by Skyler White
“I didn’t come for money,” he says to my latex back. “I mean, I did, sort of, but not only for the money. For what the money can do.”
I turn to him. He looks like a warrior—proud, beautiful, powerfully built, straight, and hard. I could break him for fun. “No man serves a god for its own sake, only for what it might do for him,” I tell him. “You serve science with a zealot’s prayer for your own salvation.”
I walk toward him, but he turns away from me, struggling for control. I watch his broad shoulders and the hard curve of his back.
“I take it you are uninterested in participating in my research?” he says, still not looking at me. The masculinity of his beauty is exquisite—strong but not blunt, mortal but unshielded, and the contradiction pins me with fascination’s fine spines. They prick like desire smells.
“I could bite my lip and kiss you,” I whisper, conforming my soft body to the unyielding length of his spine, “and in my angelic blood you would taste real freedom. I could drink from your mouth without hurting you, and feed all my hungers while I strengthen yours.” I slide my hands along his strong shoulders and press myself onto tiptoe to bring my succulent lips to his ear.
But I do not kiss the tiny pulsing place beneath it. “For days after, you will see more clearly, think more swiftly, be stronger physically and less prone to disease.” He wets his lips with his tongue and swallows hard. “Come,” I whisper to him, “claim what you desire.”
“What I want is a woman.”
“You can have an angel.”
“I want reality.”
“Reality may encompass more than you imagine,” I whisper, dark, insinuating.
“Reality is what we experience.”
“There is no difference, in your brain chemistry, between reality and imagination.”
“How do you know that?”
“I’m an angel, Dominic,” I tell him. “Maybe I’m yours.”
6
I DON’T WANT TO SEE
“Are guardian angels real? Is that ridiculous, underfed, vampirewannabe Olivia mine?”
“I would not expect to find a guardian angel in Hell, Dominic. Would you?”
“No, of course not.” Dominic glowered at Gaehod across the old man’s cluttered study. “Why would they be where you’d actually need them?”
Gaehod threaded a path through teetering stalagmites of paper and books. “How is Olivia?” he asked.
“She’s nuts.”
“Is that your clinical diagnosis, Doctor?” The old man lifted a slippery stack of books, papers, and brass fittings from a faded pink armchair. “Have a seat, Dominic. I’ll make tea.”
“I’ll stand, thank you.”
“A fellow brought me a nice selection of green teas as a gift last month.” Gaehod slipped through a cityscape of rolled maps from the chair to the shelves that flanked a wide-open stone hearth. “I had a new one on Wednesday. I really liked it.” He held a desiccated green tangle of leaves up for Dominic’s inspection before dropping it into a small black clay teapot. “It is a sea creature, I think.”
It did look rather like a miniature green dehydrated squid, and wrung a reluctant smile from Dominic’s angry mouth.
“I was surprised that you chose the paper volume to resume your writing here,” the graceful old man said. Dominic nodded. He’d been right not to trust the confidentially of the networked machines.
Gaehod balanced the teapot and two handleless mugs on a tray. “I understand you have found an admirer in our resident celebrity.”
“Alyx?” Dominic stepped over the stacks and towers to take the tray from the old man.
“Thank you, Dominic. My… ah, vertical filing system may allow my work to reach great heights”—he winked—“but it’s rather a nuisance for the housekeeper. I must make my own tea.”
Dominic stood absurdly, in the belly of the lunatic hotel, holding the tea tray. He fought the urge to hurl it, with its pot and mugs, across the room while the innkeeper puttered, clearing a spot for it on his desk. “I understand you stock his room with liquor,” he said. “How do you justify that? Alyx is drinking himself to death.”
“So it would seem.” Gaehod took the tray from Dominic and placed it carefully in the empty space.
“And you don’t intend to do anything about that, do you?”
“I intend to let it break my heart.”
Seated, Gaehod looked so small and so deeply forlorn that Dominic’s outrage seemed tawdry beside it. He sat down across from the old man in the flattened pink armchair.
