He laughed as I stood unmoved. He took a step back and put his hand onto my arm, as he spoke he began to squeeze tighter and tighter, “If my words do not strike fear into your heart then perhaps you are not as smart as I first presumed.”
“Please, Mr Wright,” I murmured. He threw my arm away and looked deep into my soul with a curse on his tongue and acid in his heart of stone.
I stood before his house, the Wright Manor, and I forced a smile onto my lips. I had always promised myself that I would return there, I would go simply to rile the long dead and buried Mr Wright. It was a childish desire, but I didn’t much like being told what to do, which was more than proved to Mr Wright the following year upon my engagement to Sedric and the events that followed.
“Ok, so you are officially gone,” Victor mumbled as he opened the front door.
I smoothed down my skirt and walked to the front door. I looked down and a sickness curdled in my stomach. Someone had been there. Muddy boots had stood where I was standing. The shelter of the porch roof had stopped the weather from cleaning them away.
I looked around me, far into the wild surroundings and listened to the silence. I was confident that no one was around. Wearily I walked past Victor through the door and stepped inside.
The furniture had been moved and a scene had been created. I walked through into the drawing room and sat in Mr Wright’s chair was a man. He was faced away from me, looking towards the unlit fire. I edged around him and when he didn’t respond to my being there my heart began to race. I lifted his chin and his jacket fell open. Just as Oliver was, he was heartless.
I lay his head back onto his chest and covered my mouth to stop myself from screaming. I turned back to the fire and realised that it was not the fire he was observing, but a row of hearts in neatly labelled jars. I reached out and grabbed Victor’s hand. His touch was the only thing keeping me from losing complete control.
The man who we had disturbed was not the only actor in the sick play. In the library there were two women sat with books open in their hands. In the kitchen propped up against the sink was an older man donned in an apron. The family room was possibly the most disturbing of the scenarios. A man and a woman were sat in arm chairs looking down at the rug on which there lay two young men holding a doll between them that I knew far too well.
I leant down and gently took her in my shaking hands. Her face was tired with age, but none the less I knew her instantly. Sedric’s mother had lost a daughter before Sedric and I were born. She had given the doll to me when I was six years old. Never having a mother I would often imagine that Mrs Wright was my mother, especially when she would hold me on her knee and brush my hair so delicately the way that she did. Sedric’s mother always had liked me, even once Sedric and I had managed to ruin everything. Sighing I stroked her thinning yellow hair and traced her painted face with my little finger, to her dress which was pale pink with sewn on yellow and white flowers.
“If you’re going to cry I’m getting out of here,” Victor whispered as I put the doll down. I elbowed his stomach and he stood back holding up his hands. “Come on, Oliver’s is up here.”
I walked to the stairs and took a breath, bracing myself for both the present and past.
I seldom went upstairs in Sedric’s home, and the few times that I did he had snuck me in past his father. My only memories of the gallery were brief and the rooms surrounding Sedric’s meant very little to me.
I stood outside of his door and closed my eyes, Victor vanished before me and I was dead to the present world.
1821
It had been a month since I had said yes and I had lost count of how many times I had been snuck past his father beneath a hooded cloak.
I fell onto his bed and laughed. He covered my mouth with his hand and put a finger to his lips.
“Sorry,” I whispered. My laughter came trickling out with my apology.
He smiled and threw himself down next to me. His bed was one of a rich man. Four posters made with luxurious dark wood. His linen was the finest of course, but he did not care for it. His only care in our world was our love, just as was mine.
I took his hand in mine and held it tightly. I never wanted to leave that moment. My skin was on fire at his touch. My heart always yearned for more, until I finally took too much.
I shook my head and took a hold of the door handle. Victor’s hand fell over mine and he looked down into my eyes with worry and uncertainty. He didn’t want me to go in the room. He had thought that I would be strong enough, but I could see that he wasn’t so sure anymore.
With one fatal twist I pushed the door open. I walked to the bed and ran my hands along the wood. I pushed aside the curtains that covered the bed itself and stood back taking Victor’s hands tight, my back to his chest.
“Is that…” I began, not wanting to believe what lay before me.
“No,” he said, shaking his head.
“How can you be sure?”
He wrapped his arms around my waist and rested our clasped hands on my stomach, “I went to the cemetery before I came here, everything is in place. Whoever this is, he isn’t who they want you to think he is.”
I relaxed in his arms and rested my head back against his chest, “Why are they doing this to me?”
“Because you are the strongest one left,” he said quietly, holding me tighter, locking me in his arms, keeping me safe from myself.
“Do you think they did this to Katelyn?”
As I asked I could feel his body tense beneath mine and I turned around in his arms, taking my hands from his.
“Do you know something?”
“Victoria, this isn’t the time or the place.”
“Well I don’t see a better one coming, if you know something just tell me.” I rested my hands onto his chest in supplication and stared up into his dark clouded eyes.
