by Vicki Keire
Be human with me, Caspia.
For a moment I could see it, us together, not laughing yet, but I could let myself lie down against the warmth of his skin through his borrowed clothes and find safety there. The slightest of movements on my part would take me there, into arms like eternal summer carved just for me.
For the span of one fragile mortal lifetime, and then, for Ethan, an eternity alone. How long before he went insane, before the beautiful planes of light across his back turned into dark sucking abscesses, before he hated humans and tried to hurt them?
Asheroth had loved a human named Caspia once.
My hands gripped the edge of the table carefully, as if I sat at the keys of a grand piano and might, at any moment, launch into a Nocturne. I realized I was shaking very, very slightly, tiny tremors of fear and rage and shock traveling up and down my body in waves. I opened my mouth, but no sound came out. Blind Mr. Markov slapped a mug down in front of me as surely as if declaring checkmate. It quickly filled with coffee, black and strong. It must have been Ethan again, because no one moved to get the pot from the kitchen. It was just there. They stared at me, waiting.
I was waiting too. I was waiting for answers. I was waiting to know what was safe to tell and what had to be kept secret, and from whom. I was waiting for my brother to die and for my brother to get better. I was waiting for Ethan to stay and for Ethan to go. I was waiting for Asheroth and his minions to come back and to wake up and find out it had all been a dream.
I was sick of waiting.
I don’t remember how I got there. Perhaps my Nephilim blood suddenly boiled over, gifting me with impossible speed at last, or perhaps I forgot everything else in the grip of enraged shock. I know even Ethan wasn’t fast enough to stop me as I grabbed our final family photograph from my father’s roll top desk. “I want to know why.” My fingers curled around the edges of the frame. To me, my slow prowl back towards the table seemed calm and reasonable, but everyone else looked at me as if I had picked up a deadly weapon. “Why?” I shook the picture, the four of us smiling, frozen forever behind glass. “Why couldn’t they tell us who we are? Why couldn’t she,” I smashed the frame, glass down, against the back edge of my chair. It made a satisfying crunching sound. “Tell me I had the same blood,” I whacked the picture harder, sending glass flying. “As Asheroth?” I used both hands this time. The frame snapped in half. “That Nephilim,” I ripped the picture free, “want to kidnap me and steal my brother’s soul when he’s dead?” I compressed the picture into the tightest ball I could as my voice climbed to a shriek even I recognized as hysterical.
Hands like stone caught mine and held them. I recognized the warm, maddening, calming presence against my back. I leaned into him in spite of myself. “I won’t let them,” he promised. There was nothing soft or soothing to this vow. There was nothing soft about him at all as he held me motionless. “They won’t take him. But I won’t let you hurt yourself, either.”
Logan appeared in front of me, hollowed from the night's revelations, to pry the remains of our family photo from my fist. “I’m not dead yet, Caspia.” He sounded almost angry.
It burned in me, this last dark secret between us. I felt as if I was disgorging snakes when I let it out, at last. “But you will be.” I jerked again against Ethan’s hold. “He wouldn’t be here, if you weren’t. You realize that, don’t you?”
Logan leaned in really close and wiped the tears from my eyes. I got the sense it wasn’t out of tenderness. Rather, he wanted me to have a good look at his face. “How much of our time together have you wasted acting like I’m already dead, little sister?” He poked me in the stomach, hard. “Don’t blame him. At least he doesn’t treat me like a walking corpse.”
Then Logan was gone from my field of vision. Mr. Markov had gone at some point, too. Ethan’s hands slipped from mine and I stood alone in our living room, shaking violently. I thought about going after Logan, about crawling up next to him in his bed. I wanted to apologize and promise to do better and cry and have him hold me, but something held me back. “He’s right,” I told the empty living room. “I’m a terrible person, and he doesn’t need me.”
“You’re an idiot," Ethan said into my ear, gathering me close. “Do you think that was any easier for him than it was for you?” One hand molded itself against the curve at the base of my spine, and I felt him smile against my cheek. “You were brave, the both of you. Truth is hard, when you love someone.” He set me down in a room full of hot steam and the sound of running water. The tiles were slick beneath my feet.
