by Alma Katsu
Adair clapped a hand on Jude’s back, trying to bolster his confidence. “If anyone can find the money, it’s you. Talk to him. And make him understand: he has no choice now.”
Hours later, when the body had shut down and come back to life, Adair went to see Pendleton in the darkened room. Even in the dimness he saw that the change was nearly complete. The man on the bed looked his age again, his skin fresh and supple, his hair darkening and thickening. He was thin still, but the muscle was rejuvenated and, with time, would become normal again. It was a promising body—not a god-like specimen as Jonathan had been, but you could tell he’d been fit once, as much as his weak heart had allowed. He would be pleasant enough to have around. Adair sat on the edge of the bed and looked into the frightened eyes.
“How do you feel?”
Pendleton’s tongue ran over his cracked lips. “Shitty. But different. Changed.”
“I restored your health, as I promised. You may not feel it yet, but as you will see in the mirror, you are as you were before the illness. Do you want me to prove it to you?”
Pendleton’s eyes reflected memories of the gun, and Jude on the floor. He shuddered. “No. No, I believe you. I can tell. Even now, I feel better than I have in months. I just want to get out of here. I want to get on with my life.”
“And so you shall.”
Pendleton steadied himself against the bed. “So . . . what happens next? Do I get some kind of training? There must be things I need to know, like how to go undetected in the normal world. And you’re going to explain it all to me, right? Where this power came from? What it all means?”
“In a sense, yes. But you have plenty of time to learn. You will move in here with me and Jude. You will become part of my household . . . like a servant, really. You will do everything I say—everything. Because if you don’t obey me, I will kill you.”
Pendleton struggled to his elbows, despite the spinning in his head and the cold sweat blooming across his back. “What do you mean, ‘kill’ me? You said I would be immortal—”
Adair shook his head. “When we met, you seemed to pride yourself on being clever, but for a shrewd man, you didn’t ask very many questions when it came to our deal. Jude warned you to pay attention to the details of my offer, but alas, you did not. If you had, I would have explained that while you are immortal, there is one exception, one little chink in your armor of invincibility. And that one exception is me.”
Pendleton, graying around the eyes, squinted at Adair.
“Nothing in this world is absolute. Haven’t you learned that already? I would imagine that, given your life, your business and personal dealings, you’d know this was true. There is always a . . . provision, I guess you would say. Checks and balances. That is how the world is made to function, it is inescapable. I am the check on your power. Do you remember when you first met me, the demonstration with the gun—how I put it in your hand and made you shoot Jude? That’s because if I had shot him, he would have died. Only I can end your life, just as only I can make you feel pain, and you should know that I am not hesitant to exercise either power when I see fit. You may have cheated people in life, but you will never cheat me. Never.”
“Th-this isn’t what I paid you for. . . . This wasn’t our bargain,” Pendleton sputtered as he tried to rise from the bed, but, still weak, he collapsed on the floor at Adair’s feet.
“Not our bargain? Can you explain, then, exactly what it was we agreed on? Show me where it’s written, present to me a contract? Of course, there is no contract. There is only one path to immortality that I know of, only one way to be given eternal life, and that is from me. I know my terms, Pendleton. I have lived up to my half of the bargain. Now would be a good time for your first lesson, I think.”
Jude stepped into the room holding a large kitchen knife, thumbing the blade nervously. Pendleton looked from the knife to Adair, fear mounting in his eyes.
“This is a step we all go through—Jude, the others I have brought to my side—to prove that I am telling you the truth. So you’ll never test me again.” He nodded at Jude, who crouched next to Pendleton. He held on to Pendleton’s shoulder to steady himself, turned his face away, and drove the blade into the man’s soft belly.
Pendleton cringed and opened his mouth to howl, but no sound came forth. His eyes popped open in surprise. He took the knife from Jude and stared at the bloody blade. “What the . . . I didn’t feel anything. Nothing. How did you do that?”