He pushed his left hand through my hair and frowned as he looked over my face. “So perfect, how could anyone want to hurt you?” He took a breath and smiled before he dropped his arms and sat on the edge of the bed next to the unknown corpse. “I saw what they did to Katelyn through Levi’s eyes, he knew that she was in trouble, of course he was torn between helping her and,” he looked up to me and smiled lightly, “you.” He shrugged, “They broke her, but she put on a brave face just like you have been doing. Victoria, they know that they can’t defeat you physically, so they’ll do just what they did to her, keep pushing until you beg to be killed.”
“Are you trying to tell me that Katelyn wanted to die?”
He walked back over to me and put his hands onto my cheeks, “There is only so much one mind can take.”
I closed my eyes and shook my head; I wandered to the window and hoisted it open. I hung my head out into the cool air and took several deep breaths. I couldn’t believe what it had all come to. From where I began, this was not where I had ever thought I would end.
“How much do you think that mine can take?” I asked, pulling myself back into the room.
Chapter 22
When I returned home I found Levi lying on the lawn, his clothes soaked through, as if it was a summer’s day.
“Looks like I’m not the only one losing my mind,” I said with a small laugh as I sat down next to him.
He turned to look at me and as his hand came up to my cheek that was when I saw his tears. I stood and ran back into the house. I stormed through and threw open the door to the servants quarters. George and Gabriel stood shell shocked at the foot of the stairs as I continued through like a lightning bolt thundering through the black sky the only thing visible during the storm.
She lay, cold as ice, her heart no longer beating.
God made man fear death so that he could die, true immortals fear not of death so they will never die. She had said that to me when we first met. She had worn a black pencil skirt and a pale yellow shirt; she had come from her office job, her latest cover. I would never forget my wonder at her, how similar she was to her brother who
had doted on her with such love in his heart. They pretended not to get on, to loathe each other, but behind closed doors they were inseparable. She was his world, his darling little sister, the last of his siblings.
I pressed my lips against hers as my tears poured from my eyes. I closed my eyes tightly shut and prayed over and over that she would wake up. I buried my head into her neck and kept her held to my chest. My tears soaked her shirt and her hair clung to me.
Clarence would never hold me again. She would never shoot me that darling smile that I always knew meant trouble. Nor would she talk to me again. I would never feel the soft satin of her lips against mine ever again.
I let go of the breath that I was holding and sobbed, and sobbed until I had nothing left. The fates were cruel, they did not care. To me it did not matter that Clarence feared death, it was no reason for her to die. Suddenly my grief turned to anger. I would kill them all and I would make sure that paradise would not welcome their evil souls.
Gabriel and George pushed the door to where Oliver and Clarence lay open and walked over to me, both putting a hand on my shoulders.
“When?” George breathed.
“Not long ago,” Gabriel replied, his voice barely audible.
I took a breath and wiped my eyes. “Why did this happen?” I asked.
Gabriel looked across to George and neither spoke.
A sudden darkness overwhelmed the room and stood at the door was Victor. His eyes were fixed on Clarence’s unmoving body.
“Her heart was weakened before it was returned to her body; most probably it spent too long in the company of a hunter, or the dead. She hasn’t been with us for some time, not really.”
Gabriel and George’s hands fell from me and they stood back as I got to my feet and walked to the shadow of a man that loomed over us.
I look down to his hands and I saw the jar that had rested in the hands of the corpse.
“You didn’t have to bring it here, I would have gone back.”
“I couldn’t put you through that again. The other’s have been moved, they should heal in time.”
I met his eyes and smiled with the weight of loss in my heart. “Did you pass Levi?”
He nodded and handed me the jar. “He needs you now more than any of us ever have.”
I leant up onto my toes and kissed his cheek lightly before I rested the jar next to Oliver’s bed; I turned to Gabriel and motioned to Oliver’s body. He bowed his head and waited until Victor and I had left the room before he scuttled to the jar and made preparations to place the heart back where it belonged.
As Victor and I walked through George’s house I couldn’t help but feel that whatever tension had been between us over past forty years had evaporated there and then and completely vanished into the air.
Levi was stood at the end of the drive waiting for us.
I ran down to him leaving Victor to walk slowly alone. I pushed his hair from his face and wrapped my arms around his shoulders, relief flooding into me as his hands found my waist. I kissed his neck and promised him in a breath of a kiss that I would fix everything, as he had promised to me.
Victor’s hand separated us for a second as he rested it onto his ancient enemies shoulder. “I can arrange the rites,” he said, his voice heavy with understanding of Levi’s pain.
Levi did not speak. He simply looked away and relaxed his arms around my waist. I graced my fingers onto Victor’s bare wet arm and forged a smile onto my iron lips, “Find them for us.”
Once Levi was asleep I crept from our bed and walked out and across to the room that had once been mine alone. I dressed and dialled an unfamiliar number.
“Hi Pat, this is Victoria.”
Her voice filled with recognition, “Victoria, darling. Why are you using Levi’s phone?”
I was surprised that she had his number, but it was a petty thing to think about. “I need to see you.”
“Now?”
“Preferably, yes,” I said.
