, if I
don’t keen them the next time I’m with my sisters. I’ll come back for her
tomorrow night. Tonight, I’m already bored.
But
over the dancer’s dark, broad shoulder, I catch an intriguing glimpse of a face
I recognize from the airport magazine’s “rock stars in rehab” cover. He’s
wearing goggles and a filthy bathrobe belted with an orange extension cord. One
scarred arm twists upward to drape across the muscular shoulder of the man I
saw today in Hell’s front parlor. He shrugs the rock star’s frail arm off and
nods to me. Do I know him? Even in the dark club, his health and strength make
a jarring contrast to the withered singer. Only his eyes betray his place here,
among the damned. He has lived and died and been reborn, lifetime after
lifetime. In childhood, these cursed Reborn forget, but as adolescence dawns,
their memories of every incarnation awaken. Poor bastards. I think it’s worse
than being undead.
The
dancer’s grip on my waist tightens. Only her hips are moving now, and no longer
to the tuneless music pulsing through us. Her eyes are not closed, but clamped,
her hips not driving, but driven. A deep blood red seeps under her earthy skin.
Brown stone nipples tent the fabric of her shirt. Perhaps, like my sister
Vivian, I could possess the pleasure of mortals, summon their ecstasies, and
command their orgasms. I pluck at a dark pebble with my hard fingers. The
dancer’s startled cry is drowned in the torrent of music. But in her moment of
wild-eyed surprise, I learn that they are green. She plunges below the surface
again, pushing her body against mine. Her distended nipple sprouts hard between
my twisting fingers.
I
can feel the Reborn watching me, and find him more interesting than the
tuneless dancer. The faces of the Reborn change lifetime to lifetime, but mine,
of course, is unchanging over millennia. If he knew me once, he will know me
still, but I have seen too many for too long. Sometimes they all run red
together. Without tightening or loosening the crush of my fingers, I begin to
wind the fleshy bulb of the dancer’s breast, left and right. Her body surges
against my stillness. If angelic flesh could bruise, her grip would hurt me,
but she is oblivious to my pain or lack of it, mindless of me except where her
fork grinds against my thigh. If I were as open as she, would this arouse me?
Would we pleasure one another with the throbbing music in the pulsing crowd,
our sex and hearts beating rhythm?
But
if I try to touch my scarlet lips to hers, the dancer will reject me. I could
drop my hungry mouth to the generous rise of breast. That I would not be
denied. She holds her breath, releasing it in sudden gasps. Her hips grind
against me. The Reborn’s eyes have moved on. The dancer starts to shudder. I
look into her face, suffused with heat and color, with blood, with life. Her
mouth opens like Ophelia’s in spriek, but silent in orgasm. In its clutches,
her graceful body contorts. Death agonies look the same and pass as quickly.
And both are replaced with the same annihilated vacancy.
I
want to be so emptied.
Alone
again on the throbbing dance floor, I watch her rippling and scarless back
stagger into the beating red stream of the living. Then I sense him. Behind me,
coming closer, alone now, eyes on me. I wait, but he hesitates, a blockage in
the artery that feeds the dance floor. I wind my serpentine way through the
press of bodies toward the exit. He will follow. I slip through the doors. I
could vanish now.
But
no. I catch the door as the Reborn pushes it open, motionless. Unprepared to
stop, he collides with me in confusion. I clamp his strong body to mine.
“Never
hunt a hunter,” I whisper low against the pulsing warmth of his throat.
Motionless on the threshold, I hold the door open and his hard body imprisoned
against mine. He tries to disentangle himself and, rather than make the point
that my one arm could restrain him, I release both door and man, and stride
away.
“Olivia!”
Now
he has surprised me. “Did the old man tell you my name?” I ask.
“No,
but I registered tonight. ‘Olivia’ was the newest name above mine.” He shrugs,
lifting muscular shoulders. “I guessed.” He wears a buttoned shirt and a tie
over his military torso, but he has an artist’s lips. What a strange jigsaw.
“Are
you a vampire?” he asks.
I
roll my eyes and walk away, but he falls into confident step beside me.
“You
have totally screwed up the protocol, you know,” I tell him.
“Sorry.”
“The
rules are very clear.”
“Yeah,
I know.” He isn’t defiant, just indifferent.
“You’re
never to ask an angel’s name, or use it without her permission.”
“Yeah.”
Cheeky! The cursed are usually
obedient. What makes this Reborn bold? I grace him with my most seductive smile
and turn into one of the ground-floor entrances to the spiral hall that curls
upward to the glass skylight thirteen stories over our heads.
“Try
again,” I say.
One
corner of his handsome mouth twitches up, but he stuffs his hands into his
pockets. “Greetings, angel, my name is—”
“I
haven’t announced myself yet.”
“Okay,
okay.” He winks with an audacious grin. “Greetings, fellow guest. My name is
Dominic O’Shaunnessy.”
“Greetings.”
He
waits only a second. “You didn’t give your name in return.”
“I
don’t have to,” I tell him. “I outrank you.”
“Jesus
Christ!”
“Guess
again.”
He
laughs, and I find I like the sound. It seems to come from deep in his broad
chest, rusty perhaps, but rich. A frown scores the strong planes of his face.
“But you said I can’t guess.” He could be ferocious, but he’s playing.
“Correct.”
I give a demure nod.
“Okay.
So I ask the next question?” He clears his throat fussily. “How art thou
damned?”
“I
am Undead.”
“I
am Reborn.” But his jaw grips when he says it. I wonder why.
“I
am Olivia.”
“Yeah.
I already knew that.” We both laugh. “Hello, Olivia.”
“Hello,
Dominic.”
“You
can call me D or D.O. if you want to. That’s what I’m used to.”
“Don’t
call me Ollie. I hate that.”
We
are nearing the first door in the hallway. I have access all the way up, but he
will not, so I lean my elbows on the railing and look down over the floor of
the Grand Reception Hall of the Hotel of the Damned.
“And
to answer your original question: Yes, I am a vampire.”
How
strange to say it, to hear the words hang in the air between me and a mortal
man without the taste of terror in my throat or his blood in my memory—to speak
the truth without hope of salvation, or fear of failure.
He
stands beside me, his large hands wrapped loosely around the railing. His index
and pinky fingers curl toward the middle of his hand, accustomed to tucking
into fists, but the flesh is dappled and smooth, dusted with fine copper hair
that glints in the dim light of the corridor. I glimpse tattoo blue beneath the
cuff and wonder how he’s marked his body. Do the rich blue lines run over his
hard chest, down his bicep and across the elbow of his other arm?
“I
drew it on myself with Sharpie when I was seventeen,” he answers my exploring
eyes, “and walked to the tattoo place. It was part of a pre-Roman British mania
I was going through at the time.”
“The
old woad markings . . .”
He
shrugs. “At the time, it meant something about my approaching manhood. Childish
of me, really.”
He
seems as ancient as I am. Most of the Reborn never leave the hotel, once they
remember their way back. I understand their unwillingness to experience yet
again the heartbreak of living, dying, loving, and parting, knowing what will
happen, having lived it all before. But he is old for reawakening, and has just
today checked in.
Although
they have not changed in size or shape, I am keenly aware of my high breasts
and perfect skin. I turn to him, softening my body and my smile. “Why were you
and your buddy stalking me in the club? It doesn’t look like your kind of
place,” I tease him.
“My
buddy? Oh, Alyx. No, he’s not really my friend, just someone I met here.”
“He’s
famous, you know, in the surface world. The magazines all say he’s in rehab.”
“He
needs it.”
“Was
he the one tracking me, then?”
“No.
That was me. I mean, I wasn’t either, but more than he was. I saw you arrive. I
wanted to meet you.”
“Did
you?” I steal a peek at him, his handsome head lowered, eyes down. He looks
weary, but his profile is strong. I could love that face with its fierce red
brows and hard jaw, or at least love to taste it.
“Yeah.”
Earnest eyes meet mine. I slide a hand into the crook of his elbow and snuggle
up against the mortal warmth of his muscular arm. I match my steps to his when
we start walking again.
“Let
me guess,” I tease. “You were stalking me because you’ve always had fantasies
about vampires. You want to offer yourself to me, want to feel me strike into
your lovely throat with my wicked fangs and feed.”
The
sweet, dark chuckle rumbles against my fingers coiled around his strong arm.
“No, nothing like that.”
“I’ve
got it! You want me to turn you, to make you immortal. I can’t do that, you
know. Hate to disappoint a fan, but it’s just legend—contagion by the Other.
Vampires are born, not made. My sisters and I are all Desire’s fallen angels.
There are no more up there to come tumbling down. Sorry, kiddo.”
“Nope.”
He grins. “I’m not looking for immortality, although that would pose an
interesting challenge to the so-called curse of being reborn, wouldn’t it?”
“Give
it up,” I say with more venom than I intend. “There’re no loopholes.”
“What
do you mean?”
I
touch the metal plate beside the doors and they swing open on silent pneumatic
hinges. Dominic walks beside me through them. “I came back here, to Gaehod’s
hotel, because I have spent the last several thousand years searching for a way
out, and I’m tired. I had hoped that in mankind I might find a key to my own
salvation. I thought—in God’s divine do-over after his creation of angels
didn’t work out as planned—I might discover my own second chance. I believed
humanity might save the angels. But you can’t. I’ve come back here to become
undead on the inside, too, to give up futile hope, and with it, suffering.”
He’s
quiet a while, then turns his clear, deep eyes on me. He looks like I must when
I scent for desire or fear the first time. “What if hope is not futile?” he
asks me.
“That’s
such a human response!”
Bending
to match his height to mine, he takes my shoulders in his large hands. His
brilliant blue eyes blaze with surprising passion. “I believe I can help you,”
he says.
“Men
always do.”
A
tiny muscle flinches in his jaw with impatience or humor.
“Will
you let me try?” He is fighting for composure, trying not to frighten me with
his urgency, but the intensity of his beautiful face stirs something in me.
Sincerity is a rare delicacy on the twisted, ironic lips of the twenty-first
century. My deep teeth throb to taste it.
His
lips do not move when mine brush them, so I kiss him again, more
softly—slowly—the very lightness of my kiss a provocation. And it works. His
hands grasp my shoulders to pull my yielding body against his powerful frame. The
immobile strength of his chest is trembling, and he takes my lips in his, once
and hard. Under his demanding mouth, mine opens to take his seeking tongue
within. The smell of his pure masculine desire drenches me. Deep emptiness
pulses in my gums.
His
hands are hard on my shoulders. His brilliant eyes have mine again. “We can’t
do this,” he says, voice choked. “I can’t do this. I want to help you. I really
do. And I think I can. But I can’t get involved with you personally if I’m
going to be working with you professionally. It’s unethical. It’s a bad idea.
It’s . . . it just doesn’t work.”
“But
it feels good,” I whisper.
“Bad
ideas always do.” He’s looking away.
My
kiss has rattled him, and his confusion and desire spread from his lips to me.
I, who cannot feel pain or pleasure . . . I am tasting something new. I turn
and walk away, but he falls into step easily beside me. We walk a long time in
silence, spiraling up.
“Olivia,
I’m a medical doctor. I work with brain chemistry and medicines. I believe I
can help you escape the hell you’re in. There are treatments, therapies. You
could get well, be happy. Live a normal life. I want to offer you the hope that
things can get better.”
I
round on him, furious. “I don’t want your hope! I came back here today with my
last hope. Tonight, I realized that even my cynical sisters quest helplessly
after something. Even they cannot be free from the tyrannies of hope. Hope is
the unthinking, unseeing master of unending hell. I have my own. Don’t offer me
yours!”
We
have reached the top of the spiral and stand on the final circle of balcony
beneath the domed glass. Above us, the Irish sky towers black and starless.
Dominic’s
voice is meltingly tender. “What if you’re right? What if hope is the master of
Hell? What if something in your own mind, in your own hopes, or fears, or
ideas, is the cause of your suffering? What if you are not damned?”
“If
I am not damned, what am I?”
“A
woman in pain.”
“An
ordinary woman?”
“There
is nothing ordinary in any woman’s pain.”
“A
mortal woman?”
“Would
that be so terrible?”
My
laugh is almost a howl. “I take no pleasure in food, but I still eat,” I tell
him. “I have no joy in life, but I live. Does that sound like an ordinary
woman? I am the Undead. The Hollow. I am Numb. I am the sacred, stuffed into
the profane. My body, made like yours of vile mud and ash, cannot contain all
of who I am, and yet I am nothing at all. I am timeless, spaceless, crammed
into time and space. I am the unspeakable made into a single word. I am a true
violation of Truth.”
He
dares not look at me. “I used to feel that way.” His voice is low with the
weight of things never before said. “When I was a kid, I started having dreams
of women. Most boys do, about that age, but mine were of women I had whole
stories for. From all over history. The first time I had sex, I almost went out
of my head. Not just the way it felt, but the images I saw—other faces, other
beds, whole lifetimes.”
Even
his desire, strong in the air between us, smells bittersweet. I swallow hard
against the rising quills dripping hunger, and something else as well.
“For
a while, the memories came flooding back so fast I couldn’t keep anything
straight,” he tells me. “Then I remembered this place, the hotel, coming here
in other lifetimes, and how to find it again. I came back. Here, there are
diaries that look to be hundreds of years old, of lives that I remember. I
remember my children, how much I loved them, how they died in front of me or
watched me die. I tried to track the lineage of one son born before the Second
World War, but I was black, and the records are bad. I felt”—he gropes for an
unfamiliar word—“helpless.”
“But
they aren’t memories,” he continues, so determined he sounds angry. “They’re
delusions that behave like memories. Seizures in the memory parts of my brain.
I’m learning to stop them. I’m getting close to a treatment.”
“Your
quest has become your treatment, not the other way around.” I shrug. “Even the
search for a quest can heal you mortals.”
“No,
it’s more than that. I no longer accept the idea that I’m cursed. It’s
ridiculous. I was a child and I made up a story. You probably did something
similar. I universalized my experience. Comprehending my mortality changed me,
that’s all.”
“But
the lineage of myth runs on. I saw a Persephone on the airplane.”
“I
don’t believe in any of that—gods, titans, angels, curses—none of it.” His
eyes, earnest and hungry, search my face.
“That’s
some power trip you’re on,” I say. “I may be a victim of God’s ideas, but you
have made God the victim of yours.”
He
takes a step toward me, reaching for my hands. “I want to help you.”
“I
don’t need help.” I pull my quilled nails away from him.
“You’re
unhappy.”
“I
would rather be a damned angel than a sick human. Besides, you’re unhappy,
too.”
He
drops my eyes.
“Physician,
heal thyself,” I mock him.
His
head is bowed and he seems to be studying my fingers, still held in his. “God,
I hate this place,” he whispers.
“Then
why did you come back?”
“I
had to.”
“Then
you’re not as free as you claim,” I say. “If God cannot compel you, what does?”
“My
work.”
“Ah,
Mammon. He’s an uncle of mine.” I pull my hands away and walk the edge of the
balcony. I can sense his eyes on me. His solitary shadow stains the wall across
from us.
“I
didn’t come for money,” he says to my latex back. “I mean, I did, sort of, but
not only for the money. For what the money can do.”
I
turn to him. He looks like a warrior—proud, beautiful, powerfully built,
straight, and hard. I could break him for fun. “No man serves a god for its own
sake, only for what it might do for him,” I tell him. “You serve science with a
zealot’s prayer for your own salvation.”
I
walk toward him, but he turns away from me, struggling for control. I watch his
broad shoulders and the hard curve of his back.
“I
take it you are uninterested in participating in my research?” he says, still
not looking at me. The masculinity of his beauty is exquisite—strong but not
blunt, mortal but unshielded, and the contradiction pins me with fascination’s
fine spines. They prick like desire smells.
“I
could bite my lip and kiss you,” I whisper, conforming my soft body to the
unyielding length of his spine, “and in my angelic blood you would taste real
freedom. I could drink from your mouth without hurting you, and feed all my
hungers while I strengthen yours.” I slide my hands along his strong shoulders
and press myself onto tiptoe to bring my succulent lips to his ear.
But
I do not kiss the tiny pulsing place beneath it. “For days after, you will see
more clearly, think more swiftly, be stronger physically and less prone to
disease.” He wets his lips with his tongue and swallows hard. “Come,” I whisper
to him, “claim what you desire.”
“What
I want is a woman.”
“You
can have an angel.”
“I
want reality.”
“Reality
may encompass more than you imagine,” I whisper, dark, insinuating.
“Reality
is what we experience.”
“There
is no difference, in your brain chemistry, between reality and imagination.”
“How
do you know that?”
“I’m
an angel, Dominic,” I tell him. “Maybe I’m yours.”
6
I DON’T WANT TO SEE
“Are
guardian angels real? Is that ridiculous, underfed, vampirewannabe Olivia
mine?”
“I
would not expect to find a guardian angel in Hell, Dominic. Would you?”
“No,
of course not.” Dominic glowered at Gaehod across the old man’s cluttered
study. “Why would they be where you’d actually need them?”
Gaehod
threaded a path through teetering stalagmites of paper and books. “How is
Olivia?” he asked.
“She’s
nuts.”
“Is
that your clinical diagnosis, Doctor?” The old man lifted a slippery stack of
books, papers, and brass fittings from a faded pink armchair. “Have a seat,
Dominic. I’ll make tea.”
“I’ll
stand, thank you.”
“A
fellow brought me a nice selection of green teas as a gift last month.” Gaehod
slipped through a cityscape of rolled maps from the chair to the shelves that
flanked a wide-open stone hearth. “I had a new one on Wednesday. I really liked
it.” He held a desiccated green tangle of leaves up for Dominic’s inspection
before dropping it into a small black clay teapot. “It is a sea creature, I think.”
It
did look rather like a miniature green dehydrated squid, and wrung a reluctant
smile from Dominic’s angry mouth.
“I
was surprised that you chose the paper volume to resume your writing here,” the
graceful old man said. Dominic nodded. He’d been right not to trust the
confidentially of the networked machines.
Gaehod
balanced the teapot and two handleless mugs on a tray. “I understand you have
found an admirer in our resident celebrity.”
“Alyx?”
Dominic stepped over the stacks and towers to take the tray from the old man.
“Thank
you, Dominic. My . . . ah, vertical filing system may allow my work to reach
great heights”—he winked—“but it’s rather a nuisance for the housekeeper. I
must make my own tea.”
Dominic
stood absurdly, in the belly of the lunatic hotel, holding the tea tray. He
fought the urge to hurl it, with its pot and mugs, across the room while the
innkeeper puttered, clearing a spot for it on his desk. “I understand you stock
his room with liquor,” he said. “How do you justify that? Alyx is drinking
himself to death.”
“So
it would seem.” Gaehod took the tray from Dominic and placed it carefully in
the empty space.
“And
you don’t intend to do anything about that, do you?”
“I
intend to let it break my heart.”
Seated,
Gaehod looked so small and so deeply forlorn that Dominic’s outrage seemed
tawdry beside it. He sat down across from the old man in the flattened pink
armchair.
“Alyx
thinks you bring us all here, you know,” he said at last. “He thinks you summon
us.”
As
if recalled from a distance by Dominic’s words, the old man turned his drifting
attention from the fire to the teakettle hanging over it. “I write letters,
little more,” he said. He reached through the glowing copper tubing that snaked
through the fireplace and grate. He raised the steam-capture cap from the nose
of the kettle and poured a stream of boiling water into the pot. “Of course, I
did write to you,” he added, brightening. “And here you are.”
“You
never wrote to me,” Dominic corrected the old man.
“I
did, actually.” Gaehod cast about absently and selected a paper from one of the
delicate, swaying stacks. “Ah, yes. Here it is.” He handed a letter to Dominic.
“But
you didn’t mail it . . .” Dominic said, scanning the letter.
My
darling ones, Reborn and Undead, Damned, Cursed, and Misbegotten—Hell calls her
absent children home. Let us meet in general congress at L’Otel Matillide this
April to debate whether, in the dawn of this new millennium, we face the
twilight of demons. Are we grown obsolete? Shall Hell, at last, disband?
The
weak have inherited the earth, but it was not always so. When angels fell, they
landed here and, clothed in flesh, walked the land because they could not fly.
But Man was given his dominion, drowning Knowledge in his blood, while Desire,
sweet vampires, grew fangs and fed upon him. Undead, come home!
In
Myth, my Titan children are cursed for the gifts they gave. Some, for fire,
burn lifetimes in darkness, creating what none will see, song without listener,
image without eye. Others suffer, for a greater gift, through remembered
incarnations, the simple agony of love and loss repeating. I call these Reborn
home!
Be
thou summoned, my children, two champions to do battle for the fate of Hell.
Let us gather our ancient, scattered tribes to fashion for ourselves the gift
denied us. Shall we close our gate? Shall we steal our destiny? Come home and
make your voices heard. Only here can you speak truth, for home is the origin
of sin. De profundis, G.
Dominic
glanced up, mouth agape. “You’re thinking of closing the hotel?”
“You’ll
join me for a cup of tea, I hope. I’m afraid I have little else to offer. I no
longer drink wine.” The old man filled the mugs with steaming liquid.
“Gaehod,
are you seriously considering putting an end to this?”
“I
keep asking myself, do we really need it anymore? It’s beginning to seem
redundant of the surface world.”
“Hell
is obsolete?”
“You
have to wonder, don’t you, when you can buy a pentagram at your local Galleria?
I understand that vampires even have their own TV shows nowadays. Witches
advertise for coven-mates on the Internet. It’s harrowing.” The old man reached
across his chaotic desk to hand Dominic a mug, golden nails glinting, and sat
down again as though the effort to bridge the desk had exhausted him. “Who
knows?” he sighed. “Perhaps even my secrets might see the light one day.”
Dominic
didn’t need his years of psychiatric training to comprehend the terrible pain
of the man beside him, despite his light tone.
“What
do you think, Dominic? Without social ostracism and religious persecution to
drive us underground, do the damned still need this?”
“We
still have shame.”
“Oh?”
“I
meet other—” Dominic hesitated. “I meet other what you would call ‘cursed’
souls sometimes. We all bear the same mark.”
“Shame?”
“Yes.
That inexpressible sense that something fundamental is wrong with us—that we
are somehow secretly and unknowably flawed.” Dominic took a cautious sip from
his warm mug. The tea was vaguely floral, but not at all sweet. The old man sat
silent, not touching his cup. “But it’s vampire hunters now, actually,” Dominic
said slyly.
“What?”
“The
ones with the TV show. ‘Slayers,’ they called them.”
“Really?”
The old man rewarded Dominic with a faint smile. “I should expect a very brief
program. Slayer hunts vampire. Slayer dies.”
“She
usually does okay, actually.”
Gaehod
chuckled. “How very reassuring. Perhaps there is still some fear left then,
some resistance to the heroic damned?”
“I
think so.” Dominic drained his little mug and gazed into it moodily. “Gaehod,”
he said at last, “they really are not heroic, you know. They’re sick, most of
them, and in pain. I know you can understand that—how much pain they’re in.
Maybe, if you stop romanticizing the damned, you can help them. Otherwise,
we’re no better than St. Paul down here. Suffering isn’t enough for salvation.”
“And
do you believe you know what is, Dominic?”
“I
believe I have an obligation to try and understand. To do what I can to help
relieve suffering.”
“Yes,”
Gaehod whispered. “It’s hard to witness suffering without desiring those
things.” Gaehod refilled Dominic’s mug. “I’ll introduce you to one of Olivia’s
lovely sisters after lunch.”
Dominic
shrugged.
“You
need to collect subjects for your research, and I promised to help you. How do
you like the tea?”
“It’s
nice. The leaves are tied together, aren’t they? That’s what you were showing
me. That’s why you don’t have to strain it from the pot.”
“More
flower than cephalopod I suppose.” The old man smiled at Dominic with a
fondness so obvious it made him squirm. “Olivia should be joining us shortly.”
Dominic’s
mind instantly replayed the striking spiral of beautiful woman through the
lobby’s floor. His rebellious body reeled though a swifter but less orderly
replay of her lips closing over his. He had resolved against enrolling her in
his study. She would make a poor subject.
Dominic
drained the teacup and stood. “I’d like to talk with you more about closing the
hotel, Gaehod. But it’s lunchtime and I’m starving.”
“She’s
very beautiful, don’t you think?”
Dominic
slung his laptop bag over his shoulder and scanned the floor for a path to the
door. “Olivia? Yes. She’s very beautiful.”
“You
say that without pleasure.”
“I
don’t trust beautiful women.” Dominic lifted one of the lobby’s small,
mechanical trays from the floor and replaced it, wheels up, on the seat of the
armchair he’d just vacated. He had had less trouble walking in.
“Why
is that?” Gaehod asked.
“Oh
I don’t know, something to do with the absurdity of today’s dieting beauties
who spend half their lives in the gym trying to sculpt a body like their
foremothers had when necessity required that they work in the fields and suffer
long and hard for just enough to eat.” Dominic took several more steps toward
the door, but had to stop again and shift a display case filled with glass
beads from his path.
“I
like looking at her.” Gaehod smiled.
“I
imagine she enjoys that.”
“I
hope so. I do make a point of trying to see her.”
“She’s
hard to miss. She really plays it up too, the pale skin and black hair, the
tight clothes. She’s the kind of woman who likes to stand out in a crowd, who
wants men looking at her. I’ll bet she spends a lot of time looking at herself,
too.”
“No,
I don’t think so.” Gaehod shook his graying head solemnly.
“Oh,
don’t give me that crap about vampires and mirrors. I saw her reflection in the
dome of the roof last night.”
“Yes,
but could she?”
Dominic
seized the door handle and turned back to the old man. Despite his crisp shirt
front and buttoned-up vest, Gaehod looked small and tired amidst the clinking
mechanisms of energy capture and the towering stacks of books. “You save
everything, don’t you?” he said.
“I
do try. I’ll come by your room after lunch and we’ll go down to the gardens. Do
you know your way to the kitchens?”
“No,”
Dominic said opening the door, “but I’m a smart guy. I’ll figure it out.”
I
knock on the old man’s door, and a young man answers. Fuck, this Reborn is
everywhere. His fearless blue eyes pierce mine. One thundering heartbeat
drains the color from beneath his copper-stubbled face and fills the narrow
space between us with the leafy scent of his desire. He grits his jaw against
it.
“Please
come in, Olivia,” he says stiffly. “I was just leaving.”
There
is so much crap spread over Gaehod’s floor that I can’t walk past Dominic into
the inviting firelight and uncomforting chairs, but I won’t step back into the
hall to let him pass. He closes his warrior’s eyes against my sinuous body
sliding across his immobile chest and thighs, squeezing past him into the room.
“Olivia!”
The sharpness of the old man’s greeting startles me and I trip over a mound of
leather-bound, gold-edged books. Dominic reaches swiftly and steadies me, hard
hands on my waist, faster than I knew I was tripping. It would have been an
ideal opportunity, had I been thinking, to taste him with a quilled nail
against his strong wrist.
But
he disentangles himself easily and is quickly out the door. “Olivia, my dear,”
Gaehod continues, oblivious to the stumbling his stacked books and rolled
drawings, collected specimens and boxed treasures have caused. “Dominic needs
an escort to the kitchens.”
“No.
I don’t.” Dominic glowers in the hall.
“Would
you be so kind to help him find his way?”
“That’s
really not necessary.”
I
look at Dominic again. He truly is delicious. With the hard lines of strength
and sinew disguised under a ragged sweater, and the wide strap of his bag
across his broad chest like a bandolier, he looks like academe’s own warrior.
“I’d
be happy to,” I say sweetly. “You want anything while I’m down there, Gaehod?
Sandwich?”
“Thank
you, but I no longer eat bread.”
“Soup?”
“That
would be lovely.”
I
smile at Gaehod and wink. “Back in a bit,” I tell him, and turn to Dominic. He
stalks down the hall ahead of me in the wrong direction. “So tell me about
these tests you’ll be doing on me,” I ask him.
“I’m
not going to run any tests on you.”
“Why
not? I’ve got nothing better to do with my time.” I take his elbow and turn us
around.
“I’m
not sure I could be objective.”
“All
my sisters are more beautiful. If you’re waiting to find a vampire you don’t
desire, you’ll have nobody to study,” I tell him as we trot down the stairs
abreast.
“It’s
not because you’re beautiful that I can’t use you in the study.”
“No?”
“No,
it’s because you appear to be attracted to me. I can control for my feelings,
but not for yours.”
“I
don’t have feelings.”
“I
don’t believe that.”
“Your
belief is irrelevant. And insolent. How dare you presume to judge the truth of
my nature?” I slam open the swinging doors into the kitchen, sending cascades
of ball bearings rattling away. “You can’t even face your own nature.”
“But
you know all about it, don’t you?”
“About
the Reborn? Sure.” I yank open a low drawer and pull out a copper-bottomed pan.
“Don’t
you see the hypocrisy in that?”
Everything
about him enrages me—the savagery of his masculine beauty, the discipline of
his athlete’s strength. “As though you could talk about hypocrisy!” I shake the
pot at him. “You, the healer who can’t care for his patients.”
“I’m
not a physician. I told you. I’m a researcher.”
“Why
would anyone research anything, except for love?”
“There’s
only one other option, isn’t there?” He squares his broad shoulders and refuses
to step out of my path. I could tear his handsome arms from their sockets and
put them on to boil. But something in his ruthless, blue eyes—the pain beneath
the fury—stops me. He doesn’t shout, but his voice could not hold more power if
he did. “I work like I do out of fear—fear that I’m crazy, fear that I can’t
control the things my mind creates, hell—fear that
I
can’t control anything at all.” I step past him and put the pan on the stove. A
gas flame leaps up to embrace the copper. He meets my eyes defiantly, anything
but fearful.
“So,
what exactly do you fear?” I ask him. I already know the answer.
I
wait for him.
He
smiles grimly. “Love, I guess.”
And
it’s true. He fears it because he has already suffered it—the entire pattern of
birth, and love, and death. The endless agony of losing those he has loved. The
grief his deaths have caused those who loved him. A terrible and primal love
drives him to protect himself, his family, and his lovers from that pain. I
have never wanted anything as ferociously. And I am the angel of desire.
I
walk past him along the long rows of refrigerator drawers until I find one
marked “Soup.” Dominic pulls his ratty shoulder bag off and hoists himself up
to sit on the counter beside it. His guileless eyes don’t leave me. He watches
me spin the lid off a soup jar and dump it into the pan. My mood won’t soften
under his gaze the way my tits would.
“I
think,” he says at last, “that my guardian angel would be a better cook.”
This
makes me laugh. “I think your guardian angel is asleep on the job,” I say.
“That’s
what I thought.” He nods sadly, but winks at me. “Guess I’ll have to make my
own sandwich.” He leaps down from the counter and engages noisily with the
ball-bearing-hinged cabinets and drawers. I stir Gaehod’s soup, watching Dominic.
His athlete’s body is graceful and efficient, but how passionate he is, and how
hard he loves—and the terror of that love—puzzle me. I scent the air, but there
is no fear and no desire on him. I would break my teeth against his throat, he
is so free right now.
“Olivia,
we got off to a weird start. I’m sorry. I’d like to try again.”
“Okay,”
I say.
“Want
a sandwich?” he asks me.
“No.”
“You
sure? You could use a little meat on you.” He’s joking. My body would plump for
him sweetly if he wanted me that way.
I
pour the old man’s soup into a bowl. I’ll be damned if I’m going to let that
stand. Desire is an actor’s trick-handled knife. If he doesn’t want me, I’ll
turn the blade around.
“Yesterday,
you said you could help me.” I slip a spoon into Gaehod’s bowl, keeping my eyes
down and my voice uncertain. “I’d like that.”
He
has stopped with the bread and lettuce, the tomato and the knife. I stir the
soup a little with the spoon.
“I
thought you weren’t interested.”
“I
am, but . . .” I look up into his fierce blue eyes. The tenderness in his face
almost makes me feel ashamed. “Okay, if I’m honest, it’s mostly that I’d like
to see more of you.” Almost, but not quite.
“Olivia
. . .”
I
pick up Gaehod’s soup bowl and push the trick blade in. “I shouldn’t have said
that, about wanting to see you. I have to go.”
Some
may master their own, but few can resist the taste of another’s desire. We’re
all part vampire in the end.
The
catacomb of hallways swallowed Dominic, walking beside Gaehod, perfectly
dressed for a night at the Victorian opera, except for his absence of footwear.
Intrigued by Olivia’s new openness to his work, eager to start working with
her, Dominic was not interested in meeting the other vampires right now. But
the innkeeper had stopped by his room and collected him after lunch. And he did
still need several more girls to round out the study.
Along
one corridor, Gaehod stopped to look through a mullioned window. It opened into
a room whose opposite wall was lined with identical, but smaller windows. In
front of these windows, on benches, blank-eyed men and women sat unblinking,
shoulder to shoulder, in close-packed rows. Horror fingered the back of
Dominic’s neck.
“Who
are they?” he whispered to Gaehod.
“Watchers.”
“What
are they watching?”
“A
life.”
“Whose?”
“It
doesn’t matter—they just have to watch it all, from beginning to end.”
Dominic
suppressed a shudder.
“It’s
not so bad,” Gaehod reassured him, “a little tedious in the hours of sleep,
infancy, and old age, but they are damned for one lifetime only, for the sins
of their last. It’s soon over.”
“Why?”
Dominic realized he was whispering, although Gaehod made no attempt to lower
his voice.
“The
last time around they had fates, not destinies. They made no choices. ”
Dominic
shook himself. “Isn’t it a little creepy for the people who are being watched
every second of their entire lives?”
“The
Watchers only bear witness. They can’t do anything about the life they observe,
so most of the Watched aren’t aware of them. A few will sense them, of course,
and believe in angels or fashion tinfoil hats.”
“Does
it work?”
“The
tinfoil?”
“No.”
Dominic scowled at Gaehod.
The
old man returned his glare with a subtly mischievous smile and the overtly
theatrical whirl of opera cape over one shoulder. “I thought you did not
believe in reincarnation, Dominic,” he chided and started walking again. As
they turned the corner, Dominic caught a momentary glint of light off glass.
Had there been another window across the hall, behind him? He hadn’t thought to
look.
Dominic
bit back his welling rage and kept walking until he was confident he could keep
the anger from his voice. “Why are you showing me this?”
“I
promised you a tour.”
“I
thought you were ready to stop all this, to close this place down?”
“I
have been considering that, yes. What do you think, Dominic?”
“I
think all these underground people need help,” Dominic said wearily.
“And
of course you need your research subjects who might be easier to persuade if
their familiar, comfortable home were no longer here to welcome them.”
“I
think their ‘familiar, comfortable home’ keeps them in their familiar,
uncomfortable sickness. If they were forced to function in the real world, they
might recognize the disconnect between reality and these stories they tell
about themselves.”
“They
should dismiss these mythic selves?” Rounding another corner, Gaehod’s cape
gave a skeptical swirl.
“They
should get help.”
“My
dear boy, I house the damned and the cursed: descendants of ancient races,
angels, and the great-great-grandchildren of titans and elves, as well as souls
punished for a single lifetime’s wrongs. They’re exquisite and deep, rare,
magical beings. Why should they want to be anything but what they are?”
“Because
they’re in pain. Gaehod, I’m afraid your affection for these people keeps you
from seeing how screwed up they really are.”
“Yes.”
Gaehod nodded. “Love is blind.” A warm smile split the old man’s face.
“Speaking of which . . .” He pointed a slender finger toward a flight of stairs
where a set of naked, olive-skinned legs was descending into view. The two men,
young and old, stopped to watch the woman appear, rosy toes, dimpled knees,
gently swaying hips, high delicate breasts, softly parted lips breaking into a
stunning smile.
“Hello,
my dear,” the old man said, placing a reverent kiss on the girl’s inviting cheek.
“Hello,
Father.” She embraced Gaehod, held him against her gentle body, then continued
down the hall.
“Who
was that?”
“She’s
a student from the Venice school, a hierodule, just arrived.”
“A
what?”
“A hetaera,
a nad?tu, how do you translate it?”
Dominic
recognized the Greek. “Temple slave?”
“Temple
prostitute, sacred prostitute. That’s closest I think.”
“I
can see why you enjoy your work.” Dominic turned a wry eye over his shoulder at
the beauty swaying away.
“I
have tried to help them.”
“I
know you have. But, Gaehod, I think they might get more help, better, more
modern help, if you closed the hotel. Psychiatric medicine has come a long way.
A lot of people in tinfoil beanies do very well on paliperdone.”
“You
want me to close the hotel?”
“Yes,
Gaehod. I do.”
“Would
you be willing to champion that cause?”
The
miles of rock between him and the surface world of light and sanity, of reason
and science, crushed him. How could he champion anything? “Absolutely,” he
said.
He
drew breath to question the old man, but they turned a corner and he released
the air in a low whistle of surprise. Dominic and Gaehod passed beneath a
towering gate, high and wide and without bars, into a twilit, subterranean
garden.
The
peculiar light made a contrary dusk in which color stood out more starkly
rather than muting into the gloom. The golds and purples were shocking, and
even the gray-leaved olive trees, whose gnarled roots clutched the bare rocks
along a black river, seemed young and supple. Dominic followed Gaehod’s bare feet
across brilliant, soft green grass riddled with golden crocus and bending
daffodils, to the edge of the black water. There, the unmoving figure of a
gorgeous woman sat staring into the water’s reflective surface.
“I
am so very sorry for your loss, my dear.” Gaehod bent over her, mingling white
threads of hair with her crimson streams, and kissed her flawless brow. She
sighed, but did not look up. The strange garden light stripped her of shadow.
“I
didn’t mean to.” The woman’s voice bore the indents and peaks of Ireland,
rolling and enchanting, even with their burden of grief. “I haven’t killed in
years.”
“I
know.”
“I
loved her.” A perfect tear, in which the whole strange garden was reflected,
inverse, trembled on the delicate rim of her upturned eyes. Gaehod brushed it
away with compassion so intimate and profound Dominic turned away.
“Sylvia,
I’d like to you meet Dominic. He is Reborn and, like you, remembers many past
loves.” Sylvia’s icy gray eyes, when she turned them to Dominic, held pain
miles deep.
“If
only the river I sit by were Lethe,” she said to Dominic, her Irish voice a
sweet burble beside the silent water, “we could both drink and forget.” She
patted the green bank beside her with a graceful hand. “Come tell me of your
lost loves.”
“I
don’t remember.”
Dominic
pulled his laptop bag over his head and sat down, pushing it away from him
across the black grass.
“I’ll
leave you two to get acquainted.” Gaehod smiled down on them. He turned and
walked toward the door, stopping only once to pet a potbellied dog and pluck a
pomegranate from a shrubby tree.
Sylvia
gazed into the black water. Dominic wished he had remained standing. “I was
looking for God,” Sylvia murmured, “but I saw myself instead.”
“So
you killed her?”
She
shrugged a slender black-swathed shoulder. “That killed her. Mortal blood
retains deep loves and fears. When we feed, we catch the glimpses, like dreams.
It’s the danger in going back to the same source too often. You become one of
their fears.”
“Or
loves?”
“I
guess.” Sylvia shrugged.
“So
what kills them?”
“If
you keep feeding when you can see yourself in their blood, it . . . I don’t
know. I guess it closes a loop or something. It stops their hearts.”
“That’s
impossible you know, right? To see memories in blood? Memory is a neurological function.
The notion that even genetic information is ‘in the blood’ is purely poetic.”
“Gaehod
said you were interested in memory. Do you remember every love from every
lifetime?”
“Every
one. No—but they’re not really memories, they’re delusions. I only think I
remember them.”
“How
tragic!” Sylvia pulled her lips into a succulent moue. “You lose your lovers
twice this way, once in the deaths you remember and then by not believing their
memory.”
“You
can’t lose what you never had.”
“Of
course you can. You can lose hope where things have always been hopeless. You
can lose faith although there was never a God.”
“You
can’t lose your heart if you don’t have one.”
“You
have a heart, Dominic. I can hear it.”
Dominic
felt very conscious of the meaty apparatus of humanity, of his beating heart
and too-big, useless hands.
“I
didn’t mean literally,” Sylvia giggled, and slipped fragile, porcelain fingers
between the buttons of Dominic’s shirt, pressing coolness and heat against the
bare skin of his chest. She ran her fingers over the snaking raised lines of
his tattoo. “Distract me from my sorrow, Dominic.”
He
took her fine, white elbow in his clumsy hands and extracted her arm from his
shirt. Sylvia wore the same strange key bracelet that circled Olivia’s wrist.
It, too, was clasped with a small padlock, and although it looked as though the
key would fit into the lock, the chain was too short for the key to reach.
Sylvia dropped her hand to Dominic’s crotch and began to stroke him through his
constricting jeans.
“Doesn’t
that feel good?” she whispered against his neck, raising a legion of chills.
He
nodded. “It does. But I’m not going to make love to you.”
“I
didn’t ask you to. Fall in love with me instead.”
Dominic
grinned ruefully. “Make love, fall in love.” He shrugged. “I’m not going to do
either.” He moved her hand from the buttons of his jeans and placed it on her
lap.
Sylvia’s
spurned hand swept to the tiny black buttons of her high-necked blouse. Beneath
the delicate black cotton, her pristine skin shone in the strange garden light.
She pushed the halves of her shirt open and ran dainty hands over her exposed,
abundant breasts. Her luminous pale coral nipples contracted in the cool air
and she fanned seductive fingertips across them.
“Do
you want to touch me?”
Mute,
Dominic shook his head.
“I
can’t feel your touch. You can be as rough as you want. You cannot bruise or
injure me. You can’t hurt me.” She cupped her full, inviting breasts with
caressing fingers.
