‘That’s not gonna do it,’ she said. ‘Who are you? Who the fuck are you?’
I heard a catch in her voice and I saw tears in her eyes.
‘I’m just a paramedic—’ I began.
‘Bullshit!’ she said, then sniffed and turned away angrily, wiping her eyes. ‘This isn’t normal, Sean. I’ve dated guys and found out about ex-girlfriends and criminal records and cheating, but not fucking supernatural powers. I’m not naïve; I know you have a past. Hell, everyone has a past, but your past clearly has more knives in it than I’m comfortable with. Jesus! I can’t even believe I’m having this conversation.’
‘I know this is hard to wrap your head around,’ I said. ‘It’s complicated. Please hear me out.’
‘You’ve got one shot. God knows why the hell I’m giving you that.’ She paused, fighting back tears, and shook her head violently. ‘No, that’s not fair. I’m really falling for you. I want this to work so much. You’d think this would be a deal breaker, but I need to give you a chance. Or I wouldn’t forgive myself.’
‘Sarah, I want to explain.’
‘And I want to believe you. God, how I want to believe you. But... Jesus Christ. I mean, I just got beaten. And then you killed people. Like it was something you’d done before. Done enough to get good at. And how the hell did you... fix... everything?’
‘It’s hard to explain.’
‘Try,’ she said, her eyes cold now and deadly serious. ‘Try really, really hard.’
I took a drink to buy time, to fight down my urge to babble. To focus my thoughts. This wasn’t a conversation I’d had with... well, anyone.
‘Well?’
‘I’m trying to think where to begin.’
‘How about at the beginning?’
‘That’s the part I don’t know,’ I replied. ‘For starters, I’m a lot older than I look.’
‘How old?’
‘Old enough to know better. I really don’t know. I can remember back over centuries. When I said I liked Alexandre Dumas and Mark Twain, I meant it. They were both worth knowing, and always willing to buy their round. But I can’t remember all the answers you deserve.’
She looked incredulous. ‘Shall I start with what you’ve just said, or what you’re not saying? How can you not remember? Did you hit your head? Wake up shipwrecked? What?’
‘I don’t think it’s anything that romantic,’ I replied. ‘I just think there’s a limit to how much you can stuff into long-term memory. Wait, listen.’ I quickly pushed on as I saw suspicion creeping over her face. ‘What do you remember about first grade? Probably your teacher’s name, maybe your best friend, maybe who you sat next to. But what color was your bedroom when you were five? Did you have a favorite stuffed animal? Memories fade. The big events fade slower, but they do get fuzzy with time, right?’
‘I guess.’
‘Now, instead of twenty years, think about ten times that. I remember battles, lovers, beauty, joy and trauma. I can’t remember my parents, or a childhood of any kind. I know I tried to do the village healer thing. I remember being happy at it, but needing to travel before anyone did the math on my age. I know I was driven out of a few places as a witch. I served as a soldier in a lot of places, since there’s always hurts to heal and men come and go. I did that for ages, until I found EMS. The good parts of soldiering—without sleeping in muddy holes or hand-to-hand combat. Usually.’
‘Have there been a lot of lovers?’
‘Depends on what you consider a lot. By the standards of a rock star or professional athlete, hardly any. And I would ask the court to take the time into consideration. I’m human. Probably. I need companionship like anybody else. For obvious reasons, long-term relationships can be problematic.’
‘So where do I fit on this list?’
There was no right answer. I’ve known enough women to know that. She was too smart to accept something like “none of them compare to you”. I decided to take a shot at her sense of humor.
‘Just ahead of Madame Dubarry. In a three-way tie with Lola Montez and Lady Emma Hamilton.’ I smiled.
She laughed. A sound that made me happier than the skirl of approaching bagpipes drifting over the walls of Lucknow, or the roar of Corsairs flying in to strafe the Korean hillsides. ‘Lord Nelson’s mistress?’
‘Yeah, but I used to sneak out on his blind side if he came in unexpectedly. He never caught on.’
‘Good thinking,’ she smiled, sniffing and wiping away a tear.
‘One way you’re different from all the others,’ I said seriously. ‘You are the only person I’ve told the whole truth.’
