I didn’t get the chance. He uttered a sound of disgust and strode away from me, down the path.
“Wait!” I jogged after him. “You mean, I could have brought you back instead of your father?” I didn’t know whether to be insulted that he expected me to in the first place, or feel bad that I hadn’t thought to do it myself. “You’re back. Why does it matter who did it?”
“Why does it matter?” he repeated, wrath and bewilderment plain on his features. “My father pulled me back to sacrifice me. I’ll be going back to that damnable blue world and there’s nothing I can do to stop it.”
He grabbed me again, but this time I was ready for him. He wasn’t as strong in this incarnation as he had been in the past, and I pushed him off me, hard. He fell back, and I loomed over him. “You want to stop it? Than quit whining and help us! Help us without doing it on your own terms and worrying about your hurt feelings!”
“Do you really want that?” He pulled himself up, warily. “Do you really want me to be in your life again? Won’t it destroy the perfect solution I provided you with my death?”
My heart lurched in my chest. “You think I wanted you dead?”
He couldn’t meet my eyes. “It certainly made your choice easier. Which one to pick, your sire or your fledgling?”
It felt as though I’d had the wind knocked out of me. My heart raced and I became dizzy. But I didn’t collapse or lose my balance. I’d had a revelation.
“Cyrus, even if you had never died…there wouldn’t have been any choice. I don’t love you.”
Now I knew exactly what people meant when they said the weight of their world was lifted off their shoulders. It was true, I didn’t love Cyrus. I was drawn to him, inexplicably, but I could never be happy with him. I could only be happy with Nathan. Whatever feelings I had for Cyrus had been a result of the blood ties we’d shared, or nostalgia for those feelings. But Nathan…I’d had feelings for Nathan almost immediately, before we ever shared a blood tie. They’d been lost amid the physical attraction and my desperation to learn about the world I’d been thrust helplessly into, but they had been there all along. Nathan was right; there was such a thing as love at first sight. No other kind existed.
And I wasn’t the only one who knew it. Cyrus knew it. I saw it cross his face as he watched me. I hadn’t loved him, just as he had never loved me. What a fine pair we’d made.
Hanging his head in defeat, he laughed. “You’re right. You’re right. You don’t love me, and I’m doomed. This has turned out to be a merry meeting, indeed.”
My breath escaped me on a guttural exhalation. “Stop with the self-pity. Why would your father bring you back just to kill you again?”
“He’s finally streamlined the ritual he needs. Remember Dahlia’s pleasant little trick of including all sorts of impossible ingredients and tasks in her spells? It seems that’s not an original idea. He didn’t need the souls of all of his fledglings. The ones who’d been killed either at his own hand or due to their own misdeeds won’t be missed in the metaphysics of the ritual. But he does need a certain number, and to reach that number, he now needs two of us.”
I shook my head. “But why you? He could have picked up a drifter and turned him and used him. Why go to all the trouble of raising the dead?”
“To punish me.” He sighed heavily and pinched the bridge of his nose, tilting his head back. When he opened his eyes, they shone with tears like the stars we couldn’t see beyond the city’s light pollution. But Cyrus wouldn’t cry in front of me. Not now, when he was so vulnerable in other ways. “He gave me life, not just once. And he believes I wasted those lives. He wants to punish me, and to send a message that my weakness can’t be tolerated.”
“And you were going to go along with it?” We started to walk down the gravel path. The graveyard seemed somewhat less sinister, though nothing about the physical atmosphere had changed.
He took my hand in his as we walked. “He has my heart. Whether I ‘go along with it’ or not, it doesn’t matter.”
“It didn’t occur to you to just…escape?” True, the Soul Eater had his heart, but if he wanted Cyrus for the ritual, he wouldn’t stake him. “Unless he only needed your heart, you’d be free and clear.”
“He’d find me.” Cyrus shook his head. “And besides, as much as I hate being dead, I hate being alive much more these days.”
It killed me to hear him say this. I might not have loved him, but I certainly didn’t want him to suffer this way. “It doesn’t matter, anyway. He still needs another fledgling, right? Unless he’s got one willing to go to the slaughter, he can’t do the ritual.”
