by Skyler White
“But you don’t want me.” Weariness almost swallows my voice. I must feed, and soon.
“I want your happiness, your enjoyment of my hotel, your pleasure in my company.”
“Yes, you love without desire for possession,” I say, “but what does that kind of love cost you, Gaehod?”
“It’s true.” He chuckles and rolls down his sleeves from the garters which have held them above his delicate elbows. “It’s very painful. Sometimes I want to check out of my own hotel.” He looks terribly old to me, pulled into his tattered chair. “Who knows”—he buttons his cuffs—“perhaps young Dominic is right. Disbanding the hotel would certainly be easier.”
“But it’s not what you want.”
“Do you know what I want?”
“I’ve heard the stories of how you made this place, created our entire network, carved this hole. You made it all out of your desire.”
“It was more than my desire.” The kettle starts to rumble and Gaehod turns his penetrating eyes away from me to tend it. “I know tea can’t feed you, but would you like a cup?”
I nod.
“I remember when I could go months without the taste of it,” I tell him. “I could sacrifice, suffer, and be willing to dissolve into nothing but my own need, believing that love would save me. For eternity, I have believed that each new time would be the time I would find my way back up.”
Gaehod nods and pulls himself to standing. “And did you ever reach the heavens?” He stretches on tiptoe for a pale blue canister high on a sagging shelf.
“Sometimes, for a moment, but I always fell back down.” I reach the tea tin for him.
“Perhaps that’s all we get—the glimpses.”
“I’d rather knife out my eyes and keep them with my wings,” I tell him. But the ferocity exhausts me. I sink back into the frowsy pink chair, dizzy.
Gaehod pries the lid from the tea with a butter knife and inserts his long, pointed nose into the jar. He closes his eyes over the scent, and his voice, when it comes again, is twisted to nasal by the muffling metal. “That might be easier.”
“Easy is what I’m after,” I say. “I want numb. I want my sisters to sharpen my edges. I want to feed. I want desire without choice.”
“That’s not desire, that’s craving.”
“Then I shall be the angel of craving. I never had any desires of my own anyway.”
“My dear.” Gaehod spoons a measure of coiled dry leaves into a red clay pot. “You have no lack of desire.” In goes another spoonful. “You’re filled to the brim with it.” And another. “They spill out over your lashes and your gums.” Another and another spoonful of tea drop into the pot. “What you lack”—he clamps the lid—“is experience with choice.”
“Gaehod, I’m damned. Choice has been taken from me.”
“Quite the contrary, I think.” He hands me the pot and sits back down. “But we’ll have to see, I guess. Dominic is a persuasive young man. Very confident. And I am an old man, full of doubt.”
“But you know so much.” I wave my pale hand at the whole chaotic wealth of Gaehod’s library and writings, of the papers stacked on the floor and the books piled on the shelves, of the years collecting and studying.
“Knowledge is only the beginning, my dear. Every fool knows things.”
“A fool knows things by mistake, without choosing what he knows.”
Gaehod moves the whistling kettle from the fire, but makes no move to pour its water into the pot I’m holding. “Dominic says that he can bring proof to knowledge. I am not so sure I can offer the same for what I think I know. Perhaps the new magic is stronger.”
“The new magic isn’t magic,” I tell him. “It leaves magic out. And that is why the old ways win. Don’t do this to me, Gaehod. If you destroy the hotel, you’ll take away the only place I have to bury my hope. I don’t want to be strapped to a corpse for all eternity. Gaehod, all I’m asking for is a grave.”
“Anything can be a grave.”
He says nothing else, watching the escaping steam rise from the open throat of the cooling kettle. I search the wayward tendrils for inspiration—for persuasion—I have to make him change his mind. I turn the knife around.
“We still need you,” I say. “And it’s not just us, not just the ancient stained. This new millennia is damned in new ways. They need you even more than we did. We, at least, understood our damnation. They think it’s all bad chemistry or worse luck.”
“Dominic says the contemporary damned have everything they need in the surface world.”
