“And your second order, mistress?” He kept his eyes averted lest she see the turmoil in his eyes.
“I think that should be obvious, but before I codify your potential punishment, let me give you your reward.” Elizabeth reached a hand to him and lightly pried his lips apart. She looked with a clinical gaze at his teeth, their roots decayed and hazed with a deposit of something unclean. He hated the feeling, but she did not pull away in disgust. She merely leaned into him and covered his mouth with hers, pulling air into her lungs from his corroded chest, a wafting, pulsing rush of wind that spoke of crypts and moss, and in seconds, the feelings of life began to return to some of his body. Life. She is giving me life again. He nearly wept with joy, falling to his knees as she released him, bowing until his head was flush against the tip of one of her shoes, the leather gleaming like a mirror. He saw his reflection there, and it was one of the man he had been years before. The transformation was instant, and then, unbidden, the tears did come to him as she crouched and stroked one cheek with her finger, while her eyes searched his for something he could not discern. She was opaque, and yet momentarily open. Her lack of humanity was as complete as her contempt for the world around them. “And now, to the second command. Fail me, and my next touch will return the necrosis to your body with blistering speed. You will fall apart, piece by rotting piece, and I will watch it occur even as you reach for me. Do you understand?”
He nodded emphatically. He would become a doctor for whatever dark purpose she intended as long as his lungs continued to fill with such sweet air, free from the stink of death that had hung about him like a curse. He rose to his feet, meeting her gaze with joy and renewed confidence. “Where would you like me to start?”
35
The Archangel Kyle
The boy’s eyes were downcast, lids heavy with concentration and his hands had an uncertainty that was nowhere to be found in the clear, sweet notes of his voice. He strummed on a single string, mostly, coaxing simple notes from the thin wood of a guitar that didn’t belong anywhere near the music business. The noise of a bar filled with self-absorbed performers paid no mind to the tentative shadow on the stage, another nobody on an open microphone in a city filled with failures, and thieves, and the fodder that drove a business built of lies. But then, the boy began to sing, and there was nothing plaintive or uncertain about it. He directed his words towards a single chair, in the middle of the room, and by the third bar, the noise of the busy room began to die off like the trickle of a stream in august, finally passing from something to be expected in a room full of people drinking, to that rarity, where making a sound became disrespectful. The room was his, and he let his voice flood their senses, line after line.
Here you are covered in shame again
that no rain can ever wash off
The dust of this wreck of a life hangs on
with sad and broken hands
And you reach for the cloud of darkness
Swallow and cry and cough
We are here ,and we will be
please, let us bring you along
Stay your hand
Stay your hand
And stay here.
We will rinse and then clean
until your bitter garden blooms
Lift shades and sills
and let the breezes come free
Let us roll the stone from your room
feel the sun light the corners
Chase the shadows and chills
so the all the lies can leave you be
Hold my hand
Hold your breath
And stay here.
We can’t be young
but we can all grow old
Sister, fortune is yet to be made
God keep you safe
So stay with me
Stay with us
And stay here.
It was the first time that Stan, the bar’s owner, had ever heard dead silence in the room. He listened once again, intently, and amended his opinion because he could distinctly make out more than one person quietly crying, and several of his staff still had their hands on their mouths, covering them as if they were afraid to break the thin glass covering the incredible bittersweet sadness that drifted in the air after the singer put his guitar down. A young woman, thin and pale, had hurried to the women’s room, and she was, for a single moment, the only motion at all in the entire place. Then the singer, Kyle, who had never performed before, clambered down from the stage and went to order a drink. After what he had just poured forth, it was only logical. He hadn’t just been singing, he was communing with the crowd, and in particular, the girl who seemed to be his younger sister.
Sister. The tumblers clicked and Stan knew, with utter certainty, that every word of the song resonating like gospel in the smoky, dark bar had been nothing short of the essence of truth, a plaintive cry done with three chords on a cheap guitar, and sung by a boy who had probably never written a song before in his life. Tamara, the waitress, came by in a fugue state, her eyes rimmed with tears, still, but humming the melody of the song that was as out of place in Nashville as the boy who sang it. Stan’s mind was dragged--no, bullied, and beautifully so by the lines, each word a thread in the cloak that a brother had woven to protect a girl he had known since birth.
Kyle sat at the bar, searching the hallway near the restrooms with an intense stare, pausing only to look down at his glass every few seconds. He didn’t recognize the woman who walked out of the dark corridor, but she seemed to know him, and her path never deviated at all as she carved her way through the now more energetic crowd. She took the seat next to him and said “wine” to the air with the confidence that the low command would be obeyed at once. It was, as the bartender soundlessly placed a glass of red wine in front of her without speaking, leaving with an aura of subservience that he wore with odd disquiet. Kyle took the measure of the beauty sitting before him in a relaxed pose that suggested she held a secret he simply had to know. Her green and gold eyes glinted in the garish neon light of the beer signs, and her long, dark hair was pulled back from a neck that bespoke the carriage of power. Her neck was long, upright, and unmarked by the sun.