“He has one. Or a part of one, at least.” Cyrus gave me a pointed look. “I’m sure you’ll figure this part out. You’re a smart girl.”
A splinter of confused panic lodged in my chest. He couldn’t mean Ziggy’s heart, because Bill had that. And he couldn’t mean Nathan’s heart, because I’d actually seen that with my own eyes as it beat in his chest. “I don’t—”
“His skin, Carrie.” Cyrus sounded as if he would gag on the word. “Dahlia is an inventive torturer, but I can’t believe she would have thought that up on her own.”
The marks. The symbols carved into Nathan’s body. “The spell was called ‘The Dark Night Of The Soul,’” I stammered. “Does that mean…”
“My father has access to call Nolen’s soul back. It’s how the spell was done in the first place. Whatever you did to free him of the spell freed his soul and returned it to him. But my father can use those symbols to call it back. All he has to do is consume the symbols and Nathan’s soul is his, forever.”
My stomach heaved at the thought of the Soul Eater tucking in to eat Nathan’s discarded skin, but I held back the vomit. “So, Nathan will die, then, if your father completes the ritual?”
“No.” Cyrus said it matter-of-factly. “He would go on living, I suppose, until he did finally die. And then, instead of going into that blue world, he would go into my father. Or, wherever the souls consumed by him will go after he’s become a god.”
The idea of Nathan’s soul being taken from him was something so horrific and wholly unacceptable that I bypassed anger and went straight into cold, calculated fury.
“We’re planning to attack during the ritual. Whatever information you can give me would be helpful. And I can either try to save you, or—”
“Oh, there are all kinds of details father has delighted in torturing me with. Who will be there, what it will entail.” He stopped walking and faced me. “It’s going to be dangerous, Carrie. I’d rather not see you get hurt.”
“I’m not going to back down from a fight, you know that. Can you be on my side? Maybe sneak me in? When I…ate Dahlia’s soul, that made me the most powerful of our little group. I’m going to fight your father myself.” I shrugged, suddenly feeling foolish. “Not that I’m trying to sound invincible here. I will still need help.”
He clucked his tongue mockingly. “Now, now. If you’re so sure you’ll fail before you even start, you’ve doomed your entire enterprise.”
We resumed our walk, but we didn’t speak for a long time. It was a comfortable silence, until he stopped again to look at me. “There are times that I wish I could have done things so much differently with you.”
“Is this one of those times?” I knew that sounded too prying, but I couldn’t stop myself. “What would you have done?”
“I wouldn’t have tried to dominate you. And I wouldn’t have tried to seduce you. I wouldn’t have tried at all.” He laughed softly. “I think you recognized that. That I was trying. And you resented it.”
“That’s very insightful of you.” The way I felt about Cyrus, my sire, wouldn’t have been quite as forgiving as the portrayal he’d given himself, but I let him keep his delusion, a little. “You could also have toned down the psychotic narcissism.”
“Yes, that has always been my downfall in relationships.” He leaned forward as if he would kiss me, then stopped himsel
f a hairbreadth from my lips. “No, that would be a bad idea.”
I couldn’t help my breathlessness when I whispered back, “I’m glad one of us remembers that.”
He straightened and looked up at the sky. “I miss the stars. After this is all over, I’m going to go someplace where I can see stars.”
“After this is all over, I’ll be dead.” The words slipped out as if finally freed. I couldn’t have said it to Nathan. I would have worried about upsetting him. And maybe that was the true difference between the two men. Nathan, I could love and yet not speak the truth to, not all the time, especially not if it would hurt him. I couldn’t love Cyrus, but I could be selfish and self-focused with him. When I’d thought I loved Cyrus, I’d just loved the way I could be around him. It was a little sad.
Cyrus didn’t argue with my sudden, fatalistic turn. “It’s really what will be best for you. You’ll go crazy, spending eternity with Dahlia.”
Now that it was spoken out in the open, I wanted to cry. I didn’t want to die, and yet I’d said the words and sealed my fate. I felt suddenly tired and overly emotional. I choked down my sobs. “I have to get back to Nathan. He was pretty damaged when I took him from your father’s place.”