‘You don’t give this speech to all the girls?’ she asked. A definite thaw. The bantering tone was back in her voice. ‘Why only me?’
‘You’re smart, you’re funny, you’re beautiful. I haven’t felt this way about anyone in as long as I can remember. I can talk to you. Plus, there’s that thing you do with your tongue.’
‘So,’ she asked, the smile still there, but also a glint of steel in her expression. ‘What happens from here? You vanish on me? Or string me along until I get wrinkly?’
‘My hope, if you’ll still have me, is to stay with you. To keep you by my side as long as you’ll let me. I’d never have told you what I did if I didn’t trust you and care about you. And unless I find a way to outsmart these guys, a long lifespan may stop being a problem.’
‘And what about them? The ones with big knives and definite views on getting an answer?’
‘All I know is I fixed a guy’s ankle a while back. On the ambulance. He had a bad break, I repaired it so when he got to the ER it was just a bad sprain. He had the same accent as these guys. I thought it was strange because I couldn’t place it, even though it was a bit familiar. He seemed suspicious, which is odd. Usually I get away with a lot pre-hospital, since nobody knows how bad an injury really is before the x-rays. That’s one reason I like to work as a medic, not a doctor. Anyway, this guy started asking about me, and shortly after that, there was an attempt on me. That’s how I picked up that knife and got the cut on my hand that you saw the day you met me. Since then it’s been a competition to see which of us can learn about the other guy first.’
‘How’s that working out?’
‘I think we’re both pretty bad at it.’ I shrugged. ‘I’m just hitting dead ends, and the best they’ve managed is to kick in the door of a place I used to live, and beat up you and a girl from the hospital who gave me some info...’ I froze. ‘You said you had some leads on that inscription. Did you find something? Talk to somebody who knew something?’
‘I got a reply on one of the ancient language forums online. I uploaded a scan of the copy you gave me, and some professor in Chicago replied and asked about it. Said he’s seen similar stuff in old eastern European burial sites.’
‘So he asked about where you found this inscription, what it was about, and so on.’ I sighed. ‘It was a trap. They must monitor any searches on their languages, or the info they give out, and then trace the leads back. They’re looking for me, they know that the inscription you posted is from the knife I took in that first attack. Every time I look for them, I give away my position.’
Like a muzzle flash in the dark.
I turned to her, guilt twisting a dagger in my belly. ‘I am so sorry. I had no idea this could put you in danger. I just thought you might recognize an alphabet, I never expected they’d come for you.’
She shrugged. ‘It’s OK. How could you guess? Traditionally, a bunch of ancient-language nerds sitting around in their carpet slippers sipping Earl Grey aren’t known for sending teams of thugs with knives to torture people for information. The Tweed Ninjas are a closely guarded secret.’
‘The best thing to do,’ I thought aloud, pacing, ‘is go to ground. I have some money and fake papers stashed. I can get you some IDs, we can be off the radar in a day. Then, we pick a new city—’
‘I’m not running,’ she said. Not defiantly. Just with absolute convi
ction.
‘Sarah,’ I pleaded, ‘think about what these people are willing to do. I’ve seen how people react when they begin to think what I can do is a threat.’
‘So have I,’ she pointed out.
‘And that is what I can’t risk. No. I’m not going to have them work their way through my friends. I’m not putting people I care about at risk.’
‘I’m staying here. I have a life.’
‘I’ve had to pull up stakes before. It’s not that bad. It’s starting fresh. We can go anywhere. I’ve never gotten to Australia. You want to see Australia?’
‘Sean, I’m not leaving. I like my job. My family is here. My friends. I’ve known you for a week. Now, you’re good company, a good cook and there’s that thing you do with your tongue, but I’m not running away. You want to stay here and deal with this, I’ll be right by your side. You run, you run alone.’
I opened my mouth to argue, but saw a look in her eyes and realized there was no point. I’d seen that look on some of history’s famous faces, generally followed by fixed bayonets and a period of stark terror. Wellington had worn that look at Waterloo, and MacArthur at Inchon. Of course, so had Bonnie Prince Charlie at Culloden and Travis at the Alamo, so I won’t say I viewed it without some trepidation.
