Tara

by Jennifer Bene

  She’d taken a bullet for him, and immortal or not she was in pain. A lot of it.

  “Dammit, Tara, why did you do that?” He kneeled beside the tub and put the robe over her first, then the blanket. He was tucking it around her when she laughed a little.

  “Something tells me mortals don’t get up from gunshot wounds a couple of hours later.” She tilted her head to look up at him, and her eyes were still crystal water, even if they were a little dimmer from the pain.

  He muttered under his breath about her risking herself, and then he took her high heels off. They had left red marks on her feet and he rubbed them absent-mindedly. “You shouldn’t have done it, I’m not worth it.” He pushed himself up from the tub, guilt wracking him as her eyes followed him. “You could have been free.”

  Tara shook her head. “I wouldn’t have been free, Alaric, that’s not how it works. Someone would have claimed me eventually, I don’t get to be free.” Her breath hitched and she winced. “And you are worth it, I don’t want you dead. I want you out of this mess and I want you to live a long life.”

  “You are insane, you’re acting like this is no big deal. Like getting shot is no big deal. I think you’re a little delusional from blood loss.” Alaric leaned back against the door to the standing shower, the one he’d seen her outline in the night before.

  “I know you’re a good man. You being assigned to bring me to this client? That wasn’t your choice, Alaric. It would have happened with or without you, and others would have taken full advantage. So stop arguing with me while I’m bleeding.” She smiled again at him and he felt a ridiculous laugh bubble up in his chest.

  “I won’t argue with you right now, but only because you’re bleeding. Are you okay?” Alaric noticed she had stopped shivering, but her eyes were closing.

  “Mmmhmm, sleepy.” Tara slurred her words and then she was out. Alaric pulled out his phone to check the time, a little after 4:00am. He didn’t know when dawn would come, but at least she wouldn’t be in pain too much longer. There were two text message notifications – Luca and Claude.

  Unlocking his phone Alaric moved back into the living room and dropped into the chair to read the one from Luca first: Will the newspaper get delivered tomorrow?

  Alaric tapped out a quick reply: yes, tomorrow.

  Flipping over to Claude’s message, his stomach dropped. It read: Did you forget the cameras? I saw the kiss. Thought you were just delivering her. Liars aren’t welcome in my club.

  His heart was racing when he responded: just a kiss, she was thanking me for the dancing. we still on for papers?

  Alaric groaned to himself and sank down in the chair. His feet were on top of some of the clothes from the box and he knew he needed to clean up before she woke up. He couldn’t focus though. Claude kept shining a light on the dark places in their situation. He was saying all of the things Alaric had thought but wouldn’t admit to.

  And, honestly, if those guys hadn’t been here, he would have done a lot more than kiss her.

  His phone buzzed a few times against his leg and he looked at it again.

  Luca: Be ready to move when I call.

  Claude: if I get the money, yes, but don’t call me again

  He wanted to call Luca and yell at him for doing this to him, for putting him in this situation – but he also wanted to thank him for meeting her. For getting to have tonight, which had almost been perfect.

  Other than her getting shot.

  Alaric shook out his hand and looked at the redness of his knuckles. They might bruise, and that was all the damage to him. She had joked about keeping him safe, but then she had, and she wasn’t even upset. She’d heal in a few hours, and didn’t seem bothered by what had happened. Didn’t seem bothered by the fact that she was laying in a bathtub bleeding, because of him.

  He groaned to himself and texted Luca the amount to transfer to Claude before he got up to start gathering her clothes, loosely folding them and setting them on the couch. They would need to move hotels, he’d need to use another alias, and he needed to sleep at some point. Alaric lifted a shirt off the floor and underneath it was her iPod, one of those assholes had dropped a boot onto it with enough force to crack the screen and the case. It was the only thing she’d had with her in that cell, and she’d been so concerned with charging it – and it was destroyed.

  Damn them.

