As expected, Riley showed up a few minutes after sunset. He noticed Hawk's agitated state at once. "Going out for the evening?" he asked cautiously.
Hawk nodded. "Just waiting for a call." His eyes strayed to the cell phone he'd left in plain view, so that he could grab it the moment it lit up. "You get everything packed up?"
"Yep. Busy day—I kind of envy you being able to sleep while we do all the work. Anyway, it's all set to go to Cincinnati. The bus is leaving this afternoon, and you and I will take off tomorrow night."
"Fine. I'll be ready." Traveling to new venues had become much easier in the era of private planes—he and Riley could touch down in a new city and get him bundled up and safe long before the sun ever peeked over the horizon. Yet the ease of modern travel had also made him accustomed to a choppy, fragmented life—a few nights here, a few nights there—with little except his music to give his existence a common thread. Having Aldor back would change everything. Even Riley seemed to sense that something beyond a regular flirtation was afoot.
"Are you sure? Boston can be kind of a happening place," Riley said. "Plenty of … you know … cool people here."
"Yeah. I'm sure there are." Hawk's expression hardened into stony stubbornness. "Enough to keep me busy until we have to go, I'd say."
"Be careful, Hawk." Riley shook his head. "I saw the way you looked at him. Don't want to see you too distracted to perform—and I don't want to see you hurt."
"You don't understand the situation at all. As for being hurt, you think this would be the first time in eight hundred years? Give me a break, Riley. You mortals have such a simple way of looking at things sometimes."
"Well, we're kind of limited in that way." Riley tried to laugh the situation off, but Hawk could tell that he wasn't relieved in the least. "I'm just saying to watch your step."
"Got it."
"All right, then. I'll be in touch when the plane's ready. Meanwhile, I think I'll enjoy a night out on the town myself."
"You should. You deserve it. You've worked hard this week." Hawk didn't bother to hide his relief at the prospect of Riley leaving. It was almost eight, in fact.
"Yeah, and next week I get to do it all over again. Never mind—I enjoy every minute of it. As long as you're happy, Hawk."
"Never better." Hawk flashed an obviously fake smile at him, complete with fangs. At last, Riley took the hint and left him alone.
At precisely eight o'clock, his cell phone buzzed. Hawk's mood shifted instantly, a hopeful smile sliding over his face as he pressed his thumb to the button.
"Hi," a voice he clearly recognized as Aldor's said. "You told me to call … so I'm calling."
Hawk got right to the point. "Just tell me the address and I'll be there."
The voice at the other end named a street Hawk knew pretty well. There were a number of bars and clubs nearby, some of them catering to a gay clientele. On a warm spring night there would be plenty of guys on the move down there, eager to see and be seen, at the very least. Aldor, or whoever he really was, wasn't as naïve as he pretended to be, since it was unlikely he'd picked that address at random. Hawk decided to confront him with it as soon as they saw each other.
He practiced the words as he drove over in the sporty green Jaguar he'd rented upon arriving in the city. He'd considered sending for a limo, but he figured the extra pair of eyes would only make Aldor less likely to open up to him—in every sense of the word. His eyes eagerly scanned the curb as he approached the designated meeting place.
As soon as he saw Aldor standing on the corner, he forgot every last one of the borderline-confrontational lines he'd rehearsed. There he was, standing by a streetlamp, wearing a pair of tight white jeans, a salmon-colored t-shirt, and a different flannel shirt, again with rolled-up sleeves. His soft brown boots seemed perfectly molded to his feet, making Hawk fondly recall the pointed slippers Aldor had worn in the thirteenth century. Yet this version of Aldor was indisputably modern in every way.
In some ways, that bothered him. As fully as he had assimilated himself to contemporary American culture, Hawk still felt that a trace of his Old World self remained at the core. Other people sensed it too—it was part of his mystique. Yet no trace of the medieval Aldor remained, at least as far as Hawk could see.