“I want you to know I had nothing to do with that,” Cyrus said, quickly and earnestly. “She tried to get me to join in, but I fear I disappointed her. In truth, I didn’t want to see Nolen, and I didn’t want him to see me.”
“That’s fine.” I didn’t want to hear any more, in case he told me a lie. I couldn’t take any more lies from him. “Tell me how you can help me.”
“I can get you into the ritual. The participants will all be dressed the same, so it won’t be difficult for you to go unnoticed once you’re inside. From there, I assume you’ll have your own plan?”
I nodded. “We’ll think of something.”
“And you can help me, if I wanted it?” I could tell he tried to keep the hope from his voice, so I responded noncommittally, telling him I would do what I could. He seemed to accept this and said, “Very well. I will send you a disguise. On the night, you should be able to enter unmolested.”
“Thank you.” We shook hands awkwardly, and I turned away from him.
I was a few steps up the path when he called after me. “Carrie. There was something, wasn’t there? I mean, we did have some part of each other?”
I couldn’t look at him. It was too much to know that months from now, we might pass each other in that weird, blue-spirit realm and not recognize who the other was. After all we’d shared, we would be ultimately alone.
“Yes. I think we did.”
Unlike Orpheus, I didn’t look back as I left the land of the dead. But the end of the story would have been the same, either way.
Twenty:
Loose Ends; Further Unraveling
W hen I came through the door, Nathan was waiting for me in the dark living room.
I tried to keep my voice light. “Where is everyone?”
“Downstairs.” He didn’t humor me by pretending nothing was wrong. “I want to talk to you.”
I sat in the armchair, and I didn’t bother to turn on the lights. I knew what he wanted to talk about. There was no way I’d reached the conclusion I had in the graveyard on my own. Left alone, it was only a matter of time before we could no longer avoid thinking beyond the problem at hand.
“Nathan,” I began, trying to find the impossible way to cushion the words. “There was a reason that Dahlia…did what she did to you.”
He nodded, resigned, as he looked at where the tight, transplanted skin met the unblemished part of his arm. “I can’t say I didn’t wonder about that, myself.”
I wondered what else had been tormenting Nathan while I assumed he was just concentrating on healing. “Cyrus thinks that his father will consume the symbols and take your soul back. Nothing would happen to you, at least, until you died. But he would be able to complete the ritual.”
“Nothing would happen to me,” he repeated softly. “I would lose my soul.”
“Nathan—” I began, but what was I going to say? That he didn’t need a soul? I wasn’t a spiritual person and I still wanted mine. And Nathan owned a New Age bookstore and was still a devout Roman Catholic, even if he couldn’t go to Sunday-morning mass. That was more than a conflict of interest. It was a clear sign that he was still searching for something. Whether he shared those feelings with anyone or not, he clearly still valued his soul.
“What will happen after you kill the Soul Eater?” There was a tension in his voice I’d never heard before.
The only answer I had for him was, “I don’t know.”
“I think you know.” Slowly, painfully, he pulled himself up from the wheelchair and stood, leaning with one hand on the back of the couch for support. “At least, you’re afraid of what will happen.”
“I’m afraid of dying. That I know for sure. And I’m afraid I’ll fail, and I’m afraid I’ll be too late and the world will suffer for it. And I’m afraid that I’ll succeed and I won’t be able to stop myself…” I cleared my throat and tried to hold back tears. “I’m afraid I won’t be able to stop myself from draining him and taking all of that evil into me.”
“And even if you do manage to kill the Soul Eater and you don’t feel the compulsion to take his soul, you’ll still be a Soul Eater. You’ll need to feed again. And I don’t think you’ll be able to,” he finished for me, grimly. “And if you can…I’m not sure what I’ll do if you go down that road.”
My breath caught in my throat. “What are you suggesting?”
“Only what you thought of on your own.” He sounded angry and tired.
“So, what do I do?” I stood and paced the living room. “Kill the Soul Eater and then let someone kill me? It’s not like they can stake me.”