“I
could break your heart.”
“I
could break your neck.”
“Do
you want to?” he asked her.
Sylvia
tipped her perfect, pale face to one side, considering. Her copper hair tumbled
gracefully over a milky shoulder. “No.” She smiled. “I don’t think I do. Do you
want to break my heart?”
“No,
in fact quite the opposite. Sylvia, I believe I can help you. I’m working to
develop medicines that might heal your heart. Would you be willing to
participate in a research study? I could pay you.”
Sylvia’s
laugh rang silver and unfettered. “Darling, I’m a vampire. I have more money than
I could ever use.” Sylvia looked down at her breasts in her hands. She pushed
the twin globes of tempting flesh toward her lowered chin and dropped them so
they shivered and rolled deliciously. “I don’t want money. I want your desire.”
“You
have that.” His voice was thick.
“How
would you touch me, knowing you cannot arouse me? How would you make love to
woman for your pleasure alone, knowing she feels nothing?”
“Physical
numbness is not an uncommon psychiatric symptom. I believe you can feel. I can
help you.”
“Try.”
She held the cloud pink nipples toward his dry lips.
“I
cannot become sexually involved with study participants,” Dominic ground
between clinched teeth. “And in good conscience, I can’t make love to you
knowing that I am incapable of having emotional or romantic feelings for you. I
can’t fall in love again.”
“I
believe you can feel. I can help you.” With a sweet smile, she turned his words
back on him. He reached for his laptop bag, but Sylvia knelt on the riverbank,
her ripe breasts overfilling the forked fingers of one hand. Dominic’s mouth
was dry, but he dared not lick his lips so close to the succulent flesh.
Sylvia’s free hand pushed back the collar of his shirt, tracing the jugular
thread where it beat lust and iron. A red tear splashed onto her upraised
breast. It trickled down the cushion of rosette flesh, hunger, and salt.
“Hello,
lovers.”
Tall
and almost fluid, Olivia stood silhouetted in the portal, motionless. Dominic
jumped to his feet and looked around for a reason to be standing. The sight of
Olivia yards away affected him as Sylvia, even topless and nearby, had not.
Sylvia reclined on the bank, pillowing her head in upstretched arms. Her round
breasts stretched into pears, swollen marble teardrops sprung from the black
veil of her unbuttoned blouse. Dominic looked from her to Olivia to the river,
and back, irresistibly, to Olivia. She came toward him across the
flower-spattered grass. Dominic spotted a tree growing beside the stream and,
looking for something to do with his hands, reached for one of its fruits
casually, but the wind swayed the branch beyond his reach. He tried another
time and sat down empty-handed.
“Shouldn’t
eat the food of the dead, anyway,” Sylvia mused, still bare-breasted. “Hello,
little sister.”
Dominic
stood up again.
“Gaehod
said I would find you here.” Olivia addressed only Sylvia. “I came to offer my
sympathy.” She did not glance at Dominic.
“Whatever
for?”
“For
the death of your timeless love,” Olivia said.
“Oh
that. Have a seat, Ollie. Have you met Dominic?”
“Yes.”
Olivia sat coolly beside her sister. “Have you been rending your garments for
grief, my sister?”
Dominic
felt the blood rise in his face. From the green ground, the two stunning women
regarded him unblinking.
“Perhaps
we should go for a swim?” Sylvia suggested. She began to peel gauze-fine layers
of clothing from her body.
Spellbound,
Dominic watched the hypnotic dance of fabric and flesh, then collected himself.
“I think I’ll just go for a walk,” he said and struck out blindly away from
temptation.
He
walked away from the two exquisite, delusional women, deeper into the dark
garden, straying aimlessly. Finally he sat down against a gnarled apple tree.
He wasn’t having much luck recruiting vampires for his study, although they
seemed willing enough participants in anything else.
“Guess
who?” a sibilant voice whispered. Dominic looked around, but couldn’t see
anyone. He didn’t think Olivia had followed him. Sylvia would be swimming in
the black river now, her pale, sinuous body slipping through the soundless
water.
“Guess
who?”
Dominic
checked behind the tree, but found no one. He shrugged. It was a weird place.
“Give me a hint,” he said to the empty air.
“I’m
shaped like a cock, but I move like a cunt, and my throat’s open all the way
down.”
“Olivia?”
Dominic stood up again.
“My
tongue is forked for her pleasure, whispering ‘eat!’ Women have had food issues
ever since.”
“Oh,
I get it. You’re the serpent in the tree of knowledge, right? Where are you?”
Dominic searched the tree’s golden branches, but movement at the base caught
his keen eye. From a hole at the root of the tree, right where he had been
sitting, a forked tongue flickered in the darkness. All Dominic could see of
the snake, when the tongue retreated, were twin, unblinking, black eyes, two
darker places in the black of the hole.
Time
for new meds.
“Are
you going to talk me into eating an apple?” Dominic asked the hole.
“Not
if I can simply shake the tree and drop one on your head.”
As
if something deep under the ground, in the roots of the tree, were pushing it,
the serpent’s head squeezed out of the small hole and onto the grass.
“Knowledge, inspiration, revelation, it’s all me!” it said.
Its
iridescent, blood-red body glinted rainbows and gold in the perpetual twilight
brilliance of the underground garden. Its mirrored scales and blunt, rounded
head pushed along the ground and against the tree trunk. It wound, making three
smooth coils up the trunk, to the height of Dominic’s hips, and lifted its
head, like a bobbing arboreal erection from the tree’s trunk. “Riddle me this,”
the snake said, “does not even human law make knowing the difference between
right and wrong a prerequisite for punishment?”
“Yes.”
“And
yet Eve damned all women by doing something she’d been told not to—before she
tasted of this tree. She had no knowledge of good and evil until she ate. She
disobeyed without the ability to know disobedience was wrong.”
“But
you knew it was wrong.”
“Yes.”
“So
why did you tempt her?”
“I
didn’t. I told her the fruit was knowledge, not poison. That’s all I ever said
to Eve. ‘It won’t kill you.’ Curiosity killed the cat (and the pussy). Eve was
damned for nothing less.” The snake wound higher up the tree, coiling again and
again. “And yet my apples are still to blame for most of the suffering in your
world.”
“Oh?”
Dominic reached into his pocket and extracted a bottle of pills. He knocked one
into his broad palm and swallowed. “How do you figure?” he asked the helixed
snake. Might as well enjoy the theater until the medicine kicks in.
“You
will always see the world in paired opposites now: male and female with their
fig leaves, right and wrong with their swords. Ask yourself, would the story
have ended differently if Eve had not blamed me?” The snake wound a seventh
time around the tree. Eye to eye with Dominic, its flat head extended from the
trunk in a new and breathing branch, it whispered, “What if Eve had answered,
‘I chose to eat this’?”
Dominic
glanced, with a vague sense of dread, at the hole beneath his feet. From its
darkness, pushing upward, the snake’s tail protruded and rose. Shimmering and
winding upward, it spiraled the tree, crisscrossing the glistening coils
already wound there, reflecting itself on itself in infinite recursions.
Dominic squeezed his eyes shut and opened them with only dim hope the
apparition would be gone.
“You
humans walk so eagerly into tyrannies,” the snake mocked. “The thrall of
addiction, of oppression, of victimization—‘I was tempted. I couldn’t help
myself. It’s genetic.’ Or you hand your power over to other forces, kinder
gods, and are controlled by your To-Do List, or your Childhood Trauma or your
Chemical Imbalance. New gods for a new age.”
“Listen,”
Dominic growled, “if it weren’t for my fucked-up chemistry, we wouldn’t be
talking.” The tail wound higher, sliding over and slipping under itself.
“Eve
swallowed not the simple split of good and evil, but duality itself,” the snake
said. “So she and Adam saw the differences between all split things: man and
woman, good and evil, god and human, and went scrabbling for fig leaves to
cover them up.” The tail reached the head, and the snake flicked itself with
tip and tongue slyly.
Dominic
shook his head and looked back through the garden, back toward the relatively
less hallucinatory vampires. This snake was enough to make him miss those
girls.
“And
that’s original sin, my friend,” the snake whispered, “the cleft in your mind
that you can’t span. It’s elegant, really. No work from me required, to stretch
you on the rack of paradox. And I—self-pleasuring, self-destroying—put my tail
in my mouth, and suck, and swallow.”
“Dominic?”
Dominic wheeled violently away from the snake whose body seemed still to be
winding and reflecting, pushing from below the tree, into and around itself. He
wanted to hide.
“Dominic?”
called Olivia. “Where are you?”
“I’m
here.” Lord, what a state he was in.
In
the luminous gloom of the garden, the Reborn’s freckled whiteness stands stark
against the browns and greens. He tears an apple savagely from the tree and
glares at me like a hunted thing. But I am not hunting him. Not really.
Gaehod asked me to keep an eye on him, that’s all.
“You
didn’t want to come down to the river?” I ask him. “Wash away your sins?”
“I
don’t believe in sin.”
“Right.
Are you going to eat that?”
He
looks at the apple, a red so deep it’s almost black, and tosses it lightly into
the air. “Why, are you hungry?” He meets my eyes for the first time since I
entered the garden.
“Yes,”
I say, because it’s true. He pitches the apple to me, harder than he needs to,
but I catch it with ease.
“I’ve
already had one,” he says, voice held steady. “But I have seen people chewing
different fruit from the same damn branch fly planes into buildings secure in
what they ingested here. So thank you, no. I do not want another one of your
damn apples.”
I
drop the apple into the pocket of my coat, black as an oil slick and as long,
and walk up to Dominic under the tree.
“What
do you want then?” I whisper. He smells like fig leaves and denial.
“I
want not to be here anymore. I don’t want the weird light and the underground
garden and the lunatic landlord. I don’t want your sister unbuttoning her
shirt—”
“Knowing
what you don’t want is not the same as knowing what you do,” I remind him.
He
grimaces, and meets my eyes. His voice, when he speaks again, is stripped raw
of its usual veneer of academia and irony. It is naked. “I don’t want to keep
meeting new vampires. But I need a reasonably sized study group to make good on
a promise I don’t want to have made for money I don’t want to have taken for
research I don’t want to do.”
Rage
haunts the junctures of his handsome face. Even the colors of him battle one
another. His red lashes bloody his blue eyes. Dark freckles bruise his golden
skin deliciously.
“Come
on,” I say, “let’s get out of here.”
7
OVERTAKEN
I
could have changed into less conspicuous clothes, or boots with something less
than a three-inch heel, but as I throw my sleek leg over the black body of the
Harley and gun it, stiletto and latex seem just right, tight and cold. I ride
the bike like the pale horse it has replaced, out from Hell’s underground
garage at full speed. And the Reborn keeps up. He matches me turn for turn,
skid for skid. So I fall in beside him, losing my vampire biker bitch in the
steady, muzzled percussion of our harmonizing engines. We ride together into
the lilacs and the rain.
An
hour out of Cashel, Dominic points at something through the trees. I catch a
glimpse of walls and windows, of moon-raked sky where roof and glass should be.
We pull off the road and push our bikes into the underbrush.
A
fence towers along the road, but I track Dominic as he walks away from the
bikes, skirting the barricade. He finds a low metal gate and pushes it open.
Spectral cows regard us darkly in the ashen April moonlight.
He
sets off purposefully toward the ruined church across the gray grass. “Come
on,” he calls, unperturbed by the spotted cows whose whiteness leaves them
grotesquely incomplete where the night swallows the black places in their hide.
“Ireland
has a relationship with her past almost as strange as I have with mine,” he
says, his restless eyes roving the abbey’s decaying silhouette.
“What
are you talking about?” I snap. Dominic has relaxed on the ride and is
comfortable in the field, ambling where I must pick my way, trying to
distinguish cow pies from clover.
“The
whole island is spotted with derelict cottages and abandoned churches like this
one. They sit in pastures as invisible to the Irish as a mother is to a teenage
girl.” His smile is warm in the cool night, friendly and frank. He’s having
fun. But we are approaching the clump of cows. They stand along the low stone
wall that bounds the ruined abbey. There is a gate, but Dominic vaults the wall
and turns to offer me a hand across it. I can leap ten vertical feet without a
running start. It would rattle him right out of the complacent gallantry that
holds out his waiting hand to me but, quite frankly, the cows rattle me, so I
take his warm hand and step onto the wall.
“Can’t
they climb a fence this low?” I ask him.
“The
cows?” He grins up at me. “It’d be more like a clamber, but yeah.”
He
circles the church, studying the old stones carved by hands dead for hundreds
of years. I listen to him in the dark walking over the damp grass. He comes
back to where I’m standing on the wall and looks past me at the cows. “Of
course,” he tells me in a casual drawl, “a motivated cow could jump that wall.”
I
leap down and wander away from him into what was once the central courtyard of
the church. A row of Gothic arches opens onto the grassy space, lined on one
side by a covered walkway tucked under the hulking stone. A crumbling bell
tower stands in the far corner like a drunk’s party hat. Dominic prowls the
ancient, sacred darknesses. I close my eyes and scent for his desire. It’s
there, strong and warm in the cool Irish night.
“How
can you tell a motivated cow from one that isn’t?” I call after him.
“A
motivated cow is one that’s being chased.” His low voice comes from above me,
and I look up to see him sitting in the threshold of a second-floor doorway.
“Chased?”
“Sure,
by a coyote or a rancher. All the rest are resolutely unmotivated.” I
can see the structures that once supported a wooden floor in the stone beneath
him. Above him, roof scars tell the same story, of years of rain and roof
taxes, of history and possibility. Ruined things, roofless to the dark, these
walls can no longer be owned the way other beauties are.
From
the bell tower’s spiraling staircase, I step onto the flat top of a first-story
wall and walk to the ragged edge where the stones are gone and an empty space
connects my portion of wall to the rest. I sit down, across the void from
Dominic.
“Have
you been here before?” I ask him
“No.
But the first time I came to Ireland, I drove around a lot. I wasn’t sure where
the hotel was. I had to feel my way across the country.” He’s quiet for a
while. “But I’m connected to it somehow,” he says, almost to himself.
“I’ve
never lived in Ireland,” I tell him.
The
night is unnaturally still, no wind or birds break the silence, and his deep
voice reaches me across the empty sanctuary.
“This
and a couple of other countries, I have a fascination for, mostly made of bad
fantasy movies, I guess. I imagined a life in Ireland long ago in which”—he
chuckles—“God, this is embarrassing, in which I was some sort of pagan warrior.
It’s very vivid, in places, this imagining, and when I was younger, I could
almost be homesick for it. For the time, the language, for the land itself, the
way my body feels in Ireland. For a woman I loved. A woman I made up, I guess.”
“Tell
me the story?” I turn sideways on the wall to stretch out onto my scarred back.
The stones, flat to receive the roof timbers, are cold but not uncomfortable
and the moonlight floods into my flawless face. I close my eyes.
“She
was the priestess. A healer. A woman not my wife.”
“But
you were in love with her?”
“It
was an adolescent fantasy. I was forever falling in love with these made-up
women.”
“What
about real women?”
“Not
in this lifetime.”
“What
do you mean?”
“It’s
just an expression.” He laughs, but it’s a bitter sound. “No. I have never been
in love. What about you?”
“Hundreds
of times.” In the empty space that slopes from beyond my stilettos, I can
almost see the stones that are gone. I stare into the edge of rock and
nothingness, the boundary between what was and what might be, between the past
and the lost.
I
want to see my wall from the ground. I leap down, the billow of my coat
crackling like flame. The emptiness is more alive to me than the dead stones,
and the wall more interesting where it is not, where anything could have been
or could now be. I step into the gap. “Come here,” I whisper.
Dominic
hits the ground behind me. His pale skin is made for this Irish darkness.
Whatever soul in him is reborn from place to place, his body comes, through generations,
from this land. He is beautiful in it, and not afraid of me, the ancient evil
curse in the black unknown, the vampire.
“Do
you want to know what it feels like?” I ask him. “Love?”
“Olivia,
I don’t—”
“Walk
through that doorway and stand opposite me.”
I
wait. He does.
“Now
look up,” I tell him. He raises his handsome face to the high moon, exposing
the long pale of his dappled throat to the cool night. “Do you see the triple
arch of that window?” I ask him, unable to follow his gaze up, riveted to the
strong, subtle lines of vein and muscle in his neck.
“Yes.
It looks like it held stained glass once.”
“Probably,”
I say. “See how the stonework is different from the surrounding wall?”
“Yeah.”
“Look
through it at the sky.”
“Okay.”
Okay.
“Pick
out a star.”
“Any
star?”
“Yes,
just pick one, but don’t forget which one it is.”
“Okay.”
“Now
look at it. Really look hard,” I tell him. “Imagine that star is your home. It
is where you were born: Eden before the apple. The perfect place. There you
were held in the loving embrace of childhood, innocent and free, with no
difference between what you want and need, and all your needs met. It is
Heaven. Imagine it.” I wait. “You can love that star, can’t you?”
“As
an ideal? As an abstract concept? Sure.”
“Good.”
He
stands straight and fearless in the night, his beautiful body relaxed but
powerful even so. It holds something of the warrior’s lithe wariness still,
even completely unconcerned for his safety.
I
walk around behind him. “I’ve picked a star, too,” I say, “but I want you to
tell me about yours first. Describe it for me.” I turn my reluctant eyes from
his moon-kissed flesh to Heaven.
“It’s
small, and very far away, between two brighter stars.”
“Are
you looking through the center pane?” I ask him.
“Yes.”
“I
am, too. Go on.”
“It
gives the illusion of twinkling, even more brightly than the other stars around
it.” His voice is low and warm, layered in secrets like spy’s or a priest’s.
“Yes,”
I whisper.
“And
it has a light yellow cast to it.”
“Mine,
too.”
“It’s
not the highest star I can see through the opening of the window.”
“No,
but there’s just something about it, right?”
“Yeah.
I’m not even sure why I picked it.”
I
step closer to him, to his capable shoulders and warming scent in the chill
dark.
“The
two stars near it are faint, too, and around them there’s almost a ring of
blackness. No other stars at all nearby,” he says, standing motionless, looking
up. His breath is slow and peaceful. Even the smell of him is growing subtle in
the night.
“But
it seems to make a triangle with the other two, right?” I slip from behind to
beside him, standing close to the animal heat of his living body.
“Yes,”
he says. I touch my temple to his. “Can you tell which one I’m seeing?”
“Yes,”
I say. “It was the one I picked, too. Isn’t it beautiful?”
I am
lying. He smells of stone and wind. Of the ground we stand on, and the bikes we
rode here. I inhale deeply, barely touching him, drinking in the warmth of his
temple against mine and the slightly cooler back of his masculine hand where it
brushes mine until it reaches out. He takes my cold fingers, wrapping them
together in his own. The brass key around my wrist slides between our hollowed
palms. The light of all the stars shines into our upturned eyes.
“Love
is this feeling.” I whisper so low it is almost only in his mind. “Believe we
both desire to possess that star for ourselves and to share it with each other.
Believe that.”
“Is
it true?”
“Beliefs
are what you know without choosing to. Just believe.”
He
closes his midnight blue eyes and leans imperceptibly against me. “I don’t know
if I can do that.” His voice is so low my angelic hearing must tense to catch
each word. “Have you ever been to Glendalough?” he asks at last, so softly.
“No.”
“The
first time I came to Ireland, I spent a day there. Its bell tower was my
favorite thing from that trip.”
Darker
stones than the ones before us rise in an almost window-less spire before my
eyes. What the fuck? Reborns can’t psycast. But I am seeing things not here. I
separate my temple from his, but he doesn’t notice.
“It’s
seven stories high, a sacred number, the sum of four—the perfection of the
physical world—four cardinal directions, four elements, four corners in a
square, plus three—the perfection of the spiritual world as embodied in the Trinity.”
He shifts his weight, but his hand stays warm around my fingers. He likes to
teach. The smell of him swells my deep gums in aching pockets. “But I think I
like this tumbling church better. It’s a broken, lost, annihilated cosmos,
where cathedral walls fall away into nothingness.”
I
move back a little from the smell of him, but the hunger pushes down my throat
all the same. “Yeah, I like this nameless church with its poor three-story
tower more,” he says. “And I like the missing places here more than what
remains upright there.” He shakes his head to clear it and turns a wry grin on
me. “How screwed up is that? Wabi-sabi. The beauty of broken things.” He raises
his hand—and mine still enveloped in it—and bows his head over my folded wrist.
His warm human lips touch my flesh. My body cannot feel the nuances of his
kiss, but the beauty of the gesture wrings my soul. I strangle a gasp.
“Thank
you,” he says, still holding my small hand in both of his.
Hunger
gallops over me.
In
the moon’s naked light, all the places where his face wears rage are stripped
to an ancient, bare pain. His eyes pierce me. “Thank you,” he says again. “I
needed to get away.” His beautiful lips curl into a soft smile before he
presses them against the knuckle of my thumb. A hard, motionless shiver
radiates from that point through the deep bones in me. My nails quill against
my crushed fingers, but he’s looking right into me, warmth and memory in his
night-blue eyes.
“A
week ago,” he says, his deep voice rippling into me, “I was eating doughnuts in
Cambridge with uninterrupted days in the lab ahead of me as far as I could see.
Now I’m back where I swore I’d never be, indentured to a funding source, doing
fieldwork, a tenant in a loony bin.” Hunger climbs my chest and claws down to
my breasts. “It’s been an intense couple of days. It feels really good to be
out of there. Out here. With you.”
He
frees my hand and stalks off toward the wall and the cows. They have not moved,
but I wish he would come away from them. Back to me. Need grips my belly. I
should have fed before. Hunger is clouding my thoughts. I walk away from him
across the yard, away from the rising smell of his desire, away from the cows.
I
duck into a darkness blacker than the night and mount the spiraling stone steps
of the squat bell tower again. I climb beyond where I had sat before, to get
above the terrible hunger his desire raises in me. I balance on the decrepit
peak. My wingscars ache to stretch and unfurl, to hold the night in their
divine embrace and soar.
Falling
wouldn’t hurt me, but it would be ugly. His scent carries on the teasing
breeze. Only angels fall with grace.
“What
time do you guess it is?” he asks. He can’t see me.
“Between
late and early.” I walk back down to him.
“Do
you need to be back before dawn?”
“No.”
I step into the double archway of what must once have been a massive wooden
door and he comes to me, away from the cows.
“Olivia?”
I
turn away from him and pace the low, paved passageway where the moonlight does
not penetrate. My hunger opens from a specific need to a wider well, plumbing
me.
“Olivia.”
His voice is low, but reaches through all the dark, open places. “Dublin has a
lab where I could do the kind of work I need to, to keep my funding, to advance
my research. If the hotel closes down, do you think you might be able to talk
any of your sisters into coming to Dublin? They wouldn’t have to do anything
except let me examine their brains. No promise of a cure, no medicines, just
spend a little time in the lab and let me get some baselines?”
“They’re
happy at the hotel.”
“Are
they? Are they happy there?”
“Their
suffering is familiar there,” I tell him. “They know the contours of that
place, of their pain.”
“Better
the devil you know, eh?”
“He’s
like a father to me. The hotel is my home.”
“I
thought that star was home.” He touches my elbow. I had not heard him approach.
He should not be able to surprise me. “The way you talked about that star, I
could feel it.” My angelic hearing has never been surprised before. “Olivia,
come to Dublin with me? I won’t ask you to participate in the research. We can
get to know each other a little better, discover the city. I could use your
help.”
“Why
are you so interested in vampires?”
“I’m
not. I mean, not specifically. I’m interested in understanding why you, why people
like you, feel so apart from the rest of humanity, why we think of ourselves as
so radically different, as cursed or damned or worse.”
“What
is worse than damnation?”
“I
don’t know. To have no God to damn you, maybe.” Something not-quite-fear bleeds
into his scent. I breathe it in. Caution under manhood, sex, and suffering. I
clamp my jaws against the quilling.
“My
sisters would have no reason to go to Dublin,” I tell him through my gripping
teeth.
“To
help their sister?”
“That’s
no reason for them.”
“To
help themselves?”
“They
won’t believe you can. At least not beyond a good night’s feed.”
“Or
fuck,” he snorts. “I’ve never seen such a sexually aggressive psychotype.”
I
work the rage in me, to ease the eruption in my bones and gums. “We can’t
fuck.”
“What?”
“We
can’t fuck. A vampire’s sex is closed—monstrous, grotesque.”
“Olivia.”
His tender hands turn my body to him. He searches for my clouded eyes in the
darkness. “Olivia, shame around sex is very common. It’s something people work
through.”
“I’m
not ashamed.” My teeth are fully quilled. The scent of him drenches me. “I’m a
virgin.”
“They’re
not mutually exclusive, you know.”
“I’m
made of stone. Impenetrable.” I’m grappling for anger again, struggling for
anything but the pure volcanic hunger diving through all my veins to my aching
lips.
“Olivia,
were you abused?”
“I
was damned.”
“Olivia—”
“You
just won’t face reality, will you?” The anger finds me and I push the flood
roiling over need. “I am damned. You are cursed. My sisters are angels thrown
from Heaven. So while our psychotype may appear sexual, we’re really just
aggressive. We hate what we cannot possess, so we find ways to borrow it. We
make you want us, and we feed on your hunger. We are the angels of desire. We
have none of our own.”
“You
have no desire?”
“No.”
“But
you get hungry, don’t you?”
“You
have no idea.” The feeding edges force through the pliant flesh of my mouth.
I’m almost choking on them. “But that’s not desire, it’s craving. It’s
inescapable. It becomes irresistible. Everything but the impulse to feed dies
in you, and you’re eating before you know you’ve struck. That’s how Sylvia
killed her fig last night.”
“Her
what?”
“Never
mind.”
“Did
she actually kill a real person?” Horror now, in the heady mix of smells.
Almost disgust. I suck it in to poison myself. “What kind of ridiculous fantasy
role-playing does Gaehod provide for down there?”
“Sylvie
didn’t mean to kill her. I think she loved the girl.”
“God!”
“That’s
what she thought.”
Rage
and incomprehension dance over his warrior’s face, slipping into the familiar
hollows. I watch him struggle for mastery. “Olivia, surely you can see that the
hotel is not a good place to be. It’s unhealthy. You know that, right? That’s
why you’ve never been here before now, isn’t it? Look, Gaehod is thinking
seriously of shutting down the place, sending everyone home. If he’s killing
people, for Christ’s sake, it shouldn’t be too hard to see why. He’s asked me
to help convince people. Olivia, would you . . .”
“No.”
My anger is gone. It has abandoned me fast as love and has left me as
exhausted. “I’m tired of trying to pass for human in the surface world,” I tell
him. “I love the hotel. I’ve come home to take off the mask.”
“You’ve
come home to wear the costume. Look at you”—he chuckles—“touring the Irish
countryside in knee-high boots and leather pants.”
I
slide from his strong fingers effortlessly.
“Olivia,
I’m sorry, it was a joke.”
I am
striding into the grassy courtyard and through the towering door-shaped hole. I
could pierce his skull with my nails.
“Olivia,
that was cruel of me. I didn’t mean it.”
The
cows regard me silently as I near the low wall.
“Olivia,
stop. I’m sorry.”
If I
continue my purposeful walk in this direction, will it look like chasing to the
cows?
I
face him. Feeding full-tooth on this desirable, stupid man would approach
pleasure, he has me so enraged. Just his shock would be delicious.
“What
makes you think you have any influence with the old man?” I demand.
“He
asked my opinion.”
“About
whether to shut down the hotel?”
“Yeah.
It’s not something he’s planning on doing right away. He’s just mulling over
the idea.”
“What
did you tell him?”
“Nothing,
really. That I thought his affection for some of the hotel’s guests kept him
from seeing the real nature behind their reasons for being there.”
My
laugh is a bark, and the cows shift their weight in the black grass behind me.
They’ve stopped eating. I move without a sound away from them.
“Olivia,
I am sorry. Look, it’s got to be getting near morning. Let’s head back. They’ll
be serving breakfast by the time we get there. I just realized I’m starving. I
say stupid things when I’m hungry.”
I
pull the apple from my coat pocket. “Here.” I raise it in the waning light. The
moon is setting, but the sun does not yet bleach the sky. I could throw it to
him, but I simply hold it, offering it to him, if he will come and take from
me.
He
closes the distance between us, smiling. Innocent, he comes to take Eve’s
apple. I keen the nails on the hand that holds it. He thinks it is a peace
offering, held between us.
I
draw my quilled nails down his long fingers as they curl around it.
“Ow!”
He palms the apple into his other hand to see the bloodied slash.
My
quills are too dull, the opening too wide.
“I
must have caught myself on the edge of your nail,” he shrugs and sucks the cut.
My
veins seethe in constricting agony. His scent hangs fresh and thick in the air
between us, and my harvest runs, live and sticky, down two fingers of my frozen
hand. I writhe with aching for it. And because I am angry and done hiding, done
with being desirable before all else, I mimic him. I put my stained fingers in
my scarlet mouth and suck.
“You
did that on purpose.” He stuffs the cut finger into the back pocket of his
jeans.
“Yes.”
“Why?”
“Because
I wanted to.” His powerful taste lingers behind my lips. Not enough. I
want to close my eyes and savor. “I didn’t mean for you to feel it,” I tell
him. “My quills are dull. I need my sisters to keen them, but I hate asking.”
“You
don’t seem to mind just taking.” He shoots me a rueful grin and bites into the
apple.
“If
I had asked you, would you have given me permission? If I had told you, out
here in the quiet night, if I had whispered to you that I need your blood to
feed me, would you have given it?”
He
says nothing. I reach behind his muscular back and take his hand at the wrist.
It slides from his pocket and I bring it, American lint and masculinity, to my
lips. “Am I the succubus?” I whisper. “Gorgeous insatiable lust, tempting in
the night?” I push the red snake of my tongue between my lips and draw it up
the shaft of his straight finger. “Do I come to you from underneath, full of
desire for you?” I balance the tip of his finger on the curl of my pointed
tongue. “No, I am the opposite. The desire that fills me is from you, not for you.
It’s your want that satisfies me. But if you want, you can be denied.” I touch
my teeth to his rounded fingertip and close my lips around it. “To desire is to
give your power away.”
“So
you protect yourself from rejection by denying that there’s anything you want?”
He’s following my words and not my lips. I hold his wide finger in the soft,
pursed cushion of my perfect mouth and suck. It stops his breath. The blood, no
longer flowing, is salt and earth on my parched tongue. I long to open the cut
again.
Letting
his flesh blur my words, I answer him. “I am what is desired, not who desires.”
His
passionate eyes, dancing between my lips and my eyes, are keenly alert to the
deliberate eroticism of the gesture, but also on the challenging trail of
diagnosis. He sees patterns, not people. I suck more firmly, drawing the length
of his hard finger into the empty womb of my mouth, the welcoming wet of my
tongue against his hungry flesh.
The
apple falls from his free hand. “If I want you, does that give you power over
me?” His voice is thick and I wind my seducing tongue around his finger,
sucking. He wants me. I can taste it.
“You
believe that my attraction to you gives you power over me?” he repeats, his
thoughts struggling to stay above his rising lust. He puts a finger beneath my
chin and tips my face up to his. His captive finger, sliding from my crimson
lips, glistens between us, only its tip still my mouth’s prisoner. “Is the
vampire fetish really a power one?” His blue eyes search my face. “Do vampires
drink blood as a symbol for taking vitality, of taking my power into you?”
“We
drink blood to live.” I tell him. His strong hands cup my face, but I flog my
anger to keep his hungry scent from overflowing. “I drink living blood because
I have none of my own. Because I’m tangled in a nasty web of interconnectedness
that binds me to strangers for what I eat and my family for how I do.”
He
holds my face, concern and tenderness in his mortal eyes. “I think everyone
feels that way, the dependence on others, and the connection to other living
things.”
For
all his cleverness and his clinical detachment, the smell of his irrational
desire grows steadily with his hands slipping into my hair, his yearning eyes
holding mine—another blind mortal who has confused physical form with moral
content. “Hell, even quantum physics will tell you that the observer and the
observed can’t be totally unaffected by each other,” he murmurs. Desire drains
the choice from him. Our lips are almost touching. “Even space and time are
connected, right?” I push a piece of hair away from his drowning eyes. “There’s
even a nomenclature—‘quantum nonlocality’—which seems to show us that, on some
deep level of reality, even the speed of light doesn’t limit connections
between wildly separate events.” His lips touch mine, and a hard blood-hunger
stabs my fingers and teeth and heart. In seconds, I will strike.
Choice
is all you ever own. He whispers my name against my inviting mouth. I step back
from him. Choice, and the knowledge that hangs from its bough.
“I’m
okay with the connections,” I tell him. “Everything that touches me belongs to
me.”
“So
it is about power, isn’t it?” He keeps his hands on my arms.
I
could kill him here. I could drink and bathe myself in his intense desire. It
would be days before anyone knew. He touches his forehead to mine, bending to
look into my eyes. “Did you have a very authoritarian father?”
I
laugh. “He only wanted me to love him,” I say, but I can’t hold his questioning
eyes. I turn away from him and pick up the apple he dropped. “Love him with all
my heart, all my soul, all my mind, and all my strength,” I say, looking away
from him to the abbey.
“That
sounds really difficult,” he says to my shiny black back.
“That
was just his first commandment,” I say. “It was the second one that was really
a bitch.”
“Olivia,”
he reaches for my hand, but finds the apple. He takes it and throws it hard
away from us. I turn to watch it fly. It tumbles up into the night and lands
precisely between the eyes of a cow. I gasp, but the cow does not move.
“What
will it do?” I whisper.
“It’s
thinking,” he whispers back, an infuriating smile staining his warm voice.
“It’s thinking ‘Ow! What happened?’ ” I stifle a giggle at his witless cow
voice. The creature bends its head and snuffs in the grass. “Now it’s thinking
‘Can I eat that?’ ” The beast raises its ghostly head, chewing.
“What’s
it thinking now?”
“Nothing.
It’s eating.”
“Does
it know what hit it?”
“It’s
forgotten.”
“Do
cows believe apples just fall out of the sky in the middle of a field?”
“They’re
not very smart.”
“Let’s
go back,” I say, stepping over the wall and walking past the stupid cows toward
our bikes. Dominic follows me because I am beautiful. And the cows, because
they are true believers, stand still.
Dominic
sank into a plush wingback and gazed through the glass dome soaring stories
overhead into the dull dawn sky. The metallic hail of ball bearings absorbing
his weight on the chair would summon one of the wheeling brass carts to his
side in minutes. Deserted at this ungodly hour, Hell’s lobby was almost
indistinguishable from any luxury hotel’s. Clusters of overstuffed chairs and
artfully placed trees in massive pots defined discreet seating alcoves. Were it
not for the complex pattern of energy-harvesting canals in the floor and the
flame-licked walls, he could be back in California waiting for Madalene Wright
to summon him for a status report. And he would be able to give her good news.
Dominic
leaned back into the welcoming comfort of the chair and allowed a secret smile
to radiate across his face. It reached into the tight hinges of his jaw and
spread an unfamiliar warmth across the muscles of his neck and back. Olivia’s
perfect face drifted before his closed eyes, and he lingered over his memory of
it, her oceanic eyes, gray and stormy, her slender shoulders of milky satin
over sculptured strength. He was falling in love with her. He opened his eyes
and stared straight through the distant dome into the Irish dawn. He was in
love with her.
A
brass tray, spinning on its single wheel, pulled up beside his chair. Dominic
unclipped the notepad and pen from its polished surface and hesitated. He could
write for a menu and one would be sent, or he could conjure from his own
imagination anything he wanted for breakfast. He thought a minute and wrote
“oatmeal, coffee, eggs, yogurt,” and closed his eyes again to find the tidal
tug of Olivia’s face circulating through him.
He
caressed the memory of her icy fingers gripped in his, recalled the lunar
paleness of her high cheekbones when her flawless face turned up to him.
Permitting himself, sleepy, to swim in memory of the most desirable woman he
had ever seen, he was still not slipping into seizure. No slippery events
slithered into his recollections of Olivia that had not occurred on the black
abbey grounds. Her alluring smile, holding out the apple, the erotic shudder of
her velvet lips around his finger. These were his most perilous waters, the
thoughts most likely to trigger the unwelcome faces of wives whose names drove
yawning gulfs of longing and grief into him. But he was happy. Bordering on
euphoric.
Dominic
touched his fingers to the carotid pulse below his jaw. It beat steadily, his
breathing regular. No indication of abnormal mania. His mind was clear. But he
was in love. Love lit up the caudate nucleus, primed dopamine receptors, and
triggered seizures. But there he sat, with just the elevated energy, focused
attention, and increased reward-winning motivation of a man catapulted into
Heaven by a woman’s eyes. His latest pills were working!
Dominic
resisted the urge to leap onto the ebony table behind his chair, throw his head
back, and howl in triumph. He hadn’t had a seizure since the snake in the
buried garden. And he wasn’t convinced that insidious creature had been a
proper seizure. There had been no taste aura, no sense of déjà vu, or memory.
It had been more hallucinatory than engramic. Full-blown immersive
hallucinations would destroy the promise of the AEDvIII.0s, and Dominic
intended to be vigilant against any similar experience, but he suspected the
serpent had more to do with where he was than what he was taking. No, there was
good reason for optimism.
If
he was right—and he needed to be more certain first—if the AEDvIII.0s were
really as effective as he suspected, convincing Gaehod to close this madhouse
would be a much simpler effort. With the hotel closed and Olivia in agreement
with him, he would certainly be able to convince her vampire sisters to
participate in a drug trial. Madalene would be beyond pleased. Dysart would
have to forgive him for keeping his experimentations secret. He would get
tenure, and marry Olivia.
The
excitement coursing through him made it impossible for Dominic to stay in his
comfortable chair. He got up and paced the lobby, marveling at the cobweb of
energy-capture channels in the floor. L’Otel Matillide was certainly a miracle
of engineering. Dominic stopped before a strange, empty hearth made of three
massive stones and cocked his head at the cantilevered hallway above him,
tracing the graceful metal struts with his eye. He had to make sure he got at
least an afternoon of photography in before Gaehod closed the place down. There
was so much to document. Or perhaps the old man would convert the place to a
real hotel. The naked gas flame walls would never pass code. Not even in
Ireland. But the rest . . . Dominic rested a hand on the cozy green wingback by
the fireplace and smiled.
The
four brass columns formed when Olivia’s spiraling elevator walls folded in on
themselves caught Dominic’s eye, and he wandered over to investigate their
construction. Still marveling at Hell’s vast beauty, he tripped over a pile of
filthy rags and hair dumped against one of the bright pillars.
“When
you’re quite done gazing about you in delight and surprise like fucking Harry
Potter, you might help me up. Or maybe you’d like to kick me again?”
“Sorry,
Alyx. Didn’t see you.”
“No,
how could you, being all starry-eyed and shit.”
“Sorry,”
Dominic said again, and wiped the idiot grin off his face. “I just ordered some
breakfast. Want to join me? You should eat something.”
Alyx
raised a scarred arm. Dominic grasped the tumble of bathrobe and bones by the
wrist and pulled. To his surprise, Alyx peeled up from the ground and landed
across his chest with a muffled grunt. Dominic hadn’t meant to pick the man up,
but he weighed less than a child. He returned to his vacated chair, deposited
the rock star, and sat down across from him.
“So
what’s got your handsome head in the clouds, oh you great god of reason and
science?” Alyx asked.
Dominic
stretched his legs out before him, leaning into the chair’s soft embrace. “I
was just wondering what this place would be like if Gaehod opened it to the
public.”
“It’d
die.”
“Do
you think so?”
“It’s
what happens to anything when it stops being used and starts being saved.”
“I
bet UNESCO would designate it a world heritage site.”
“Have
to be dead before you can be preserved.” Alyx tugged his bathrobe closed,
clinching the shoelace harder around his skinny waist. “What are you trying to
shut down Hell for anyway?”
“How
do you know about that?”
“You
just don’t fucking listen, do you? I already told you. That bastard up there,
in all his chaos and mechanical bits, and books, and tea, is just fucking
sitting on the goddamn inlet to the memepool we’re all drowning in. He’s the
Typhoid Mary of ideas, the ultimate replicator. If he thinks it, we all know
it. Without knowing how we know it. It just gets into the water.”
“Alyx,
that’s really not possible.”
“I
know you’re the poster child for the Hell-closure faction.”
“You
make it sound like a war. Gaehod’s just thinking over his options.”
“Bullshit.
It is a war. And you’re the enemy general.”
“I’m
not. I’ve just been putting together a proposal.”
“It’ll
be the Israelites and the fucking Philistines, down to a battle of chosen
champions, one per side, to the death.”
“It’ll
be a PowerPoint presentation.”
“Trial
by combat.”
“Me
versus Gaehod?”
“Can
you really be that stupid?” Laughing shook Alyx until the danger he would
tumble out of his chair forced him silent. “Guess I’ve got no worries about
being turned out of my home if you don’t even know who you’re fighting.” Still
gulping back giggles, Alyx struggled nearly upright in his chair. “Hey,” he
asked Dominic, “you still looking for victims?”
“Research
participants?”
“Whatever.”
“I
am, but honestly, Alyx, I think you need sleep and food more than medicine.
That and to stop medicating yourself.”
“I
wasn’t talking about me, you dick. I know you can’t help me. I’m looking for
the Reset button.”
“Alyx—”
“Cause
David’s sister’s walking this way.”
“What?”
“You
are the dumbest motherfucker I ever met. And I’ve known plenty of people up to
their assholes in denial. But you, my friend, have got your eyes about sewn
closed.”