Another possibility, one he hadn't considered before, struck him as Not-Aldor waved and came over to open the car door. What if his Aldor had survived that terrible night at the castle and gone on to found a line of his own? What if this Aldor was the direct descendant of his own? Though he didn't like to imagine the man he loved taking a bride and fathering one—or maybe many—children, it would have been the usual and expected course for a man of Aldor's social position.
"Hey," Aldor said as he got into the car. "Thanks for coming."
"My pleasure," Hawk replied as he pulled out into the slow-moving Boston traffic.
"So where are we going?"
"Let's make it someplace quiet so we can talk … really talk. Any preferences?"
Aldor swallowed. "I have to admit, I don't really know my way around here too well. Do you?"
"Sure." Hawk shrugged. "I lived in Boston a long time ago—and other places, too. England, for example. Ever been there?" He turned and looked directly at Aldor, trying to gauge his expression.
"Wow. That must have been interesting," Aldor said without answering the question.
"It was," Hawk said. "It's where I was born, in fact."
Still no reaction. "Yeah. I read that about you somewhere. Newspaper article in the Globe about the concert, maybe. Can't really remember."
"I didn't see that one, but I guess it makes sense they'd cover the concert." They were five minutes into their date and Hawk was already getting frustrated. Something strange was going on, and he was determined to find out what it was. Hawk's fingers tightened on the steering wheel. Suddenly he cut sharply to the right. "I just decided where we're going."
"Where?" Aldor asked a bit nervously.
"The harbor. You don't get seasick, do you?"
"I … I don't think so," Aldor stammered. He fell silent as Hawk drove down to the docks and chartered a moonlight cruise for the two of them on one of the small sightseeing boats available for hire. The captain took his place at the wheel on the upper deck, well out of sight and earshot, while they settled into cushy seats at the back of the boat. Aldor, though, looked anything but comfortable. "Is this … um … something you do a lot?" he asked Hawk as the brightly lit city shoreline dropped behind them.
"No. I've never done it before, in fact. I just happened to pass the sign a few times while I was driving around the city." The truth was that Hawk, like most vampires, had no real desire to be surrounded by water, but he was willing to put up with it in exchange for having a place to ask Aldor some hard questions without worrying about him running away. "But I thought it would be a nice, quiet place to talk."
"Yeah. I guess so," Aldor said, staring skeptically at the dark water churning around the hull. "As long as it's safe."
"Don't worry. There aren't any giant sea serpents in Boston Harbor, and the boat seems pretty seaworthy. Unless you decide to fling yourself over the side, you won't end up in the drink. Does that set your mind at ease?" When Aldor didn't respond, he pressed forward. One way or the other, he was going to get some answers. Maybe it was time to try a more direct approach. "Right. We came here to talk, so let's talk. You can start. Ask me any three questions, and I'll answer you as honestly as I can. Then I get to do the same to you."
Aldor turned away from the sea to face Hawk instead. Had he paled a bit, or was that simply an effect of the moonlight and the reflections from other passing pleasure boats? "Um … okay," he said at last. He paused for a moment, obviously trying to think of a suitable question with which to start. "How did you first get into the music business?"
The question surprised Hawk at first, since he'd expected something more personal. On the other hand, the way he answered it could yield important clues abo
ut his past, if that was what Aldor was fishing for.
"Like most people, I started off singing for friends and at what I guess you could call small gatherings," he said, scrutinizing Aldor's face for any sign of true understanding. "Some of them didn't go so well, so eventually I decided to leave England. When I got to America, I started doing the same thing—entertaining at private parties and the like. Pretty soon someone noticed me and offered me a contract. The music industry had changed quite a bit since then."
"And do you like your life the way it is now?"
"Sure—what's not to like? I make money doing something I enjoy, the fans are great, and for the most part, my time is my own. I admit I'm not crazy about all the travel, but Riley handles the details for me. Generally I just have to step out of the tour bus, walk into the concert hall, and sing."
"Do you meet a lot of guys that way?"
