Ether

by Dana Michelle Belle

  I nod, still numb, still slow to move. Ephraim’s arm circles my waist, lifting me much the same way Justin’s supporting Matt. I lean into his warmth. After touching so much darkness, the warmth of being close to him is like pure joy. His arm tightens around me, feeling as real as any other man’s arms ever will. I let my head fall against his chest as he guides us out of the woods and towards the football field. I belong with him. Just now, having faced down death yet again there doesn’t seem to be any point in lying to myself. When I’m with Ephraim I felt complete, like my soul is whole and the lost, confusing experiences of my life melt away into happiness. I don’t know if that means love, but I know I can’t live without it, not now that I’ve found him.

  As if he can read my thoughts Ephraim pauses, shifting his body so he can look me in the eyes. His eyes are very bright, very intense, very focused on me. He leans closer, just a little and my breath catches in my throat. “Ephraim,” I warn him, before he can do what it looks like he’d about to do. “You know, I’m sort of, with Justin. Not officially, but-”

  Ephraim presses one soft finger against my lips, “I know. And that makes sense. He’s human. You’re human.” I start to shake my head but he hasn’t moved his finger and that slight pressure is enough to still me. “You are human and young and this, between us, is really new and uncertain. For now, he really is better for you. Which is why I’m not going to kiss you, yet. But I’m yours, whenever, however you need me. Forever. So someday…” His thumb caresses the side of my face, very lightly and he draws his hand away. My lips still feel warm where he touched them.

  My whole body strains toward him, aching for his warmth, his touch. I know without a doubt that if he had tried to kiss me, right then, I would have thrown myself into his arms without hesitation. I sneak a guilty look over at Matt and Justin, who are both oblivious as they strain towards the parking lot, maybe a hundred feet away from us. I’m feeling faint and giddy in Ephraim’s arms, from the ordeal or from his closeness I can’t tell. Ephraim’s still looking at me intently, watching my reaction. It feels strange for him to offer himself to me and at the same time give me permission to pursue things with Justin. Yet another way in which he isn’t quite real. I sigh. “It could be a long wait,” I say, surprising myself.

  “That’s okay. I’m a very patient eternal being,” He says it lightly, but he sounds happy. I smile up at him. Maybe he has a right to be happy, maybe we both do. I’m not dead. Matt’s not dead and considering what we were up against, that’s not nothing.

  At the edge of the parking lot Justin looks over his shoulder, realizes how far behind we’ve dropped and turns to wait for us. Our eyes meet over the green, and the space between us seems to yawn larger and more impassable. It feels like a rift is forming between us, cutting us off from each other.

  I shake myself, trying to snap out of my melodrama, and realize that it isn’t just figurative thinking, Justin’s growing smaller, more distant, further away. I clutch Ephraim as the world tilts and squeezes, “Ephraim!”

  His arms tighten around me, and then pass through me, wispy and transparent. I stagger, falling through his image and struggling to stay on my feet as the colour wash out of the world not in whiteness but in deepening grey until the scene shifts and I feel asphalt harden under my feet. I smell oil, burning rubber, blood; a sickening combination that brings me back to one very specific moment in time. Unwillingly, my head turns until the twisted metal and the broken body on the ground fill my vision.

  Ephraim steps in front of me, putting himself between me and the vision of my dying body but he’s so translucent now that I can see it rippling through him. It’s like watching myself die through a veil of water, another unpleasant experience I’ve had.

  Movement shifts in the trees just beyond the crash, in the exact place I’ve seen in all my nightmares ever since. I’ve been caught here since the accident.

  Derrick strides out of the woods. He’s dressed entirely in black in flowing clothes that seem hundreds of years out of place, but still made him look alluring, intense and evil. He spreads his hands and smiles pleasantly. “That was beautiful. Really, truly beautiful. I don’t know when I’ve been so entertained.” He looks right through Ephraim, focusing on me alone. “Such moxy! Such fire! It’s almost a shame you’re completely doomed. But then you’ve been entirely out classed from the beginning.”

  Ephraim steps toward him. “I’m not going to let you touch her, Numina.” He spits with more violence in his voice than I’ve ever heard.

  Derricks’ head turns slowly, registering Ephraim for the first time. “As if you have anything to say about this, child,” he scolds. “What have you got a few dozen years of experience? The vast elemental power of a pleasant spring day? Please. She’s mine. My inspiration, my creation. You’re just a naïve child who’s broken rules that were created to protect you because you’re too impetuous and self-indulgent to stop yourself. Maybe you need a little time out.” A sweep of power swirls out from his hands and blasts Ephraim away from me, encasing him in sparkling sheer walls. Ephraim throws himself against the walls, over and over, but he only bounces off them.

  Derrick’s eyes slide away from Ephraim and back to me. “It’s so much better now that we have some privacy. Before I kill you, I think it’s only polite to thank you for putting on such a top notch show. The look on Inteus’ face when you dismissed him a second time; Priceless.”

  Venom roars through me. Venom and rage. “You find this entertaining? Torturing and killing is some kind of show for your pleasure? That’s why you did all this to me? To my friends? To those innocent kids you killed?”

  He gives a snort of derision. “Now let’s be fair. No one died until you started playing with powers that don’t belong to you. No one had to die, except you, obviously. And it isn’t like I was condemning you to oblivion. I was offering you a golden gift. I offered you eternity. Eternal life as an ethereal with the man of your dreams; a painful process but not without its rewards.”

  I don’t believe a damned word out of his mouth. “And what about all the innocent kids your people took as hosts? Do they get eternity too?”