“Alyx thinks you bring us all here, you know,” he said at last. “He thinks you summon us.”
As if recalled from a distance by Dominic’s words, the old man turned his drifting attention from the fire to the teakettle hanging over it. “I write letters, little more,” he said. He reached through the glowing copper tubing that snaked through the fireplace and grate. He raised the steam-capture cap from the nose of the kettle and poured a stream of boiling water into the pot. “Of course, I did write to you,” he added, brightening. “And here you are.”
“You never wrote to me,” Dominic corrected the old man.
“I did, actually.” Gaehod cast about absently and selected a paper from one of the delicate, swaying stacks. “Ah, yes. Here it is.” He handed a letter to Dominic.
“But you didn’t mail it…” Dominic said, scanning the letter.
My darling ones, Reborn and Undead, Damned, Cursed, and Misbegotten—Hell calls her absent children home. Let us meet in general congress at L’Otel Matillide this April to debate whether, in the dawn of this new millennium, we face the twilight of demons. Are we grown obsolete? Shall Hell, at last, disband?
The weak have inherited the earth, but it was not always so. When angels fell, they landed here and, clothed in flesh, walked the land because they could not fly. But Man was given his dominion, drowning Knowledge in his blood, while Desire, sweet vampires, grew fangs and fed upon him. Undead, come home!
In Myth, my Titan children are cursed for the gifts they gave. Some, for fire, burn lifetimes in darkness, creating what none will see, song without listener, image without eye. Others suffer, for a greater gift, through remembered incarnations, the simple agony of love and loss repeating. I call these Reborn home!
Be thou summoned, my children, two champions to do battle for the fate of Hell. Let us gather our ancient, scattered tribes to fashion for ourselves the gift denied us. Shall we close our gate? Shall we steal our destiny? Come home and make your voices heard. Only here can you speak truth, for home is the origin of sin. De profundis, G.
Dominic glanced up, mouth agape. “You’re thinking of closing the hotel?”
“You’ll join me for a cup of tea, I hope. I’m afraid I have little else to offer. I no longer drink wine.” The old man filled the mugs with steaming liquid.
“Gaehod, are you seriously considering putting an end to this?”
“I keep asking myself, do we really need it anymore? It’s beginning to seem redundant of the surface world.”
“Hell is obsolete?”
“You have to wonder, don’t you, when you can buy a pentagram at your local Galleria? I understand that vampires even have their own TV shows nowadays. Witches advertise for coven-mates on the Internet. It’s harrowing.” The old man reached across his chaotic desk to hand Dominic a mug, golden nails glinting, and sat down again as though the effort to bridge the desk had exhausted him. “Who knows?” he sighed. “Perhaps even my secrets might see the light one day.”
Dominic didn’t need his years of psychiatric training to comprehend the terrible pain of the man beside him, despite his light tone.
“What do you think, Dominic? Without social ostracism and religious persecution to drive us underground, do the damned still need this?”
“We still have shame.”
“Oh?”
“I meet other—” Dominic hesitated. “I meet other what you would call ‘cursed’ souls sometimes. We all bear the same mar
k.”
“Shame?”
“Yes. That inexpressible sense that something fundamental is wrong with us—that we are somehow secretly and unknowably flawed.” Dominic took a cautious sip from his warm mug. The tea was vaguely floral, but not at all sweet. The old man sat silent, not touching his cup. “But it’s vampire hunters now, actually,” Dominic said slyly.
“What?”
“The ones with the TV show. ‘Slayers,’ they called them.”
“Really?” The old man rewarded Dominic with a faint smile. “I should expect a very brief program. Slayer hunts vampire. Slayer dies.”
“She usually does okay, actually.”
Gaehod chuckled. “How very reassuring. Perhaps there is still some fear left then, some resistance to the heroic damned?”
“I think so.” Dominic drained his little mug and gazed into it moodily. “Gaehod,” he said at last, “they really are not heroic, you know. They’re sick, most of them, and in pain. I know you can understand that—how much pain they’re in. Maybe, if you stop romanticizing the damned, you can help them. Otherwise, we’re no better than St. Paul down here. Suffering isn’t enough for salvation.”