From
behind Dominic, a stunningly tall, muscular woman in vampire-black fetish wear
swept past.
“Hello,
Vivian,” Alyx managed to squeak out before the woman leapt onto the arms of his
velvet chair. Silver buckles glinted down her rippling back. She had undergone
extensive back surgery, Dominic noted, but seemed agile enough now. She lowered
herself in a predatory crouch over Alyx’s wasted body and grasped his head, one
gloved hand in his long, thin hair, one gripping his jaw. She lifted the man by
his face to her mouth and kissed him.
Dominic
looked away from the rock star’s opening bathrobe, returning to his studious
examination of the miraculous architecture of Hell’s front parlor. He had
actually distracted himself when he heard Vivian spring down from her perch
over Alyx. He was paler, but smiling.
“Dominic,
this is Vivian, one of Olivia’s sisters.”
Dominic
stood to shake hands with the striking blonde.
“Eyes,
Alyx!” Vivian barked.
Dominic
glanced at the collapsed rock star, who made no attempt to conceal his
lecherous study of Vivian’s high breasts. Dominic valiantly kept his eyes from
the black-and-red-iron-cross latex pasties barely covering the prominent tips
of the exposed flesh escaping her tightly cinched corset. “Pleased to meet
you,” he said, hand out.
Vivian
shook her spiked white hair and laughed. She grasped his hand with surprising
strength and yanked his wrist so forcefully Dominic nearly fell into her. She
sniffed at his wrists and released his hand.
“Have
you seen her?” she hissed. “We’re supposed to meet Gaehod for tea.”
“Olivia?
Not in the last half-hour. You might look in the kitchen. She said she was
hungry.”
Vivian’s
glance toward Dominic dripped distain.
“Hey,
Vee—” Alyx called, but she turned on her steel stiletto and stalked out of the
lobby. “I think she kinda likes me,” Alyx murmured.
Dominic
sat back down. “Yeah?”
“Yeah.
She does that sometimes. Just walks up and kisses me.”
“Does
she ever talk to you?”
“No.
But it’s me. What’s to say?”
Like
a riderless unicycle, another service tray wheeled up beside Dominic’s chair
bearing a pure white porcelain teapot with matching sugar dish and creamer.
Dominic fixed himself a heavily sweetened cup and dismissed the tray with a
gentle push.
“I’d
imagine you’ve got some pretty good stories,” he said, taking a long sip.
“What?
From the rock star days?” Alyx snorted and rolled over in his chair. “Tales of
drugs and debauchery? Cautionary stories about sex and drugs? About pride
before destruction?”
“What
kind of music did you play?”
“Straight-on,
hard-driving rock and roll. None of that nasal whiner shit the pussies in their
jackets and Vans make now. I was a fuckup from the get-go.”
“But
you were good at it.”
“Good
at being a fuckup? It’s all I know, bro.”
“No.
I meant at singing.”
“Hell
yeah. But it broke me. You’ve got no idea, man, what it’s like to stand up
there every night and let it hit you. All the kids out there, all their ugly
faces, all of them screaming every goddamn word you wrote. It comes at you like
a train, and you send it back to them. They put their hands up. Like they’re
gonna throw their souls at you. And you gotta catch it or it’s all these souls
just raining down around you. You gotta catch every one and channel it back. Your
body just rattles with it for hours after, all that attention driven through
you. All that energy . . . All that . . .”
“Love?”
Dominic asked.
Alyx
shrugged. “That’s what they think anyway. They yell it at you, ‘I love you,
Alyx.’ Even the dudes. But they say ‘man,’ instead of my name. And I’ll tell
you something else. Those fuckers will eat you alive. I mean really. They want
to own you. You need body-guards and shit to keep them away.” Alyx shook his
head. “Nah. That’s not love.”
“What
is it?”
“I
don’t know. They want you to see them. Every goddamned one of them. And you
can’t.”
“But
you touch them.”
“Just
the ones with the really great tits.” Alyx chortled into his robe.
“No,”
Dominic said. “I mean your music, your voice—it must have touched them, or they
wouldn’t feel that way about you. I mean, even if it isn’t love, it’s
something. You’ve made them feel something.”
“Yeah?
My songs weren’t great art, you know. Mostly about girls and being angry.”
“But
they worked.”
“This
some lame-ass shrink trick to make me feel better about my sorry-ass life?”
“Did
it work?”
“Fuck.
It’s just a line: ‘You touched people, man.’ Doesn’t make me any less a
fuckup.”
“How
things look depends on where you sit sometimes.”
“So
I should just sit in a happy chair and see my life as being this great,
meaningful thing? Like I mattered?”
“Why
not?”
“
’Cause it’s bullshit.”
“So
you’d rather have a fifth of Jack?”
“Fuck,
yeah.”
“Because
that’s more real?”
“Fuck
you. I know you’re fucked up, same as me.”
“No,
I’m fucked up different.”
“Whatever.
You’ve just got better drugs.”
Dominic
leapt to his feet. Adrenaline stung his palms and feet.
“Shit,
dude,” Alyx said. “What’s got you by the throat?”
“My
bag.” Dominic’s mind raced backwards through time. Not at the abbey. Not at
the tree. The river. “Fucking Lethe,” he whispered.
“What?”
“My
laptop,” he explained. “I’ve been making my damn diary entries in the journal
Gaehod gave me, but all my work, my lab notes. My latest batch of—” He turned
back to Alyx, bruised and ghostly in the armchair. “For Christ’s sake, when my
breakfast gets here, eat it, okay? I have to go.”
“I’ll
come with you.”
“Okay,”
Dominic said, and set off at a dead run. It was a pace he knew Alyx couldn’t
match at all, but he was still surprised, turning over his shoulder, to realize
the rock star hadn’t budged. Dominic ran, uncertain he remembered the way back
to the garden, desperate to get there. He had traveled all over the world, into
dangerous places and exalted ones, and never once forgotten that bag. And it
had never mattered more. That bag held the last few AEDvIII.0 capsules and
their chemical formula. Its loss would be apocalyptic.
The
hotel sounds like the house of war—silent as divorce and dissolution—thundering
soundlessly with what’s left unsaid. I stand in the old man’s doorway.
“Did
you tell the new Reborn that you might close Hell?” I demand.
“Yes.”
Gaehod beams down at me from his unsteady perch, seated atop a teetering
stepladder in a butler’s long starched apron.
“Is
that true?”
“That
I might disband the hotel? Yes.” Gaehod plucks another book from the towering
shelves that line his chaotic study and adds the tome to the precarious stack
balanced on his up-drawn knees.
“You
can’t!” I struggle not to scream.
“I
was thinking I might open it to the public.”
“That’s
the same thing as closing it,” I cry. “That will ruin it!”
“Archeologists
could excavate it, bring the past into the light.”
“We
will all die! We can only survive underground. Gaehod, I need this place!”
He
beams warmth down on me. “Have you found something here that pleases you, my
dear? I am so glad! I would love for you to tell me about it, but first, come
help me a moment won’t you?”
“No!
I haven’t found anything here that pleases me.” My voice makes a detestable
shrill. “I’ve only found things that irritate or depress me.” I stride across
the litter of the old man’s office—mounds of books, towers of letters. “I came
here to escape. I came to learn from my sisters how to be the proper kind of
damned—cool, cynical, aloof—but I find even they are not free from tyrannical
hope. Each of them is trapped in helpless quests for something. They believe.
They still believe. And as long as belief clings to desire, there is no
escape from hope.”
Gaehod
nods cautiously to avoid toppling his precious books. “Hope cannot be sheared
as swift as wings.”
I
grasp the rails of his delicate ladder, forcing him to steady books with one
hand, and his diminutive body against the bookcase with the other. “I haven’t
found what I’m looking for, damn it, because what I want is an end to
searching.” I shake the steps beneath him.
“Get
a grip on yourself, my dear!”
“Why?
I have a grip on you.”
“Impossible.”
I
give the ladder a vicious rattle.
“Self-possession
is freedom.” Gaehod smiles, clasping toppling books against his narrow chest.
“Everyone
has something to clutch,” I rage. “Vivian claims the pleasure of her victims.
Ophelia wants to be possessed. Sylvia is possessed—or was until she killed the
girl. Blood communion for Sylvia, blood sacrifice for Vivian, blood brothers
for Ophelia. You and your damnable books. I want out of this hell of blood and
possession! ”
“I
think Dominic feels much the same way. Which is why he is encouraging me to
close the place down.”
“I’ll
kill him,” I say. And I mean it. I would enjoy that.
“Why?”
“I
don’t want to hide who I am.” I climb the ladder toward him. “I don’t want the
reciprocal pretend love of my sisters who only listen so they can talk, who
only kiss so they’ll be kissed. I don’t want to only use and be used.” I am
standing one rung below him. The ornate, carved ladder shudders and pitches
under our combined weight.
“And
you are ready to kill, which you have never done, not in the name of something
you desire, but only for what you do not want?” Gaehod is calm on his reeling
ladder.
I
claim the last rung between us and face him squarely. “It is only over what is
unwanted that battles are ever waged.” My height more than makes up for the
difference in our positions on the sea-sick ladder. He presses the top third of
his toppling tower of books into my unready hands. “Do you want to serve your
sisters?” he asks.
“What’s
the difference between serving them and being used by them?” I am balancing,
hands full of books.
“The
same as between holding a belief and having an idea.”
I
climb down the ladder backwards.
“These
are all cookbooks.” I say.
“I,
for example, have the idea that L’Otel is no longer necessary.”
“What
the hell are you doing with cookbooks, Gaehod?”
“Here,
love, take the next stack from me,” he says as soon as I touch down. I climb
the ladder and retrieve another portion of the books that threaten, at every
movement, to unbalance the old man and send him, his heavy books, and his light
ladder clattering to the ground.
“The
surface world has grown very tolerant, from what I understand.” Gaehod piles
the slim Twenty-Four Rose Petal Cakes for Weddings and the massive Traditional
Cross-Quarter Feasts onto my precarious stack.
I
deposit them with the others and sink into the worn pink chair by Gaehod’s
smoky fireplace. “Not tolerant, really,” I tell him. “It accepts a broader
range of beautiful, but it still loathes ugly.”
“And
love?” Gaehod lifts another book from the towering shelves. A low pneumatic
moan registers the energy released.
“Adultery
is still rampant, but now they tell each other.” I tuck my legs up into the
chair’s thin embrace, willing to spill some of my collected vitriol on humanity
in general since I can’t pour it over one man in particular. “Having mistaken
the ideal of fidelity for an achievable goal and being therefore bitterly
disappointed, today’s modern couple settles for cold reality. They show
themselves to one another, naked in fluorescent light, every vein and pimple
exploited. It’s ugly. I miss the eras when every woman strove for beauty and
thought herself the only secret sinner in a room. Shame is sexier than truth.
Exhibitionism is not honesty.”
“And
evil?”
“Nope.
They’re still perfectly okay with evil as long as it looks good.”
Gaehod
grunts and climbs down at last. “All frosting and no cake. Would you like
some?”
“What?”
“Anything,
a little snack? You look famished.”
“I
have not fed.”
“No?”
He regards me shrewdly. It embarrasses me, for him to see me needy. “Do you
want Dominic?”
“What,
for a snack?” My laugh rings too harsh.
“We
were talking about what you did not want. I would like to understand what you
do.” Ever the innkeeper, the old man drops another square of peat onto the fire
and pushes the kettle into the flames.
“He
wants me,” I say.
“Naturally.”
“He
can’t see me. Desire blinds men.”
“Really?
I think it rather sharpens my eyes.” He regards me again, steadily. “I think I
see you very clearly,” he says, sitting cautiously into the armchair on the
fire’s other side.
“But
you don’t want me.” Weariness almost swallows my voice. I must feed, and soon.
“I
want your happiness, your enjoyment of my hotel, your pleasure in my company.”
“Yes,
you love without desire for possession,” I say, “but what does that kind of
love cost you, Gaehod?”
“It’s
true.” He chuckles and rolls down his sleeves from the garters which have held
them above his delicate elbows. “It’s very painful. Sometimes I want to check
out of my own hotel.” He looks terribly old to me, pulled into his tattered
chair. “Who knows”—he buttons his cuffs—“perhaps young Dominic is right.
Disbanding the hotel would certainly be easier.”
“But
it’s not what you want.”
“Do
you know what I want?”
“I’ve
heard the stories of how you made this place, created our entire network,
carved this hole. You made it all out of your desire.”
“It
was more than my desire.” The kettle starts to rumble and Gaehod turns his
penetrating eyes away from me to tend it. “I know tea can’t feed you, but would
you like a cup?”
I
nod.
“I
remember when I could go months without the taste of it,” I tell him. “I could
sacrifice, suffer, and be willing to dissolve into nothing but my own need,
believing that love would save me. For eternity, I have believed that each new
time would be the time I would find my way back up.”
Gaehod
nods and pulls himself to standing. “And did you ever reach the heavens?” He
stretches on tiptoe for a pale blue canister high on a sagging shelf.
“Sometimes,
for a moment, but I always fell back down.” I reach the tea tin for him.
“Perhaps
that’s all we get—the glimpses.”
“I’d
rather knife out my eyes and keep them with my wings,” I tell him. But the
ferocity exhausts me. I sink back into the frowsy pink chair, dizzy.
Gaehod
pries the lid from the tea with a butter knife and inserts his long, pointed
nose into the jar. He closes his eyes over the scent, and his voice, when it
comes again, is twisted to nasal by the muffling metal. “That might be easier.”
“Easy
is what I’m after,” I say. “I want numb. I want my sisters to sharpen my edges.
I want to feed. I want desire without choice.”
“That’s
not desire, that’s craving.”
“Then
I shall be the angel of craving. I never had any desires of my own anyway.”
“My
dear.” Gaehod spoons a measure of coiled dry leaves into a red clay pot. “You
have no lack of desire.” In goes another spoonful. “You’re filled to the brim
with it.” And another. “They spill out over your lashes and your gums.” Another
and another spoonful of tea drop into the pot. “What you lack”—he clamps the
lid—“is experience with choice.”
“Gaehod,
I’m damned. Choice has been taken from me.”
“Quite
the contrary, I think.” He hands me the pot and sits back down. “But we’ll have
to see, I guess. Dominic is a persuasive young man. Very confident. And I am an
old man, full of doubt.”
“But
you know so much.” I wave my pale hand at the whole chaotic wealth of Gaehod’s
library and writings, of the papers stacked on the floor and the books piled on
the shelves, of the years collecting and studying.
“Knowledge
is only the beginning, my dear. Every fool knows things.”
“A
fool knows things by mistake, without choosing what he knows.”
Gaehod
moves the whistling kettle from the fire, but makes no move to pour its water
into the pot I’m holding. “Dominic says that he can bring proof to knowledge. I
am not so sure I can offer the same for what I think I know. Perhaps the new
magic is stronger.”
“The
new magic isn’t magic,” I tell him. “It leaves magic out. And that is why the
old ways win. Don’t do this to me, Gaehod. If you destroy the hotel, you’ll
take away the only place I have to bury my hope. I don’t want to be strapped to
a corpse for all eternity. Gaehod, all I’m asking for is a grave.”
“Anything
can be a grave.”
He
says nothing else, watching the escaping steam rise from the open throat of the
cooling kettle. I search the wayward tendrils for inspiration—for persuasion—I
have to make him change his mind. I turn the knife around.
“We
still need you,” I say. “And it’s not just us, not just the ancient stained.
This new millennia is damned in new ways. They need you even more than we did.
We, at least, understood our damnation. They think it’s all bad chemistry or
worse luck.”
“Dominic
says the contemporary damned have everything they need in the surface world.”
“Except
redemption.”
“They
don’t seem to be looking for that.”
“They
wouldn’t know where! Nobody reads the old texts, nobody knows their own
lineage. You should be reaching out to them, not shuttering our gates! They
need us.”
“Stories,
not science?”
“Yes!”
“Myth,
not medicine?”
“Look,”
I say, “we throw magic in the face of logic, and magic wins. Irrational desire
still thrives in reasonable minds. Desire for money has scientists swearing
cigarettes don’t cause cancer. Desire for God makes teachers spout Intelligent
Design. Desire trumps reason every time. The mind has no chance without the
body. I can prove it.”
Gaehod
still says nothing, but turns his deep eyes from the fire to me.
“Test
me!” I beg.
“Yes,”
he says at last. “I can put this burden on you, since you have asked.”
I
start to thank him, to revel in victory, but his delicate face bears no trace
of fondness for the first time in the hundreds of years I have known him. It
terrifies me.
“The
test must be for you both,” he says. “He wants to study you. You want to devour
him.”
“I
win,” I say lightly. “We eat before we understand.”
“Dominic
will ask you to go to Dublin for neurological testing,” Gaehod says at last.
“If you go, if you even enter the hospital there, modernity wins and I will
open the hotel to the public, and publish all our pasts.”
I
clamp my lips so hard against a grin that I taste ichor. Don’t go to Dublin.
Refuse to be examined. There has never been an easier trial.
“However,”
the grim old man continues, “if you’re right, if Dominic surrenders to desire,
we will not only continue underground, but will also begin a new program of
outreach for the twenty-first century’s undiscovered damned.”
“I
broke his skin this morning. He has already fallen.”
“No.”
Gaehod’s crystal eyes are cold and distant. “You may freely eat of every
willing guest in my hotel, but of Dominic’s blood you shall not taste, for in
the day that you drink from him, one of you will surely die.”
I am
angry. “If he did not want or fear me, I could not pierce his flesh. How else
do you expect me to prove his desire?”
“He
must kiss you in the garden.”
“You
want me to kiss him, but not feed, hungry as you know I am?” Dominic is right.
The old man is nuts.
“Sometimes
to deny a craving—just because it is craving—is enough for strength.”
“I’m
not Sylvia,” I shout. “I never get lost in the flood. I hate that they want
me!” I am on my feet, towering over him.
“Then
bring me his kiss. It will mark him for me.”
“Kiss
him, but don’t dare ask for what I need. Sounds like every marriage I have ever
seen.”
“Be
kissed.” Gaehod stands slowly and takes the teapot from my clawed hands. “He’s
in the garden now.”
“I
will starve into shadow before I see your beautiful hotel opened to the
undamned.” I spin on my still-muddy heel and stalk across the wreckage to the
door. “It doesn’t matter what Dominic knows. Without desire, knowledge has no
meaning. All meaning comes from down here. Without it, there are only facts and
death. More than wanted, I will be believed,” I shout at the old man, my hand
on the door.
“Belief
is a choice.” He pours steaming water into the red teapot.
“He
will choose me,” I whisper. And I leave him there.
I
know it will hurt to feel Dominic’s lips again and not taste him. I remember
them in the moonlight last night, and how they tempted me, but I have not
kissed him since the first night when we left Pandemonium to walk the spiral
hall. I have always hesitated to hurt him. Curious.
I
will find him in the garden. He will kiss me. I will not taste him. My sisters
will know I have saved the hotel and keen my secret teeth for me. I will go to
the Quarry and hunt and feed full-tooth. Then, I think, I may find Dominic
again. He will be disappointed that Hell will not close. Perhaps I will comfort
him. But now, I must catch up with him before he leaves the garden, or my home
and my family, my hunger, and my last hope for hopelessness—for acceptance—will
be swallowed by my own demand that Gaehod test me.
8
OVERTHROWN
Dominic
found the bag where he had left it when he had fled the vampire sisters and
their pale and perfect flesh in the bright darkness. The garden was quiet, its
brilliant gloom forcing all colors into lurid against the muddy light. The
black river flowed through the silence, and the fruit trees leaked their scent
against it. Relieved but exhausted, Dominic dropped to the ground and unzipped
his bag.
Everything
was in place. He took a brown plastic bottle from a small locked case and
swallowed a capsule. The AEDvIII.0’s effects appeared to last about forty-eight
hours, an excellent burn rate. He had taken one before his trip to Pandemonium
two nights ago. Except for that fucking snake, this formulation seemed
effective in keeping the delusions at bay. He intended to go back to that tree
and explore. He wanted to rule out animatronics. But no memories of distant
times or women had haunted him even when, foolishly, he had taken Olivia’s cool
hand in his, touched his face to her smooth temple, kissed her supple wrist.
Dominic
slipped his laptop from its battered bag and settled himself against the same
tree Sylvia had reclined beneath, her flawless breasts exposed to tempt him.
Funny how they had not, but he knew he would not be so strong against Olivia if
she pulled her buttons down. If she had turned toward him in the moonlight last
night, in the ruined stones and caressing breeze, he would have kissed her. Her
mouth, ripe and inviting, had opened for his finger, sucking, drawing a longing
from him that tugged again between his legs, remembering.
Dominic
steadied his back against the tree and fired up his machine. He would take a
few quick notes on the efficacy of the AEDvIII.0s and then go upstairs to bed.
He was too old to stay up all night and not feel it the next day. He blinked
his eyes against a jungle vigil in complete silence, alert all night, his
arthritic hand, curled unmoving around the shaft of an ancient spear. The pills
should kick in soon. His computer chirped and, looking down, he chuckled in the
stillness. Hell was online. He had mail.
To:
D_O@mindlab.edu
From:
MadaleneWright@MadaleneWright.org
Subject:
Status
Dear
Dominic—
I
understand from Dr. Dysart that you arrived safely in Ireland. I am glad.
Likewise, I am pleased to understand from him that I was not mistaken in my
estimation of your tact. His statements to the media have focused on the
general relationship of memory and delusion without reference to specific
behaviors or symptoms. I am grateful.
Dysart
tells me that he is in the procurement stage, outfitting a state-of-the-art
lab, and collecting what he needs to conduct experiments. I assume that you are
actively engaged in much the same sort of work—collecting in order to
experiment. I look forward to hearing, in the next week, how many and of what.
Let me know if you need any additional support.
Warmly—
Madalene
Email
seemed so far away, farther than an ocean and five time zones. Dysart and the
Ps, the lab, the science, things he could measure on a screen, track on a
graph, the weight of his clandestine alliance with Madalene, the damage she
could still do. And the email was date-stamped April twentieth. He had
forgotten how time elongated underground. He’d barely settled in. Barely
unpacked. “Dear Ms. Wright,” Dominic typed, “I am in Hell on your
behalf. Nagging is redundant.”
He
deleted the email. How could he communicate anything across this gulf in time
and power, reality and distance?
“Dear
Ms. Wright, You sent me to Hell, same to you.”
He
was almost tired enough to send that. He erased it instead. He was too politic
in this lifetime. Where was the hunter?
Soundlessly
waiting in the Bengali forest.
Dominic
pressed the corners of his lids against the hard bone of his nose until
chessboard vortices spiraled in front of him. He stared at the empty email
reply window. He was exhausted. The flight, the drive, the hotel, the
nightclub, the bike ride, the abbey, this unfamiliar ancient home, the garden,
all conspired against him. He hoped Alyx would eat his oatmeal.
“Dear
Ms. Wright,”
he typed sleepily. “We can stop our search. I have formulated the answer by
mistake.” Olivia’s boundless eyes swam against his burning lids. He groped
for the feeling of her lips around his finger, the erotic pull of sliding into
her mouth’s black welcome, the challenge of her eyes. She made him work, made
him think. She was what he needed, if not what he had sought. “Everything is
here . . .” he typed, eyes closed, “ . . . very dangerous.” The
grass was soft and the air hung warm and utterly still. There was no sound in
the garden, no birds, and even the leaves and river were silent. His fingers
slipped from the keys. He was drifting, seeking Olivia’s face again. The laptop
fell sideways from his legs. He pushed an eye open to see the email was gone.
He hadn’t meant to send that. He would need to send a follow-up to Madalene,
but later. He was sliding, almost sleeping.
“Kiss
me.”
Olivia
stood, towering over him, one black, boot-clad foot on either side of his body.
Dominic followed the lean curve up her thighs to the red corseted dip at her
waist, and back over the swell of breasts to her face, looking down. She
lowered herself over him and tucked her feet beneath her, legs spread across
his hips, her hands on the tree trunk behind him. “Kiss me,” she said again.
“Why?”
“Because
I know you want to.”
Her
lips curled in a tempting half smile, mocking and tender, inches from his
mouth. Without willing it, his hands caught at her hips, his thumbs resting in
the soft places just within the bone, his fingers splayed over the giving
rounded flesh. He gripped her. Beneath her straddling legs, his cock quickened.
She leaned closer, pressing the weight of her body against him. Her breasts,
soft in red velvet, brushed his chest. She tilted her head, her lips parted in
invitation. Her breath came, soft and cool, against his scorched lips.
“No,”
he whispered. He closed his burning eyes against the beauty and softness, felt
her breasts and open legs, her parted lips almost touching his own. Yes, he
wanted to.
“I
want to ask you something,” she said, and settled herself, open-legged against
him. “Open your eyes.”
He
tore himself away from the pure sensation of her body near and open over him,
unresponsive. Her lashes were dark against the white of her cheeks and the gray
of her eyes ran deeper than the soundless river he had fled.
“There’s
something about you I don’t understand,” the dark beauty mused, “and it’s been
bothering me since I met you.”
“What’s
that?” His hands still held her hips, could grind her open thighs against his
iron cock.
“My
body conforms to desire. If a man likes tall girls, I get a little
taller—couple inches, no big thing. If a woman likes tiny breasts, mine shrink.
If he likes a full ass, mine swells. All that matters is that they want me.”
Dominic willed himself not to look down. “It’s never such a dramatic change
that it makes me unrecognizable one fig to the next, but their desire distorts
me, molds me to their tastes.”
“I
didn’t know that.”
“Yeah.
But here’s the thing”—Olivia leaned in again, her perfect lips against the
unshaved roughness of his jaw, her voice a welcome invasion—“with you, I have
not changed at all. So either you think I’m perfect just the way I am”—her
lower lip grazed his earlobe—“or you do not desire me.”
Dominic
slid his hands from her hips to her narrow waist, fighting the urge to crush
her body against his hammering chest, to wrap his arms around her slender torso
and pull her hard against him. She sat back from him a little and looked into
his face. “And I honestly can’t imagine either is possible.”
His
hands felt huge on her lithe waist. He did want her, wanted her ferociously,
but he owed her the reason he could not tell her so. “Olivia, I—”
How
could he explain his madness, make her understand what he could not accept?
“Standing
out at the abbey with you last night, I felt . . . I can’t want you that way.
It would deny everything I believe in. My work would stop making sense. I
couldn’t love you and keep my job. I’m a neuroscientist. You have to
understand. It’s who I am.”
He
slid his hands up the smooth cloth that encased her, feeling the long column of
her back with shaking fingers, holding the curve of her with the palm of his
hands. “Olivia, you . . .” He was making a mess of this. Why couldn’t what he
felt be illustrated in an elegant wave graph? “When I look at you, I don’t see
an available woman, desirable or otherwise. I see someone in pain, enslaved by
their illness, driven by compulsion or delusion, someone who isn’t free to
choose me.”
“Free?”
“Right.”
“And
do you think that you are free?”
“I’m
trying to be.”
She
moved so swiftly he barely saw what she lunged for. She hung his pill bottle
between them. “This is freedom?”
“That
is medicine.”
“What
does it do?”
“I
don’t know yet. I hope it may curb delusion.”
“Yours
or mine?”
“Mine.”
“Can
you still see me?”
He
smiled grimly. If she noticed the aching erection she straddled, she gave no
indication. On her slim thighs, his hands, large and freckled, stroked the soft
fabric covering her perfect legs. “I don’t think for a moment that you’re a
hallucination of mine. My fantasy lovers are all”—he glanced into her quizzical
eyes and grinned—“much more compliant.”
“Then
what do you see that you think is not real?”
“Right
now?” He looked around at the dark garden, sunlessly shining. “Nothing, really.
But I’ve been taking my medicine.”
He
meant it as a joke, but she didn’t smile. “Dominic, you want me. I can smell
it.”
He
nodded. “I know. I do. Out at the abbey, even at the nightclub, something about
you speaks to me. Or would, I think, if I let myself listen. I have to keep
stuffing cotton in my ears. It’s not easy.”
“I’m
an angel, not a siren.”
“I
know, but if I kissed you right now, and yes, I want to . . . If I kissed you,
it would mean giving up on everything that’s held me together since the last
time I was in this insane place. It’s more than just my work that would stop
making sense. It’s me. I can’t want you in the way I want you.” He was choking,
blind, staring at his hands on her thighs. He bowed his head.
“It’s
a choice?”
“It
has to be.” Her lips touched his hair as it fell over his eyes. If he opened
them, her breasts would be all he could see. Even against his clamped-shut
lids, their white perfection swam before him. He heard the rattle but didn’t
recognize the sound until she had swallowed and tossed the pill bottle back
into his bag.
“You
shouldn’t have done that.” His voice was caked with despair and desire.
“I
thought you wanted to heal me.”
“How
many did you take?”
“I
left you some.”
“You
know that’s useless to me clinically.”
“I
didn’t do it for you.” She stood up and walked away from him, noiseless across
the dark grass. He sprawled against the tree trunk, exhausted and taut,
relieved and aroused. If she suggested a swim now, he would be lost. But she
stayed silent, and his thrashing mind began to steady.
“I
think Gaehod will close the hotel,” she said at last.
“That
isn’t what you want, is it?”
“No.
My sisters will be angry.” Her voice was expressionless, her face marble.
“Vampires
get angry?”
“Twice,
to date. But it could be good for you. If Gaehod opens the hotel to the public,
my sisters won’t be able to stay. I think you might convince some of them to
follow you to Dublin.”
“I
thought you said they’d never participate in a clinical trial?”
“You’ll
need to set up a place for them to stay, with underground storage, and tell
them the rest is a game, a novelty. Boredom is our contagious cancer.” She
turned away from him, standing by the fruit tree branch he’d reached for only
yesterday.
“I’m
certain I could devise ways to make the tests interesting.” Dominic’s mind was
sailing ahead. If he could get out of this damned hotel, back into a city with
trains and bookstores, if he could confine the madness of vampires and curses
to a laboratory and the daylight, he might yet fulfill his promises to Madalene
and his obligations to Dysart. Maybe then he could wrap his head around what
this pale, perfect woman did to his heart. His eyes ran up the slick columns of
her legs and across the narrow expanse of her red-cased back and flowing hair.
“Would you come, too?” he asked quietly.
“No.”
He
stood up to take her by the shoulders and turn her to him. “Why are you helping
me?”
“I
want to.” She almost smiled. “That’s my choice.”
Touching
her again was a mistake. The clear sanity of his Dublin plans blurred in the
depth of her melting eyes. She closed them wearily.
“You’re
tired, aren’t you?” he asked.
“No.”
“You
look exhausted.”
“I
haven’t eaten.” She swayed slightly and without thinking, Dominic pulled her
tiny body to his. She leaned against his chest and inhaled. Her breath, as she
released it, shook her in his steady arms. He wrapped her more closely against
him.
“Olivia,
why did you take that pill?”
“I
was curious.” Her body, pliant but strong, molded against his, making an almost
audible hum in his ears. Her slow hands traced his back from waist to shoulder.
“I’ve never been curious before,” she whispered. Her fingers were learning the
shapes and contours of him, pressing into tender places, he could barely hear
her.
“Why
haven’t you eaten?”
“Vampires
can only feed on blood that wants or fears them.”
“You
could have fed on me,” he whispered over the roar of desire in his ears. “I
want you.”
She
lifted her head from his chest to gaze at him. “I can smell it on you, so
thick. But if you can choose, then so can I.”
He
took her face in his hands, cradling it, fingers in her hair again, his thumbs
on the porcelain richness of cheekbones. Her lips, so tempting, trembled. She
was hurting, and he was slowly starting to understand. “You chose not to?”
“Hunger
is the only thing a vampire feels, a yawning emptiness, that drinking does not
fill, but numbs. It’s like a gash you can’t suture, but inject with lidocaine.
I didn’t feed on you last night, and the emptiness got bigger than I have ever
known. But without your desire to numb me, something new started to happen. I
think I have started to feel my self, under my hunger.” Her tidal eyes held
his, her voice the only sound in the garden’s dead world. “Under my roaring
hunger for you to want me, under my shrieking need for your blood to keep me
warm, I’ve started to hear”—his thumbs grazed her cheek—“the whisper of my own
desire.” Her body, so alive against his, made his dull thighs and shoulders,
his blunt chest and belly ache.
“I
want you,” he whispered.
“And
I want you.” Her lips scarcely moved with the whisper of surprise and
discovery. Her fingers clung to his back, her body held to his, but it was her
eyes he could not bear to leave in the blue light of tearshed and blood. He
rubbed the balls of his thumbs against the twin wet places on her cheeks.
She
closed her eyes, a pained furrow between her perfect brows. “I have only eaten
choices,” she murmured, silent as prayer. His thumb touched her swollen lips
feeling, more than hearing, her words. They ran in torrents through him. “I
have always taken. When I make the tiny cuts with my teeth or nails that go
unnoticed, when I drive my teeth on those who flee me, I steal.” The supple flesh
pursed under his reluctant touch. “It is why Gaehod chose the sign he has. A
kiss must be given.”
“You
asked me to kiss you.”
“Yes,”
she said.
“Ask
me again.” His voice was raw with his hunger.
Beauty
does not belong to me. It comes with damnation. My flawless body stands against
his mortal one, bathed in our desire. If I do not walk away from him now, he
will kiss me. Gaehod will not close the hotel. My deathless sisters will be
pleased. If I open my aching mouth to his hunger, I could drown my agony on his
need. He will feel me strike, and my raw quills, unkeened for weeks through
indifference, would hurt him. But he is brave and will stand it. I slip from
his hungry, seeking fingers on my cheeks and lips, and walk away.
“Olivia!”
I do
not turn back.
“Olivia?”
“Come
with me,” I say. But I do not turn back to look for him until I have pushed the
gates of the garden wide. He stops to gather his things, the computer on the
grass, the pill bottle, a notebook. I wait for him, dizzy with freedom or need.
There
is one thing I must understand.
“Where
are we going?” The bag hangs across his strong chest, his broad shoulders easy
under its weight, his bright blue eyes burning wild in the garden light. He has
not shaved since the last time I led him out of this garden to the bikes and
our night drive. Bronze stubble roughens his face, clouded with sex and doubt.
But striding toward me, he looks fierce and elemental, a force of desire and
rage beaten against powers stronger and darker than he sees or can understand.
I
want to discover, once and for all, what happens when he looks at me.
He
walks wordlessly beside me down the silent halls. We pass black metal and
vaulted wooden doors. When I stop before a dull gray one, he only waits as I
push my flawless fingers into the narrow seam beside the lock, and slide an
elongating nail between the jam and tumblers. He holds the door. The smaller,
dank hallway smells of mold and earthworms, of cellars, graves, and abandoned
wells.
“I
keep forgetting we’re underground,” he whispers.
The
corridor ends abruptly, rounding a curved wall, to deposit us at the foot of a
cavernous space. It is dark and airless, nothing like the chill humidity of the
grand hall. It soars dustless, limitless and black.
“The
gas will come on when we take the floor,” I tell him. I hold his hand, warm and
human, and step into the void. The ceiling ignites in blinding banks of flame,
but I keep walking. When I stop, and when he can see again, we stand in the
center of a vast Art Deco ballroom whose inlaid black-and-white floor sweeps
away in dizzying patterns on every side. The ceiling soars stories up,
supported by colossal carved titans whose rippling bodies of living stone bear
the weight of the entire hotel above them on strong, blind backs. On every
wall, broken only by white columns, mirrors reflect us back to our dazzled
eyes.
I
leave Dominic standing and walk to touch the old, cold silver surface. Looking
at me from the glass is a woman I have never seen. Familiar, yes, like the
myriad faces I have seen when those who want me gaze on me. But different
somehow, and purely my own. This is my native face. Then I see him. He stands
where I left him, pale and still. His artist’s lips make a hard, thin line, of
anger or fear.
“Why
can’t I see you?” His voice is a cold hammer.
“I’m
here.” I turn from the mirror to face him. His logical eyes search the glass
behind me.
“What
the fuck!” His broad hands are balled into fists and his fierce teeth are set.
“I can see you standing right there in front of the mirror, but I can’t see you
in it.” I turn back to the glass. I smile at my reflection, and it returns the
grin with a look of barely contained joy. It’s all I can do not to laugh.
“I
can see myself,” I tell him.
“I
can see myself, too, but only me. Why can’t I see you? Is it a trick? Some
insane game of Gaehod’s? Goddamn it, that old man won’t quit fucking with my
mind.” He looks about to tear it from his skull, dropping his bag in the center
of the floor and driving the heels of his hands against his raging eyes. He
strides to the mirror and cups his hands, peering into the reflecting surface.
Then he yanks a pocketknife from his jeans and flips open the blade. He
scratches the mirror’s surface and swears.
I
wander, half dreaming, happy, back to the room’s center and gaze at my true
reflection, turning slowly to see myself in a infinite line of smaller selves,
each blessedly identical. He glances at me and back at the mirrors. “It’s some
kind of stupid trick,” he mutters, pressing his furrowed face against the
plaster to peer behind the glass. He turns to me and scrubs his violent eyes
again, leaning his taut back against the mirrored wall, facing mirrors on the
other side, but looking at me. He shakes his head. “I don’t understand,” he
says.
“You’re
not used to that, are you?”
“To
not being able to understand what I see? No. I’m not. I’m a logical man. I
figure things out.”
“Have
you figured me out?” I ask him.
“You’re
a person, not a thing. And no, I haven’t. I don’t even try with women. They
don’t make sense.”
“And
now this room doesn’t make sense?” I am teasing him. It’s unfair, but I am in
the mirror and feel millennia younger—lighthearted and giddy. He slams his hand
against the glass. The massive pane ripples, waves in a frozen pond, but does
not shatter, and Dominic hugs his hand against his chest.
“Fuck,”
he says sheepishly. “That was stupid. Sorry I startled you.”
“Are
you hurt?”
“No.”
He walks right to me. “You nailed it, you know. I have to stop trying to make
things make sense down here. None of it does, not even that it is here,
a room this size, underground. The rules of the real world don’t apply.” He
half grins and takes my small wrists in his large hands. “I have rules I make
and rules I follow, rules I expect the world to play by, and rules I know it
won’t. I have rules about women and about falling in love. Like one of nature’s
laws, you can’t break it, you can only break yourself against it. But no rules
work here. I’m falling and there’s no gravity. I’m reflecting and there’s no
image.”
But
I cannot hear him. His strong hands encircle my wrists. I see them in the
mirror. I feel them on my flesh.
“Touch
my face,” I whisper.
His
hands slide up my arms, and I close my eyes to drink in the sensation.
My
body has sensation.
“Olivia.”
He shakes me gently by the shoulders he’s holding. “Olivia? Are you okay?
You’re really pale.”
I
am the Undead, of course I’m pale! I feel like laughing. I’m pale and dizzy, and a thousand
other things no angel can be. He touched and I felt. I sway in his strong
hands.
“You
really need to eat, don’t you? You missed breakfast. I don’t know about those
pills on an empty stomach either. Are you faint?”
I
touch his jaw. Against my fingertips, the stubble is rough and masculine. I
trace his hard cheekbone where the skin is taut and smooth. Manhood and
strength tingle up my fingers and across my bones.
I
can feel him.
“Olivia?”
His hands slide to my waist and their descent radiates from my skin into the
core of me. “What’s happening?”
“I
can feel you,” I whisper.
“I
don’t understand.” He makes his voice soft, like mine.
It
will overwhelm me, the weight of his hands on my waist, the sheer heat of his
body close to mine, the drenching smell of his desire and the unfamiliar scent
of my own. I breathe in deeply.
Yes.
I want. I
can smell my desire. I have never wanted. I touch his softening mouth with
uncertain fingers. I want him. The inviting flesh of his lips is giving and
soft after the roughness of his jaw, and I run questioning fingers over it
until he shudders.
“I
can see you, here in my arms,” he whispers. “I can feel you touching me, but
when I look,” his strong brows contract and his fingers dig into my waist. I
moan to feel their hard demand, to feel him touching me. “But when I look into
all the mirrors on all the walls, you’re not there. I just see my empty hands
holding nothing.”
“I
can see me.”
“I’m
having a seizure.” He bows his head, defeat heavy on him,
“I
must be getting worse. I have never had this kind of fully consciousness
doubling before.”
“It
has to be enough that I can see me.” I push my fingers harder against his
inviting lips to feel the sudden barricade of teeth. I push between them, and
he bites me lightly. “Let it be enough,” I ask him. He turns his face from me
and my fingers slip from between his lips.
“Am
I losing my mind?” he whispers.
“You’re
asking me?” I mean it lightly, lost in the texture of his skin, trailing my
nerve-rich fingertips from his jaw to where the stubble grows more sparsely,
where the sinews of his throat stand out in stark relief. His throat. I feel
the pulse, his hypnotic thrusting blood beneath it.
With
something like a sob, he gathers me against him, against the heat and rhythm of
his chest, within the circle of his arms and strength, against the hard
unmoving of his legs and belly, and holds me tightly. “I feel like I’m losing
my grip on everything,” he whispers into my hair.
“Maybe
you never had it.” I’m drinking the smells and touch of him, the warmth and
sounds, air in his breath, blood in his heart, enveloping me.
“I
want to do everything wrong.” His voice is harsh and low in my hair. “I want to
walk through those mirrors. I want to jump from the balconies. I want to be
out-of-my-head crazy, raving, speaking in tongues. I want to give up on
science. I want to allow irrationality and cruelty to win. Olivia—” He takes my
head between his strong hands and turns my face up to his. His fearless, blue
eyes dive into me. “I want you.”
