Divine Fire

by Melanie Jackson

  “Yes. I saved his life, pulled him out of a hellhole in Nicaragua. He’s very grateful. However, I think that this time we will dispense with his services. He’s away with his family. I’ll call him later and tell him I took the car. He won’t ask questions. Fortunately, there are no attendants at the garage and no security cameras. I chose it for that reason.” After a moment Damien asked, “And on your end? Is there anyone—a housekeeper or gardener, someone who could contradict our story?”

  “No. I always spend the holidays alone. And the house is somewhat isolated.” She thought for a minute. “There is the matter of my unused plane ticket. Won’t it look odd if I don’t use it?”

  “I never fly,” Damien said. “It’s one of my well-known idiosyncrasies. No one will think it odd—or at least not unusual—that I insisted we drive. You can cash it in later.”

  Brice exhaled slowly. “So, we have a plan.”

  “Yes. Or at least the general outline of one. We can flesh it out as we go.”

  “Do you like fishing?” Brice asked him suddenly. “We have excellent fishing at home.”

  Damien permitted himself a small smile. “Yes, I still like fishing. If we have the time and the weather permits, perhaps we will indulge.”

  Brice took a short stroll around the room—or at least that’s what she told herself she did. Strolling sounded much better than pacing.

  “I should be worried about this. I mean really worried. But I’m not. Why is that? Has standing hip-deep in zombies while I commit a dozen felonies made me lose my mind? Can one become sociopathic overnight, do you think?”

  Damien shook his head. “No, of course not. But I don’t think that anything will ever be able to truly frighten you again. It’s one of those consequences of bravery that I was talking about before. And it’s a good one—as long as it doesn’t make you foolhardy. Life is to be lived.”

  Dark eyes met dark eyes. Brice smiled a little.

  “There is plenty of reason to suppose me a fool. Look at the last two days—and now I am running off with a stranger.”

  “Am I any less foolish?” he asked, also smiling a little. There was something ancient and knowledgeable in the curve of those lips. This was a dangerous man—but not dangerous to Brice, she didn’t think.

  She shivered. It was mostly in a good way.

  “Have I not experienced the same two days?” Damien asked when she didn’t answer him. “Anyway, I don’t think you can say that I am a stranger. After all, you know me very, very well.”

  “No,” Brice argued, shaking her head. “I knew who you were. The future is still a big question mark. For both of us.”

  “An adventure,” he corrected.

  “An adventure,” she agreed.

  “Are you ready for it?” Damien asked, extending his hand.

  Brice nodded slowly and reached for Damien. “Yes, I believe that I am.” Their hands laced. She said quietly, “I’ve always loved you, you know—at least for my entire reading life.”

  “And I’ve waited all my life—all my lives—for you. You’re what will complete my heart and maybe my soul. How Heaven will laugh at this, but your being here now is enough to make me believe in a merciful God.”

  Her smile was more radiant than the moon.

  “We’re going to have a wonderful life,” he told her.

  “I believe you.”

  Chapter Twenty-two

  The golden opportunity Is never offered twice; seize then the hour When Fortune smiles and Duty points the way.

  —Byron

  The event on which this new fiction of Mary Shelley’s is founded has been supposed by some of the physiological writers of Germany to be an impossible occurrence. How wrong they are.

  —From the journal of Johann Conrad Dippel

  December 27, 2005

  If it wasn’t one damned thing, it was another, Karl thought to himself as he rode down in the service elevator. First, there were those damn cops all over the place. And where there weren’t cops, there were friggin’ secondstring reporters in a feeding frenzy, looking for the story that would make them big-time. Worst of all, there were gawkers everywhere. Hell! A man couldn’t hardly find a quiet place to spark up. He’d finally had to pretend to Mr. Ruthven’s secretary that there was something wrong with the drainpipe and go up on the roof. It was barely worth it. He’d got his smoke but damn near froze his ass off in the snow.

