by Lily Luchesi
Brighton smiled, looking down at their entwined hands. Mark still loved him, it was evident in the warm vibe he was emitting. “We’ve no need to speak of it again until the end of the night, if that is what you wish.”
Mark gave his hand a squeeze before letting him go and taking a long sip of his wine.
“I admit,” Brighton continued, “I am not very good with small talk. I am afraid I might be a bit of a bore.”
Picking up a menu, Mark said, “Good, because neither am I. Talk about likes and dislikes, tell me what makes you tick. Tell me about your studies. I want to know you. I don’t want to talk about the weather or current events: I would rather know who you are. Inside. And I’d be glad to respond in kind.”
You don’t want to know who I really am, trust me, Brighton thought. “Sounds like we’re two of a kind,” he said.
A waiter arrived and they placed their orders, and the owner stopped by to check on their table, as he always did when Brighton came in.
“Everyone seems to know you here,” Mark said. “You’re a regular, I assume?”
Before Brighton could respond, the owner interjected. “Ah yes, he is. But you are the first guest he has ever brought here. So no need to worry if he brings all his paramours here.”
Brighton face-palmed, embarrassed, but Mark just laughed it off.
“I’m not a paramour, as you say,” he said. “He’s my colleague.”
Colleague. That word made Brighton’s skin prickle. He wanted so much more than that with Mark. It was unfair if they were both reborn and yet could still not be together.
Dinner moved along with Brighton asking Mark a few questions that required long winded answers, and Mark happily giving said answers while they ate pasta and drank the deep red wine.
“So, Angelica found you at Oxford. What made you want to come work with us, you know, fight monsters?” Mark asked after a small lull in the conversation occurred.
“Oh, well...it isn’t boring,” Brighton replied, at least being partially honest.
Mark’s eyebrows raised. “What do you mean by that?”
“There’s only so far in human science I can advance. With this, there’s no telling what may happen and it gives me a thrill to chase down unnatural criminals in between creating something that could improve many creatures’ quality of life,” Brighton elaborated. “What about you?”
Mark chuckled. “This is a funny story. I was working as a guard at Buckingham Palace. Not one of the guys in the tall hats, but a plainclothes guard hiding amongst the tourists. Well, one day I was on the night shift when one of the funny hat men was murdered. As the place had been nearly deserted, I caught a good view of who— or I should say what —killed him. It was a vampire, no doubt about it. However, he disappeared without a trace, and I was the only suspect.
“I was cleared thanks to lack of evidence, and ever since I devoted my existence to hunting down killers. When I started, I believed that all vampires were evil, which I have since been informed is a very old-fashioned way to think. I taught myself to recognise signs of vampires in people. I was rarely wrong when I saw one, and I even managed two kills.
“One night, I saw a different vampire hanging around the Palace. I knew this was a different one because the first had been a man and this was a woman. I wondered what it was about guards that they found so damn tasty. I stalked her all the way across London, and then she turned down an alleyway and I lost sight of her. I figured she’d turned into a bat and flown away when suddenly I was shoved face-first into a brick wall, an iron grip on my arms and shoulders.
“‘Who are you and why are you following me?’ the vampire asked. I was too scared to answer and when I didn’t she shoved me harder and said, ‘I asked you a question, you bloody idiot.’
“My resolve broke and fear coursed through me like I’d been injected with it ‘Please,’ I said, ‘don’t hurt me. I promise I’ll leave you alone.’
“I felt her breath on my neck as she chuckled. ‘Not very brave, are you, hunter?’ she whispered, flipping me around to face her. I didn’t know it then, but she was going to change my life for the better. It was Angelica, obviously, and she offered to have a conversation with me, providing I put away my weapons. A few hours later, I was the new strategist for the London PID.”
Mark shrugged, looking quite pleased with himself. Brighton felt his heart swell after Mark had finished speaking. In the past, he had been a chronicler of all the adventures the four hunters had, and it looked as if his talent for storytelling was still intact.