He
glances up into the mirror. The sound is strangled, a cry, a desperation. “I
want to give up on everything I believe in, everything I know, everything I’ve
served. I want to give it away. Give it to you. Olivia, why can’t I see you in
the mirror?”
“You
can see me in your hands,” I tell him. He holds my face in his powerful
fingers, his trembling body inches from me, pain in his hard jaw and brows.
“Close your eyes,” I whisper.
With
his eyes shut, he looks innocent, and I touch his lids to watch them flinch.
“It’s my fault,” I whisper. “I’m not real. Vampires do strange things with
mirrors. Things I didn’t know.” I run my hands down the unyielding cords of his
hard and scarless back.
The
sensation that stabs through me as my breasts touch his chest forces a gasp
from me. He opens his eyes in alarm. “I have always fed on man’s desire,” I
tell him. “I have drunk desire and fear to keep me numb from the terrible
gaping emptiness that is my damnation inside me. My emptiness, my numbness, my
hunger, for your mortal desire, your sensation, your blood to feed me. Mirrors
never showed me who I was, because I never knew.”
“If
I knew you better could I see you?”
“To
know and to see are not the same.”
“I
don’t understand.” His fingers tighten on me in his confusion, hurting me, and
I laugh with the joy of feeling that small pain. This is what hurt feels like,
this hard insistence of bones.
“And
how could you know me better, anyway, if you can’t see me?” I ask him.
“You
could tell me.”
“Would
you believe me?”
“I
think I could, if you asked me to.” His face shows only courage in the pain he
feels—in the face of his world falling in.
“It
would be easier to believe I took your pill and we are both sane.”
“Nothing
about you is easy,” he says.
“Damnation
is easy.”
“You
are not damned.”
“Illness
is easy.”
“You
are not ill.”
“I
am desire.” I say. “Desire is never easy.”
He
drops his proud forehead to mine, resting the weight of his head against me.
His warrior’s eyes squeeze closed, and his breathing fills the space between
us.
“Desire
is suffering,” I whisper.
He
swallows hard. “Then I am desire, too.”
His
hands clasp behind my head and he presses his face against my hair. His naked
voice is raw. “Tell me what to do.”
I
shudder in his arms, and press my sensitive cheek against the grit of his. The
tips of my breasts are alive, acute, beneath my confining corset. But pleasure
courses down from them, between my legs, into my receptive belly. I could laugh
or sob with the sensation. He turns his rough mouth against my delicate cheek,
and the heat and softness of his whispering lips makes me cling to his back
with immortal fingers.
“What
do you want?” he asks me.
“I
want my hunger not to hurt you.”
“I
don’t care if it does,” he says.
And
then his lips touch mine. The light feather of his breath sends torrents
through me. He whispers “Kiss me” against the sensitive flesh that whispers
back “I cannot.” But his lips open over mine. I hold to his hard back against
the heat and hunger to open my mouth beneath his. I want to.
“I
would believe in angels to kiss you,” he whispers.
“That
is not who you are.”
“No.”
But
the tender question of his tongue tips my starving lips with need, traces a
line of raging heat around their swollen hunger. His mouth is slowly gathering
mine beneath it in a kiss that takes my resolution with my strength. New
pleasure, first desire, his lips lingering over mine, his body strong and
hungry, mine runs liquid under it.
“I
can love what I don’t understand.” He is almost pleading. I could open my lips
and kiss him.
“Most
mortals fear it,” I say.
“I
am immortal then.”
And
he looks it, eyes flaming into mine, hard jaw proud and hungry for me. One
kiss. This is not the garden. I will not feed. I could allow myself one kiss,
and it will be good-bye. Who he is cannot believe what I am.
Yes.
His
lips are an adoring rage on mine, demanding and giving beauty and terrible
hunger. I would choke on my cruel teeth to keep from hurting him, but I cry out
when his fingers find the wingscars on my back. The tips of my warming breasts
rake against his chest. Drenched in sensation, I wring a pure smile from the
mouth that claims mine. It fills me. The soft curve of his beautiful lips
cradles the soaring sense of myself expanding, swelling to fill the pure white
ballroom, shining back in the ocean of mirrors, everything reflected back, and
back again. Breaking in waves over us standing, holding to each other’s body,
each other’s lips. Angels before the fall, love without sin, completion,
perfection, joy.
This
is not the garden.
Sylvia’s
psycast is ice in my mind.
How
dare you fuck this up?
I
close my eyes against my outraged sisters, circling me, to hold Dominic
timeless away from them reflected in every mirrored wall, surrounding us. He
hasn’t noticed them.
Gaehod
had us to tea.
His
lips whisper a kiss that grows to screaming, open-mouthed, hard and searching,
claimed and claiming. And I return the kiss, knowing my sisters advance.
Knowing they see I do not feed. Knowing they will kill me for this.
We
are going to try you for treason.
If
the fall is to this man, I can love descent. But he will be broken by it,
taken, unfinished, ruined, and in pain.
“Come
with us.” I can’t see which of the rows of Sylvias is real in her phalanxed
reflection.
“I
will,” I say, but turn my back to her. I bite deeply into my lower lip, and
fill my mouth with ichor.
“Olivia?”
Dominic’s worried eyes are searching mine.
“It’s
all right,” I whisper to him. “I need to go with my sisters now.” I kiss
omnipotence and strength into his lips and tell him, “You’ve got to get out of
here! The minute I leave, go to Gaehod and tell him to get you out. They will
kill you. Swear to me you’ll get away.”
“All
right.”
“I have
to go now.” I kiss him a final time in a communion of scoured souls.
“I
don’t want to lose you,” he says.
“I
was already lost.”
“No.”
He pulls me closer, and my sisters’ footsteps quicken.
“Stop
believing that. It’s a choice, remember? Every belief is something we’ve
chosen.”
“Is
it?” Sylvia and Vivian each have me by an elbow now, almost carrying me toward
the door. If I struggle they will lift me, and I don’t want to frighten him. He
must think I am walking away. He bends to pick his bag up from the ground and
the beauty in the gesture breaks through the strange, hard fingers in my
now-feeling flesh, the new sensation of bruises and nail bites. I could savor
even these if his grace bending and slinging the bag across his hard man’s
chest did not tear at me even more strongly.
He
stands uncertain. He wants to call after me, but does not think he has the
right. He watches me go, tasting doubt, eyes questioning. “Why did she kiss
me?” he wonders. “Did she feel what I did? Do I love her?”
If I
could answer, if he could hear me psycast: I am with you still. Your
angel. Your love. But reason deafens him, and the noise of vampire shoes on
the inlaid dance floor, and then in the concrete hallway, rounding away from
where he stands. I catch a final glimpse of him, walking toward the mirrors
once more, to try to understand.
Dominic
checked again behind the mirrors. Nothing. No projector he could see
hung from the ceiling above, nor was the glass warped. It simply didn’t make
sense. He made a complete and careful circuit of the room before he noticed
her—a pale, diminutive thing—trailing black gauze and diaphanous lace. She, at
least, looked the same in the mirror as on the periphery of the dance floor,
where she lingered, watching him. Dominic nodded to her, and went to gather his
decrepit shoulder bag. He would go back to his room. Olivia could find him
there when she finished whatever ridiculousness she had to with her friends. He
wanted to see her again, touch her again. Kiss her.
“I’m
Ophelia.”
“Hi.”
Dominic extended his hand to the girl who now stood beside him. She seemed
taller than she had been, standing by the door. Ophelia shook his hand with an
amused smile.
“You’re
very formal for a man my sister’s been making love to.”
“She
kissed me. That’s it,” Dominic said, ridiculously defensive.
“Ah,
but a kiss to mortals is the first volley of romance, with its promise of love
and sex and babies—the kiss of life.” She stood too close to him, smiling. “For
us, of course, a kiss is the first taste of something else, and can promise
only the possible, distant child of death.” In a grotesque, childish gesture,
Ophelia stuck the two pale middle fingers of her tiny right hand into her
puckered, scarlet mouth and sucked them, staring. She had Olivia’s matte gray
eyes, flat and deep. Perhaps they really were sisters.
“No,”
he told her. “No, there was no vampire weirdness. She didn’t try to bite me.
She didn’t even try to kiss me. I kissed her.”
“We
saw.”
“You
were watching us?” Dominic asked. The ghostly girl began to pace a slow circle
around him. Dominic stood perplexed in the center of the dance floor’s
complicated, radiating pattern.
“Yes.
You shouldn’t have done that. Ollie shouldn’t have done that.”
“Why?”
Dominic demanded. “Is dating against the rules at the Hotel of the Damned?”
“Dating
is its own curse.”
Dominic
throttled a laugh with a cough. That, at least, mapped to his experience.
“Why
did Olivia have to leave with the rest of them? Why did you stay?”
“I
stayed because I saw something in the mirror.” The girl kept circling.
“What?”
“I’m
not going to tell you. But yes, that is why Olivia had to leave.”
“Because
I kissed her?”
“Because
this is not the garden.” Ophelia slid her cool shoulder against Dominic’s back
like a cat. “She’s dangerously weak, you know. You could have helped her.”
It
irritated Dominic not to be able to see Ophelia, to look her in the eyes while
he talked to her, to be forced to keep craning his head over one shoulder then
the next as she paced circles around him. “Olivia has taken an antipsychotic.
It may have cut into some of the conditioned thinking you and your so-called
sisters have instilled in her.”
“You
gave her medicine?” Ophelia bristled.
“Is
that against the rules, too? Are you afraid she might see clearly for long
enough to get free of you?” Impatience defeated Dominic’s sense of obligation
to be charming for one of Olivia’s friends. He wanted to grab his laptop bag
and get out of the elaborate, airless, and distorting ballroom.
“Vampires
can only metabolize blood. She’s in no danger. Not from your pills, anyway.”
“What
do you mean? Is she in danger from something else?”
“There
is always danger.”
“To
Olivia?”
“To
her. And from her.”
“What
are you talking about?” Dominic rounded on Ophelia, catching her delicate
shoulders to hold her still.
She
swayed her enticing hips and smiled at him. “We’re going to kill her,” she
whispered, singsong.
Dominic
towered over the tiny vampire. His fingers curled into hard fists at his sides
to keep from shaking her. “What do you mean you’re going to kill her?”
“I
can smell how much you want her,” Ophelia sang.
Dominic’s
voice was a growl. “What do you mean you’re going to kill her?”
“Your
blood is full of desire and very powerful.” Ophelia’s delicate, pale fingers
reached for his shoulder, but he violently shrugged her hand away. He was a scientist,
a rational man, but the noise he made was animal. Ophelia watched him, a dreamy
smile on her childish lips. “Do you want me?” she whispered.
“I’m
asking you, for the last time,” Dominic ground through clenched teeth, “what
you meant when you said you were going to kill Olivia. You don’t mean
literally.”
“Angels
are literal by nature.”
This
time he did grab her. She gave no indication that he hurt her. He didn’t mean
to, but he had to understand. “Where did they take her?” he demanded.
The
tiny girl shrugged. She made her eyes into large, innocent gray blanks in her
pale, heart-shaped face. “The hotel’s a big place. They could have taken Ollie
to the Quarry. Or to Sylvie’s room. Or the crypts.”
“Do
you know where they took her?”
“You
could have me, you know.”
“I
don’t want you.”
“No.
You want Olivia. I can see it in the mirror.”
“What?”
“I
look like her.”
“No,
you don’t.”
“I
do to me.” The girl gazed wistfully at her own reflection.
“Ophelia,
I need to find Olivia. I’ll talk to the others and explain, but it’s time to
get her out of this crazy place.”
“You?
Take Ollie out of here?” Ophelia’s laugh reverberated like shattering glass. It
bounced off the high ceilings and the distant walls, against the inlaid wood
and plaster and mirrors. “You can’t find your own way out. How could you take a
failing vampire?”
“You
admit it, don’t you?” Dominic tried not to shout. “Olivia has stopped playing
your game. She’s a failed vampire. She’s simply a woman, as difficult and
complicated as that is. She’s not pretending to some divine, immortal status
any more. You and the rest of them are scared shitless that if she can stop,
you might, too. And you can, I think. Maybe. I could try you all on the
medicine she took. But I have to get to her before anyone does anything
stupid.”
“Stupid?”
“Without
thinking it through.”
“Angels
have nothing to do with thought.”
“No,
of course not!” Dominic rounded on her. “It’s all faith with angels, isn’t it?
Stupid, blind, ignorant faith. The kind of superstitious not-looking-at-things that
gave us witch burnings and insisted on a geocentric universe three hundred
years after Copernicus!”
“Goodness,
you’re a passionate man.”
“I’m
not. Not really.” Dominic took a steadying breath. “I’m a rational man, but I’m
worried about Olivia. I want to see her. I need you to tell me where she is.”
“Mmm,
and I need you,” Ophelia licked her blood-red lips, gliding up to him. “Let’s
work something out, shall we?”
“What?”
Dominic pinched his searing eyes against the bridge of his nose, incredulous.
“If I let you pretend to drink my blood, or whatever kinkiness you want, you’ll
tell me where they’ve taken Olivia?”
“I
will take you.”
“Take
me to her?”
“No.”
Ophelia’s arms climbed like tendrils around him. “I will have you.”
“I
don’t think so.” Dominic untangled her winding arms from his waist, but they
twined like water plants around his wrists, tracing his arm’s snaking tattoos
to his shoulders, pressing her cool, firm body to his. “I’m going to Gaehod,”
His voice was a chained roar. “Move. I don’t want to hurt you.”
He
noted the wooden dance floor gave just a little when his back slammed onto it,
but not nearly enough. He lay still, gasping.
“Do
you want me?” Ophelia, tiny and pale, stood motionless over him.
“No.”
“Then
you will fear me.”
Dominic
picked himself up gingerly. “Why, because you know jujitsu? I don’t think so.”
He
hit the ground again. It was no softer the second time.
“Olivia!”
He shouted her name, and it careened from wall to glass to ceiling to floor,
echoing thunderously.
“She
can’t hear you.”
Dominic
sat up. “I’m going to her.”
Ophelia
landed on his chest, her light body coiled over his, her cool lips against his
ear. “Do you know what happens when an immortal cannot feed? When a vampire’s
quills are too dull to puncture, and her sisters will not keen the edges for
her?”
Dominic
held himself motionless beneath the black-draped body spread like a bat against
his chest. He needed her to say where Olivia had been taken, why she was in
danger. Ophelia’s tongue trailed from his ear to his jaw.
“Vampires
cannot die. We fade. We lose substance, become invisible, formless. Without her
sisters, a vampire is a hungry ghost of unmeetable needs.”
For
an instant, Dominic’s vision blurred. Ophelia’s eyes became surreal cesspits,
black and bottomless. Her face spiraled in, a hallucinatory implosion whose
mouth made a void, an icy, empty cosmic hole that swallowed time and light.
Dominic shuddered.
Ophelia
struck.
Her
jaws flexed, Dominic glimpsed fantastically long fangs protruding from her
rosebud mouth. Delicate fingers clutched his jaw to expose his throat. Her
scream was brief but shrill, a cry before biting. She snapped her dark head
back, whiplashed up, and slammed down on his naked flesh. Twin blunt pains
stabbed his throat. His body convulsed in rage and disgust and he threw her
from him. She sprawled across the inlaid floor and Dominic sprang to standing,
horrified.
Ophelia
curled into a puddle of black gauze. Her dainty hand clamped over her stained
mouth. Hideous gulping sounds came from behind her pale palm, and scarlet
streams ran between her fragile fingers. Dominic staggered back from her. She
was choking. Blood poured in torrents from her, across her shuddering
shoulders, down into her deep décolleté, staining breast and dress. He was a
doctor, but he wanted to run. He leaned over the spill seeping onto the floor,
and touched her heaving back gently.
“Ophelia,
are you choking on your teeth? Where are you hurt?” Dominic sat on his heels
and plucked at her fragile wrist. “Can you take your hand away? I need to find
where you’re bleeding from.” She gulped frantically. Her wild, racing eyes
darted over him, the room, the blood that ran down her porcelain wrists and
arms. Dominic pried her dripping hand away.
Two
terrible, ragged, broken incisors poured blood into her brimming mouth. Was she
choking on the detached tips? The prosthetic teeth she had apparently broken on
his throat must be attached, somewhere, to a bladder. Ingenious, really.
Functioning properly, the pressure of her strike would trigger them to “bleed”
against his skin for her to suck. It must be a large reservoir though, to pour
out so much blood that she was in danger of drowning on it.
“Hold
your head forward so the blood doesn’t choke you,” he cautioned, pulling
Ophelia to her knees. But she shook herself free of his hands, and threw back
her small head. Blood gurgled in her throat and overflowed her lips. She would
drown herself in that position if she stayed there long.
She
screamed. Head back, her tiny body twisted, her bleeding mouth forced
inexplicably wide. Even the fractured bits of her false teeth seemed to shiver
with the effort the long shriek tore from her. Pain shot through Dominic. He
clutched his exploding ears. Ophelia gagged on the inhale, writhing. He caught
her by the shoulders and forced her over at the waist. He would not watch a
girl drown on stage blood before his eyes.
“Keep
bent forward!” he commanded the crumpled thing. “I’ll go for help.”
“They’ll
come,” she panted.
“What?”
“My
sisters. They are coming.”
My
sisters held me, wrists bound, in the Quarry’s lush darkness, but I was
distracted from their questions and the threats against my life by the
fascination of pain. The thin, rough twine on my tender flesh captured my
attention. It hurt me, and I kept losing my thoughts in its invading cry. How
do mortals speak and answer? Does not every hunger, every injury intrude upon
them? I had offered but little in my own defense at trial. I am condemned.
Again.
Now
running jumbles everything. My hands are tied and yanked forward at Sylvia’s
urgent pace. I am weakening, but even I still taste the red horror of Ophelia’s
spriek. I stumble on the stairs. Pain is new, and I like it steadily less as it
grows familiar. I trot after my swift sisters, struggling to remember what they
have said to me since they took me from Dominic. Dominic whom I kissed without
feeding. Dominic whom I have scarcely tasted.
“He’s
not the loophole,” Evelyn had mocked me, lounging on the Quarry’s backless
sofa. “He can’t get you back upstairs.”
“I
know,” I told them. “I’m not trying to get there anymore.”
It
wasn’t until I said it that I knew it was true. But my sisters like it here.
They like their numbness and the craving. They want to stay in L’Otel Matillide
and I have now denied them.
They
begged me. “You must change the Reborn’s mind,” Vivian pleaded. “It should be
easy enough. Men will do anything for love. Teach him he loves the hotel, does
not want it exposed, will resign his position, will stay here with us. With
you.”
“I
want no power over him,” I told them.
“He
has other desires,” Vivian said.
Now
Sylvia pushes me ahead of her into the glass coach. From Cinderella to the
Witch of the North, this cursed, impenetrable transparency has carried women
from safety into sex. I huddle on the red cushion and look away from the image
of my baby sister, projected over every curved, interior glass, in the moment
of spriek, choking on blood, collapsing against the inlaid black and white of
the ballroom floor. Is Dominic there? Surely he’s gone to Gaehod by now.
The
glass sphere carries us to her.
We
will reach her soon,
Sylvia’s seductive, Irish voice murmurs in my mind. She turns to me. “It’s a
powerful desire, the desire not to die.”
“But
it is not love.”
“We’re
angels of desire, darling. The desire—the hunger—to eat, to own, to live, it
doesn’t matter. It’s only desire. Only you ever said anything about love.”
“I
love him.”
“That’s
your funeral.”
“I
can’t die.”
“A
woman who is not desired is worse than dead. You will be invisible, unfeedable.
Make him want to keep the hotel, and we will let you live.”
“I
can’t.”
“You
can’t surrender desire’s power over him. It’s bigger than you are. Desire is
advertising and industry, alcoholics, inventors, addicts, and mothers.
Everyone, everything serves us.”
“I have
my own desires now.”
“If
you cannot make him want you, one of us can.”
And
suddenly I know what’s happened to Ophelia. “No, you can’t,” I tell them. I
stand up in the swimming bubble. “She’s broken her teeth on his throat because
he does not want or fear her.”
I am
unreasonably proud of this.
“I
fed Ophelia to him,” Sylvia growls. “I will drain him myself. I swear it.” My
scarlet sister only whispers the oath, but I know she will do everything in her
unearthly power to keep it.
The
glass bubble stops. I am rattling uncontrollably with fear and hunger now. We
have made a detour. Not straight to Ophelia, who must be nearly void by now. We
are on my floor. Sylvia and Vivian drag me into my own room. My red sarcophagus
waits against the bare stone wall. I steady myself against the heavy carved
posts of my bed, clutching its rich curtains for support. Vivian easily hefts
the stone lid of my old crypt aside.
“Get
in!” she commands.
I
don’t move. I can’t. Terror freezes me. Vivian sweeps me into her cold arms like
an infant and drops me into the hollowed belly of carved stone. I land with a
sickening crush of wing and bone. Shivering convulses me. Shuddering obscenely
in every joint, I will not give them the satisfaction of begging for mercy.
They have none.
The red
stone grinds closed above me.
Without
the strength to shift it, without the quills to feed, I will stay here, eaten
by my hunger, until I fade so thin I can move through stone and walls and, mad,
invisible, and mouthless, roam Earth endlessly, never satisfied, more than
damned.
Dominic’s
hands looked grotesquely large holding Ophelia’s delicate head. When all the
idiocy was over, he would have to figure out how the blood-delivery device
worked and why it had malfunctioned. It created a dangerous choking hazard. He
would write the manufacturer.
“Can
you take these teeth out?” he asked. Ophelia shook her head. Dominic reached
cautiously into her mouth to feel where the connections were.
“Holy
shit!” He tore his hand away and almost dropped her head. The blood was real.
Some of it at least. He had felt the hot arterial pulse against his probing
fingers. If even a portion of the flood that poured unstinting from her
delicate mouth and down his wrist into a spreading pool on the inlaid floor, if
even part of that was real, this little girl would bleed out in his arms before
anyone got there. She didn’t need pretend sisters in fake vampire clothes. She
needed paramedics and several units of plasma.
“Ophelia,
I’ve got to slow the bleeding down. I’m going to reach in your mouth again and
try to apply some pressure. Can you show me where you’re bleeding from? These
teeth you broke, are they surgically implanted? Can you guide my fingers?”
But
she shook her ringletted head again. Careful to keep one hand on the nape of
her neck, holding her forward to prevent choking, Dominic pushed a finger into
Ophelia’s mouth, feeling for the source of blood. It really did seem to be
coming from the teeth themselves. He touched the jagged surface and pushed
gently.
“Son
of a bitch!” He jerked his hand away again. The broken places in her mouth were
wickedly sharp. His own blood mingled with Ophelia’s, real and fake. She might
have further cut her tongue on the fractured edges, and he couldn’t apply
adequate pressure without tearing himself to hamburger.
“Ophelia?”
She
turned swimming eyes to him. Fear stood in stark blue smears down her face.
Blood had gotten into her gray eyes, and it pooled in their corners and clumped
her lashes.
“Ophelia!”
He needed her attention, and she was going into shock. “I have to stand up and
take off my shirt so I can use it to put pressure on your teeth. You have to
keep your head forward, okay? You can’t lie back, or try to scream again. Do
you understand?”
She
nodded, and Dominic sprang to his feet tearing off his linen shirt. He pulled
his cotton undershirt over his head and balled it into a pad. He bent back to
Ophelia, aware of the brilliant red stains on the knees and cuffs of his pants
and of the blood that soaked into his shoes.
“Open
your mouth.”
He
pushed the T-shirt up against the broken places in the little vampire’s mouth.
“Can you breathe through your nose? Good. Try to bite down. Gently. Good.
You’re doing fine.”
“Ophelia!”
Dominic
turned on his knees, crouched over her, to spot the vampire who had bared her
breasts for him by the river. She and several other tall, gorgeous women swept
around the corner and onto the dance floor.
“Sylvia,”
he called to her. “I need you to find a phone and get medical help. Ophelia is
losing blood rapidly. She can’t stay conscious much longer.”
Sylvia
knelt beside Dominic and took Ophelia’s tiny body from his hands. She turned
the pale girl’s face to hers and pulled Dominic’s T-shirt from between the pale
and shivering lips. Ophelia gurgled in her limp throat as her head lolled back
on Sylvia’s cradling arm.
“What
the hell are you doing?” Dominic reached for Ophelia again, but found his arms
pinioned behind his back. “She will drown on her blood!”
These
svelte women knew their martial arts. He could not move his arms. Sylvia bent
over Ophelia to kiss her bleeding, open mouth. Dominic struggled briefly, weak
and slippery in the spilling blood, but soon stopped.
The
red streams that poured from Ophelia’s lips, even with Sylvia’s lascivious
mouth clamped over them, had slowed. Dumbfounded, Dominic watched the elegant
redhead holding Ophelia’s delicate face between her strong hands. She seemed to
be almost biting into the gaping, bloody hole of her sister’s mouth. But the
grinding kiss was working.
Soft
lips brushed Dominic’s ear, and the hard fingers on his arms softened. A voice
he did not recognize whispered, “Sylvie is keening the edges. It will seal
them, and they’ll regrow.”
Dominic
sat back on his heels in the gruesome mess. Sylvia bit and sucked at her pale
sister, whose body slowly relaxed under the assault. The blood running from
between the women’s mouths slowed to a trickle. Ophelia’s breathing steadied,
but she was still shaking, and clearly in shock.
Sylvia
lifted her stained mouth from her unconscious sister’s. “Help me clean her!”
she cried. The other women dropped to their knees around Ophelia’s body. A
full-hipped redhead, whose heavy breasts swayed as she crawled, slipped from
behind Dominic to join her sisters. He stretched his released arms. Sylvia
resumed kissing Ophelia’s slack mouth while the women on either side took
Ophelia’s fingers between their lips and sucked each blood-drenched digit.
Ophelia moaned, and another sister straddled her narrow hips to deftly unfasten
the closures at the side of her velvet bodice, revealing bloodstained breasts
to suck. Dominic watched uncomprehending, then stood quietly. Sylvia met his
interrogating eyes.
“Stay,
won’t you? Our sister will be hungry when she wakes.” Sylvia ran predator’s
eyes over Dominic’s shirtless chest, taking in the bare, muscled torso, the
smooth, twining tattoo lines, and the blood drying in savage designs against
his skin. She licked her smeared lips, a feverish flush climbing in her pale
cheeks. But Ophelia moaned and Sylvia dropped her lips to her sister’s once
more, kissing and sucking, hollowing her cheeks with the strength of the
kisses.
Dominic
slowly backed away from Ophelia’s body sprawled in the blood she had spilled
over the white and black floor. Kissing, sucking mouths and unbuttoning,
caressing fingers danced over her pale body in a sticky tango of hunger and
healing. She was moaning freely now, writhing against the floor and the
feeding. Dominic shook his head. These girls would fuck a pack of cigarettes.
What had seemed to him to be a perfectly obvious medical emergency was, for
them, an invitation to a bacchanal. A statuesque blonde Dominic had never seen
unbuttoned her shirt and reached behind her back for the clasp of her bra.
Dominic
pulled off his blood-soaked shoes. The blonde’s freshly exposed white flesh was
already striped with blood. Her pale fingers, riding the generous swell of
breast and nipple, looked almost as if she drew the blood from her own flesh
rather than painting it on from the floor. Sylvia moved aside, and Dominic
glimpsed Ophelia’s pale, but finally unbleeding, mouth. The blonde leaned over
her inert sister and touched a delicate, blood-beaded nipple to Ophelia’s
parted lips. Dominic watched the pale violet underside of Ophelia’s tongue
extend to lap, and the relieved smile that spread from Sylvia to the other
sisters.
As
if on cue, two more began to undress. Dominic took a soundless step away. The
sisters lifted Ophelia’s limp hands to their exposed breasts or throats or
vulnerable thighs, and everywhere her fingers touched, long streaks of blood
trailed her fingernails. Silently, slowly, Dominic backed away. Olivia had told
him to leave, to go to Gaehod. Now he understood why. But Ophelia had said
Olivia was in danger, and he needed to see her first. He had to know she was
okay. They could go together to Gaehod.
Dominic
stood in the hallway and swore violently. He had left his laptop bag and shoes
in the ballroom. He was shirtless, and left a red trail of bare footprints on
the cold stone floor. His jeans were stained, and his bare chest and arms were
streaked in drying scarlet. His only way of reaching Madalene or Dysart—all his
slim connections to the safe surface world—were in that bag. His medicine, his
laptop, his notes, and all his work, soaking in Ophelia’s blood.
Dominic
looked up the stairs, in the direction of Gaehod, his eccentric teas, and his
unflappable calm. Did that old man have any sense of the lethal kinkiness he
harbored? Dominic looked left, down the stairs, toward the weird underground
garden with the self-devouring snake and its apples. Dominic wiped his bloody
hands on his jeans and held them out in front of him. All he had to hold on to
was doubt. It would have to be enough. Dominic turned left. He knew what he had
to do.
9
IN DARK
Every
angel has a shadow; she keeps it buried with her wings. Its blackness is our
oldest home. For millennia, I have slept in this hollow stone that mimics a
cave, but when the sliding rock closes out light and hope above me, I feel fear
for the first time. I am closed in my red tomb with my new senses. I feel where
I have always slept. I feel the presence of what I have hidden, and the absence
of light, the grinding crumble of my severed wings beneath me, and the deeper
black of my crouching, hiding shadow.
Only
a hundred and fifty years ago, I brought this sarcophagus with me to the New
World by boat in a mysterious, heavy crate—an archeological find unearthed from
ancient Greece—at least that’s what I told the vessel’s curious Victorians. I
miss that era of talented amateurs busy cataloging beetles in systems as
complex as the layers of lace and bone, fabric and leather they swathed
themselves within. Interest in the natural world must never extend to their own
bodies. The mysteries closest to home remained furthest from known. I fed, on
that leisurely Atlantic passage, my maiden voyage, dressed in widow’s weeds,
from a husband and his wife in a sweet tangle of stolen silences and secret
glances. Now, in my final, eyeless silence, I reach back for the comfort of
that weak web, my closest to love.
Lady
Anoria had become too fond, it seems, of a certain English princess. The
scandal, had it ever been known, would have clouded the unsetting sun, and so
the pale young lady had been married, quickly but well, and dispatched to the
Americas before the princess, who would have stopped it, learned they had been
discovered.
I
met Lady Anoria’s fresh husband on the first cold, starry night afloat while he
walked the creaking wooden deck to smoke. I smelled his fear, even wreathed in
its tobacco, and I hunted him. He had been seated beside me at the captain’s
table in the best salon, the mysterious European widow and the English duke.
His new wife, he had apologized, was ill, but the table got on famously without
her. Every man at it, except the duke, had wanted me.
I
was not curious about him then, strolling on the chill deck alone, only killing
time before another gentleman appeared to feed. But when I scented his fear, I
fainted. It was my favorite trick in those decorous days, before ambulances and
needles, to stagger weakly, already so pale, and swoon. A gentleman would take
my tender arm to steady me, and my quilled nails could slip between his gloved
hand and cuff. So I fainted on the ship’s promenade and the duke dutifully
rushed to my aid, happy for the unfamiliar certainty of action. Gentlemen
materialized from the refined night and helped him carry me upstairs.
They
placed me on the divan in his stateroom, but when the duchess emerged from her
boudoir, pale, tear-stained, and surprised, the gentlemen withdrew. Lady Anoria
sat beside me and took my limp hand. I would kill for that touch to reach me
now, where I am truly faint, but desperately alone. One was never alone then.
“Constantine,
she’s bleeding. There’s blood under her nails!”
Fuck.
“I’ll
fetch a basin and a cloth,” he offered. “You should perhaps loosen her stays?”
Feminine fingers touched the tight, high buttons at my throat, my body limp on
the velvet chaise.
I
smelled it on her wrist.
The
scent is unmistakable. I opened my eyes. The new duchess was pale with grief,
but a naturally rosy girl with blue eyes that were made to sparkle more than
weep. From the pall of grief, a blush of simple desire rose, then shame. Poor
thing. I moved my lips soundlessly.
“No,
don’t talk. You’re too weak.” She inclined her perfect head to the prostrate
stranger on her couch. “I can’t hear you.”
“Closer,”
I gasped.
“Constantine,
she’s waking, bring brandy!” But she did lean closer, and I breathed in the
woozy smell of feminine desire.
I
have smelled my own today, and still I love the scent. It was too uncommon in
those days. I had tasted only woman’s fear for years. The men swam with
repressed desires though, and I had fed well on the dark-wood and button-shoe
generation. But not on this, this ocean smell while we’re at sea. Not since the
French convent, and my last darling’s visions and desire, sweet and red. Lady
Anoria shook my shoulders gently and pressed her dewy cheek against my
invalid’s parched lips. What I had pretended then, I am in earnest now. I touch
my dry tongue to my cracking lips in the blackness and reach to feel Anoria
again.
“Can
I send for someone? Can you tell me your name?” she implored.
I
sighed into the fragile curl of ear and inhaled the precious scent. The taste
of it would be exquisite in her blood, so many tendrils red beneath the white
ridge and lobe. My feeding edges raked the virginal skin. “Angel,” I whispered,
“an angel.”
Duke
Constantine was right to fear me.
Now,
in my own deep terror, I reach again to savor Anoria’s slow confession, mixed
with tears I had lapped away. My darling’s timid explorations with the princess
were quickly surpassed. I fed from her soft throat, while Constantine paced and
smoked. His new wife grew healthier, pale but smiling. She took the air, long
strolls, arm in arm with her new friend. He should be heartened.
The
voyage would have been tedious without a diversion, and I found the girl
endlessly diverting. Such innocence tasted truly strange to me, and liberating.
The spoiled child of privilege, and still somewhat ashamed, Anoria let me touch
and remained untouched, savoring the heady mix of fear with desire. I taught
her woman’s pleasure, desire’s death, and brought her to that dying again and
again, with abandon, and with hunger, and with finally what she swore was love.
I
began to linger with my duchess, to allow her duke to find us drowsing in their
wide, white bed, just to smell the fear on him. I would take his hand to taste
it, too, sometimes. And thus I brought my ancient tomb from the Old World to
the new, drunk on tides of desire and fear that reversed the tastes of an age
where ladies feared and men desired, and illness filled the void that ambition
and need left bare.
That
Lady Anoria believed she loved me added dimension to my shipboard entertainment
but, as the journey neared its end, it troubled me. I can always disappear. I
can sink into the invisible eternal that mortals swim within and never see. Ask
a fish what water is. Humans are more blind. I can always disappear, but the one-ton
block of ancient red history, my past, my tomb that now imprisons me, would
stay behind. Anoria could track me through my past into my future in the New
World, and that must not be. I needed to get off the ship unremarked, but not
unseen.
I
invited the duke and duchess to dine with me one night, four days away from the
New World’s newest port, in my well-appointed, private chambers. I knew he
would drink too much—he always drank too much—but that night I planned to do
the same.
“Olivia,
look at him!” Lady Anoria exclaimed as her husband tipped toward the floor. I
had added a little something to the wine.
“Poor
man. He is exhausted worrying over you,” I told her.
“Me?”
Anoria laughed, flattered. She did not love him, but liked that he and I both
hunted her. Vain girl. She fussed over her husband for her lover’s sake, as
though jealousy could touch an angel. But she almost swooned in truth when I
grasped him by belt and cravat and hoisted him from the table to my narrow bed.
I am too strong for a well-bred lady and usually conceal it. But I threw my
lover’s husband from us and took her, soft and eager, in my marble arms.
Without
Anoria, without the sea voyage, I might never have learned to love plump women.
Even into the present age, after the flappers and the hippies, I still relish
the luscious curves of women who remind me of the swells and waves, of the
sweet diving into flesh, crossing the sea. Those were more leisurely days. The
transit between the Americas and Europe was an enforced respite, a month of
gossip in a closed circle, a time apart and in between. There are no red-eye
ocean voyages.
I
arrived in New York well-fed, and have come home to starve. I smile faintly in
my hungry dark remembering. But Anoria, who had been ill and pale with grief when
she boarded the vessel in Bristol, must take a turn for the worse, now that New
York would soon come in to sight. This would be our final time, and a time
worthy of farewells.
I
sigh in the dark interior of my coffin. What was the last time for me—the final
last? I can’t remember. I have fed from many, as I did on that long voyage, in
sips and licks, tiny shivers of hunger stilled in the slicing kiss or raking
fingernail, but how long since I had flexed my jaw and punctured skin? When was
the last time I fed full-tooth to satiation, to stupefaction as I did that
night? Not from Maria, damn the Quarry with its two-quart rule. Not this year,
not this decade even. A sob of pure self-pity rises in my throat, but I push it
down, remembering.
On
that long last ocean night, I came closest to my centuries-old affliction, to
my human loophole. I learned how secretly personal and diverse the patterns of
flesh-pleasure are, how different from my French nun, how different from men,
until I believed I approached feeling myself, so keenly did I map the ways my
touch aroused her.
If
her desire and sensation created angelic feeling in me, I pondered, could
mortal desire and knowledge make angelic comprehension? Humanity is God’s
second chance. Could it also be mine? I wrung sensation from that ocean-borne
English blossom, and believed humanity might save the angels.
But
they can’t. What I knew that night was no closer to real feeling, as I have
felt it now, than what she felt for me was love. She was too unbroken for real
love, nor had I brought her there to love her. I possessed her. It is as close
as gods come.
Ecstatic
to have learned both touch and taste, wild with what I thought I knew, I
climbed aboard her. But my jaws unhinged before I reached her throat. She
looked through her lashes, drowsy with sex, and jolted awake. Her eyes spread
like an opened egg. Her lips parted to scream, and she tried to back against
the avalanching pillows, but my fangs found her. I had wanted only desire in
her blood, but terror came flooding sweetly in and I sucked more savagely in
rage.
She
writhed beneath me, spilling into me, her naked breasts and slippery thighs
roiling, life pumping. Time stretched. It twisted and opened as softly as her
sex, and I rode into the blood dreams on her futile fighting. I drank privilege
and class, tutors, needlepoint, and summer homes. I drank her petty doubts and
petulant denials. I drank the princess’s secret reachings and the swift and
sobbing marriage to the duke. I drank the carriage ride to our vessel and its
strange, mountain name. And then I stopped. I could not drink the first night
at sea, the glamorous stranger who fainted, or our days again. I did not want
to kill her. I only thought I did.
The
next morning, when the doctors had finished tending his wife, Constantine came
to me. He confessed, in shattered sobs, his fear that last night, drunk, he had
ravaged his new wife, forced himself upon her and destroyed her mind. She was
too frail. I comforted him, stroking his hand, and agreed to tend his darling
in her delirium. I nursed her (and from her) the last three days until we
docked, keeping her just below the surface of waking. Then I left them to their
guilty incompetencies. May their human frailty unite them. They each could have
loved the other.
I
claimed my cargo and took a train unnoticed. Anoria would recover swiftly, but
would be too embarrassed and too weak to search for me.
I am
weaker now than she. And more ashamed. I put my ruined hands above me and push
at the rock. I cannot shift it. Its coldness shivers through me and slowly,
seeping through the smooth rock, terror shakes me until not even the memory of
Anoria can hold it at bay. I feel it. In the darkness all around me, in the
airless space, I feel. The horror of my new ability rises against my calm. I
have never been inside this stone when I could feel, and even the best
remembered pleasures can no longer keep the newness of real sensation from me.
I
feel the want of air, the lack of sound, and my sightless shadow, a stupid,
mute, and restless thing, waiting. I hate it. It has no thought or feeling, it
only is, which is why I keep it here. I crowd myself against the cold stone
away from it, but it is shadow in darkness, a ghost in wind.
I
feel it touch me. I am screaming.
Empty-handed,
Dominic stalked the corridor, Cro-Magnon in his gait and rage. The garden’s
unbarred gate stood open, and he walked resolutely through it to the tree. He
did not run. He did not even hurry. With her sisters drinking vicariously from
Ophelia’s desire spilled out across the ballroom floor, Olivia was safe.
Nothing rushed Dominic, but nothing could have stopped him.
He
dropped to his knees before the tree, and grimly thrust his hands deep into the
blackness at its roots. The snake writhed around his wrists and up his tattooed
forearms in rivers of molten gold and red. He grasped at it, but the smooth
body slid between his hands and around them, winding and pulsing. Dominic
seized a closing coil and dragged it up into the garden’s weird light. He threw
the twist onto the grass and pinned it with the full weight of his body against
the ground. Still, it flowed under his broad palms endlessly, like flood water
beneath an old bridge.
“Come
out!” he howled into the empty garden, into the slithering hole, but the
mirroring darkness only whipped through his hands. He drove his bare heel into
the snake’s flesh to hold it, but it slithered ceaselessly.
Then
the snake’s cool voice came from a golden bough above him. “Ah, isn’t that
always the way?”
Dominic
tore his gaze from the undulations beneath his knee and hands. How had the
damned thing wound itself into the branches? The serpent flowed across bark,
unperturbed by the detour its body took through Dominic’s bare hands and
beneath his naked foot.
“Isn’t
what always the way?” Dominic stood up panting, uncomprehending.
“Truth
slips through your hands.”
“You
aren’t truth. You’re the devil.”
“Are
you prepared to explain the difference?”
Dominic
took a step toward the glittering eyes, reaching for the shimmering head, and
tripped over the coil at his feet. He sprawled on the ground. Softer, at least,
than the dance floor. The snake wound around his ankles and along his thigh.
