An Immortal Christmas

by Monica La Porta

  This soft sprinkle tickling her nose was rare in Rome, and made her content.

  The moment she got off Quintilius’s private jet and stepped into Seattle’s city limits, scents assailed her with a potpourri of strongly roasted coffee beans and crushed leaves. Steel, wood, glass, and concrete created a landscape of tall skyscrapers and single-family homes that inhabited the hills nestled between a multitude of lakes and the Pacific Ocean. In the cold grip of December, evergreens covered the volcanic earth with a luscious natural mantle. Resin from the pines and waffle-cone smells mixed in the air to create a distinctive flavor that she would forever associate with Seattle. As she would always remember the morning mist that painted the city with a romantic brush, and framed the distant white silhouette of Mount Rainier, making it look like it was floating above the clouds.

  And the people. The variegated humanity strolling by, demonstrating that world peace was a possibility, and that winter was a relative concept when it came to Seattleites’ wardrobe. In the few hours Camelia had spent in the city center earlier that morning, she saw people wearing everything from kilts to kimonos, fur coats, thin-cotton white shirts and shorts, cosplay costumes, burkas, colorful saris and white mundus, formal gowns, cowboy hats, high heels, combat boots, sandals, and flip-flops. She had never seen so many flip-flops outside of a beach in her long life. And not a single umbrella in sight, even while it was raining. Seattle had elevated people-watching to an Olympic event.

  So different from the bricks and marbles of Rome, even Seattle’s sounds held a tune she hadn’t heard before. In an orderly manner, cars and buses flew over the asphalt made sleek by the constant drizzle, while their drivers drank from Styrofoam cups. Music from coffee shops mingled with the Christmas Carols, and Santas asked spare change for charities, shaking little bells. The many languages spoken added to the city’s soundtrack, which explained the variety of food from every corner of the world sold at hole-in-the-wall shops.

  Now that everyone around her had settled into their new lives, Camelia could imagine moving to Seattle and starting anew. Nobody would know of her past, and she could gorge everyday on curry dishes, sushi, dim sum, pho, ramen soup, pad thai, bibimbap, mochi…

  She would be running from Rome, but with time, she would find her place in this multifaceted metropolis.

  At that thought, her mood took a turn toward melancholic. She closed her eyes, tilted her chin up, and let the cold dewy caress of the rain slide down her face, mingling with her tears. They weren’t tears of sadness though. It was the power of memories that never faded, but had become stronger since her arrival in Seattle.

  Warm, hazel eyes lazily studying her. Strong hands tracing the contour of her body. Full lips devouring hers. Fangs teasing her skin and marking her as his.

  “I love you,” she whispered, and her words grew white gossamer wings and drifted away toward the cones of light overhead.

  After all those years, she was still in love with Constantine, her soulmate who never came to her rescue.

  An alpha from the Sagrado Corazon, the Sacred Heart sect, Constantine Castillo De La Vega had stolen her breath away the first time they met. For him, she ingested poison on the night before her wedding with Quintilius. Her plan worked, she avoided marriage by remaining crippled, but she spent the first decade waiting for Constantine. Then she resigned to the idea that her knight would never show up on a white horse to rescue her from a loveless life.

  Constantine’s betrayal hurt her deeply. If it weren’t for Quintilius’s support, she would have lost her mind. But she had never come to love Constantine any less. She longed for his kisses as strongly today as she had then. Any time something major happened in her life, she wished she could share it with Constantine. Her need for him was overwhelming, and she had started talking to him, imagining the conversations they would have had if together.

  What began as a desperate attempt to fill a void, soon became Camelia’s new normal. For the last century and a half, she had talked to Constantine almost every day. To her, it was as if he were in the adjacent room, using his mindspeak power.

  “Camelia?” Quintilius appeared from around the bend in the path and briskly covered the distance between them. “Here you are, my sweet flower.”

  “Shouldn’t you be with your husband?” She smiled up at him.