  Then, when he’d finally got around to hitting his locker, he’d found out someone had messed with his tools—even the paintbrushes! Hell, it was that damned Rodney, he’d bet. The guy had been liberating supplies again. That was the only way to explain why all the floor cleaner was gone. It’d serve the bastard right if he went out to the cops and told them. A little stay downtown would teach that lazy-ass thief.

  “Shit.” Karl thought about spitting but didn’t. Not many people rode this elevator, but if he hawked one out here, someone would notice. Security was actually watching their cameras now.

  And it wasn’t like Rodney would be along to clean it up. That sucker was on some hour-long coffee break down at the Memuria cafeteria. There was some hottie down there—April, he thought her name was—and Rodney was trying to make time with her. Which was fine for Rodney, but it left Karl doing all the work.

  And now he was supposed to get up to the sixth floor and catch some rat a lady had seen behind the radiator in the women’s bathroom. That wasn’t in his job description. What the hell did they think he was—animalfuckin’-control?

  Karl stopped outside the women’s restroom and knocked loudly. He’d learned to do that—and to keep knocking for a good long while. Ladies acted like he was some kind of pervert just because he went in and saw their feet under the door. What? Like they didn’t pee like everyone else?

  After a good long pound, Karl decided it was safe to go in. He put out the WET FLOOR sign and then wheeled his cart inside. He shut the door behind him. It might be funny to chase the rat out into the offices—maybe it would run up some stuck-up woman’s dress. But there would probably be hell to pay if that happened, and Karl didn’t want to lose another job.

  He heard a soft scrabbling and shivered. A rat, sure enough. And he hated the friggin’ things. He didn’t like to admit it, but he was scared of ’em. They were nasty-ass animals, always trying to get in the lockers and eat his lunch.

  Karl knelt reluctantly and peered under the radiator. Something was there, sure enough. He couldn’t exactly tell what he was looking at, but something was definitely there, way in the back where the light didn’t reach. It was pale and kind of fleshy looking. Maybe all the rat’s hair had fallen out. Wouldn’t that suck—especially in winter? Being a rat and being bald?

  Then the smell hit him.

  “Shit!” Karl reeled backward. The damned thing smelled bad enough to knock a starving buzzard off a garbage truck.

  He fished out a broom. He’d try chasing the rat out and catching it with a bucket. That would be less messy than beating it to death, and he’d probably get in trouble for killing the thing. He could just imagine: Somebody would claim it was a rare kind of smelly bathroom rat, and that he’d killed some endangered species.

  “Come on out, you smelly, bald sonuvabitch,” Karl said in what he imagined to be a gentle voice. He poked the broom handle at the creature a couple of times. The third time, the broom stopped abruptly and then jerked hard enough to nearly be torn from his hand. “What the hell?”

  The damn rat had grabbed the handle!

  Shocked and a bit frightened, though he couldn’t say exactly why, Karl snatched at his broom with both hands. He jerked the thing out, dragging the creature with it.

  “Oh, shit!” Karl flung the broom against the wall, and the rat hit the window with a rubbery splat. Karl only caught a glimpse before it scuttled for a hole in the wall under the sink, but what he saw…For sure his eyesight was going and he’d smoked a little too much weed—but that rat had looked like a hand. One torn off just above the wris
t.

  Karl stood for a moment, trembling and trying to convince himself of what he had seen.

  It had looked like a hand—a damned ugly one with long fingernails and a ragged stump that ended about a third of the way up the arm. But that couldn’t be. It just couldn’t. The lady had seen a rat, hadn’t she? It must have just been a bald rat who’d gotten its tail cut off. Maybe lost it in a trap.

  Do you care? If it’s a rat, it’s a friggin’ mutant. You don’t want to be touchin’ it. What if your hair falls out too? Or something more important?

  Karl wanted to run. He wanted to take off like every friggin’ bull in Pamplona was after his ass. Hell, he wanted to run faster than that—rats scared him senseless. And this thing?

  “Shit.” Karl finally pulled out his radio. He didn’t like looking like a pussy, but he wasn’t dealing with this shit alone.

