Eternal

by H. G. Nadel

  “Instinct,” was the cold reply.

  Suddenly, the locked door flew open, and someone pointed both a flashlight and a gun around the room. Nadia squinted into the light. “Is that you, Pierre? You always did like to make an entrance. I suggest dropping your gun, as mine already has a target—one that I think is important to you.”

  The flashlight and gun lowered, revealing Austin’s stricken face, which was focused on Julia. Jack walked up behind Austin and pulled the gun from his limp hand while pressing his own gun to his friend’s neck.

  Austin looked bewildered. “Jack? What are you doing? What’s going on?”

  “Our friends aren’t themselves anymore,” Julia said simply. Austin’s darkening face revealed that her meaning had registered.

  Nadia laughed, and the sound held some of her old seductive flirtation.

  Jack tossed Austin’s gun into a large black duffle with green piping in the corner. Bertel’s old tool bag.

  “Take his Taser too,” Nadia said.

  Jack obliged. He pulled a set of handcuffs out of the duffle and proceeded to handcuff Austin’s wrist to an old radiator. Then he took another set of handcuffs from his belt and cuffed Austin’s other wrist to a nearby pole, so that his arms were stretched to their limit. “Make a noise and she’s dead,” Jack intoned.

  “Who are you?” Austin asked.

  “We weren’t properly introduced in the past, but, as you may recall, I once cut away your sin and helped make way for your life of godly devotion.”

  “Tibaut,” Austin said in a barely audible whisper.

  Jack took a bow and snarled a smile. “I guess you remember, after all.”

  Nadia stepped closer to Austin, gun still trained on Julia’s neck, the light of the bonfire outside casting dark shadows across her face. “You’ll remember me, as well. You were my tutor in England.”

  Austin only stared at her, uncomprehending.

  “In the royal court?”

  He shook his head almost imperceptibly.

  “I’m your Genevieve.”

  Austin looked even more bewildered.

  Nadia looked aghast but regained her composure quickly. “My, that’s not very flattering, is it? You don’t remember your beloved Genevieve, the one you betrayed for this … this provincial little princess who thinks she’s so smart.”

  Austin looked into Julia’s eyes, but neither of them said a word. Fate seemed determined to repeat itself. Without a word, they both understood that this might be the last time they would see each other alive. They stared steady and long, not wanting to look away.

  Austin was the first to break their gaze. “Just kill me this time,” he said to Jack, “There’s no need to go through all that symbolism again. I haven’t touched her. “

  “Not my concern,” Jack said.

  “I have money,” Austin said.

  “Money?” Jack laughed. “Sure, I’ll kill you for your money, after I castrate you for his.” He thrust a thumb in Bertel’s direction. Then he stepped over to the duffle bag, reached in, and pulled out a pair of industrial shears. He held them up and grinned. “Would you look at what I found.”

  Austin looked away. He turned to Bertel, and then to Julia. “Fulbert?”

  She nodded.

  He turned back to Bertel. “You can do what you want to me, Fulbert. But let your niece go. She’s done nothing. Don’t commit an unpardonable sin and kill your own flesh and blood.”

  “There’s no blood between Heloise and myself anymore,” Bertel said, slowly. “Many years have passed. Many lifetimes.”

  “Many lifetimes,” Julia echoed. Tears welled in her eyes. “Isn’t it time to forgive and forget? I can, Uncle Fulbert. It’s time to let go.”

  Bertel’s face remained motionless, but his eyes softened. Finally, his shoulders sagged in defeat. “You’re right,” he said softly. “I can’t kill my Heloise. My darling girl, I’ve loved you for a thousand years.” He turned to Jack and Nadia. “Tibaut and Genevieve, we have a change of plans. Heloise will remain with me. Genevieve, you finally have the man of your dreams. Do what you want with him. Just make sure you leave no loose ends.”

  “No pun intended,” Jack said, twirling the thick shears by the handle.

  Genevieve gave Bertel a look of disgust. “You always were weak.” Then she turned to Austin. “Too bad you won’t ever get to spoil the petals of Fulbert’s precious little virgin flower.”

  Jack chuckled as he opened and closed the scissors. “Ouch!” he said, and pressed a hand to his lips.

  “Jack, get ahold of yourself,” Austin pleaded. “This isn’t you.”