Dominic struggled to stand, but could not. Cool, hard circles of sliding snake
pinned his arms against his sides. Dominic shuddered. A slender, dank sliver
licked the opening of his ear. He smashed his head against the ground.
“Get
off me!” he shouted.
“You
called for me.”
Dominic’s
full strength strained against the tightening spirals that enclosed him, but
nothing gave.
“Dominic,
what did you come here seeking?” the snake hissed in his exposed ear.
Dominic
struggled to breathe in the snake’s cold grasp. The intercostal muscles he
needed to expand his lungs against the embracing coil seemed too small, by
contrast, to the constricting mass.
The
snake’s sibilant voice showered spittle into his ear. “Or did you only come to
fight?”
“I
came here to understand where the hell I am. I came here to make you tell me
what this place really is,” Dominic panted.
Undulating
against him, the snake’s body slowed, and the pressure on Dominic’s torso eased
slightly.
“What
do you think it is, Dominic?”
“I
think it is the dangerous offspring of Gaehod’s extraordinary wealth and
complete insanity.”
“A
worthy pedigree. Madness has many children, but few grow more swiftly than
those she births to power. This country is speckled with that brood. Have you
done any sightseeing in Ireland, Dominic?”
Dominic
struggled for deeper breaths. He was at risk of hyperventilating, and nothing
would be more dangerous than to lose consciousness in the embrace of this
snake. “Not much,” he answered.
“Been
to Blarney?”
“No.”
“That’s
a pity. You should try to see more of your world.” Dominic found he could
almost free his right hand from beneath one of the sparkling, pinioning spirals.
“I will. But first, tell me where I am now.”
“Why?”
“Because
if I know where I am, I’ll know what to do.”
“Information
is not toxic to indecision,” the snake observed. Dominic managed to push a
thumb free. “Of course,” the whisper continued, “I could tell you something
that would make up your mind about what to do next, but you could know the
exact nature of this place, understand precisely what it is, how it is
constructed, and still not know what to do.”
“That
doesn’t make sense.”
“True.”
The snake’s suspended head seemed to nod. “Sense is not a made thing. Not
something you can construct from the materials you have at hand.” Dominic
flexed his wrist and slipped his hand from beneath the rope of muscle that that
bound it. He opened and closed the fingers cautiously.
“All
this industrious construction!” the snake whispered. “Such busy little beavers,
making up your minds, building knowledge, forming conclusions. Your vast,
pathetic aspiration is to take one more step down the path of Bacon and Skinner,
but there are secrets down unblazed trails and constellations in undiscovered
stars.” Dominic ground his free fingers into the soft earth.
The
snake flicked its tongue against Dominic’s earlobe and slid its hard, round
head down his throat toward the tree. “To see truly new things,” the snake
whispered, “you need new ways of seeing. Every time you invent a new lens,
there are new things to observe through it. Every listening device brings new
sounds. What speaks to you now that you simply do not possess the tools to
hear?” Dominic anchored his heel against the dirt. The snake’s head glided up
the tree toward a low-hanging fruit. “What confronts you that you still do not
see because you lack the way of looking? What do you do when you know there are
unknowable things?”
Bracing
himself against the earth with foot and hand, Dominic abruptly arched against
the winding snake. He yanked himself free and, grappling an armload of the
undulating coils against his bare chest, threw himself over the roiling mass.
The snake’s forward motion stopped. It brought its eyes level with Dominic’s,
squeezed closed against the effort it required to hold so much writhing
strength compressed in his arms.
“Knowledge
can’t give you what you want to know,” the snake whispered.
“The
first time I met you,” Dominic panted, “you said you were more than knowledge,
you said you were inspiration and insight.”
“That
was hardly the first time we met. And you don’t believe in inspiration.”
Dominic
tightened his arms, working every fiber of his strength. He squeezed the
throbbing coils in his arms and felt the snake subtly deflate. “Convince me,”
he choked. “Inspire me.”
The
tremor that ran through the snake could have been a laugh or a shudder. “So
you’ll wring inspiration from the devil?” it said.
Grunting
with the effort, Dominic tightened his hold on the serpent yet again. The
creature’s rippling body tangled with the static tattoos that spiraled
Dominic’s arm until he had to look away from the illusion that his arms were
snakes. “Go on,” he panted, “prove to me that inspiration is anything but the
clever conjunction and realignment of things I already know.”
“You
really don’t understand, do you?” The weight under Dominic’s body began to flow
again. “Proof belongs to the surface world. You can prove facts. You can’t
prove meanings. Wrong vocabulary, wrong tools. Your quest to have the world
make sense, to force it to conform to patterns you already know, is an
impossible desire. Impossible desires are their own hell, with their own
angels, and angels—always—can get you closer to God.”
“I
am so fucking sick of angels!” Dominic shouted. “I’m not a character in a
goddamn fable, and I don’t want an allegory or a symbolic explanation.”
The
snake laughed. “You are a man, like Everyman.”
“I
just want to understand reality. That’s all. Not meanings, not interpretations,
just what’s actually out there.”
“Do
you, for a moment, think you have the proper tools, the proper framework, even
the proper sensory organs to perceive, much less to understand, what’s ‘actually
out there’?”
“I
want to understand as much as I can.”
“And
if you could understand more than you do right now? I have dropped apples on
heads before Newton’s.”
“I
understand Newton’s universe. We’ve transcended it.”
“Very
good, ready for the next step out?” The snake’s bunched body spilled easily
from Dominic’s arms. Had he ever had hold of it? He had thought he was winning,
but now that seemed impossible.
“Did
you know that snakes once had wings?” the serpent asked, flowing smoothly
toward its tree again. “It’s true. We spanned the earth and sky, creatures of
the material and etheric worlds—a perfect paradox. What do you call a winged
snake, Dominic?”
Dominic
scrambled to his feet, away from the hole the snake thrust its tail into. It
must be nearly bottomless to house such lengths of slithering, and the garden
was on the lowest floor. Such depth was hideously visceral to Dominic. It
frightened him, which made him angry. “I don’t know,” he growled, “a dragon?”
“That’s
right! Across the globe, God is not so universal in cultures and stories as
dragons are. We could breathe fire when we flew, and water when we swam. We
were everywhere once, with a foot on each side of a paradox. It’s why we’re
footless now.” The snake slipped backwards into its hole. “That’s where you are
now—caught against the actual nature of reality.”
Only
the flickering tongue of the snake protruded from the bottomless pit it dwelt
within—its tongue, and its even deeper eyes. Its voice was just a hiss. “But
here’s the secret of the garden, my friend. Some of you can find in my wrack’s
horizontal stretch, a vertical reach. Raise yourself to Eden before the fork in
the road, the fork in the tongue, the forked pre-fall nondual, my poor, bare,
forked animal. Make my wrack a ladder.”
The
snake’s voice was receding. Dominic lay on his naked belly in the grass,
peering into the blackness. “Can you teach me how?” he asked and pressed his
ear over the hole to listen.
The
snake’s voice was barely audible from the depths of the hole. “Push man into
woman and find oneness once more,” it whispered. “Lose yourself in another, and
find yourself in love.”
The
sound I make reaches my ears and hurts them. It reaches nothing else. My quills
are achingly dull, but I blunt them more with scratching, scoring the stone
above my head, and screaming. Shadow brushes over my face, my eyes wildly
staring, but it is just the dust of the rock I tear at, falling down on me. I
cannot turn over; the space is too constricted, closing in with my shadow’s
deaf advance.
I
gather my soul to spriek, twist my body hard against the rock, away from the
creeping, rising touch of shadow, but I cannot inhale. I will breathe the
shadow in. And my sisters will not come.
Please,
I do not want to drown on my shadow. I want my slow starvation, my numbness,
and my beauty back. I gulp the air in terror. Shadow touches my foot. I coil up
my leg and twist to pull it under me. I tear again at the stone, feeling my
flawless flesh shred. Shadow touches my scar-marked back. I spin to push it
against the stone. It touches my navel. My torn hands flail, clawing, but it is
only shadow. I cannot touch it, or fight it back, or block it.
It
rests on my chest. I cannot breathe to scream again. It touches my breast. I am
panting. My breasts have never known touch. I cross my arms across my chest,
draw up my knees. It’s on my breast again. I have pulled it closer. I uncoil
and whip wildly at my body, to push my clinging shadow from me, but it ripples
out from every touch, spreading over me like fire catching.
It
touches both my breasts. I press my hands hard against the low roof stone and
feel the cold rock against my palms. Feel the cold nothing of darkness upon
each breast. I scream for Gaehod, and throw all my failing strength against the
stone. I am flailing without control, coldness touching everything. I scream
and scream for God.
Silence
invades me.
Desire
presides over many things. It is the guardian angel of ambition and adultery,
of flirtation and assassination. It was worshiped once. A devotee of mine, a
queen, was taken with her husband’s slave, and bound to him. My splintering
mind scrambles to remember her, the godking’s wife, stripped and tied to a
strong board, her legs pulled wide. They thrust a carved phallus between her
thighs and forced a stone between her teeth. The pharaoh’s slave they drugged
to sleeping and they forced his mouth, too, and placed it over her, open mouth
over open mouth, and used the linen mummy strips to bind them.
Twist
over twist, they tied his arms around her, and hers across him. They wrapped
them thigh to thigh, breast to chest, bound together, frozen lovers battling,
and left them in the tomb to die. My worshipper’s screaming did not wake her
lover until the draught wore off. Terror, and then exhaustion, and then
terrible thirst took them. And madness. And then death, the queen before the
slave, who felt his lover’s body finally become still, then cold, then rigid
and swelling. It took three days. I will take millennia and still not die. I
will only fade. Into a ghost, a shade. Oh God—into a shadow!
I am
screaming again, bloodying my fists and knees and the soles of my feet against
the stone slab over me. I must get out of here, away from that thing, this
insistent darkness. The horror mounts and mounts and will not be denied. The
shadow touches me, climbs over me, mindless, stupid, mute. It feathers across
my breasts and elbows, seeps between me and the rock, against me, beneath my
clothes. It insinuates itself between my toes and pushes down into my ears. I
pound my head to shake it free, but it climbs between my hairs and pushes down
my scalp. It slides over my closed eyes. It curls against my nostrils. It worms
between my clamped thighs. Now I cannot scream or blink. It is poised against
the hole in the center of my eyes. Why can I feel this? All the nights I slept
with this black darkness and felt no fear. I asked for this. I asked for
feeling.
I
have felt him touch me. I saw him see me. And I did not feed. The spriek tears
my throat unbidden. They will hear it and laugh. My angels do not love me. They
rushed to save my sister, but even in their urgency, in the terror of her
bleeding cry, they stopped to bury me. Does it mean I matter to them more that
they attended to my death before Ophelia’s? Does she matter to them at all?
They will sharpen her broken teeth, grind down the jagged, bleeding edges with
their own mouths, but they will drink from her while they do. Her blood matters
to them. It’s as close as they get to love.
I am
cast out. Again. Damned and more damned, by God and now by family. I
came here to be myself without apology, but even in Hell, I cannot be accepted.
No.
He cannot.
I
open my lips to say his name, and shadow licks them. This is how hope dies at
last, thrashing wildly from stone to stone, on broken wings, in the dark,
alone. My shadow touches me again, scrapes the smooth, closed place between my
legs and digs at the hard center of my eyes. My shadow is the closest thing I
will have to a legacy, the only thing I ever made. I feel its touch on my lips.
I have tasted few things, and all on the blood of mortals. This is the taste of
despair. I want to spit it out.
If I
had kissed Dominic in the garden, if I had bitten him in the abbey, I would not
have this in my mouth. I cannot close my weak lips against it. My jaws unhinge.
It runs into my mouth, against my throat, too heavy to hold closed against it.
It weighs against my tongue, pushes behind my teeth, pours over my gums and
down my cheeks, distending my lips, pushing, pouring until I can no longer hold
my throat closed against it. Retching, I swallow.
It
is cold in me. It worms up from between my thighs, and down my throat, into my
pupils, my nostrils, my ears. But it does not become me. It swallows me, but I
am gulping, too. We flow into one another, and my starved body will no longer
be denied. It eats and is eaten, desire and its disappointment, feeding. This
will change me. And as my shadow’s dark weight envelops me at last, I know how.
Dominic
lay on his belly in the cool, black grass, seething. “Love? Love is the answer?
Christ! If you think for a minute I’m going to buy that sophomoric bullsh—”
He
was flying backwards as the snake shot from its hole. Its massive weight landed
heavily on his chest, writhing over the sprawled length of his battered body,
and it thrust piercingly sharp teeth into the depths of his ear. Dominic
shouted with pain and felt blood well from the deep tympanic puncture.
“No!”
the snake screeched soundlessly. “How do you make two into one? I just told
you.”
The
horror of the writhing body’s crushing weight pushed Dominic toward panic. He
was losing it. Losing his grip, his sanity. The enormity of his isolation and
abandonment shook him. Had the snake’s bite poisoned him?
“Fuck
you!” he spat between clenched teeth, flat on his back.
“Not
me!” The snake’s roar twisted though the blood in his ear. It reared up from
Dominic’s chest, its smooth, blunt head swaying over him, questioning.
Did
Dominic actually understand? He forced his eyes closed against the snake’s
hypnotic dance.
“You
get pretty close, don’t you?” The serpent’s sibilant voice whispered in
Dominic’s mind as much as in his bleeding ear. “Touching heaven and gutter,
orgasm-blind seeing self and other? Your recreational re-creating of creation
procreates. Sex apes God, and creates life.”
“And
pushes us into duality again,” Dominic whispered.
“Very
good!” The snake dropped his head, its forked, black tongue flickering over
Dominic’s bare chest. “Two made one makes a third, a child, who will be both
yours and his own,” it hissed.
“So
now even sex is a symbol?”
The
sinuous snake danced, overtly erotic, across Dominic’s chest, but his mind
clung to the intellectual puzzle the snake had dangled.
“Terribly
elegant, don’t you think?” it whispered. “Powerful, and designed to get your
attention.” The snake’s flickering tongue tormented the flesh of his bare
chest, still pinned under the undulating coils, one loop of which now spiraled
sensually between his legs. “Sex is the clearest instruction you’ll ever get
from God.”
Dominic
shook his head and wiped the blood from his ear. “That sounds like something
the devil would say.”
“And
yet you came to me to have your questions answered, when you could have turned
the other way.”
“I
thought you might tell me the truth.”
“So
I have.”
“Your
key to the secret wisdom of the universe is sex? You advise I go find someone
to fuck, and all will be revealed?” But even as the words left him, Dominic
knew that encoded instructions were often misread. He pondered the neurotoxicity
of snake venom, feeling giddy with understanding.
“The
advancement of knowledge, your fondest desire, eh? But no, I don’t give advice,
just knowledge.” The snake slowed its helixed coiling up the tree. “To question
what you think you know, not in light of new information, but in order to bring
new information to light, knowing it will ignite and blind you, takes real
courage. You have won a friend in me. I’ll tell you a secret as a prize.”
“Thank
you. I’d shake your hand, but, you know.”
The
snake stopped his spiraling and touched the tip of his midnight tail to its
lipless mouth. “It’s enough for me that you were willing. It’s been a long time
since anyone has given me their ear.”
“Van
Gogh? Romans, countrymen? Besides, I’m hoping that maybe, if I can learn from
you now, you won’t sneak up and bite me in the future.”
“No.
But I promised you a prize, so I’ll add some information to your wisdom. Your
angel is dying.”
“Olivia?”
The
snake stabbed his blunt tail into his lipless mouth and swallowed and swallowed.
Terror swam up Dominic, but he knew it would be useless to try and squeeze more
information from the snake; its mouth was already full.
I
swim in darkness. Eyes opened, eyes closed, it makes not a fucking fig of
difference. I cannot see. Nothing to see. No one sees me. Around me, inside me,
the night of my ageless sarcophagus has swallowed and penetrated me. It pushed
itself inside me and pulled me into it until we are one.
I am
always falling, but a strange new beauty clings to this descent. I am drowning
and do not care to swim. Flying down, hair streaming into tragedy, I could
almost welcome the familiar sensation of the plunge, through air and water,
through stone and despair and into perfect love. The impact forces a sob from
me.
Strange
sensation—like a backwards swallow.
I am
crying—angels don’t cry—I am crying for the beauty of falling, for the night
that holds me, and for the darkness I hold. For the stone, that cold and
unforgiving womb of earth that traps me in what is real, in rock and bone, in
death and love, all dead to me, the Undead.
All
I have left of living is recollection. In memory, I trace the smooth planes of
Dominic’s face and the hard lines that scored it in the ballroom before he
kissed me. Every place our bodies touched throbs again with cushioned stabs in
the darkness. I close my eyes. In the warmth of memory, his kiss stretches,
curling fresh fingers of pleasure into my imperfect flesh. It elongates, and I
notice, for the first time, his teeth’s brief grind of desperation before he
kissed me, as if they seized and tore away some final veil between my mouth and
his surrender.
He
caught my shoulders first, to cushion the crashing of his hard body into mine,
to not hurt me, to pull me to him without stopping. His strong hands grasped
and clutched my body closer, nearer, until he gentled them enough to take my
face. In the cold stone, I hear the shudder of his steadying inhalation. His
stone-blue eyes pierced mine, dove in hard, then skimmed my face. Had he been
frightened? Washed in sensation, I sway in his fierce arms and whisper his
name, “Dominic.”
I
slide my ruined fingertips against my lips. The shiver of his passion, kissing
me, trembles deeper now against my swallowed shadow. My body is taut as the
strings of a lute, stretched so that even an artless touch can make the humming
vibrations heard. He kissed me then, and the resonance of his hard mouth calls
my hesitating fingers to strum clumsily against my shuddering flesh now. His
beautiful lips barely brushed mine first, but that had been too much tenderness,
and his next desperate kiss brought his mouth and tongue hard and seeking.
Careful,
in my private darkness, I touch my new fingers to the soft velvet encasing my
living flesh. I trace the memory of his strong, steadfast body against me. His
demanding kiss opened my lips, my face in his trembling hands. I rub the crown
of my full breasts beneath the silken cloth. His sweet tongue coursed through
me, marking the keen height of my breasts, but I cannot find the same center of
pleasure within them now. The fabric mutes my touch.
The
stone’s coldness against my twisting arm adds a chill shiver in the cramped
black when I reach to find the back zip. I pull it down, and the boned and
tailored vest jumps free. I had never noticed how hard it holds my body in. My
freed flesh feels vulnerable without its borrowed hide, more responsive—open
and exposed. I run my raw hands over my warm belly and across my breasts in a
rush of pleasure just to be released.
Then
I find his seeking mouth in memory again. I kissed just the softest lower lip
then, and he made a little sound, a stifled groan, and opened his mouth to me.
Turning his copper head, he brought our tongues and lips, mouths and bodies
still closer, and my fingers dust the places where our bodies touched. The caress
both surfaces the pleasure, and sends it diving to my core.
Some
buried heart—long-dead or never animate—flutter-pulses deep below my waist. The
wonder of it sends my eyes searching open in the darkness. Remember! His
strong arms wrapped around me, pulling my body hard against his. My fingers
pass again over the peaks of my new and naked breasts. His starving kiss
plunges into me, and against my gulping shock and joy, true feeling runs
through me, dancing over and behind my shuddering breasts.
Fear
starts to prick in my throat with the drenching pleasure, too powerful,
unknown, and unfathomable. My legs shudder with my breathing, staggerings of
air. The new inverted liquid peak between my softening thighs reaches deeper
into me. I whisper “Dominic,” my lips soaked in the swirling scent of pure
potent feminine desire.
Impossible.
I
taste the dark air again.
But
it is. My own desire. My teeth and nails are blunt. I keen the edges and
feel—not my own—but my shadow’s breaking through.
With
shadow’s black, sharp teeth, I sink untested quills into my flesh. The first
taste wracks me, sob and swallow, but desire fills my starving mouth. Scent
tumbles into the sterile space, and sensation breaks in lapping shudders. I
taste the fingers of the driver from Dublin, automotive oil and beer, and Irish
cigarettes. Sweeter now than before, full of flavor and a strange new taste. I
suck again. The tiny taste I had from Dominic the night I offered him an apple
and cut his bold fingers with my dull blades. “Dominic,” I whisper again. He is
safe on his way to Dublin now.
Drenching,
worming newness comes in the tastes I have tasted, in the drinking I have
drunk. This is pleasure, washing, illuminating. I taste strength and dawning
power, and the bitter taste of my shadow mingled with what I have made and what
I have taken, the blood of men and angels.
The
blood comes slower to my shadow’s feeding teeth. I withdraw the slender edges
and feel them fold deep against my own quills, secret in my gums. I lick the
broken place on my arm to savor the last sweet seeping from the closing holes,
and the bruisey ache in the flesh beneath my tongue. Sensation eddies and a
soft smile floats across my lips, atop my breasts, and in the secret place
shadow has left between my legs.
Desire,
be silent. Run down my throat. I remind myself of its fading. Savor, and the taste of tea.
I swim in perfection.
Dominic
scrubbed his poisoned ear, impatient with the tickle of blood from the snake’s
bite. His hand came away sticky and red. Shirtless and shoeless, with blood on
his hands and on his feet and chest, he looked around the dim garden wildly.
Where was Olivia? Hell was vast. She could be anywhere within it.
Dominic
racked his memory for everything Ophelia had told him about the way angels die.
If she faded to the point where she could no longer feed, he could never get
her back. Delusional or not, she was in real danger. He wanted to shield her
from the macabre weirdness of her sisters and the hotel. Delusion and reality
didn’t matter—maybe they were the same—hell, maybe he really was what Gaehod
said. It didn’t matter. Finding Olivia was everything.
Dominic
ran through the distorting garden light, almost hoping it was all real. He
could give her all of himself that way, and find her again lifetime after
lifetime. He could bear the endless returning, if he could find her in it. But
he had to find her in this present first. The blood oozing in his throbbing ear
was maddening. He bounded up the stairs from the garden, wiping his bloody
hands on his jeans. At the top, he shoved his finger in his bleeding ear.
“Dominic.”
It
was Olivia’s voice. He whipped around, looking behind him. Nobody. He closed
his damaged ear again with a stained and tentative hand. Where was her voice?
Dominic strode down the hallway, listening. Silence. Again he plugged his ear
and heard her angelic voice, but more distant. He ran the other direction, down
the stairs back toward the wide, barless gates. At the threshold, he stopped
again and listened.
“Dominic.”
She
sounded weak—but closer. Dominic ran down the corridor, across the stained
floor where his bare feet had tracked blood from the ballroom. He hesitated at
that doorway. He heard Ophelia moaning, but not Olivia again.
“Dominic!”
Sylvia’s voice cut through him. “You owe my sister blood! Come feed Ophelia of
your free will, or I shall bring you to her dead.”
How
the hell could he hear Olivia with that bitch screaming at him?
Dominic
plugged the bleeding ear again and listened.
“I
want.” Olivia’s voice was faint but constant.
Dominic
ran. He ran full-tilt, following the disembodied voice of a dying angel in his
punctured ear, ready to lay down his life for her desire.
10
DEATH
“I
want,” I whisper, like a bell pounding the hours in me. “I want. I want. I
want.”
I
want Dominic. And freedom. I want to do things I have done and not noticed. I
want to be things I have dreamed and not seen. I want to live. I want without
reason, unseen, and by myself alone. “I want. I want. I want.” Tolling rhythmic
as a bass drum, or a heartbeat.
I
want things I cannot have, and the longing aches, vibrating through every
shivering sinew stretched on my mortal powerless-ness to realize divine desire.
I want out. Angels might be what is wanted and not what wants, but I know with
certainty that I want the fuck out of my coffin. I want to stand up again.
Weighed
down by my mingled bone and shadow, I reach slowly for the stone slab above me
and push. With all of my old strength and new desire, I press up against the
roof of my coffin. The stone is rough and dusty against my too-soft fingers.
And too heavy.
“Help?”
I whisper to the silent blackness wound around and through me.
I
need help.
My
angelic body is invincible, and my arms sculpted perfection in pure marble, but
my back is a woman’s still, strong to carry and to bear weight that would break
the arms of men. The idea comes like a sob, unbidden and almost too late. I
twist onto my belly, brace my torn hands and knees, and set my spine against
the stone. I press.
I
hear the cold mass grind. Blood from my back pricks sticky against the rock. I
scramble in the dark for something soft to pad it, cramming whatever my groping
hands find between my yielding flesh and the unfeeling stone. I throw myself
against it again, pushing hard away with the full strength of arms, legs, and
back, groaning. Move. It must. It has to. I have to. There is nothing
more.
Dominic’s
chest, blood-streaked and bare, strained against the air he gulped, hands on
knees, doubled over in the grand foyer, ringed with a timid floss of cultured
confusion. The only sound in the abruptly silenced space was the rasp of his
raw panting and the pounding of his heart.
“He
does it for the exercise.”
Dominic
blinked and rubbed trickling sweat away from his eyes. The crowd turned from
him to Alyx, sprawled inelegantly in the same high, wingbacked chair, Dominic’s
untouched breakfast balanced on an impatient, spinning tray beside him.
Dominic
shook his head. “Find Olivia,” he gasped.
Alyx
gathered the flaps of his bathrobe around himself and tugged at the silk
necktie belting it. He lurched to his feet.
“Dude,
you look like shit.”
“Where’s
Olivia?” Dominic straightened and gripped his hands over his head, trying to
calm his riotous heart and lungs enough to run again.
“Is
that your blood?” Alyx steadied himself against the high chair’s back.
Dominic
glanced down at his bare chest and bloodstained pants. He shook his head.
“Ophelia.”
“Never
liked her,” Alyx shrugged. “Too skinny. Vivian on the other hand, all that
leather, the whips . . .” Alyx gave a gleeful growl low in his ruined throat.
Dominic
clamped his punctured ear again and heard, too many stories over him, the
grotesque grinding of stone on flesh.
“Sugar,
sugar, sugar . . .” Alyx sang, half sauntering, half falling
across the lobby toward him.
“Help?”
whispered his angel.
“Olivia!”
Alyx
fell into a closer chair and shrugged. “Her room’s up there,” he said.
Dominic
hauled the withered rock star to standing. “I have to find her,” he panted.
“She’s in trouble. Might be dying—fading.”
From
behind the purple lenses of his brass goggles, Alyx’s muddy eyes searched
Dominic’s. “Look, I don’t know shit, but I know breakdowns, dude, and you’re
about to have one.”
Dominic
shook the man again. “I have to find her.”
“Check
her room.”
“Where?”
“Seventh
floor. Halfway between the first door and the next.”
Dominic
nodded and filled his searing lungs to run. “Go get Gaehod, okay, Alyx?” he
said. “Tell him to find Olivia. Sylvia is hunting for me, and if she finds me,
she’ll kill us both.”
“Dude
. . .”
“Alyx!”
“Yeah?”
Dominic
scrubbed his bloody ear in frustration and froze, sickened by what he heard—the
unmistakable sound of Olivia’s perfect body giving way, pressed, and breaking.
But it was close. “Go get Gaehod!” he shouted at Alyx and stumbling, threw
himself into running again, up the spiraling hall. Up and up, to her.
I
brace my bleeding back, padded now with my velvet shirt and severed wings,
against the stone a final time. Desire is immortal and impossible. The damned
have no pleasure in memory, but I have eddied in its sweet appreciation. I have
stroked my memories, stirred them to yawning and curled myself around them,
drenching and sweet.
I
grimace with pain, and remember Dominic’s unfurled hands as he stood leaning,
laughing with me over the railing at L’Otel Matillide’s domed peak, looking
down the spiraling stairs into the pit, into reception and the milling damned
who did not see us, Reborn and Undead, watching them from above.
I
stretch my bruised body, ragged from battering rock. I will fight it again, but
not now. The pulling muscles howl under my dusty skin, and I reach for another
memory. I want Gaehod. I want to see the insane old man who built this wild,
vast mansion inverted in the ground. I want to sit again in his study—the belly
of the beast, or the brain stem, drinking tea. For connoisseurs of blood and
wine and poison, he pours out his little, stemless cups, every blend of leaf
and herb unique. Right there, at the hub of Hell, Gaehod’s wide-awake calm
beckons, and I lap at the memory. It is all I have to drink.
Dominic
was close. He struggled to calm the rebellious symphony of his screaming flesh
enough to hear his angel caught in stone. He listened. A sob? A whisper. Here?
He glanced up the long corridor and back again behind him. Doors lined the
hallway. There were so many rooms, and any of them might hold Olivia. Dominic
listened again, his bleeding ear against the door nearest him. Nothing. And
then, a sound.
A
sob?
No,
but her voice, and he threw himself against the door.
Dominic
is gone. He’s safe and distant by now from this mad place, and though it breaks
my new heart, I am grateful.
I
make a sound like a sob, but it isn’t. I loved him and it has set him free.
Maybe
a hiccup?
Dominic
saw me and loved me and it got him out of Hell. I have been his loophole. The
sound comes again, and I know what it is.
I
spent millennia searching for a mortal love to lift me to Heaven.
I
have loved a mortal and been trapped by angels in Hell.
I am
laughing out loud.
The
antique brass lock gave way beneath the force of Dominic’s shoulder and he
tumbled into a dark room furnished in the standard Hotel of the Damned eclectic
style. A lean and modern wardrobe occupied one wall with Scandinavian
solemnity, while an elaborately carved Victorian bed, draped and curtained in
patterned red velvet and exuberant silks, filled the far wall.
Urgency
warred with caution in his still-hammering chest while he scanned the light and
dark woods for some sign of Olivia. He spotted a blue and gold shawl draped
over a massive red stone box that, at first glance, he had thought was part of
the living stone wall. Could the sound he had heard come from that? He shoved
the star-dappled cloth aside and ran his bloody palms over the cold stone.
“Olivia,”
he called softly, “are you here?”
I am
screaming. The sound bounces back at me from the stone that holds me. Seconds
distort like blood dreams and with a violent rebound. The full flood of Dominic
runs over me. His kiss, his betrayal. He should be miles away. He must be safe.
I accepted this endless black to get him out of Hell. Why is his voice seeping
through the rock, calling to me, not in memory or dream?
“Olivia?”
His voice is louder now, an invocation.
“Olivia?”
A third time, “Can you hear me?”
I
scream his name in rage and terror, forcing the power of both against the rock
lid.
Dominic
ran his bloodstained fingers along the rough seam of the dry stone lid. He
ground the heels of his hand against the edge and pushed, but the rock was
almost level with his head, too high for him to get a purchase on, and he could
not bring much force against it. Adrenaline and will had dragged him here,
dashing through Hell’s corridors and open spaces. Now they were poisoning him.
Or maybe the snake. Neurotoxic venom could explain a lot.
Shaking,
he leaned heavily against the stone that he had no sane reason to think
imprisoned a woman whom he had no logical reason to believe was in danger.
Dominic’s
shoulder throbbed from the impact with the door. He looked across the room at
it, standing open, the jamb splintered where he had torn the lock’s strike
plate away from the wood. His reptilian nature had driven him to this
irrational behavior. It would take hours to make sense of it—to discover where
Olivia was, what had happened, what it all meant. For all he knew, this barren
place wasn’t even her room.
Dominic
looked around. He opened the wardrobe too forcefully and the black beads of
captured energy rained down its back and disappeared into the floor. The closet
held Hell’s “outsider” uniform: black leather and velvet, high lace-up boots
and heavy belts. No books, no papers. No name. Dominic pulled back the bed
curtains that rolled on channeled cogs. He gazed down onto the bed’s pristine
expanse of silk, hearing the gears still turning. In Hell’s biosphere, not even
the energy of pulling back the curtains for the night was wasted.
My
voice breaks. He cannot hear me. And I no longer can hear him. Has he left? My
legs slip out from under me, my arms shaking. I lie still in my coffin,
exhausted. My angelic strength and mortal will are gone. I am fading.
Dominic
picked up the strike plate from the carpet and placed it on the graceful Art
Nouveau table by the door. The elegant, bent-wood piece held only a strangely
iridescent, beautifully curved teapot. Dominic glanced again at the massive
stone box, and ran weary fingers across the pot’s fragile, translucent
porcelain. Modern in design, with a wide, shocking red horizontal stripe bold
across the middle of the classic spout, belly, and handle, he knew without
looking that the maker’s mark and number on the bottom would be from one of the
old houses.
Dominic
put the teapot down.
His
strong fingers dug hard into wood. The frame of Olivia’s door groaned under the
pull, like a bow bent to the arrow.
My
angelic hearing pricks me.
I
scramble to my battered knees again. The hard gasps of a man preparing his
lungs to dive terrify me. Dominic, what are you doing?
Then
footsteps, propelled from the doorway’s slingshot, run headlong at me. Toward
my immutable sarcophagus, a missile, a battering ram, runs to drive his mortal
body against the lid and push it back to free me. If it does not slide, it will
kill him.
Level
with his eyes, the split in the stone Dominic held targeted for impact flashed
like the teapot’s red stripe. He ran toward it with all his gathered strength
and speed. He gathered power swiftly, pumping his runner’s arms wildly,
although he planned to throw them over his head before he hit the rock. He
would shift the lid or break his skull against it.
Olivia
was inside, and he intended to set her free.
“I
want him to live.” Pure desire now, I’m whispering on my knees in the dark not
damned.
I
throw everything I am and want into my bleeding back against the stone. The
cold weight of the coffin lid yawns, tilts, and crashes down.
I
uncurl, dropping my shredded red corset to the ground, stand, and spread my
tattered wings.
The
impact exploded red in Dominic’s gut and teeth. It threw him backwards. The
sprawl surprised him as much as the shift.
But
the stone had shifted.
He
sat up, bloody and sick. Reality skittered across the floor-boards on
clattering claws. Everything he knew or believed in was wrong. Above him,
bare-breasted, wings spread, a ghostly angel shimmered through the pounding
redness. The room lurched. Dominic struggled not to vomit. His forearms, where
they had hit the stone lid of the sarcophagus, were already showing bruises. He
touched his fingers to his head, and they came away bloody. He knew something
about head trauma, but couldn’t remember what.
The
angel stood over him, eyes unseeing, black hair pouring over her bare, white
shoulders and across her naked breasts. Why was she shirtless? She held her
pale arms outstretched. Behind them, massive, white wings spread, shimmering
six feet at least, on either side. No Renaissance artist, no New Age airbrush,
has ever done justice to the pure, unearthly sexual beauty of angels. Dominic
blinked. The wings folded and restretched. Her hands reached forward. She
swayed, and Dominic realized suddenly that she was in danger of falling.
“Olivia!”
Could
she hear him? She trembled, her blind hands reaching. Dominic staggered to his
feet.
“Olivia?”
he called again, afraid.
How
do you approach a blind angel? Magnificent, ethereal, erotic, her wings
contracted against her unearthly body with hypnotic grace, their joints forming
delicate peaks behind her ears. Her slender arms and shoulders seemed even
smaller within the curved frame of feathers. Dominic took a tentative step. She
swayed again. Her cloud-gray eyes—profound, but frightened—darted around the
room, finally seeing where she was. Dominic squared his battered shoulders
against the crushing pain in his head and arms, and stepped closer. Had she
whispered to him?
A
slender, long-boned hand reached forward, and Dominic took her gentle fingers
in his own. Her perfect body tilted toward him and, fearing she would faint, he
boldly wrapped his bleeding hands around her waist and lifted her away from the
open tomb.
He
carried her, trailing long wings, to the curtained bed and carefully placed her
inert body within its arching frame. A ridiculous, childish longing yanked at
him to simply climb into bed beside her and pull the curtains closed. But
Sylvia would not be long in coming. There was no way to hide.
Against
the blood-red silk of the coverlet, Olivia’s skin and wings shone pure white.
Her black eyelashes shivered against her translucent cheeks. Dominic’s head
throbbed with the dull pain of impact and his heart with the harder pulse of
fear. The moment Sylvia could leave Ophelia, or safely carry her, she would
come hunting him. And Dominic had no doubt she would kill him.
He
blinked against the illusion that the complicated carvings on Olivia’s
headboard and bedposts were moving. Tortured wooden sinners seemed to contort
in burls of mud, wallowing in graven ecstasies. The centerpiece, an altar
taken, no doubt, from a decaying Irish cathedral and refashioned for Gaehod’s
hotel into a bed, held two carved naked figures standing, legs and arms
entwined and whipped by devils in lurid medieval relief. Their bodies were
being forced, by the repeated lashings, to pound one another endlessly. Their
crime on Earth, their reward in Hell. But the figures held their faces a little
bit apart, their eyes, fashioned of small blue stones, were alone immobile in
the writhing wooden mass. He must have knocked himself harder than he had
realized.
Olivia’s
head fell to one side, and her black hair ran over her bare breasts and
outstretched arms like clouds across ice. She was deathly pale.
“Olivia?”
Dominic’s hands felt too big to cup her delicate shoulders, but she must wake
up. They had to move.
“Olivia?”
Her
ashen lips whispered, and Dominic leaned closer to hear her.
“Olivia?”
It was a soundless whisper against her flawless cheek, but she turned her face
toward it and his lips met her cool skin. Without his willing it, his mouth
touched the place beneath her soft lashes and lingered. She did not move, but
the throbbing pain and terror slipped from his lips as he kissed her, and he
reached a careful hand to her cheek to turn her face to his. Her pale lips rose
like a bubble from the still surface of her lifeless face, and Dominic opened
his mouth against them in a kiss that was almost a prayer.
“Olivia?”
He spoke it against her mouth, unwilling to take his lips from hers. A slow
inhalation lifted her breasts against his supporting arm. He closed his eyes
and took her mouth again, a deeper kiss, drawing her willing lips into his,
feeling the elastic tenderness of her flesh.
Everything
he had feared and never faced, everything he had hoped for and never asked
pressed into his fervent kiss, sliding and coursing against her. Her lips
trembled under his, and opened. With a stifled gasp, Olivia was living under
him, her mouth responding, her hands on his bare shoulders, and her breasts
beneath his chest.
Dominic
tumbled into a dazzling liquid fire. His body, through its lacerations and
contusions, stretched beside Olivia to pull her pliant body against his
battered own. Some nameless dread caught in his belly, but he slid his bloodstained
hands between her back and wings and rolled over her, the bare flesh of his
torso smothered against the rise and fall of her full breasts and sloping
waist, and her mouth, under his, kissing him.
“You
must flee,” she whispered. Her hands slid across his back, sending radiant
shivers of pleasure across his flesh.
“We
both must.” Dominic couldn’t stop kissing her to speak, but he forced the words
against her lips. “Your sisters blame me for what happened to Ophelia, and
they’ve already tried to kill you once. They won’t stop now.”
“I’m
too weak.”
“I
know.” It took every bit of Dominic’s long-trained and powerful will to take
his lips from the mouth that drowned him, but he tore himself from above
Olivia’s body to lie beside her again. He wrapped a protective arm around her,
and cradled her against his body, pillowing her cool cheek in the hollow of his
chest and shoulder. She turned her beautiful face up to him, but he forced his
eyes away from her tidal pull. Instead, drawing her closer, he touched the sweet,
swollen pink of her nipple. She shuddered. He traced the high tenderness with
the ball of his thumb, feeling her body tremble against his, watching the flesh
gather and harden until she moaned.
“I
have never felt this—never felt anything—before you,” she whispered. Her eyes
were closed, a look of painful concentration on her face.
“I
know.” Dominic wanted to kiss her trembling breast, wanted to climb her desire
higher, give her all sensation, every pleasure. It would be simple. He gently
pinched the reddening flesh of her shuddering nipple, winding the fingers of
his other hand into her hair to pull her face against his throat.
Her
mouth opened against his neck. She stiffened, but he pressed her closer. Hard
teeth caught on his flesh. He stroked her breast again.
“Dominic—”
She pushed away, but he held her.
“Dominic,
no!”
His
desperate mouth was in her flowing hair. He held her face against his carotid
pulse. “You have to.” His voice sounded strange in his own ears. “You are
starving, and your sisters are on their way.” He knew it as the words left him.
They were carrying the screaming Ophelia off the ballroom floor.
“I
can’t. My quills are too dull. It would hurt you.”
“I
don’t care.”
“The
punctures would be huge—gashes.”
“I
don’t care.”
Dominic
felt Sylvia scream his name in the garden. She was hunting him, and her rage
echoed painfully in the bones of his feet.
“I
don’t know if I could stop in time.” Olivia’s voice was raw. “It could kill
you.”
“Your
sisters will kill us both.”
Her
slender body convulsed against his, and then she was above him, hair spilling
over his face, nipples hard against his chest. Despite the danger, the sisters
prowling the black garden grass searching, Dominic’s cock gave a primitive
pulse against the fork of Olivia’s legs opened over him. “You must leave here!”
she pleaded. “I will go to my sisters. I will buy you time. Go back to the
garage, take a bike, and get the fuck away before they scent you.”
Dominic
lay on his back against the red silk and smiled. Framed by her shimmering,
outstretched wings, Olivia’s white face and depthless eyes shone with a
breathtaking beauty. He was willing. He wanted to. Not to flee, not leave
without her—that was out of the question—but to die with her. To stay here,
dreaming in the drowning desire to taste and touch and pleasure her. Until her
vengeful sisters came and killed them both.
A
hard, flat line caught his eye across the soft curling sweep of her pure white
wings. He squinted at it. From behind her, the harsh outline of her exploded
crypt shone through her torso and wings. She was becoming transparent.
“I’m
Reborn, right?” he whispered. “I’ll come back to you.”
“You
don’t believe that.” Olivia shook her head, black rivulets winding around her
face. Dominic pushed a slender tendril behind her ear, allowing his fingers to
trace the graceful sweep from fragile lobe to trembling chin. He raked the pad
of her inviting lips, and she closed her fathomless eyes.
