Immortal Love

by Carmen Ferreiro-Esteban

  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 promises, 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.

  Cesar snarled. “Tell me Bécquer, do you prefer to die now or should I kill your ladylove first?”

  Cradling his broken arm, Bécquer said nothing.

  “This is not how it was supposed to be.” Cesar pointed at Beatriz, who was slumped on the chair, unconscious or dead I was not sure. “She was supposed to kill you.”

  “Let me guess,” Bécquer said, the effort to speak showing in the way his words came out, one by one and broken. “You will kill me now, but she will take the blame when you tell the Elders. In your version, Beatriz attacked me. You tried to stop her but were too late to save me, and in the fight that ensued, you killed Beatriz unwillingly. A dead Beatriz suits you fine because, dead, she cannot confess she stole my blood or that it was you who asked her to kill me.”

  “Precisely.”

  Cesar raised his arm once more, his flat hand a mortal weapon aimed at Bécquer’s chest, and I could do nothing but watch and wait for the fatal blow that would stop his heart. Only it never happened because someone else entered the room, too fast for me to see, and grabbed Cesar’s arm as it struck.

  Cesar turned. His eyes widened when he saw the man holding him. “Alexander,” he said, his voice slightly off.

  “You have disobeyed our orders,” the man said, “thus you will answer to us now.”

  The metallic edge of his voice broke the wall that immobilized me. Barely aware of the two immortals dressed in black who had materialized in the room and were carrying Cesar away, I ran to Bécquer’s side calling his name. But Bécquer, pale and still, didn’t stir.

  “Bécquer is not dead,” Alexander’s voice came from behind. “Just unconscious.”

  I turned. Over his shoulder, I saw two different men, also in black, carrying Beatriz out of the room. Cesar was nowhere in sight.

  “You must leave now, Carla,” Alexander said, not unkindly.

  I didn’t move. “You saved Bécquer’s life, and I’m grateful. But I won’t leave him.”

  “You must,” he insisted and his voice had the authority of an ancient king’s. “Bécquer’s sentence has been revoked for we are aware that Beatriz stole Bécquer’s blood. He’s safe with us.”

  With the uncanny speed immortals moved, he rushed by me. Sitting by Bécquer’s side, grabbed his broken arm, and snapped the bone in place. Then he bent over and kissed him on the lips.

  He’s changing him. He’s making him an immortal. The thought startled me. If Bécquer became an immortal, I could not be with him, I could not even talk to him because I wouldn’t trust him.

  I jumped forward. “No.”
>
  I grabbed Alexander’s arm. A lame attempt on my part, for his muscles felt like iron under my hand. Yet Alexander did stop and turned to face me. The drop of blood glowing bright red on his lips confirmed my suspicion.

  “May I talk with him first?” My voice, weak with wanting, was barely audible.

  Alexander shook his head. “I wouldn’t recommend waking him up. His body is healing too fast for a mortal’s consciousness to endure.”

  “So, he’s mortal still?”

  “For now. But if you excuse me — ”

  “Please, don’t.”

  “Why not?”

  “Because … ” Desperate, I looked around, and my eyes met the machine that was supposed to read Bécquer’s vitals but that was now frozen displaying the numbers of its last reading. The numbers of a mortal Bécquer. What would they read, I wondered, after he was no longer human? And that gave me the answer I was looking for. “Because if you do, Bécquer would be miraculously healed by morning and that would have the doctors wondering.”

  Alexander laughed. “They won’t ask any questions, believe me. I will see to it.”

  If I had considered seeing Bécquer after his change, Alexander’s casual acceptance that he manipulated humans’ minds reaffirmed my decision to stay away from immortals. If I wanted to say goodbye to Bécquer, the only way to do so was to postpone his change.

  “What about the charts,” I improvised, “the medical records?” Had any immortal ever been at the hospital? Did the Elders have a protocol to deal with a situation such as this one?

  Apparently not, because for the first time Alexander hesitated. “It could be arranged for new records to be made. But maybe it would be better if we wait to change him until he’s home.”

  His eyes narrowed on me. “Talking to Bécquer will change nothing,” he said, his words confirming my suspicion that he had sensed my feelings. “Bécquer will choose to be immortal.”

  “I only want to say goodbye while he is still human.”

  “I’ll let him know. But you must promise you won’t wake him up tonight.”

  I swallowed hard. “I promise.”

  “All right, then. I’ll leave now. When Federico comes, tell him we’ll reconvene at Bécquer’s house by noon tomorrow.”

  I nodded, a useless gesture because Alexander was already gone. The pressing beeping of the machine announcing it had been disconnected told me time had resumed its course for us.

  Soon a nurse came in — the night nurse I had not met before. I told her Bécquer had broken his arm struggling against the straps that bound him to his bed. The fact that she didn’t question the unlikeness of my explanation, nor argue when I told her he didn’t need a cast, just to have his arm set, made me guess Alexander was controlling her mind.

  When Federico arrived later that night, Bécquer was still unconscious. The immortal blood healing his body had raised his temperature so that his skin was hot to the touch, and the few times he opened his eyes, he had not recognized me. But Federico reassured me Bécquer would be better by morning.

  “You should go now,” he insisted. “You shouldn’t be present when I talk to them.”

  He didn’t explain further and I didn’t ask. Instead, I asked him to tell Bécquer that I wanted to talk with him before he became immortal.

  Federico promised and, out of excuses to stay, I left.

  I left, reluctantly, because I knew quite well as I closed the door that Bécquer would be immortal the next day and I would never see him again.

  It hurt to walk.