  Jack’s eye twitched and then went blank for a second or two. He lowered the scissors and stared at them, puzzled. Then he shook his head like a dog shaking off excess water after a jump into a pool and moved toward Austin.

  “We’ll need to tie his legs too,” Nadia said. She pulled a length of rope from the duffle bag and swung it back and forth as she moved toward Austin, clearly enjoying every second of her long-awaited revenge.

  Julia thought quickly—her scientist’s brain trying to analyze the whole situation and break it down into some sort of empirical data she could quantify. Bertel and Jack had, for a fleeting moment, returned to themselves during their possessions. Yet Nadia had yet to show a sign of faltering: she seemed to be completely Genevieve. Was Nadia more susceptible because she was a woman? Because she was younger? Whatever the case, Bertel and Jack seemed to be fighting Fulbert and Tibaut, but Nadia wasn’t fighting Genevieve. So Julia decided to focus her attention on her old nemesis—in the body of her best friend.

  “Let him go, Genevieve!” Julia pleaded.

  “Do you now recognize me?” Nadia asked.

  “I made a terrible mistake. Pierre was clearly destined to be with you, to love you. I was the distraction. But I’m no longer Heloise. That life is dead to me now. I have no interest in your Pierre anymore. If you want him, take him. I won’t get in your way. There’s no need to kill him. But if you do kill him, you’ll have an entire police department after you. Now that you’re here, doesn’t it feel good to be alive? Wouldn’t you like a chance to experience love with the man you’ve dreamed of for so long? Maybe party with the kids on the beach? I mean, look at you. You’re sexy. You’re smart. Your whole life is ahead of you. Why have the police on your tail?”

  “Very clever, but it won’t work,” Nadia said. “I see how you two look at each other. He’s not mine—never was, never will be. But if I can’t have him, why should you?”

  Julia narrowed her eyes, dropping the charade. “This isn’t about competition, Genevieve. It’s about the fact that you’re trash. Pierre saw it then, and Austin sees it now.”

  Genevieve ran at Julia and hit her across the only part of her face that hadn’t yet been bruised in the night’s festivities. She then saw the blood on Julia’s hip and gave it a vicious kick. Julia moaned in pain. Austin struggled against his restraints. Nadia tossed the rope to Jack. “Tie his feet!” she barked.

  Jack picked up Austin’s Taser from the desk and zapped the man who was once his friend. When Austin was immobilized, Jack tied his legs together. Nadia then pulled a hunting knife out of the big black duffel bag.

  “You see, Heloise,” Nadia monologued, “I can have my cake and eat it too. I will have Pierre, but he’ll be my servant, not my lover. I can have all the men I want in this body. And I’m not worried about his friends at the police department. Fulbert and I can use your technique to turn them into much more cooperative men.”

  Jack shrieked with laughter.

  With all eyes on Nadia, Julia pushed herself up from the chair and surged toward her nemesis in a desperate move, swinging her handcuffed fists across the bridge of Nadia’s nose with all the strength she could muster. She felt bone shift under her hands and heard a loud crunch. Nadia yelped and clutched her broken nose, dropping the knife. The knife seemed to fly into Julia’s palms, as she gripped it awkwardly with her fingers.
r />   Austin took advantage of the moment. He lifted his bound feet and kicked Jack squarely in the face. Jack fell backward but then bounced back up and lunged at Austin. Julia seized the black duffel bag and, with a sigh of relief, found what she was looking for. She quickly exchanged the knife for her Super Taser. She placed the Taser at the back of Jack’s neck and pulled the trigger. He collapsed onto the floor. Julia ran to her shoulder bag, which had been thrown in the corner of the room, and pulled out an inhaler that she had modified in her father’s lab. She ran to Jack, who was lying on the floor, his mouth working like a beached fish drowning in the air. She sprayed a new PCP cocktail directly into his gaping mouth, then tased him again. Then she grabbed the keys swinging from his belt and released her wrists from their shackles. She threw the keys down next to him.

