by Tate Jackson
Richard landed beside her, having just jumped over the house.
Beck ignored him and continued, “Yes, that sounds very interesting. When would I need to meet with you?”
“Let’s see. Next week, July 20th at 9:00 a.m. would be excellent. We are located in what I see is your hometown of Clarksville, Tennessee, and I believe you reside in North Carolina now. Is that correct?” Dr. Rogers asked.
“Yes, it is.”
“We will, of course, set everything up and pay for your travel expenses”
“That won’t be necessary,” she assured him. “I was planning to be in Clarksville then anyway.”
“Wonderful, and can I get your dress size? We would like to have some period clothes made for you from the Ripper era. We want the experiment to be realistic.”
“That won’t be necessary, either. I have dresses from that era already.” Dr. Rogers sounded excited, “Fabulous! Bring them along. We’re located on College Street, down the street from the Red River Bridge, in a large gray building surrounded by a chain link fence. Do you know where that is?”
“Yes, it used to be an old factory, I believe.”
“Indeed it was. Just show your identification at the gate and they’ll show you where to go. We’ll see you then. Have a good day,” he said, and hung up.
Beck turned to smile at Richard, but he looked sick. She could feel the despair coming off of him in waves.
“Did you eat something?” she asked him.
“What?”
“You look like you’re gonna throw up,” she said, trying to tease him out of this mood.
He smiled sadly. “No, it’s just a week isn’t very long.”
“Don’t worry. Everything will be fine.”
“Yeah, I know it will,” he said. They spent the rest of the week mostly talking and spending every second they could together.
“So where did you learn that move you used to take me down with?” he asked one day. “That was an attack, not self-defense.”
They were sitting on the cliff looking at their ocean down below.
“I thought you would have known. I took two years of mixed martial arts and kickboxing classes after I finished the self-defense courses,” she explained. “For the record, I know you let me take you down the other night.”
He smiled and admitted, “No, you really did get me on the ground. I stayed down to see what you were going to do. I was impressed by the move, though. You’re very fast for a human.”
“You’ve really never watched the Ultimate Fighter or any MMA fights on T.V.?”
“No, human fighting is to slow to interest us much. But you were right. We depend on strength and speed when we fight.”
“Well, one of the first things I’m doing when I go back is teaching you and your family to fight. You can go get Jeremy and teach him. He was in Dublin, Ireland then. He told me last night when you and Jenny went hunting.”
***
They spent her birthday playing toss in the front yard, but instead of a ball, they tossed her. Potter, Leso, Jenny, and Richard took turns seeing who could throw her higher, but Richard was always the one to jump up and catch her. They tried to toss Bev, but she threw up after the first toss, so Bev sat on the porch cheering on everyone else. Later that night, they had cake. Only Beck, Bev, and Potter could eat it, even though Richard sat across the table spitting out icing.
“That’s so gross!” Jenny practically gagged. Richard just stuck his icing coated tongue out at her. Beck noticed no one was taking Richard’s precious pictures. She excused herself and went up to their bedroom to get one of the cameras. When she flipped on the light, she saw ‘her’ ghost standing in the middle of the room. She took a deep breath, not believing what she was about to do.
“Bruce?” she whispered.
He nodded, but was not smiling as he usually did. He pointed to the closet. She opened the door and waited for him to tell her what she was looking for. He pointed to the big box with her dresses in it. She pulled it out and opened it. Her dresses were just stuffed in the box. She pulled them out and saw all of her stuff laying in the bottom, destroyed. All those years of planning, gone! She took a deep breath to scream Richard’s name, but Bruce appeared not six inches in front of her face, holding his finger across his lips and shaking his head.
Then he was on his knees pointing under the bed. She got on her knees too, looked under the bed, and saw one needle laying there. She grabbed it and stood up. Bruce was at the head of the bed, pointing at her pillow. he went and put the needle under the pillow. She looked over, and Bruce was back by the box, waving her over. When she got to the box, he made a palms down patting motion. She got on her knees. He jabbed a finger towards the floor, opened his mouth, and ran his open hand quickly up his throat: NOW SCREAM!
“RICHARD!”
He was at the door almost before she finished his name.
“What’s wro…,” he started to say, when his eyes caught site of the box. “What the hell did you do!?” she yelled at him.
“Beck, let me explain.”
“I wish you would,” she seethed between clenched teeth. “We can’t talk here. Come with me?”
He threw open the shutter-style windows, picked her up, and jumped. He put her in the car, drove to the end of the driveway, and stopped. He shut off the car and turned toward her.
“You can’t do it, Beck.”
“Well, not anymore, thanks to you!”
“No, when you go back, you can’t come to me.”
“What the hell are you babbling about?”
“It’s not safe for you to find me. Don’t you understand? If we’re together, Elderson will hunt you down. He won’t stop until you’re dead. I would never have come to you here if I had known what was going on.”
“So, you think that if we never met, I’d be safe?” she asked, staring out the front of the car at Bruce. For the first time in her life, she wished ghosts could talk to her.