He
drew her face toward his. “I love you,” he whispered, his eyes clamped against
the pain that choked him.
“I
love you,” he said again and kissed her soundlessly. He held her hard by the
fragile slope of her waist. “I’m not leaving.”
“Dominic!”
She brought her lips to his. The delicate tips of her breasts touched his
hammering chest. What he felt would strangle him, if he kissed her mouth again.
“Olivia,
I can face it all again, but I have to know I can find you. You have to be here
when I come back. If I die knowing that the memory of you will resurface for
me, that I can love you again, then I’m glad for my curse. But, Olivia, God,
Olivia, if you die . . .” A tear slid between their cheeks, pressed together,
and Dominic could not have said if it was hers or his. “You have to let me feed
you. It’s the only way.”
Olivia’s
voice was choked. “Dominic, it may already be too late.”
“It
can’t be. I love you. Doesn’t that have to change something?” The sob that
shook her was almost a word. “What did you say—loophole? What does that mean?
Olivia, is there something special about blood that’s freely given? About
love?”
“I
don’t know.”
“But
there could be?”
“I
used to think so.”
“Well
let’s believe that now, okay? Let’s try,” he whispered.
The
howl of outraged vampires shook the garden, half a mile below.
“Either
you kill me or your sisters do, and at least if it’s you, you’ll be strong
enough to fight them. And, Olivia, I’m coming back.”
“Can
you? Will you?”
“I
swear it.”
Her
black hair rained around them, enclosing them in a torrent of silk and silent
beauty. Her kisses lit separate fires in him, behind his eyes, deep in his
belly. They ignited and lingered, spread and engulfed him. And he let them
rage. He withstood a firestorm of kisses on his cheeks and lips against the
flat of chest. Her fingers ran molten up his arms and into his hair. Then Olivia
was standing by the bed.
“Olivia!”
he cried.
“I’m
not leaving.” Her voice was flat. Dominic watched the shadows of the room play
across and—horribly—through her. “I’ll stay with you and I’ll do what you ask,
but I need something from you first.”
Dominic
pushed himself up on the bed. The sisters were stalking the lowest halls.
“Anything.”
“Make
love to me.”
“I
thought you couldn’t . . .”
“I
don’t know if I can. But until today I couldn’t know pleasure. Before I . . .
Before you . . .” Olivia peeled her pants off and stood before him naked. “I
want to try.”
Dominic
climbed off the massive bed to stand silently beside her. He took her face
between his hands and kissed her again, long and painful and slow. If he came
back and found her gone, he would not be able to live. He would hole up in this
grotesque hotel and spend the rest of his incarnations in madness.
“You
never felt pain before today either.”
“No.”
“It
might . . .”
The
vampires were swarming the lobby now.
“You
just asked me to kill you.” Hysteria tinged her perfect voice. “You want me to
drive my dull quills into your neck and drain your life from you in the remote
hope that you’ll remember and find me again in however many years it takes you
to reincarnate. You’re asking me to knowingly kill the only man—hell the only
thing, mortal or divine—that I have ever loved. I want to feel this first.”
If
she faded into nothingness in his arms while he made love to her, he would live
and die regretting without end what he could not change. But she had lived since
the beginning of time, inspiring what she could not feel.
Silently,
he undressed. He sat on the edge of the bed and pulled her to him. He kissed
her smooth belly and ran his greedy hands up to her high breasts and down her
slender back beneath the gorgeous wings. He stroked her, wondering at the
supple texture and smooth, lean form of her. His thumbs pushed up the rise of
her thighs to circle the silky nest of black hair that crowned them. He looked
up, but her eyes were closed, her body swaying. He pushed his fingers between
her yielding thighs and felt the ocean softness of her. His cock ached.
“Do
I . . . ?” she whispered.
He
slid a finger against the warmth and darkness. “Yes.”
He
bowed his head to kiss her over the dark curls and stopped. Her sisters were
climbing the stairs. And she was fading. A blue shadow, eerily like letters,
played against the taut clear white of her flesh. Sylvia screamed, cursing him
in the torn-open door of his downstairs room.
Dominic
took Olivia’s waist in his hands, guided her to the bed, and pulled the
curtains shut around them. Her face was pale, but when he kissed her, waves of
desire poured from her against him. She wanted him, was alive to him, was
giving and open and ready for him. Dominic was shaking. Whether from terror or
desire he didn’t know, but he wanted her. He wanted to love her, to feel her,
to drive his body into her, to lose himself in her, and find himself.
“I
love you,” he whispered.
The
room shuddered with the thundering of the last hallway door torn from its
hinges. Between Dominic’s hands, Olivia’s shimmering face showed no sign of
anything beyond an enveloping pleasure. Could she not hear her sisters? Her
tender mouth pulled his in invitation when he kissed it, and her pale,
beautiful legs opened. Trembling, he pushed his cock between her yielding
thighs. If she was afraid, she did not show it.
“I
love you,” she answered and closed her oceanic eyes.
Dominic
raised his body back from the woman he knew he loved and with a groaning,
convulsive thrust, gathered all his force, and drove his throat against her
open mouth.
An
arterial burst of footsteps ricochets across elongating time. I drink his
flight, taste my sisters’ pulse. Dominic, impaled on my blunt quills, lies
motionless across me. His living blood presses into my teeth’s hollow cores and
down the back of my gulping throat. I do not want this. I do not want the
ragged, leaking place in his skin, slippery and warm against my lips. I do not
want Dominic sacrificed for such a wild and distant chance. But my feeding
teeth are buried, and it would be easier to hold my breath to suffocation than
refuse the pouring of his life into my parched mouth. My limbs, of their own
accord, twist over his, pull his powerful body closer. I hold him, sucking.
Killing him.
“Olivia!”
Sylvia screams down the distant hallway, her voice an indistinct roar in the
distortion of his blood pounding in my ears. Already my vision is darkening,
sights as old as I am taking shape, tumbling into the blood dreams. I glimpse
earthen walls, clay amphorae stacked and marked with indented tiny triangles. A
mother’s black eyes and strong, long nose. A whisper that rasps and growls. I
drink in the oiled beard and brows of a proud brother, older, and revered. I
see his handsome, dark throat brutally severed, then the brilliant flash of the
dripping blade before young eyes. Then I see only the deep red I must stop
draining. Dominic died young his first lifetime.
Through
the darkness, I urge my sisters to hurry. They will tear him from my teeth.
Perhaps in time to save his life. But they are hunting him by scent, tracking
his steps searching for me. It will still bring them here, but not directly. He
did not know my room.
I
see eyes again in the red darkness—cold and yellow. I feel terror seeping and
taste the keen ache of unmoving muscles. He stalks the feral eyes with other
men in an impenetrable jungle night. Many of them died that hunt, but he is
welcomed home to a grass-thatched hut and straw mat. A woman reclines upon it,
her legs around his hips. Then her face again, washed in sweat. But there
now—nestling against her breast—cradles a tiny head. His first child. Love
dripping, and then drowning in a screaming agony of vomitus and blood. So much
more painful than the sudden sword. Heartbreak drenches me.
I
cannot stop drinking the endless blood dreams.
A
mother’s eyes swim though the red. They brim with love and close in death. Her
lifeless face sinks into the rich stream and coils into parchment, rolled and
tidy, resting on marble. He loved them, not as fiercely as the death-stolen
mother, but that lifetime’s loves were never that strong again—the devoted
practice of medicine, a cool passion for thought, and the narrow hips of boys.
Through
the reddening, his past slides again toward death, and I battle to slow my
hard, convulsive pulls of hunger. My sisters are coming. Their footsteps in the
closer hall are slower than his pulse, but more relentless. Their feet, his
heart, drums, or horse hooves echo inside stone. A woman above him, her head
thrown back. I taste sex. Warrior, be thou summoned. Her body initiates
him. Warrior, be thou safe returned. A splintering blow shatters bone
and prevents it.
Then
wives—too many wives—and children with sweet liquid eyes who bow their faces to
the ground.
A
father, two masters—one artist, one owner.
A
friend on horseback coils a lasso with nimble hands.
A
blond wife-to-be running, and black blisters creeping over infant flesh he
loves, as I have never loved skin and bone and blood.
An
old man with terrible teeth and a doughnut, a ridiculous sweep of black, and my
own desire-blinded eyes. No! My fingers reach to touch his copper hair,
tuck a fallen piece behind his ear. I tear his throat away.
Gasping,
swallowing, I lie against Dominic’s limp body, his face still as a frozen
stream, its freckles like leaves caught in early winter ice that would collapse
if you put your heel upon it. Tears gather behind my eyes and surface. A sob
comes as a low groan in the moment that the broken door to my room is torn
away. I swallow the sound, too, and wrap my wings around my only and
unbreathing, pulseless love.
Dominic
poured into the insistent pulsing pull of Olivia’s power over him, losing
himself in her. Her swallowing matched the beat of his hammering heart, and he
listened to the liquid sounds of them together. Singing, his heart set the
tempo, her hunger gave the harmony. It rose, and slowed. His pulse followed her
lead, dancing against her lithe body, until he didn’t know whether it was his
heart or her mouth that moved his blood through him.
Even
with his eyes open, he couldn’t see. He was blind, and the urgent sounds of her
sisters drowned in the aching beat of their bodies’ shared pulse. All he could
hear, all he could feel, was her. He was dying. Consciousness pulled away from
the edges of him, exposing fathomless memories of love and suffering and loss.
Why were they still there—the wives and children, and the other deaths?
Delusional, even now, damn him.
What
happens in the visual cortex when it is depleted of oxygen-carrying blood? When
people refer to lives flashing before their eyes, were they witnessing a final
electrical discharge, the simultaneous firing of every collapsing synapse?
Buried memories rose from neurological graves to flow with his slackening pulse
out of him and into her.
He
wished he could see her. Love lapped at him, washed him with a heat that didn’t
warm him. He smelled ash. A particulate, scentless sensation filled his
nostrils when he inhaled, but he clung to the warmth of Olivia’s cold mouth on
his throat. He remembered her in the ruined abbey, the way she had reached for
the hair that fell in his face. She needed him. Needed this. That was all that
mattered.
His
breath was coming slower. Awareness shrank away from the cold peripheries. He
had never been young. The loss of every love had weighed him down, but now he
was light at least, the free-floating, tiny pieces of him dissipating.
He
was loved.
He
would be remembered, as he had always remembered.
He
watched himself, the lover, float away from himself, the beloved. How could he
say good-bye to himself when the extinguished cinders weighed nothing at all?
Consciousness
cowered in the last places of breathing, the mind away from the brain, the self
from the other, shrinking, reaching, yearning—not for the light—but for the
ashes. He slid up the face of oblivion, falling faster than gravity, upward
with the ashes.
Dominic
stood up into the silence. There was no sky. The ashes had no air to float
into, only the deepening quiet of an unbeating heart and an undrinking mouth,
still softer and at one with the silence, without sensation.
She
was gone.
He
must remember her.
His
body was gone.
He
must remember.
Everything
had gone into a silence made of ash. He must . . .
He
was gone, and yet somewhere, he was there. His thoughts remained to note the
memory motes dancing away. Remember! Memory makes us immortal. Like
angels, immortal. Like ashes, what is left of what is burned. Remember.
Time and thought flame out. Awareness out, and memory.
11
THE FACE OF THE VOID
The
scream is a hideous crawling horror that paints my room in rage.
My
sisters have come.
“The
bitch broke out of her crypt!” Sylvia howls.
“How
could she have had the strength?” Ophelia sounds near to fainting herself.
“The
Reborn came to her rescue,” Sylvia snaps, and I hear my smallest sister’s
unsupported body slump to the ground.
Vivian
is scornful. “He could not have shifted the stone,” she says.
“What
else explains it?” Sylvia paces wildly, her stilettos beating a ferocious
tattoo against my floor. “He got away from us. He went to the garden. We
tracked his scent here, and we find her coffin opened. I will kill him myself!”
“Shut
up,” Vivian commands. “Where is his scent?”
From
within my curtained bed, I scent the air with my hungry sisters. Even with my
body pressed to his, there is no smell of blood from Dominic. I have drunk it.
“Fuck
him,” Vivian spits. “Wherever he is, he’s dead. There’s no scent. What we need
to do is find Ollie.”
My
wardrobe doors smash against the wall with a splintering crack.
Sylvia
swears again. Hard footsteps stride toward my bed. Through my transparent
wings, I see Vivian’s blood-red fingertips penetrate the seam between the
drapes and rend the curtains in a violent storm of falling velvet and the tiny
brass rain of gears.
Sylvia,
Vivian, and even Ophelia, swaying slightly, gaze down at Dominic, wrapped in my
wings.
“God
damn him!” Vivian whispers.
“He’s
gone!” Ophelia wails.
I
stare into the rigid faces of my sisters who look—blindly—through me and
through Dominic in my arms. Ophelia collapses again.
“Where
the hell is Ollie?” Sylvia demands.
“Listen,”
Vivian orders, “even if she drained the Reborn, she can’t have got far. She was
too damn weak.”
I
examine their keen faces, each of my sisters listening to catch the sound of my
desire. I smile beneath their eyes. They will not hear me. I am full angel
now—without desire—soundless and invisible.
“Come
here, you crazy bitches! I’ll kill every one of you!” The half shriek, half
aria reverberates from my splintered doorway.
My
sisters turn from me to glance dispassionately at Alyx standing,
uncharacteristically erect, brandishing a broken table leg by the shattered
hinges of my door. His hair is a wild tangle in his face, and his cool, ironic
eyes roll wildly around the room, crazed—but sober. They pass over the bed,
blind as my sisters’ are to Dominic and me motionless upon it.
Vivian
laughs. “Alyx, what are you wearing?”
He
shrugs his skinny shoulders, wearing leather pants belted with an obscenely
wrought diamond-crusted buckle and rock star boots. “It was all I had. Now fuck
off. All of you.”
“Oh
no, a drunken rock star arrives to ruin all our plans,” Vivian sneers. “Go
away, Alyx.”
“Wooden
stake,” he counters, brandishing the splintered table piece at her. He looks
ridiculous, mad, brandishing the ruined furniture, a man who could never face
his own, prepared to take on all the demons of Hell.
Vivian
walks up to him and scents the air for his desire. Noiselessly, from the bed, I
do the same. If Alyx is still himself enough to want her, or sane enough to
fear any of my almighty sisters, Vee, standing with her pale face against his
stubbled cheek, will sink her teeth into his throat and silence him in four
long swallows. Vivian is full of rage, and he is undernourished.
But
I can glean no scent from him.
“What
have you done with D?” he demands, meeting Vivian’s puzzled gaze.
“Funny
you should ask.” She smiles. “We’re hunting him, too.”
“He
wanted to help you guys. But you couldn’t see past your next meal, could you?
If you’ve killed him, I swear to God, I’ll make you regret it.”
“He
doesn’t want me,” Vivian murmured. “He doesn’t fear me, either.”
“He
will,” Ophelia whispered from the floor. “I will make him.”
My
ravenous sisters crowd around Alyx, scenting the air and running their fingers
across the acute planes of his wasted body. Vivian’s long fingers unfasten his
ridiculous belt buckle, and Ophelia sucks hard on two of his fingers. He looks
dazed. Hatred he could fight, but what chance does he stand against desire? If
he believes—even for a moment—that just one of them wants him, he will be lost.
Vivian makes a low moan against his throat, tracing the fertile line between
his ear and collarbone with her tongue.
I
stand and gather Dominic against me.
With
wary eyes on Alyx and my sisters swarming over him, cooing and licking, I take
a silent step. If they move just a little from Alyx at the door, I will simply
walk through it and away. Alyx’s grip on the table leg is slackening. He shakes
himself like a dog, flinging off sensation’s soaking torrent. “You girls wanna
have a little party, do you?” he leers. But there’s no scent of desire on him.
He saunters toward my bed, his back to me. I hold Dominic close against my
body. And we slip the other way.
“Why
don’t ya’ll come over here with me? Take a load off.” Alyx steps over the
broken curtain rod, its tiny gears at last spun down, and falls onto my bed. I
take another step toward the door, with Dominic’s limp body, tattoo-lined,
blood-streaked, and cold in my arms. I’m desperate to flee, to take him out of
here, but I must not make a sound.
“Do
you mock us?” Vivian’s voice is taut as a corset string, strung between metal
eyes.
Alyx
pats the bedspread beside him. “Come on, ladies.”
I
step cautiously around the bentwood table by my door.
He’s
stalling us!
Trying
to keep us here—
Hoping
to deter us—
To
buy time for that Reborn to escape!
My
sisters’ thoughts seethe like a miasma of swallowed rage around my transparent
ankles. They turn blazing eyes through me to the decayed rock star sprawled
against the elegant, understated crewelwork of my silk coverlet, red on red. He
winks at them lewdly. “There’s enough of me to go around. Come on, girls,
wouldn’t be the first time, if you know what I mean.”
Sylvia’s
cry is terrible. My sisters close in on Alyx and I slip away through the
shattered door with the lifeless body of my love. I have only one thought, one
hope, but it is stained with blood. I run the few steps across the corridor as
swiftly as I can with Dominic’s body still sheathed in my wings, and crash
through the railing into the open space above the lobby.
We
fall.
My
wings unfurl. They stretch. The void beneath them catches their muscular curve,
and our tumbling descent slows. I lock the muscles of my back and flex. It
contracts my wings, and they beat against the empty space.
Again.
And
we are no longer falling. I circle the air above the milling damned. They
stare, pointing upward at the bloodied man, lost in the unbreathing sleep of
angels, whose body seems wrapped around a phantom lover. His arms are draped
across an empty space, legs caught by invisible ankles. So this, I hear
one think, is what my soul does on those perfect nights. I knew it
traveled.
But
I am flying straight up now. Up and up toward the spiral of Hell’s starlit
dome, ascending into Heaven. The glass shatters and rains soundlessly down
behind us, and I fly with him into the night.
A
moment separated itself from nothingness in lonely, horrible isolation. Dominic
braced himself. Stay just one. But another came behind it, stringing ash
links on a chain, dragging him from oblivion. Wait! There is something
buried there. Something he must return to. Or from.
But
it was gone. Everything was gone. He was dead, and time rushed at him in
torrents. He had no strength to shield his face from the minutes hailing into
his open eyes. Wait. Remember.
The
angel’s eyes were bottomless as love. He struggled to reach them, and she put
her red lips against his—like fire—but he kissed her, and closed his eyes to
feel her mouth again. Stay here and now, nowhere and timeless. Dead, with lips
on an angel’s. Wait.
He
pulled his breathless mouth away. “Olivia?” he whispered. Her depthless eyes
met his again. He took her winged shoulders in hands he didn’t know were his
until they touched her. “Olivia, why are you here?”
“I
love you,” she said.
“I
died.”
“I
know. I killed you.”
Her
exquisite head dropped against his silent chest, and Dominic wrapped unsteady
arms around her, quaking against the painful, waking bone and sinew of his
body. His limbs convulsed violently. Olivia clung to him, waking his stomach
and thighs where she pressed against them, too.
“Dominic,
what’s happening?”
“I’m
slipping.” Life was pulling on him, irresistible as sleep. He smiled. “I’m
going back. I’ll find you again soon. Wait for me.”
“Dominic,
no!” Her pale fingers ran across his face, down his arms in trails of flame
against his skin, kindling him.
“I
won’t remember at first, but by eighteen, I should be back to you, back in
Ireland.”
A
sob wracked her, and Dominic turned her face to kiss her once again. Her lips
trembled beneath him, making him want to kiss her more strongly, more deeply,
to smooth her tremors with the necessary force of it. She hiccupped.
It
was a funny, human sound in his lifeless mouth, and he forced himself to pull
away from her lips. “Olivia, I know it seems like a long time, but it will pass
quickly. Nothing compared to how long you’ve been alive.” He pushed two crystal
tears away from her brimming eyes with his ashen thumb. “And when I find you
again, I promise, I’ll make it up to you. We’ll make love, finally. We will—”
“You
don’t understand.”
She
closed her boundless eyes against him, pushing a new rivulet of tears down the
smooth plane of her cheeks as he stroked them. Every touch of her body, every
kiss, pressed him back toward living, and yet he could not let her go.
He
would return, in a new body, a new beginning. He was willing. All his life—all
his lives—he had fought it, but now he was willing. He would go back, face the
piecemeal agony at adolescence, the grueling, slow remembering, the irrational
puzzle coming together, and he would find her again. He could face anything for
her, with her, his angel.
He
took her encompassing mouth with his again. He wanted to stay as long as he
could, to comfort and reassure her, but he had to taste her mouth again. She
opened perfectly to his kiss, a deep softness in her yielding to his insistent
lips and tongue. Would making love to her here, in the aching in-between, drive
him more quickly back into the endless cycle, faster back to his next rebirth?
He should stop, but desire overwhelmed him. Her mouth welcomed his, not hungry,
but sustaining; not forbidden, but divine.
She
pulled her lips away. “Dominic, if you can’t find me down there, I’ll be here.”
“What
do you mean?”
“If
you can’t find me at the hotel—”
A
woman’s voice, distant and muffled, cried out in pain. “Mother,” he whispered.
Olivia closed her azure eyes.
“I’m
an angel now,” she said. “Full angel. I can’t—”
But
Dominic stopped Olivia’s mouth. He kissed her against a strangled sob in his
throat, and in his ears. He had died too late to save her. The woman wailed
again. Was he that close to return?
“I
won’t be there,” Olivia whispered. “I’m invisible there. I don’t know if I can
find you here, in the between, every time you die, but if I can, I will.
Dominic, I love you.”
Her
hair was impossibly soft. “I’ll come back and find you here,” he promised.
Hospital
noises drilled at his ears. A man’s voice now, calm and rhythmic. He was
slipping.
Pure
horror tinged Olivia’s pale face. “Dominic, you mustn’t suicide. I know what
happens to Reborn suicides, it’s too terrible to bear.”
Dominic
ran shaking hands down the strong column of her back and bowed his head. He
nuzzled her throat and spread his fingers across her back as if he could contain
her. No, he wouldn’t kill himself. He carried lives and heartbreaks, and
experienced the terrible pattern of life and loss repeating now, but as a teen,
it had come back in bits and pieces. It had been terrible. It was still. But to
remember it all—the impossibility of escape, the inevitability of
suffering—before birth, before speech? It destroyed the mind it housed and the
shell-shocked children were all born mad. No, even to return to her, he would
not begin his own end. She shuddered in his arms, and he pressed a lingering
kiss on her delicate collarbone.
Pain
seared across his face and chest, a terrible constricting agony, and he found
his fingers back on her angelic face, tracing her brows, pushing into her hair.
“Olivia
. . .” It was all he could manage. Her body clung to him, her fingers strong in
the muscles of his arms, her supple legs wrapping his. To kiss her would push
him farther from her, but what could he do but kiss her? He took her mouth
again and again, almost savagely, and with each spasm that wracked him, felt
her open more.
“Olivia,
if you want me to stay with you here, I have to stop. It’s pulling me away.”
She
gave a little sob, and he crushed her against his body. “I can feel you,” she
whispered. “I thought I would be beyond physical sensation here . . . pleasure,
pain . . . but it’s more acute, more intense.”
“Does
it hurt you?” he whispered.
“No.”
He
was grateful she didn’t ask him the same, because the pain for him was intense.
Every place her body touched, he was branded by flame. Still, he kissed her and
wrapped his searing arms around her. He braced himself against the tearing
pain, to welcome the angel he loved, and would happily suffer to hold.
Light
pressed blood-red against his open eyes. He was losing her face, vision slipping
into a crimson and underwater glow. He gasped and clutched her harder, her
breasts tender brands against the flesh of his chest. He caught one in his
hand, and she cried out as though he’d slapped her.
The
sound came muffled through the ashes in his ears. He dropped his hand lower,
seeking between her legs. They opened readily and he stroked her. She took his
mouth again, and he inhaled.
“He’s
choking!”
A
man’s face peered down. Dominic clamped his eyes closed, gasping, but Olivia
was gone.
“Hello,
son,” the man said.
Dominic
squinted into the hovering face, the brimming eyes and terrible teeth.
Alyx
looks like shit. He is folded behind the exploded door to my apartment, limbs
bent at bad angles, bits missing. Not that I ever saw him look well. Still,
death makes every face a mockery. My avenging sisters have gone. I listen for
the sound of their hungers, but the hotel is quiet. I can’t hear Gaehod, but I
never could. I’ve come back to the hotel to find him.
My
bedroom is a war zone. The heavy stone sarcophagus lid is shattered, and chunks
of rock lie everywhere—radical, natural shapes amongst the ridiculous, ornate
carvings and silly Spartan lines. The curtains torn from my bed pepper the
floor with gears and uncoiled springs, and the wardrobe doors lie splintered
where Sylvia threw them. There’s nothing here I need. My wings flex tight
against my back. I had thought I would grab a shirt, but I square my shoulders
to lift my naked breasts high. I’ll go bare-breasted to Gaehod. I will stand
before him, quill my angel’s wings, and plead. Every moment pulls Dominic
farther from me.
“I
always knew you had great tits.”
I
freeze. I scent nothing.
“Who’s
there?” I demand, loathing the quaver in my voice.
“Yo.”
Alyx
is lying right above me, his narrow back resting against the ceiling, staring with
considerable fondness at my bare breasts.
“Eyes,
Alyx.”
His
soft, brown eyes meet mine reluctantly. He looks younger than I remember, but
real and solid, and floating down to stand beside me.
“What
the fuck?” I ask him.
He
shrugs, looking at his abandoned body behind the door. “Jesus, I was skinny.
Why didn’t anybody make me eat?”
I
pick up his broken body and carry it to the bed. His left eye is swollen
closed, ringed with a purple so deep it looks black near his nose. I push a
pillow under his rolling head. His nose is flattened to the right side of his
face, and he’s missing his two left front teeth. The oddly pristine right side
of his face looks only mildly surprised. It is anything but peaceful, and
unsettling even to me, no stranger to death’s sculpting fingers. I arrange his
stiff limbs as properly as I can, although I leave the left arm spayed out to
the side. I could push it down, but the sound would be too much for him. He
leans against my tomb, watching me.
“Ophelia,”
he says quietly, nodding at his corpse.
I
pick the heavy drapes from the floor and toss them over the bed’s broken rails
to shield the poor, broken body from his eyes. I need to reach Gaehod, but I
can’t leave Alyx here, alone with his ruined body.
“Ophelia
did this to you?”
“Yup.
I was having a drink in the lobby and Dominic blew in, acting crazy, looking
for you. He said you were in trouble. Then Vivian and the vamp girls went by
about ten minutes later. I figured they were hunting him. I wasn’t going to let
that happen. But fuck, man. I’m useless. What am I going to do against a pack
of pissedoff vampire bitches?”
“You
came up here after them? Alone?”
“Yeah.
Not that it mattered. Fuckers didn’t know where D was, either. He wasn’t here,
so I tried to keep them from leaving. Vee just picked me up and hurled me. I
don’t weigh much, I know, but damn . . . Anyway, the glass dome in the lobby
exploded, and they all left to see what the fuck—except Ophelia.”
“She
was too weak to follow them.”
“Weak?
That bitch broke my arm with one hand! She crawled over to where I was trying
to get up after being chucked across the fucking room and”—Alyx give me a wry
grin—“had her way with me.”
“She
drained you to get her strength back.”
“She
seemed strong enough.”
“But
she hurt you before she drank?”
Alyx
shrugs, but I am sure of it. Ophelia is famous for the fines she pays to the
Quarry in damages. She would have tortured him any way that didn’t waste blood.
“Hey,
if I was into S&M, it would have been great.”
“But
you’re okay now?” I ask him. “I mean you’re not still in any kind of pain,
right?”
“I
feel great. Better than I have in years.” He shoots me a wry grin. “Wouldn’t
mind a drink, though.”
“No
booze in Heaven, I don’t guess,” I say.
“Hang
on, are you dead, too?”
“Yeah.”
“And
Dominic?” I catch the masked despair in his eyes.
I
just nod. And Alyx looks hollow, truly dead for the first time. He sags.
“I
came back here to find Gaehod,” I say. “Maybe he’ll think of something.” But
Alyx is staring at his mangled corpse on my bed, shaking his head.
“How
fucking typical,” he says bitterly. “I wasted my life, and now I’ve wasted my
death. If I could have stopped them—”
“It
wasn’t your fault,” I tell him, but he doesn’t hear me. I sit down beside him
on my destroyed tomb. “Alyx, I was here. With Dominic.” I have his attention
now. “Dominic found me in my crypt. Broke the lid open with his head. My
sisters couldn’t see him, because I hid him with my wings. I’m invisible to the
living.”
“And
to the Undead, apparently.”
I
laugh. “Yeah, apparently. You are the reason I was able to carry Dominic out of
here. They all closed in around you, and I walked out the door and flew away
with him.”
“Jesus
. . .”
“You
saved him. Us, actually.”
Half
a smile twists his beautiful lips. He looks at me clearly through cloudy eyes.
“Where did you take him?”
“To
Dublin. To the hospital there.”
Alyx
makes a low whistle. “You gave up the bet then? The hotel’s gonna close?”
“I
hadn’t thought of that,” I say. I hate the idea of not having this place. I
need it. The world needs it, no matter what Gaehod says about modernity and
acceptance. I hang my head. How will Dominic ever find me now, when he
remembers?
“Can
they save him?”
“The
hospital? I don’t know. I don’t think so. I believed they could when I took him
there, but then I saw him here, where we are, he was being pulled away.” I
swallow against the tears. “I think he died,” I say. “In fact, I think he might
have been reborn already, reincarnated. I don’t know. That’s why I need to talk
to Gaehod.”
“You
saw Dominic here? In this room?”
“No,
here, in Heaven.” Alyx looks so defeated that pity curls itself around my
waist. “It’s overrated, don’t you think?” I elbow him gently. “I remember
Paradise being different before.”
“I
don’t think we’re in Heaven,” he says.
“We’re
dead.”
“I
know, but seriously, it’s me. What are the odds?”
“Maybe
your final act of self-sacrifice redeemed you. That was a pretty noble thing
you did.”
Alyx
snorts with derision. “I don’t think so.”
But
it doesn’t seem like much of a heaven. “Where do you think we are?” I ask him.
“I
dunno. Limbo, the Beyond. We’re just out there, man.”
I’m
sitting on the edge of my sarcophagus beside him, but he’s looking down at the
floor between his shiny boots. His hands on the red stone are white beneath the
bloodstains, and I rub away a flaking coil that winds around his wrist with my
finger. “I need to find Gaehod,” I tell him. “Do you want to come with me? We
can ask him where the fuck we are and what we’re supposed to do now.”
Alyx
shakes his head. “No. I know what I’m supposed to do now.”
I
glance over at his ruined body on my cursed bed, and feel afraid for him.
Mortals are so frail, so temporary, so . . . mortal. Gaehod translates mortals
as dying ones, and so they are. And so they are afraid.
“Will
you come with me?” he asks, not looking at me.
I
start to say I can’t, that I have to find Gaehod in time, but . . . okay, if
I’m honest, true immortal that I am, the one thing I’ve got plenty of is time.
Dominic is dead. And even though it would help me to know what will happen to
him now, there’s nothing I can do with the knowledge. And Alyx is alone for the
first time, the way I have always been.
“Sure,”
I say. “Where are we going?”
He
stands, and I follow, past his poor body, through my shattered door, and into a
dank and silent cave. Our backs are to the cave mouth, and we walk away from
it, from the high moon and shivering treetops, to grope our way deeper in. The
ground is craggy and sloped, and before too long we start to smell a faint,
sweet smoke rising from deep cracks in the ground beneath us. We’re in Delphi.
“You
must be looking for the oracle,” I whisper to Alyx.
His
grin is crooked and he slips his hand into mine. “Just all my life,” he says.
We
step across a wide fissure and almost trip over a little three-legged stool.
“Oracle?”
Alyx calls into the still blackness.
“Pythia!”
I shout, but only echoes come back to us.
Alyx
sits down heavily on the empty stool. “Figures,” he grunts. “I didn’t tell you,
but before you showed up, I tried to leave your room and ended up in this
fucking horrible hot desert with a burning bush that wouldn’t talk to me
either.”
I
try to imagine Alyx standing in the sand, shouting at a flaming shrub, but it
just makes me giggle. “I’m sorry,” I say. “It’s not funny.”
“Yeah,
but it is, isn’t it? I mean, seriously, all my pathetic life, I’ve been trying
to figure out what the hell I was here for—what I was there for—on the
planet, I mean. I figured, when I died, at least I’d get to know. I never
really believed in God. Not since I was a kid, when God was like Santa Claus,
this old white-haired magic man who could bring you whatever you wanted if you
asked real nice, who would make your wishes all come true. It was baby faith.
But then he didn’t show up a couple of times, no matter how I asked. Figured
he’d stopped listening, phone off the hook.”
Alyx
shrugs. “I guess I still believed there would be answers when you died. You’d
get to know what you were supposed to have done. Your destiny, calling,
whatever. I thought I’d finally know why. He’d say, ‘This is the reason you
were put on Earth. This was your reason for being,’ and I’d know if I had
failed. Or maybe succeeded.”
He’s
trying to sound casual, unconcerned, but his fingers grip mine hard, and his
other hand is balled into a fist. His eyes scrape the walls and ceiling of the
empty cave.
He
shouts into the blackness over us, “I want to know!” He peers over the ledge
into the crack in the ground. “Tell me!”
“Tell
us.”
It’s
a whisper that forms in my mind like a headache. I glance at Alyx, but he’s
transfixed. He hears it, too.
“I
don’t know,” he whispers.
“Tell
us now why you have lived.”
It
is a thousand whispers, brushing against my cheek and ankles, pouring up from
the earth and down from above. “Tell us why you have lived. God only asks the
questions.”
Alyx
is shivering. I want to touch him, reach my transparent hand out to him, but
the air is too heavy with whispers, and I can’t move. He looks at me. He is
almost impossibly beautiful, his cheek and collarbones rising on the same steep
angle, like wings.
“The
purpose of life is to have a purpose for life,” he says softly.
I
nod. I get it. But we’re dead. It’s too late for us to have a purpose. The dead
have only what meaning the living give us.
“And
the purpose of death is acceptance,” Alyx whispers.
“I’m
not so sure about that.” I’m trying to joke, but I just sound strained.
“For
me.”
“Alyx?
You’re slipping.”
He
smiles.
“Are
you going to Heaven?”
He
shakes his head at me.
“Is
this Heaven?”
He
shakes his head again. “No. This is just one of your deaths.”
I
shudder. “How many do I get?”
“Only
two.”
He
hardly looks like himself anymore.
“Any
idea when the other one’s due?” I ask him.
“You’ve
already done that.”
“What
do you mean?”
“Adam,
the count, the duchess, all the way back . . .”
“No,
they never knew me. Never loved me,” I say.
“Exactly.”
“They
didn’t kill me.”
“You
aren’t life, Olivia.”
“I
don’t get it!” This is pissing me off. Alyx isn’t making sense.
“I
saw them,” he whispers, vanishing, smiling, slipping away. I don’t know what
the fuck he’s talking about, but he looks blissful. “I touched them,” he
murmurs. He starts to hum, smiling, low in his throat, a perfect, clear note.
I
close my eyes to clear them, and he’s gone. I close them again, and I’m back in
my room, alone with Alyx’s broken corpse, ashen on my scarlet bed.
I
don’t get it. Of course this is Heaven. It must be. The place I’ve been trying
to reach since Time trapped me in human form. I’m just not as happy as I
thought I would be.
Alyx’s
body jerks violently, and I jump. I watch with horror, but there is nothing
more. He looks childlike, laid out this way. Once, he had a mother who tucked
him into bed. Now he only has me, poor bastard. I creep to the contorted form
of the second friend I ever made, to pull the red curtains over him. He
whispers to me.
I
can’t stop screaming.
Arms
flailing, hands clawed and grasping, he struggled against the ash in his mouth
that kept air from rushing in. He couldn’t breathe. He coughed again.
“It’s
okay. You’re okay. Try to relax.” The ruined teeth smiled down at him.
“Dominic, can you hear me? Blink twice if you can.”
Dominic
blinked. One. Two.
“Good.
Can you talk?”
“I
think so.” His voice tasted rusty, of blood and disuse.
“Can
you tell me your name?”
“You
called me Dominic.”
“That’s
right. Do you know your last name? Or your birth date?”
“No.”
“Do
you know where you were born, or where you are now?”
“Hospital?”
The
old man chuckled. “I suspect you are correct on both points, my son, but I
meant more specifically.”
Dominic
looked around. He recognized things, knew the names and uses of them, but he
could find no context to place around them—or himself. He shook his head.
“Today’s
date?” The old man asked, brows contracting.
“No.”
“It’s
April twenty-seventh. Do you know who I am?”
“A
doctor?”
“Yes,
but I’m not here in that capacity. I’m your friend. My name’s Francis Dysart.
You and I work together in the U.S. But we’re in Ireland now. You had an
accident.”
“What
kind of accident?”
“Well,
that’s part of the mystery, son. Nobody knows. You turned up in the emergency
ward downstairs two days ago. You were a right mess, from the sound of it.”
Dominic
struggled to sit up. Dysart helped him, gently supporting an elbow and raising
the head of the bed with a lever. “A nurse walked into an empty examination
bay, and found you naked on the table. You looked like you’d been hit by a car
or fallen from quite some height. You had a fractured arm and depressed skull
fracture, but—and here’s where it gets really interesting—no intracranial
hematoma, no bleeding at all. In fact, your blood volume was dangerously low.
They gave you six units.”
“Damn.”
“I
know! Stranger still, with that much blood loss, they could find no internal
bleeds, and the hypotension may actually have saved your life, since it
prevented any bleeding into your brain from the head trauma. But you were very
near to empty, and we still don’t know how that happened. Your head and
forearms bore generous surface abrasions, but no lacerations large or deep
enough to explain the blood loss. Dominic, do you remember what happened to
you?”
“I
don’t really remember anything.”
Dr.
Dysart smiled too brightly. “Transient global amnesia isn’t uncommon in head
injury with reduced blood flow, especially with coma. I’m sure your memory will
return soon. I really should summon a doctor. They’ll be very eager to talk
with you, now that you’re awake.” The old man studied him. “Dominic, do you
remember the date?”
“April
twenty-seventh.”
“So
the amnesia is strictly retrograde,” the old man muttered. “Dominic, I need to
ask you something important.”
“Okay.”
“You
were . . . No, no, you are a brilliant young neuroscientist. One of the
best in your field, and you’ve been working with me for the past several years
on problems dealing with memory. But you and I have never really discussed the
reasons behind your interest in this area. You’re a very private—I won’t say
secretive—but a very quiet person on the topic of your past. I’ve never been
able to get you to say much about your childhood or family. I have wondered,
through the years, if you weren’t trying to forget something.”
Dominic
said nothing.
“You
should know that your mother has been notified of your accident and is on her
way,” Dysart said, “and that several other people are here to see you.”
“Okay.”
“You’re
not afraid of anyone, are you? Not in any danger?”
“I
don’t feel afraid. Do you think someone did this to me?”
“We
honestly don’t know, but the police have been involved. There’s certainly no
way you could have walked into the hospital in your condition. Someone must have
brought you.”
“Okay.”
“Dominic,
you weren’t engaged in any kind of radical experimentation over here, were you?
Something I didn’t know about? This isn’t an operation or a medication gone
horribly wrong, is it?”
Dominic
hated to see the old man’s face so scarred by worry, but no matter how he tried
to push his gummy mind backwards beyond waking up to Dysart’s voice and teeth,
he simply couldn’t see anything.
“That
doesn’t feel very likely, but I don’t know.”
“Well,
don’t let it worry you, son. These amnesias are typically short-lived. Your
memory should start coming back soon. Although I imagine they’ll want to do
another CT now that you’re awake. I wish I had thought to bring your old scans
from our lab as a baseline.” The man was talking to himself, gathering his coat
and hat, rummaging through the magazines on the floor. “Here’s another odd
thing,” he said, turning back to Dominic on his way out. “Yesterday, out of the
clear blue, your laptop bag appeared in your room. Just right there in the
chair. Nobody knows who brought it. The ICU nurses didn’t see anyone come in or
out. Nothing on the monitors. It looked as though someone had tried to clean it
after you’d bled all over it, but it’s here, if you want it.”
“Thanks.”
“I’d
give it to you now, but I don’t imagine you’d get a chance to unzip it before
the doctors come in. But you’ve kept a photo log as long as I’ve known you.
It’s online, I’ll jot down the URL. I didn’t find any clues in your latest
pictures—mostly snapshots from the roadside by the look of it, but maybe
something will spark your memory. Oh, and don’t tell them how long we visited.
I should have gotten them right away . . .” Still muttering, the doctor let
himself out of the tiny, glass-walled ICU room. Dominic watched him shuffle up
to a central desk, but closed his weary eyes against the burst of activity the
old man’s news caused. Nurses snatching up phones, doctors striding his way. He
wanted a nap.
“Dominic,
dear boy? Dominic, are you awake?” A slender hand shook his shoulder softly,
but insistently. “Dominic? It’s Madalene. Can you spare a moment, my dear?”
Dominic
rolled onto his back and opened his eyes. An older woman leaned urgently over
the hospital bedrail.