  Julia turned toward Nadia, who was slumped on the floor, clutching her nose, and coughing in great choking burbles. Her usually petite nose was tilted to the left—swollen and bleeding. Before Julia could reach her, Nadia scrambled to the black bag, grabbed a wicked looking semi-automatic, and started to run out the door. Austin had worked one foot out of its restraints and tripped Nadia, sending her sprawling. Nadia dropped the gun, which clattered on the floor next to Bertel. Bertel picked up the gun and stared at it for a second. He pointed it from Genevieve to Julia and back again, as if uncertain whose side he was on.

  “Look out, Fulbert!” Nadia said.

  Bertel pointed the gun at Julia, who was aiming her Super Taser toward him. She lowered her arm.

  Jack began to moan. He put a hand on either side of his head, like someone with a migraine. “Austin?”

  Julia’s heart leaped into her throat. It worked! she thought, triumphantly.

  But her satisfaction was fleeting. Nadia looked at Jack with new contempt, grabbed the keys from the floor, and unlocked Austin’s handcuffs. Austin stood slowly, his eyes on Bertel and the gun, waiting for his chance. But Nadia grabbed the knife from the desk, making Julia regret that she’d traded it for the inhaler. Then Nadia stepped behind Austin, wrapped an arm around his chest, and pressed the blade to his back. “Come with me, or Fulbert will shoot Heloise.”

  Austin looked from Bertel to Julia. “You won’t kill her. You love her.”

  Bertel kept the gun pointed at Julia’s face. His jaw was clenched, which belied a hint of softness in his eyes. “That was a long time ago. And she never loved me. One little bullet won’t change that, either way.”

  Nadia pushed Austin outside. Julia hoped that once they were outside, he might escape. He was a cop trained in self-defense, after all—surely he could escape from a woman with a knife. But then she realized that as long as Bertel had her, Austin would never try anything risky. No, she thought dejectedly, this is far from over.

  The music drifting in from outside seemed to grow louder, the firelight redder.

  Jack jumped up and staggered after his partner. Julia thought Bertel might fire at him, which would give her a chance to make a run for it. But he kept the barrel aimed at her and smiled grimly. “There are few pleasures left to me, but I think keeping you from what you want most may be my greatest.”

  “They’re gone now,” Julia said. “It’s over. You’ve won, Uncle.”

  “I hope you realize how true that is,” he said. “Marry me, and you can live. Otherwise, well, we will end it here, now.”

  Julia searched the face of Caleb Bertel. His eyes were hard, determined, but wounded, as well. She sighed, resigned. Then she stepped back and smiled. “I’d say marriage to my friend Dr. Bertel is preferable to death, wouldn’t you?” She approached him slowly, stood on her tiptoes, and pressed her lips to his. As their mouths parted, she felt a thousand years of hurt, pride, and longing give way to vulnerability. And in that moment, Bertel’s soul fought back.

  Bertel released himself from the kiss and, in an instant, grabbed the Taser from the floor and turned it on himself. With a giant jolt of electricity, Dr. Caleb Bertel fell to the floor, motionless. Julia picked up the inhaler from the floor. She sprayed it into Bertel’s mouth, then tased Bertel again. Julia watched Bertel’s body jolt fiercely again, then lie still.

  Julia crouched over Bertel, searching frantically for a pulse. It was faint, but it was still there. She breathed a sigh of relief and crumpled into a ball of exhaustion.

  TWENTY-SEVEN

  Julia heard the doorknob turn. She aimed her Super Taser in the direction of the office door. The door flew open, and Jack burst into the room.

  “I lost Austin and that psycho woman!” he said.

  She continued to point the Super Taser at him, not daring to believe her drug cocktail was truly successful. “Did you see which direction their metal carriage went?”

  “Their what? Are you okay, Julia?” Jack couldn’t have looked more confused.

  She lowered her weapon. “Sorry, I just needed to be sure.”

  “Sure of what? What the hell’s going on?” He looked at Bertel’s body. “Is he—”

  She shook her head. “He’s just unconscious. What’s the last thing you remember?”

  “I was following you to that church, when I saw him crossing an intersection.” He nodded at Bertel. “I pulled over, got out, and followed Bertel into an alley.”

  “It wasn’t Bertel.”

  “I’m sure it was him.”

  “No, what I mean is, for a while he wasn’t himself. He wasn’t Bertel.”

  “What, you mean that’s not his real identity?”

  Julia sighed. “Never mind. So you don’t remember anything since the alley.”

