by Susan Conley
He closed his eyes.
I touched his hand with my fingers. “Bécquer — ” I started. Whatever I was about to tell him I forgot when I met his eyes for there was so much hope in them. So much despair. I leaned down and kissed his lips.
Bécquer did not respond. I moved back.
“Don’t play with me, Carla.” His voice was cold. His face unreadable.
“I’m not playing.”
“I overheard the nurse talking to you. I heard her asking you to pretend you love me.”
“You think my kiss was a lie?”
Bécquer said nothing.
“You’re wrong, Bécquer. Besides, what the nurse said does not apply anymore. You will not be paralyzed for long. Nor human for that matter. Once you tell the Elders what really happened the day Beatriz became immortal, Federico is certain the Elders will reverse your sentence.”
“They won’t. Because I did change her, and I’m taking full responsibility for it.”
I frowned. “But that’s not true. Why should you — ”
Bécquer’s face hardened into a mask, but for a brief moment his eyes met mine, and, as they did, an image jumped to my conscious mind: the image of Beatriz holding Ryan over the dam and of Bécquer facing her. And I knew, as clearly as if I had heard their words what the pact between them had been.
“You promised her,” I said, and my voice came out broken, almost unrecognizable. “You promised Beatriz you’d take responsibility for her change if she let Ryan go.”
It wasn’t a question. Had it been, his silence would have been answer enough.
“I cannot, I will not, let you take the blame.”
“I’m afraid it’s not your decision, Carla. You were not there. You have no proof.”
“I may not have proof, but now that you’re human you cannot lie to the immortals anymore, for they don’t need your permission to search your mind. Federico we’ll have no problem learning the truth.”
Bécquer swore and I knew I had won because he changed his tactic.
“Carla, you don’t understand.” His voice that had been hard before was now pleading. “I gave her my word. If I break it, Beatriz will not abide by her promise and Ryan will be in danger again. Not only him, your daughter — ”
“Madison,” I supplied my daughter’s name automatically.
“Madison will be in danger too.”
I hesitated for a moment. Fear for my children weighed against my responsibility to make things right for Bécquer.
“I have to tell the truth. I can’t let you take the blame for something you didn’t do.”
“You said your kiss was not a lie, Carla. This is your test. If you care for me you will respect my wish.”
“I can’t.”
“So I was right. You don’t care for me. Or maybe you did. You cared for me when I was immortal. Not for this broken human I have become.”
“You’re wrong.”
“Prove it to me then. Stand by me. Don’t tell Federico about my pact with Beatriz. Convince him he can’t tell the Elders what happened between us.”
“But — ”
“Carla, listen. I’ve lived for a long time. Your children haven’t. They deserve to live more than I do. Besides, you saved my life. I owe you.”
I sighed.
“All right, I’ll support your decision.”
“Thank you, Carla. So maybe it’s true you care for me a little.”
His voice was light and teasing and his eyes were asking me to come closer. But I couldn’t move. I felt dirty. I had agreed to Bécquer’s request in order to save my children’s lives, but, deep down, I knew it was wrong. If the Elders knew the truth they would allow Bécquer to be immortal. But if I didn’t tell them, he would remain human and, maybe even, paralyzed.
“It’s all right.” Bécquer said, serious now. “I understand you won’t want to stay with me under these circumstances.” Briefly, his eyes moved to his legs, then without a hint of self-pity, held mine again. “You owe me no explanation.”
“Of course I want to stay with you,” I said, angry for letting my silence give him the wrong impression. “I love you, Bécquer. Your present circumstances are of no importance to me. I’ll stay with you as long as you’ll have me.”
Bécquer stared at me for a long time. “Do you really mean it?”
“I do.”
Bending over, I kissed him again.
