by Keary Taylor
The man asks how long we have been married.
Cyrus responds, smooth and perfect, that we are on our honeymoon.
It’s not at all true, but still, I blush as the man congratulates us and winks.
My heart is warm and flushed. I feel…happy. Peaceful.
As the music turns to a slower, gentler song, Cyrus wraps his arms around me once more, pulling me in for a slow dance.
I lay my head on his shoulder, placing my hand on his chest.
A little cough works its way up my throat. Only once. That’s all I let form. Despite the burn in my throat.
Cyrus’ grip on me tightens slightly. I feel his regret as if it’s a physical thing.
“If I could go back in time and reverse what I did, I would,” he says quietly. “Back to my time in that lab. My studies. I never would have done any of it. I would have stayed working in the fields, sweating, with bleeding fingers every day, so you wouldn’t have to go through this, over and over, Sevan.”
I remember those early days. The fear of what my husband had become. The confusion. And then when I was what he was. And then the painful death. Over and over.
I don’t say anything. I tuck myself tighter into his chest.
“I am eternally grateful that we have had such an extended period of time together. For all the lives and love we have shared. But I would take it all back, our kind, my immortality.” He presses his lips into my hair. “I’d undo it all for you.”
I stare at the fabric of his shirt, tracing a fingernail down it. My insides are tight. Twisted up. Because even though I forgave him a long time ago, it doesn’t take away the fact that he did it.
The pain is still there, deep down. It opens up every time the end comes. It opens up every time I am reborn.
“I am so sorry, Sevan,” he whispers. “I love you.”
His words. I know they’re true. I believe them with everything in me. So I let go of the pain. I reach up, placing my hand behind his neck and look into his eyes. “I know,” I breathe. I’m back in a dusty market, saved from a terrible man by a stranger. I’m begging my parents for permission to be with a poor man with a crazy family reputation. I’m running away in the night with the man I love and marrying him in a field beneath a tree. “I love you, too, Cyrus. Im yndmisht srtov. Even after all this time.”
He tips his head down and kisses me with the very same lips he first kissed me with over two thousand years ago. He holds me with those same hands. He’s just as solid and strong and real as the first day I met him.
He’s made a million mistakes since then. He’s lost his mind and done questionable things. He’s killed and punished and been cruel.
But I know he would do anything for me. He would go to the ends of the earth if I asked him. He’d lay down his life for mine if he could.
No one has ever loved another like I love Cyrus. Like Cyrus has loved me.
Chapter 20
I swear, these stairs are going to collapse under our weight. They creak and moan and some of them are so rotted I can see right through them.
The address Henry gave to Alivia to give to us is for what I’m guessing is an apartment above a few rundown shops in the heart of town. It’s some kind of spice shop, and the smells coming out of it are strong. Very next door to it, beneath the same apartment, is what looks to be a club.
There’s a set of wooden stairs that rises from the ground level up the side of the building. It’s sagging, and I swear, the whole thing is going to peel off the wall any second.
We wear sunshades against the growing morning light. My throat is on fire. I couldn’t stop myself this morning before we got here. I killed a woman.
I didn’t want to. But I literally couldn’t stop.
I feel full, sloshy. Filled to the brim.
But my throat still burns. Far worse than it was yesterday.
And I don’t feel good. I feel…sluggish. I’m tired. I feel like I could take a nap and not wake up for a week.
This is progressing fast.
We reach the top of the rickety stairs and Cyrus knocks on the scarred red door.
My heart is residing somewhere at the back of my throat, which makes it kind of hard to breathe. My palms are sweating. I feel half blind, because all I can focus on and think about is that door and who and what is behind it, and how this could change everything.
But no one comes to the door.
Cyrus knocks again and we wait another minute. We double-check the address on the paper, and sure it’s correct, I put my hand on the doorknob. It turns, not locked. With one look back at Cyrus, I push it open.
Cyrus immediately steps around me, and for a second, I panic.
What if this is a set up? What if Henry decided to turn against us? What if we’re about to be ambushed?
My husband’s knees are bent slightly, the tenseness in his shoulders says he’ll snap at any wrong sound. We didn’t come armed, per Henry’s request, but we’ll fight with our bare hands, if needed.
My ears strain, listening for sounds of life.
Faintly, I can hear breathing coming from a back room.
We entered into a large living room. The furnishings are minimal and worn out, but colorful and thoughtfully chosen. There’s a rudimentary kitchen along the far wall. Down the hall, I see a few doors branch off.
Silently, we slip through the living area and down the hall.
The first bedroom is empty, as is the bathroom.
But in that last bedroom, we find a figure standing at the window.
If he hears us come up behind him, he doesn’t indicate it. He stands with his back to us, and he seems to be staring outside into the growing light.
I don’t see evidence of sunshades, so maybe this isn’t Henry Conrath, because if it was, surely he’d be in pain.
With furrowed brows, Cyrus steps forward. Cautiously, he walks up around the man’s side, searching for his face. I step forward, and realize I’m holding my breath.
The man I see has nearly shoulder length hair, scruffy, but somewhat kempt. His jaw holds a week’s worth of facial growth. His clothes are clean, a suit that looks well worn.