  Jack looked puzzled. “That’s the weird thing. I do, but I don’t. It’s like I was floating around watching myself in a dream. Only it wasn’t me. It was someone else in my body, acting psychotic, like that girl. In this dream, I kidnapped you. None of it makes sense, and I remember only bits and pieces. Maybe Bertel drugged me, gave me some sort of hallucinogen.”

  “You could say that.”

  “You know what he gave me?”

  “It’s a long story.”

  “No time for long stories. I need to find Austin. I put out a BOLO on the woman’s license plate, but by the time anyone spots her it could be too late. That woman was screaming Fatal Attraction B.S. at him: ‘You can live or die. Be my lover or my slave,’ weird stuff like that.”

  Bertel started to stir, moaning. He opened his eyes.

  “Julia?”

  “Dr. Bertel! Can you sit up?” She helped him to a seated position.

  He winced. “I’m a little dizzy.” He turned to the side and, without warning, threw up on the parquet floor. He wiped his hand across his lips and turned back to Julia. “I’m so sorry.”

  “You couldn’t help it.”

  “I’m not talking about throwing up.”

  “I know.”

  “I could see everything, Julia, but I couldn’t get control.”

  “Dr. Bertel, it wasn’t your fault. You were trapped.”

  “What the—?” Jack said in disbelief. “Okay everyone, can we come back to Planet Earth for a minute and talk about what happened to Austin and Single

  White Female?”

  Dr. Bertel gripped Julia’s arm. “Nadia told me—I mean she told Fulbert, but she thought it was me—that she had a favorite place on the beach. Do you think she might have put the thought in Genevieve’s head?”

  Julia leaped to her feet. “The pier! That makes sense. Nadia always was pushy, so let’s just hope she’s still in there somewhere calling the shots. Jack, let’s go!”

  Bertel pulled himself up on wobbly legs. “Let me come. I spent a lot of time in Fulbert’s weird little netherworld, and I might be able to help.”

  “Fulbert?” Jack said, his gaze turning inward. “That sounds familiar.”

  “No time,” Julia said. “We need to go.”

  “Okay, right!” Jack started to lead them out the door, then stopped and leaned over to mutter in Julia’s ear. “Just one problem: do you remember where I
parked my car?”

  Since Julia was the only one in their trio who hadn’t had a demonic soul bounced out of their pineal gland that day, she drove. It wasn’t unusual for her to be chasing down Nadia in the wee hours. Nadia was a little too fond of partying and often found herself in hot water as a result. The fact that it was really Genevieve who was in control and not Nadia was of little comfort. Nadia was still out there somewhere; and if Julia couldn’t find her, there would be no coming back. She would never see her friend again.

  Not long ago they’d been hanging out at Nadia’s apartment, shopping bags strewn everywhere, while Nadia put on a fashion show. She’d posed and preened in front of her mirror, modeling a paisley silk blouse, leather skirt, and lace-up boots she’d bought for a hot date. Giving her own reflection a seductive smile, she’d said, “To die for.”

  “Love yourself much?” Julia grinned.

  “Hey, don’t knock self-love. It takes a lot of turned-down cheesecake and pumped-up Pilates to look like this.”

  Nadia had always been the more confident of the two of them. And Julia was certain her friend wouldn’t give up her hard-earned body to evil without a serious

  The pier wasn’t far, but when they stopped at a red light, the car’s engine wheezed, sputtered, and died. Julia tried to start it again, but none of her repeated attempts worked. She looked at the gas gauge. Empty.

  “No!” She gripped the steering wheel and shook herself.

  “I’m sure I filled it,” Jack said.

  “I think Fulbert had someone siphon it,” Bertel said. “Just in case.”

  “Just in case of what?” Jack said.

  “We’ll have to hoof it from here!” Julia said. “Come on!”

  As she opened her door, a motorcycle pulled alongside her. “Julia, is that you?” said a familiar voice. The girl with her arms wrapped around this week’s boyfriend was Kate. Kate leapt off the bike and ran to her bloodied friend.

  “Are you alright?” she asked Julia, mouth agape. She spared an odd look for Jack and Dr. Bertel as they emerged from the small car, unsteady on their feet. Dr. Bertel promptly fell to the ground, and Jack leaned against the car for support. “More to the point, are your friends alright?”