  When the room was somewhat put back together Alaric grabbed his gun, checked it and leaned back against the wall outside of the bathroom. He’d learned to sleep anywhere and with himself between the door and her he felt comfortable enough to catch a little shuteye. He’d be useless without it.

  “Leonidas –” Alaric snapped awake to the sound of Tara whimpering in the bathroom behind him, the same name from the night before slipping out. Her voice was so sad, and when he stood over her he could see her eyebrows pulled together, a pained look on her face. Which was more likely from the gunshot wound in her abdomen, but could have also been due to whatever she was thinking about.

  Or whoever she was thinking about.

  Alaric crouched down by the tub and laid his hand on her shoulder. She jumped awake and then winced, letting out a stream of curses as she tweaked the wound.

  “What’s wrong? Are they back?” Tara asked through the pain, her teeth gritting and her breathing coming in shallow pants.

  “No, I’m sorry, you were calling out in your sleep. I was just checking on you.” Alaric pulled his hand back and she sighed and relaxed back against the tub. She was still so pale, but she wasn’t shaking anymore. Despite the blood loss she somehow managed to look ethereal and beautiful. Her blonde hair pooled around her head and her eyes were bright blue as they met his.

  “I always have nightmares if I fall asleep in pain. Sometimes even if I don’t. It’s why Gianni kept me in a different room. Sorry if I woke you.” Her voice was so empty, and his chest hurt imagining how many times she must have fallen asleep in pain to even mention it.

  Alaric cleared his throat. “Who is Leonidas? That’s the second time you’ve called out for him.”

  “Jealousy doesn’t suit you, Alaric.” Tara said flatly, looking up at him through her lashes.

  “I’m not jealous, I’m worried about you. What happened to him?” His response had a little more bite to it than he intended. Maybe because you are jealous. Ugh.

  “Don’t ask questions you won’t like the answers to.” Tara redirected her eyes to the ceiling. He couldn’t tell if the hollow sound to her voice was from the nightmare or the pain – or both.

  “I don’t care if I don’t like the answer, I want to know more about you.”

  “I thought you didn’t like to know about your jobs.” Tara retorted.

  “Why are you evading the question?” Alaric knew he should let it drop, but he just couldn’t. Tara almost looked like she would cry. After everything he’d put her through she hadn’t cried. She hadn’t even cried when she was shot.

  Who was Leonidas if he could reduce her to this?

  Tara took a breath and then spoke very quietly, “Because if Eltera were to judge me on anything I’ve done in my long life, I fear most that she would judge me for what happened to Leonidas.”

  “Why?” Alaric tried to stop himself from pushing her further, but he had to know, because the pain in her voice had very little to do with the gunshot.

  “Because he died because I was weak.” She laughed bitterly, still not looking at him. “You wouldn’t know what that’s like, would you?”

  “I’d know better than you think.” His carefully organized mind was flipped over as he remembered blood. Pale skin. Someone screaming while a low voice kept saying they were sorry, so sorry.

  “What do you mean?” She spoke softly and he met her eyes reluctantly.

  “Make a deal with me. If I tell you my story, you’ll tell me who Leonidas is?” It was a gamble, but his curiosity had the better of him.

  “Yes.” Tara didn’t break eye contact, and it was too
late for him to back out now. They’d made a deal. He would share his failure, and she would tell him about hers.

  Great idea, idiot.

  Alaric let his mind shuffle through the old memories. Bits and pieces of the worst night of his life laid out on the floor of his mind like shattered pieces of something that used to be whole. He steeled himself and took a breath as he prepared to rip open old wounds. “My father was a drunk. A violent drunk with a shit factory job, and he hated his life. He hated me and my sister for existing, and he hated my mum for having us.” Just saying the words out loud lifted his memories up like full color photographs – too many nights with no food in the house, of his father spending his whole check at the pub, of his mother crying in her room at night. He chanced looking at Tara, prepared for pity – which would make him nauseous – but she was just listening. Her strength was what made him able to continue.

