An Immortal in London: Corruption

by Hardie, Bethanie

  As I turned around I felt my fingers tremble as I realised that it wasn’t Levi stood behind me.

  Victor was flanked by two others, just as he had been in the seventies. There was no recognition in his eyes. Unlike that fateful night in the Killin woods Victor didn’t send his men away, instead he sent them towards me. I called out for Levi and stumbled back, hitting my head on the curb.

  I tried to push myself up, but there was something holding my arms down. As my vision slowly came back to me I saw Levi stood above me, fear and worry in his eyes. I looked around, but the street was empty.

  “Where… they were…”

  Levi picked me up and set me down against a wall, a few streets from George’s house. “What happened?”

  I looked around and shook my head, “There were three of them. I swear that I saw them. Levi, they were here.”

  “You were fighting with nothing Rose, there was no one here.”

  “No, there had to be. Levi I’m not going mad.” I closed my eyes and steadied my breathing.

  “Could it have been a memory?” he asked.

  I nodded slowly and looked up to him. “Stay with me tonight. I don’t want to be alone.”

  The next morning I stretched my arms up and yawned. “What time is it?” I mumbled.

  Levi sighed and rolled over to look at the clock, “half past eleven.”

  I sat up and smiled. “I had a wonderful sleep,” my surprise conveyed in my voice.

  He sighed heavily again and climbed out of bed and met me by the door, “are you okay?”

  I smiled and wrapped my robe around my shoulders, “I’m just fine, are you?”

  He shook his head and put his hand softly onto my cheek, “I take it you don’t know what day it is.”

  I stole his phone from the night stand and looked at the date. I met his eyes and he nodded slowly, all of the compassion in the world resided in those dazzling emeralds, before he pulled me into his arms. I lay my head onto his chest and stared dead ahead. How could I have forgotten?

  1821

  The snow had fallen heavy that year. It was one of the most beautiful winters I had ever seen. I was seventeen years old. My aunt hurried me dressed and Sophie was hardly able to contain herself. She ran in and out of my bedroom saying how beautiful the day was and how wonderful my dress looked.

  I laughed in confusion and told them both how foolish they looked. They followed me out of my room, but stayed at the door refusing to walk any further. Their smiles didn’t falter and they motioned for me to carry on.

  I walked to the top of the stairs and when I looked down I couldn’t hide the smile that broke out onto my lips or the tears that escaped my eyes. On one knee at the foot of the stairs was my beautiful Sedric.

  As I stood in Levi’s arms I became emotionless. It had been the best day of my life and I had allowed it to fade from my mind.

  “We don’t have to hunt today, we can stay here, George won’t mind taking over.”

  I shook my head, “you don’t have to do that.”

  “Why do you have to be so brave all of the time?”

  I shook my head and pulled myself out of his arms. Leaning against the door frame I muttered, “I’m the biggest coward I know.”

  After breakfast we took a walk to his grand home.

  Levi wandered into his study and asked lightly, “So, what do you want to do today?”

  “I could lie down and never get up,” I said quietly, “but what would be the good in that?”

  Levi’s home phone rang out into the study and he looked across to me.

  “Answer it.”

  Before he could answer it flicked to answer machine and Clarence’s voice played out into the room. Levi didn’t move for a second. Instead he let me push past him.

  “Levi! Hi. I’ve done some more digging and you were right Victoria is in real deep. You have to do something; I can arrange a meeting with Victor, the sooner he is out the picture the safer she will be. Call me. I’m still at Gabriel’s.” She sighed and then the message stopped.

  I turned to Levi and he was stood still watching me, waiting for my reaction. I walked back to the window and shook my head, fury pumping hard and fast in my heart. I had questioned Clarence’s loyalty to me, but I wasn’t angry at her there and then, she was just trying to help as she had said over and over. But Levi?

  “You knew…” I said, hardly able to say the words aloud.

