by Nola Sarina
I wanted to watch him all day, but the comfort of his skin lulled me under a spell, and within moments I was gone against his chest.
Nightfall brought Nycholas stroking my arms, tracing the golden ropes between my tattoos as my eyelids fluttered open. I couldn’t see because it was dark, but I could smell and feel and that was all I needed.
I rolled to face him and dragged him on top of me, and it hurt so damn good, the soreness of last night and the new pain of his body entering me… I was lost within moments, and lost for hours.
“I remember you now,” I whispered as I sat astride him when he was spent once more, still buried within my core, pulsing, cold, and tender. “Tell me how it happened… when it ended.”
Nycholas slid his hands up from my hips to my breasts and then stroked back down my belly. He settled his palms atop my thighs, still secured within me, and sighed.
“Levitiqas discovered us. He knew for months as we ran all over the continent to escape his wrath. I didn’t hear him creeping up behind us, and I saw him grabbing your face so I attacked him, though I knew I shouldn’t, I knew it was wrong to do. I dared to strike my master, and thus I was sentenced to death.
“My brothers chased us. But they chased us half-heartedly. Only Festus and Manaen – you’ll remember Manaen, he is dark of tone…”
I did remember him. As hugely thick as Nycholas, black as night, with eyes that melted into his face even darker than his flesh – I saw him behind me as I ran as fast as I could away from a train station. He terrified me.
“…Only they chased us with certainty and intent. The others, not so much, for they felt pity for me. I carried you through water… a lot of water, a long way. I don’t know if it was a lake or an ocean… all I could think was to get space between us, to get you away from them and help your wound heal.”
I shivered. I couldn’t recall the ice-cold water, only the security of Nycholas clutching me to his chest as I bled from a deep gash in my face.
“And then, I stopped with you outside of a hospital. People saw me. I didn’t care. I pinched my fang, and you screamed at me, Calli, you demanded I not give it to you, but I knew if I didn’t, we’d be caught eventually and you’d die. So I drugged you against your will, told you that you had a car accident, and kissed you goodbye with my tongue in your mouth, assuring that you’d remember nothing of me at all.”
My heart clenched at the tale, for the potency of his tongue, directly mingled with mine, was too thick an amnesia for my feeble brain to break.
“The Psycho – a little one, Sychar is his real name - was the Vesper who caught up with me in that hospital parking lot as I left you on the ground, bleeding and babbling about an accident. He’s so fast you probably never saw him, because he moves at an unmatchable, invisible speed. But he is small, and young, and compassionate… and when he saw me lay your head on the pavement, he backed away. I assume he told my master you were dead, because I never heard mention of you again, all the times I’ve run into my brothers by mistake.
“And then I left you, and it tore my heart in half to do so, and I began to hide. I grew tired of counting moons without you and decided to end it, to turn myself in, so I came back to have you one last time… Oh, Calli, I intended to wipe the memory of me from you once more, but I can see the absence of me has only broken you further.”
I listened patiently, unwilling to interrupt, knowing my recall was damaged beyond repair. I could remember his pleasure and I could remember his drug, and if the nightmare of our escape from his master refused to return to my memory, I had to assume that ghastly amnesia was for the best.
Nycholas was frightening no matter how much I loved him. Flashes of Levitiqas and Manaen and their snarling jaws, snapping at me… it was enough memory to quiet my curiosity, and I refused to dig any further into the trauma, afraid of finding another reason to be angry with him.
We had so little time left to be together before he would walk into a deathtrap and never come out. My stomach dropped and I groaned with sorrow as I fell against him, and he held me tight and moved within me once more.
We lay atop a hill – hours and a beautiful shower of the most exquisite intensity later - gazing at the stars, as we’d done so often for our affair of a year. Nycholas brought a knife out of his pocket and showed me how it refused to cut his skin, and explained that Levitiqas would kill him by tearing off his head. I pulled away from him and retched into the grass at that, and he rubbed my back without words. What words could he say? Nothing could make this better, and all for what? Because he broke some stupid rules from his tyrannical master who had something to do with protecting the human race?