  “My sister was seven and was on holiday with my aunt, I was supposed to go but I’d been in trouble at school for fighting. I was twelve at the time. So I was at home in my room, well it was me and Catherine’s room, when he got home late one night. He was shouting, and so drunk he was impossible to understand. I buried my head under my pillow trying to block him out. Even when I heard my mum talking to him –” Alaric stopped and turned to put his back to the tub, he couldn’t look at her and tell her what happened next.

  “You don’t have to, Alaric.” Tara’s voice was smooth. It didn’t hold a hint of judgment, just an offer to stop, but all the pieces were already out in his head.

  “I agreed to tell you. It’s fine.” He took a breath that shook more than he meant it to. “I heard them fighting in their room, and I heard him hit her, like he did sometimes when he drank. And I didn’t do anything. I stayed still in bed, as if being motionless meant it wasn’t happening. Then I heard her screaming, and she called for me. She yelled my name and I sat up in bed, but I didn’t go to her. I didn’t run to her room to try and help her. She was my mother and I just sat there and listened.”

  His head flashed images. The pattern of his sheets, the map the street light made on his floor. He remembered how long he had stood at his bedroom door, with his hand on the doorknob trying to stop crying so his father wouldn’t slap him for being a baby. He wondered how long she’d lain there by the time he finally opened the door and crept down the hallway to push open their bedroom door.

  “When I finally had the courage to check on her, I heard him from the hall saying he was sorry over and over and over. That scared me more than the screaming, because I couldn’t hear her at all. When I pushed the door open she was on the floor in front of him, and there was blood everywhere. He’d stabbed her, multiple times, and her eyes were open and she was still. I knew instantly that there was no saving her. She was already gone.”

  “Alaric, you were twe -” Tara started to talk but he cut her off.

  “Story isn’t over. The knife was next to him, and he had his hands on her, maybe he’d tried to stop the bleeding when he’d realized what he’d done. I’m still not sure, everything was coated in it. I didn’t really think about what I was doing, I just picked up the knife… and stabbed him in the neck with it. I stayed and watched him die. I had to know he was dead. Then I washed my hands and I left the house without even calling the police.” Alaric realized his fists were clenched so tight his knuckles were completely white except for the cut and the bruises. The image of his mother’s face was burned onto the inside of his eyelids again. It had taken years to not see it every time he closed his eyes, and here he was ripping open the box on those memories and dumping them out.

  “Later, when the police found me, I tried to say I wasn’t there, but I’m pretty sure they had my fingerprints. They knew what I’d done, that I had been the one to kill him – and then Luca showed up. My aunt kept Catherine but she’d made it clear she didn’t want me, said I was trouble, she told them to turn me over to the foster system or put me in prison somewhere.”

  Alaric shook his head as he remembered the fear of going to prison, and then the first time he’d met Luca in that small meeting room. The man’s quiet eyes, the way he had talked to him like an adult, offered to take him somewhere to be free. To be someone new.

  “Luca somehow made it all go away, I never found out how, but he took me in. He pulled all the strings and the police just let me go. I went to live with him after that. He knew I’d done it, and he didn’t care. I didn’t go back to school, I didn’t see Catherine or my aunt. He taught me himself, trained me to work for Infinity Consulting. He made me strong, gave me a life, a life I would have never had otherwise.” Alaric cleared his throat as the debt and loyalty he owed Luca settled on his shoulders.

  He couldn’t even turn around to look at Tara. She was in pain from taking a bullet for him, because of men trying to take her and deliver her to some asshole with money.

  Just like he was.

  If it was possible for Alaric to feel worse after the talk with Claude and his follow-up messages, he did now.

  “You know that you wouldn’t have been able to stop him, right? At twelve? Even if you had stopped him that night, even if he hadn’t killed you too, a man like that is going to snap at some point. At least you avenged her.” Tara said it so matter-of-factly that for a moment it rang true and soothed the violent images in his head.