“I am very glad she was able to convince you that not all monsters are evil,” Brighton said. “We would never have met otherwise.” He paused and chuckled. “You know I asked her for advice today? I wasn’t sure how to behave tonight.”
Mark cocked his head. “Why wouldn’t you? No offence, but since you kissed me, I figured that you were the more experienced one here.”
Brighton shook his head. “Alas, I am woefully inept at social engagement. All social conventionalities seem to be impossible for me to grasp.”
“You seem to be doing fine now,” Mark observed.
“You’re incredibly easy to speak to and spend time with,” Brighton replied.
Mark was quiet for a moment, pushing his pasta around on his plate. It was another few minutes before he broke the silence. “I like your voice. The tone, the accent, the inflection...I feel as if I could listen to you for hours and it wouldn’t matter if you were talking about poetry, politics, or murder.”
Brighton laughed to cover up his embarrassment. No one had ever said anything like that to him since Michael in their previous life. “Well, murder will be a frequent topic of conversation between us, so I am pleased you won’t mind my speaking of it often.”
Mark laughed with him. “Look, I don’t know what’s going to happen between us. Can I have tonight to think it over? Please? I don’t want to hurt anyone unnecessarily.”
Brighton sighed. “All right. But patience is not one of my virtues.”
Mark smiled. “Since you don’t have many qualms about taking me from my fiancée, I wouldn’t say you were a very virtuous person whatsoever.”
Chapter Nine
That night, Mark lay awake as his fiancée happily snored next to him, after having drunk too much while out with the girls. She did that often. Marie Wertz never met a bottle of wine she didn’t like, after all.
He replayed the entire day over and over again, always getting stuck on one simple fact: he enjoyed Brighton’s very presence. It was as if he’d known him all his life. It had been warm, welcoming, comfortable. Familiar.
He got out of bed and went into their small living room, taking out his cell phone.
“Cross.”
“Angelica, I think I’m in love with Brighton Sands,” Mark said breathlessly.
“What? Mark? Are you mad? It’s three in the morning by you!” Angelica cried on the other end of the line.
“I’m sorry, I just don’t know what to do,” he admitted.
He heard her sigh. “I never thought I’d be brought down to being a motherfucking relationship counsellor. Look, Brighton likes you. He called me, flustered, after he met you. And Mahon Quinn basically set you two up. If Brighton left the ball in your court, you’ve got to either make your play or pass it. But don’t call me when I’m right off of a fucking airplane and I haven’t even had any blood, expecting me to solve your romance problems. I’ve always been a gut person, so go with your gut. That’s all I can tell you. Now, can you go to sleep so you can adequately run my company in the morning?”
She hung up, and Mark had to smile. Had he really expected her to say anything different? However, her hasty advice was correct: he needed to go with his heart and not overthink this. It’s once in a lifetime you feel such a connection with someone, and when it happens you’ve got to jump or else your chance at happiness might disappear forever.
He’d figure out what to say to Marie. He’d figure out what i
t meant to discover your sexuality when you’re thirty-six. As long as he didn’t let Brighton Sands get away, that was what was important.
He thought he’d be able to sleep then, but it did not come.
With meeting Brighton, a lot of things he had overlooked suddenly became glaringly clear in his mind. How he’d fallen for the only person to look at him after he was nearly arrested for killing the guard, the case Angelica helped him solve. How he could not feel safe enough to tell Marie what his job really entailed. He realised how stupid and blind he had been, and it was literally a wake-up call. He had ignored her glaring faults in his desire to be loved, to be seen as normal, and not a man formerly accused of murder. And she had used him, used the lack of warm emotion in his life to worm her way into his heart. He had no idea why, and frankly it didn’t matter to him anymore.
He felt like he had been asleep all this time and he was only now waking up to see the light. And it felt brilliant.
***
One week later
“I take it she wasn’t happy,” Brighton said, sitting with his back to Mark in the London PID’s common room. They were the only two there at the moment.
“How do you do that?” Mark asked, sitting next to him on the sofa.