"That's your third question, by the way," Hawk said with a wink. Aldor nodded for him to continue, so he answered. "I guess the answer would vary depending on what you mean by 'meet.' If you mean the word in the conventional sense of 'hello, I'm Hawk Black,' then the answer is yes. If you mean actually hooking up, I admit there have been a few. But it's not something I do often. I'm actually hoping to find something—someone—more meaningful one day."
He paused, waiting for a response, but Aldor merely nodded as though satisfied with that answer for the time being. Hawk held up three fingers. "My turn. Three questions."
"Fair enough. Go."
"What inspired you to attend my concert last night?"
Even such a simple question make Aldor tense up. Hawk was glad he hadn't started with the tougher inquiries, tempted though he was.
"I saw an ad," Aldor confessed. "In one of those free newspapers they give away around the city. I thought it might be something fun to do while I was in the city."
Nothing useful there. No indication that he'd ever heard of Hawk, either, even though his current CD was starting to get significant national airplay and had a decent Internet following. Was that a deliberate omission? Hawk bent down one finger. "Question two. What brought you to Boston in the first place?"
"Sightseeing. I'd always wanted to visit here, and now seemed like the right time."
Again, the most bare-bones response Aldor could get away with. Not entirely believable, either. Trying not to let his growing frustration show, Hawk bent down a second finger. "Third and final one, so I have to make it count. If I were holding your birth certificate in my hand right now, what would it say? Remember—that includes your full name as well as both year and place, and you have to answer honestly."
That time, Aldor really did look as though he'd been struck across the face. "I don't have a birth certificate," he said.
"No dodging. This is hypothetical. You have to answer honestly."
"Why does it matter so much to you? Can't we just be who we are here, tonight? Isn't that enough for you?"
"Now you've asked me two more questions without answering my third one. You're not playing fair, Aldor. And don't ask me why I insist on calling you that—not only is it another question, it's because that's your name." Overcome with emotion, Hawk grabbed Aldor's arm and clutched the sleeve of his jacket with desperate fingers. "But no, it's not enough. I've played your game long enough, torture though it has been. If I still had a living heart, you would have torn a hole through it by now."
"Don't be melodramatic," Aldor said through clenched teeth.
"You don't know how I have longed for you, ached for you, knowing not whether you were alive or dead. Aldor, it's been eight bloody centuries, and you know I mean that quite literally! I refuse to believe you are not the man I loved back then—the man I lost the night I lost my life. Please, please, tell me how you came to be here, back with me at last, and tell me you have come to stay with me!"
At the end of his outburst, he dropped Aldor's sleeve and sat back, blinking. The intensity of his speech had startled even him, including the fact that he had temporarily, and unconsciously, slipped back into the accent it had taken him many, many decades to soften. Had Aldor recognized that voice?
A long silence followed, broken only by the purr of the boat's motor and the hiss of the water. Finally he heard Aldor suck back a deep breath, as though he were building up his courage.
"All right, then. This is the truth. I am the man you've been waiting for—I am your Aldor, lost to you over eight hundred years ago. And for every day that you have missed me, I have missed you twice as much. Now, at last, I have found you again."
"I knew it." The emotion that welled up in Hawk was so powerful that he could barely speak the words. Yet he pushed on, even as the tears gathered in his eyes and his throat strained to swallow back a wrenching sob of happiness. "At last, my love, at last we are together. I always hoped—"
He leaned toward Aldor, preparing for a full embrace, even the passionate kiss he had spent so many lonely nights dreaming about. Yet, at the last moment, Aldor placed a hand on his chest and kept him at arm's length. When Hawk looked up into his eyes, he was startled to see they were as icy as the harbor waters churning beneath them.
"Wait. Though in some ways I am still the same Aldor, in others I am not. Yes, we have found one another again after all of these years. But I am afraid I cannot love you—not now, not ever, though I shall most likely live as long as the earth itself."
