Vicious Circle

by Linda Robertson

  I looked away. What could I do? Nothing. Nothing to stop him, nothing to change his mind. And where was Johnny? Were beholders beating him up while I warmed myself by the fire?

  “Do something for me, Persephone, and perhaps I will feel more kindly toward your Johnny.”

  “Let me guess—you want to put a second mark on me?”

  “I could be devious and say yes, because I think you just might take it to save the wære. But as I said, I want your trust.” He paused. “No, Persephone. It does not involve a second mark.”

  “What do you want me to do for you, then?”

  “Tend my wound.”

  The thought of tending something as awful and deep as that gash on his chest was not one that sat well with me, but for Johnny’s sake, I agreed. “Fine. This way.” In the kitchen, I retrieved my first aid kit and stared down into the plastic box of supplies. “I don’t even know what’s appropriate to use on a vampire.”

  “Proceed with whatever you would use on your own wound.” He stripped out of the shirt. The ugly wound marred the beauty of him: swells of masculine strength in his chest and shoulders proportioned perfectly under pale, smooth skin.

  “But you’re a vampire. It’s dead flesh. It seems ridiculous to apply healing cream to the wound of a dead man. Won’t that just fester during the daylight hours and make everything worse? It’ll stink and—” I realized that Menessos didn’t smell like the bottom of a leaf pile. “Why don’t you smell?”

  “What?”

  “Most vampires smell rotten. You don’t.”

  “I am not like other vampires.”

  “That’s pretty much what I just said. Why?”

  He caressed my hand. “Perhaps, someday, I will tell you.” He paused. “Please tend my wound.”

  I laid out the gauze, tape, and antibiotic cream atop the kitchen counter and focused my attention on the horrible gash. Taking clean dishcloths from the drawer, I dampened one under the sink faucet and gave him the other. “To wipe with,” I said. After adding a disinfectant from the kit to the wet cloth, I squeezed the solution over the gash. Menessos sucked air through his teeth as pink water ran down his chest. “It hurts?”

  He wiped the rivulets from his abdomen. “Of course it hurts. Do you think I don’t feel?”

  “I guess I did.” I made certain to not make a disgusted face as I dabbed at the flecks of dirt and mud clinging to the torn skin. If he could bear the physical pain of this, then I could bear looking at it. “There’s dirt in there, and some splinters that’ll have to come out.” Now I understood how the true stake could have destroyed him, leaving pieces like these behind.

  I rinsed the wound again. After pouring disinfectant over the tweezers, I used them to pick out the dirt and wood. Blood welled up anew, and I rinsed a third and fourth time to be sure I’d gotten all of the pieces out. “The skin where the splinters were is all gray now.”

  “It will rejuvenate.”

  I blotted it dry, as much as I could, and picked up the antibiotic cream. “Yes or no?”

  “Yes.”

  “You’re certain?”

  “If I feel pain, then I cannot be entirely dead, can I?”

  I squirted the cream into the gash, way more than I thought was necessary, and held the flap in place, securing the parted flesh with three bandage-sutures and then covering it with gauze and tape.

  When I finished, Menessos gently lifted my chin until I met his dangerous gaze. He said:

  “Only when the sun’s light has fled

  is my life lived and my hungers fed,

  but I will live on and on, forever

  if you will but swear to leave me never.”

  He leaned in and put his lips to mine.

  The mouth of a vampire is a dangerous, deadly weapon. But when used for pleasure…that weapon transforms into a sensual tool. Deep within me, my core shivered and sighed, yet an undercurrent of exquisite pain razored the edges of my tattered soul. I clung to him, as if we could become one and make this bliss last forever.

  The smell of cedar and sage drifted to my nostrils and I woke as if from a dream.

  “Johnny.” He stood in the doorway from the garage, stake in hand.

  His posture was a rictus of pain; his expression was agonized. It was more than the blood drying on his face or his blackened eye, which was now nearly swollen shut. He was hurt. Emotionally. It was killing him to see me in Menessos’s arms and enjoying it. I thrust myself away from Menessos, but as soon as our contact broke, all the ease and comfort evaporated.

