She had not enjoyed saying what she had, yet to Candy these spoken words brought clarity, like finally rubbing filth from a window pane that one has been afraid to look through. Because when you do, your worst fear is suddenly on display. Which of course you knew all along. As it was you who created it in the first place. And from Candy's gaze she was now staring right through that window, her face pressed up against the glass as words tumbled from her lips. “I don't have to be the good thing to have faith in it, any more than I have to lock away the nature of my evil for fear of who I am. My evil is healthy and strong, it keeps me healthy and strong, yet I would have rather destroy it and let those around me die rather than accept that this is who I am.”
-Twelve years before Faith lies bleeding to death, sensing that one day there will be an answer to the question she asked so long ago. And more than this, a reason. Who am I? she thinks as unbearable pain fills her lovers head –
A headache which had lasted over a decade gradually began to subside and as it did so, Jan staggered a couple of paces to her left, then back again to the right. To a common observer it would probably seem like a woman who sunk one too many drinks and then suddenly tried to stand up. It was as if a screw had been removed by invisible pliers and years of agony now poured out from the hole it left behind. Even then she tried to describe the experience, to figure out what was happening to her, yet all she knew was that the pain was floating out of her skull and dispersing like a smattering of grey cloud, departing meteorically with ascending winds. At some point she had closed her eyes, and she opened them now. Around Candy she saw that the space around her was somehow expanding, and that having gone as far as it could, with a final shudder it contracted. She had been about to ask Candy 'if she had seen that and what the hell just happened?' when she noticed that the question would fall on deaf ears. On the sofa Candy lay quite still, the smile on her lips unmissable.
Jan took a good long look at the psychopath who lay before her. She really was quite beautiful and for not the first time she felt a pang of guilt. Then it was gone. The past could not be changed and the future wasn't written in stone. Suddenly she felt quite ill, as if guilt itself had caused the nausea and she had to fight the urge to throw up, a sensation she had never once known in her entire life. Until now. Looking down upon the sleeping figure, she realised that were it not for the gentle sound of breathing, Candy could easily be mistaken for being dead. Deadish... The smile no longer held the same beauty it did before, and now it was Jan's turn to feel fear, not a new feeling by any means, but again something she had never experienced in all her life.
It was the smile alright. There was something about it which spoke to her in a way that even she, the telepath from another realm could not fathom. Yet, it was speaking to her none the less. Yes the wordless grin translated it's meaning into Jan's head and it said, 'I know who you are and I know what you're thinking.' Jan ran for the bathroom, hand clasped across her mouth, unable to keep back the first signs of vomit which erupted forcefully, a purging of sorts. She pulled back the dripping wetness of her palm and filled the bowl. Presently, after a few dry heaves she pressed her face against the coolness of the floor.
In the morning all traces of the sickness would be gone.
Meanwhile, in the deepness of sleep Candy dreamt nothing but black.
CHAPTER TEN
JOHN DECIDES ON ANOTHER DRINK
Whilst Candy slept that night John found that he could not.
The sight of the fallen figures, the pools of blood, it brought back so much to him. The fact that he was a murderer had not been known by the others. What they thought of him now he could only guess. He was over three hundred years old. You didn't get to his age without making some enemies, and some of these enemies had wanted to kill old John. So old John had returned the favour and gotten in there first, because with that kind of thing last wasn't where you wanted to be.
But then there were the other times... He slipped on his beige leather jacket, the kind that had tassels and decided that what he needed was a drink and a woman. And he knew where he could find at least one of his needs. The door closed with no more than a click. Only Faith was awake to hear it, and the feeling of hatred that radiated from the Indian was confusing to her.
For some reason it seemed personal, yet she knew his mind was nowhere near her, in thought.
Before she could fully peek inside his mind however the feeling disappeared and as she fell asleep it dwindled to a point where she was not sure what she had felt, sure knowledge of her friend taking precedence over a mere feeling.
The bar was the kind that John liked. It had women in it for a start. It had music. And it had row after row of mood changing liquids, all in different coloured bottles. He approached the bar and took his place beside a tall blonde, who smiled as he sat down.
Might be onto something here after all, he thought to himself.
The barman approached. "Well, what will it be?"
John wondered if barman ever phrased this question differently. For the life of him it had always sounded the same. "I'll have a triple Johnny walker. And... eh... whatever the lass beside me wants."
Blondie smiled and surveyed the rows of bottles behind the bar. "Do you do... like...cocktails. I'm really in the mood for some cocktails."
The barman sighed. He had caught the innuendo implied, as had John who took the opportunity to make himself really known. "Yeah get the lady a cocktail. Anything she wants, ya hear?"
Blondie gave John the once over and turned to the barman. "Think I feel like having a..... let me see.. I feel like.... sex in the alley."
The barman sighed again, wearily this time, "We only do sex on the beach."
Blondie giggled and rested a hand on John's knee. "Oh... my mistake. Then just give me a pitcher of that. Me and the gentleman here is going to be sitting at the table over there. Just you bring it right over."