  He reached down for her gloved hands and brought them to his lips for a ghost kiss. “The angelic representative from the Holy Nation has taken him hostage. They are deep in conversation about something so important that it couldn’t wait.” He shrugged and good-naturedly laughed.

  “Well, my love, you just married the Archangel,” Camelia teased him.

  Quintilius lowered his imposing figure to the bench and wound his arm over her shoulder, as he had done so many times in the past. “How are you?”

  “I’m happy for you.” She leaned against him, and his warmth seeped through all the layers of their clothes.

  “I know that.” He gently brushed her hood. “But I’ve asked you, how are you?”

  “You know the answer to that question. I will always miss him.” A long shiver ran through her spine. Through the mist, Constantine appeared in her mind. Not a memory. Something different. Then she caught a whiff of a scent she hadn’t smelled since leaving Spain, a heady mixture of sandalwood, leather, and cognac combined with orange liquor, dark honey notes and a hint of vanilla. The last detail made her lick her lips as her mouth filled with the viscous feel of amber liquid. She pressed her hand over her heart, repressing a gasp. Only one spirit possessed those characteristics, the Mandarine Napoléon, the citrus cognac Constantine used to have shipped from France directly from the chemist renowned for his distilling skills who made it for the emperor.

  No other man could ever wear that combination of scents.

  I’m finally losing my mind, she thought. After hearing him, I’m also sensing him now.

  “We’ll hire another agency—” Quintilius said. “Are you okay? Is it too cold?”

  “I’m fine.” She squeezed Quintilius’s hand, trying to disperse the bizarre energy that made all her body tingle. “If he doesn’t want to be found, no PI will ever find him.” She never said Constantine’s name out loud. When the topic of her lost lover came out, it was always he and him.

  “Maybe this time will be different.” Quintilius hugged her closer.

  The paparazzi pushing through the bars of the fence went crazy with their flashes.

  Camelia smiled at Quintilius’s positive attitude. He wasn’t just saying it for her sake, he truly believed that by applying oneself to a task, one could make dreams come true. And look at him, two thousand years in the making, but he was wearing Ludwig’s ring on his finger. Talk about being patient.

  “Maybe you are right,” she said, and shifted on her long coat to kiss his cheek.

  Shouts, white lights, and camera clicks invaded their privacy once again.

  “That’s my Camelia.” Quintilius stood and swept her in his arms for another hug and a brotherly peck that made the press’s night. “Are you coming in? The reception has already started.”

  In the greenhouse, waiters were busy serving appetizers and champagne. Typical Seattle fare like wild salmon and fresh oysters were on the menu, alongside the Italian specialties Ludwig requested.

  “In a moment.” Camelia caressed Quintilius’s face. “Let me enjoy the rain a minute longer.”

  As soon as Quintilius disappeared inside, the paparazzi found her too boring and moved along the perimeter of the museum, looking for juicier fodder.

  Still unsettled by the experience of sensing Constantine’s scent as if he stood nearby, Camelia went for a short walk, hoping the exercise would clear her mind. After a few minutes of pacing the garden’s pebbled path back and forth, the olfactory hallucination dimmed, and Camelia breathed again.

  Chapter Two

  Constantine blindly ran away from the glass museum.

  After Camelia left him to marry her Roman fianc
é, her betrayal almost cost him his life. He never thought he could ever come close to that level of physical hurt again.

  He had been wrong.

  Seeing her, only to be the witness of her marital bliss, had reopened a festering wound. How many times had he wished to be in her presence again? Well, his request had been granted, and now he felt like dying.

  His wolf guided him toward the neighborhood of Queen Ann and Kerry Park, the place he always visited when upset. He strode toward Changing Form and sat inside the steel frame of the abstract sculpture, facing the panoramic view of downtown and the Space Needle. Then he realized his mistake. There was no running away from Camelia this time.

  One heartbeat exploded against his ribcage, and he pressed both hands over it.

  She was his soulmate. Werewolves mated for life. Sacred Heart werewolves could sense their mates’ every emotion, even at a great distance from each other. He crossed oceans to be sure he couldn’t hear Camelia any longer, but now she was in his city and their bond would strengthen again.