“Did you think your song could save her?” The question was asked as the glass of wine transited from the bar to the playful curve of her lips, almost an afterthought.
Kyle stopped himself, a breath catching low in his chest. He keyed on the past tense in her question, delivered in a voice that was winsome and free of care. He knew then that he had not saved Lara, and that, if her were to go to that filthy women’s room, she would be there. Or, rather, what had been Lara would be there. Nine years. Nine fucking years of pulling the needle out of her arm, washing her like a baby, holding her hair while she vomited. Nine. And not one day longer than I could have withstood the lies until she broke me, just as surely as I watched her break the day our parents died. No matter how hard he tried, how many apologies he made, or nights spent screaming at her to come back, let go, and move on, none of it had been enough. Now, here this wickedly becoming woman sat, telling him that his last, greatest, and most permanent failure lay in a bathroom stall, and he could do nothing about it except feel relief. He melted into himself, his vision blurring and the heat rising to his neck like a column of lava muscling up through the frigid depths of the sea, unseen, but scorching everything instantly, only to cool and collapse again. That would be Kyle. He would immolate deep within himself, here, in this room full of strangers, and then he would go to join Lara and his task-- endless, Sisyphean, and exhausting—it would end. He could end it himself, if he had to, but he knew that his emotional candle held no courage now, rotted through as he was with the sum of transgressions he had absorbed from his weak, kindly, mystifying, gorgeous wreck of a sister. Oh, Lara. Why did you wait so long? The admission was poisonous ejecta that gutted him as it left, leaving a crimson shell of fear and release.
“I know.” Her hand was on his face, red hot and frigid alternations of pleasure
as fine fingertips stroked him, and one hand leaned perilously close to his groin, a contradiction of joy so repulsive that he shuddered and felt like retching, but he could not move away. She stood, announced that her name was Elizabeth, and he should follow. He stood, compulsion outweighing his timorous heart.
“Bring the guitar, “she ordered him, with a coy smile. It seemed to fit her face poorly, as the expression was entirely too young.
“I don’t play. I won’t again, I don’t think.”
Her shoes stopped as she pivoted and looked at the entirety of his form. Her eyes flicked up, then down, and rested for a narrowed second on the cheap instrument leaning against the stool. Reading her rising anger, he picked the guitar up as she patted him, master to pet, and without looking him in the eye assured him, “Yes, you will.”
36
Florida
Dinner with Delphine continued in the form of a picnic in my Wagoneer. We ate olives and cheese bought at a liquor store and washed them down with the excellent red wine, adding a second bottle as a reserve. I sensed that she was opening up, which was a rare event. I didn’t intend to truncate her revelations due to a lack of wine. We parked on a dark street near the water, close enough to hear the waves, but not see them, which meant less foot traffic and less exposure. She leaned her seat back, just slightly, and again I was reminded of how petite she seemed, away from her place of power.
“How old is the name Andiarka?” I asked around a mouthful of dry, bright mizithra cheese.
She swirled the wine in her plastic cup, watching it cling to the sides before sliding back into the whorled remains of the pour. “It’s always been mine. Since the beginning, when I can first remember my mother and her hands, and the smell of the sea when it raced up the cliff sides to overpower the peat fires we had at night. I loved my name, at least I did until I stained it with—” She hesitated, looking blankly into the window, and then said, “I ruined the beauty of my name long ago. I took something that was the last of my real memory and washed it in the blood of hundreds, perhaps thousands.” She turned to me with an intensity that was palpable. “Do you know Elizabeth rated my murders? She . . . graded me, like a student, or a child, year after year, for millennia. She always had someone watching me; it was a violation I cannot describe, knowing that I was being hounded to kill. I know you might doubt my sincerity, because it is true, I derive great pleasure from feeding. That pleasure has a great deal to do with my selections, some of whom are rather unsavory men. I do not, however, like killing; in point of fact I hate it. I always have. I can feed without being a monster. Did you know that?”
“I did not. You have that fine a control on your—needs? How you feed, I mean?” I had my doubts that her feeding on rough men was purely altruistic.
She shook her head softly. “I can go for days, sometimes weeks without feeling those urges. The pressure that builds is like an addiction coming home to roost, forcing the hand, making me begin to slink about and look at men like something disposable. I can subvert the majority of it, but it has taken time to develop, and it was even more impossible knowing that she had an agent nearby, ready to rend my heart with the accidental death or disappearance of a loved one.”
I queried her with my eyes at that statement. Love?
“Yes, you dolt, I feel love.” She punched me lightly on the shoulder, a gesture of such normalcy I had to rein myself for a moment. “Oh, I find the whole notion of making sandwiches for some slovenly husband rather . . .” She wiggled her fingers in distaste. “But, yes, love. It is something I have felt, and something I choose to seek, regardless of my uninvited watchers who haunt me throughout my life.” She took an oil-cured olive and nibbled it delicately, then tossed the pit out the window in what was, for her, a completely roguish behavior. “I have been in love, and there have been times that I have felt genuine love in return.”
