“Arrêtez vous, le fils d’une chienne!” Lucien’s voice reverberated in the bloody enclosure.
The wolf skidded to a stop. Summer felt his rancid breath on her face. His lips curled as a low growl thundered up his throat.
“Allez vous faire foutre, avant que je vous casse le cou,” Lucien threatened. Tucking its tail, the wolf slunk into the darkness, emitting a high whine.
A bolt of white hot lightning ripped through her spine, a metallic taste filled her mouth. Her eyelids fluttered. The shadows turned to twilight, the twilight to inky blackness, and then no pain.
Picking up the Pieces
In the days which followed, Summer drifted in and out of consciousness. Life-sustaining fluids flowed into her wrecked body through a tangle of tubes. Sometimes, at night, she thought she’d see Lucien standing vigil at her bedside. But when she asked the nurse if she, too, had seen him, the nurse would shake her head and slow the flow of the morphine drip. The blood black bruising gradually turned to blue, then brown, and by the time it had faded to a sickly yellow, Summer was able to stay alert most hours of the day.
Through a haze of narcotics, Summer related the events of that horrific night to a police detective, omitting the part about Lucien. Although the detective grilled her for an answer, she insisted she could not recall who had extracted her from the wolf enclosure and delivered her to the hospital door.
Days turned to weeks, and weeks to months. Summer’s scars healed, but her legs were stubborn. The fall from the tree had fractured her spine.
With time and the grace of God, the doctors advised, she might regain mobility.
The grace of God…God saved no grace for her. Just as His face had turned from Lucien all those many years ago, He had turned from her for loving him. Summer’s heart felt as crippled as her body.
One wintry morning, the physician informed Summer that she could be discharged from the hospital to convalesce at home, but that her present condition required someone to care for her until she was able to walk.
Her release from the hospital was a double-edged sword. Summer yearned to be away from the confinement, but she was virtually helpless - a cripple. She had no relatives to rely on. What was to become of her? She had nothing and no one.
Late that afternoon, small snowflakes drifted outside the window of her hospital room as the sun retired for a winter’s nap. Melody bounced into the room, bearing the latest Hollywood gossip magazines and a tempting greasy cheeseburger for Summer. At the same time, Summer’s physician peeked in to see if she had arranged for her scheduled release the following morning.
She’d been looking to this day with equal degrees of anticipation and dread. Definitely, she wanted to leave the hospital, but where she’d go, she didn’t know. Dr. Silver stood at the foot of her bed; the thick folder of her medical records tucked under one arm. The scent of his aftershave wafted fragrant spice through the air. He was short in stature, with thick, black hair slicked neatly into place. Summer liked his lively blue eyes and quick broad smile. As always, a Star of David hung on a gold chain around his neck.
Summer appreciated his manner, which was neither tender nor brusque, but frank in a way that meted out the facts in manageable doses.
“Do you have any relatives that you can stay with on a long-term basis?” he inquired.
Summer shook her head. She was a product of the foster care system. When she had turned eighteen, the magical age when the system yanks away the safety net, she had been on her own. She might as well have dropped to earth from another planet.
“What about your friend here?” he inquired, indicating Melody.
“I’d love for Summer to stay with me, but I only have a lumpy futon that I share with my two cats. It’s a third floor walkup, and my landlord’s an asshole that won’t even install a smoke alarm, much less a wheelchair lift.”
Dr. Silver drew a deep breath and squeezed her toes through the sheet.
“I’m afraid, Summer, that if you cannot find someone to stay with you, we will have to release you to a long-term care facility until you regain the skills that you need to care for yourself properly,” he cautioned.
Summer turned her face from him, staring at the tile on the wall while tears flooded her eyes. His words and their implications frightened her.
Her tears were a mixture of that fear and sorrow of knowing that she was alone in this world - crippled and alone.