This time his lips opened as they touched mine, and, just before I closed my eyes, I saw myself on his black pupils, dark mirrors reflecting my soul as it met his own. His lips were soft and warm, inviting yet demanding, his kiss both pleasure and pain. I wanted to scream and I wanted to die. I wanted this kiss never to end and I wanted to flee for I was scared of losing myself, of forgetting everything I’d ever been, or was, or planned to be. Yet, I didn’t mind. I didn’t care if I ever had a thought but this: That he was mine and I, his, this moment and every moment. He and I but one, a single soul. Forever.
“Carla” he said when we at last parted. “Could you — ?”
“Kiss you once more?”
He smiled. “That too. But first could you untie me?”
I considered his request. They had bound him so he would not kill himself, but now that he knew the Elders didn’t want him dead, he wouldn’t try again, would he?
“Should I trust you?”
Bécquer smile widened. “I’ll be a gentleman. I promise.” The mischief he infused into his words, made me believe, at last, that he would fight to stay alive.
Bécquer flexed his arms when I finished, disregarding the UV tubing attached to his left hand.
“Be careful.” I reached over the bed to stay the tubing that swung wildly.
Bécquer winced.
“Sorry. Did I hurt you?”
He lay back and shook his head.
But I knew he was lying because his eyes were full of pain. “Seriously, Bécquer, how do you feel?”
Bécquer shrugged. “The truth?”
I nodded.
“If you were not with me,” he said, with a deprecatory smile, “I would think I had died and gone to hell.”
“Maybe you have,” I teased him. “Maybe, like Sartre claimed, L’enfer c’est les autres. Hell is other people. And I am yours.”
“No. You’re not, that I know for certain. Although, once upon a time, my private hell did have a woman’s name.”
“Lucrezia.”
I said the name without thinking, the name of the woman he mentioned in his diary.
Bécquer frowned and, as I blushed under his dark stare, he sighed. “You read my diary.”
“Only the first page. Rachel wanted me to read it to prove Cesar was real, although you had denied it. She thought you might mention him in your diary.”
“Did she read it too?”
“No, she didn’t.”
“Nothing happened between us.”
“Rachel or Lucrezia?”
“I meant Rachel. As for Lucrezia — ”
“You don’t owe me an explanation.”
He smiled ruefully. “Come,” he asked me and when following his suggestion I sat by his side, he took my hand. “Yes. I have to tell you about Lucrezia. But I fear that when I do, I’ll lose your respect. And your love.”
“Because you still love her?”
“No, Carla. I don’t love her. That’s not why. I’m afraid that you’ll think poorly of me because I’m ashamed of who I was and how I lived my life when I was human.”
“You were Bécquer, when you were human. Gustavo Adolfo Bécquer. How can you be ashamed? You’re admired, adored by legions of fans that have read your poetry, your legends, your letters.”
Bécquer laughed. “My fans, as you call t
hem, do not love me. They love the myth I created after my death. My so-called death, anyway. During my life, I was an unknown, a failure as a writer, a dilettante of sorts, working clerk jobs I couldn’t keep, writing pieces for newspapers, articles nobody read, searching all the time for that elusive perfect nirvana Lucrezia gave me when I was a child.”
“So you loved her back then?”
“If you call that love. What I felt for her was more like an addiction, a disease that stole my soul and poisoned my mind. And because in my ignorance I called that love, I spent my life searching for the intangible — a silver moon ray, a pair of green eyes, the impossible I could never have.”
“Did Lucrezia love you?”
“I doubt Lucrezia was capable of love. Besides, I was eleven when I met her, a boy still grieving the death of his mother. How could she love me? I was her human pet, nothing more. Later, maybe she coveted my young body and the adoration she saw in my eyes. And so for a while, we were lovers drinking in each other: me in her beauty, she in the glow of my love for her.
“Until one day, she left me, without explanation, without saying goodbye. I spent the rest of my life longing for her, while she in turn took me as her lover or rejected me, only to taunt me again when I fell in love with someone else.
“And, all the time, Cesar watched us — either jealous or amused, I do not know — biding his time to avenge himself for the few moments of bliss Lucrezia gave me.”