“I’d rather the human race perish than lose you again,” I despaired.
Nycholas only kissed my hair and whispered no comfort to me. “Too many innocents. I am not an innocent, therefore only my life should pay my debts.”
His world was so complex yet simple, just as he was so cryptic yet straightforward. I loved the pleasure and pain of his body and the ecstasy and agony of his love in my soul, and I knew it would be over way before I was ready.
He pushed my hair away from my face as I shivered, an unnatural sweat of panic broken out across my forehead. “I should take you home now.”
I glared at him. “No, you should stay with me, sleep with me through the day, and let me have every moment with you that I can.” I didn’t say the words that threatened to slip out. I didn’t say before you abandon me again.
Nycholas frowned. “If we stay together, I risk returning you home while they’re already on their way, watching me. I can return you home now and they’ll never know we were together once more, they’ll never know you’re still alive.”
I set my jaw and refused to back down, and the vehemence of my voice reflected my pain. “Let them know! Let them kill me, Nycholas. I’d rather die with you than waste any moment of time I could have spent with you before it all ends.”
Nycholas laughed, that sexy sound that stabbed me in my pelvis with electric force. “Calli, such things are not as romantic as they seem in ancient poetry.”
I shoved him and rose to my feet to stomp away. I didn’t know where I was going. I just walked in the darkness, Nycholas right behind me the whole time. Eventually, I found the path we’d taken through the woods and we headed back the way we’d come.
The sun began to glow beyond the horizon as I neared the house that had made our home for only a night. I stopped in the backyard and turned to Nycholas, my arms folded across my chest, tears pricking behind my eyes.
“If you’re going to do this, Nycholas… how can I trust that you’re really gone, when you let me forget you, before? How can I move forward and live a life… half a life without you… wondering if you’re going to just show up again?”
Nycholas narrowed his eyes and slipped his hands around my waist with the most gentleness he’d used with me in our entire, fucked up relationship. “You’ll have to trust me. Tonight, when the sun goes away again, I will die, Calli.”
I chomped on my lip. “I can’t trust you. You ruined that when you wiped the best fucking year of my life from my permanent memory.”
He swallowed and shifted, indecision evident in his posture. “I had to protect you.”
“You could have run away with me.”
“We ran for a long time, Calli. We tried to go anywhere, everywhere, and they were always only one little step behind us, stalking us, and you would have died.”
I fought against a memory, knowing that he spoke the truth. I bit my lip again, harder, opening the wound where he’d broken it silencing me in the little boat. Blood leaked across my tongue and Nycholas inhaled through his nose, stepped forward and cupped my chin to get a look at the refreshed injury.
I pulled my chin away. “I’m going to bleed from the inside out for the rest of my life, Nycholas, wondering if you’re somewhere in the shadows… reprogrammed by Levitiqas, still here but unable to find me again, unable to touch me again…�
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He groaned with remorse and wrapped his enormous arms around my shoulders, and I was helpless to get away. I didn’t want to get away, really. I just couldn’t let him twine deeper with my soul… knowing how much I was going to lose when he left.
My reluctance was a reluctance of fear, and even though I knew it would hurt more than anything ever hurt anyone on the planet before, I knew a clean break was the only way for me to ever move on after this.
“Let me watch,” I whispered.
“Watch what?” Nycholas asked. “I can’t enjoy the sunrise with you. I’ll burn.”
That grin that forced its way across my lips every time he said something adorable tugged at the corners of my mouth, but I suppressed it, stubborn. I shook my head. “Let me watch it end, for you. Let me know you’re gone… see it for myself.”
Nycholas froze, and then his hair danced over me as he shook his head from where he embraced me so tightly. “No. Never. Not hurting you like that.”
I pulled back and glared at him, furious. “You’ll make me wander in question forever, then! You broke my trust, Nycholas! I can’t know you’re really gone unless I see you go!”
He glared back, disappointed, baffled, and conflicted. “You’ll be ruined, if you watch such a thing. Our kind of violence is not a gentle one.”