  Pain overwhelmed my every nerve, contracting every muscle. My body rebelled against living. Anguish swallowed me. I crumbled to the floor, writhing, unable to speak.

  “Destroy it now!” Menessos commanded, pointing to the living room. “The hearth is already aflame.”

  Johnny tossed the stake up in the air and caught it repeatedly. My pain continued, but the pinpoint of it rolled back and forth with the stake’s movement. “I’ve been thinking,” he said.

  “It is a dangerous time for you to try to change this situation. There is but one outcome here: the destruction of the stake.”

  “See, that’s what I’ve been thinking about. Maybe I shouldn’t destroy it after all,” Johnny said.

  “Look at her! She will die if you do not act quickly!”

  “Oh, I doubt that. Though if she did, it would spare her from the horrors of the…affection you’ll force on her.”

  “You care for her so little? Her death would mean nothing to you? Not hers, or her grandmother’s and the child’s?”

  Johnny paused to consider that. “To rid the world of you, it might be worth it.” He stepped forward. Menessos retreated. I screamed in wordless agony.

  “You’re killing her!” Menessos shouted.

  Johnny took another step, and another. “I’m killing her? I am?” With each step, my torture increased threefold. I was burning. I was freezing. My skin was being torn off. My brain was buzzing as every nerve in my body sent contradicting messages of the kinds of torment I could experience. Death would be a welcome release. I started praying to the Goddess, begging her to grant me that outcome.

  “Why, I wonder, are you not the one writhing on the floor?” Johnny asked Menessos as he stopped beside me.

  I managed to roll my head enough to see Menessos where he had retreated. “She is mortal yet,” he said. “That is why her pain is greater.”

  “Really?” Johnny knelt beside me. He laid the stake on the floor only inches from me. I screamed and choked, and my eyes welled up and tears blurred everything.

  “You are killing her!” Menessos shouted, each word emphasized.

  “No,” Johnny shouted back. “You are!” Softer, to me, he said, “He’s using you, Red. And only you can stop it.”

  Menessos stomped a trio of steps closer, but Johnny grabbed the stake and held it before him. “C’mon!” he shouted. “C’mon! Let’s see what happens. Let’s see which of us wins.”

  I blinked away the tears. Johnny was on his knees, rigid and trembling, but not backing down from the vampire.

  “He’s using you, Red. Using the mark. He’s transferring his pain onto you, to keep himself able to act. This pussy is putting twice the pain onto the mortal woman and taking but a small, unavoidable dose of it himself.” He cracked the stake on the floor beside me again. “You have the power now. Right now. Not him. You do. Use it, Red. Use it. Take the stake in your hand—”

  “No! It will kill her!” Menessos insisted.

  “No, Red. It will set you free. It will burn away the mark he put upon you.”

  “That’s a lie! The whelp is lying, Persephone! He is willing to sacrifice you and those you care about! He said it already. And if you touch that stake, you will die.”

  “He just doesn’t want to feel the pain, Red. He knows he’ll be overcome like you are overcome now. He knows he’ll be weak. He knows I’ll stake him through.”

  “Do not listen to this nonsense, Persephone
. He cares nothing for you! He has proven himself a devious plotter and a backstabber. Do not listen to him!”

  “Take it,” Johnny whispered. “Take it.”

  I moved my hand, only a little. It was like reaching blistered fingers into boiling water. A whine left my lips. “Hhhhhurts. I can’t!”

  “Do it, Red. Just do it. It’ll all go away.”

  Menessos shouted, “No! It is your life that will go away!”

  I turned my back on Menessos and rolled to my side, coming inches closer to the stake. “Persephone, no!” the vampire wailed behind me. “No!”

  I looked into those Wedjat eyes.

  All I could think was that I had asked for a release and the Goddess had provided one. I sucked in all the air my lungs could hold and summoned all my strength, all my resolve. I seized the stake and, clutching it to my chest, I screamed my last breath.