“Yes, I do. I’m sorry, but it’s for the best, I promise. Go in the opposite direction than they tell you, get in a hotel room, stay there, and have food sent up to you. Don’t go out to see who the Ripper is. It’s Elderson. I cannot stress how dangerous he is. Please don’t go looking for him. When you get back, tell them it’s any suspect you want. It doesn’t matter. They’re all dead anyway, and it’s not as if they’re going to release any of the information that you give them. Please?” he begged.
She thought for a moment and then replied, “You’re right. I’ve been thinking about it, and I don’t think I can be with a vampyre. It’s been fun, most of it anyway, but I would never feel safe. I do love you, in a way, but not enough to do this. I wasn’t going to come to you anyway. I just didn’t want to tell you. What would be the point when you were never going to know me anyway.”
Bruce was nodding, but she could taste the lie, like bile, in the back of her throat.
“Don’t tell Leso, though. It would kill him to know he’s not gonna be with Bev. Can you take me home, please?” He nodded and backed the car down the driveway.
She got out of the car and went into the house. She walked past everyone and went to her room. Bruce was already there.
“Did I say the right thing?” she mouthed. He nodded. “You know it was all bullshit, right?” His face broke into the big smile she was used to and nodded again. Richard didn’t come to their room that night, but Bruce stayed.
***
Richard ran, but not to the cliff. He couldn’t look at it. He ran in the other direction, leaving drops of blood like a trail behind him. She didn’t want him. He’d expected her to fight with him, to tell him he was crazy. He stopped running, jumped into a big tree, sat on a branch, and let the blood fall like rain to the ground below.
She didn’t feel safe with him. And why would she? It’s not as if he’d done anything to make her feel safe. He’d let her get killed by one vampyre and then attacked by another. She had to run from her home, but still he hadn’t seen thi
s coming. He wanted to go get Potter and have him kill him now, but she was right. It would kill Leso if he knew. She loved him ‘in a way, but not enough’.
His soul screamed in agony. He knew it was for best, but it didn’t feel that way. It felt like his insides were being ripped out by acid-coated hooks. All the pain he’d felt before, the years without her, the loss of his family, the guilt, all combined held nothing in comparison to this moment. His need to go to her was almost more than he could resist.
He wanted to shake her and demand she take it back, to make the torture stop, to tell her it was more than he could bear. He wanted to grovel at her feet and beg her not to go, to stay with him, that he would find a way to make it right, but he couldn’t. He had to let her go to keep her safe. Elderson had finally gotten his wish after all. He was in hell.
***
Beck spent most of the next morning with Bev and Bruce. They were allowed to stray only as far as necessary to ensure some privacy from vampyre ears. She let the others believe she was just nervous, but she didn’t really feel nervous at all about it. In truth, she was excited. “What was the fight about last night?” Bev asked. Beck sighed. “Richard explained to me that when I got to the past, I must not seek him out, that we can never meet, that it’s the only way to keep me safe.”
“What did you say?”
“I agreed with him. It is the only way to keep me safe. I told him I’d do it.”
Bev’s jaw dropped open in shock, but before she could say anything, Potter landed softly beside them at the tree line of the front yard.
“I thought you couldn’t hear us,” Beck said tightly.
Potter answered just as tightly, “They can’t hear you. My hearing is much more attuned. How could you agree to that? After all the work you put into this?”
“Oh, he went behind my back and tore up all my ‘work’ before he told me what he wanted me to do. He knew what he wanted, and he did what he wanted. He didn’t give a damn what my opinion might be. So I gave him what he wanted, I told him I’d do it.”
The stricken look on Potter’s face made her relent a little.
“Oh, relax. I lied to him. I’m going to find him anyway, but Bruce seemed to think it was a good idea to help him on his quest to becoming a martyr. It’s a good thing I love him, or I might have gone along with his damn plan.”
“Bruce?” Bev asked. Potter was stunned. “Where?”
“He’s right here. I’ve seen him since I was a kid,” she said and smiled at Bruce. “We go way back.”
“You’re talking to ghosts now?” Bev asked. “I thought you didn’t do that.”
“I tried to talk to him, but it didn’t work. He’s not actually talking, just hand movements really.”
“Can you tell him I’m sorry for what I did to him?” Potter asked. “He’s dead, not deaf. You just told him yourself.”
Bruce made a sweeping motion with his palms flat down. He put his hand to his chest, then extended it palm up towards Potter.
“He said you have nothing to be sorry for, and he apologizes for attacking you,” Beck translated.
Potter looked like a thousand pound weight had been lifted off his back.
“I love you, Beck,” he said softly.
“Love you back, Potter,” she said, smiling. “So, where’s Richard at today?”
“I don’t know,” Potter said. “He didn’t come home last night, and we didn’t go looking for him this time. What did you say to him to make him mad enough to stay out like that?”
“I told him I wasn’t going to look for him in the past anyway, that I didn’t feel safe, and I didn’t love him enough to go through this with him.” Potter’s mouth fell open in shock as he sank down into a squat. “Please tell me you didn’t really say that to him.”