“Oh
good! I’m so glad you’re awake. My goddaughter’s waiting in the hall, so I
won’t take much of your time. Just one quick question.” Dominic sat up and
raised the bed’s head to support himself. He felt weak. Time to start getting
some exercise. He stretched his creaky arms above his head and flexed the
muscles along his spine. Madalene’s practiced eyes ran over his chest and down
his legs. Had they been lovers? She glanced away discreetly. He didn’t think
so. She pulled a chair up to his bedside and leaned in conspiratorially.
“Dominic,
do you know who I am?”
“No.”
“I’m
the reason you’re in Ireland. I sent you here on a mission, and I have reason
to believe you’ve been more wildly successful than I would have dared to hope.”
Madalene’s cultured voice was soft, but urgent.
“Radical
experimentation?”
“Not
really radical, darling. Just innovative.” She was clearly excited, nervous,
and expensive.
“Are
you the reason I’ve been moved to a private room?”
“Well,
let’s just say that I’m not without influence here.”
“I
didn’t think I was getting the usual treatment.”
“No.
You’re getting the very best.”
“Thank
you.”
“Not
at all. If I’m right, and you’ve solved my little difficulty for me, you can
become accustomed to no less.”
“I’m
afraid I don’t remember the nature of your difficulty.”
“Really?”
The woman leaned closer to Dominic. Her delicate perfume and face powder combined
to gently waft the heady scent of pure wealth over Dominic. Whatever was on her
mind was important. And secret.
“Dominic,
you emailed almost a week before your . . . accident. In that letter you hinted
that you’d made a critical discovery, but also that you were becoming alarmed
by something. Since my goddaughter was sightseeing in the British Isles—she
likes ruins, part of the whole Gothic thing, I imagine—since she was already
here, I thought I’d pop over and, ah . . . encourage you. As soon as we touched
down, I learned of your accident. I came as soon as I heard you were conscious.
“Last
night, I stopped in, but you were asleep in the ICU. Apparently they’d been
running tests all day. When they were moving you to this room, I picked up your
bag to bring it with you, and a little pill bottle rolled out. I took a chance.
You had used the word formulated in your email. I knew it was risky. I
gave one to my goddaughter, and Dominic, she already seems to be improving.
She’s outside right now, wearing a sweatshirt!” Madalene was trembling,
and rested a thin, vein-spattered hand on his bed to steady herself. “Do you
know how long it’s been since I’ve seen her in anything but latex?”
A
different and beautiful hand shakes the little brown pill bottle before his
eyes, asks him something, and he’s trembling, too, aroused suddenly, hard
beneath the thin hospital blanket.
“Dominic?”
Madalene gripped his elbow, nails driving into skin. “Did you just remember
something?”
“I
think so.”
“What?
What did you remember? About my goddaughter?”
“I
don’t know.”
“Dominic,
do you remember the pills?”
“I
remember someone taking them. She was beautiful.”
“She
is, but do you remember the formula?”
“No,
but I’m sure I would have written that down. It would be on my laptop—”
Madalene
pulled the bloodstained bag from a chair and placed it beside him in the bed.
“I
know you need your rest, but please, Dominic darling, just as soon as you feel
up to it, would you find out what you can about those pills—how many, how
often, how long?”
He
nodded.
“There
were just two left. Is it possible that only one pill could be enough for . .
.”
Dominic
nodded again, and Madalene reached into her exquisitely tailored suit jacket to
fish out a business card with another woman’s name. “Megan will be able to
reach me wherever I am. Just tell her it’s you.” Madalene stood by the door,
her shrewd eyes taking in the full length of Dominic’s body on the bed, and
then every inch of his face. “I know quite a lot of your personal history,” she
said in a voice raked clean of emotion. “Perhaps we can exchange notes? Your
past in exchange for my goddaughter’s future?”
“Mrs.
Wright—”
“Ms.”
“Ms.
Wright, if I can do anything to help your goddaughter, I’d be happy to.”
“Just
out of the goodness of your heart, I suppose.”
Dominic
shrugged.
“Your
heart was wiser when we first met.”
“I’d
like to think it was always good.”
“Good
is not innocent. Nor the other way around. But that’s the glory of your
condition, isn’t it? You can think anything you’d like about who you used to
be. You might be innocent and good. I could envy you that, my dear, if I
weren’t already too old for new beginnings. Get well, Dr. O’Shaughnessy. I’ll
pop in on you again after my tour.”
Ms.
Wright pushed open the door, only to have it caught from the outside and held
wide for her. A thin, graceful man entered and beamed benevolently at Dominic,
who struggled to swing his legs over the side of the mechanical bed. Before he
talked to anyone else, he wanted to stand up and try walking. Does every
critical care patient become a confessor? People had been testing their secrets
against him since he woke up, and this man, although he looked wise and gentle,
an antiquated professor in tweeds and wool, also seemed about to do the same.
With
soft hands, the man wordlessly lifted Dominic’s feet from the bed and slipped a
slender arm beneath his shivering shoulders, supporting his weight easily.
Intent on walking stiffly from his bed to the window, Dominic did not say
anything or meet the man’s eyes until he had accomplished his self-assigned
goal and sank, exhausted, into one of the elegant chairs that framed the
window.
“I’m
glad to see you upright, Dominic. You’re looking well.”
“I’m
pretty sure that’s not the case,” Dominic chuckled. “I haven’t seen a mirror
since I woke up, but I know I haven’t shaved, and I can feel the sutures in my
scalp. I bet I look like Frankenstein’s monster.”
The
older man smiled. “You were always too handsome for your own good, anyway.”
“I’m
afraid I don’t know anything about you.”
“No,
of course. I’m sorry. I’m Gaehod. You were staying with me before the
accident.”
“But
I’ve known you a long time?”
“Yes.”
“I’m
sorry,” Dominic shrugged. “I don’t remember.”
“How
are you feeling, Dominic?”
“Okay.
I had my first bit of a memory just now, I think, talking to the woman who was
here before you.”
“Ms.
Wright? Really?”
“Do
you know each other?”
“I
know her by reputation, but I’ve been having a very interesting chat with her
goddaughter. Madalene wasn’t pressing you for information was she?”
“No.
But the doctors say that the first seventy-two hours are critical. If I’m going
to recover my memory, it needs to happen in the next two days. The prognosis
drops dramatically after that.”
“Have
you considered that you might be better off without it?”
“Without
my memory? No. Why?”
“You
could choose to see your amnesia as a gift.”
“A
gift from whom? What are you, a priest?”
“From
an angel, actually. And no, I’m not a priest. Far from it. But I could restore
your memory.”
“You’re
a doctor?”
“I’m
an innkeeper.”
“So
how is it that all the medical experts are telling me it’s simply a matter of
time, whether my brain heals or not, and you think you’ve got a miracle cure?”
“I
can’t really explain that.”
“Are
you who brought me here?”
“No.”
“But
you know who did.” Dominic studied the man’s serene face.
“It
doesn’t matter. She’s gone.”
“There’s
an awful lot you’re not saying.”
The
old man smiled. “And an awful lot I could. But here’s a simple and conventional
bit of wisdom for you. You’ve kept a journal as long as I’ve known you, and
that’s a long time. I’ve brought it from your room. Read through it. Once
you’re done, if you have questions, I’ll be willing to say more. But let’s get
you back to your bed. You look about to slide out of that chair.”
Too
weak to nod more than once, Dominic allowed himself to be steered back to bed
by the old man’s deceptively powerful hands, and was asleep before he had been
fully lifted in.
Dominic
closed the red leather diary and put it back into the bag that Dysart had
bought to replace his bloodstained one. His laptop, likewise soaked, was with
Trinity’s computer experts for data recovery. Dominic stayed standing, enjoying
the increasing strength of his back and legs. He braced a hand on either side
of the window and flexed his arms and chest.
“The
doctors say you’re much improved,” commented Dysart from the doorway.
Dominic
pulled his laptop bag off the chair and gestured to the professor, who took the
proffered seat.
Dominic
paced. “I feel great, but I can’t convince them to let me out for a jog.”
Dysart
chuckled. “It’s still too soon. But you’re sounding like yourself again,
D—impatient as ever.”
“Well,
you would know that better than I. It’s weird. You have memories of me and I
have—not only none of you—but not even any of me. You have more of me than I
do.”
“Your
memory may still come back, D. We haven’t crossed the seventy-two-hour
threshold yet.”
“But
we’re getting pretty damn close, aren’t we?” Dominic prowled the space between
the bed and chairs. “When I was first waking up, you said you thought I might
have been trying to forget something.”
“I
don’t think your amnesia is psychosomatic, D.”
“I
know, but I think you might have been right. My landlord brought me a diary he
found in my room. It’s clear I kept most of my notes on my laptop, but there
are hints. I talk about an experiment I want to conduct. What if I can’t
remember anything now because what I tried worked? I think the man I was
wouldn’t want his memory back. I think he—I mean I—would have chosen amnesia
over memory.”
“I
don’t know, D. I suppose it’s possible. But we haven’t exhausted your medical
options. I’d still like to see what some high-dose intravenous thiamine might
do. Would you take my recommendation, even over your doctor’s? He disagrees.”
“I
trust you, but you’re not the only person from before my accident to tell me I
wouldn’t want to get well.”
“Who
else has been visiting you?” Dysart’s rheumy eyes narrowed.
“Nobody
I know.”
The
doctor flashed brown teeth at Dominic. “But of course, you don’t know me
either, do you?”
“No.
So, it’s hard to know who to trust.”
“Trust
yourself.”
“My
present self or my prior self? Hell, can a man even have a self without a
memory? I want my memories back to feel whole again, but everything I know
about my whole self says I wanted to be rid of my memories. I don’t know what
to do, and time is running out.” Dominic dropped wearily into the chair across
from Dysart.
“You
may not remember yourself, but I know you well enough to know that nothing I—or
anyone else—can say will sway you. You’ve always been one to make up your own
mind.” The old man heaved himself to standing and patted Dominic’s shoulder.
“You
don’t have to go,” Dominic said.
“I
also know you well enough to know when you’re done talking. You’ll think it
through and make your decision. Get some sleep, son. I’ll be back in the
morning. Visiting hours are about over anyway. I’ll go before they throw me out
again.”
Dominic
nodded, looking out the hospital window at the river. By this time tomorrow, if
he didn’t do anything, his memory would be gone. Perhaps he should just let it
go.
Alyx
is right. Getting what you want is not the death of desire any more than not
getting it is. I beat my practiced wings hard through the hotel lobby’s vast
spiraling space, up through the glass dome I broke four days ago taking Dominic
to Dublin.
Alyx
didn’t want to die. He just couldn’t figure out how to live. All his talent
went into his voice. He had none left for living, or for happiness. I wish I
could have helped him, but what can the Undead offer the living? I have no
talent for happiness myself. Alyx, at least, had his suffering to call his own.
Everything I have, I’ve stolen.
I’m
halfway to Dublin before I know where I’m going. I will track down Gaehod
tomorrow, but I want to see Dominic again now. Even his inert body would be
better than this. I fly across the black country, over the cars and homes
bleeding their light into a hungry dark that swallows even the brightest beams
in time.
I
find him standing in a new hospital room five floors above the ICU where I last
saw him. He looks wonderful. Healthy and powerful again, in pajamas someone
else has bought for him. He looks out the safety glass into the night. He
cannot see me in it.
I
wait until he sleeps. Then I climb into the metal-railed bed to rest my
timeless body against his. He is warm and human under their white blankets, and
he smells of mouthwash and dry ovens. I gaze into the thin, folded flesh of his
flickering eyelids and kiss his slack mouth. He makes a low groan and turns his
copper head away from me. I lift a sleep-heavy arm with its fine spray of
freckles and tuck my invisible body against him. It is easier to feel him in
imagination than to touch his senseless body beside me. I close my eyes and
conjure him standing in the brilliant, gas- lit, mirrored ballroom. His lips
are parted in my memory, as they are now, but I see them as they were then,
open against a hunger he wars with himself to satisfy. I could stay like this
forever, immortal and invisible, making love to him in vision, but he’s a
restless sleeper.
“He
moves like that, in his sleep, because it hurts him.”
It
is Gaehod’s voice.
“You
can see it on the monitors—the spike in heart rate, elevated body temp. And yet
he fights to stay asleep.”
My
winged back is to the door. I whisper his name, but Gaehod doesn’t reply. Can
he hear me? Or see me? Is he right about Dominic? I touch his unshaven cheek
with my invisible fingertips. He moans.
“You’re
hurting him, Olivia.”
I
leap to face him, full of rage. Standing before him, slight man that he is, my
wings outspread, I am taller, stronger, invisible, immortal, and divine. But he
can’t see me, and even if he could, I wouldn’t frighten him into telling me
otherwise.
“You
carried him here, didn’t you?”
Yes.
“I
wonder if it occurred to you when you did, or when you came back tonight, that
it would cost us the hotel?”
What? I’m psycasting to him, but I
don’t know if he can hear me. He pauses between sentences, but he may be just
thinking of what to say next and not listening to me at all.
“That
was the flip side of the wager, my beautiful daughter. Dominic would kiss you
in the garden, or you would come here with him. Myth lost, my child. I’m
closing down the old home.”
“No!
You can’t do that,” I shout, forgetting he can’t hear me. “How will he find me
the next time? Where will I go to wait?” The slow, steady bleeps of Dominic’s
monitors are the only thing in the air between us. Sleeping easily now, without
me, his strong chest moves in rhythm with life. I fold my wings around my still
naked body and push a piece of hair back from his handsome face. It leaves an
angry red wheal where my finger brushed the skin of his brow, but he does not
wince.
“You
saved his life, bringing him here, Olivia. Just as he saved yours. Only a
symbolic gesture could redeem an angel. Only modern medicine can save a doctor.
What we believe in heals us.”
But
what good is my redemption to me if I can no longer touch him?
“Once,
you sought a loophole. You believed that if a mortal could both see and love
you, it would allow you to return home, escape the world of the living. Now,
full angel again, you want to remain material. You’re the reason he came back,
I think, although I’m sure the doctors would disagree. They feel quite heroic,
having saved him.”
What
do you mean?
“Dominic
embraced the empty space, my dear. He put his arms around the hole. In loving
something he could not have, he met the pain that let him know he was alive. It
was that pain that woke him.”
Did
he ask for me?
“He
woke up here. And you, my precious child, are going to have to come down and
live in the real world now, if you want to be with him.”
That’s
impossible. I wouldn’t even know how. And where? There’s no hotel left. No
place for me.
“Dominic’s
memories are gone.”
He
doesn’t remember me!
“He’s
found, at least, a way out of the suffering his curse has caused him, lifetime
after lifetime. You should be happy for him.”
How
can I be happy?
“You
should be happy for yourself as well. You both attained what you came home to
find. Dominic, his past forgotten, dwells in a new world that is completely
explicable. Any abnormalities in memory he may experience going forward are
attributable to a previous severe head trauma. Everything he has experienced
since waking makes sense. And you, no longer shaped by the desire of others,
live in an abstract realm where your every desire is gratified.”
I
was happier with the wanting than the having.
“You
always held yourself aloof from life anyway, my darling . . .”
It
never seemed real to me! I could not feel. It was a temporary place of
punishment.
“And
now you are beyond it.”
I
want to come back.
Gaehod
walks past me to Dominic’s bed and stands over him, gazing tenderly down at the
sleeping man. I think everyone must have been in love with Dominic—Alyx,
Gaehod, me. Are they as oblivious to my love for him as I have been to theirs?
Look
up if you can hear me,
I psycast to him, but Gaehod doesn’t glance away from Dominic’s still face. I
shout his name, but I know he cannot hear me.
I
have longed for this—total freedom from the needs of others, and the constant
gnawing of their eyes, but now, without them, I feel like the separated pieces
of me are coming apart. I squeeze my eyes closed against the tears.
Gaehod’s
study is dark and still, lifeless as my crypt. The constant fire he keeps on
the low grate has burned out. Even the flames of Hell will die when we don’t
feed them. I look around the desolate room. Without Gaehod’s pottering presence
to tend them, the stacks of papers and books just look untidy. The room is
haunted by him, his touch, his ordering on everything that, without him,
dissolves into meaninglessness and chaos.
Sylvia
stands over Ophelia in the Quarry lounge. Ophelia’s hands are bound. She is
howling, and her flailing whips the ropes loose to fly around her like
fantastic garlands, which Vivian silently captures and reties. Ophelia’s
struggles rock the antique armchair to which they’ve lashed her delicate frame,
and the clatter and roll of ball bearings and cogs make a mechanical hailstorm
beneath her shriek. Alyx’s only slightly larger body, gaunt and ungainly in its
brokenness, lies on one of the modular, backless sofas, empty and meaningless
as Gaehod’s office.
“You
had no right to take his life,” Vivian accuses our baby sister.
“That
right is not yours to bestow and take away,” Ophelia snarls back.
“Enough!”
Sylvia cries. “Carry her to her tomb and be done with it!”
“You
have not that right either!” Ophelia chokes on rage and hysteria, hurling her
bound body violently between the ornate arms of the carved chair. I am standing
behind her, and although all my raging sisters turn their eyes in my direction,
they cannot see me.
“We
have the right to decide who is too broken to dwell among us.” Vivian’s voice
is bright ice. “And you cannot fight us and win. So you must submit to
judgment.”
Even
for angels, it devolves to brute force.
“We
find you guilty of murder—”
“Hypocrites!”
Ophelia shouts. “We are all vampires!”
“—murder
most foul.”
“You
know what we are, but not what we may be. Odin and Jesus on trees! See how the
branches are breaking . . .” Ophelia’s voice trails into a gurgling wail.
“She’s
insane!” Sylvia barks. “We can’t try her like this.”
“Bullshit.”
Vivian grips our keening sister by the jaw and sniffs her lips. “She’s stoned
on Alyx. I used to hit that fucker when I wanted a buzz. It wouldn’t take much.
And she was weak to begin with. And drained him. Put Ophelia in her crypt. Let
her fade away. She’ll never be any saner.”
My
sisters nod. “Sugar, sugar, sugar don’t you laugh. Driving is flying and the
highway’s my whore.” Ophelia launches into song, writhing against the ropes
that hold her. “Sugar, sugar, sugar take my breath. Your kisses are poison
and I want to drink more.”
I
will be a ministering angel, while she lies howling. I close my eyes to bless
her.
The
moist night air at the empty abbey insinuates its chill through my self-less
self in a way even the cold of the grave could not. The spectral cows don’t see
me, but unnerve me more than Gaehod’s empty office or Alyx’s corpse. My
avenging sisters are carrying Ophelia to her grappling grave.
Above
me, the Irish night seems endlessly heavier than it did when I walked with
Dominic here. I circle the ruined building, trying to locate the glassless
window he looked through to see a star as home, but the stones blend with the
grass, and the walls with the night, and I’m afraid to walk along the boundary
fence because of the cows. I must inhabit all this, partake of this, if I hope
to love him.
It
could destroy me.
I
climb the bell tower’s spiraling stairs to stand at the peak of the roofless
church. It cannot hold me. How can anything?
I
flex my wings. They stretch like a fighter’s arms from the taut center of my
back. Spread, they are so formed for flight that the light breeze tugs me into
it. I lean my naked breasts into the air and raise my chin, my hollow throat
stretched against the emptiness. My fingertips curl around the soft flesh of
wing ridges, the muscles of my arm wrapping upward to lend the strength of
bicep and belly, forearm and chest to the span of my extending wings.
I
let slip. They beat. I am flying.
Flight
is not a glide, but the muscular swim of a fluid body through living air. My
every sinew and thought is lost to the tides of space riding me up and down,
driving ascent and gravity, pulling and pushing me and the void I fly across. I
leave Earth behind me. I am mastery, pure and potent. I am desire and denial. I
am inner contradiction. I own my entire soul.
The
Atlantic is cold and distant, swollen like a headache, folding wave on icy wave
under me. I flew here once before, cocooned in metal, beside a prattling
Persephone, winging our way home to Hell. Now I will make the unfathomable my
own, and be forever both buoyed and anchored by its breaking within me.
I
pike my body, pull tight my wings around me, and make a comet of my cloud-light
flight.
I
plummet.
My
body rattles madly. I cannot hold my wings. I am knocked backwards, see the
moon-drenched sky receding, then thrown over again, wings torn back, torn
apart, ripped from me. Blood flies into the space behind. Air drives into my
lungs so fast it drowns me. Falling out of control, out of grace—I am free.
Falling.
12
VERTIGO
Dominic
threw the thin hospital blankets from his restless body in disgust, and jumped
out of bed. He shook himself, touched a sore place on his forehead, and bounced
on the balls of his feet. If his memory didn’t start coming back today, it was
likely to stay gone.
He
was sick of pajamas. He was tired of sleep, of doctors, of the machinery of
medicine. He plucked the irritating pulse oximeter from his hand and unpeeled
the sticky electrode tabs from his chest with fingers that seemed to retain
more memory than his mind. He spread his hands and looked at them. They were
strong, but not callused, skilled. He had been a doctor. Dysart had told him
so. And an athlete. He didn’t need any confirmation of that beyond his body’s
indignation at his current lack of activity. He wanted to run.
“Dr.
O’Shaughnessy?” His pretty, black-haired nurse poked her sharp face into the
room.
“Good
morning, Clare. How does a man get a pair of running shoes in this place?”
“Did
you disable your pulse ox, Dr. O’Shaughnessy?” It was remarkable to Dominic how
stern the Irish young could be. He grinned at the beaky girl and sat down on
the edge of his knotted bed.
“Yes.
Sorry, Clare.”
“Were
you having the bad dreams again?” Her brow constricted in concern.
Dominic
nodded. The past two days had been a restless parade of visits and visitors.
Specialists, nurses, scans, tests, and their incomprehensible results were
interrupted only by the necessity of rehashing it all with Dysart during
visiting hours. When he slept, his mind tangled without context to make sense
of it all.
“Your
mum phoned from the airport. She’s on the ground in Dublin and should be here
in another hour.”
“Could
I please get some clothes before then?”
“She’s
your mother.”
“Please?”
“I’ll
see what I can do.”
“Thank
you.”
Clare’s
slender, tapered fingers re-clipped the monitor and pushed Dominic back toward
the stack of pillows on his bed.
“Maybe
your landlord can help. He’s so lovely. Came by t’other day. Maybe he could
bring you some of your things.” She regarded the discarded EEG pads and
shrugged.
“I’d
like to see him today,” Dominic said.
“That
should be easy enough.” Clare untangled the blankets from their frustrated ball
on the floor. “I’ll ring him for you, it’s a local number.”
“Thank
you.”
Clare
positioned pillows behind Dominic’s back and the blankets across his knees with
the obscure precision of a mother bird. “You should try and get yourself a wee
bit more sleep. It’s not quite morning.”
Dominic
gazed out the window at the raw, late April sky. “You’ll call him right away?”
he asked.
“If
you want me to. I’ll ask him about your clothes.”
“No,
that doesn’t matter, just tell him to come as soon as he can.”
In
the reflective pane of his gray window, Dominic watched Clare tuck the blankets
at his feet between the plastic-cased mattress and the metal bedrail. She
turned at the door and smiled at him. Her gentleness and warmth seemed fragile
in the window’s cold glass. Dominic shut his eyes against the sky, which
lightened into the faded night that passed for a Dublin spring morning.
I am
sitting before I wake up, dizzy on the floor beside my bed.
“Are
you all right?” an old voice calls from another room.
My
throat is too dry to answer. I stagger to my feet and grope for the edge of the
bed. Then I fall back to the floor again. I reach up to find the tiny stem of a
bedside table lamp, and twist it. Electric yellow light opens the old darkness,
illuminating my broad, tumbled, black-covered bed. Shiny rock band posters on
thin paper adorn the fresh plaster wall. I squint at a singer in bruise-colored
dreads—but I can’t place the man.
“Hello?”
An old man is knocking at my closed door.
“I’m
okay,” I say, but I don’t sound it. My voice is raw, and the insides of my
mouth taste like blood.
“May
I come in?”
“Sure.”
He
kneels beside the bed. I’m wearing sweatpants that are too ugly to be mine.
“Can
you walk? It’s important to get on your feet as soon as possible.”
“Okay,”
I say. He wraps a deceptively slender arm around my waist, below the
blood-sticky, damaged places on my back, and pulls me to standing. My thighs
run water. My feet are heavy red stone. I push them across the carpet with my
will.
“Vanity,”
I say, pointing.
He
helps me reach the bench and I collapse on the little stool. I draw a slow
breath to steady myself and look up. The large, round mirror balances on a low
table with two drawers on either side. It’s a modern piece of furniture, maybe
seventy years old and painted a high-gloss black. I look into the silvered
glass. Ringed with old makeup and fresh bruises, my eyes are the gray of the
cold, early morning sky behind me.
In
the other room, a cell phone rings, and the old man leaves me between the
window and the mirror, watching myself.
“Yes,”
he says into the phone. “I’ll be right there.”
I
close my eyes and start to fall.
“Dominic,
let me beg you, one last time, to reconsider.”
Dominic
stood with his hands jammed into the pockets of the jeans Gaehod had brought
for him. In them, and his own sweatshirt and running shoes, he was even more
certain of his decision. He wanted his memories back, and he trusted the
stranger seated across from him to do what his doctors were afraid to tell him
had already slipped from probability.
But
the old man looked tragic. “The restoration will be complete you understand,”
he said. “I cannot pick and choose what to leave lost and what to retrieve. It
will all come back to you. All of it.”
Dominic
shrugged. “It doesn’t seem to be in my nature to be content with not knowing.”
“Yes,
I was afraid of that.”
“How
will it work?”
“You
must make certain that we are not interrupted.”
Dominic
felt a thrill of dread, but set his jaw. “All right,” he said. He had learned
enough about himself in the last three days to be intensely uncomfortable
taking the recommendations of a non-scientist over those of doctors and
professors, but he had seen enough of memory, living without it, to know it
dwelt in a landscape between science and something else. His doctors had done
everything they could within their kingdom. He must venture into the other now.
“I
must go and retrieve a few things,” Gaehod said sadly.
“All
right.”
The
old man wrapped a heavy cloak around his graceful shoulders, glancing
distractedly around the sterile hospital room. “Objects and artifacts to
ground. Signs and symbols are uplifting,” he sighed.
“What?”
Dominic was seized with a momentary apprehension. What sort of bizarre
procedure was this man planning? Signs and symbols? “What did you say?”
he asked again.
“Nothing.
You need such different things, arcane and mundane . . .”
“I
do?”
“Not
‘I,’ ‘we.’ ”
“You
and I?”
The
old man stopped his preparations. He stood motionless a long time. Then he
reached up and placed both his slender hands on Dominic’s broad shoulders and
looked directly into the younger man’s eyes. “Once upon a time . . . No, never
mind. There’s a vast difference, my friend, between restraint and sacrifice.”
Every
time I close my eyes, I am falling again, so I get back out of bed.
My
room is a TV set. Everything in it is new. I find a pair of jeans and a NYU
sweatshirt in a wad behind the door. The soft, fleecy interior of the
sweatshirt sits familiarly against my warm skin. I put on the only pair of
shoes in the closet without a price sticker on the sole and twist open the
plastic blinds. The window lets in anemic light and offers a view of the
quaint, crumbling brick wall across a narrow alley from me.
The
wall paint of the kitchenette and small sitting room is fresh as a murder site,
sins covered, but not cleansed. Beside the sink, a stack of freshly scrubbed
pots, terrines, gelatin molds, and a glistening steel mandoline drip dry on a
kitchen towel. A small white and red teapot sits as centerpiece on the pretty
kitchen table, which also holds a large glass mixing bowl in which dismembered
roses float. A gleaming automatic coffeemaker, with a sleek pneumatic hum, discharges
the last of a steaming stream of fresh coffee into a pressure-locked aluminum
canister. I pour myself a cup.
Slender
bottles of champagne, vacuum-sealed tins of caviar, and cheeses of every
imaginable shape stand in neat rows in the stainless steel fridge along with
several foil-wrapped packets I don’t open. The dishwasher is empty. The pantry
is stocked with gold seal balsamic vinegar, black truffle oil, and dried morel
mushrooms. I tear the top off a paper bag of unrefined cane sugar and spoon some
into my mug.
I
deduce from the neatly folded blanket on the sofa that the old man had been
sleeping out here when my fall from bed woke him. I sit on the springy new
cushions and leaf through a magazine, but I’m hungry. Beside the door, a
frameless mirror is mounted above an antique table of flowing wooden vines. It
holds a single brass key on a slender chain and a U.S. passport. I put the
photo up beside my face in the mirror. When I’m finally able to look away from
my reflection, I take the handbag from the doorknob. It holds a camera, a thick
wallet, a hand-drawn map and a blood-red lipstick. I paint my mouth in the
mirror and smile at Olivia Wright. The brass key locks the door behind me.
The
hard muscles along Dominic’s spine were gripped so fiercely that when Madalene
Wright burst into his hospital room, her interruption was almost a release. A
child knows his mother before light or air, and every understanding of the
wider world is anchored in that primary connection. An hour ago, Dominic had
greeted his mother without context or history. Difficult though he knew
mother-child negotiations could be, he had found being a stranger’s son almost
unbearably painful.
“Madalene,
I’d like you to meet my mother.” The tall, expensive woman at the door extended
a hand to the short, practical woman by the window. She rose to take Madalene’s
gloved fingers in a small shake. Dominic recalled the gesture’s origin as an
above-elbow clasp between warriors evaluating for bicep strength and concealed
knives.
“Maeve
O’Shaughnessy,” his mother said, easily stepping into the gaping chasm
Dominic’s absent memory had opened.
“That’s
a lovely name, Maeve, are you Irish?”
“My
people come from here, but a long way back. It was my great-grandmother’s name.
Won’t you sit down, Madalene?”
“No,
thank you. I can’t stay. In fact, I was only stopping in to say good-bye.”
Madalene turned a radiant face to Dominic. “My goddaughter is checking into a
treatment program—we’re all thrilled! But the program director has taken her
passport, so I’m off now to see her get settled in. Then I’m flying back to New
York on Monday to pack up her things and get her out of her sublet.”
“An
inpatient program?”
“Yes.”
“Medicinally
or behaviorally based?”
“I’m
sure I don’t know, my dear. I really must be going. It’s quite a drive.”
Madalene smiled benignly and swiveled to face Dominic’s mother. “So very nice
to have met you, Maeve.”
“I
want to thank you for all you’ve done for my Dominic.” Maeve smiled as smoothly
back. “You’ve been so kind, the private room, the clothes . . .”
“Not
at all. I am still indebted to your son. I’ll be back in a month to check on
both our children.”
“Lovely.
I’ll see you then.”
As
Madalene left, Dominic’s mother turned back to him. “You know this program her
daughter enrolled in, don’t you?”
“It’s
experimental,” Dominic answered.
“You’ve
always been drawn to the radical thinkers,” his mother smiled. “I remember the Times
article about your Dr. Dysart. What was it they called him?”
“I
don’t remember.”
“No,
of course not. I’m sorry, darling. It was ‘enigmatic, brilliant, controversial
and vilified,’ I believe. The same article referred to you as ‘Dysart’s
charismatic and rambunctious assistant, who may just be the brains behind this
genius operation.’ ”
“Why
don’t you show me the next album, Mom?”
From
an oversized suitcase sprawled across his hospital bed, Dominic’s mother
extracted another leather-clad binder.
“I’m
so glad Dysart suggested I bring these,” she said. In profile, she looked
younger, her wild white hair could be stylish rather than harried. But Dominic
didn’t know. He re-seated himself at his mother’s side, re-cramping his neck to
read the Roman numeral on the book’s stout spine. “I’m sure he didn’t mean for
you to bring them all.” He smiled. “It must have been quite a chore wrangling
that many scrapbooks onto an airplane. Did you even pack clothes?”
“In
my carry-on.”
His
mother opened the third album to the first page, reading the dates inscribed,
but ignoring the Latin notation in Dominic’s stilted, adolescent handwriting.
“You would have been fourteen.”
“The
year you gave me that Nikon for my birthday.”
“Well,
you developed such an interest in photography the year before.” She leafed past
the front page inscription, Noli esse incredulus sed fidelis, to the
first archival-quality sheet of simple, English declaratives under photos. “My
house: front door.” “My dog: Twin.”
“I
never understood why you named him that,” Maeve mused. “Plenty of dogs have
only two-puppy litters.”
“I
know,” said Dominic, “but Thomas was different.”
“That
was what your sister named him! Are you beginning to remember?” The unfamiliar
lines of his mother’s hopeful smile told Dominic, in a language more ancient
than his adolescent secret code, of the aging woman’s private struggle. Be
no longer unbelieving, but believe.
“I
think, maybe, I am.”
The
famous teahouse makes liberal use of the peculiar Dublin physics that allow an
almost infinite catacomb of vertical space within very concrete horizontal
parameters. It irritates me.
Stairs
wind up and down, and an arcane calculus based on whether you want tea or
supper determines whether you sit above or below street level. Since each word
has a different meaning in Ireland than it does in the states, I just tell the
skinny hostess I’m hungry and go where she takes me.
My
plump waitress addresses the gentleman seated across from me by name, calls me
“luv,” and says she’s Kate. She drops off my neighbor’s ticket—handwritten on
an unlined slip of notepaper—and deposits a plastic basket of Irish brown bread
before me. She pats the back of my pale hand and says she’ll be back directly
for my order.
I
sink my teeth into the dense, moist Irish texture which eclipses flavor, and
close my eyes. An open void swallows me, hurtling up through story after story
of historic wood-floored teahouse. I tear my wheeling eyes open to meet my
waitress’s concerned gaze. Her soft hand touches my sore shoulder.
“Are
you ill, luv?” she asks.
“No,”
I croak and clear my throat. “A little giddy.”
“You’re
American,” she notes and I nod. “Jetlagged?”
I
nod again.
“Flying
sure can take it out of you.”
“Yes,”
I say.
“Have
something to eat. You’ll feel better.”
I
give her fleshy hand a little squeeze. “Thank you,” I say.
She
returns the squeeze and bustles away. I smile reassuringly at the business suit
my waitress called James. His elaborately bow-tied silk cravat protrudes beyond
the horizontal plane of his tuberous nose.
The
soup, when it comes, is simple and rich. It smells of field and barn, carrot,
barley, meat and—of course—potato. It is as Irish as Kate. She takes my empty
bowl away.
“Do
you feel better?”
“I
feel wonderful,” I tell her and point questioningly at the bright blue bandage
across her chubby thumb.
“So
we don’t lose them in the food,” she chuckles and pockets the extravagant tip
I’ve left.
I
walk out into the late afternoon chaos and theater of Grafton Street, feeling
fully nourished and grounded. I have one more thing to do in Dublin, and then
only one place left on this earth I must go.
Dominic
had stopped listening to Dr. Dysart, acutely aware of how little he knew about
himself. He was nervous, and didn’t know what indications were typical of him,
what he needed to conceal. Only two hours remained of visiting hours, and
Gaehod had said he would need at least ninety uninterrupted minutes alone with
him. Dysart’s blue eyes glinted with mischief through his spiny brows and
Dominic returned the man’s discolored grin, although he had missed the joke.
“I
need to ask you a favor,” Dominic said, and was surprised by how quickly his
mentor’s expression changed. Whatever humor the doctor had been sharing was as
forced at Dominic’s had been.
“Anything
you need, my dear boy, anything at all.”
“Thank
you. It’s a bit awkward, really.” Dominic reminded himself what Gaehod had told
him—a fiction as close as possible to fact was best.
Dysart’s
intelligent eyes betrayed no anticipation of what Dominic was about to say, and
for a moment Dominic hesitated. He steeled himself. He knew very little about
the man he had been before his still unexplained injuries landed him in the
neuro ward of St. James’ Hospital, but he was absolutely certain he was about
to betray that prior self.
“Our
lab hadn’t been working on any medicinal formulae, had we?”
“Oh,
some theoretical ones. You know how it is, speculation really. What compounds
might be efficacious, what current drugs we might use off-label, or in
combination, but we were several years away. Why?”
Dominic
took a deep breath. There was only one thing he could trade for Dysart’s
guaranteed absence through the end of visiting hours. He lowered his voice. “I
found some pills.”
“What
sort of pills?”
“Homemade
capsules.”
The
old man’s marbled jaw fell.
“I
think I was taking them. Experimenting on myself.”
“Jesus,
Dominic!” Dysart sat as if electrocuted. “Could that be what happened to you? A
chemically induced amnesia?”
“I
don’t know.”
“Obviously,
you’d suffered some external injury . . . the blood loss, fractures . . . but
the brain scans have all been negative . . .” The old man chuckled. “Our own
Albert Hofman! Who would have thought it of you, Dominic? You were always so
obedient.”
“Apparently
not.”
“No.
How gratifying.”
“I
thought you’d be angry.”
“Oh,
I’m sure I should be. And I certainly would not have condoned it, had I known.
I would have insisted you stop. It’s professionally useless and personally
dangerous, as I obviously don’t need to tell you. But I must say, my dear boy,
I’m pleased by your daring. And your dedication.”
“There’s
one capsule left,” Dominic said.
Dysart
leaned in eagerly. “And you would like me to have it analyzed?”
“Do
you know any place local that—”
Dysart
sprang to his flat feet. It startled Dominic to see such mass move with such
speed. He suppressed a grin. That had been easier than he had expected.
“Of
course, son! I have a few folks over at Trinity who would love a chance to do
me a favor. A phone call or two, and I’m certain we could find a lab willing to
let me borrow a bit of space tonight. And if not, we’ll see what doors
Madalene’s last name unlocks!”
“You
know Madalene?”
“I’d
be glad for an excuse to know her better.” Dysart winked and scurried away.
Dominic pushed his feet into the new running shoes Gaehod had brought him that
morning and went looking for Clare in the little gray and aqua nurse’s lounge.
The time pressure squeezed his throat, and the minutes beat against his rib
cage like an impatient pulse. Gaehod had been very clear. They must not be
interrupted. Whatever weird ritual the mysterious old man was planning, he was
very keen that they be left alone for the full ninety minutes he said it would
take, and time is the last possession a hospital returns to its patients.
“Dr.
O’Shaughnessy! Whatever are you doing?” Clare’s keen black eyes darted up to
meet his.
“Going
running.”
“Absolutely
not.” She plunked her knitting down on the table and turned her chair to face
her patient.
“I
can’t sleep.”
“I
can ask the doctor to write you something for that.”
“I
don’t want pills Clare, I want exercise.”
“So
you propose to just trot about my corridors?”
“Until
I’m tired enough to drop.”
“I
cannot allow that.”
Dominic
leaned wearily against the cold, tile wall, closed his eyes, and listened to
the little lounge refrigerator’s dull, mechanical keening. He waited. Frail and
nervous though she was, Clare had clearly chosen nursing out of a genuine care
for others. Dominic felt her eyes touch his face and he sagged deliberately,
making his best play for her compassion.
“Clare,”
he said, meeting her eyes at last, “I’m exhausted. There has been a constant
parade of visitors and doctors through my room since I regained consciousness.
And I’m certain that I loved my friends and family, but they all feel like
strangers to me now.”
“I
never thought of that. It must be like entertaining guests for you, rather than
visiting with family.”
Dominic
nodded. “And the doctors . . .”
“I
understand.” Clare stood up. “You go back to your room now and relax. No
running, but take a shower. Go to bed. I won’t let anyone disturb you. Not even
the doctors. Not for a couple of hours, anyway.”
“Can
you really do that?”
Clare’s
dark eyes glinted with determination. “Aye, I can do that,” she said. “You get
some rest, Dr. O’Shaughnessy.”
Dominic
smiled wearily and walked to the door. “Why won’t you use my first name,
Clare?”
“I
remember who you were, Doctor.”
“And
you use my title to remind me, is that it?”
Clare
regarded him unblinking. “Go to bed, Doctor.”
“Yes,
ma’am.”
“You
have my personal guarantee of at least an hour to yourself. But I can only keep
the doctors away for so long. They begin last rounds at nine. I can stall them,
but I can’t stop them.”
“Thanks
for taking me under your wing this way, Clare.”
“Never
you mind. I hope it helps.”
Dominic
glanced back at the nurse, but she had resumed her knitting and did not meet
his eyes. He retreated to his room, to find Gaehod there, dressed for safari in
white linen, already engrossed in his mysterious work. Dominic closed the door.
The
old innkeeper had laid out an array of strange supplies on the striped plane of
Dominic’s hospital bed. A slender Chinese calligraphy brush and an ancient
carved bone flask waited beside seven neat piles of vellum, hide, clay, and
paper. Gaehod was crouched over the red leather-clad diary when Dominic came
in. He looked up, but seeing Dominic, gestured for him to sit, and began
leafing through a clearly decades-older, yellowing, blue-lined notepad spidered
in rough semi-literate scrawl. Gaehod made a final notation and looked up.
“Very
well. I think we’re ready.”
“Okay.”
Dominic squared his shoulders. “What do you need me to do?”
“Nothing,
right now. I need to prepare the window.”
“Can
I help?”
“No,
I don’t think so.” Gaehod opened the hinged brass lid of the squat, bone pot
and dipped the brush’s unevenly colored hairs into it. With careful strokes, he
began painting the hospital window in minute, swooping red symbols.
“What
does that mean?” Dominic asked.
“It’s
a name,” Gaehod answered, preoccupied. Beneath it, he drew another symbol.
Then, taking a step to his left, he made another sign a little lower on the
glass. “Another name,” he explained without turning around. He drew four
figures directly beneath the name, and moved left again and farther down again.
Dominic was surprised by how beautiful each symbol was, and the way the deep
red ink stayed completely opaque and glistening, but did not run or harden.
Gaehod
worked counterclockwise, creating a circle of stacked symbols on the window.