I took a deep breath, that little voice screaming at me to run, get out, move across the country, grow a beard, go to bartending school. I wrestled it down. I was going to stand my ground, for once. These people had hurt a woman I loved, and one who’d helped me out, and they wouldn’t stop coming after my friends just because I went away.
I blew out a long breath. ‘If you stay, then I stay.’
She nodded. ‘That’ll do.’
I held her then, gently, protectively. She squeezed me tightly, then kissed me with a fierce intensity. It was desperate, possessive, almost violent, like she needed to assert herself after all that had happened to her tonight, all the helplessness and confusion and fear.
I felt a surge of relief, a loosening of the knot in my gut. The buoyant exhilaration of a bullet dodged, a skirmish survived. Whatever I still had to face, at least Sarah wasn’t leaving me. I crushed her against me and returned her kiss. Too much emotion and adrenaline still flowed through both of us, demanding an outlet.
We made it to the bedroom, but only just.
* * * *
Afterwards, on the tangled sheets, her head on my shoulder, I lay still for a long moment, drinking in the warm, comforting exhaustion. The fact that she wanted to stay with me blunted the fear, softened the edges of danger and doubt.
I couldn’t explain why she meant so much to me. I just accepted it.
That begged the question: why did I mean enough to her that she was willing to face knives and fists and whatever else might be waiting? And not just in the abstract; she had actually felt the effects of that danger. She hadn’t even passed comment on my extraordinary age. It would come, I was sure, but her capacity to just accept me was extraordinary.
‘Hate to break the mood,’ I said, ‘but I have to ask why you seem to be taking all this in stride. Not that I’m complaining. But I didn’t expect it.’
She was quiet for a moment. ‘Because I finally want to have my cake and eat it too.’
I waited, content to enjoy the feel of her body against me as she marshaled her thoughts.
‘My family is working-class Irish,’ she said. ‘Dad was a successful contractor. My relatives, and everyone in the neighborhood, were roofers, carpenters, plumbers, one or two cops and firemen. The boys, anyway. The girls worked until they got pregnant, then raised kids and volunteered at school. Nobody I grew up with had any vision or goal beyond the house in the burbs and seeing little Timmy play baseball. They lived for the beer after work and opening day at Fenway.’
She paused. ‘I hate to sound so condescending, I really do. But I was the first one in my family to graduate college. I put myself through grad school, since none of them could see why anyone would waste money on more education when I should be finding a nice boy while I still had my looks. I got my PhD in 2004. You mention that year in my dad’s house and he’ll cry tears of joy because that’s the year the Sox finally beat the Curse of the Bambino and won the World Series. I wanted to get out of that world so badly, to meet boys who had read something deeper than the sports pages of the Herald or the pledge on the back of a Rolling Rock bottle.’
I laughed at that.
‘So I went to college. I met boys who could play the guitar and quote Byron. I was excited until I saw that their intellectualism was just a different kind of parochialism. They were only halfway men. Sure, the boys I knew from the old neighborhood spent too much time out drinking with Sully and Fitzy, punching each other in the arm and calling one another a “buncha quee-ahs”, but even if they got hammered on a Thursday, they dragged themselves to work on Friday. They were never too sick or too hurt to do anything, and if they said they’d help you move a piano on Saturday, they showed up, hungover or not. The grad students could quote Marx and Engels and talk about the plight of the worker, but they had no idea who the worker was. They couldn’t change out a light switch or check their oil or work a sixty-hour week. They were all for women’s equality and empowerment, but they still wanted a relationship on their terms, not mine. They wanted to think and talk and profess theories about how the world should be, how people should be, but they didn’t want to be those people. They were unreliable, unable to stand on their feet.’
‘So then,’ she kissed my neck, ‘you walked into my office, swaggering like Douglas Fairbanks with a bag of swords over your shoulder, and swept me off my feet. And you were educated and well read, you could cook, you listened instead of just waiting for a chance to talk. And then, when I needed rescuing, you showed up, and you were strong and terrifying and savage without hesitation. Intellectual, sensitive, but reliable and... well… masculine, I suppose. So now, at last, I want to have my cake and eat it too.’