“And do you believe you know what is, Dominic?”
“I believe I have an obligation to try and understand. To do what I can to help relieve suffering.”
“Yes,” Gaehod whispered. “It’s hard to witness suffering without desiring those things.” Gaehod refilled Dominic’s mug. “I’ll introduce you to one of Olivia’s lovely sisters after lunch.”
Dominic shrugged.
“You need to collect subjects for your research, and I promised to help you. How do you like the tea?”
“It’s nice. The leaves are tied together, aren’t they? That’s what you were showing me. That’s why you don’t have to strain it from the pot.”
“More flower than cephalopod I suppose.” The old man smiled at Dominic with a fondness so obvious it made him squirm. “Olivia should be joining us shortly.”
Dominic’s mind instantly replayed the striking spiral of beautiful woman through the lobby’s floor. His rebellious body reeled though a swifter but less orderly replay of her lips closing over his. He had resolved against enrolling her in his study. She would make a poor subject.
Dominic drained the teacup and stood. “I’d like to talk with you more about closing the hotel, Gaehod. But it’s lunchtime and I’m starving.”
“She’s very beautiful, don’t you think?”
Dominic slung his laptop bag over his shoulder and scanned the floor for a path to the door. “Olivia? Yes. She’s very beautiful.”
“You say that without pleasure.”
“I don’t trust beautiful women.” Dominic lifted one of the lobby’s small, mechanical trays from the floor and replaced it, wheels up, on the seat of the armchair he’d just vacated. He had had less trouble walking in.
“Why is that?” Gaehod asked.
“Oh I don’t know, something to do with the absurdity of today’s dieting beauties who spend half their lives in the gym trying to sculpt a body like their foremothers had when necessity required that they work in the fields and suffer long and hard for just enough to eat.” Dominic took several more steps toward the door, but had to stop again and shift a display case filled with glass beads from his path.
“I like looking at her.” Gaehod smiled.
“I imagine she enjoys that.”
“I hope so. I do make a point of trying to see her.”
“She’s hard to miss. She really plays it up too, the pale skin and black hair, the tight clothes. She’s the kind of woman who likes to stand out in a crowd, who wants men looking at her. I’ll bet she spends a lot of time looking at herself, too.”
“No, I don’t think so.” Gaehod shook his graying head solemnly.
“Oh, don’t give me that crap about vampires and mirrors. I saw her reflection in the dome of the roof last night.”
“Yes, but could she?”
Dominic seized the door handle and turned back to the old man. Despite his crisp shirt front and buttoned-up vest, Gaehod looked small and tired amidst the clinking mechanisms of energy capture and the towering stacks of books. “You save everything, don’t you?” he said.
“I do try. I’ll come by your room after lunch and we’ll go down to the gardens. Do you know your way to the kitchens?”
“No,” Dominic said opening the door, “but I’m a smart guy. I’ll figure it out.”
———
I knock on the old man’s door, and a young man answers. Fuck, this Reborn is everywhere. His fearless blue eyes pierce mine. One thundering heartbeat drains the color from beneath his copper-stubbled face and fills the narrow space between us with the leafy scent of his desire. He grits his jaw against it.
“Please come in, Olivia,” he says stiffly. “I was just leaving.”
There is so much crap spread over Gaehod’s floor that I can’t walk past Dominic into the inviting firelight and uncomforting chairs, but I won’t step back into the hall to let him pass. He closes his warrior’s eyes against my sinuous body sliding across his immobile chest and thighs, squeezing past him into the room.
“Olivia!” The sharpness of the old man’s greeting startles me and I trip over a mound of leather-bound, gold-edged books. Dominic reaches swiftly and steadies me, hard hands on my waist, faster than I knew I was tripping. It would have been an ideal opportunity, had I been thinking, to taste him with a quilled nail against his strong wrist.
