The Immortal Bind

by Traci Harding

  Isabelle was wide-eyed at his language for only a second. ‘Did you kill Jacques?’ she whispered. ‘At the castle—’

  ‘Who do you think the stowaway is?’

  ‘Oh, praise God.’ The relief was fleeting, for Chisomo appeared very grave.

  ‘But the evil eye, it does not work on you?’ she quizzed.

  ‘In Africa we know how to defend ourselves against such demons — you just have to consciously reject in your mind everything they say you must do.’

  ‘I saw his eyes,’ she uttered, still in shock. ‘Is he even human?’

  ‘I can’t say. But from what I have seen, Lachance is as inhuman, as unnatural and evil, as any creature that ever walked the earth.’

  ‘Oh God.’ Isabelle so wanted to wake from this nightmare. ‘We must kill him.’ It was a suggestion so beyond fathoming that it made her stomach turn.

  ‘There is no known way to kill whatever he is. Many have tried, all have failed. Which is why your man is hanging from the ship rigging as we speak. He’s buying you time to choose your fate. As he and I already have.’

  Tears began to well in Isabelle’s eyes, for having run through the options open to her she could see only three.

  ‘We can stay and await the captain’s return,’ Chisomo outlined their choices. ‘I can kill you where you stand, or—’

  ‘We take our chances in the water beyond that balcony.’ Isabelle was already on her way to the doors.

  ‘That’s the option Jacques and I chose.’

  ‘Curse it.’ Isabelle was frustrated to find the door locked.

  ‘Never fear.’ Chisomo pulled the key from the captain’s desk drawer, and opened the doors. They stepped out onto the balcony and Chisomo locked the doors closed behind them.

  It was as exhilarating as it was horrifying to have a clear path of escape from the captain’s plans for her. There was a hint of light in the eastern sky, all she had to do was swim towards it and she would eventually reach land.

  ‘Is there a slim hope we shall survive?’ The idea of plunging into the dark, turbulent waters below struck the fear of death into her soul, and she wondered if she had the courage to do it.

  ‘The rips can be strong here, I won’t lie,’ Chisomo advised. ‘But dawn is about as calm as it’s going to get.’

  ‘What about sharks?’ She indicated the blood dripping from the wound in Chisomo’s neck.

  ‘I shall swim away from you,’ he advised. ‘You swim to the sunrise—’

  ‘Then you’ll be swimming out to sea! No! You must try and save yourself,’ she appealed. ‘I’ll never make it to shore without you.’

  ‘As soon as I blow this horn’ — he placed a hand on the item slung to his belt — ‘Jacques will join you in the water. Perhaps together you have a chance.’

  A metal bar smashed through one of the glass plates in the door and an arm reached through the breach and gripped Chisomo around the neck. ‘Go!’ he urged, gripping the arm around his throat to prevent himself from being choked.

  Isabelle climbed over the balustrade, slippery with sea spray, as the ship rose and fell with the ebb and flow of the waves. On the ship’s incline towards the water, she prepared to launch herself into the ocean, but fear kept her holding tight.

  ‘I can’t do it!’ She wept, for she did not wish to be returned to that cabin either.

  Chisomo struggled to release the grip Lachance had on him as his assailant smashed the lock off the door and attempted to barge through. The young African bit into the arm around his neck.

  ‘AHHH!’ The captain pulled his arm in to focus on pushing open the door, smashing its glass plates to pieces in the process.

  ‘Be fearless!’ Chisomo held the door closed as long as he could. ‘Die free, my lady.’ He ran and dived for the water ahead of her. ‘Don’t let him win!’ He disappeared beneath the waves with a splash.

  ‘Don’t you dare!’ Lachance burst through the doors and reached out to grab hold of her.

  A surreal calm overcame Isabelle as time and events seemed to slip into slow motion; it was a shock to realise that she was at peace with letting go.

  She plunged feet-first deep into the dark, watery abyss, her silk gown flying up to entangle her arms and head. But she knew which way was up and launched herself back into her nightdress. It took several long, hard strokes to surface, whereupon she drew a deep breath.