If this is Henry Conrath, he is not what I pictured.
“Henry,” Cyrus finally says. He studies the strange man with intense focus and confusion.
There’s a view of the ocean from here, beautiful and blue. He just stares. His eyes are filled with sadness. Regret.
“You tried to stop it?” he finally says. “All of this madness taking over the world. You tried to stop it, right?”
Cyrus looks over at me. I see the frustration in his eyes. We came here for a specific purpose, and Henry is acting…odd. I don’t know the man, but I do know he’s being weird.
“Of course,” I answer his question. “We’ve lost a lot of lives trying to stop it. We’re still fighting against it. We left the battle in Dorian and Malachi’s hands to come here.”
Henry continues staring out into the daylight like it isn’t bothering him at all. He nods.
“I stayed out of the game for such a long time, stayed so removed, that I began to forget that there were any others like us out there besides myself and those who are members of my daughter’s House. And then the world explodes and now we are everywhere, coming out or being dragged out of the shadows.”
I understand that far off look in his eyes now. He’s seen something. Maybe he’s been fighting some kind of battle. I don’t know whose side he’s on, or why he took his cures from his lab in Mississippi and disappeared. But Henry has been up to things. He’s witnessed things he didn’t ever want to see happen.
“I tried to warn them,” I say. I step forward, stopping at his side, and I look out over the ocean with him. I’m only able to do so because I still wear my sunshades. “Maybe I should have done more. I should have found a way to tell every single one of them. That we’re too few. That there are so many more humans out there than there are Born or Royal or Bitten. They don’t know what it’s li
ke to be hunted.”
And now, finally, Henry looks over at me. It’s actually quite startling how much Alivia looks like him. The same exact brow. The same lips. Jaw. The serious eyes.
If Alivia looks like him, I look like him.
“You have no idea how many of us are out there now, do you?” he says.
My stomach goes cold. It spreads like a wildfire, ripping through my veins, spreading clear to my fingertips and toes.
“What do you mean?” I ask in a breath.
Henry looks at me, and the longer he looks at me, the deeper I study him, I realize.
I’ve seen this man before.
Holy shit, I’ve seen him before. More than once.
My memory falls back, back to when I was maybe seven years old. I’d been riding my bike and, distracted by one of my neighborhood friends talking to me from across the street, I didn’t see the rock in the middle of the road.
I hit it. I lost control of my bike, and a second later, I was skidding across the pavement. I’m sure the scream that came out of my lungs was impressive.
A man darted down the sidewalk. I didn’t pay attention to where he had come from. But he was there, kneeling in the road beside me, pulling a handkerchief from his pocket and dabbing at my skinned knees and palms.
“There, there,” he cooed to me, trying to calm my sobs. “It hurts now, but in a few minutes, you’re going to forget all about it and you’ll show off your battle wounds with pride.”
I looked up at him, thinking it was a strange thing to say. But it still hurt and I kept crying.
“Let’s get you home to your family, okay?” he said, offering a comforting smile.
I nodded. And I shouldn’t have trusted a stranger so much, but I wasn’t afraid of him for some reason. The man scooped me up into his arms, and I felt safe and I felt better. This stranger didn’t have to ask where I lived as he carried me straight to my house and transferred me to my father’s arms when he came to the door.
And then, my sophomore year of high school, something unexpected happened. Eli brought a friend with him to a family barbeque. He’d never done that before. But he said Henry was a friend from work, in town for a short visit.
He’d met my parents. He’d laughed with them. He’d joked lightly with Eshan. He’d talked to me about my schoolwork and what I wanted to be when I grew up.
I hadn’t recognized him from so many years ago.
I didn’t think it was important enough to store his name in my memory.
He’d been clean-shaven then. His hair had been so much shorter. He was kept and clean.
He looks so different now.
But I take in a sudden breath, realizing: this is my grandfather. And he’d checked in on me multiple times over my life, even if I had no idea who he was. But all along, I’d had family, and family friends making sure I was safe, and protected, and loved.
“You were there,” I say, the words coming out breathy and quiet. I vaguely remember him saying something before, something important. But it feels kind of far away and distant right now. “As a kid. You…you were there. I remember you now.”
There’s a spark of a smile there now on his face. It doesn’t fully form, but it tries to. “Alivia knew she could never, she would never risk exposing you to him.” His eyes flick over to Cyrus for a moment. “But she loved you. She wanted to be sure you were safe and protected. That’s why she sent Rath to watch over you. And I had to know, as well. I missed all of Alivia’s life. And I hated that I couldn’t be present in my granddaughter’s life, either.”
The Logan part of me wants to be snarky and bitter and say that if he really wanted to, it wouldn’t have been that hard to subtly make himself a part of my life, hiding who he was, just like Rath did.
But it’s too late now. It doesn’t really matter now.
I’m learning a lot about what kind of a man Henry Conrath really is.
“What did you mean?” I ask again, pushing aside nostalgia and memories. Henry said something really, really important. You have no idea how many of us are out there now, do you?