The barman nodded with a secret urge to strangle the blonde woman. He might have even just refused the order, but there was something spooky about the Native American she was now sitting with. He kinda looked like – well – like he'd killed a guy. Then the couple had left and the same urge suddenly seemed foreign, and he'd felt himself even then try and repress it.
Strangle her?
He fought for truthful recollection and realized she'd been the focus of his evening before the tall Mohawk had arrived. Feeling like a person who has momentarily lived a darker existence, he pushed all thought of the woman aside and began to mix the cocktail which he routinely shook into glasses. He delivered it without so much as a glance, and returned to his work polishing the clear forms that sat on the bar top like used goods.
Presently his mind wandered and ten minutes later when he looked up the blonde and the Red Indian were walking out the door.
John watched the barman as the door swung shut and he gripped tighter onto the blonde woman's arm. Gemma. Her name was Gemma. She looked down at his tightened fist and he immediately released his grip and took her gaze into his. Moments later he smiled. And moments after she raised one hand in salute of a passing taxi which pulled to a halt by their side, the other firmly nestled in Johns. She did not see the smile on his face. John was positively grinning. The taxi driver asked straight off for an address and John could see her deliberate, should she take him to hers and he knew with a certainty she would. He enjoyed this part of the dance as much as what came next. He liked to read the look in their eyes and somehow change their minds with only a smile or a whisper.
"It's your choice," he would say, barely a sound at all, yet he knew that the choice was then his.
He would speak two languages. One he would put into bare meanings and make all important. Yet it was the picture that lit up his pupils as it flared outwards from deep in his mind that really transmitted. The picture of the woman, naked in the bed, and every time that is where they would end up.
The taxi stopped, the driver was speaking, had been for most of the trip John now su
pposed, yet he merely dropped a note into the exchange box and pushed open the door, then willed for the woman, Gemma, to walk out before him. He could do this, and enjoyed the way his intent could move her like the clumsy king on the chess board, a step at a time, and watching the look of disbelief as it crossed her face, as she struggled to deny that she was no longer in control. The stairwell was dark and John stopped a moment and the blonde mimicked this movement, and he muttered a few words that she thought she heard clearly and she giggled, yet with a rising fear as she tried to convince herself the words had no meaning.
Which they did not, not in any English/American sense.
Yet as John watched the shadows on the wall dart quickly across the wall then floor, she thought they sounded very much like death. The shadows moved again, although this time they seemed more than just a dormant silhouette; then they were gone, leaving only coldness to the air and a more fitting feeling in the Old Shaman. As he walked his eyes fell shut, his breathing deepened, and he pictured the woman instead in his mind. She had reached the door and he stepped through and followed this image down the hall. She seemed to hesitate at the bedroom, before pushing open the door. Then his eyes were open and Gemma felt herself start as consciousness flooded back into her.
She turned and faced John. "Yeah. Oh right. You... we... at the bar, yeah? We met?"
John nodded. This seemed to satisfy the woman, and she reached with a wanted certainty to John's face and pulled him close.
"And we were going to fuck, yeah?"
John nodded again. Gemma smiled. For a minute there she had been worried. Why else would the man have come home with her, and as if in response to her new beliefs John began to unbutton her jeans. Soon they were loose, and she fumbled with his as he removed the faded denim. He moved to her top half then, all the time smiling, and soon she was naked save for her socks. John pushed her onto the bed, and she glanced down at his fallen trousers and marvelled at the erection that had sprung up from below as John removed the last of the cotton, rubbing her toes with a gentle deftness that made her moan in pleasure. He pushed up her legs and she barely caught the approach and pulled her pussy lips wide when he plunged deep with his cock and began to rock back and forward. She gasped, a sudden wetness flooding her opening, and John pushed harder.
"I'm sorry, Jessie," he said and a look of confusion crossed over Gemma's face.
"It's Gemma. It's okay; you really don't need to be sorry."
A look of revulsion crossed the Native American and for the first time he saw clearly the woman beneath him, and cried out at his mistake, a mistake that had occurred since the death of his loved one. Again his heart felt the pain of ages break against its core and he shook his head.
"No. You were Jessie. Where did she go? You are doing this..."
And he felt his pain reach out with his arms and smash into Gemma's look of growing concern, felt the fragile expression crumble beneath his palms, the warmth of the blood upon his dark skin. The world began to slow and pulsate, as Jessie’s face appeared again, and John cried out as he wiped blood frantically from her eyes, the sound of her moaning suddenly too real as if a switch had been flipped, and he too moaned – "Jessie, no, where did you go? I thought it was another one trying to trick me, to take your place, to make you go away. Please understand Jessie. I did it for you." And he thought he saw Jessie nod.
Presently the shadows again passed and he found himself once again holding the woman from the bar, his hands retreating from the stillness of the body like a child's from the fire.
So it had happened again. He sighed. Too long living, too much pain, makes a person mad. He looked at the glazed eyes of the woman and presently he reached out and stroked her cheek, saddened by the waste of life that lay before him, naked yet with all trace of sexuality removed. He tried to remember if the shadow had been there again this time, and a dim fleeting blackness flitted across his memory, then in an instant it was gone, leaving behind only the traces of certainty, just a little yet enough.
“You know it was there, you fucking called it!” he cried out to himself.