  CHAPTER THIRTY-ONE

  Thirst.

  I stood before my grove of ash trees, sweating and weary. The sun overhead shone down unnaturally bright and hot. The once lush foliage of my ever-springtime meditation place was now wilted and dying in the heat. I dropped to my knees at the edge of the stream, cupped my hands together, and lifted handful after handful up to my mouth. At least the water was still cold. Rivulets poured down my throat and over my skin, and I was so grateful for the small relief they gave. I drank for many minutes before I’d had enough. I splashed a handful over my face. That was when I saw Her.

  The buckskin mustang stood at the opposite side of the stream, head down, drinking also. The hot sun cast a bluish sheen on Her black mane, but Her dun-colored hide looked soft and sleek. I stilled and watched as if She were a wild animal I did not want to alarm or frighten away.

  She drank and drank as I had done, and I relished this nearness. I yearned to touch Her, but knew that I could not. So I studied Her and memorized Her image, even the blurry part reflected in the water. It stunned me to see that the reflection was not that of a horse, but that of a woman kneeling and drinking with both hands, as I had.

  I remembered that Amenemhab had told me this was the Goddess. He had said She appeared to me in the color of mild tarnish. If that color represented tarnish, then such a taint was acceptable—She was beautiful. Her presence comforted me, for surely I was dying and She had not abandoned me.

  Suddenly the stream was drinking the mustang, slurping it up in a swirl of colors.

  “No!” I shouted. “No! Don’t leave me…”

  The woman of the reflection rose up from the water. Her hair was black like the horse’s mane, glistening and wet. Her copper skin radiated a soft glow. I realized it was the sun, which had traveled swiftly into a setting position, shining at Her back. She wore no clothing, but Her dark hair covered Her breasts, and Her stance was such that Her body was slightly angled away from me. One leg, raised enough to allow Her foot to rest on a rock so it was slightly higher than the other, protected Her modesty.

  Her chin tilted slightly down, darkening Her eyes and expression. I wanted Her to look at me, to see me and be happy, but She did not face me directly. She gazed past me, to the east. Carefully I turned, curious as to what so fixedly held Her attention.

  I saw smoke. Black smoke, rising past a grove of oaks.

  Movement caught my attention. The Goddess pointed toward the smoke. I looked at it again and when I turned back to Her, She was gone.

  I stood and walked toward the darkening eastern sky. Time passed so quickly! I began to run. I passed the oaks and stepped into a clearing where red-cloaked figures stood in a circle around a high, tapering pole. Firewood had been piled high and wide around the base of the pole, and a black-clad figure was bound to it. The fire had nearly reached the figure.

  I hurried around the circle to the front of the bound figure. I could not tell who it was; the hood of the cape was pulled down low. But the figure struggled, the heat rising and smoke billowing chokingly upward. “What is happening here?” I asked. None of the red-cloaked figures acknowledged me. This wasn’t right. “What’s happening?” I shouted.

  “Help! Help me!” the dark figure called.

  I turned sideways and slipped between two of the red-cloaked figures. Both turned to me then and held me back. “What are you doing?” I demanded.

  “Please! Please help me!” The figure in black struggled more as the flames neared. The hood fell away, and I beheld my own face.

  I backed away.

  “No! No! Help me!”

  The bound me began screaming as the flames caught her black robe. She struggled harder, more desperately. The chest of the cloak opened and revealed a bloody ankh on her chest. This was me, burning at the stake, a stake that I now realized was shaped like the one Vivian had created as a weapon against Menessos. That was me up there, the stained part of myself, the shadowed part of me, being destroyed.

  I watched, numb, aghast at the barbaric execution. That people had once done this, brought their children and came to the town squares to watch someone be burnt alive as entertainment, horrified me.

  The black robe burned in earnest now, and the other me’s hair was smoking. Her head whipped back and forth as if she could put out the flames, but she couldn’t. The exposed ankh on her chest turned to ash. The flames burned her feet directly, blackening her skin. The weakening screams of the other me became a renewed frenzy of shrieks. The stench of burning hair and flesh wafted toward me, and I gagged.