“Except redemption.”
“They don’t seem to be looking for that.”
“They wouldn’t know where! Nobody reads the old texts, nobody knows their own lineage. You should be reaching out to them, not shuttering our gates! They need us.”
“Stories, not science?”
“Yes!”
“Myth, not medicine?”
“Look,” I say, “we throw magic in the face of logic, and magic wins. Irrational desire still thrives in reasonable minds. Desire for money has scientists swearing cigarettes don’t cause cancer. Desire for God makes teachers spout Intelligent Design. Desire trumps reason every time. The mind has no chance without the body. I can prove it.”
Gaehod still says nothing, but turns his deep eyes from the fire to me.
“Test me!” I beg.
“Yes,” he says at last. “I can put this burden on you, since you have asked.”
I start to thank him, to revel in victory, but his delicate face bears no trace of fondness for the first time in the hundreds of years I have known him. It terrifies me.
“The test must be for you both,” he says. “He wants to study you. You want to devour him.”
“I win,” I say lightly. “We eat before we understand.”
“Dominic will ask you to go to Dublin for neurological testing,” Gaehod says at last. “If you go, if you even enter the hospital there, modernity wins and I will open the hotel to the public, and publish all our pasts.”
I clamp my lips so hard against a grin that I taste ichor. Don’t go to Dublin. Refuse to be examined. There has never been an easier trial.
“However,” the grim old man continues, “if you’re right, if Dominic surrenders to desire, we will not only continue underground, but will also begin a new program of outreach for the twenty-first century’s undiscovered damned.”
“I broke his skin this morning. He has already fallen.”
“No.” Gaehod’s crystal eyes are cold and distant. “You may freely eat of every willing guest in my hotel, but of Dominic’s blood you shall not taste, for in the day that you drink from him, one of you will surely die.”
I am angry. “If he did not want or fear me, I could not pierce his flesh. How else do you expect me to prove his desire?”
“He must kiss you in the garden.”
“You want me to kiss him, but not feed, hungry as you know I am?” Dominic is right. The old man is nuts.
“Sometimes to deny a craving—just because it is craving—is enough for strength.”
“I’m not Sylvia,” I shout. “I never get lost in the flood. I hate that they want me!” I am on my feet, towering over him.
“Then bring me his kiss. It will mark him for me.”
“Kiss him, but don’t dare ask for what I need. Sounds like every marriage I have ever seen.”
“Be kissed.” Gaehod stands slowly and takes the teapot from my clawed hands. “He’s in the garden now.”
“I will starve into shadow before I see your beautiful hotel opened to the undamned.” I spin on my still-muddy heel and stalk across the wreckage to the door. “It doesn’t matter what Dominic knows. Without desire, knowledge has no meaning. All meaning comes from down here. Without it, there are only facts and death. More than wanted, I will be believed,” I shout at the old man, my hand on the door.
“Belief is a choice.” He pours steaming water into the red teapot.
“He will
choose me,” I whisper. And I leave him there.
I know it will hurt to feel Dominic’s lips again and not taste him. I remember them in the moonlight last night, and how they tempted me, but I have not kissed him since the first night when we left Pandemonium to walk the spiral hall. I have always hesitated to hurt him. Curious.
I will find him in the garden. He will kiss me. I will not taste him. My sisters will know I have saved the hotel and keen my secret teeth for me. I will go to the Quarry and hunt and feed full-tooth. Then, I think, I may find Dominic again. He will be disappointed that Hell will not close. Perhaps I will comfort him. But now, I must catch up with him before he leaves the garden, or my home and my family, my hunger, and my last hope for hopelessness—for acceptance—will be swallowed by my own demand that Gaehod test me.
8
OVERTHROWN
Dominic found the bag where he had left it when he had fled the vampire sisters and their pale and perfect flesh in the bright darkness. The garden was quiet, its brilliant gloom forcing all colors into lurid against the muddy light. The black river flowed through the silence, and the fruit trees leaked their scent against it. Relieved but exhausted, Dominic dropped to the ground and unzipped his bag.
