Beloved Forever

by Kit Tunstall

  She found a flurry of activity in the hall. Strangers rushed in and out, carrying parcels, furniture and bags. Brannon sat on one of the rickety chairs, immersed in his Game Boy. She brushed past two men balancing an oversized chair, heading for the hallway at the end of the hall that she knew led to a sitting room.

  She took a seat beside him, cautiously testing the chair before letting it absorb her weight. He looked up, but not quite in her direction. “What’s going on?” she asked.

  “Nicholas had some stuff brought up from London.” He slid a bowl of apples to her. “Breakfast, until after everyone leaves. Then I’ll whip up something. Nicholas has stocked your…provisions in the cooler in the basement, so you won’t need to hunt.” He spoke blandly, but the set of his shoulders was tense.

  She took one of the red apples and polished it on her shirt. “Who brought up my luggage? It was inside my room when I woke up.”

  He shrugged. “Wasn’t me. Probably Nicholas.”

  She sighed. “Don’t you ever put that thing away?”

  He clicked it off and looked up. “Yes.”

  She drummed her fingers on the tabletop. “And those sunglasses—don’t you ever take them off?”

  He frowned. “You’re certain you want me to?”

  “Why wouldn’t I?”

  “Hmm.” He brought up a hand to slide the sunglasses onto the top of his head. “Satisfied?”

  Her breath hissed through her teeth when she saw his eyes…rather, his lack of eyes. Empty sockets, marred with scars, stared back at her. “You’re blind.”

  He returned the sunglasses to the bridge of his nose, hiding his eyes again. “You didn’t know?”

  She shook her head. “How could I? You don’t seem blind. You’re always playing that game—”

  “It’s a matter of sound and logic. I’m not that good at most of the games, but practicing keeps my senses sharp.”

  “How do you get around? You seem so capable.”

  Brannon shrugged. “Again, it’s a matter of using my senses. I’ve been blind for almost two hundred years. My senses of hearing, touch, taste and smell have compensated. Not to mention my psychic abilities.” As he spoke, one of the apples lifted from the bowl and twirled through the air. “It’s not a lot different from having my sight.” He grinned at her. “For example, I can tell you exactly what ingredients are in the perfume you’re wearing. Charlie Red, isn’t it?”

  She nodded before realizing he couldn’t see. “Uh, yeah.”

  “Don’t worry about your gestures. You’re easy to read.” The apple floated back to the bowl. “It’s actually an effort to block out your thoughts right now. It’ll probably be like that for another century or so.”

  She sighed. “I doubt I’ll be around that long.”

  “He didn’t mean it.” Brannon reached for the handheld game again. “Nicholas is stubborn as hell, and he’s decided the only way to get Koss to leave you alone is to make him think he doesn’t love you.”

  “That’s not it. He would have said something—”

  “Yeah, ‘cause you’d be convincing if you knew,” he said with mild sarcasm. He touched her hand casually. “Look, he’s not an easy man to get close to. He’s doing his best to push you away, because he’s trying to convince himself he doesn’t love you any longer. It’s the safest thing for you.”

  She set the apple on the table, finding her appetite gone. “That’s stupid. Koss will hurt me either way.”

  He nodded. “That’s what Nicholas hasn’t realized. Even if he didn’t love you anymore, Koss would know he had loved you once. And he’ll do anything to hurt him. If he can’t have Nicholas, he doesn’t want him to be happy with anyone else.”

  “Why can’t he let Nicholas go?” She clenched her hands together. “Would he if I left Nicholas? If Koss knows Nicholas can’t have me, won’t he—”

  “No.” Brannon spoke abruptly. “Part of torturing Nicholas includes watching him suffer each time you die. He promised Johanna he could make her mistress of Tremont Plantation if she betrayed Elspeth’s secret. Whom do you think twisted Tremont’s mind to convince him spend a year torturing Elspeth, a woman he was in love with? He convinced Tremont to marry Johanna, and he was the one who planted the idea of Tremont killing her right before Nicholas returned. It took Nicholas years to break Koss’s hold on the man and discover he wasn’t as evil as he had seemed. He loved Elspeth, and in the end, he was a victim, just like the rest of us. That’s what allowed Nicholas and Tremont to form a rapport despite the anguish they had caused each other. Their common hatred of Koss united them in a way I wouldn’t have imagined possible.”