“I did. Why?” she answered, now worried. “You can’t just say shit like that to him, Beck. He’s not a man; well, he’s not a human man, and he doesn’t love you like a human man would. He doesn’t have the capacity to heal from the trauma of losing his mate again. The only reason he survived the last time was with the desperate hope that he would find you again here. You can argue and fight with him until the end of time, but you can’t just take your love away. Don’t you see, Beck? He doesn’t know it wasn’t true.”
“I just thought, since I was going to change our future anyway, it didn’t matter. He wouldn’t remember it anyway. I thought I was giving him what he wanted.”
“You’re changing your future and the future of the Richard you’re going back to, but what if this Richard stays right here in this time, always believing what you said to him, that he’s not worthy enough for your love?”
Now she was the one who was horrorstruck. She had never considered that this Richard might remain here without her.
“Do you know where he was headed?”
“Just that he went that way,” he told her, pointing in the opposite direction of the cliff.
She looked at Bruce. “Do you know where he is?”
Bruce held up his finger, telling her to wait, and then he vanished. He was back in two seconds, nodding.
“How many miles away?”
He held up one finger.
She looked to Bev and Potter. “He’s a mile out.”
“Only a mile?” Potter asked. “He must be bad off. I don’t sense him at all.”
“I’m going to get him. Can you keep an eye out for extra vampyres for me?”
Potter nodded. “I’ll be watching.”
“Lead the way,” she told Bruce, and followed him into the woods.
***
They walked for quite some time before Bruce stopped and pointed into the tree they were standing beneath. She stepped next to him and looked up. Richard was sitting on a branch with his head hanging down. She was looking into his face, but he didn’t seem to see her. Something touched her arm, and she saw that it was blood. She looked down and realized that the ground was covered in it.
“Richard, I’m sorry. I didn’t mean what I said. Come down.”
He didn’t respond. She screamed his name until she was hoarse, but he didn’t move. There was no way she could get in the tree, no branch she could reach. She even hit him with a rock, but he didn’t even flinch. She didn’t know what else to do, so she sat in the rain of his tears and waited. Bruce had left her alone with Richard. She knew he felt horrible about the part he played in this. She had hoped that Potter would have shown up by now to help get him out of the tree, but no such luck. She was still grasping for something to do when a high-pitched snarl disrupted her thoughts.
Her first, terrified thought was: vampyre. But when she swung her head around, she saw that that wasn’t the case this time. There, not six feet away from where she sat, was a bobcat. Of course there was a bobcat. Why wouldn’t there be a bobcat when she was sitting on the ground covered in blood?
“Well, shit,” she said softly.
She very slowly got her feet under her and stood up. She knew not to turn her back on it, so she started backing away. Bobcats were small cats, not much bigger that a large house cat, but they were vicious animals.
Their teeth and claws could make them lethal. Her size would not detour him when she was saturated in blood. She took one more step back, and it leapt. She covered her face with her arms and waited for the claws to sink into her, but they never did. She peeked between her arms and saw Richard standing in front of her, holding the cat.
***
He’d thought he was dreaming. He’d known Beck wasn’t here. His mind was only torturing him with her image, her scent, her voice. He’d even imagined Bruce standing next to her at one point, further proof that it was a dream. In his beautiful dream, she had said the things he longed to hear: ‘I’m sorry. I take it back. I didn’t mean it’. He never wanted to wake up.
It wasn’t until the animal hunched its legs to attack that he knew it was no dream, not all of it anyway. No dream of his would ever attack her, never her, and he jumped, catching th
e cat in mid-leap. He dropped the cat on the ground, allowing it streak back into the woods. Beck was covered in blood, his blood, and he could hear her heart hammering against her ribs.
“Are you alright, Little One?”
“I’m better now, thanks to you,” she said, walking over to him and taking his hand. “I’m sorry about what I said to you. It wasn’t true.”
“It was my fault,” he said, and his beautiful wife drew back her hand and slapped him hard across the face, stunning him.
“It was your fault! You’re an idiot! You decided for both of us how things were gonna be without even discussing it with me. You’re not the only one in this relationship, Richard. Did you ever stop to think that even if I did what you asked, that if I went back and didn’t meet you, that I would still remember? That I would have to come back and have to live my life without you.
“Do you really think that would be easier for me than for you in those hundred plus years you were without me? Not meeting you may save my life, but what would be the point of saving it without you in it? Don’t you know how much I love you?”
He pulled her to him and whispered against her lips, “Say it again.”
“I love you,” she said and kissed him.
He could smell her scent under the blood and knew he had been pulled out of hell and set back on solid ground.
“You’re a mess,” he told her lightly.
“And you, this was not your fault either,” she said, turning and talking to…nothing. “We both thought we were doing the right thing.”
“What?” he asked, confused. “What’s going on?”
“Take this memory,” she said, taking his hand.
He took her hand and saw his brother, Bruce, standing next to him, here in this place, and he looked very upset about something.
Looking at Beck, he gasped, “How is this possible?”
“He’s a ghost, and he’s upset because he showed me the box, and he thought me telling you what I told you was the right thing to do.”