“I’m already fucking ruined!” I knew the words would sting him, but I was beyond caring and it was only the truth. I’d never love a man after Nycholas, and I’d never be satisfied wandering, searching for my immortal lover who left me in solitude once more. “You ruined me by being so… so… fucking perfect! And wonderful…” My fury melted into tears again and I fisted the cords of his hair between my fingers, wishing that somehow, this didn’t have to happen.
Nycholas watched me cry but had nothing to say to comfort me.
I didn’t blame him for not trying.
“I need to see. To be with you at the end. It might fuck me up, but I need to see.”
“Why?” he asked.
“Because I love you.” My voice dwindled to a whisper. “Because I don’t want you to be alone… because I want to be with you for every moment of your life, however many moments are left…” I knew I was rambling, but it didn’t matter. How could I explain it in a way that made sense?
I took a deep breath and blew it out. “Let me be with you.” It was all I could think to say.
Nycholas studied me for a long moment, as the sun glowed on the horizon brighter, the indigo lifting to pink, and then he scooped me into his arms and carried me inside the little house.
In the bed, we laced ourselves together again, and he moved in me harder and faster than ever before, his mouth hovering over my jugular, and the pain was divine.
He fell into the heavy Vesper slumber of daytime when we finished, and I refused to sleep, watching the slow rise and fall of his breaths, counting them. He counted moons in the sky for me, I could keep vigil with him and count breaths on the last sleep before his eternal night.
My eyes were weary, but I couldn’t tear my gaze away from him, knowing it was only hours until I’d never set eyes on him again. Dread mingled with sorrow, disbelief, and love in my heart, and the battle of those was far worse than the warring of lust and fear I’d felt before.
This battle pulled at my insides, ripped them from my bones, and a horrible combination of nausea and terror brewed my blood into a furious boil. More than a few times that sleepless day, I thought I’d vomit or explode or vanish, so raw were my nerves as he slept. The silence in that house was maddening, and I kept waiting, wishing, and praying that an earthquake or act of God would heave all the train tracks in the world from the ground and I’d have him for just a few more nights, or years, or lifetimes, or even merely breaths.
But nothing happened despite my wishing, and my terror bubbled into a total, choking sorrow as the day wore on to evening, and when Nycholas finally woke, I was sobbing against him, completely dry of tears and shaking violently on his chest. He enveloped me in his muscles and the velvet of his skin, and crooned his apologies, his confidence in my strength, and his certainty that I wouldn’t miss him for long.
He was so fucking wrong I couldn’t even express it, so I just let him talk to me as the sun disappeared and the red glow of nightfall faded to black.
And then we rose from the bed, and the time had come. He didn’t even argue with me as I glued my hand to his, and he led me through the water in the little paddle boat, back out into the forest. He helped me climb up a rocky, muddy hill in the trees with me – the hill where I’d seen the Vespers from a distance before - and tucked me into his brown leather trench coat. I shivered and silently begged myself to stay conscious as he pressed his lips to my forehead, his breath freezing cold and his lips as soft as feathers.
He straightened to standing and smiled at me. “I love you.”
I shook harder and stared past him at the train tracks through the trees, and then I met his eyes and thought I was going to just slump over and die from fright. “I love you, too.”
“I still have time to wipe me from your mind and send you away,” he said.
I just shook my head and huddled down smaller inside the coat where I sat.
Nycholas sighed. “Stay hidden until they leave. Stay quiet. You are far enough away to hide your scent, but if you make a sound…” He shook his head.
I nodded. Nycholas’ eyebrows furrowed with sorrow, and then he traced my lip with a fingertip, and turned to walk with courage and strength down into the trees.
The second his back was to me, I wanted to scream at the top of my lungs, launch myself to my feet and tackle him, touch him, forbid him from leaving my side. I wanted him to come back. I needed him. He couldn’t leave me, because I loved him!
But to see my fear, now, would weaken his resolve to leave my memory untainted, so I kept achingly quiet as Nycholas slipped out of my reach.
A train horn sounded in the distance, and tears leaked from my eyes again. I knew better than to make any sound.
