by Aja James
“If you see something you covet,” she paused to spear Inanna with her sharp intuition, “then take it.”
“But—“
The old woman interrupted Inanna’s protest with a wave of her hand.
“Oh, I’m not suggesting you break any laws.”
And then she said almost inaudibly under her breath, “Unless they are meant to be broken.”
More loudly, she said, “I am merely saying life is too short to deny your deepest desires.”
She cocked her head at Inanna. “And for those who live unfulfilled, life can be much too long. If I had a thousand years, five thousand years even, I would exchange it all to have my heart’s desire for just one more day.”
She paused momentarily as if lost in thought, but then looked wistfully back at Inanna.
“Wouldn’t you?”
“The superiority of our Race is witnessed by our immortality, sustained by restraint and wisdom. The frailty of the human race is witnessed by their fleeting existence, sustained by their penchant for violence and self-destruction and the inability to learn from mistakes.”
—Excerpt from the Ecliptic Scrolls
Chapter Three
Six years ago, Christmas Eve.
The young woman about five months pregnant was likely still in college, if she was pursuing higher education.
Her pale blonde hair was pulled back by a butterfly clip from her face, revealing an ethereal beauty that suffered only marginally from her concentrated frown as she peered down at her slightly rounded belly in the half-reclined mechanical hospital bed. From her unhappy, ferocious expression, one would have thought she was going to give birth to a two-headed monster.
Whatever the reason, one thing was clear: she did not want this baby growing inside of her.
This was the third day that the young woman shared the same room with Inanna’s Blood Contract, a middle-aged homeless man dying of cancer.
It did not escape Inanna’s notice that the girl watched her closely every time she came to visit, and leaned so far over her bed she almost fell off several times to hear the exchange between Inanna and the dying man. Inanna hoped it was simply curiosity, but something told her the young woman saw too much, heard too much, and wanted that which she should not.
This would be the last night Inanna visited the man in the curtain-separated twin bed a few feet away from the girl’s. Before dawn, she would return to collect on the Blood Contract. Having soothed the cancer patient into a dreamless slumber, Inanna pulled the curtain closed between the two patient beds and tried to take her leave before the young woman expressed her dark desires.
“Are you an angel?” the girl asked just as Inanna passed by the foot of her bed to the door.
She could have ignored the question, could have pretended she didn’t hear and rudely leave without bothering to acknowledge the girl’s presence. But Inanna’s feet would not obey her.
As if pulled by an invisible string, she turned toward the girl and met her light blue eyes for the first time.
“I am no angel,” Inanna responded softly but clearly, “you will do well to remember that.”
“But you have come to grant his wishes, isn’t that right?” the girl persisted, her large eyes getting even larger as she stared intensely at the Chosen, as if trying to solve an unsolvable puzzle.
“I heard him ask you for relief and I heard you promise he would have it.”
“Forget what you think you heard, little girl. It does not concern you.” Inanna knew that she should leave.
Now.
Her instincts told her that if she stayed, the decision would irrevocably impact the whole of her existence.
And yet she stood her ground. Somehow, she knew that this barely-legal young woman was a guidepost in her destiny.
“Could you do the same for me?” the girl asked in a gasping whisper, her cheeks suddenly flooding with color at her own audacity.
Inanna felt as if the longer she gazed into the woman’s eyes, the deeper she was plunging into a bottomless pool. Resolutely, she tried to pull herself out of it.
“You do not know what you ask,” the Chosen said. “Someone such as you have all of life to look forward to. What could you possibly need relief from.”
It was not a question, but the girl answered it anyway, an edge of desperation in her voice that increased until she was all but shrieking.
“I don’t want to live! I have no family, no friends! And this-this-thing inside me will keep growing and growing and I’m getting so ugly and fat and he doesn’t want me! He only likes skinny girls who can party and have a good time and I’m fat and ugly and he dumped me! And he’s disgusted that I got this way, that I wasn’t careful enough and he blames me for it! He doesn’t believe that it’s his! I don’t want it! If I can’t have him I don’t want to live!”
Youthful hysteria aside, there was a raw hopelessness and despair in the young woman’s countenance that made Inanna consider her more carefully.
Something about the girl was not quite right.
She was obviously frightened and despondent, but there was also a pervasive cloak of depression about her, a darkness in her heart that the brightness of her beauty could not eclipse.
After millennia of witnessing the various emotions, desires and regrets of the dying, Inanna recognized a Lost Soul when she saw one.
Against her better judgment, Inanna closed the distance between herself and the nearly frantic girl, her chest heaving with the exertion of her outburst, hot tears running down her cheeks. Inanna pulled up a chair to the girl’s bed and enfolded her cold, damp hands within her own warm grasp.
It was then that she noticed the gauze bandages around the girl’s wrists.
So it was not a whim, then, this desire to quit the living.
Even though she was rescued and brought to a hospital, even though a new life was growing inside of her, the girl was still looking for a way out.