TRACK FIVE
"What?" Hawk drew back, stung to the core. "What do you mean you can't love me?" Pausing to calm himself, he tried to put Aldor's shocking words into perspective. "I mean, I know a lot of time has passed, and we've both probably been through a lot, but what we had is strong enough to survive. All we have to do is spend some time together, and I'm sure all those feelings will come back."
Aldor shook his head. "I'm afraid there's more to it than that—or less, depending on how you look at things. The truth is, Hawk, I cannot love anyone ever again. I am no longer capable of such emotion, any more than I am able to sprout wings and fly at will. To offer myself to you as I am now would be worse than an insult—it would be outright cruelty."
"You're lecturing me on cruelty?" Hawk barked out an angry laugh. "You do realize that you're talking to a vampire? Believe me, I've seen more than my share. I am not the delicate, overly sensitive flower I was back in the Middle Ages."
"I know what you are," Aldor said, his jaw tightening. "I knew ever since that terrible night, when Duke Corbin turned on his guests and began to feed on them like a ravenous beast. I watched you die, Hawk—what do you think that did to me? Sometimes I think losing my capacity for emotion was a strange sort of blessing. Otherwise it would be hard to live with some of the things I have seen over the centuries. That is certainly one of them."
"I was there, too, you know," Hawk said. He noticed that the boat began to make a slow turn in the middle of the harbor. Soon they would be heading back to the dock. Their romantic nighttime cruise was half over, and he'd barely had time to take in the view, never mind experience a moment of romance. "I managed to get through that same night, and everything that followed. I didn't let it destroy me … or my ability to love."
"That wasn't what destroyed my love. It was what came later. I survived that bloodbath in the castle, and I know I have you to thank for that. I remember how you fought them off to give me a chance to escape. As I ran, I saw them close in around you. I heard you scream." Aldor shook his head, pressing his palms to his ears as if to block the terrible sounds all over again. After a moment of intense concentration, he dropped them into his lap. "I thought for certain they would tear you to pieces and devour your flesh. I assumed you were dead in the way we would ordinarily think of that state. Only later, after I had fled to the city, did I hear other tales involving what we now call vampires. Then I realized what I had actually seen."
"Yes … for many centuries, I had no name for what I was," Hawk said, a bit wistfully. "That made things inconvenient, especially when people simply used an unflatterin
g epithet in place of a proper name. Even a revenant has his pride. But go on."
Aldor tilted his head to the night sky, his eyes searching the stars as if he might find answers there. "To think that you were still alive … not in the way I knew you, perhaps, but nonetheless in a form I could touch … hold … even kiss. It was like my heart broke a second time, to think that you were in the world somewhere and I had no way, no hope of finding you."
Though Aldor spoke without deep emotion, Hawk's eyes misted over afresh. The same thought had occurred to him at almost the same moment. All the time, Aldor had been alive and in England. If only he had traveled farther, searched a bit more diligently …
"I'm sorry," he managed to choke out. "I wish I had known."
"Aye, I wish the same. However, for whatever reason, 'twas not to be."
"Until now, you mean." Hawk noticed that, like himself, Aldor had fallen into familiar antiquated speech patterns. At least they had that connection left, Hawk reflected. Hopefully, Aldor would realize that their unique shared past bound them closer together than any other two people in the world.
"After five years of searching, the pain of existing without you grew too great. In hopes of learning more about your fate, I consulted an alchemist with a reputation for expertise in such matters. He told me some shocking tales of what might likely have happened to you. He also told me that you would never age and never die, assuming you could escape those who had the power to destroy you by fire or wooden stake. That got me thinking—supposing I did find you, many years in the future? I would be an old man, and you would yet be young and vibrant, just as you were the day I last saw you. Surely you would never want me again under those conditions. I decided to find a way to remain young and alive forever, so that no matter how many years it took for me to find you again, I would be ready."
"No." A terrible sense of dread came over Hawk as he suddenly realized where Aldor's revelation might be going. "Tell me you did not ask the alchemist to assist in your quest."
Rocking Hard, Volume 2 Page 26