“Cesar? The same Cesar who ordered you to kill yourself?”
“The very same. Cesar was Lucrezia’s lover and her brother. In life and after death.”
Of course. Cesar was Cesar Borgia, Federico had told me. Which made Lucrezia the infamously beautiful Lucrezia Borgia.
“Cesar made her immortal against the Elder’s wishes,” Bécquer explained. “Apart from beauty, she had no merits of her own. She was not artistically, nor scientifically gifted, and thus by the Elder’s rules, she did not qualify to become immortal. But Alexander, the Elders’ leader, loved Cesar at the time and allowed Cesar’s defiance to go unchallenged. Eventually Alexander moved on to other lovers, and Cesar continued his affair with Lucrezia. They were still together when I met her in Sevilla.”
“Is that why he hates you? Because once upon a time you and Lucrezia were lovers?”
“He hates me because Lucrezia made me an immortal against his wishes and, in his wrath at her defiance, Cesar killed her. He blames me for his actions.”
“If you knew he hates you, how could you believe him when he told you the Elders had sentenced you to death?”
“He believed me because I said the truth,” A deep, sarcastic voice answered from the door.
Letting go of my hands, Bécquer leaned forward, his body tense as if preparing for a fight. A fight he couldn’t win, even if he were not bedridden, because the man standing by the door, dark and beautiful like an angel fallen from grace, was Cesar.
And Cesar was immortal.
Chapter Twenty: Cesar
“The Elders want you dead,” the man said in heavily accented English as he stepped into the room. “I should know for I am one of them.”
“You want me dead, Cesar, not the Elders. Their sentence was to make me mortal.”
“And so you are, my dear Gustavo, quite mortal indeed. Unfortunately, mortals have a nasty habit of dying and so it is that a sentence to be mortal is equivalent, in my opinion, to one of death.”
With a speed that would have betrayed him as being immortal had I not already known, Cesar reached his side then turned to me. “But I see you have company,” he said, appraising me. “Aren’t you going to introduce us?”
“You must leave.” Where Cesar’s voice had been sarcastic, Bécquer’s was cold. “The Elders are aware that you manipulated me, bending their sentence with your lies so I would agree to end my life. If I die today, they will hold you responsible. And if you hurt Carla, I will haunt you for all eternity.”
Cesar laughed. “Would you really haunt me for all eternity? How poetic. But, of course, you always had a way with words. While I was more of a man of action. As for your lady, Carla did you say?” He turned again to me. “I’m Cesar. Cesar Borgia, at your service.”
Grabbing my hand, he bent to kiss it. The chivalrous gesture an ominous sign, a warning that he set the rules.
Bécquer swore and yanked the IV tubing from his arm. I held my breath, expecting the alarm to go off. But it didn’t. The numbers in the machine were frozen, which meant we had once more stepped out of time. Nobody would come to help us now. Which really made no difference as no human would stand a chance against an immortal. At the thought, the fear inside me grew exponentially.
Unlike me, Bécquer didn’t seem surprised when his action had no effect. His eyes on Cesar, he ordered him to leave once more.
Cesar nodded. “I will,” he said as if he meant it. “As soon as you confirm that you’ll keep your promise to take your own life before Monday.”
“I won’t. You lied to me, Cesar, which means my word is not binding, for it was given under a false premise.”
“Isn’t it?” A triumphant smile curved Cesar’s pale lips as he turned toward the door. “Now you believe me? Now you believe your reluctant sire is an oath breaker?”
At Cesar’s words, a second visitor materialized by the door. It was Beatriz, I realized, as she glided forward and came to stand by Bécquer’s side.
I took a step back for nothing human remained in her face, the beautiful face of a vengeful goddess. But Bécquer, unperturbed as though he had expected her, returned her stare.
Gracefully, Beatriz sat on his bed and bent forward until their faces almost touched. When she spoke, her perfectly modulated voice was that of a lover. But her words were not of love.