Adair laughed darkly. “You are no longer made of the stuff of mortals. Your body is just a vessel now. No knife can harm you, nor any bullet. Not fire, not water. Not heat, not cold, thirst nor hunger. You will note that it was Jude’s hand that held the knife, which is why you felt nothing. It is exactly as I told you: you have nothing to fear from any man. Except me.”
Before Pendleton could complete the equation in his mind and see what was coming, Adair reached out and snapped Pendleton’s wrist back, the crack of his bones echoing through the room. The knife clattered to the floor. “Goddamn!” Pendleton bellowed, clutching his forearm. “You broke my wrist! You broke my fucking wrist!”
Adair stood, rolling back his sleeves as Jude hurried out of the room. “Yes, I did. You see, we have come to the second part of the lesson, a painful but necessary lesson. Because very soon you will start to enjoy the gift that I have given you. You will feel powerful and free to do anything you want. But you must always remember, Pendleton, that ultimately you are not free. You are beholden to me for the rest of time. Sadly, it has been my experience that mere words will not be enough to make you remember. I must make it clear to you in a way you will never forget, so that you will always fear me. Fear and obey me.” He reached down and stroked the side of Pendleton’s face, drawing two fingers from his sideburn across the ridge of his cheekbone, the man shivering at his touch.
Then he drove his fist into the same spot he had just stroked, a punishing blow that left Pendleton seeing flashes of white and grinding his teeth in pain. Pendleton hadn’t been in a fight since prep school, one of those little outbreaks between boys, as combustible as a match and about as long-lasting. This was different: pain traveled up his jaw and through his skull as though he’d been hit with a plumber’s wrench. That was from one punch; he couldn’t imagine he would survive a second.
He fell at Adair’s feet momentarily, then rose woozily to his knees. “I get it. You’re the boss. You can stop now,” he said, struggling to get away from him, too late.
Adair held Pendleton’s jaw in a crushing grip and drove a fist into his face again, into the same tender spot. “Think of this as a necessary exercise in obedience. You are like an untrained dog, you see, but by the time I am finished with you, you will be attentive as the most devoted hound. And, like any pack animal, you will learn to take comfort in discipline, in knowing your place in our family, and in doing as your master tells you. For I am your master now: the master you cannot cheat or deceive, the master from whom you can never escape. From now until the end of time, you and all you possess are mine. I am your life now; I am your god.”
NINE
CASABLANCA
Adusty darkness had fallen over the city. The street below was quiet, the bustle of the day replaced by the murmurs of the evening crowd, families sitting down to dinner in the cool of a courtyard.
Savva and I sat on the floor in his apartment with his paraphernalia scattered around us, the water pipe silent and hashish gone, only flecks and smears left clinging to the crumpled tinfoil. He was in that temporary peace that came from narcotics and wine. Savva’s wise blue eyes watched me closely as he questioned me again.
“This wouldn’t have anything to do with Adair, would it? As incapacitated as I am, even I can put the clues together, Lanny dear. His presence had been missing for almost ten years when we first met. It comes back after two centuries, and the very next day you show up on my doorstep. That’s too much of a coincidence for me. I can’t help but wonder if you have something to
tell me.”
I was flooded with a tremendous sense of relief to finally be able to share my secret with someone who would understand as only those who’d lived under Adair’s spell could. But I was ashamed, too, because I hadn’t told Savva earlier. We’d lived together for decades and swapped stories about Adair, yes, but there’d always been a line I wouldn’t cross. No one could know about the wall. I hadn’t kept this secret from Savva because I thought he’d release Adair, but I knew he was in contact with the others and was afraid he might inadvertently let it slip when he was drunk or under the influence of one drug or another.
With no reason to be cautious any longer, I confessed the entire story. I told him that Adair was more powerful and crueler than we had been led to believe, and how he’d deceived us all. I told him how I’d pretended to love Adair in order to trap him. His eyes grew wider as my story spilled out in a tumult of words, for once I’d started, I couldn’t stop for the sheer relief of confessing.