  His wolf whined, his memories of Camelia’s wolf coming back.

  ****

  Pyrenees, Spain, Summer 1856

  From atop the column, the old warlock studied Constantine for a long moment, then tilted his head to the side. “What you ask will cost you dearly.”

  “Name your price,” Constantine said, surprised their conversation started with such a statement when he hadn’t expressed his request yet.

  After a week and a half of hiking up the ridges of the Pyrenees, through isolated valleys and steep gorges where no horse could travel, Constantine had reached the hamlet of Sierra Luna, a place very few knew existed. Populated by warlocks and witches, the small village didn’t open the gates to anyone who knocked on its door. Constantine was forced to wait outside the tall rock wall another week before the portcullis swung down over the moat, and the old man finally admitted him in.

  The warlock led him through several seemingly identical alleys connected by arches and bridges, up and down in what resembled a goose chase meant to confuse him. Constantine could have sworn he saw turrets rotating as they passed, and windows reflecting foreign landscapes. A woman waved at him from the third floor of a manor, but as he blinked she appeared on a balcony on the first story, playing a harpsichord. They walked past a gated garden containing the most bizarre orchard Constantine had ever seen. Instead of plants and trees, there were statues made of stones representing them. Constantine couldn’t help but shiver at the sight.

  An hour later, the man stopped before a stone cottage with a thatched roof and let Constantine in. On the other side of the door, there weren’t rooms, but a meadow and Roman ruins. The sun shone bright over them, while from outside the cottage, the darkening sky announced a starry night. The warlock then chose a truncated column as his seat and meditated, leaving Constantine to his own devices.

  “It’s not me you’ll pay the price to.” The warlock’s ancient eyes regarded him with sadness.

  “To whom then?” Constantine hadn’t gone to the extreme of climbing the unhospitable mountain range to turn back now.

  The warlock pressed a hand over his heart, then pointed a finger toward Constantine. “Yourself.”

  Constantine stared at the man for a moment before breaking into a loud laugh. “No price is too high if you can help me.”

  The man nodded, then asked, “What’s your full name?”

  “Constantine Castillo De La Vega.”

  “English name, Spanish surnames. What’s your story?”

  Before leaving Salamanca to undertake the gruesome trek, Constantine had been warned about warlocks and witches and their seemingly random ways. The friend who gave him directions to Sierra Luna also told him to always answer their questions without asking why they wanted to know. “During the crusades, one of my ancestors was saved from a vampire attack by an Anglo-Saxon named Constantine. In gratitude, every firstborn in our family must carry that name.”

  The warlock readjusted himself, sitting more comfortable on the marble surface. “Why do you want to erase your wolf’s memory?”

  Constantine was surprised by the precision of the man’s question. He had also been advised to be truthful in his answers. “I belong to Corazon Sagrado, the Sacred Heart sect, and I was cursed with never-ending love. My soulmate left me to wed another man, and I can still sense her through the connections our wolves share. Every emotion she feels, I feel.” He paused to gather his thoughts. “She will soon marry… and I can’t bear to live through her first conjugal night and all the others that will follow.”

  “That would break any man or wolf.” The warlock hopped down from the column and placed a hand over Constantine’s heart. “I can do what you ask—”

  “Thanks.” A weight was lifted from Constantine’s chest.

  The warlock shook his head. “Don’t thank me yet. You won’t share emotions with your soulmate any longer, and you’ll be released from the soulmate bond.”

  “That’s all I ask.” Despite his statement, even the idea of rescinding his soulmate ties with Camelia hurt. Cold air blew through his heart, making him shiver.

  The warlock continued, “You’ll be able to take lovers, but you can’t go back to Salamanca and your sect. Tampering with your wolf’s memory is blasphemous—”

  Constantine wondered how the warlock knew so much about him. “It doesn’t matter anymore.” He pressed his hand over the warlock’s still resting on his chest. “Can you feel my pain? Anything that can lessen this hurt, even if by a fraction, I will welcome it.”