Inanna did not know her troubles and was therefore not equipped to judge, but on a basic level, she could not wrap her mind around the antipathy that the girl held toward her unborn child, especially at this late stage. For a four thousand-year-old vampire who may never have children, Inanna could not help but rebel inwardly at the girl’s selfishness and callousness. Nevertheless, she kept her expression neutral and her tone soothing.
“Surely there is someone,” Inanna said with encouragement.
She looked around the room briefly and noticed the vase of fresh flowers on the nightstand. Searching through her peripheral memory, she realized that, everyday, the vase was replenished with diligent care.
“Who gave you those flowers? They must not be easy to acquire this time of year.”
The girl’s breathing calmed somewhat at this reminder, her expression softening with wistfulness.
“I guess I have one friend,” she whispered in a barely audible voice. “I don’t deserve him though.”
“Lucky for you that he seems to disagree,” Inanna said. “He obviously still thinks you’re beautiful and lovable if he brings you these gifts of affection everyday.”
The girl sniffed as she considered Inanna’s words. Her face scrunched into a small, mystified frown as she said, “I don’t know why he’s always so nice to me. He’s been that way since we were in High School. It’s not like I encourage him or anything.”
“Maybe he just likes you because you’re likable,” Inanna offered. “Maybe if you ask him, he will give you the help and support you need.”
The young woman looked down at her belly and said, “He already offered to help. He said he’d marry me and take care of me and the baby as if it were his. He said it would be the best gift anyone ever gave him if I agreed. It’s his birthday today, you see. He’s the one who found me in my bathtub that day…”
The girl’s expression darkened again in memory.
Abruptly she shook her head as if to clear it and lifted her eyes to Inanna. “But why would he do that? Offer to take ca
re of me and the-the- baby?”
At the last word, the girl’s voice was barely a whisper, as if giving name to the entity within her would make it too real.
More loudly, she said, “I don’t even like him like that. What could he possibly get out of it?”
“Sometimes people help others simply because they want to, because they care,” Inanna responded. “Sometimes they aren’t asking for anything in exchange. They simply want to give.”
“Like I said, I don’t deserve him.” The girl’s lower lip started quivering again. “I think I’ll make him miserable. I’ll treat him something terrible and he’ll end up leaving me too, just like everyone else. I know it.”
Inanna tightened her clasp of the girl’s shaking hands, trying to infuse heat into her cold palms. Suddenly, she was overwhelmed by sympathy and understanding toward the girl, despite her initial resentment and disappointment.
She had felt alone too. Strange and alone. Living in limbo.
If not for her father, and… there was something else.
Someone else.
But the moment her mind caught onto this thought, the inkling vanished as if it never was.
Inanna blinked to orient herself again.
If not for her father’s courageous, unconditional, healing love, she could not have overcome the doubts and fears that plagued her, could not have found the strength to make her own way in life.
Even if the girl was a Lost Soul, she did not deserve to be abandoned.
At that moment, Inanna made a choice.
“You are not alone,” Inanna said, resolute and strong. “You will never be alone. I, for one, would be delighted to be your friend. And now you have at least two people you can count on in this world.”
The girl peered at her disbelievingly and a little shyly. “Really? You want to be my friend? But you don’t know me at all? And I’m so-so-”
Inanna shot her a look that effectively silenced whatever disparaging thing she was going to say about herself.
“I’d like to get to know you,” the Chosen said, her sincerity beyond doubt. She let go of one of the girl’s hands and held onto the right hand, giving it a firm pump.
“Hello, my name is Nana Chastain. It’s nice to meet you.”
For the first time, a faint smile hovered on the edges of the girl’s chapped pink lips. “Hello,” she replied, “my name is Olivia.”
An hour later, leaving her new friend in better spirits and more optimistic about the life she carried within her, Inanna rode the elevator down to ground floor.
She’d stayed in the hospital longer than she intended, but it was time well spent if she could convince the girl to hold onto hope and give herself and her baby a fighting chance.
She would return early the next morning before dawn to collect on the other patient’s Blood Contract on Christmas Day.
As Inanna walked toward the reception area on her way to the exit, her attention was arrested by a tall, leanly built young man leaning over the check-in counter with a bouquet of fresh flowers. Involuntarily, her footsteps slowed as she drew closer.
“It will just be ten more minutes or so,” the receptionist said to the young man. “We need to move Ms. Brown to another room.”
“Nothing wrong, I hope?” the man said with immediate concern, his low, husky voice pricking Inanna’s awareness like a thousand needles.
“Not at all,” the receptionist smiled back reassuringly. “It’s just that the other patient sharing her room requested to be alone tonight. And as it’s Christmas Eve, we try to grant as many requests as we can within reason. And Mr. Stevens hadn’t made any requests up ’til now.”
The young man nodded, his broad shoulders relaxing slightly with visible relief. He signed in, picked up the flowers and a hefty satchel of papers from the reception desk, too busy tucking it under his arm, and didn’t look where he was going.
Abruptly, he crashed into someone else, crushing the flowers between them and dropping the satchel to the floor, papers flying out everywhere.