But he disentangles himself easily and is quickly out the door. “Olivia, my dear,” Gaehod continues, oblivious to the stumbling his stacked books and rolled drawings, collected specimens and boxed treasures have caused. “Dominic needs an escort to the kitchens.”
“No. I don’t.” Dominic glowers in the hall.
“Would you be so kind to help him find his way?”
“That’s really not necessary.”
I look at Dominic again. He truly is delicious. With the hard lines of strength and sinew disguised under a ragged sweater, and the wide strap of his bag across his broad chest like a bandolier, he looks like academe’s own warrior.
“I’d be happy to,” I say sweetly. “You want anything while I’m down there, Gaehod? Sandwich?”
“Thank you, but I no longer eat bread.”
“Soup?”
“That would be lovely.”
I smile at Gaehod and wink. “Back in a bit,” I tell him, and turn to Dominic. He stalks down the hall ahead of me in the wrong direction. “So tell me about these tests you’ll be doing on me,” I ask him.
“I’m not going to run any tests on you.”
“Why not? I’ve got nothing better to do with my time.” I take his elbow and turn us around.
“I’m not sure I could be objective.”
“All my sisters are more beautiful. If you’re waiting to find a vampire you don’t desire, you’ll have nobody to study,” I tell him as we trot down the stairs abreast.
“It’s not because you’re beautiful that I can’t use you in the study.”
“No?”
“No, it’s because you appear to be attracted to me. I can control for my feelings, but not for yours.”
“I don’t have feelings.”
“I don’t believe that.”
“Your belief is irrelevant. And insolent. How dare you presume to judge the truth of my nature?” I slam open the swinging doors into the kitchen, sending cascades of ball bearings rattling away. “You can’t even face your own nature.”
“But you know all about it, don’t you?”
“About the Reborn? Sure.” I yank open a low drawer and pull out a copper-bottomed pan.
“Don’t you see the hypocrisy in that?”
Everything about him enrages me—the savagery of his masculine beauty, the discipline of his athlete’s strength. “As though you could talk about hypocrisy!” I shake the pot at him. “You, the healer who can’t care for his patients.�
�
“I’m not a physician. I told you. I’m a researcher.”
“Why would anyone research anything, except for love?”
“There’s only one other option, isn’t there?” He squares his broad shoulders and refuses to step out of my path. I could tear his handsome arms from their sockets and put them on to boil. But something in his ruthless, blue eyes—the pain beneath the fury—stops me. He doesn’t shout, but his voice could not hold more power if he did. “I work like I do out of fear—fear that I’m crazy, fear that I can’t control the things my mind creates, hell—fear that
I can’t control anything at all.” I step past him and put the pan on the stove. A gas flame leaps up to embrace the copper. He meets my eyes defiantly, anything but fearful.
“So, what exactly do you fear?” I ask him. I already know the answer.
I wait for him.
He smiles grimly. “Love, I guess.”
And it’s true. He fears it because he has already suffered it—the entire pattern of birth, and love, and death. The endless agony of losing those he has loved. The grief his deaths have caused those who loved him. A terrible and primal love drives him to protect himself, his family, and his lovers from that pain. I have never wanted anything as ferociously. And I am the angel of desire.
I walk past him along the long rows of refrigerator drawers until I find one marked “Soup.” Dominic pulls his ratty shoulder bag off and hoists himself up to sit on the counter beside it. His guileless eyes don’t leave me. He watches me spin the lid off a soup jar and dump it into the pan. My mood won’t soften under his gaze the way my tits would.
“I think,” he says at last, “that my guardian angel would be a better cook.”
This makes me laugh. “I think your guardian angel is asleep on the job,” I say.
“That’s what I thought.” He nods sadly, but winks at me. “Guess I’ll have to make my own sandwich.” He leaps down from the counter and engages noisily with the ball-bearing-hinged cabinets and drawers. I stir Gaehod’s soup, watching Dominic. His athlete’s body is graceful and efficient, but how passionate he is, and how hard he loves—and the terror of that love—puzzle me. I scent the air, but there is no fear and no desire on him. I would break my teeth against his throat, he is so free right now.