Each stack was crowned with a unique name, but in the columns below, Dominic
began to notice a few repeated motifs, a pattern in the incomprehensible signs.
“What
does that symbol mean?” he asked, as Gaehod finished drawing one of the more
frequent symbols on the glass.
“It’s
the sigil ‘heartbreak.’ ”
Dominic
snorted. “I seem to have had more than my share.”
Gaehod
consulted the next stack of papers on the bed and shook his roan head. “No.
Below each name is a list of pivots, the points where a life turns.” He dipped
the brush into the bone pot again and returned to the window. Dominic watched
the stabbing liquid lines.
“They
all look painful,” he said.
“Pain
is a catalyst for change.” Gaehod bent to draw an abbreviated column at the
lowest point on the window.
“Not
all changes are good,” Dominic said, his lingering eyes on the brilliant red
knife-lines of heartbreak.
“No,”
Gaehod agreed, consulting the next stack of papers on the bed, “but even good
change can be painful.”
Dominic
watched the red ink clinging to the motley bristles of the brush. The cord
binding them looked new, although the handle was ancient.
“Did
you make that brush yourself, Gaehod?”
“Yes.”
“Especially
for tonight?”
“Yes.”
Gaehod
glanced at Dominic and turned to the hospital window again.
“Gaehod,
is that my hair?” Dominic asked.
Gaehod
dipped the brush in the ink and drew another name with another line of symbols.
He worked swiftly, with complete concentration, and Dominic didn’t interrupt
again, watching the red circle close, searching for patterns in the columns and
letter shapes.
“There’s
the symbol for heartbreak again,” Dominic noted.
“Heartbreak
is necessary to a complete life. You can’t fall in love until your heart’s been
broken. You must stand on the splintered pieces to reach the first rung. Come
here, Dominic.”
Dominic
walked to the glyph-crowded window, his heart thundering. Every animal part of
him, brain-stem to fingertip, was alight with danger.
“It’s
time.” Gaehod said. His face was deeply lined with fatigue or anguish, but he
did not ask Dominic if he was certain he wanted to proceed, despite clearly
wishing that he would not. “Look at your eyes in the glass,” he said.
Dominic
looked at his reflection. He looked ragged, unshaven, and weary. Then he met
his own eyes and gazed into their unfamiliarity.
“Now
look out the window,” Gaehod said.
Dominic
toggled his focus and saw the rain-polished roofs and streets of Dublin.
“Put
your left hand on the top symbol.” Gaehod’s voice was soft, a subtle whisper,
almost more in Dominic’s thoughts than hearing. He touched hesitant fingers to
the cold glass.
“See
your eyes.”
They
were darker somehow, and his nose longer and strong. His face, lashes, and
brows, where they bordered his vision, seemed younger, but unfamiliar still.
“Look
through the window.”
The
city’s spires and depressions, shades of darkness, profiles of commerce, swam
into focus.
“Look
in your eyes.”
Dominic’s
focus switched, blurring for a moment, the red circle at the periphery of vision,
but he did not blink, and black eyes met his gaze again.
“Look
through the window.”
His
raised hand on the glass kept him from falling into the night outside, where
buildings, like trees, stretched endlessly up.
“Look
through your eyes.”
The
whirling red circle rimmed his vision and the glass, like water, rippling,
showed him himself reflected, deep eyes, almost green, beneath long lashes,
still unblinking.
“See
through the window.”
Back
again, the switching focus, dizzying, the lights shining, city smoking,
shivering.
“See
through your eyes.”
“The
window.”
“Your
eyes.”
“The
window.”
Gaehod’s
voice commanded. Dominic’s focus shifted. The red ring around him blurred. The
night, his vision, his open eyes, the glass between them, everything began to
dissolve and whisper, blur and seep. Dominic caught glimpses of different eyes,
none of them—and all of them—his own, reflected back and across nights of
cities and forests and towns.
“Sweep
your hand in a circle across the glass.”
Dominic
obeyed, his stiff arm twisting in the socket.
“Again.”
It
was easier the second time, although he still did not blink his eyes. His palm
slid frictionless across the cool glass. “Again.”
His
arm flooded with the heat of movement returning, tingling up from his fingers,
smearing the glass. He blinked. Staggered. Shambhu, Bel-nirari, Gnith Cas.
Brother!
Priestess!
Gaehod’s
arms came around his violently convulsing shoulders. Leaning against Gaehod’s
maternal softness, Dominic backed numbly from the window. His arm fell heavily
away from generation after generation. He stumbled against the edge of his
metal hospital bed and let Gaehod ease his exhausted body down. Antonius
Musa, Huáng Z?ngx?, Venerio lo Grato.
Mother!
Ghita!
The
man’s tender hands pulled the blankets up, and Dominic closed his smoking eyes.
The metal door whispered closed.
Dominic
looked through the wiped-clean glass, ready to continue, learning nothing but
the unique lines of cityscapes and faces. His searching eyes closed against the
unending night, willing to keep solving nothing, fighting and building, with
his stubborn strength against the vast and constant void of love and loss
repeating. It had been so much, so distant and enduring. Heartbreaking. And
yes, magnificent.
13
LEGEND
The
heiress’s godchild is divine. At least that’s what my tattoo says. Okay, if I’m
honest, it just suggests it. But true twenty-first-century girl that I am,
literal is my only metaphor.
Dublin’s
tattoo parlors cluster into a few square blocks like American churches in a
one-stoplight town. I began my pilgrimage late on a southwest corner and was
turned away from the first four doors I entered. But Dani has tattooed over
surgery scars before and only warns me about the pain. “You’ll wish you were
dead,” he tells me. “The nerves are closer to the surface in scars.”
He
tells me to break the work into sessions, but I offer him twice his posted rate
to finish tonight. It takes nine hours. We don’t talk. He’s grudgingly
impressed that I don’t make a sound while the needle drills scar tissue and
bone, and he stops only to pee. He doesn’t hit on me. I’m not his type.
It’s
early morning when Dani finishes. He offers me a pint, but I say I need to get
on the road, and he understands. I had wanted to go to Glendalough, to see its
famous bell tower pictured on the tourist guides, but I’m following the
hand-drawn map instead, driving into the heart of Ireland on the small
roads—unnamed on map or sign—that vein the land. Several times I stop and get
out of the car to look around or just listen. I am absurd, as more of the
landscape unfurls, hopping in and out of the car to stare at each new convolute
and coil, somewhere between inspiration and idiocy. It seems impossible that
the vampire bars of New York that I left behind so recently could belong to the
same world I now inhabit.
I am
waylaid again and again by the glory of this strange land. For miles, as far as
I can see in any direction, the road I’m driving is the only sign of human
work. I leave the rental in the road; there is no shoulder to pull over onto.
In fact, there are no lanes—but there are also no cars. I’m staggered by the
indefinite expanse and silence and beauty. This landscape could be anytime—the
earth before mankind, the Garden before the fall. And yet, I feel at home inside
it.
The
Rock of Cashel is a geologically drastic stone outcrop burst from Tipperary’s
lush and gentle landscape. I imagine people have lived or worshiped from its
lofty vantage as long as there have been people, but I’m just glad you can see
it from a long way off. This is where my map delivers me.
I
spend an hour and a half systematically following every road that radiates from
the rock. On the fourth of five roads, I chance upon a ruined abbey, late in
the afternoon, a little off the road and across a field of grazing cows, dull
and placid in the un-mystic sun. Behind the church, I discover two headstones,
and stretch out in the soft grass to watch the prototypical spring clouds in
the bright blue sky. Tomorrow will be May. There are more cold days to come,
but right now, the sun is low and warm. I’m deeply relaxed, almost slipping
into sleep, when it occurs to me that interred beneath me are men who buried
their lust beneath their desire for union with a perfect god and so managed,
their whole lives, to avoid sleeping with a woman. It seems cruel of me to lie
above them now, so I get up. “May you sleep ever with the angels,” I pray.
I am
climbing the abbey’s interrupted walls again, when I see a man across the
field. Something in his confident stride suggests urgency. He is not wandering
or exploring. He is pursuing. His shoulders are broad, and his hands ball into
taut fists. He will not be brooked, whatever his search. I put my head over the
parapet to watch him.
He’s
handsome, hair glinting red in the sunset’s bloody light. There’s something of
the warrior in his lithe body, and he jumps the low stone wall easily. He stops
at the ruined threshold. His eyes, blue as a sword’s edge, run across the
edifice, but he doesn’t see me above it. He walks through the doorless opening
in the wall I sit atop, into the grass-carpeted nave. He looks up, gazing
through an empty stone window toward the cloudless, blue sky. I walk
soundlessly down the spiraling stair.
“Hi,”
I say quietly, not to startle him.
“Olivia,”
Dominic whispered. He turned from the window and found her dressed for roaming
the Irish countryside in jeans and a sweatshirt, wearing running shoes in the
soft grass.
“Hi,”
she said again. She was slender and pale, beautiful in an unexplainable way,
but almost shy, looking at him and then down. He took a step to put his arms
around her again—at last, but she stepped away.
“Do
I know you?” she said.
For
the first time since he woke up in the hospital almost a week ago, Dominic felt
afraid. How, after everything, could she be lost to him now?
“I’m
sorry. I have a terrible memory,” she said. “Please don’t take it personally. I
didn’t mean to hurt your feelings.” She shrugged prettily. “Too many drugs,”
she smiled.
“Olivia—”
He searched her flawless face.
She
smiled gently—warm, but a little sad. “Tell me how we know each other?”
“You
. . .” he whispered, unable to meet her oceanic eyes. “You’re my angel.”
She
laughed, clear and brilliant. “Not at all. Just a concerned stranger.”
Rage
welled through Dominic. If he could believe in God, he would hate Him for this.
“No,” he ground out, striding away from her, away from the no-longer-moonlit
abbey, away from idiocy, idealism, and undying love. He would have killed
Gaehod in that moment, for convincing him to hope. Or Dysart for cautioning him
against it.
“Wait!”
She followed him to the boundary of ancient edifice and present pasture. “Let’s
sit down. You can tell me everything, okay?” She patted the rough stones of the
wall beside her. “The cows won’t hurt us, will they?”
“No.
Olivia . . .” How could he tell her anything at all?
Dominic
could not make himself obey her, and stayed standing, silent, twisting a small
rock from the low wall between his fingers. “When I was fourteen,” he said at
last, “I dug up two million dollars in Civil War-era gold on my grandparents’
ranch.”
“Wow!
Weren’t you the lucky kid?”
“Maybe.”
Dominic threw the stone hard away from himself. It bounded off the church wall
and vanished into the grass. “Or maybe I remembered where I had buried it a
hundred and fifty years before, afraid to be hung as a thief if anyone found
that kind of gold with a black man.”
“Past-life
memories?”
“Maybe.
Maybe coincidence.”
“Which?”
He
looked at her. The setting sun burned the sky above her, staining the clouds,
and even the air between them, a honeyed red. Utterly beautiful, black wisps of
hair blowing in silken shadows across her heavenly pale skin. She was asking
him for more than his opinion.
“Both,”
he answered.
Her
smile reached into Dominic’s torment, and quieted a seething place.
“That’s
not a very scientific answer,” he admitted, looking down from her soft beauty
to his hard hands. He couldn’t bear her right now.
“And
I’m a scientist. I’ve spent my adult life and most of the proceeds from that
gold I found searching for testable, concrete answers to simpler questions, and
all I can tell you is that the infinite reaches of outer space are well-mapped
compared to what we know about the human mind. Each of us carries a vast and
disobedient terra incognita inside our own skulls.”
Her bubbling
laugh released something in the deep muscles of his shoulder. “Yeah,” she said,
meeting his eyes frankly, “it’s unruly inside my head, too.”
The
spectra of the setting sun framed her like a halo, making Dominic squint
against the apocalyptic red. He sat down beside her, so that looking at her no
longer blinded him.
“But
we’ll figure it out eventually, right?” she asked.
“I
don’t know. It’s possible our brains are wired in such a way that we aren’t
capable of understanding how our brains are wired.”
“There’s
something magical in that.”
“And
even . . .” Dominic pressed on. “Even if science gets to the place where we
know, on a molecular level, the mechanics of thought, it won’t tell us anything
definitive about the purpose of thinking, or why, abstractly, we are capable of
abstraction. Science is good with fact, but it’s useless with meaning.” He
glanced at her uncertainly.
“Look,”
he tried again, “it’s a fact I found a rotting box of stamped gold bricks. But
what did it mean? Hell if I know.”
Olivia
smiled. “It meant”—she poked him playfully on the arm—“that you’d never have to
work again.”
“I
gave most of the money to the place I went to grad school.”
She
poked him again. “That means you love your work.”
“I
love—” Dominic caught her hand midpoke. The sun was sinking, taking its warmth
with it. The night would be cold. “I used to think knowledge and love were
linked,” he said to her soft fingers. “I thought we could only hate what we
could not comprehend, and that I loved knowledge.”
“But
now?” Her fingers interlaced with his.
“Now,
I think the opposite.” He bravely met her bottomless eyes again. “Now, I think,
I love a mystery.”
“Love
to untangle it? Solve it?” Her eyes were gloaming gray, the color of the
darkening Irish sky behind her, and as vast.
“Now
I love learning, not knowledge.”
“You
love what you don’t understand?”
“I
love not understanding.” Olivia did not look away. Dominic remembered her
piercing teeth in his throat and the soft ashes of his death. He remembered her
searing embrace in the place between consciousness and death, where every touch
from her had wracked him, but where he fought to stay. He would shoulder his
curse again happily—face infinite deaths, to stay alive to her. He looked at
their clasped hands.
The
last flaming sliver of sun sank below a distant hill, and Olivia shivered.
“What about you?” he asked, his voice tight. “What do you love?”
She
stayed silent a while, then lifted his arm by the hand she held and wrapped it
around her slender shoulders. “I used to complain,” she said quietly, “that I
wanted only impossible things.”
“But
now?”
She
rested her dark head against his shoulder. “Now, I think I want what I have.”
“You’re
talking about acceptance, choosing things as they are?”
“No.”
The night was darkening quickly. Dominic strengthened his grip on Olivia’s
small body, tucking it against his own. He couldn’t see her face, but he knew
it would be twisted in the delicate knot of brows and forehead he had seen
before when she faced danger. “What if mysteries want to be understood?” she
asked softly against his chest.
“If
they were understood, they wouldn’t be mysteries.”
“I
know.”
“So
it’s a good thing the curious are inept, huh?”
“Love
blinds them,” she whispered.
“Yes,”
he said.
Yes,
he loved her. And it blinded him. He closed his eyes, and could still see her
angelic face.
“I
actually did recognize you,” she said shyly. “I’ve seen you in the papers.
You’re the brilliant American neuroscientist. My god-mother gives money to your
university in America. You came over here to do some work for her, but were
brutally attacked in the process. You’ve been in a coma.”
“That’s
not who I am. I am Reborn, cursed through generations—”
“You’re
not cursed!”
“And
you are the angel of desire—”
“Dominic!”
Olivia sprang from the wall to face him, her deep eyes reflecting the light of
the just-rising moon. “Stop!”
“Olivia
. . .” He hesitated. If he believed her, if he was just a scientist—and there
was no proof otherwise, since Trinity had retrieved nothing from his
blood-soaked machine—if he believed her, how could he explain the welter of
emotions, desire and terror, tenderness and rage, scouring him? He stood beside
her and closed his eyes.
Her
long, cool fingers wrapped his still-bruised ones. “Why did you close your
eyes?” she whispered.
“I don’t
need them now.”
“When
I close my eyes,” she said, “I get dizzy.”
Dominic
peered into hers again. “Neurological?”
“A
side effect of cult-deprogramming hypnosis.” She shrugged. “Or a very long
fall.” Her steady gray eyes held his, her hands soft but strong in his own. She
was asking him for something impossible. But he already knew he would give her
anything. His life, his blood, his belief . . .
“That
must have been very difficult,” he said stiffly.
“Yes.”
She bowed her forehead to his chest, and Dominic put his lips against her
smooth hair in a devotional kiss. “But no more difficult than what you’ve been
through—the attack, the coma . . .”
“It’s
been a hard month,” he agreed.
“But
now?” she turned her face up to his. It seemed to be their question.
The
moon, rising behind him, touched her upturned face with its ash fingers,
drawing her in a monochrome of mystery and shadow.
“I
don’t know,” he said simply.
“Do
you need to?” Her eyes were moonlight, and he was tumbling into them.
“Not
anymore,” he said. She blinked black lashes, and he was flying upward in her
sheltering arms through shattered glass, bending to her raised lips and
bottomless eyes. “Olivia . . .” He touched her elbows with his fingers, and she
stepped toward him. The weight of her brought to ground for him was more than
he could stand. It had been easier to die.
“Olivia,
I know we’ve just met . . .” Tears stood in her eyes, dark puddles of gratitude
in the night. He took a shuddering breath and tried not to clench his hands too
hard around her delicate arms.“By one of those strange coincidences that put
two American tourists at an obscure Irish abbey, but I”—her eyes were like the
midnight clouds, deep and distant and they soundlessly spilled twin, twisting
shadows down her moon-burnt cheeks—“but I think I’m falling . . .”
“Dominic
. . .” She closed her eyes and swayed in his hands.
“ .
. . in love with you, and I . . .” She opened her eyes.
Nothing
in this world, beneath, or above it, could have kept his lips from hers. It was
the only way to say it. Everything he could not speak, he said, and heard her
confessions in the bones of his shoulders where her hands coiled, like Eve’s
snake, over his back.
“It
must be the moon,” she whispered, smiling.
She
was better at this than he would ever be, better at straddling worlds, spanning
truths. He pushed the tears from the warm, pale planes of her perfect face and
curled his fingers into her black hair. And his second kiss said only one
thing. When she drew her lips away, she slid her fingers into his hand and
stepped over the wall behind them. He followed in the wake of desire.
“Where’s
your car?” she asked.
“I
don’t have one. I got a ride with a man who owns a hotel nearby.” Dominic’s
voice was parched, inadequate to speak over his howling need.
“I’m
tired of hotels,” she said, walking warily past the cows in the dark, holding
his hand. “But I have the address of a great little bed-and-breakfast in
Cashel.”
“Legends?”
Dominic asked. He had reserved a room there a month ago, when he first made his
travel plans, when he thought Gaehod might let him stay on the surface. He’d
booked it for four weeks. They might still have a room in his name.
Thunder
growled in the darkness, and Dominic looked into the fathomless sky,
remembering the last time he had followed her out of this field to their
waiting bikes. He had wanted her then, but had fought against it, furious with
her delusions and with his own. He had wanted her then, and she had thrown it
in his face.
She
was the angel of desire. He had never had any choice but to want her. He wanted
her still, wanted her now, but as the silent black clouds above them gathered
rain to spill, he knew Olivia had been right then, too. Desire is an angel. It
can get us closer to God, can raise us out of despair, out of Hell, out of
death. Desire is immortal, and inherently impossible. As impossible as love,
but Dominic loved her all the same.
The
Rock of Cashel rises like a blasted tree stump across the narrow lane behind
Legends Bed-and-Breakfast. I’m nervous, and slip my hand into Dominic’s when he
gets out of the car. Now that a lifetime of waiting has ticked down to hours, I
find it blotched with doubt and anxiety. What will it be, finally, to open my
arms, my lips, and my body to love?
Dominic
is hungry, but it is ten o’clock, and I don’t know if we will be able find a
restaurant open in Cashel. I only want to touch my lips to his again. His
full-moon kiss in the abbey’s black grass had tasted timeless, of gardens and
memory, of lilacs and the cool, sudden spring rain that made us run together,
laughing, the last few yards of cow pies and cold iron gate to my car. I
slipped once, but he caught me, and the smell of warm field and wet night
stayed with us in the rental car’s sterile plastic interior.
Huddled
on Legends’ doorstep now, he puts a protective arm around me and knocks a
second time. An American voice shouts, “I’ve got it!” from behind the wood and
brass, which opens in a gust of peat smoke and candlelight. I step in at once,
past the heavyset man holding the door wide, but Dominic is rooted at the threshold.
“It’s
him!” the man shouts over his thick shoulder, “Dominic’s made it! Come on in,
my boy, I can’t tell you how good it is to see you!”
Dominic
doesn’t move. He’s staring at the jowly face before him with something between
shock and terror. “Why are you here?” he asks, soft and dangerous.
“Dominic,
why don’t you come inside?” I plead, “I’m sure . . .”
“Francis,”
the man supplies for me.
“I’m
sure Francis can answer all your questions.”
A
slow smile cracks Dominic’s handsome face. He takes his searching eyes from the
corroded face and looks straight at me. “Somehow, I don’t think so,” he
chuckles, but he steps into the cozy entryway and claps the man’s meaty back.
“Professor Dysart, this is Olivia.”
I
smile and say hello, and together we follow our enthusiastic escort through a
deserted bar into a small dining room. A cheerful cry greets us, and a small,
round woman with a blazing white corona of hair rockets to her feet.
“Mom!
” Dominic sounds stunned, but a broad grin is melting every hard angle of his
face. Dominic’s attention is completely arrested, but even through the
confusion I feel another’s eyes on me. I face the sculptured blonde across the
table directly.
She
whispers “uncanny” under her perfumed breath, as Dominic holds out his arms to
the white-haired woman. She stands by the seat she sprang from, her fingers
gripping its high, cushioned back.
“Dominic.”
She braces herself between the chair and table. “Do you know who I am?”
“You’re
my mother.”
“You
remember? From yesterday?”
“From
my whole life, Mrs. Maeve Gonne O’Shaunnessy.”
“My
maiden name!” The tears welling in Maeve’s eyes give them a preternatural gleam
in the warm firelight. “I didn’t mention it yesterday. Are you . . .”
“I’m
fine. Completely myself again. My memory came back last night—”
Maeve
launches herself at her son. “You didn’t know me! Didn’t know my first name! We
looked at photo albums. I brought them from . . . Oh, Dominic, I’m just so
glad!” Arms full of soft, shaking woman, Dominic smiles over her head at me,
and beyond me to Dysart, who stands awkwardly beside me.
“Mom”—Dominic
gently unpeels her from his chest—“I’d like you to meet Olivia.”
Tears
flow freely down Maeve’s smooth cheeks, but she turns her clear blue eyes to me
with a brave smile.
“Hello,
Olivia,” she whispers.
The
emotion is too much for me. I was strung out when we got here. Now, with Maeve
still clinging to Dominic and Dysart shuffling uncertainly, I start to giggle.
“My boyfriends’ mothers usually don’t start crying until after they’ve
met me.” It’s a stupid thing to say, but Maeve smiles deeply, and I know she
sees me as I have never been seen by a woman before.
“I’m
sorry . . . joking,” I whisper.
“Not
at all. I’m sorry, my dear. I’m new to this. Dominic has never
introduced me to a girlfriend before. I’ll try to do better next time.”
“There’s
not going to be a next time,” he says softly into her wild hair.
“No,”
she says. “I didn’t think so.”
She
turns her face up to look at him, pats his cheek with a wrinkled hand. Then she
turns back to the table and sits down again, looking completely at ease. She’s
the only one.
“Yes,
well . . .” Dysart clears his jowly throat. “A few more introductions here.
Dominic, I know you’ve already met our quaint hotel’s celebrity guest, Madalene
Wright.”
The
queenly blond woman across the table from Maeve, who is still searching my
face, smiles cordially and raises a glass. “I believe I may be the only person
here they both already know. Of course, there’s my professional connection to
Dr. O’Shaughnessy, and Olivia”—Madalene’s keen eyes scan my face hungrily—“is
like a daughter to me.”
Dysart
beams across the table at Madalene. “I believe everyone in the world knows you.
Or wants to. Right. Only one more person for the kids to meet then,” he
exclaims, wedging himself behind his vacated chair and Madalene’s to rap
briskly on the swinging door behind him. “He’s listened to us all fretting
about you for hours now, our miraculously generous host—”
The
kitchen door swings open. Beside me, Dominic’s intake of breath rasps like a
sword unsheathed. The G is on both our lips, but the old man stops us
with a glance. “Gaehod,” he says, “the innkeeper. So lovely to meet you both.”
His
rolled-up white sleeves and pin-striped trousers are partially covered by a
crisp white apron. He hands an impressively populated cheeseboard to Dysart and
pushes a loose tendril the color of snow and blood back from his face with a
familiar impatience. “I’ll just clear a spot on the table, Francis . . .”
The
table is actually two of the B&B’s three dining tables dragged into a
central column. Covered with a patchwork of white tablecloths, it is littered
with opened wine bottles and emptied bread baskets, which Gaehod collects as he
speaks.
“I’m
so glad the two of you could join us. So nice to have young people tonight. I’m
rather old-fashioned, you see, and fond of the old rites and rituals. This is
Walpurgis Eve, the night before May Day, and I am long in the habit of marking
the occasion in the old style with whatever guests my humble establishment has
collected for the evening. I hope you’ll join our feast?”
Dominic
and I continue to stand, silent and confounded. We nod, all our questions in
our eyes.
Maeve
jumps up to take the wine bottles from Gaehod’s hands, and he gestures for
Dysart to put the massive wooden platter into the cleared spot. The table
rearranged, he turns his calm eyes back to us and smiles. “It would appear you
got caught in one of our sudden April showers. You’re both quite bedraggled.
Francis, do you have something Dominic might wear? Madalene, I’m sure you could
assist your goddaughter?”
Madalene’s
eyes are blank only a moment before a surge of movement sweeps Dominic and me
from the table. Madalene and the professor escort us apart—me to Madalene’s
room, he to Dysart’s.
“Is
this color too much?” Madalene holds a deep red silk dress out to me from a
narrow closet.
“No,”
I tell her truthfully. “It’s perfect.”
She
peels the tattooist’s plastic from my back without comment, and tenderly washes
the no-longer bleeding skin. It’s sore where she touches it, but her eyes meet
mine in the mirror, and we both smile. She zips the dress over the bright black
lines and turns me full to face the mirror. Crimson flows across my body like a
living thing, pouring over my breasts in subtle pleats, and lying flat against
my belly. It both molds and reveals me, and the color is divine.
“Thank
you,” she whispers.
Madalene
fusses over me for half an hour, but I enjoy it. I feel like an American
stereotype—a homecoming queen, or a bride. I tell her I don’t wear foundation,
but she proves herself a magician in her preferred media, applying a weightless
patina of blended neutral hues and contouring shades to my pale skin. “It’s
going to take a little getting used to,” she says, holding my eyes in the
mirror. I walk downstairs on her arm.
Dominic
makes a funny little noise—a sort of strangled gasp—when I reenter the dining
room. Even if I hadn’t enjoyed Madalene’s ministrations upstairs, Dominic’s
reaction would have made it worthwhile. Rising to greet me, his strong, capable
hands touch the tablecloth, clasp before, and then behind him. He clears his
throat.
He’s
wearing Dysart’s jacket, too tight across the shoulder, too short in the arm,
and swinging around his lean body like a cape. His blazing eyes leave no doubt
he desires me. My gaze, meeting his, is as hungry. Twinned, our desires claim
and are claimed.
His
eyes touch both what is his and what is mine. As mine do. In a perfect balance
of lover and beloved, a knot of interwoven freedom binds us. I hold out my
hands to him, and he takes them gratefully, twisting his strong fingers into
mine.
Dysart
has dragged up two more chairs, which he points to from his spot in the back
corner. “Now have a seat, and let’s all catch up on each other’s stories!”
“Yes,
all right,” Dominic agrees, and we sit down together, our hands still clasped
beneath the table.
“The
last time any of us saw you,” the genial doctor chides Dominic, “you were in
the hospital recovering from a nasty head trauma. They were starting you on a
new thiamine protocol overnight, so I was eager to see you, but when I arrived
at the start of visiting hours, the charge nurse said you’d checked yourself
out against medical advice. Dominic, there’s so much we could learn from your
recovery . . . tests we should run, assessments . . .”
“I
know. I wasn’t thinking like a scientist, I guess.”
“No.”
“I
was just grateful you’d left word for us,” Maeve interrupts.
“I .
. .”
“Darling
girl, that—Clare, was it—the nurse?” She glances across the table to Dysart,
who nods confirmation. “Clare. She gave us this number. Said it was where you
had been staying.” Maeve burbles on, “But Gaehod told us, when we phoned, that
you had been missing for almost a week. We drove out hoping to find you here.
Or along the way.”
“We?”
“Dr.
Dysart was kind enough to drive me. I’m just terrified by the roads here!
They’re so narrow, and all unmarked and confusing.”
“The
roads are different”—Madalene nods—“they’re really all tunnels through
stone or grass. And I don’t think I’ve used my rearview once!”
“No,”
Dominic agrees, “because it’s to your left. But I thought you were leaving for
New York, Madalene?” Something in Dominic’s voice lilts Bengali to my ear.
“Not
till Monday,” Madalene purrs back.
Gaehod
returns from the kitchen with a heavy, steaming tray, and Dominic springs to
help him. In the chaos, while fragrant plates are passed around the table,
Madalene excuses herself to take a call from someone with a cat’s name.
When
everyone lands again, Dominic has dragged the room’s last table up to make
space for all the food, and Dysart has moved eagerly from Gaehod’s right to his
left beside Maeve. As plate after plate of food is passed around the table,
everyone relaxes and begins to float on the smells and tastes, the light and
promises of the night.
“I
don’t know how Gaehod does it,” Maeve marvels, looking at the loaded table. “He
must have been cooking for weeks, and I can’t imagine you can buy dried morels
locally.” Gaehod waves the praise away, but the food is truly sumptuous,
gratifying to look at and delicious, and the wine weaves the tastes and people
together in easy loops. Under the table, my legs press against Dominic’s like
roots around rock, anchoring me. I am ready to be alone with him.
The
room is filled with the warm glow of wine-flushed cheeks, candles, and
conversations allowed to wander and twine. When dessert—a delicious
rose-infused cake—is finished, Dysart sets aside his wineglass and pours
burgundy into his water tumbler. He climbs a little blearily to his feet, glass
raised. “To love!” he declares.
“Yes,”
Gaehod says, looking across the table to us. “To love, because we are powerful
in love, especially on this night, halfway between perfect balance and the
longest day. Love reinvents us tonight. Makes us angelic, titanic.”
“Here,
here!” Dysart roars and bumps his tumbler to Maeve’s glass. Gaehod salutes
Madalene with his teacup, and Dominic’s deep eyes hold mine as we raise our
wine to one another. But Dysart reaches across the table to clink both our
glasses and then to Madalene’s, and what began as a simple toast becomes a
tangled dance of arms as we each find every other glass to touch.
“To
love!” Dysart cries. “Logarithmically!”
And
we all drink.
Dysart
fills his tumbler again, and surveys the small room. “You have quite the full
house tonight, Innkeep. Will you have a room for all of us?”
“I
believe so. If Dominic and Olivia will share a room?” His shrewd eyes hook mine
and I nod. “I’ll open the third floor. The room up there doesn’t get used much,
a bit old-fashioned, really, the bridal suite, but it will have to do. Shall I
show you two up?”
Dominic
and I rise to follow our host, but Dysart, despite the fact that he’s slipped
his chair much closer to Maeve’s, begins a slow, ironic applause, grinning.
“Weren’t
you the man just toasting love?” Dominic asks archly.
“I
was. It’s true. But pure, true, undying love and ‘going upstairs’ are two very
different things, my boy.”
“They
don’t have to be.” Maeve speaks so quietly I scarcely hear her, but it silences
the room. “Good night, my dears,” she says.
Her
words slip under me like the tiny, washing waves on a pebbled shore. I slip my
hand into Dominic’s proffered elbow and follow Gaehod upstairs, floating on the
smiles and waves of Dysart and Maeve standing beneath us.
Gaehod
stops on the second landing and touches my hand. “Olivia, I’m expecting a
significant uptick in new arrivals at my hotel in the coming year. I wonder if
you’re looking for work?”
I am
dumbstruck. “I lost . . .”
Dominic’s
blue eyes flicker from Gaehod’s to mine. “I could get a job at St. James,” he
says.
“They’re
doing such important research there.” Gaehod’s voice is soft, but it holds
Dominic completely. “Potentially very beneficial to so many, I think, here and
elsewhere.”
I
watch the two men, eyes locked like dancers. “You might both split your time,”
Gaehod suggests, “between Cashel and Dublin, if Olivia consents to work with
me.”
Gaehod
and Dominic are watching me closely, and I see myself reflected in their eyes.
I was invisible when I entered the hospital. Is enough to have met the terms of
Gaehod’s test? Light that feeds a leaf can kill the root. “I’d like that,” I
say.
Gaehod
ushers us into a small, pitched-roof room whose sole window offers an
unobstructed view of the rock. Dominic and I stand together, looking out at it,
holding hands. A small rain falls faintly through the starry, blue Irish night,
against the illuminated Rock of Cashel, on the graves behind the abbey, and
into the dark, swollen Atlantic. Dominic rubs between his eyebrows.
“Can
you see that?” he asks me.
I
follow the tilt of his chin into the partial dark between the electric lights
illuminating the rock’s stone towers, and our snug room. Ophelia stands under a
dripping tree, in the hungry grass, her pale throat elongated and hideous, her
tiny body obscenely distorted by a belly so distended it pulls her body toward
the ground.
“What?”
I whisper back.
“The
lilacs growing under that tree?”
I
look again. Ophelia has become a hungry ghost, faded so thin she has slipped
from the crypt that imprisoned her, and now steals into houses and shops,
breeding sinners, an immortal, howling emptiness creeping over lives. Nothing
in this world can fill her.
“They’re
violets, I think,” I say.
Lightning
cracks the night, open to the heavens.
Look
up! I psycast
to my bat-winged, baby-faced sister.
But
she’s climbing down the bell tower wall, feet facing the moon, and her black
hair, pulled tight as a violin strings, whispers back to me I need the light
to hunt by.
“Olivia?
Dominic?” Gaehod says quietly. We turn around. He is standing in the doorway,
his face almost obscured by the two white-wrapped packages he holds.
“Your
things,” he says simply, and places them—one long, shallow and light, one
compact and heavy—on the bed, like offerings on an altar. “Give them to each
other.”
Gaehod
leaves, and we stand motionless, staring at the bed.
My
wings and Dominic’s life vitae.
Dominic
bends down and picks up the heavy box. “Olivia?” he says softly. I meet his
clear eyes as he puts the bound stack of scroll, tablet, and sheaf in my hand.
“You should have these.”
“I
can’t read them.”
“I
know.”
I
hold it against my beating heart with one hand and pick up the other package.
It weighs nothing in contrast.
“I
didn’t know these survived,” I say, “but I don’t want them anymore.”
He
takes them reverently. “I can’t use them,” he says.
“I
know.”
Then
he kisses me.
Standing
by the window, holding my freedom, his life tucked against my breast, he kisses
me. His mouth is strong and soft, and eloquent, and I am keenly aware of how my
flesh imprisons me, creates a barrier between us. His strong kiss deepens and
hardens, feeling it too, trying to eat it away. I slip my hands under Dysart’s
borrowed jacket and slide them up the hard, broad landscape of his back. His
hands travel from my shoulders down my spine, and I wince. He looks into my
eyes questioningly, and I touch his proud face with my fingertips, tracing the
worried lines that score it.
“Your
back?” he asks.
“I
got a tattoo today,” I say. “It still hurts.”
“Will
you show me?”
And
suddenly I—who have been looked at forever, who has fed on the hunger in the
eyes of men and changed to please them—am terrified of being seen. He searches
my face. I turn my back to him, and he pulls the zipper of my borrowed dress
down. His tremoring fingers feel too large pushing open the dress halves, and I
am frightened. He slides my dress forward, and the exquisite red silk falls
from me in a stiff puddle on the ground. I am naked now.
“Wings,”
he whispers.
“Over
a very old scar,” I say.
His
fingers trace the fresh lines with wonder. “They’re perfect,” he whispers.
“They
don’t work as well,” I tease, but I turn to face him.
My
exposed body throws a shadow against the wall behind him, but it mingles with
his to form a single dancing darkness on the white plaster. He looks
momentarily simpleminded. The sound he makes is something between a whimper and
a growl, savage and awed.
He
undresses, and I run unashamed eyes over him, tracking the twining strength of
his masculine arms and legs. He should always be naked. His body was created
for this. He comes to me, circles my waist low, beneath the unbleeding, black
ink wings, and pulls me hard against him. I gasp at the feel of his bare flesh
on mine. A thousand centers of sensation burst throughout me. No wonder man is
so helpless in this.
His
mouth finds mine again, and even our exploring hands fall still in the pure
communion of our mouths and skin touching. His lips are caressing, but the
force of his restraint sends tremors through him. He is afraid of hurting me,
afraid for me, and I am afraid, too. But fear is grown familiar, and this is
all so new.
Our
kisses are a feast tasted, but not consumed. Every mouthful makes the hunger
grow, and I feel it—not in my gums, not in the hollow places of my mouth—but in
all the full and swelling places of my body. At the peaks of my shuddering
breasts and the depths of my pulsing sex, a flameless fire licks me. Although
desire stakes me to him, my body begins to twist.
Finally,
I break the kiss, gasping. But his lips burn down my throat to engulf a
shivering nipple, and my sex ignites. My breath comes in tiny pants through
kiss-scorched lips showering slow sparks down my body. And all my awareness is
caught in the storm flashing from my suckled nipple to deep between my legs.
When his strong fingers take my other breast I cry out, and he takes his lips
and hands away.
He
lies on his back in our bed and pulls me to him. I straddle his strong hips
with my knees, and the hard tower of his cock stands shockingly vertical from
the landscape of his body. I’m uncertain what to do, and lean over him, knowing
his kiss will guide me. But I don’t need it to. My flaming nipples graze his
chest, his fingers make strong circles on my ass, and his cock touches a focus
of sensation that almost blinds me. This is the sister locus of the inferno in
my sex, a sentinel of pleasure—precise, minute, and raging. I scrape it against
the shaft of his straining cock and sob with wanting more.
But
he will not rush this. Although his panting chest moves swift and hard beneath
me, although I see the agony of his restraint in the rigid cords of his
shoulders, he does kiss me again. My living sex shudders. I feel coiled too
tight, and every twist of my writhing body, pushing cock against sex, breasts
against chest, no matter which direction I turn, only tightens the spiral. It
is wound both ways, and there is no loosing it save the final torque which will
release and launch and fragment it.
He
kisses me, and my blind hips answer the slow suck of his summoning mouth,
pulling my back into an arch and curling it forward again, dragging the opening
of my searing sex and its twitching sentry along the pulsing length of his
cock. His lips move imperceptibly against mine, no longer kissing, whispering,
praying.
“I
love you.”
“I
love you, too,” I say. And I do.
He
kisses me again. “I will love you forever.”
“I
will not live forever.”
“That’s
life, I guess,” he says, smiling. And it is.
“I
will always love you,” I say. This is my immortality and my immutability.
I wind
my hungry body under his strength. He moves over me until the tip of his
stone-hard cock kisses the mouth of my liquid sex. He does not move, but I
slowly raise my willing hips to him. His body plunges into mine, opens me. His
hard arms are trembling, and his eyes, gazing into mine, are fringed with fear
for me. It does hurt. The wings on my back against the mattress hurt and the
inexorable advance of his cock into my sex hurts, but I want this.
He
holds his pulsing body still inside mine and drops his seeking lips once more
to my full and swollen breast. His warm mouth there raises a radiating heat in
my stretched-wide sex, and I let the desire mount in me until my helpless body
convulses, clutching at his rooted cock. My sex sucks at the flesh that chokes
it, pulls in more than it can hold, and his body answers, pushing hard.
Every
place his body touches me ignites. He tries to kiss me, but our breathing comes
too quickly, our bodies drive too hard. So he looks at me, eyes in mine, as his
flesh is in mine. I grip his arms with human hands and wrap my clay feet behind
his back. I am time and timeless, freedom and surrender, body and soul.
His
perfect face is twisted, focused on me, but mindless, and I am caught as well,
release and restraint, the orgasm climbing higher. His cock is ruthless now, no
longer striving for gentleness, but only for reunion. And I grind my sex
against him. I want everything and nothing else. My body summons his invading
sex, my breasts lunge toward the crushing chest.
Our
breathing is tortured and entwined. The pleasure climbs through me,
balances—and for a moment I am dying—locked in a rigor of agony, mortality made
too real too soon. Pleasure grips my belly in a cruel fist, and a glory of
trembling takes me. I can’t breathe, am howling, have found the perfect
totality of sensation, and scream to be released. My sex spasms, pleasure
leaps. Dominic cries out. Another seizure takes my sex, washing me in the pure
free-fall of orgasm flying through me.
This
is love. This is how mortals live with our too-few chances to bridge the rack
we’re stretched on. This is how we look death in the face. With no Heaven I can
ascend to and no God to cast me out, I stand, briefly, for a moment, in the
love of a man and the joy of our bodies.
Then
I am falling. I am falling and see everything, always, one last time, falling
into sleep. Dominic and I will buy a house between Dublin and Cashel. We will
be happy there, living and working together. But right now, my secret sisters,
safe in their places underground, are welcoming our first new guest. I notice
she looks like me.
Dominic’s
mother and Dysart drink whiskey in the bar, while Madalene puts a call in to
her son across the ocean. Outside my window, Ophelia’s ghost whispers filth
into the Irish night. But Alyx, high above her, sleeps peacefully at last. And
Gaehod, below us all, in the owner’s cluttered deep basement suite, writes to
the undiscovered damned of the twenty-first century: My darling ones, Reborn
and Undead, Damned, Cursed, and Misbegotten—Hell calls her absent children
home.