  The galleon was already some distance from her, and she heard a horn in the water some distance away in the dark sea beyond. The water was choppy in the galleon’s wake and it was a struggle to negotiate the waves, yet she felt a thousand times safer at the mercy of Mother Nature than she had in Lachance’s company. She was tempted to let her mind wander towards pondering how this day would end, or the horrors that might be lurking all around her. Instead Isabelle focused all her energy on listening out for the sound of another splash in the water.

  * * *

  The sound of Chisomo’s horn brought a wave of relief rushing over Jacques. He was now Isabelle’s best hope of making it back to shore, but he needed to jump ship and quickly. Still, to avoid falling to his death on the deck of the ship, he’d have to climb out of the crow’s-nest and onto the yard arm of the mainsail.

  To gauge the situation he peeked over the side of the crow’s-nest, whereby a knife whizzed straight past him from the direction of the fore-mast crow’s-nest.

  ‘Don’t kill him! The captain wants him alive,’ called the first mate.

  This was good news for Jacques and he decided to take advantage of it. He climbed out of the nest onto the yardarm, and laying down he shimmied along the arm backwards, to keep his eyes on his enemy.

  Lachance returned to the deck, fuming, and Jacques took this to be a good sign. ‘I suppose you think you’ve defeated me? But my only aim was to send her to a tragic demise, so you’ve done my dirty work for me. But just in case you find her—’

  In the blink of an eye Lachance had scaled the mast like an agile reptile and joined Jacques out on the yardarm. Jacques sat up to confront him, his sword poised and ready to fight — he might not be able to kill the captain, but he could still fend him off. The man’s eyes, black as night, were captivating, Jacques could not look way. He wanted to strike at him but was suddenly paralysed and his weapon slipped from his hand and crashed onto the deck below.

  Chisomo had instructed that should Lachance use his evil glare, Jacques must go into trance and in his mind reject the captain’s suggestions, but taken by surprise and fascinated by the anomaly, Jacques had not been quick enough to raise his psychic defences.

  ‘I don’t know how that nigger defied me, but you will kill your lady love, one way or the other.’ Lachance pulled a dagger and slashed a gash across Jacques’ thigh, which Jacques gripped as blood seeped between his fingers.

  Son of a bitch! The last dim hope of swimming Isabelle to safety flittered away — once he landed in that water he’d be shark bait and so would anything in his vicinity.

  ‘See you in the next life!’ With superhuman force, Lachance shoved him backwards off the yard arm and into the sea.

  It was a hard landing in the water that felt as if it shattered all his bones. The shock of the sting of salt water in his wound nearly made him pass out, as he ripped off his shirt to try and bind the wound in the hope of slowing the bleeding. The binding helped with the smarting and made it easier to swim, but he was still a threat to Isabelle.

  ‘Jacques!’ He heard her calling across the water and panicked.

  ‘No, Isabelle, stay away!’ he called. ‘I am wounded!’ As he rose up on a wave he spied her swimming towards him. ‘No! Stay away!’

  ‘I’m not leaving you!’ She only doubled her efforts to reach him, and moments later she glided into arm’s reach. ‘I would rather die with you than live alone.’ She kissed him, and he sank beneath the waves with her, losing himself in the last gift this life would give him.

  ‘You will kill your lady love, one way or the other.’ The captai
n’s dark eyes filled Jacques’ mind as they surfaced to draw breath.

  In the distance, Chisomo’s death cry alerted them that sharks were on the way.

  ‘We have to go.’ Isabelle grabbed his hand to encourage him to swim for land with her.

  He pulled her back towards himself as his soul filled with burning hate. ‘This is all your fault!’ He wrapped both hands around her throat and squeezed with all his might. Neither the look of betrayal on Isabelle’s face nor the fins moving through the waters around him could distract him from his task.

  Only once Isabelle was a dead weight in his hands did Jacques regain his sensibilities.

  ‘I’ve done the demon’s work!’ He howled out his anguish as he struggled to hold her above the water. ‘Forgive me.’ He held her dead body close as the sharks moved in.

  * * *

  ‘Enough!’