A nursing home! What if she never walked again? She’d live out her years amid the reek of urine and the death rattles of the elderly. A dark despondence settled on her, like a vulture perched on her shoulder. Summer wished she had died in that wolf enclosure.
A familiar voice beamed like a beacon in the darkest of hours. “She can stay with me.” Lucien strode into the room, taking his place at Summer’s bedside. For the first time in many months, Summer felt the light return to her eyes.
“And you are?” the doctor queried.
“I am…”
“My cousin,” Summer interjected. “He’s my cousin…” The doctor’s brow knitted in confusion. “…from Paris,” Summer concluded.
“That’s right,” Lucien confirmed, placing a kiss on her forehead. “I am studying at the university, and my dear cousin is welcome to stay with me. She will be coming home with me tomorrow, if Miss Melody does not mind picking her up from the hospital in the morning. I have a schedule conflict that I cannot change, and will not be available at the time of her release. That is, if that is agreeable with dear cousin Summer.”
Summer felt as buoyant as a beach ball. In an instant, everything she’d lost had been returned to her. If Lucien had charged in on a snow white steed, he couldn’t have appeared more of a hero. Her dark angel had come to rescue her in her hour of need, just as he had so many long months before. She looked at him - his eyes changed colors like shattered glass, and she felt safe for the first time in months. She knew she’d been under the protection of her pale knight all along.
***
The next morning when Melody wheeled her into the Lafayette Square house, Summer discovered that Lucien had already prepared a bedroom for her, complete with a spectacular view of the park. The Chinese marriage bed, thick with down coverlets and puffs of feather pillows awaited her. She settled into its sheltered comfort, and there she passed the long weeks of her recuperation.
Through the abbreviated daylight hours of winter, Lucien’s housekeeper, Louise, tended to Summer’s needs. Melody proved to be a true and faithful friend, stopping in daily to cheer Summer with gossip; often bringing her favorite treats and transporting her to physical therapy and doctor appointments. When Summer’s doctor refused to refill her pain-numbing morphine prescription, Melody scored some medical-grade marijuana to ease the constant anguish in Summer’s shattered spine.
When the sun slept, Lucien settled by Summer’s side: watching movies, telling stories and playing games. He schooled her in Bezique, an old French card game, and she taught him the strategy of penny-a-point gin rummy. He surprised her one day, by bringing her jazz collection from her house, so she could listen to her beloved music.
Not a single word passed between them about their broken affair. Lucien was cautious in his affection towards Summer, often slipping her hand into his or stroking her hair, but nothing more.
Oftentimes, as she slept, he would sit by her bedside in the darkened room listening to her breathing, and, as he sat, memories rose and sank in his brain like waking dreams.
A car would pass by, and he would remember a carriage carving through the white snow, its passenger as pale as the silvery moonlight on the drifts. Like pages of a book, he turned these memories one by one in his mind, as one might a beautiful and intricate bauble.
As his mind meandered through the old streets and older shadows of the past, a gradual change occurred in him. He had mourned his lost humanity for too long, he’d decided. Too many precious years he’d filled to the brim with guilt and regret.
A barstool philos
opher had once said to him, “Buddy-O, you’re either the piss-er or the pissed-on, and every day of your life you gotta wake up and ask yourself -which one am I gonna be today?”
So, when he felt the clarion call, he would leap on the back of the wind - the thrill of flight excited him still -and travel to places far from the city - wretched, dark places that only the brave or the foolish dare go. There he would choose his victim, and, when he was done, both he and society were better for it.
No longer did he have such specific requirements. No, instead he decided to embrace his nature with a new-found gusto, choosing less discriminately, but only taking what he needed and never from the innocent. He would do what he must and let God sort them out in the end.
As time passed, Summer’s legs improved, and she could walk for short distances with the assistance of braces and steel crutches. The pain in her spine too often sent her hobbling back to the comfort of her bed.