“Genuine?” I prompted.
“Yes, authentic. Real love, based not on my skills, but on me. The who, rather than the what. It isn’t common, but it is often enough that I have had to take certain precautions against the more assertive lovers who confuse sexual congress while I feed with permission to occupy my personal life.”
Precautions seemed such a bland term. “What kind of persuasion was used on the men who have gotten a bit too enthusiastic?”
She grew still and drifted into deep thought for a second, as if processing how to relate a complex concept to a child. “At first, I was able to move around in order to avoid being an unwilling paramour, but that got tiresome. I cannot tell you how much work I squandered, leaving a home that I had labored for years to perfect, usually; I had to abandon an excellent identity as well. Some brute with a stiff cock and a tin ear would pursue me like a hare, never associating our sex with the bedridden exhaustion he felt for days afterward. They would always take it as a sign, providence, really, that I was made to fit around their unwashed members, and once besotted, they would invade my life as surely as an army coming ashore.” She shuddered delicately in remembrance.
“You are an amazing lay,” I said, smiling broadly.
She tittered a bit and said without a hint of arrogance, “True. I was good before I became an immortal, and let me tell you, Ring, three millennia of anything can make you a past master at the task. Or mistress, in my case, but you understand. Especially when you feel an inner desperation that drives you to feed, and you do not truly know what might happen if you do not satiate your needs. It is a forgone conclusion that immortals are experts at any number of tasks, save being merciful, I think.” We sat quietly for a moment, letting the sounds of the city surround us, pass by, and, thankfully, ignore us.
“Two centuries ago, I decided to stop running. I would not be hounded by my prey, nor would I sacrifice any of my gains simply because of external pressures from lovesick suitors. But before I go on, let me ask you, do you think that there is a distinction between immortality and magic?” She regarded me as one might study a potential partner, with a scrutiny that was intense, frank, and steady.
I tapped my jaw with my fingers, trying to articulate my thoughts, and then answered her, simply, “Yes.”
“How do you know?” She was testing me.
“I have evidence, secondhand but very reliable, of witches. I have firsthand evidence of warlocks, and I have personally killed no less than six of them over the years. I find them to be vile, cowardly, and cunning, but not immortal. They share some qualities with immortals, but they seem to be over-reaching humans who have mastered blood arts but not conquered death itself. Is that about right?” I asked her hopefully. It was the best I could do.
She laid her hand on my arm, and in a familiar, honeyed voice, said, “You are more correct than you can know. There is magic, and there is—whatever I am. The two overlap, but are not one and the same. Witches and warlocks are rarely beneficial; they tend to be sociopaths prior to performing their first incantation, and they often work under the tutelage of grotesque Undying who inhabit niches none of us immortals care to see.”
“Like ghouls?”
“Precisely. But in their early years, it is possible to use witches much like a tool, which brings me back to my arrival in New Orleans and how I hired a dreadful little man who called himself ‘The Carpenter’.”
“Colorful, and not entirely free of heretical overtones,” I said, imagining a witch using Jesus of Nazareth’s career choice as his working name. It might not have been well-received in Catholic New Orleans.
She laughed, a musical tinkling that was much more suited to her than the tears from earlier. “He was quite the nonbeliever, but an absolute genius with wood and some stone. I tasked him with a special defense for me, unique to my home, and one that would remain foolproof for all eternity.”
“I take it we’re not talking about a moat filled with crocodiles?” I smiled at her, bidding her to continue.
“No, beasties of such temperament have no business anywhere near my home, unless it is in the form of a
darling handbag. But back to the point—he harrumphed and toiled for months before he brought me a single plank, perhaps four feet long, that had smooth, unremarkable stones peeping through every foot or so, as if they had worn naturally through the wood over centuries. It was pretty, in a homespun sort of way, but hardly the finished product I had imagined. I asked him to tell me why I had given him a fortune in silver, and he responded, in his ugly little voice, that I must have a test subject of sorts, who must be male, and he must willingly step onto the wooden section. Well, needless to say, men were not in short supply for me, so I simply called over one of my male servants, who stepped onto the plank—” She stopped, awash with memory. I waited in patient silence, and she continued, “He dropped to the ground as if struck dead, curling into himself and mewling, weeping, I think he may have wet himself, too—and he kept screaming over and over, ‘Mother, forgive me, I was only a boy. I knew not of your sickness’ until I took mercy on him and rolled him from the object. He slept for a full day, and when he awoke, his memory was as muddled as a fever victim, save for bits in which he retold the loss of his mother to some flux when he was a child. It was, he said, his most painful memory ever, and it came to him in whispers from the wood on which he walked.”
Box Set: The Fearless 1-3 Page 36