  If only I could blot out the pitiful sound of her! Even as I thought it, her voice weakened, her throat becoming raw and her voice hoarse. I knew the flames were eating the air, leaving nothing but smoke for her to breathe.

  I was witnessing the death of a part of me that I loathed and wanted gone. But not like this. No, not so cruelly as this.

  She, the one bound there, was more than Menessos’s mark. She was the part of me that had slain a stalker. The part of me that kept a baseball bat for defense and smarted off to people who deserved it. She was the part of me that had agreed to kill Goliath. Together, we were one. I was not complete without her.

  I would not let the stake take more of me than I was willing to give. I would not let it destroy all the parts of me that Menessos had attached himself to.

  I am Persephone Isis Alcmedi. And I am all that my roots have made me.

  I yanked down the hood of the nearest red-cloaked figure. Again, I saw myself. I punched this me in the face and kicked her feet from under her. As another me turned to stop the assault, I faked to the right and rushed past her and leapt up onto the burning timbers. The flames died. The ropes binding the dying me turned to dust in my hands. I took this other me into my arms and fled.

  The red-cloaked me’s did not try to stop our retreat. I cradled my other self to my chest and returned to the stream, thinking the Goddess would be there and would know what to do.

  By the time I arrived, the night was full and only the soft glow of the moon provided any light. I eased down at the edge of the water. “Where are you?” I called across the stream. “I need you!”

  I looked at the horribly burned me now shivering in my arms. She was unrecognizable. So pitiful. Her hair gone, her skin a mass of blisters and blackness. She breathed shallow, wheezing breaths, and I knew I’d acted too late. I’d hesitated too long. I’d stopped and thought when I should have acted! I knew it was wrong.

  “I’m so sorry.” Tears filled my eyes. “I didn’t know. I didn’t know.” I reached to the water and let drops from my hand moisten her lips.

  The other me moved—fingers only, but she touched my arm. The swollen blisters that were her fingers dragged sickeningly across my skin. “You know now,” she whispered.

  “I do. I know now. I know I need you.” And I knew what I had to do. “I won’t let you go.”

  My palm rested lightly on her chest where the ankh had been. “Come,” I said. “Come back to me.” Our blood surged. Our bodies trembled.

  She melted into me—slowly, weakly. I took her burns into me, una
fraid, for they had always been mine. “You are mine.”

  An inner glowing overtook me, but it was not like the pompous rays of the sun. This was a cooling, luminous light, the moon’s light. This light filled me from the inside out—cool, soothing, and healing, like aloe. I marveled to know that it was no accident, the names given me at birth. Both Persephone and Isis are lunar goddesses, and tonight the Moon embraced me and healed me and told me I was Her own.

  CHAPTER THIRTY-TWO

  I heard screaming.

  I sat up, turning to the sound and thinking, Not again.

  Menessos writhed on my floor, folding in and out of the fetal position.

  “Red?”

  I turned around. Johnny grinned at me. Even with the swollen eye and dried rivulets of blood on his face, he was charming. I reached up to where the eyebrow ring had been torn out.

  “It’ll be fine,” he said. “You okay?”

  Though I felt pain distantly, as I had that morning, I grinned. “Never better.”

  He stood and extended his hand to me. “Then let’s finish this.” He helped me up and eased nearer to the agonized vampire. I moved forward, and Menessos rolled away from me. He crawled from my advance like a worm. I followed him through the dining room and into the living room, where he rolled up against my couch. He could retreat no farther. I stopped.

  “What’s wrong?” Johnny asked.

  “Nothing.”

  “Go on, then. Stake him!”

  I twisted the stake in my grip. Spun it between my fingers and stopped with the pointed end in a downward position. My grip tightened.

  Menessos continued to moan and scream and writhe. I understood his pain; I’d felt it. He could not even beg for his existence. For the first time he was suffering everything he deserved.