You project your thoughts like a bloody movie theatre, Brighton thought, but did not answer. “What happened?”
“It was weird,” Mark said. “Some of her responses were...I don’t know how to describe them. It was more like I was getting her fired from a job rather than telling her we’re breaking up.”
“That is odd. But then again, normal people often do things that I find odd, but they think is perfectly ordinary,” Brighton commented.
“I’m normal. Do I do that, too?” Mark asked.
Brighton chuckled, planting a kiss on his temple. “You are anything but ordinary, love.”
They lapsed into comfortable silence until Mark started work and Brighton went to train. Usually it was working in the lab on the HG replacement or some other project that helped him focus and think clearly, but today was not that day. He needed mind-numbing physicality to induce a clear thought process. Something he had seen in Mark’s memory had raised Brighton’s hackles and he needed to brood on it.
Marie had responded oddly. Not as a woman who was broken-hearted, but more fearful. Exactly as Mark had described it: being let go from an important job. Or...not quite. Her reaction to the news reminded Brighton of the film The Devil Wears Prada. She was panicked, like she had a dangerous boss who would destroy her because she failed her task.
He was still not accustomed to how people of this time period acted. It was alien to him, so perhaps he was overthinking it. Unable to come up with a concrete conclusion to her actions, he let it go, hoping it wouldn’t come back to bite him in the arse. He had seen many people killed by ex-lovers, after all.
***
Chicago, Illinois
October, 2015
Brighton was asleep in his and Mark’s hotel in downtown Chicago when his laptop started pinging repeatedly. In his spare time, he had designed a software that turned it on and alerted him if there was a PID emergency. Groaning, wrapping his body in one of the luxurious sheets, he moved off the bed and sat at the desk in the corner of the room.
It was Angelica, and she was telling him that he was needed on a video conference.
“Can it wait?” he typed. “I was asleep.”
“NO! It cannot wait and the next time you wish to forsake your PID duties for forty winks, I’ll excommunicate you. It’s Inspector Linwood from London. Get your ass on the webcam.”
Sighing, he clicked the video chat icon and two faces appeared. Three, if you counted Danny standing behind Angelica.
“What’s going on, Inspector?” he asked.
Linwood gaped at him. “Are you wearing a bloody sheet?” He rubbed his dark eyes with the back of one hand. “Never mind. Is Mark with you?”
“He’s asleep. What is it?” Never in a million lifetimes could he have expected George Linwood to speak his next statement, and when he did, it sent Brighton’s world into a downward spiral.
“Peter Mabuz is still alive.”
It was like he had been struck dumb by the force of those words and what they meant. Linwood explained that he had actually seen Mabuz, and that the vampire had winked at him as if he were in on some great joke.
Doing his best to regain his composure, he finished the conversation and then stood in the middle of the pricey hotel, a sheet wrapped around him like a sarong, a cigarette lit in his hand, and stared at Mark’s sleeping form. The love he had lost. The love he had regained, protected, and cherished. The man he was going to marry.
This can’t be happening to me, he thought, feeling his heartbeat speed up and his palms begin to sweat. For the first time in his life since Michael Finnigan was killed, he was truly afraid. Afraid of losing the man he loved once again.
He knelt on his side of the bed and touched Mark’s bare shoulder, feeling the soft, warm skin beneath his fingers. “Mark, you’ve got to wake up.”
Mark mumbled something that sounded like “piss off”, but Brighton could not let him rest. He shook him harder. “There’s a problem in London. We’ve got to go back.”
Mark finally rolled over to look at Brighton through sleepy eyes. The young hunter felt his heart break again. Once more, he would be leading Mark into terrible danger. He could leave him in Chicago, but deep down his psychic intuition was telling him that he had put off the inevitable for long enough. This was his wake-up call, his chance to tell Mark everything.
More than death, he hoped that Mark would not stop loving him for all the lies he had told. He had never wanted to be facetious, but it was easier than admitting to the man you loved that you were both reincarnations, and in your previous lives one had murdered the other.