  “What about Erukán? Did he influence her death?”

  Brannon shook his head. “No, Koss didn’t know about you then. He knew about reincarnation, but didn’t know Nicholas had found out about it. I have no doubt he would have been involved with killing you in that life if he’d had the chance, but the conquistadors beat him to it.” He gave her a sardonic grin. “Poor Koss.”

  She didn’t respond to his black humor. “He wasn’t content to wait for someone else to harm Erin, I guess.”

  “No, I guess not.” Brannon sighed. “I should have been here to protect you.”

  Her eyes widened. “You knew Erin?”

  He nodded. “Oh, yes. She was a bonny lass,” he said in a terrible Scottish accent. “Though I was already older than her when she married Nicholas, she was kind of like a mother to me.” His mouth drooped. “She was the only one who didn’t try to dissuade me when I went after Koss.”

  Emily’s brow furrowed. “Why would you go after Koss?”

  He touched his sunglasses. “He took my eyes the same night he took my wife. I thought it was to hurt Nicholas in the beginning.” A bitter laugh escaped him. “Can you believe it? The sick bastard became infatuated with Nina, and he just took her.”

  She started at the mention of his wife’s name, remembering the woman from the church. She didn’t need to ask the outcome.

  “No, I guess you don’t.” He sounded weary. “By the time I caught up with them, he had her convinced she was in love with him. She told me it was all her idea, but I knew that was a lie. If you remembered Nina…”

  She shivered, recalling the cold woman from her memory of Erin’s death.

  “She wasn’t like that before he twisted her mind,” he said in a hard voice. Brannon’s mouth straightened. “I apologize. I have no right to read your thoughts and then argue with them. It’s more difficult to maintain a distance when I’m distraught.”

  A memory stirred at the back of her mind, and she frowned, struggling to focus on it. A flash of Brannon’s face—several years younger and not lined with the cares of the world—came to her. She remembered them laughing together as they stood in the chapel. She knew the image must be from Erin’s lifetime, because the church was long gone. She scrunched her brow. What were they doing in the chapel? Had he witnessed her wedding? No, that didn’t seem right.

  An image of Nina came to her as well. She wasn’t smiling like Brannon. Rather, she looked tired and strained, and there was a sullen set to her lips. She held a child in her arms. “What happened to your son?” she blurted out without thought.

  Brannon flinched, but didn’t shy away from answering. “I wish I knew. Nina took him with her the night Koss attacked us, but when I caught up with them, he was gone. Koss nearly killed me that night.” His mouth twisted. “Do you know why he spared my life?”

  She shook her head, leaning forward.

  “So I could live with the agony of not knowing what they had done with my son, not knowing if he was alive or dead.”

  The raw pain in his tone made Emily reach out to him. She grasped his hand in hers and squeezed, rubbing her thumb across the back of his hand. “Oh, Brannon—”

  “If you two are through cozying up in the corner, I could use your help,” Nicholas said, approaching the table. “The supplies are laid in, and we need to ensure the perimeter is sec
ure before we lock down the castle with ourselves inside. I want to be certain this really is a fortress before we close it to the outside world.” He looked angry, and his eyes lingered on their joined hands.

  She looked up at him, pushing back the twinge of guilt. Holding Brannon’s hand was innocent, but even if it wasn’t, she didn’t owe him any explanations. She was a free agent since he didn’t love her anymore. She met his gaze defiantly, not relinquishing his nephew’s hand.

  Brannon snorted softly as he moved his hand and got to his feet. He seemed to have cast off the bad memories haunting him, but for the slight slumping of his shoulders and grim lines around his mouth.