  He smiles, and his smile is eerily genuine. “As a matter of fact, they do. Bonding with an ethereal doesn’t obliterate the host. Surely you should know that yourself. Don’t you still possess some limited measure of free will, even now that Ephraim has taken you?”

  I shake my head, his words are twisting everything up. Ephraim didn’t take me, he saved me. But a nagging little part of me tells me there’s some truth in it. When Ephraim’s near I can’t always think clearly. I lose focus, doing as he bids me. I’d thought it was his charm, but maybe it’s something more sinister. With an effort I push the thought away, I can’t believe him. He’s trying to kill me. He’s responsible for everything that has happened to me. “So you’re what, just a poor, misunderstood good guy?” I shoot back sarcastically. “I don’t buy it. Why are we even having this conversation? If you meant to kill me, you’d have done it by now.”

  He gives me a toothy smile, stepping close enough to me that my skin crawls and I feel a familiar spark flaring up against my palms. "Kill you? After all the time I’ve invested in your creation that would be wasteful in the extreme. Plus, I have an entire army of incorporeals ready to overrun the earth and a strict time table to keep. Still, if you really, truly don’t want to be an ethereal, if you can’t find it in yourself to recognize the honour of receiving such a gift, maybe I should just take it back. Is that what you want? You want to be frail and human again?”

  “Please,” I whimper. I don’t know if I’m begging for my life or honestly asking him to roll back the hands of time and make me what I was before all this. Ephraim screams from inside his prison and I feel a sucking draw of power away from me. The tingling leaves my hands as a hole blasts through the shimmering walls, and Ephraim hurls himself out.

  Derek raises his hands, a swirling turbulence of power between his hands, growing larger eve
ry second. I hear Ephraim scream, one sharp sound and then the ball engulfs him, raging over him. He writhes on the ground and the darkness behind Derek explodes with light. A huge, dark portal pours open behind him. He doesn’t turn to look, he just nudges Ephraim with the toe of his boot and snarls down at him. “So predictable. Impetuous, reckless, self-indulgent and a damned fool. Did you really think pushing a mortal into the ethereal realm would be enough to blow open the gate between worlds? No, it always had to be the other way around. I was always going to need an ethereal rash enough to sacrifice his eternity for her mortality.”

  He turns back to me. “Still, I’m not without a sense of gratitude. And just to show you how grateful I am, I’m going to let you both live. I’ll even take the Numina well away from here and let you have your little town with your fleeting human lives. He’s of no use to me now anyway.” He turns toward the gateway and steps away from us, then half turns back, speaking over his shoulder. “but you my dear, might be, when you’ve had a little time to grow into your power. Something to consider.”

  As he steps through the gateway I have a lurching glimpse of hundreds, thousands of surging energies streaming forward, towards our world. And then we are back on the bright green grass of the football field, with Ephraim lying curled into a fetal ball on the ground and me swaying on my feet.

  I drop to the ground next to him, turning him over with shaking hands. He feels solid and warm against my hands. I lift his head so it’s cradled against my thigh. A little trickle of blood is splashed against his full pink lips. A little trickle of his own, human, blood. “Ephraim?” I whisper through tears.

  His hand finds mine and squeezes it weakly. A lot of truth passes between us. He’s sacrificed himself to save me. He’s sacrificed everything. His power, his home, and maybe the world itself, just to save me. I stroke his head gently, smoothing his hair out of his eyes, rubbing the light sheen of blood from his lips. “I don’t regret it,” he says softly.

  “Me either,” I answer. And I mean it. I’d told him once that sixteen was too young to die, no matter what the reason. A second, a third or even a fourth chance at life is worth it, no matter what the cost. We’re both alive and that’s something. As for the world, well we probably owe it some saving.

  Justin kneels in front of me, taking one of Ephraim’s arms. He helps hoist him to his feet and guides him to the car. I start to say something, to explain but Justin just shakes his head. “Explain later, move now.”

  * * *

  Justin stands on the deck his hands gripping the railing as he gazes off into the afternoon light of the forest. Ephraim’s sleeping upstairs, in my bed. Matt’s pretty much passed out on the couch. I still have no idea what I’m going to tell my mother about the three boys who are camping at my house. One of whom has no last name, no history, no family, nothing at all to fill in except that without him I’d be dead, which I can’t really add to his back story when I present him to my mother.

  Justin’s been great, helping me get them both inside, settling them, supporting me but he’s also barely spoken and so much has happened. He doesn’t even look back at me now, when I clear me throat. He just keeps his eyes on the forest, as if standing guard. “What happened back there?” he asks at last.

  I sit down in the same deck chair where I saw Ephraim, that first beautiful afternoon. “I don’t know exactly, something kind of terrible. We were just pawns, being moved around. Derrick’s not what we thought he was. He’s something else, something very old, very dangerous. I don’t think we ever could have won against him.”

  Justin turns toward me, just a fraction, “But you survived. Both of you.”

  I shake my head, “Because he let us. Because we weren’t important enough to kill. We’re like, nothing to him, insects maybe.”

  Justin gives me a weary smile and walks across the deck, sitting in the chair opposite mine. “Then he’s woefully underestimated you,” he says with brave glibness.

  I reach out and take his hand. “Maybe. Maybe not. We can figure that out tomorrow.” I squeeze his hand and bump my leg against him. “Today though, I’ve got some living to catch up on.”

  He smile at me and this time there’s real warmth in it, and something a little more tantalizing in his eyes. “I know just where to start,” he murmurs, using my hand to pull me in close. He holds still, breathing in, just inches from me. “How about kissing your boyfriend?”

  After everything it sounds so silly, so simple that I giggle, until he leans in and silences the giggle with a kiss that’s slow enough to make my insides flip. We both have a lot of living to catch up on.