The light materialized in the night from the distance and illuminated Nycholas’ silhouette where he stood on the tracks, shirtless and beautiful, and totally fucking doomed.
The train slid to a smooth halt on the tracks just before Nycholas, and my lover looked so glorious and bold that even the train seemed small and harmless by comparison.
A hatch on the top of the train opened and out crawled the Vespers… I counted nine in total, some larger than Nycholas and some smaller, but none as tall as Levi or thick as my lover. And then, when they all surrounded him in a threatening circle, a tenth emerged, this one clothed in fine, Victorian attire rather than solid leather. Levitiqas. The master, the terrifying immortal leader who gouged my face so long ago. Silver of some kind swung around his neck, and his hair was long like all the others though streaks of shiny gray lined the black. He strode forth and stood between two Vespers – Levi, the tall one and Festus, the asshole who refused Nycholas’ handshake only a few nights ago.
Two Vespers I didn’t recognize close to Nycholas’ size came around his back and grabbed him by the wrists, pulling my lover’s deadly arms out to his sides. He struggled for a moment, but they overpowered him. One of them twisted Nycholas’ arm at the elbow and he grunted and stopped fighting.
Don’t touch him! I wanted to scream. What good would it do? If I blew my cover and Nycholas watched me die before he did… oh, it would crush him. I didn’t want to watch this… but I needed to.
“Kneel,” Levitiqas’ aged, baritone rasp of a voice ripped from his mouth.
Nycholas raised his chin high and defied Levitiqas’ command, so one of the Vespers at his side kicked him in the back of the legs and his knees hit the iron of the train tracks with a clang.
I gathered the leather of Nycholas’ coat in my hands and pressed it to my mouth, trying to find some comfort, some calm. All I could feel was the pounding of my heart reaching the tip of every nerve in my body, and I was frozen and on fire,
all at once. A whimper of fear lingered in my throat, so I took a few deep breaths and strained again to keep quiet, that brutal urge to run straight for him and beg him to stay with me surging up through my body.
Levitiqas stepped forward to Nycholas and pointed with a wiry finger at his mouth. “Open,” Levitiqas commanded.
To my shock and horror, Nycholas obeyed.
I remembered him trying to cut his skin with a knife, to no avail. How could the master tear off his head?
By going for a weak spot.
“Wider,” Levitiqas said, and Nycholas unhinged his jaw and let his mouth fall open further.
I couldn’t stop the whispered “No!” that slipped from my lips, and the tall one, Levi twitched his head in my direction. I chomped on the leather of Nycholas’ coat and tried to stop shaking. Every little shift of pebbles beneath my ass and every creak of the leather I wore suddenly resounded in my brain like an accusatory echo across a canyon.
But Levi didn’t turn to look at me. Did he know I was there, watching?
Levitiqas slipped his entire hand into Nycholas’ gaping mouth.
My heart hammered in my ears, and I knew unconsciousness was only moments away for me, and I didn’t dare to blink, tears spilling from my wide eyes as I clenched my teeth into the leather so hard it hurt my jaw.
“Was it worth it?” Levitiqas sneered, his hand down Nycholas’ throat. Even his wrist disappeared into my lover’s seductive mouth.
Nycholas shrugged and nodded with his eyebrows raised as though the question itself was stupid – a classic reply for him. Pride washed over me at his defiant answer to his master, but it was followed by a wave of certainty, remorse, and terror… the moment had come.
I held my breath, and Levitiqas’ mouth curled up with the effort as he grabbed hold of something in Nycholas’ throat. Nycholas lurched once on his knees, and then Levitiqas twisted his arm sharply and yanked, and Nycholas’ throat split open across the front, black blood spewing out onto his chest and the dirt. His head fell back on his shoulders and dangled for a moment in an unnatural way as a final hiss rattled through the blood that bubbled over his bare chest. Levitiqas grabbed Nycholas’ lifeless head by the temples, wrenched it to the side and dropped it to the tracks, where my precious Vesper’s entire body wasted away to pieces of useless rust.