  * * * * *

  They met back in the hall after examining each section of the castle, nearly two hours later. Nicholas stepped into the falling rain, wearing a light jacket, and ran to the gatehouse. The portcullis came down seconds after he stepped inside the small stone structure, and Emily assumed it worked by some electronic means. As he ran across the courtyard, the lightning flashed, and the rain began falling with more force.

  He entered the castle, shaking out his wet hair, not bothering to take off the jacket before he and Brannon closed the doors. He glanced at both of them before turning the key in the lock. “No one gets in, and no one gets out until this is over.” The lock clicked, and he slipped the key back into the pocket of his jeans. Their eyes met briefly, but he looked away without speaking, then turned and walked to the staircase without looking back.

  “Hungry?” Brannon asked.

  She started to shake her head, but her stomach growled. “Yeah, I guess.”

  “You like pizza?”

  “Of course, but I thought no one could get in.”

  “I’ll make it.” He offered her his arm. “I’m pretty handy in the kitchen, and Nicholas ordered enough supplies to last months.”

  She looped her arm through his and walked with him into the kitchen. At some point in the last decade, Nicholas had upgraded the kitchen. An industrial size dishwasher and refrigerator nestled into an alcove near the stove, built into the cabinets. Somehow, the mix of ancient and modern looked more right than she would have believed.

  Brannon gestured to the island in the center of the kitchen. “Hop up on one of those stools. You can help me chop vegetables.”

  She went to a stool and clambered up, watching as he walked to the fridge and opened the crisper. “Do you need help?”

  “Nah, I know which vegetable I’m holding by touching it. If all else fails, there’s always my nose.” The opened steel door muffled his voice, until he turned to face her, bearing an armful of produce bags. “Are there knives on the island?”

  She glanced at the block of knives with wooden handles. “Uh-huh.” She extracted a chopping knife, noting how sharp it was. Would it make a good weapon? “Um, if Koss comes—”

  “When,” he inserted quietly as he set the bags on the Formica surface.

  She cleared her throat. “When he comes, how will I defend myself?”

  His brows drew together, and he made a sound low in his throat. “Good question. Guns against vampires are mostly ineffective. They heal too fast, and it’s almost impossible to do permanent injury.”

  She reached for a bag of bell peppers, extracting a red one. “I don’t know how to use a gun anyway.”

  “Hmm. How about a sword?”

  She shook her head. “No.”

  Brannon unwrapped a carton of Portobello mushrooms and took out two large ones. “Are you a quick study?”

  “It depends. Ask my parents about academics, and they’d probably say no. I had a high GPA in high school because the work was easy, not because I applied myself. Same with college.” She grinned, remembering how frustrated her father had been when she hadn’t been able to decide on a college, let alone a major. “They were annoyed when I decided to go to the local junior college with Sara for a couple of years. They thought I was wasting my potential, or something like that.”

  “Why’d you go there?” Brannon popped a bite of the mushroom in his mouth, chewing it before saying, “Nicholas told me you’ve been accepted to NYU. You’re going next semester.”

  “I didn’t want to go to college at all. It was a compromise.” She tried to be casual when she asked, “When did he tell you about NYU?”

  “When he told me I had to fix everything I’d messed up for you. He said it was important to deal with Koss before you had to be at college.”

  She stabbed the knife through the pepper with more force than was necessary. “He’s decided I’m going and that’s it, is it?”

  “You know Nicholas. He’s stubborn.”

  She slashed at a small section of the pepper, thinking it yielded too easily to the knife. “So am I.” If he thought he could go on making her decisions, he had another think coming. Rather than yell at Brannon for something Nicholas had done, she shifted the topic back to Koss. “How will Nicholas get Koss to come into the open? The way I understand it, he likes to draw out his games.”

  “We won’t have to lure Koss.”

  “You sound positive about that, but you weren’t sure the last time I asked.” Her eyes widened at his confident tone. “What changed?”

  “I know he’ll come to us, and soon.”

  She stopped chopping and looked up at him. “How do you know?”