“B…bath?" I confronted the half-filled tub, surprised. My body still shook violently, completely independent of what I commanded it to do. I scrabbled at the last two buttons of my jacket, my fingers shaking too much to do anything but get them halfway undone. “I’m so cold.”
"I know,” he said softly. The jacket came off easily in his hands. “One of the symptoms of shock. The bath will warm you. Do you want me to get your brother to help you?”
“G…god no!” I perched on the edge of the tub. “I can manage.” He nodded. “Where will you be?” I asked, fear crashing back over me again.
“Just outside the door. If you need me.” The water cut off almost exactly at the same time I felt his warm fingers lift my face to his. “I won’t let him hurt you, Caspia. Ever again.”
I let my fingers trail along the surface of the hot water. “Tell me a hard truth,” I whispered straight into his softly glowing eyes.
He knelt on one knee, until he rested level with me. He laced his fingers together across my thighs. “A trade then, Caspia Chastain. My truth for yours.” His eyes narrowed and held. “The hard kind.”
“Ok.” I took a deep breath and tried to look deadly serious. “Are you going to turn into Asheroth? Without me?”
His fingers spasmed across my thighs. “I’d like to think not,” he answered at last. “I cannot see the future, you know. But I’m pretty sure the answer is no.” I nodded, exhaling slowly, relieved.
“My turn.” He rubbed my thigh with his thumb for a moment before snapping his eyes to mine. The intensity was shocking, at once intimate and fiercely angry. “Tell me what happened. What he said to you, what he did." He smiled a very little. “What you did to him.”
I found my smile a little more easily than I had in many long hours. “Did he have knee trouble?" I guessed.
“To put it mildly,” he affirmed.
“Ok then.” I trailed my fingers through bubbles, not wanting to look at him, not knowing what I’d do if he rejected me. “Wait for me. After my bath.”
“That bad?”
“I don’t know,” I answered honestly. “He left marks. I don’t know how badly. That’s why I need the mirror. And then I’m going to crawl in my bed and have a small nervous breakdown.” My voice was very small, almost childlike, when I added, as if it was an afterthought, “I’d feel much safer if you were there.”
Bathe fast, I heard, and he was gone.
I might have imagined it, though.
The bath did little to ease the shaking.
Chapter Ten:
Declaration
“You’re going to need a shower after your bath, just to get all that stuff off you,” Ethan said, leaning against the door adjoining my bedroom. I gaped at him from the depths of my bathwater, covered from neck to toe by steamy scented bubbles.
All traces of blood and fighting were gone. His face was whole again, without even the shadow of a bruise or scrape. Logan had found some clothes for him. A long-sleeved brown t-shirt and jeans fit him as well as they once had my brother, before he’d lost so much weight. His blue green eyes narrowed and he seemed tense, blocking the door to my bedroom as if guarding me was all he knew how to do. He stood there with bare feet and both hands clenched in his pockets, watching me with careful patience as if trying to decide if it was safe to approach me and if not, then what to do instead.
He seemed to want some kind of guidance.
He
wasn’t the only one.
I was just crying, and having a bath, I tried to explain. I looked at the sheet of bubbles and wondered if he felt as lost and empty as I did. I wanted to tell him I was frightened and aching and I’d never had a boy in my bathroom before, Nephilim or not, who was not my brother, and that I had no idea what to do. What came out instead was: “I think my world looks good on you.”
I felt so stupid, I wondered if I had time to drown myself.
But he smiled, and he had never looked more human.
He must have heard something he needed in my voice. Permission, maybe. When I looked up, my bedroom door was empty. I felt fingers on my neck, just resting there. I stiffened. Ethan’s hands felt like warm pumice, lying lightly against my skin. But Asheroth…
“Am I hurting you?” he asked, as if he feared the answer.
“No.” The single syllable swelled in my throat. I breathed through it. “Asheroth held me there. Hard.”