  He looked me straight on in the eyes. “I ask nothing of you but…” he walked towards me, “Rose, you weren’t meant to do this to me.”

  I closed my eyes and leant my head back. I stepped forward and pushed my hands onto his chest. His hands graced down my body and stopped when they found my waist.

  “You knew all of this time? After everything that we have been through, why didn’t you talk to me?”

  “Because you love him Rose, what am I supposed to say? What do you want me to say?”

  “I don’t know,” I said in a breath, trying desperately to understand what he was saying.

  “I was never supposed to feel like this about you, but I do.” He laughed. His breath was hot on my face, distracting me. “I am fighting it, but the ways that you just keep touching me… you are making it impossible for me to do my job.”

  My hands were trembling against his shirt. “I want you,” I whispered.

  The truth never tasted so good.

  He pulled me closer to him, his arms stealing me from the rest of the world.

  My hands collapsed down at my side and my lips were at his mercy. The truth that I had hidden from myself terrified me. My heart was pounding against my chest, furious at my own betrayal. I felt as Levi submerged himself into my light and at the same time I took hold of his and bathed myself in its ancient beauty.

  I pulled at his shirt and he lifted my skirt above my waist. With one swift movement the papers and files that were on the desk littered the floor around our feet. He lay me down with the patience of a saint and the passion of a demon.

  His touch awoke a part of me that had been dormant for far too long. Love and lust combined to bring me alive.

  As I buttoned up his shirt he met my eyes and his brow furrowed, wrinkling his perfect forehead. He pulled me closer and his lips were hot on mine.

  “I love you,” he uttered, completely breathless.

  “The beast does have a heart.”

  As I turned my heart shattered about my feet, Victor stood in the doorway with a lazy grin on his face, and a perfect thunderstorm brewing in his ever darkening eyes.

  “Victor,” Levi announced, with nothing but calm surrounding him.

  I looked between them certain that at any second they would leap across the room and fight to the death before my very eyes. I felt Levi’s hand pressing firmer on the small of my back, his self-control weaning but his need to honour his word overcoming his natural instincts.

  “Where is the anger and jealously brother?”

  Levi looked down to me and raised his eye brows as I shook my head, begging him not to do or say anything that I would regret. “Humour me,” he said quietly, looking across to Victor he asked, “when was it that you lay with Victor?”

  I looked to Victor and his eyes shifted from me to the floor. “Forty years ago.”

  “Perhaps it is in you that we will find anger and jealousy, brother.”

  Victor’s entire body stiffened as he watched me meet Levi’s eyes.

  “The balance and the corruption are what you should be fighting over,” I said, breaking the silence.

  Neither man said anything.

  “I could walk out tomorrow and neither of you could do a damn thing about it!” I laughed, my voice staying strong, my emotions returning to their cavern of safety in my mind far from sight. “Once the corruption is over then we can have this conversation, but first we have to…”

  “Save the world, we get it,” Victor muttered.

  “Victor,” I said, with a warning in my voice.

>   “He has always had a tongue for sarcasm.”

  “Francis isn’t going after the balance,” I said, ignoring them both, trying to regain some form if dignity.

  “Your outlook on the situation can’t be trusted,” Victor began, “She should be dealt with by me or Levi.”

  “He’s right,” Levi admitted. “The ball, the confrontation, it will be best if you keep away. Watch out for other potential threats.”

  “I’m not going to sit out of the fight Levi, you know better than anyone.” I took a breath and forced a smile onto my lips, “this is my fight. I will find Francis, and I will make whoever is behind all of this pay.”

  “If you are sure,” Levi said.

  Victor was watching us closely and as he watched he smiled at my influence upon his greatest enemy. “Francis isn’t our only problem,” he said quietly.

  “If we find her imposter she will lead us straight to the corrupters.”

  “I was thinking of a problem closer to home.”

  “We have been double crossed?” I asked, not believing it.

  “You think that someone we know is working for the corruption?”