“Where did you find the nerve to take on Adair? It’s like facing down the devil himself,” he said, incredulous. “I don’t think anyone else would have dared to do what you did. You have more balls than any of the rest of us, my dear, and when you think of the cutthroats and villains Adair has gathered to serve him, that’s saying a lot.”
At the time, I’d felt more foolhardy than brave. I’d acted out of panic, not courage. Admiration alone wouldn’t help me; I’d seen more than one condemned man cheered by the mob for his moxie—all the way to the gallows. “I’ve come to you for help,” I said. “I didn’t live with Adair long enough to learn anything about the source or extent of his powers. I don’t know what he’s capable of. I need your advice.”
Savva turned grimly from me and began tidying to distract himself, sweeping the utensils into the tin box. “I won’t be of much use, I’m afraid. I wasn’t with Adair for very long, either. A couple years more than you, at the most.”
“But you got to know his other companions. You must’ve heard stories of his exploits, his adventures, of the things he could and could not do. . . .”
“What is it you want me to say?” he asked, turning on me sharply. “If there’s sanctuary, I haven’t heard of it. If there’s a way to stop him, none of us have been able to figure it out.” His shoulders slumped and he sighed apologetically. “I would like to offer you hope, but I don’t see the point in lying to you, either.”
Fear bloomed inside me again, a creeping coldness that I had been trying to suppress. “Please, Savva. Help me. I don’t want to end up . . .” I shivered from head to foot. “I don’t want to end up like Uzra,” I admitted. “The poor woman, forced to stay with Adair, to endure his sick fancies and his bad temper. And for what reason? Her only crime, if it can be called that, was that she was too beautiful for him to resist.”
“Is that what you thought?” Savva gave me a sidelong look. “Did we never talk about Uzra, not in any depth? My dear, you are wrong. Uzra was not an innocent. She was no different from Dona or Tilde, me or . . .” He trailed off before he came to the last word: you. “She was a murderess.”
I thought of the odalisque. Surely she was too slight to be dangerous, let alone kill anyone. She’d had a fierce nature, however, and there was no denying that something had burned in her heart. Although Adair had kept her prisoner for centuries, you could see by the determined, defiant look on her face that she would never stop trying to escape. “A murderess? Her father, you mean—she killed her father, that terrible man.”
“More than just her father. Her brothers, her uncles . . . every last man in her tribe. She betrayed them to a rival group by smuggling the assassins right into their midst. Supposedly she helped them on the condition that they’d leave no males alive. She wanted her family’s bloodline wiped out. It was a terrible crime, like genocide. The women who survived brought her to the sultan for judgment, and that’s when Adair found her and stole her away.”
I had the sensation of the world being turned upside down and shaken like a snow globe, the landscape obscured by the swirling flakes, my way lost again. When it came to Adair, you could not be sure of anything. The past was not set in stone. Here, with only a few words, Savva had unraveled what I thought I knew about Uzra. I groped for steady ground. “That’s not what Adair told me—”
“Haven’t you learned yet not to trust Adair’s stories?” He laughed meanly.
“Adair told me that her father killed her mother because he suspected a foreigner was Uzra’s true father. And then he made her take her mother’s place—in his bed.”
“Well, that might be true. It would explain why she hated her father and wanted revenge on her family. Why not wipe out the entire clan if they let him kill Uzra’s mother, and then stood by as he raped a girl who thought of him as her father. Oh no—if you ask me, they only got what they deserved. Though . . . I’m sure there are some people who would disagree. Was it fair to kill her brothers, poor little boys who had no say in their father’s insanity?” Savva rose from the floor, a box of drug paraphernalia tucked under his arm. “That’s the trouble when you look to apportion blame: it rarely falls into neat little piles. Does it matter whether she cut one man’s throat or dozens? Was she entitled to revenge—are any of us? I don’t know how to make sense of it. I only know that Uzra did something bad all those years ago to bring her to Adair’s attention, just like the rest of us.”