  “Rodney—you there? Rodney? Answer me, damn it!” Karl didn’t like the way his voice sounded, all squeaky and afraid, not his usual tone at all.

  Apparently, Rodney thought the same thing because he actually answered. “What’s up, Karl?” His voice was thick, like he was chewing on something.

  “I think we got us a rat problem here on six. You better call someone and then come on up.”

  There was a pause.

  “Call someone?” The gears did another slow turn. “Like an exterminator?”

  “No, I mean call the f—” Karl recalled others might be listening in and changed his mind about using his favorite profanity. “The flippin’ Pied Piper.”

  “Who?” Rodney sounded puzzled.

  Karl took a deep breath and prayed for patience. He thumbed the button on his radio again. “Yes, call the exterminator. Right now. And then get up here. I need some help.”

  “Okay, unbunch your panties, man.”

  Karl wiped his face dry, then clipped the radio back on his belt. “They ain’t payin’ me enough to deal with this shit,” he grunted.

  He went over to the cart and got out his largest mop, jammed it against the hole the rat had used and then drove the handle into the opposite wall, hard enough to dent the plaster near the electric dryer. It was an imperfect fit, but it would have to do.

  He shuddered and wiped his face again. It was a weirdlooking hole. Rats must have chewed through from the hallway, though it looked a lot like the digging had come from this side of the wall. That was where all the shredded sheetrock and lathe had landed, at any rate.

  Well, it wasn’t in his job description, but Karl decided he wouldn’t mind going down to the basement and getting a board and some nails to shut up this hole. He’d do it right away. Whatever the heck it was on the other side of the wall, he’d just as soon it stayed there until the exterminator arrived.

  Epilogue

  Cain: Then leave me.

  Adam: Never, though thy God left thee.

  —Byron

  A man who knows everything and also never dies.

  —Voltaire on the Comte de Saint Germain

  That which is striking and beautiful is not always good, but that which is good is always beautiful.

  —From a letter by Ninon de Lenclos

  The woman with red-gold hair and black eyes pushed the late-arriving Christmas cards aside and read the cable again. Her lips twitched at the “C’est un vrai cinglé, ce type” that concluded the brief report. Her informant was wrong, of course, though she understood his mistake. The great poet wasn’t a nutcase; he was just involved in some unusual projects that required somewhat suspicious behavior.

  Which was fortunate for her, because it seemed that he had taken care of the Dippel dilemma with commendable thoroughness. There remained just one other difficulty for the good doctor’s few remaining projects—but she didn’t know if it was the proper time to openly challenge Le Comte de Saint Germain about his intentions.

  “Will there ever be a time?” she asked Aleister, who politely cracked an eye at her meditative enquiry. The cat yawned, showing his dainty but very sharp teeth, which was his way of shrugging.

  Je ne le crois pas, his pea-green eyes said as he stared down from the mantel.

  She sighed heavily, suggesting to the cat that she also thought not. “But what then do I do? What course is best for me to follow?”

  Aleister sniffed once at the frangipani-scented air. He had no suggestions to make. That was regrettable, but then, really, it was not his problem. He had just eaten a large plate of fresh steamed shrimp, and it was time to drop back into a deep, contemplative state that closely resembled a nap but was actually where he thought about important cat things and listened to the sea where his next meal swam.

  Being a perceptive creature—almost a feline, he felt—his mistress took the subtle hint and politely left him to his work.

  The woman walked silently across the room, not disturbing the grass mats on the floor. Carefully she struck a match and lit one of the many candles on her old-fashioned writing table. The small flame was barely enough for a normal person to see by, but she didn’t bother to light any of the others. There was no need; she saw everything she wanted. There wasn’t a great deal to see. There was no computer on the desk, and no phone.

  To write or not to write?

  Several times in the nineteenth century, she had come close to contacting the poet. Then he had disappeared from Greece, not to be found again until the late twentieth century. It was tempting to look him up now because she could use an ally. She was quite aware of his continuing interest in her. But was it the right time?