The sight of her agony ripped at Lucien’s heart. She tried to remain cheerful in his presence, but Lucien noticed her retreating into silent contemplation when she thought he wasn’t looking. Her mind had remained blocked to his probing since the terrible event, but he could smell her despair - like dashes of pungent curry.
From her bed, Summer saw the long nights of winter shorten, as the pale green of spring pushed its way through the damp earth.
Pain was her constant companion. There was little improvement in her weakening limbs. The doctor issued a bleak prognosis for a full recovery. The limited mobility she had now, he’d said, was the best she could expect.
The prognosis devastated her in mind and spirit. At first she denied it, emotionally turning her back, crossing her arms, and refusing to believe it to be true. She would come through this, she determinedly told herself, and remake her life better than ever.
But in the face of ever-mounting pain and disability, she abandoned the hope of regaining her life as it once was, and a parasitic, wicked anger rooted inside of her, lashing out at everything and everyone. She was furious with Jerry for what he’d done to her, furious with the gods for allowing it to happen. She was even furious with the children who played on the street in front of the house, simply because they could walk, skip, and run. But mostly she was furious with herself, certain that she was at fault somehow. She despised her condition. She believed Lucien had taken her in with the expectation that she would one day return to full health. Now she felt he was trapped by obligation, giving his life over to caring for her.
In the unending hours that she spent in bed, Summer bargained with the universe. If only her health were restored, she’d do things differently. She’d be kinder and more considerate. She’d cherish each moment of every day - and she’d love Lucien exactly as he was, with all of her heart, for as long as he wanted her. But still no miracle materialized.
She suffered through the dark hours when Lucien lay still as a stone in her bed as she feigned sleep. His body so near, yet their hearts separated by a chasm that was both deep and wide.
Her mounting depression caused her to retreat more and more from him. She withdrew into isolation. She longed for things to be the way they were before her injuries. But how could he want her now, scarred and broken, bitter and lost?
Only Lucien had power enough to pick up the pieces of her shattered life and bring her back to wholeness. Twice before he’d come to her rescue. She needed him once more.
Outside, the rain poured down in silvery sheets. Thunder rumbled somewhere faraway. Summer lay sleepless in bed, listening to the rain beating against the windows like machine-gun fire. Lucien spooned behind her, his breath rustling the strands of her hair. She knew he would not go out tonight - too difficult to find what he needed in this downpour. Lately he’d seemed changed…more at peace. The old ennui had disappeared. His eyes no longer seemed as haunted. Behind those prismatic orbs, she detected a new vigor, a bold and magnetic confidence.
She knew from the vortex of energy preceding him, when he had returned home from the hunt, even before he walked into the room. It shamed her how much she coveted his vitality.
Brilliant talons of blue lightning split the sky, the rain so fierce now even the light from street lamps were no more than dim pinpricks. The room was as black as pitch, and it seemed the darkness would swallow her whole. In that tomb-like blackness, she felt the stirring of her heart. She had to seize the moment before it slipped away…before she slipped away, retreating into her small, little world, and locking him out forever.
“My guardian angel,” she whispered, her voice no more than a sigh as she slipped her trembling hand into his. She clutched his hand to her mouth, and reaching out to him, she poured out all the gratitude and longing which filled her heart, raining a dozen kisses into his palm, and murmuring with each kiss, “I love you…I love you…I love you…”
Thunder rolled in the distance; a gathering storm.
Lucien bundled her tenderly in his arms, and Summer felt the emotional divide that had separated them close as seamlessly as the blackened sky had sealed after the lightning.
She turned in his arms, reveling in the press of his body against hers. Lingering in the moment, her nose nuzzling into the curve of his neck, the pulse of his artery drummed against her cheek. His fingers stroked her hair with a gentleness that ached.
Holding her head in his hands, he brushed her mouth with his, his lips still full and lush as she remembered. She wanted to smother him with her mouth and play her tongue over his, but she was afraid.