  Victor nodded, “There has to be someone communicating with them. I’ve been watching you all and it is impossible that each and every case was a coincidence.”

  “Who could it be?” I asked quietly.

  “Anyone, it could be all of them,” Levi uttered, muttering curses.

  “Victor, do you have any ideas?”

  “How is Gabriel?” he asked suddenly, as if he had been away from the conversation and just returned.

  I looked to him with confusion in my eyes and shrugged. “He is doing ok.”

  “Is he back to his old self?”

  I shook my head, thinking back to the last time that I saw my maker. “No, not quite, but he’s getting there.”

  Victor thrust his hands into his pockets and pushed the door open with his foot. “I have to go. Victoria, I’ll be in touch. Levi, enjoy her while you can.” His eyes met mine and for a second I was transfixed, utterly and completely transfixed, “I won’t stop fighting until this wreck of a world ends.”

  Chapter 16

  I had asked Levi to leave me alone for a while. He walked back to George’s house and soon after he left I locked up.

  Stood beneath the ash tray tree I laughed as I asked, “I’ve really screwed up this time, haven’t I?”

  “Quite the opposite Victoria,” she said patiently.

  I took a drag from my cigarette and shook my head.

  “You have found yourself once more. Your light is stronger than ever. How can you be blind to it? Can you not feel it?”

  I opened my eyes and met Roberta’s fiery pair. When I first met her, her darkness had been overpowering, but stood opposite her I could feel my own light fighting strong.

  Looking at her I could feel that she hadn’t come to hand me a cryptic message, she was leaving, she had come to say goodbye. “Where are you going to go?”

  “Somewhere where the sun shines for more than five minutes at a time,” she said softly. We both laughed and she looked up at the dark clouds, “you don’t need me now. The fates have your back. You’ve solved it all on your own. But should you need me, I’ll come back.”

  “How will I contact you?”

  She laughed and shook her head, “you really need to start believing Victoria.” And with that she turned and walked away.

  I wandered to Rainbow’s End and found Jesse sat in the library, piles of books at his feet.

  He looked up to me and smiled in greeting, “I’ll put everything back, I promise.”

  I laughed and picked up an old copy of ‘Romeo and Juliet’. “Whatever keeps you out of my hair is fine.”

  With a smile he stopped removing books from their respective places on the shelves and walked around to me. He was wearing a clean pair of grey trousers and his white shirt sleeves were rolled up around his elbows.

  I sighed and shook my head, “If anyone knew…”

  “I won’t tell if you won’t,” he said quietly, taking my coat from me.

  “I’ll make sure that they pay for what they’ve done.”

  “You really mean that don’t you?”

  I nodded and took out my knife. “Of course I do. You know me Jesse.”

  “I will never be able to apologise enough for going behind your back, for not asking.”

  “If you’d have asked I would have said no.”

  “So why not just let me die?”

  I met his eyes and shook my head, “I told you not to ask.”

  He waved an imaginary white flag and took my hand in his as I brought the knife down to it. “Does it hurt?” he asked quietly, searching for truth in my eyes.

  I shrugged and cut across my palm. “Drink.”

  I sat down next to him and stretched my arm up. It had started to tingle and numb. Jesse took my left hand in his and rubbed my arm, striking life back into it slowly.

  “Do you not resent me even a little?” he asked carefully.

  I thought about Sophie and the lengths that I would go to in order to protect her and I shook my head. “I’ve done far worse in my time.”

  “Tell me,” he said, sitting back and holding my hand in his.

  I closed my eyes and began to tell him a story of my past, a crime of passion that changed me entirely and left nothing of the girl who I was behind.

  1818

  I was fourteen years old.

  I ran from my home and into the road. I rested my hands onto my knees and took a deep breath before I ran full speed through London’s streets, through my streets.

  My dress was fighting with my body as I ran against the wind.

  Sophie had been attacked.