  No, she would wait. It wasn’t likely that anyone was following her yet, but it was within the realm of the possible that her position had again been discovered and she would have to move. She wouldn’t risk leading the Dark Man to Byron and his new consort. It was possible that Saint Germain didn’t yet know the poet lived. If so, she would not be responsible for bringing more evil into Byron’s life.

  Sighing again, the woman who had once been Ninon de Lenclos folded the cable into fourths and then fed it to the candle’s greedy flame.

  When the last bit of ash was crushed out and swept into the wastebasket, she turned back to the cat and smiled fondly at his delicate snores. She loved to watch him slumber. It was the thing she missed most from her old life, being able to sleep.

  Still, there were other compensations.

  “Trés bien,” she said softly to the floral scented air that wafted in the window.

  She leaned over and blew out the candle. As her silk blouse fell forward, any passing person might have observed the small golden scars over her heart. But there was no one passing by on this side of the island; that was why she liked it.

  Author’s Note

  I’m ashamed to admit it, but this story contains at least three historical inaccuracies needed for the sake of the plot. In spite of this, the character of the characters is—I believe—completely truthful to what they were in life, and what they would be if they had lived into this century.

  The first inaccuracy is the suggestion that there was only one portrait done of Ninon de Lenclos. There were two done in her lifetime that I know of, though the second was a rather inferior effort—almost a caricature. The other portraits I’ve seen are all copies of these first and were undertaken after her death, but there are possibly others in existence.

  The second inaccuracy is in letting readers think that she held sex classes in the rue des Tournelles. She gave private lessons and shared her philosophy of love with chosen partners, but she didn’t have group orgies with a chalkboard and manuals. Thirdly, in spite of Brice Ashton’s complaints, many of Ninon’s letters and her La Coquette Vengée still exist in library archives and in the hands of scholars. It isn’t historians who have overlooked her; it is the general public—particularly in America—who have not made an effort to know this woman. Which is a shame, because she was an amazing person, liberationist, feminist and philosopher. She considered emigrating to the Americas, and I am sorry that she did not, because we might
know her better today if she had made our hemisphere her own.

  As for Lord Byron, he is still the stuff of which reallife heroes are made. Ignore the propaganda you were taught in school. Byron was the equivalent of a movie star in his day. His biographies were nearly all concocted by well-intentioned friends or worse-intentioned foes, and are about as reliable as what we read in the tabloids today. He was also government enemy #1. Because he traveled widely and reported on what he saw, Byron forced people to confront the war in which England had been embroiled for twenty years and what that war actually meant. He also advocated allowing Catholics the freedom to practice their religion without sanctions. And—gasp—he believed in educating women when they wished to learn.

  However, the final straw saw something that will be difficult for those of our time to understand. Byron admitted to, and wrote about, human sexuality. He was the British voice of libido. This was still an era of Puritanical hypocrisy and he grievously offended much of the population with his frank poems and other writing.

  The reference list at the end of this book gives the titles of works which more accurately portray the poet. Certainly he was flawed, but starting in his early youth, though handicapped by a lame foot, he demonstrated great physical bravery, often intervening on behalf of weaker children or animals. He retained this physical courage all his life, and as an adult added philosophical and political bravery to his list of assets. He was an advocate for the common man, and died helping others win their freedom. His death was a tragedy, and the burning of his memoirs by Hobhouse and Murray was a literary crime.

  The heroine, Brice Ashton, is not me. She sounds like me and shares many of my opinions, but I have made my peace regarding certain things with which she still struggles. And she is far wiser and braver than I am. Luckier too: I would dearly love to find a copy of La Coquette Vengée.

  As for Johann Conrad Dippel…he did exist and is probably the basis for Mary Shelley’s Dr. Frankenstein. He was an eighteenth-century grave-robber; however, I doubt he ever practiced grafting dead limbs onto his own body. That is my own horrific invention, as is his journal. According to history, he was born after Ninon’s death and long gone before Byron was of an age to consult him about curing his epilepsy. But isn’t it fun to pretend otherwise? Besides, he could have had a likeminded father and an equally twisted son to carry on the gruesome dynasty.