His hands vanished instantly. I missed his touch just as quickly, but then he lifted the damp mass of my hair, exposing the back of my neck to the light. “Bruising,” he said tightly, letting my hair fall. He knelt by the side of the claw-footed tub. “Have you looked yourself over yet? I just assumed…”
“I’m perfectly fine,” I growled, low and fierce.
His eyes widened in surprise that darkened quickly into anger. I blinked to find him several feet away. He stood flat against the wall next to the closet where we kept medical supplies and towels, his face a cold stone mask around eyes that burned much too brightly. He assessed me, his face calm and dangerous. Lightening-fast, I found myself standing in the tub like a landed fish, bathwater running off me in sheets, Ethan’s hand on my slick bare skin pulling me right against him. “You just lied to me,” he said flatly. “You are very obviously not fine.”
“It’s a figure of speech. That I’m fine. Sort of.” Highly conscious that I wore nothing but water, each breath against Ethan’s borrowed shirt drove home the discovery that wet skin was more sensitive than dry skin. His eyes were still furious, locked onto mine. “I’d like a towel, please,” I said in a voice that sounded too high-pitched and trembling to belong to me.
A huge brown bath towel enveloped me, its bottom soaking up bathwater. As quickly as he’d hauled me out of my bath, I was alone again.
I didn’t want to be.
And so I found myself in the middle of my bedroom, in front of my full-length mahogany frame mirror, wearing an oversized t-shirt I often slept in and loose cotton shorts while Ethan prowled around me in a slow, tight circle, stopping periodically to look closely at some part of my body. He got more agitated as he paced. Every light I owned blazed. I kept my eyes fixed on piles of laundry and stacks of books, my mind on the song playing softly from the playlist I’d started when I walked in. I did not want to look at my reflection. I did not want to see what had been done to me.
“Where else are you hurt?” He traced patterns on my skin, his fingers like fire. “What did he do to you?” His fingers, his tone, everything about him was coaxing, inviting, but with an edge. Tell me. Trust me. So I can break his neck.
I couldn’t. The words wouldn’t come.
Ethan stopped suddenly behind me. He kissed the back of my neck. I shivered. He traced one warm rough finger down my upper arms and made feather-light circles there. “Slight bruising here. Finger marks,” he said, not unkindly, although I could hear the strain there, what it cost him to stay calm. He held out one forearm. Despite myself, I looked at our reflections in my mirror. I looked so pale against him, his arm supporting mine. With every light blazing, crescent shaped marks throbbed red in the glass. “Cuts. From his nails.” Light kisses over each mark. And then he held me against his chest, tucking me close with his arms tight around me. His lips brushed the place on my temple where Asheroth had hit me. “And here.” He kissed me there again, a little longer. “What happened here?”
“He knocked me out. So he could take me… wherever he took me.”
Ethan went perfectly, primally still. “It could have killed you. A blow like that.”
Something a little too hysterical and high-pitched to be called a laugh escaped me. “No, he wanted me very much alive. It was more fun that way.”
“Why?” The word grated and scraped, like he’d had to drag it out from the depths of himself.
I finally began to shake, wearing nothing but damp skin and sleep clothes and Ethan’s arms. “He… said things. About you. About why you were here, and Logan and my blood…” My body shook so much in his arms I bit my own tongue.
“Shh,” he soothed, drawing me close. He was as warm as I remembered. “Where else, Caspia?” he asked again, dredging up patience and gentleness from somewhere. “Can you show me, if you can’t tell me?”
I inched up my t-shirt, baring my stomach to my mirror. Asheroth had first caught me there, dragging me away from Ethan, and I’d fought him before I knew it was useless to struggle. Still, the bruising wasn’t as bad as I’d thought. At first it felt like I’d broken ribs. But now, in the safety of my bedroom and the dark anger of Ethan’s watchful presence, a faint tracing of red and purplish bruises crept across my stomach like lace.
He could have hurt me so much more. As he’d hurt Ethan. I’d expected him to, at any moment. Why hadn’t he?