Everything was in place. He took a brown plastic bottle from a small locked case and swallowed a capsule. The AEDvIII.0’s effects appeared to last about forty-eight hours, an excellent burn rate. He had taken one before his trip to Pandemonium two nights ago. Except for that fucking snake, this formulation seemed effective in keeping the delusions at bay. He intended to go back to that tree and explore. He wanted to rule out animatronics. But no memories of distant times or women had haunted him even when, foolishly, he had taken Olivia’s cool hand in his, touched his face to her smooth temple, kissed her supple wrist.
Dominic slipped his laptop from its battered bag and settled himself against the same tree Sylvia had reclined beneath, her flawless breasts exposed to tempt him. Funny how they had not, but he knew he would not be so strong against Olivia if she pulled her buttons down. If she had turned toward him in the moonlight last night, in the ruined stones and caressing breeze, he would have kissed her. Her mouth, ripe and inviting, had opened for his finger, sucking, drawing a longing from him that tugged again between his legs, remembering.
Dominic steadied his back against the tree and fired up his machine. He would take a few quick notes on the efficacy of the AEDvIII.0s and then go upstairs to bed. He was too old to stay up all night and not feel it the next day. He blinked his eyes against a jungle vigil in complete silence, alert all night, his arthritic hand, curled unmoving around the shaft of an ancient spear. The pills should kick in soon. His computer chirped and, looking down, he chuckled in the stillness. Hell was online. He had mail.
To: [email protected]
From: [email protected]
Subject: Status
Dear Dominic—
I understand from Dr. Dysart that you arrived safely in Ireland. I am glad. Likewise, I am pleased to understand from him that I was not mistaken in my estimation of your tact. His statements to the media have focused on the general relationship of memory and delusion without reference to specific behaviors or symptoms. I am grateful.
Dysart tells me that he is in the procurement stage, outfitting a state-of-the-art lab, and collecting what he needs to conduct experiments. I assume that you are actively engaged in much the same sort of work—collecting in order to experiment. I look forward to hearing, in the next week, how many and of what. Let me know if you need any additional support.
Warmly—
Madalene
Email seemed so far away, farther than an ocean and five time zones. Dysart and the Ps, the lab, the science, things he could measure on a screen, track on a graph, the weight of his clandestine alliance with Madalene, the damage she could still do. And the email was date-stamped April twentieth. He had forgotten how time elongated underground. He’d barely settled in. Barely unpacked. “Dear Ms. Wright,” Dominic typed, “I am in Hell on your behalf. Nagging is redundant.”
He deleted the email. How could he communicate anything across this gulf in time and power, reality and distance?
“Dear Ms. Wright, You sent me to Hell, same to you.”
He was almost tired enough to send that. He erased it instead. He was too politic in this lifetime. Where was the hunter?
Soundlessly waiting in the Bengali forest.
Dominic pressed the corners of his lids against the hard bone of his nose until chessboard vortices spiraled in front of him. He stared at the empty email reply window. He was exhausted. The flight, the drive, the hotel, the nightclub, the bike ride, the abbey, this unfamiliar ancient home, the garden, all conspired against him. He hoped Alyx would eat his oatmeal.
“Dear Ms. Wright,” he typed sleepily. “We can stop our search. I have formulated the answer by mistake.” Olivia’s boundless eyes swam against his burning lids. He groped for the feeling of her lips around his finger, the erotic pull of sliding into her mouth’s black welcome, the challenge of her eyes. She made him work, made him think. She was what he needed, if not what he had sought. “Everything is here…” he typed, eyes closed, “… very dangerous.” The grass was soft and the air hung warm and utterly still. There was no sound in the garden, no birds, and even the leaves and river were silent. His fingers slipped from the keys. He was drifting, seeking Olivia’s face again. The laptop fell sideways from his legs. He pushed an eye open to see the email was gone. He hadn’t meant to send that. He would need to send a follow-up to Madalene, but later. He was sliding, almost sleeping.