“Maybe one of the Henries could cut off your head,” Nathan said, sitting heavily back into the wheelchair. “Or we could entrust Ziggy to do it—”
“Stop!” I covered my face with my hands and stretched my tired skin out of shape. “I can’t sit here and listen to the man I love talk about ways to kill me!”
“Do you think it’s something I want to talk about? In terms of ways to spend our last days together, it’s pretty fucking low on my list!” He struck the arm of the wheelchair and the hard plastic armrest shattered. “I don’t want you to die!”
My mind raced toward some indefinite point, but I knew I had to get there. “Wait! Wait! We have Dahlia’s book! It has the spell that brought Cyrus back! We could—”
Nathan shook his head vehemently. “No, no, I’m not going to do that. I’m not going to count on something to bring you back when I don’t know if it’s going to work!”
Rage, such as I’d never felt before, propelled me toward him, and I slapped him across the face so hard I heard a bone in my hand crack. “Then that’s it? You just kill me, and what? Life goes on because you don’t want to get your hopes up? Fuck you!”
I watched, aching to hit him again, wanting to hit anything just to make the pain in my chest go away, as he slumped over, cradling his jaw.
My hand hurt. My heart hurt. All of the energy drained out of me and into the floor, and I followed it. It felt good to lie there, unmoving. It was actually taxing to speak, but it helped some. “I can’t believe we’re discussing the way I’m going to die.”
For the moment, we didn’t. I listened to the clock ticking in the kitchen. I’d noticed that morning that it didn’t show the correct time anymore.
Finally, I lifted my head and said, quietly, “You could stake me.” When Nathan didn’t say anything, I continued. “I know the box is soldered shut, but it’s not like we can’t get the tools to open it. You could wait until I killed the Soul Eater—you could tell through the blood tie—and then you could stake me.”
“And what am I supposed to do then?” He lifted his head slowly, and when he looked me in the eyes, he let all the pain and anger he felt wash over me. “You say I’m go
ing to go on with my life. What do you suggest I do? Find someone else? Maybe some human woman to ease my pain? Isn’t that what they write about in all of those stupid romance novels?”
He stood and took a few, shuffling steps out of the living room. In the back of my mind I noted that some of his strength had returned. Not to the point that he would be any help to us when the fight came, but enough that I would be assured he would be all right when I was gone.
“That’s a fairy tale, Carrie,” he said, turning just enough to look at me over his shoulder. “When you’re gone…I might as well be, too.”
I stayed where I was. Nathan was too pissed at me, at himself, at the world, for me to follow him. I lay on the floor, my head blessedly empty of thoughts, until the sun came up and my aching back forced me to retreat.
Nathan was in the bedroom, but he wasn’t sleeping. He sat on the side of the bed, still dressed, most likely still in the pose he’d been in when he’d first sat down. I sat beside him, not touching him, and he didn’t look at me.
“I don’t like the thought of you going on with your life, either. But you will. You’re like that, Nathan. No matter how bad you think you are at it, you survive. And you’ve definitely survived worse than this.” I stopped, feeling tears well up and forcing them away. “Maybe this is happening for a reason. Maybe I happened for a reason. If I’d just stayed on my own, tried to deal with being a vampire all alone, maybe I would have never met you or Cyrus and never learned about the Soul Eater. I would never have been around to help destroy him.”
“Well, forgive me if I don’t praise God for your divine purpose.” Bitterness dripped from his words like poison. “You’re right, I did survive through killing the woman I loved once. I never thought I’d have to survive it again.”
He stood up, stumbled, then regained his footing and limped weakly to the dresser, where he braced his hands on the top of it. “I went seventy years between Marianne and you. I love you, Carrie. Maybe more than I ever loved my wife. And not just because of the blood tie, and not because I’m a different man now. I love you and I don’t think I’ll be able to move on after this. I can’t imagine being with another woman, not even physically, and have no interest in the idea. It makes me sick to think that one day, I’m supposed to be holding some stranger the way I hold you. Touching her, telling her I love her. It’s not possible.”
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