There was only the hush of their breath and the ringing of the rain on the windows. In the inky blackness, her hand found the nape of his neck, and she entwined the tendrils of his hair around her fingers; they slipped through her fingertips like running water.
His body moved against her, and she fit her leg between his, feeling the swell of his manhood on her thigh. A shudder rippled through her flesh, and then a quickening in her loins. She was afraid, but only just. The darkness would hide her scars.
She guided Lucien’s hand under her chemise; cupping her hand over his she placed it on her breast. The touch of him was ecstasy and even sweeter than before, because she loved him.
Torrents of rain crashed against the window panes. In the blackness she murmured, “Make love to me.”
His voice came low and husky, like dried corn stalks in the breeze, “I’m afraid,” he said.
“I won’t break,” she promised. “I trust you.” And she did. She trusted him with her body. She trusted him with her heart. They were both his for the taking, if he still wanted them.
The butter-cream soft flesh of her breast pressed against his hand, its little rosebud blossoming in the hollow of his palm. Lucien’s fingers trembled with equal parts fear and desire. For months, he’d only memories of her body to live on, memories so overwhelming he would sometimes take them to a private place behind a locked door where he might relieve himself of them for a while.
Now she lay next to him, her thoughts open and rushing at him like a flash flood. In those thoughts, he saw a yearning for caresses long denied, and desire for pleasures too long ignored…and something else… something secreted in the recesses of her mind…a phantom of a thought, ducking and hiding from his probing like a frightened child.
Her body moved next to him in the blackened room, frail as a fledging bird in his arms.
“Lucien,” she whimpered, her knee nuzzling his half-hard cock.
He moved his hips forward, relishing the pressure of her thigh against his rising prick, and he heard himself moan.
Beneath her gown, he filled his hand with the milky flesh of her breast. The lovely weight of it bounced lightly in his palm.
I can do this, Lucien thought. He would make love to her just as tenderly and skillfully as he delivered death’s embrace to those who were worthy of his tenderness. No pain. No fear. Only ecstasy. Yes, I can do this.
Summer clutched tightly to Lucien’s shoulder at a sudden, terrible sound. Blinding arcs of gh
ostly green, like sizzling Tesla coils, illuminated the night sky as lightning struck a transformer, plunging the neighborhood into a total blackout. Lucien held her closely as they watched the final sparks spit and fizzle to the ground.
It didn’t seem possible, but the room was blacker than before. Even with Lucien’s extraordinary night vision, he could barely see his hand in front of his face.
“Why don’t I light some candles?” Lucien suggested, with a squeeze to Summer’s shoulder.
“Don’t,” she protested, a note of panic in her voice.
“Mon chére, I want to see you.”
“Don’t be so sure,” she replied.
It was a bittersweet heartache to think that the woman who once lay naked across his couch in a fully-lit room was now afraid of a candle’s feeble light. It had been too long since Lucien had truly seen her. He wanted to savor the golden wheat of her hair, the swell of her breasts, the curve of her hips, and the slash of crimson between her legs.
“Just one small candle, then,” he pleaded. “For me?”
“Just one,” she agreed.
He crossed the room, fumbling in the dark for the box of matches he knew lay on the nightstand. He heard the rustle of the blankets as she shifted her body on them and a sound like the tinkle of glass wind chimes as her hair fell round her shoulders. The drumming of her heart he heard clearest of all.
He struck the match against the box and lowered the flame to a single candle. Lucien watched the flame flash quickly in the darkness, and then settle onto the wick, rocking back and forth. The bronze glow threw shadows that leaned and jumped, lapping at the walls as if they were a living thing.
He turned to see Summer sitting atop the rumpled bed. The meager light shone through her thin cotton gown, making it nearly translucent. Her areolas, the color of bruised peaches, peeked through the cloth. So delicate did she appear to him, he felt the need to move at a snail’s pace and speak not at all, lest she shatter.
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