“Kiss me.”
Olivia stood, towering over him, one black, boot-clad foot on either side of his body. Dominic followed the lean curve up her thighs to the red corseted dip at her waist, and back over the swell of breasts to her face, looking down. She lowered herself over him and tucked her feet beneath her, legs spread across his hips, her hands on the tree trunk behind him. “Kiss me,” she said again.
“Why?”
“Because I know you want to.”
Her lips curled in a tempting half smile, mocking and tender, inches from his mouth. Without willing it, his hands caught at her hips, his thumbs resting in the soft places just within the bone, his fingers splayed over the giving rounded flesh. He gripped her. Beneath her straddling legs, his cock quickened. She leaned closer, pressing the weight of her body against him. Her breasts, soft in red velvet, brushed his chest. She tilted her head, her lips parted in invitation. Her breath came, soft and cool, against his scorched lips.
“No,” he whispered. He closed his burning eyes against the beauty and softness, felt her breasts and open legs, her parted lips almost touching his own. Yes, he wanted to.
“I want to ask you something,” she said, and settled herself, open-legged against him. “Open your eyes.”
He tore himself away from the pure sensation of her body near and open over him, unresponsive. Her lashes were dark against the white of her cheeks and the gray of her eyes ran deeper than the soundless river he had fled.
“There’s something about you I don’t understand,” the dark beauty mused, “and it’s been bothering me since I met you.”
“What’s that?” His hands still held her hips, could grind her open thighs against his iron cock.
“My body conforms to desire. If a man likes tall girls, I get a little taller—couple inches, no big thing. If a woman likes tiny breasts, mine shrink. If he likes a full ass, mine swells. All that matters is that they want me.” Dominic willed himself not to look down. “It’s never such a dramatic change that it makes me unrecognizable one fig to the next, but their desire distorts me, molds me to their tastes.”
“I didn’t know that.”
“Yeah. But here’s the thing”—Olivia leaned in again, her perfect lips against the unshaved roughness of his jaw, her voice a welcome invasion—“with you, I have not changed at all. So either you think I’m perfect just the
way I am”—her lower lip grazed his earlobe—“or you do not desire me.”
Dominic slid his hands from her hips to her narrow waist, fighting the urge to crush her body against his hammering chest, to wrap his arms around her slender torso and pull her hard against him. She sat back from him a little and looked into his face. “And I honestly can’t imagine either is possible.”
His hands felt huge on her lithe waist. He did want her, wanted her ferociously, but he owed her the reason he could not tell her so. “Olivia, I—”
How could he explain his madness, make her understand what he could not accept?
“Standing out at the abbey with you last night, I felt… I can’t want you that way. It would deny everything I believe in. My work would stop making sense. I couldn’t love you and keep my job. I’m a neuroscientist. You have to understand. It’s who I am.”
He slid his hands up the smooth cloth that encased her, feeling the long column of her back with shaking fingers, holding the curve of her with the palm of his hands. “Olivia, you…” He was making a mess of this. Why couldn’t what he felt be illustrated in an elegant wave graph? “When I look at you, I don’t see an available woman, desirable or otherwise. I see someone in pain, enslaved by their illness, driven by compulsion or delusion, someone who isn’t free to choose me.”
“Free?”
“Right.”
“And do you think that you are free?”
“I’m trying to be.”
She moved so swiftly he barely saw what she lunged for. She hung his pill bottle between them. “This is freedom?”
“That is medicine.”
“What does it do?”
“I don’t know yet. I hope it may curb delusion.”
“Yours or mine?”
“Mine.”
“Can you still see me?”
He smiled grimly. If she noticed the aching erection she straddled, she gave no indication. On her slim thighs, his hands, large and freckled, stroked the soft fabric covering her perfect legs. “I don’t think for a moment that you’re a hallucination of mine. My fantasy lovers are all”—he glanced into her quizzical eyes and grinned—“much more compliant.”