  Chapter Twenty-One: Red Roses

  I called Ryan from the hospital. He was home, I knew, because he had left a voice message before, telling me so and demanding to know whether I had stayed at the hospital. For once, I didn’t resent his challenging me, because his call had distracted Beatriz and saved Bécquer’s life and mine.

  It was after midnight by the time Ryan arrived to pick me up. Exhausted physically and mentally, I wanted nothing more than to go home. But my car was at Bécquer’s and if I didn’t retrieve it now, I risked running into the Elders the next day. I didn’t want to meet the Elders nor Bécquer unless he asked for me before being turned immortal. I had no choice but to get the car now.

  Ryan frowned when I asked him to drive me to Bécquer’s house. “We can go together to see him tomorrow. Your car will be safe there till then.”

  I shook my head. “I’d rather go now.”

  “Why?”

  I recognized the tension in his voice, a clear warning that he was ready to fight were I to forbid him to see Bécquer. I was too tired to argue with him. So I didn’t. I didn’t tell him he couldn’t see Bécquer. I told him the truth instead.

  Yes, I still believed any relationship between humans and immortals was unwise, dangerous even, but Ryan was eighteen, no longer a baby for me to cradle and protect. And if I couldn’t stop him from seeing Bécquer, I owed him the truth so he could make a more informed decision on his own. So, on the way to Bécquer’s house, I told him what I knew about the immortals.

  “You don’t expect me to believe that, do you?” Ryan asked me when I finished.

  I shrugged. “It’s the truth.”

  “It’s absurd.” With the same determination he had shown at six when he argued that Santa Claus did not exist, he argued now that immortals did not, could not be. But the very fact that he was arguing told me a part of him believed already. The part that questioned my explanation of what had happened when Beatriz kidnapped him on Halloween.

  By the time we reached Bécquer’s house, he had run out of questions.

  “Drive safe,” I told him as he stopped the car. Ryan didn’t answer and when I bent to kiss him, he withdrew his face from me. By the time I reached my car, the screech of tires on gravel had faded away.

  • • •

  Bécquer didn’t call the next day, or the following, and my hope of seeing him before he became immortal dissipated as the days passed. On Tuesday, when I was certain he would not call, I took his diary out of the envelope and read it in one sitting. Based on the dates of his entries, he had written it the previous week, when he was human.

  It was the Bécquer of his Rhymes and Legends, the one who came through his writing, a Bécquer curious and naive, and terribly romantic. In his unaffected style, he described his obsession with Lucrezia, his love for Julia — the girl Cesar drove away from him with lies, and later married — his acceptance of a marriage of convenience with Casta, imposed on them by her father’s knowledge of the immortals and his threat to expose Bécquer to the Bishop. Bécquer had accepted mainly out of hope that a marriage blessed by the Church would put an end to his curse. He was wrong: his attraction to Lucrezia did not go away, but with time, Bécquer grew fond of his wife and very much in love with his children, including Emilio, my ancestor.

  His love for this baby who was not his and must have been for him a constant reminder of his failure as a husband, underscored a gentleness of his character that only enhanced my feelings for him. Feelings I knew I had to push out of my mind for Bécquer was immortal once more, and I could not see him again.

  Although it hurt, I had to accept that Bécquer was gone from my life. The only palpable proof he had ever existed was my two-book deal and the name of an agent I had yet to contact.

  That, and a distraught Ryan, still upset with me because Bécquer was immortal. As if it was my fault.

  But it was I who’d told him, and so he blamed me as he had blamed me for his father’s leaving when he was eight. I understood his anger at me was his defense against the pain of finding out Bécquer had lied to him and knew he would eventually work through his pain and forgive me. But not just yet.

  I had not asked Ryan if he had seen Bécquer and he had not volunteered any information. My guess was that he had tried and Bécquer had rejected him. I also noticed his showers had gotten longer, an indication that he was dating a new girl. A girl that was not Emily, Madison told me one day out of the blue. �
�Because I know you don’t like Emily and you’ll be happy they have broken up.”

  She was partially right. I liked Emily, but not the fact that she was still doing drugs.

  Madison didn’t tell me who Ryan’s new girl was and I didn’t ask. It was an unspoken understanding between us that her first loyalty was to her brother and I knew it would have been useless to challenge that.

  • • •

  A week had passed since Bécquer’s suicide attempt, when the doorbell rang.

  Abby’s mother was supposed to pick Madison up and drive both girls to the movies, so I assumed it was Abby at the door. I called to Madison from my study and, when she didn’t answer — not surprisingly because I could hear her up in her room, arguing fast and furious on her phone — I got up and opened the door.

  It wasn’t Abby, but Bécquer who stood outside. Bécquer with a bouquet of roses in one hand and a smile upon his lips.

  “Carla,” he said and bowed slightly.

  “Bécquer?”

  “I thought you’d refuse to see me if I called first, so I just came. I hope I’m not interrupting.”

  I swallowed hard. “No,” I mumbled, not sure what his question had been.

  “I brought you flowers.” His smile had spread over his face now, so his eyes twinkled with mischief.

  I looked at the flowers to hide my discomfort at his sudden appearance. They were roses, red roses in a sea of green.

  “Roses?”

  His smile disappeared. “You don’t like roses?”

  “Yes, I do.”

  Bécquer brought the bouquet forward and as I, instinctively, took it from him, a door slammed upstairs and Madison came rushing down calling to me in the hurried voice that announced yet another crisis in her life.

  “Mom. Can you drive us? Abby’s mom can’t take us to the movies — ” She stopped as she reached the bottom of the stairs. “Wow! Those are nice! What’s the occasion?”