Out of pure reflex, he wrapped his arms around the unlucky obstacle that got in his way and tried to prevent the both of them from falling. But downward momentum got the better of him and he could only twist his body at the last moment so that he landed on the hard ground first, his body breaking the impact of the other person’s descent.
“Are you okay?” he asked when he was able to take a small breath. “Are you hurt?”
Inanna could not believe that she’d made such a clumsy ass of herself. After four millennia of honed senses and combat training, she hadn’t fallen on her face since she was a toddler. What was she thinking to be so ridiculously distracted?
Her body all but vibrated with pleasure as the young man’s hands smoothed their way down her back, petting her in a comforting motion.
What was it he asked? Oh yeah, he was checking if she was hurt.
With a muted groan, not of pain but of mortification, Inanna stretched to a sitting position with her arms bracing her weight, her hands flat on the ground, and looked down.
All coherent thought evaporated as she stared into the face of her gallant rescuer.
It was the face of an angel.
A beautiful, passionate, warrior angel.
And so fresh and innocent with youth it almost hurt to look upon him.
At that moment, Inanna Fell.
For the first time in her long, lonely existence, she longed for something, someone, she should not have.
Craved him at her very core.
Deep, chocolate brown eyes gazed back at her, first with concern, and then with confusion, as if he too became suddenly aware of the inexplicable tension humming between them.
Before he could speak again, she disengaged from him, and without a word or a look back, Inanna left temptation behind.
*** *** *** ***
Present day.
Gabriel sat woodenly on one side of a twelve-foot mahogany desk.
The funeral home’s sales representative droned on about the various types of cremation and burial services they offered, along with a wide range of price tags, sprinkled in with false sympathies and condolences.
For the past four hours since receiving the call from the hospice’s attending physician, sleep had morphed into nightmare, and nightmare had become reality.
Pain, anger, disbelief, numbness, shock… a thousand different emotions churned through Gabriel’s chest cavity until gnawing emptiness loomed where functioning organs used to reside.
In those four hours, he’d calmly gathered Benji out of bed, brought Olivia’s best dress, fresh underclothes and shoes, drove to the hospice within the speed limit and without the impediment of morning work traffic; met with the physician on call to listen to the details of Olivia’s last moments, though he heard not a single word; changed Olivia out of her hospice gown and into her “Sunday Best” with the help of the nurse; struggled with putting on her left shoe because rigor mortis had made her swollen foot too stiff to fit inside, almost broke down in a fit of rage and tears because of it, but managed to pull himself together to prevent a full-blown spectacle; held Benji while he cried and said goodbye to his mother, Gabriel’s own eyes remarkably dry; ordered Olivia’s belongings into bags and suitcases, and waited for the funeral home to pick up the body and take it to temporary storage.
They’d even had time to pick up a McDonald’s breakfast along the way, and Benji was now slurping his chocolate milk and munching on hash browns in the funeral home’s reception area, away from the “serious business” on which the adults conferred at this never-ending mahogany desk.
“Cremation,” Gabriel said, the surprising sound of his interruption like a shotgun blast in the freezing conference room.
Startled to a stop mid-speech, the sales rep opened and closed his mouth before recovering his train of thoughts. “Of course. We offer three different levels of cremation—”
“And yet the result is still ashes,” Gabriel interrupted again.<
br />
As the rep struggled anew for another sales angle, he quickly and decisively declared, “Level one cremation. No urn. Just give me the bag. When can I expect to retrieve it?”
“Well…” the sales rep blinked like an owl behind his Ray-Ban glasses and darted his eyes from side to side, no doubt scrambling for persuasive tactics to get a higher price out of the grieving widower.
“Make it before closing today,” Gabriel stated, “charge me the fees for express service.”
Without waiting for a response, he stood and walked out of the too-frigid room, signaling a definitive end to the meeting.
Down one corridor to the surprisingly sunny and cheerful reception area, Gabriel found his son finishing the last of his milk, sitting atop one of the cushioned chairs, his small legs swinging carelessly a couple of feet above the floor.
“Let’s get out of here,” Gabriel said with a determined smile, “let’s go somewhere fun today, anywhere you want. How about it?”
He scooped his son into his arms, disposed of the McDonald’s breakfast bag, and exited the funeral home as fast as he could without looking as if he were running away.
“Can we come back later to see Mo-I mean- Olivia?” Benji asked, already forgetting that the goodbyes a few hours ago were, in fact, permanent.
The slip was not something Benji made often.
From the time he could speak, Olivia had insisted that her son call her by name, not Mommy, not Mother, not Mama, not Mom.
Not any moniker, in fact, that reflected their relationship.
Only since she found out about the cancer had Olivia encouraged Benji to call her Mommy, but the habit had already been formed and was difficult for the boy to break. He continued to call her Olivia despite her best efforts to persuade him otherwise.
That he involuntarily began by calling her Mom showed Gabriel just how upset Benji still was.
Swallowing the lump in his throat, Gabriel infused his voice with patience and tried to sound carefree.