“What is it?” Mark murmured, rubbing his eyes.
“There’s a very old, very dangerous vampire in London. Linwood called,” Brighton said.
“Why do we need to fly back? Why can’t he get someone else to take care of it?” Mark wondered sleepily.
Brighton sighed. “Look, it’s a long, long story, and I’ll tell you about it on the plane ride. All I can say right now is it is my responsibility and I have to go. If you’d rather stay, then you have to stay. I don’t wish to put you in any danger.”
Mark sat up, smoothing his hair. “Are you kidding? I’m not letting you fight off an old vampire by yourself! Give me a minute to get everything together. Have the lobby call a taxi.” He kissed Brighton and hopped out of bed.
There was not much to bring, thankfully. They had not yet finalised a move to Chicago, so their things were still at their flat in London. Once dressed, they hopped into a taxi to go back to the PID.
Brighton was able to take Danny aside, feeling able to confide in him after all the private training they’d been going through, trying to get Danny’s powers to expand. They had a lot of work left to do, and it made Brighton excited to think about the sheer potential the two of them had, even more if Mark was Awakened, too.
Danny Mancini gave him a very good piece of advice, something he held onto as they were about to depart to London: “Fear is a part of love. You will always be afraid of losing the one you love, be it because they leave you or pass away. You have to fight that fear in order to prove your love is stronger than it.”
For the first time in Brighton’s new life, he admitted that he had killed Mark in their previous incarnations, and just saying it aloud helped edge open the floodgates that would swing wide during the plane ride.
Angelica and the entire PID had FBI and MI-5 clearance at airports, so they managed to catch their plane in plenty of time. Due to the time they were leaving, it was not very crowded.
Brighton settled into his first class seat with a heavy sigh. He had nearly eight hours during which he’d need to sit next to Mark, and once he told him the whole story of who Mabuz was and all his lies, he was afraid he�
��d be sitting next to someone who hated him.
Mark immediately went onto his tablet as soon as the pilot said it was okay to do so, checking PID records. “How come this Mabuz fellow isn’t in the registry? If he’s so dangerous, shouldn’t someone have logged him in?”
Brighton shook his head. “No. He was made sometime before eighteen-oh-two and killed in eighteen-thirty-two. Before the PID was created. Or at least, everyone presumed him dead. No one had reason to believe he survived.”
“How do you know all of this?” Mark asked. “From Mahon and George?”
Brighton shook his head, suddenly wishing he was drunk or high. Either or both would have been preferable than dealing with this sober and clearheaded.
“I have lied to you, Mark. I have lied to you since I met you and now I have no choice but to tell you the truth, and I’m afraid you’ll never love me again. I’m afraid of losing you, but I cannot go on living a lie.”
He could hear the thoughts in Mark’s head, ranging from cheating to really being a Psi. Brighton wished any of those scenarios was the reality of this situation.
“No, Mark, I’m not a Psi and I have never cheated on you,” he said.
Mark’s mouth dropped. “How did you know?”
“Haven’t you been wondering what I’ve been doing spending so much time with Mancini? Aren’t you wondering if he and I have something on the side, leaving you and Angelica in the lurch?” Brighton asked.
“How on Earth do you know this?” Mark repeated. “I’ve never said any of that.”
“No,” Brighton agreed. “But you’ve thought it. You were thinking of it just now. But I assure you, the truth will shock you much more than mere infidelity.” He resituated himself so he was more comfortable, looking Mark directly in the eye. “This is a long story and very painful for me. Please...even if you are angry at the end, don’t be too harsh. Can you promise me that?”
Mark nodded, his face full of wonder.
“Danny Mancini was once known as a man named Jonathan Price. He was a hunter born in eighteen-eighty-six, the great-great-grandson of Leander Price. He was reincarnated in his current form, and with reincarnation he gained certain abilities: he has visions, precognition, psychometry, and can read thoughts if a person’s mind is open enough.”