  The old woman turned away from the heartbreaking scene, which she had watched from a little boat on the water nearby. How she wished she could have fished them both out of the bay and rowed them back to shore. She was only able to guide, advise and improve conditions, but she could not interfere in the outcome — nor was she able to directly tell these two poor souls anything about herself or her quest. She had learned this by trial and error as whenever she so much as entertained the notion, her power of manifestation vanished — as did she from the perception of the two souls embroiled in this nightmare of karma with her.

  ‘How many more times must we go through this?’ she appealed to the powers that be on behalf of all.

  ‘Until the eyes of the great Transformer again reside in Somnath.’ The Hindustani, who had first appeared to her after death, manifested on the seat opposite hers in the boat. He sat in the lotus position, his staff balanced across his lap.

  ‘Wanderer.’ She acknowledged him with no great fondness, having not seen him in seven hundred years — despite a million requests for his counsel. ‘Have you come to vex me? I have tried everything, and within the confines of the curse, it is impossible to combat that demon! I need to tell my charges of our history or your Lord Shiva is never getting his beloved eyes back!’

  ‘Your devotion to my Lord could have near rivalled my own once.’

  The claim intrigued her. ‘I don’t recall.’

  ‘No, you don’t.’ He grinned, as if this should be an epiphany to her.

  The old woman recalled the words of the demon, the last time they’d met, when he was in the form of Mackenzie: ‘Your memory obviously doesn’t hark back as far as ours.’ She turned to the Hindustani. ‘This life of devotion to your Lord, this would have taken place before my lifetime as Rosalind . . .’ she led the witness.

  ‘Of course.’

  ‘At around the time the stones were first stolen from Somnath?’ She cocked an eye, feeling that she might finally be breaking new ground.

  ‘These memories are all in your female charge.’ The Hindustani neither confirmed nor denied the assumption.

  This was the first time it occurred to her that perhaps the Wanderer was restricted in how much he was allowed to guide her too. ‘Is there a means by which I might access my memories of this previous life?’

  He laughed out loud at this, near hysterical he was. ‘You’ve had the means all along . . .’

  She only grew angry. ‘Souls are suffering, stop mucking about!

  Tell me how I end this suffering!’

  He calmed down and looked to her, his gaze so full of compassion that tears moistened her own eyes. ‘Take all you have learned, and all of your imagination, and think a little laterally. There must be a way to share your history without words; perhaps you can kill two birds with one stone. Not that I in any way condone the killing of birds, or any creature.’

  ‘That’s not helpful.’ She wasn’t any the wiser.

  ‘Must I spell everything out for you?’ He seemed rather disappointed as he began to fade from her view. ‘Have you not learned to manipulate physical matter? Did you not die for a means to obtain that very wish? Transform your curse into a blessing.’

  ‘The chairs,’ she gasped, enlightened.

  CLEAR AND PRESENT DANGER

  Simon was on his way home, and although he’d vowed to leave Jon in peace, he had the proofs for the exhibition media campaign and wanted to run them by Jon before they went to print. Normally Jon wouldn’t be bothered with such things and would tell Simon to go with whatever he thought. Well, Simon thought the advertisement featuring a photograph of Jon looked fantastic, but he was less than one per cent sure that his client would agree.

  He let himself in the front door, and headed straight up to the second floor as he could see there was a light on. ‘Jon?’

  Upon reaching the top of the staircase Simon was stunned to a standstill — the light emanating from Jon’s room was so intense that he was forced to shield his eyes as he edged towards it.

  ‘What is he doing in there . . . growing weed?’ Simon couldn’t think of any other reasonable explanation for the excess lighting; Jon couldn’t be doing a TV interview or Simon would know about it.

  He dropped his briefcase, deployed his sunglasses, and used both hands to shield against the glare. Nothing could be seen beyond the intense glowing void, and as he attempted to enter the room, the door slammed closed in his face.

  ‘What the hell? Jon! Are you in there?’ Simon pounded on the door, and turned the doorknob every which way in an attempt to get it to open. ‘Shit!’ Obviously he was not getting in and he headed back downstairs to seek an alternative route.