Too much fucking pain. Too much, always seems to go around these days.
Finally he shook his head and turned his back on the fallen woman. It had taken years to close this door. Now it was open he knew this was not his first victim. He did not look back at the body as he closed the door. Soon he would have the medicine to make it all go hazy. To forget. That was the best way. No forgiveness necessary. It was just an old mistake, a mistake that had always been there, buried along with the anguished terror which accompanied it.
A mistake that had found a way back. In a way he supposed he welcomed it. It had been good to see Jessie.
Stepping out onto the street he crossed the road towards the nearest public house. The noise from the bar brought back the focus in his eyes. Soon they would be dim, but he did not want to make that mistake again so soon, he would pay attention until he was harmless again.
Yet in every face that was female she stared out like a hidden reflection, his momentary gazes seeming longer than was actual. He supposed he wanted to see her. That is the mistake. He smiled at the brunette as he sat in the stool. She at least seemed familiar. Perhaps he was safe with her. He whispered in her ear and soon he was again walking amongst shadows, a smile on his face as the memory replayed. As once again the anger again drew blood at the sight of old ghosts and the darkness consumed him, the shadows mere reactions to his history, he felt sure she understood.
He had done it all for her! He had done it all for her!
It was only when the light rose in the sky that he awoke. By the time he arrived home the sun shone down. As he closed the door to his room he knew it was just a case of time before it happened again. The killing had brought it back. He understood it now, yet that did not make it any the less dangerous. As he closed his eyes he sighed. He would kill again, over and over until something satisfied, until he had seen her; then sleep took hold and John forgot the only way he knew how. Hours later he would have full recall again.
The Mohawk's chest fell like depressed silk before rising again. His heart beat steady.
For now he was at peace.
CHAPTER ELEVEN
BAD NIGHTS SLEEP, BAD NIGHTS OUT
Candy felt herself turn over and her eyes fluttered half open.
She sighed, the illusion of her dream fading into light as she faced the nightmare ahead. She felt rested, yet this only served to tempt her to shut her eyes once more as warmth stole over her body and the memory that had assembled began to de-construct. At some point she jerked awake again.
The light in the sky was further across the room. She had slept again. She had slept well and without worry for her safety, although at some point both she and Faith had cried out as sleep took over John and his normally guarded mind opened.
The nights events had spilled out, as if seeking confirmation, and Faith cried out as Candy hugged herself and murmured the sound that sought the freedom of escape within her thoughts –
“Away. Leave away.”
The memory had gone though as quickly as it had come, and was now just a fading recollection of an uncomfortable idea, and as a result Candy had arrived back to the consensual reality with only the faint suggestion some nightmarish dream the night before.
Only Faith carried the disquiet she felt around like a bag of bricks, snapping at Marcus when he suggested they go to breakfast then wondering why, a fleeting terror that had held more weight when the images had been fresh. As her dream life was a vivid affair, the unfolding images that it held were normally still fresh upon her wakeful re-entry to consciousness, and her inability to remember the detail except as a haunting vagueness bothered her still. She had apologized to Marcus, forcing a smile upon her face, then brushed her hair and used the bathroom, a deliberate attempt to either forget this feeling or let it develop. It did neither. The best she could say was that she was frightened for someone. Or more like deeply worried for so
meone.
However, when John reached past her to the chilled interior of the fridge she felt nothing, not even the urge to say hello. Still the nagging progressed. And still she tried to ignore it, let it appear if it wanted, fresh and unforced. The feeling she supposed was, well, horrific, yet she knew she would not be satisfied or feel the safety of the day before her without the feeling crystallizing into either an expected or more as she suspected an already happened event.
She sat at the table, reaching for the haphazard array of foodstuffs, deciding on toast and marmalade. John did not look up to meet her eyes. Faith sighed, and then began the task of preparing her breakfast.
After her breakfast Candy had made her way to the covenant for the second time since leaving the institution.
She was aware she was now again a fugitive of the law, yet her appearance had been changed drastically. Jan had cut and styled her hair with a cut she insisted was the height of fashion on Dizor. This had consisted of cutting off Candy’s long blonde locks into a shorter bob, which still maintained the natural thickness of her hair. Faith had then taken to dying it a bright pink.
John had played his part by piercing her nose and lip, both of which now came with protruding hoop. He also had gotten out his tattooing kit and skilfully recreated Xcetral’s depiction of her soul, using all the colours at his disposal and Candy could not help but stare in awe at the way he had been able to re-create the exact indigo on the sketchpad paper. He had stated that it had been easy when you’ve got it in front of you to work with and that he’d seen the true colour instead of its variants many a time before. He was after an ancient Sorcerer, and the mark between her breasts showed this.
Marcus had finished the new look by presenting Candy with some expensive clothes, described in his own words as a kind of blend between neo-punk rock and futuristic Techno. She had practically fallen over herself to get to the clothes, and after dressing in front of the full length mirror which adorned the back wall of Faith and Marcus’s room, she had to admit she didn’t recognize herself at all. She was in fact speechless and slightly embarrassed the French man by kissing him repeatedly on the cheeks and hugging him, before repeating the gesture with the rest of the group.
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