My heart beat faster at Savva’s words, and my throat tightened. I didn’t want to discuss it with Savva, but the distinction was important to me. I’d always looked to Uzra as proof that Adair did not only gather monsters to him. If she had been innocent, there was a chance that maybe I was innocent, too, and had come to Adair’s attention by mistake. Now, Savva was telling me there was no hope.
“Why would he lie? Why didn’t he tell me the truth about Uzra?”
Savva snorted. “Come now, Lanny, you know as well as I that Adair lied all the time. He lied to suit his purposes and to cover his tracks.” He closed his hand around the emptied foil packet, crushing it into a ball. “Or perhaps he got her story mixed up in his head, and it seemed like the truth to him. What is truth, anyway? It’s just one person’s side of the story.”
That sounded like a junkie’s logic to me. “You don’t really believe that, do you?” I asked Savva, prodding. “Surely you believe that some truths are absolutes. A fact is a fact.”
He laughed darkly, under his breath. “Oh my dear Lanny, after everything you’ve been through, you can’t possibly believe in anything as quaint as a fact. . . .” He swept a hand grandly from head to foot. “I have no explanation for what happened to us—do you?
“Let me tell you about the incident that brought this home to me,” he continued, speaking over his shoulder as he went to put the tin box away in a chest. “I’d been seeing a man named Daniel, a lovely man but nonetheless I decided to break it off with him. I felt terribly guilty, you see. He’d never been with a man before me—didn’t even know this was what he wanted. Once we were together, he walked away from his wife, his family. Even a selfish old thing like me is capable of feeling guilt. I felt as though I’d ruined his life, so I left him. Years later, I heard he was dying. AIDS. I decided to go see him; it’s the least I could do. I still felt terrible for what I’d done to him and now this, too, he’s dying and it never would have happened if not for me . . .” He choked, bringing a hand to his mouth, momentarily.
“Anyway, I went to his apartment, feeling like the angel of death. He’s dying and yet, look at me, not changed a day since he last saw me. Where is the justice, another man might ask. Yet he wasn’t angry; he didn’t blame me. He told me he was grateful that I’d come into his life. That if not for me, he wouldn’t have been the man he was supposed to be. Do you see? One incident, two views. Which is the truth? Can’t they both be the truth?”
I opened my mouth but didn’t have a response.
“I’ve thought about this a lot,” he said, suddenly vehement. “It’s import
ant to me, too. You’re not the only one to wonder why you’d been chosen by Adair. We all do, every damned one of us. I always thought he chose me because I’d ruined all these men’s lives, because I was so selfish and had gone after any man I pleased. That was my sin, and Adair was my punishment. But if Daniel could forgive me, didn’t that mean that what I’d done wasn’t so bad after all?” He took a deep breath. “If we come to see our faults and learn to change, shouldn’t that be all that matters? Shouldn’t that make us deserving of absolution? I keep hoping that maybe, one day, it will.”
The hashish should’ve made me sleep like an infant, but I lay on the sticky sheets through the humid night, thinking about what Savva had said. He seemed so sure of what he knew of Uzra’s story, but how could that be? He hadn’t heard it from the odalisque—during the time they lived under the same roof, he didn’t yet speak Arabic—and now that she was gone, there was no way to corroborate the story.
If Savva’s story was the truth, I couldn’t figure out why Adair had lied about her past to me. He’d told me the others’ sordid stories—Dona, Tilde, Alejandro—so why not Uzra, too? I thought about my early encounters with Uzra, the ones that had taken place before my transformation, and all the time we spent together once I had been made a member of the household. I was the only one whose company she sought; could that be why I tended to identify with her in my mind, because she had accepted me?
I had seen her only once before I was transformed: the night I tried to escape from Adair’s house. Sick, dying (as it turned out), I encountered her on the stairs in the mansion and fainted at her feet. The next thing I recalled was lying in bed, with Adair and Alejandro standing over me, Adair deciding whether to let me die—or live with him forever. I could still picture his face, tense from indecision. What had made him keep me? Was there some dark mark on my soul that only he could see?