“I don’t know,” Ethan said. I realized I’d spoken out loud. Warm fingers skimmed just over my bruises, charging the air between his skin and mine. I inhaled sharply at the quick unexpected slap of electricity. “It almost worries me more. Like he was saving you for something especially sinister. Did he say or do anything else, Caspia? Anything at all?”
How did we wind up on my bed, soft but mismatched sheets tangled at my back, pillows scattered all around? Maybe because my legs gave out in sheer terror at the thought of Asheroth saving me for “something especially sinister.” I clung to Ethan’s shoulders as he leaned over me. “No,” I told him. How to explain the twisted and beautiful but utterly mad creature that was Asheroth? Asheroth, who had loved a human with eyes like mine and my name and my blood? Would Ethan wind up mad and beautiful and cruel centuries from now, too? But for now, in the light and shadows of my dimly lit bedroom, there was no one else. I clung to him so tightly my muscles hurt. “Asheroth said I had...Nephilim blood. Nephilim gifts.” I almost choked on the word, but I got it out. “I won’t pretend I know what all that means or that it doesn’t scare the hell out of me.” I strained towards him, not wanting to let go. “He was… torn, I think. Twisted. He loved a human once.” I closed my eyes to say it, the hardest thing of all. “My great-great grandmother. He’s been watching us, all of us, my whole family, since she left him. However long ago that was.”
Over me, I felt Ethan freeze. No breathing, no movement. Then slowly, as if by inches, he pulled me up and into his lap, wrapping us both in a soft chenille blanket. “He told you this?” Ethan asked, incredulous, stroking my damp hair.
“He tries not to interfere, he said. With her descendents.” Me. I was her descendent. My voice cracked. “He has trouble remaining objective. But he saw you with me, and he couldn’t… let us…”
“Shh,” he whispered, but he kept on stroking my hair. I relaxed into him, together under our blanket. “Brave Caspia. What else? Can you tell me?”
“You saw the portrait?" I felt, rather than saw, his nod. “He said I have her eyes. She had Nephilim blood, and she turned him down. And he’s been alone ever since. He said… humans have a choice about whom they love. He didn’t. Do you, Ethan? Do you have a choice?”
“Perhaps,” he said, after a long moment. “But I always have a choice in my actions, Caspia. Everyone does.”
I shivered against the rough warm skin of his arms. “I’m not sure Asheroth does anymore. I think that’s one of the definitions of madness.” I forced myself not to look away from him, to purge the worst of Asheroth’s poisonous accusations before they festered any deeper. “He said you only came for Ethan’s soul
, and that when he was d…dead, you would leave me for the Dark Nephilim to fight over. Like vultures over road kill.”
He didn’t look away either, but rage simmered like a slow-burning fuse. “Do you believe him?”
“No.” I felt warmer, stronger, now that the worst was out.
“And trust?” His face was deadly serious. “Do you trust me? After what he told you?”
“Of course,” I whispered. “Who else would I trust with this?”
He smiled briefly at that. But only briefly. “I have an idea.” I tilted my head, listening. “You tell me one thing that happened, and I’ll tell you any one thing you want to know.”
I narrowed my eyes suspiciously. “Anything?”
He smiled a little. “If it’s within my power to tell, yes. I don’t, for instance, know lottery numbers or what Abigail is thinking at any given moment.”
I pulled his hand to my face for no other reason than that I wanted to nuzzle it. “I think I can get through that,” I agreed. I remembered being on top of him in the park, kissing him until I couldn’t breathe, my skin rubbed raw against his. I scraped my cheek against the palm of his hand. “But not tonight.” I kissed the dead center of his palm. “Oh, Ethan. No more pain and madness tonight.”
“Caspia.” He sounded a little winded. I looked to find him leaning closer, his blue green eyes very wide. “It’s been a long, trying day. You need rest. Where do you want me to sleep?”
“Stay with me,” I said, as calmly and matter-of-factly as I could. “Please.”