  She had stumbled in seconds before I ran from my family home. My father had tried to stop me, but in his old age he was unable to keep up.

  The summer night was starting to turn cold and the harsh winds didn’t help my cause. Where I was going I wasn’t quite certain, I just knew that I had to find him, to punish him. I stopped at the border of the ‘good’ end of town. A man passed by me, but stopped as he looked back at my face.

  “Jewels?” he asked. His voice was hoarse, he had been drinking. I could smell the alcohol on his breath, this mixed with his unwashed body created an unmistakeable scent.

  My racing heart wouldn’t calm. I grabbed the ends of my dress and screwed my fists up inside of the cotton, fear overcoming me.

  He laughed and walked over to me. His eyes were hidden beneath his hat. His hair spiralled out from it in rough greasy curls and his facial hair grew wildly.

  “Late for a wee gal like ye self, bad things happurn ‘n these parts,” he said, stumbling over his words, in his gruff Irish accent.

  I took a step back and looked past him, trying to see if there was anyone else out. Every step that I took backwards he took two towards me. My legs were shorter than his, but they were younger and my blood wasn’t intoxicated. I considered running, but with just one lunge he could have taken my young fragile body down.

  I took one last look around before I stopped. My heart stopped racing and my mind became clear. It was as if someone had thrown a cloud of calm upon me to focus my mind. In his coat, perched in his trousers, he had a gun. I could see the shooting mechanism as the moonlight shone off of the gold.

  Without having to think twice I leapt forward and caught him by surprise. As he stumbled I took hold of his gun and held it over him as he lay on the floor. Fear swam in his eyes. The fool had it loaded. My slim pale finger hovered over the trigger. His hand reached for my ankle as the gun shot echoed through the night.

  I knelt down and put the gun into his hands and closed his fingers around it with cool and calm calculation. I could hear voices and the reflection of a light coming around the corner. I stood hastily and ran. I ran into the house and Sophie caught me as I span into my room. She took me by the shoulders and looked down at my bloodied dress.

>   “What have you done?” she whispered.

  “Did you get away with it?” Jesse asked, enthused in my story.

  I nodded, “the police ruled it as suicide.”

  Had I done it in the twenty first century rather than the nineteenth, I might not have gotten away so easily. My fingerprints would have been all over his gun and several forms of CCTV would have captured the event.

  I had killed immortal after immortal and life always went on, but there was something different about taking a mortal life.

  You hold the gun, the knife, or perhaps even your own hand, towards your victim. You know what you want to do. You want to stop them from living so that you can continue, but it isn’t that easy. Feel the gun in your hand, feel the knife, or feel your skin. Hold tightly, perhaps too tightly. It is easy up until it comes to pulling the trigger, plunging the knife, or connecting flesh.

  Katelyn once told me that it took one of two things to take a mortal life. The first was a mind so deprived of human compassion, so dark, evil and corrupt. Or it would take a mind compelled by the deepest desperation. I was neither and both.

  “How did you live with it?”

  I sighed and shook my head, “I didn’t. I was trapped within my own mind. I would sit in church and cry, for hours on end. I didn’t eat or sleep,” I closed my eyes. “I left my house that night wanting to punish him for what he had done to my sister…” I swallowed and forced a smile. “What killed me the most each day was doubt. The doubt that he… he might have been a good man.” I felt a tear streak down my cheek, “I was no better than the beasts themselves. I had taken a life. The truth is that I still can’t forgive myself. I have spent my life trying to slay the real beasts of the world to make up for what I did.”

  Jesse offered me tea, but I knew that Levi would be waiting for me at George’s and we had a lot to talk about.

  When I returned he was sat on the porch looking out into the street a vacant look on his face. I held out my hand to him and without a word we walked arm in arm to the cemetery. I felt strangely ill at ease and it wasn’t until I stood at the cemetery gates that I remembered that the last time I was there my heart was almost taken from me.