  Out in the back garden, Simon removed his suit jacket and sunglasses, sticking the latter in his shirt pocket, and leaving the jacket on a chair.

  Light beamed like floodlights from the first floor room — the blinds were not drawn. Simon eyed the ivy-covered trellis that lined both sides of the enclosed stone porch beneath Jon’s tall bedroom windows.

  ‘I’d have to be mad.’ He took hold of the trellis and tugged to check the sturdiness, the verdict being doubtful; still, there was no other way. ‘Well, I guess it’s official.’ Simon precariously began to climb.

  The trellis snapped underfoot, but the thick ivy proved to be a more sturdy support. The foliage was full of bugs and damp from the rain — he could feel the moisture soaking through the front of his shirt. As he clambered towards the flat roof, he was doing his best not to consider the suit he was ruining, nor what it would be like trying to conduct his business with a broken limb — his oldest friend, and prize client, was in danger!

  ‘Why didn’t I take action when he only had a ghost in his room?’ Simon pulled himself onto the filthy roof of the porch. His heart was thumping, not from the effort of the climb, but from the exhilaration of still being in one piece.

  Sunglasses re-engaged, he squatted low and moved towards the windows, both arms shielding his eyes from the intense illumination. Then — relief — darkness fell. For a couple of moments Simon couldn’t see anything but a negative blur, and he was a little nervous that he’d done some damage, until slowly, and with much blinking, his eyes began to adjust.

  Inside the room the bed was made, Jon was sleeping in the chair.

  Regret consumed Simon as he observed Jon waken and spring from his gift as if wanting to escape it.

  ‘Ah!’ Jon cried out in anguish, feeling over his body with his hands like he was expecting to find some of it missing. ‘That was the worst yet . . . she’ll never return for another round after that?’ Jon collapsed onto the bed, his hands covering his face — he appeared traumatised.

  That bloody chair. A seed of resentment burst into bloom within Simon, fertilised by a sense of responsibility to somehow put things to rights.

  Now was clearly not going to be a good time for Jon to consider advertising. He was alive and physically unscathed by whatever had just taken place, and that was a relief. Simon didn’t wish to confront Jon about the event at present. He was feeling as rattled as Jon appeared, and he would be hard pressed to explain his
own bedraggled appearance otherwise. To wait until morning seemed the wisest course, so Simon quietly retreated from the porch roof. He liked to think that Jon would confide in him if something was seriously amiss in his life; yet clearly something beyond freaky was going on here and that accursed chair was at the root of it.

  * * *

  The glimpse of her life in Pornic, France, left Sara scrambling to change into some clothes and escape her warehouse. More horrifying than her demise as Isabelle de Brie was waking to the reality of being Sara Dash, fiancée to Robert Baxter, a.k.a. immortal incubator for an arch-rival, sworn to make her every life a misery!

  It was pre-dawn, but Sara got in her car and drove, having no idea where she was going. She’d left her phone behind to be certain that no one could locate her.

  It was Jacques’ perception of staring into the pirate captain’s black eyes that kept stirring the flash of a memory in her — the experience of gazing into those same, unmistakable empty eyes. A deep dread crept over her with every mental replay as she struggled to recall more, yet her efforts only succeeded in making her skin crawl. In all these past-life episodes, she had avoided direct eye contact with the demon stalking her, so where had this memory come from? Had Dasa and Thorkell enchanted her into marriage this time around? And what horrors did they have planned for her once they were wed?

  ‘This is ludicrous!’ Sara pulled over into a car space facing a park to attempt to reason away her irrational fears. But was this sudden insecurity a psychosis? Or was she attempting to seal a breach in her own psyche?

  Under normal circumstances she should feel comfortable to call Robert and tell him about her fears — or even call off the wedding — but her instinct insisted that she shouldn’t alert him that anything was amiss just yet. What had she done to have invoked this long-standing wrath? Or was Dasa’s hatred of her just a matter of habit now? The old woman seemed to think the answers could be found back in tenth century India, when the Eyes of Karma had first been stolen from Somnath. Was that where the chair planned to take them next?