  “I had a vision. It wasn’t clear enough to pinpoint exactly when, but it happened here. We all wore about the same style of clothes, and I didn’t look any older. It’s just a feeling, but I think it’ll only be a matter of days. Weeks, at most.”

  How could he sound so calm about it? She swallowed the lump in her throat. “Have you ever been wrong?”

  “No.”

  “What happened in the vision?” she forced herself to ask.

  He hesitated, and even his fingers stopped chopping the tomato he had moved on to after finishing the mushrooms. “It was obscure—”

  “Brannon?”

  He took a deep breath and looked in her direction. “He held a sword to your throat. I got the sense neither Nicholas nor I could stop him.”

  Her heart rate, already slow, seemed to still completely. It was a long second before her heart began beating sluggishly again. “He’s going to kill me?”

  “No, we won’t let that won’t happen.”

  “But you’re never wrong,” she said stridently.

  Brannon shook his head. “Nicholas and I will both do our best to protect you, but I won’t let you go into the situation helplessly. I may not be able to teach you much in the time we have, but you won’t be completely defenseless.”

  “So it’ll just take longer for me to die.” Emily didn’t like the stark acceptance in her voice. She wanted to be in a fighting frame of mind, not weak and powerless. She didn’t want to be dependent on Nicholas and Brannon, but what chance did she have against Koss?

  Brannon apparently couldn’t find an answer to her statement, because he picked up the knife again and started chopping the tomato without looking up. They worked in silence, moving mechanically.

  She wondered how she would manage to eat, knowing this meal might be her last. If not this one, then surely some meal would be in the coming days. Knowing she had already died and returned several times should have brought her comfort, but she knew there would be no coming back this time, not as Emily anyway. Koss would see to that. And if Nicholas really didn’t love her any longer, he wouldn’t bother to look for her again. She would live the rest of her lives with no memories of ever having loved him or being loved by him, because he wouldn’t be there to remind her. That thought worried her more than facing death.

  * * * * *

  “This sword should work for you. Notice how plain it is, but sturdy too?”

  Emily stood in the center of the round weapons’ room, located in one of the castle’s four towers, holding the sword Brannon had handed her. She was barely able to lift it, more due to its length than weight. “It’s awkward.”

  �
��Yes, but it does major damage—see how sharp the double-edge blade is? That one dates back to Nicholas’s ancestor. He carried it into battle when the Normans invaded Briton.”

  “It looks sort of like a long metal club.” She grunted as she tried to lift the heavy sword. The only decoration was the crest etched into the brass ferrule. “Was he a Saxon?”

  Brannon laughed. “No. He was part of the invading force. In case you hadn’t noticed, Nicholas doesn’t exactly have the Saxon look.”

  “No, I guess not.” She felt her wrist weakening, and she was relieved when Brannon stepped behind her to support her arm. “You do though.”

  “My mother was French. I get my coloring from her.” He spoke abruptly, indicating he didn’t want to speak about that topic. “There are five basic moves in sword fighting.”

  He cupped his hand over hers and helped her raise it fully. Together, with him guiding, they swung the sword in a tiny arc. “That’s the cut. The objective is to connect the tip of the sword with your opponent’s body. When you’ve done so, you make a small swing to leave a cut. The preferred place is a location where the enemy will bleed to death.” He helped her repeat the motion. “When dealing with a vampire, the cut is ineffectual unless you manage to sever the spinal column completely.”

  She swung the sword again, growing used to its weight. “The cut,” she repeated.

  He kept his hand over hers. “Usually, the cut won’t have enough force to get through the spinal column. You have to use the swing.” He brought her arm all the way back, and then swung forward with a lot of force.

  Emily’s arm protested as the sword sliced through the air, wrenching from her hand to clang against the stone floor. She rubbed her wrist and looked up at him. “Sorry. Maybe I should start with a smaller sword.”

  “Go get it.” He stood there, speaking as she walked to retrieve the sword. “Normally, I’d start you with a practice sword, but it would take months to teach you anything. You need a solid sword if you’re going up against Koss, and I don’t have time to baby you.”