I crossed the town to the small café in which we first met and I stopped outside of the long glass window and couldn’t believe my eyes. Pat was sat inside smiling back at me. On her table were two mugs.
“How did you get in here?”
She shrugged and smiled, “I have my ways.” She noticed my impatience and grief and rested a hand atop mine, “What is it?”
“Clarence,” I began, unable to find the words to tell a mother that her daughter was dead.
She closed her eyes and nodded slowly, “I felt it.” She moved her lips as if to smile, but faltered, “Why have you come to me?”
I furrowed my brow and shook my head, “You are her mother, why wouldn’t I have come to you?”
“Losing your mother wasn’t the only reason why you never knew about me,” she uttered. “Like I said when we met, I wasn’t the most notable mother; I was preoccupied a lot of the time.” She met my tear glazed eyes and took a breath, “I cried throughout my pregnancies, I didn’t ask to be a mother, I didn’t want to be a mother,” she sighed and pushed her hair behind her ears, “The truth was that I was terrified. I had friends, girls who I had known all of my life who left this world without seeing their children’s faces. I was there when they were giving birth, when they died.”
I felt a sharp pain in my chest, but I continued to sit there as I was, watching Clarence’s mother speak of a fear that I had once felt, a very long time ago.
She smiled and wiped a stray tear from her cheek. “They were strong girls; I was no different from them. After my first I spent months in complete denial that I had a child, I would ignore his cries, and I refused to take him to my breast. I ran away one night, he was only a week or so old, but I couldn’t face listening to him cry for me. When I returned to my husband he tried to understand, but he was a warrior, a beast, he was no woman. They never understand. Then came Clarence, and Levi, my blessings never seemed to end, I see now why they saved me.”
I placed my hand over hers and released the breath that I had been holding. “I’m sorry.”
She nodded and stroked the back of my hand, “I’m sorry that you lost another sister.”
Chapter 23
The weeks of endless snow had begun. Each snowflake drifted through the skies helpless to the winds that ushered them to their final resting places. Snowflake upon snowflake covered the streets of London to be trodden into slush, grey brown matter that added to the desperation that carried throughout the air in the city that thought it was capital of the world.
“It’s cold,” I said quietly, laughing as the words left my mouth with a cloud of white breath.
There was no answer, there never would be. I brushed the layer of snow from the top of his gravestone.
“I’m glad that you don’t have to see this.” I rested my head again the stone with his name etched into it and closed my eyes. “I wish you were here, but you know that. This world isn’t what it was. We could have had our life here, everything about this world is accepting, they are different the people. I suppose it’s because they’ve seen it all. Men can be with men and the coloured people are welcomed, most of the time. It is incredible, but it’s not what it was.” I sighed and laughed again, I hadn’t know where I was going once I left Patricia, but as I passed the cemetery I knew where I should go so I followed my heart to Sedric’s plot. “Girls have freedom too,” I said as I closed my eyes and held back my tears.
I hadn’t seen Levi since I left his bedside. I hadn’t seen any of them.
Jesse handed me a plate of biscuits and shrugged as I frowned up to him. “Worth a try I guess,” he said as he sat down next to me.
“Are you using the good china?” I asked.
He smiled and clapped his hands together, “Eureka she’s back in the room.”
I bowed my head and sighed, “Sorry.”
“Don’t be, you’re not the only one who knows what it feels like to lose someone. You need time, they all do. Levi will be fine and so will you.”
“You
r confidence in me is flattering, but unjust. Come here.”
I cut across the palm of my hand and he moved across and took it to his lips. The feeling of his lips, my blood, his racing heart beside my arm, my own heart stumbling to keep up, it was impossible to understand to imagine, but it was true, it was real. My life, my strength was passing through me and into the boy who I had taken as my own. It was the most wonderful feeling, to give life. I closed my fingers and he withdrew.
I washed my hand in the bathroom adjacent to the servant’s entrance and stood before the mirror for a second, hesitant, and fearful of my memories, as Jesse appeared around the door and rested his hand onto my shoulder.
“Levi is calling.”
I took my phone and held it to my ear desperately, “Levi?”
“Where are you?”
“I’m coming home. I’ll be there before you can say my name again.”
I smiled and kissed Jesse’s forehead before I ran from the house and stopped at the gate that barred me from the driveway, my hair soaked by melting snowflakes and my hands trembling from my passions.
His fingers wrapped around mine as I clung to the bars of iron. I rested my head against his but stood back as the gates began to grumble and parted, lending an opening for me to reach out and take him into my arms.
“I’m here, I’m here,” I whispered as I clung to him, knowing that he needed me more than I had ever needed him.
Levi was a god among men, well, that was what I believed once. He would look through a person, see through them until he found something that he wanted, needed, longed for and then he would take it from them.
There was a time when I might have been bitter about why he was in my life, how I came to be, and the reason why I lost my life, but there and then I was grateful for his all seeing eyes. He was no god, he was but a boy lost, looking for a home. His mother and father were hardly that, a mother or father, his life before was short lived yet endless.
An Immortal in London: Corruption Page 19