  “You must leave Spain, and travel far enough that your wolf and your soulmate’s will never be in the same place.”

  “I don’t plan to go to Rome, and I don’t think she will ever be back in Salamanca.”

  “I’m talking about an ocean of distance between you two.”

  Now that Camelia was gone, he had nothing left in Spain. “I’ll travel to the Americas,” Constantine said.

  “My spell will only work if you keep that distance constant. The moment you and your mate are close again, even magik won’t be able to keep you apart, and your wolf will remember—”

  “I don’t count on being near her ever again.”

  “One day, your longing to be reunited with her will be too strong to ignore, and you’ll think it’s okay to see her, maybe just that one time.” The warlock raised his eyebrow in a dare to gainsay him.

  Constantine remained silent. He knew his resolve was weak when it came to Camelia. Without thinking twice of the consequences, he had gone against his family for her.

  “If you are ever close to your mate again, even for a brief moment, your wolf will regain full memory of her.” The warlock lowered his hand, then stepped back. “When that happens, your heartbeats will be numbered. If you and she aren’t fully mated before the next full moon, your heart will break. It will be torn apart by your pain, and you’ll die.”

  ****

  The countdown had started.

  He closed his eyes and waited. A moment later, Constantine felt the aftereffect of that first heartbeat signaling the beginning of his demise. An invisible knife stabbed him in the chest. A guttural cry escaped his mouth as his wolf howled. His entire body shook, then he collapsed against the sculpture, its unyielding frame cocooning him in a cold embrace.

  When he could breathe again, he hoisted himself up and walked away from Kerry Park. His legs weren’t stable at first, but soon he sprinted into a sustained jog. He retraced his steps and descended onto Pike Place. It wasn’t the fastest route or the one that made more sense, but Constantine was past reasoning. His wolf governed his actions and his raw emotions. On Virginia Street, he entered a small alley and climbed a set of steep stairs.

  The red wooden door of his loft looked foreign to him, and he fumbled with his keys. Once inside, he went straight to the dining room overlooking the market. He grabbed a blown glass flask from his liquor cabinet, then fell onto the loveseat with the view of the bay.


  The first few sips of the Mandarine Napoléon went down his throat without him noticing. Only when the flask sloshed empty did the icy hand squeezing his heart relax. And the memories started. He was staring at the cold, black sea, but his eyes saw Camelia running through fields of golden grain…

  ****

  Salamanca, Spain, Fall 1851

  Constantine had left his lover’s bed after a night of pleasure and heavy imbibing, and was riding back home, when nature called and he stopped to relieve himself. He dismounted Durango and hastily reached for the riverbank. Fumbling with the fastenings of his riding trousers, he cursed for drinking himself to stupor—and that took a generous amount of sherry wine for a strong alpha like himself.

  A feminine voice stopped his hands a second before he would expose his body. His sleepy eyes opened wide as his ears tuned to a sweet lullaby sung nearby. On the other side of the river, on the Del Reis’ property, a large chestnut tree towered over the fields.

  When a green pup, he had often forded the stream to reach the neighbor’s fields and nap under the chestnut tree. He was never caught trespassing and spent long summer afternoons in its shade, daydreaming of adventures at sea. At fifteen, when he reached shifter puberty and discovered how soft and warm a woman’s embrace was, his escapades into the Del Reis’ estate stopped.

  Angled away from him, nested between the gnarly roots, sat a young woman. He could only see the red gown draped in a large circle and slender arms covered in tight sleeves. A long strand of straight blond hair fanned over the tree trunk when a gust of wind disturbed the morning quiet. A delicate hand fell limply to the ground, followed by the rest of her body, as if she had fainted.

  “Your turn to rest,” a masculine voice said, and the red gown was lifted from the ground.

  Constantine watched as a man in his thirties, a werewolf wearing rough servant clothes, emerged from the shade of the large trunk with the woman in his arms. The sight propelled him into action, and without thinking of the consequences, he waded the cold waters and reached the other bank, then strode to the tree.