I squeezed her shoulder. All that was flattering, but frightening in its own way. ‘That means a lot.’ I kissed her. ‘Don’t worry, I’ll get us out of this mess.’
‘You sure you want to stick around?’ she asked. ‘You’re risking more life than I am.’
‘Life’s what you make of it,’ I said, as much to my inner voice as to her, ‘and I’ve been pretty tough to kill so far. You’re in? Even seeing what could happen?’
‘I have faith in you,’ she said., ‘I saw you fight back there. You’re really terrifying when you want to be.’
I felt a tightness in my chest. I didn’t feel comfortable with so much faith placed in me. For all my military service, and some of it fairly decent service, I’d tried to avoid as much responsibility as possible. In fact, one of my most carefully honed skills was knowing when to get out of Dodge.
Sure, I survived the Alamo, but that was luck, a decent command of Spanish, a knack for fast talking and the foresight to stab an enemy about my height and steal his uniform jacket. The fact that it was pretty dark out, everybody’s face was covered in soot from firing black powder muskets, and the Mexican army’s love of big, conspicuous hats with wide, concealing bills all helped.
‘You look tense,’ she said. ‘Grab a shower, I’ll give you a backrub and we’ll figure out our next move.’
‘Sounds good,’ I admitted. ‘How are you holding up?’
‘Surprisingly well,’ she replied. ‘Better than ever. You do good work.’
I wondered at that as I walked into the bathroom. I turned on the shower, stepped inside, and let myself think as the steam rose around me. Was I sure I wanted to stay? Well, yes. OK, that was easy.
So what do I do now?
That one wasn’t so simple.
I was sure I wanted to find these bastards and make them pay. For Sarah, and for Tiffany, and for threatening my current situation, with which I was very happy. It felt strange to be planning to take on such a challenge. I’d been running so long. Sarah shamed me with her unhesitatin
g courage. Maybe I should have been chasing English professors instead of waitresses all these years.
I toweled off, pulled on a pair of flannel pajama bottoms and a robe and came out. I smelled fresh coffee. Sarah pushed a mug into my hand.
‘I put a splash of whisky in it,’ she said. ‘I know you need your caffeine, and I think we both need another drink.’
‘Thanks. You’re too good to me.’
‘I am,’ she agreed. ‘It’s my curse. Now, sit on the edge of the bed and get that robe off. I’ll see if I can’t massage some tension out of those shoulders.’
I complied readily. The laced coffee burned its way down to my stomach, the warmth of the alcohol spreading out to my limbs. Sarah sat behind me, close against my back, her knees on either side of my hips, kneading my knotted shoulders with strong hands. I groaned as she worked the sore, tense muscles.
‘Oh, that feels good.’
‘You’re very tense,’ she replied, pausing to knock back the last of her coffee. She rolled the empty mug, still warm, across my shoulders, letting the heat sink into the tissues. ‘How’s that?’
‘Oh, God, feel free to keep that up as long as you like.’
‘You know,’ she said, working away, ‘this is the first time anyone ever came to my rescue. Of course, it is kind of your fault I was in danger, but it was exciting, nonetheless.’ She leaned close and kissed my neck. ‘It means a lot to me that you decided to stay. And that you opened up. That must be tough.’
‘You believe me?’
‘Why not? I mean, how many guys can heal with a touch? And you have a skill set that includes cooking, history, literature, medicine, and stabbing thugs to death. Your story explains all of that. You sounded sincere. And why would you make that up? There has to be a more plausible lie.’
‘Fair enough,’ I conceded. ‘It feels good to talk to somebody. It’s like a weight off.’
She leaned into me, her nails sending shivers down my spine as she ran her fingers through my hair.
‘Lie down,’ she breathed in my ear, ‘I want to get your lower back.’
I did as directed, and she drove the heels of her hands deep into the muscles of my lower back and buttocks. She leaned over me as she did, I could feel her breath as she panted with the effort. Her hair hung down, brushing tantalizingly over my skin.
Out of Nowhere (The Immortal Vagabond Healer Book 1) Page 13