  Then the guilt he’d carried around for years returned.

  “I still should have answered her. I should have left the room.” Alaric wiped his hands over his face and spoke again before she could, “So, I know what it’s like to be weak when you’re supposed to be strong, and to lose someone because of it.”

  “I –” Tara started, but he talked over her.

  “Your turn. Who’s Leonidas?”

  He heard Tara take a breath like she was going to talk again, and then she let it out slowly. Apparently she had more tact than he did, she was going to drop the painful subject for him.

  While he kept pushing on hers.

  He really was an asshole.

  Chapter Seventeen

  Alaric’s confession had been a nice distraction from the burning ache in her stomach. Tara didn’t know how much longer it was until dawn, but she would be grateful when Eltera’s power washed away the pain.

  She could see from the tension of his shoulders, the way his back tightened under the shirt, that he wasn’t able to talk about the memories anymore, and she understood why. He blamed himself for his mother’s death, even though his father had been the nightmare.

  He had always been a warrior though, even as a child, that was clear.

  Tara cleared her throat and tried to ignore the pain in her stomach as her nightmare came back to her. Leonidas had been running with her, physical conditioning was something their kyrios had insisted on from everyone – not just his soldiers. The last one to him was always punished. Normally she could outpace all of the men, but she hadn’t eaten in two days and not even Eltera’s power could replace calories completely. Leonidas had purposefully slowed his gait to keep pace with her and they had both suffered for it that day. Just one day among many where he had sacrificed his own well being to help ease her pain. The images in her head threatened to choke her so she shoved them away and started talking.

  “Leonidas was someone who meant a lot to me, and I got him killed.”

  “You said he died, but who was he?” Alaric was still staring across the large bathroom. He hadn’t even glanced at her since he’d told his story.

  “Before I tell you what happened, I have to explain how we even ended up together. We were déno̱ zév̱gos. A bound pair.” Tara took a breath as even saying the words in Greek stirred up memories she was always trying to forget. “To the Romans it meant we had to be sold together, they believed the gods themselves had bound us – one to the other.”

  “Rome?” Alaric almost turned to look at her in his shock, but he shook his head and stared at the floor. “It gives me a headache to even think of you being alive tha
t long.”

  “It’s been a long time. Try not to focus on it.” Tara knew mortals didn’t handle the concept of thousands of years very well. She hadn’t exactly handled it well either and she had lived it.

  “Alright. So you two were close?” His muscles were relaxing the more she talked. Her story was a good distraction for him too. He probably wouldn’t like it though, it would confirm for him the reality of what she was. No more confusion on his part. It wasn’t all pretty black dresses, beautifully appointed rooms in Italian villas, or furnished secret cells in the basement.

  Those had actually been some of the best years of her life.

  “No. We had seen each other across the floor of the temple the day we were made a pair. It was our eyes they said the gods chose, both blue, his were like the sky -”

  Alaric mumbled under his breath, but she caught what he’d said. “Your eyes are like water.”

  He straightened up instantly and she knew he hadn’t meant to say it out loud, so she didn’t respond. “Well, they were so unusual where he was from that he was bought from his parents when he was young. He was beautiful - dark curls, golden skin, and they compared his features to the statues of the god Apollo. It was in Apollo’s temple we were bound. We didn’t see each other again until we were sold.” Tara remembered standing naked on the platform as he was led up there, he had barely been eighteen and so they looked about the same age even though at the time she’d been alive about six hundred years. She had expected him to stare at her, but he had simply glanced at her and then stared off into nothingness above the people gathered in front of them.

  “We were sold to someone who gifted us to one of the Roman strategos, a commander of a field army on one of the many fronts that Constantinople fought. Leonidas was good to his core, despite everything that had happened to him. When we were first presented to the strategos and they made us perform, he actually told me he was sorry.” Tara bit back the emotion that surged from the memory.