“And what excuse do you have to break the oath you gave to me?” she asked him.
“I did not break my oath to you.” Bécquer’s voice was even and, although not loud, it broke the intimacy she had established between them. And so it was Cesar who answered. “No. You didn’t. You sent your lap dog to do it in your stead.”
“Is that so?” Beatriz asked.
“No,” Bécquer said. “I did not send Federico.”
“Liar.” Cupping Bécquer’s face in her hands, Beatriz forced him to look at her. Bécquer’s eyes turned vacant under her stare, then his arms grew limp.
“Stop it! He’s telling the truth.”
I reached for her as I screamed. Without looking, Beatriz swung her right arm and hit me hard on the chest, sending me crashing to the floor.
Fighting the blackness that threatened to engulf me, I opened my eyes. Cesar was looking down on me, his hand extended. He shrugged when I refused it and watched as I scrambled to my feet.
“No. You didn’t tell Federico.” Beatriz released Bécquer, who fell back against the pillow. Blinking repeatedly, Bécquer sat up. A sigh of relief escaped his lips when he met my eyes.
“You didn’t tell him,” Beatriz repeated staring at me. “But you told her.”
“He didn’t. I guessed it on my own.” I took a step forward, but Cesar grabbed my arm, holding me back.
Ignoring me, Beatriz bent over Bécquer and pinned him to the bed. “What else did you tell her?” she whispered, her voice tense with hate. “Did you tell her that you loved her?”
“Let Carla go,” Bécquer said, addressing Cesar. “She has nothing to do with us.”
“You’re right. She hasn’t. But I can’t let her go. She knows too much.”
“Cesar is right,” Beatriz added. “And anyway, why would you care what is to become of her?”
“Oh, I see,” she continued when he said nothing. “You think you’re in love with her, don’t you?” She laughed. “You are pathetic. After all the women you have seduced over the years, after all your broken pro
mises, you still believe you are capable of love?”
“Come on, Beatriz. Kill him already. We’re wasting time.” Cesar sounded bored.
“Don’t listen to him,” Bécquer spoke, his voice even. “I have told the Elders that I changed you, as I promised, so they will let you live. But if you kill me — ”
“What about her?” Beatriz asked. “Will she lie for me too?”
No, the answer came to my mind unbidden. Anger spilling over the walls I was trying to erect to keep Beatriz from reading my feelings.
Remember, it was you who condemned him. As her voice yelled in my mind, she bent over Bécquer and sank her long canines into his unprotected neck.
I screamed and fought the tight grip of Cesar’s arms around me. As if in answer to my plea, the loud, jarring playing of an electric guitar filled the room, drowning my cries and Cesar’s laughter.
Beatriz looked up toward the chair, toward the sound of Ryan’s phone coming from my handbag. Bécquer’s arm shot forward and struck her neck. As her blood splattered over the white sheets, he drew her to him.
Releasing me, Cesar bolted and pulled Beatriz from Bécquer.
Her hands clapping her neck where blood still poured out, Beatriz staggered against the chair where she collapsed.
Sitting up, Bécquer challenged Cesar with his stare. In his hands, he held a shard of glass stained in blood. A piece of the vase he must have hidden before the nurses came to stop his last attempt to end his life.
Cesar laughed. “A piece of glass? Do you really think you can stop me with that, you pathetic mortal?”
His arm lashed as he spoke. But Bécquer blocked his attack and when Cesar moved back, his hand was bleeding.
Cesar swore. “You bastard. You drank from her.”
Bécquer said nothing. On his face, as pale as marble, only his eyes seemed alive, intent on Cesar. One moment passed, then his arm shook, and I knew his strength was wavering.
I called to Cesar to distract him and rushed toward Bécquer. But before I could reach him, I felt the pressure of Cesar’s mind on mine, willing me to stop. Unable to move, I watched as Cesar grabbed Bécquer’s arm. I heard the cracking sound of the bone breaking, and then saw Bécquer’s hand open, releasing the shard.