Henry blinks, looks out the window for a moment longer, and then turns away from it, going to the desk that sits against the far wall. There’s a bag atop it. He unzips it and rummages around inside. “There are so many more vampires in the world than anyone would have guessed,” he says. “A lot of them are coming out. Some are forced. There have been…displays, around the world. Proving to the world that we are real by making us go out into the sunlight and scream in agony. Or there have been fights, forced to the death, displaying their capabilities. There have been public feedings, and a whole lot of new Bitten created.”
My breathing rips in my chest, a sharp, sudden thing.
No.
No.
The world is already turning into what we feared.
“There are already legions of people lining up to be turned by Born, chomping at the bit to become one of these new creatures the world knows exists now,” Henry says as he continues rifling through his bag.
“But they’ve been outlawed,” I say, and I know it sounds stupid, but it still comes out. “Creating one is punishable by death, and has been for sixteen years now.”
“None of the old laws matter anymore,” Cyrus says. I look over at him, and he’s staring at the wall, but I know he’s not seeing the dirty and decaying surface. He’s imagining this new world.
Humans are fascinated by things that are different. We stare in morbid curiosity. We gape. We study it. Sometimes we want to be it. We want to be different, even when we so badly want to fit in.
I can imagine the allure of being turned into a Bitten. Of having another vampire drain you of most of your blood. Of getting to the point where you’re right on the verge of death. But the toxins released into your blood take hold instead. Your body changes. It doesn’t die. It evolves.
Into something stronger. Something elusive. Something a little wild and dangerous.
And I can imagine the women that will flock to the Born men. The children they’ll try to conceive. The methods and means that will instantly develop to make more Born.
The vampire population is going to explode over the next few years.
“It really is finished,” I say quietly, looking up at Cyrus and Henry. “Everything, everything we ever knew is done. It’s all going to change.”
I don’t know what Henry was looking for in that bag, but suddenly he closes it up again, coming away empty-handed. He turns, leaning against the desk and folds his arms over his chest. “The world is already a different place than it was yesterday. And it’s going to change more and more, every day, from tomorrow, and the day after that, and the day after that.”
I nod.
We always knew the ramifications of our exposure to the world would be desperate. But this…I couldn’t have even imagined it. And I haven’t even actually seen any of it yet.
The weight of this conversation is suffocating. It’s filling the air with too much…just too much.
So I’m kind of grateful for the words that next come out of Cyrus’ mouth, changing the subject.
“We need your help, Henry.”
Kind of.
Henry’s eyes flick from Cyrus’ to mine. He’s studying me, searching me over, like he can read signs of my demise off of my skin. And maybe he can. I am sweating. There were bags under my eyes this morning when I got ready to come here. Maybe he can hear my heart rate and know it’s faster than usual for me.
“It has started happening, so soon after Resurrecting?” Henry asks in saddened doubt.
“Fifty-two days,” I say. My words come out scratchy, because the burn in my throat feels so intense, even breathing feels painful.
Henry takes a step forward, and he keeps walking until he stops right in front of me, way in my personal space. He looks at me, nearly nose to nose. He looks at my skin, my eyes, my hair. I swear he’s trying to study my DNA just by looking at the surface of me.
“I
wonder why,” he muses. By the way he says it, I know he isn’t talking to me or Cyrus. He’s thinking out loud.
“Your daughter said you have a cure.” Cyrus’ words come out slightly strained, and a little urgent. He’s getting desperate, and I can feel time ticking down too, waiting for the bomb of my death to detonate.
Then how long would we have to wait before I am reborn once more? Where in the world will I wake up? How will the world look then?
Henry suddenly looks from me to Cyrus, even though we’re still standing in such close proximity. He takes a step back, pacing to the other side of the room.
“You must be truly desperate to seek me out,” Henry says. He stands in the shadows, and with the harsh light coming in through the window and the sunshades I have to wear because of it, it’s difficult to see his eyes or read his expression. “Because I know that you know why I created it.”
Beat. Beat.
The room is still for a moment, and suddenly, all these strings I hadn’t thought about pull tight, connecting.
Henry was studying Cyrus’ DNA. He was creating a cure for vampirism with it, specifically Cyrus’ kind of vampirism.
Henry and Cyrus are enemies.
Henry created a cure he thinks will work on Cyrus.
If Cyrus is human, he could be killed.
He would die.
“Yes,” Cyrus responds.
He stares at Henry. And I thought I knew the man I have loved for over two thousand years. I thought I knew his expression would be dark and penetrating.
But the look on Cyrus’ face is open and desperate.
Cyrus can hold a grudge like no one else I know. But the past is gone for him right now. Whatever has happened between the two of them, Cyrus doesn’t care anymore.
He just wants this cure.
He’s different when the Queen is alive.
I’d been told this fact by hundreds of Court members and Royals over the hundreds of years. I know the darkness Cyrus is capable of. I’ve seen it. But I know I make him a different man.
“I will do whatever you want if you will only give it to Logan,” Cyrus says. “She cannot die the death of a starving vampire if she is no longer a vampire. Maybe this…” he takes a step toward Henry, just one, and shakes his head. “Maybe this will finally break the curse, somehow.”