Love Is Mortal

by Caroline Hanson

  He lowered his gaze. “And the king…retreated. Beset by grief, he hid, and centuries passed. Then, one day, Cerdewellyn appeared. He came from the deserts; some say from a tomb in Egypt where he buried his father. But that part of the story was never quite nailed down.”

  “How do you know this?”

  “I tortured a lot of people a very long time ago. Witches. Empaths. The wolves. They all knew snippets of it. And as I killed them, I came to believe it, that all of our magic came from Cerdewellyn’s father and this realm. As the Others have perished over the centuries, Cerdewellyn’s strength has waned. Until now, when there is very little left.”

  “So if someone could find the Sard and use its magic, they would have a lot of power?”

  “Perhaps. The legends say that anything is possible with the Sard. One might have their heart’s desire. But there is a book as well. The Book of Life and Death. It has only been seen here. A thing one hears rumors of.”

  “So you need the book and the jewel?”

  She took his silence for a yes. The pieces all fell into place. Why he'd brought her here. “And what did you desire?” she asked.

  He shifted, adjusting his arms in the cuffs. “The relevant question is, where is the Sard now?”

  She couldn’t help but wonder what he had wanted all that time ago. Whatever. She needed to get over him, not discover he’d always had a hankering for Genghis Kahn’s hat or something. “Fine. Where is it now?”

  His voice was very bland. “It was turned into a necklace in the twelfth century.”

  “And then?”

  “And then it languished. It could not be used. All who came near it knew that it had great magic, could almost touch it and yet, they couldn’t access it. Everyone tried. Everyone, except Cerdewellyn of course. It is very dark in here,” he said, sounding almost whimsical.

  “Where is it?” she asked.

  He laughed, and it made his stomach muscles ripple. “You flatter me.”

  “No, I know you. You have it, where is it?”

  A sudden light filled his eyes, an animation that wiped away the casualness. “You do not know me,” he said, voice near a hiss. She took a step back, and he leaned forward, straining against the bonds. There was a calculated detachment to him, a look that said he would kill her if she came closer, that every scrap of emotion she had ever thought he might be capable of having was a lie. That evil could never be good. “If you knew me, you would kill me. If you knew me, you would not let me into your body. Would not have let yourself be used by me. You would have run away.”

  Her voice was hard. “Okay, I have terrible judgment. If I picked up a hitch-hiker, she’d turn out to be a serial killer. I get it. Don’t worry. I have learned not to trust. And if I ever get out of here, I will be sure to live by that until the end of my hopefully long and senile days. So where is the necklace?”

  He took a long, uneven breath.

  “I gave it to Marion a very long time ago.”

  “Marion is in a box.” Her stomach flipped unpleasantly.

  Lucas gave her a rakish smile. At least, that was what she’d always assumed rakish meant: a little insolent and a lot smug. “Are you not glad I let her live? If it had been up to you, she would be dead.”

  She pursed her lips. “I’m pretty sure I still want her dead.” She kind of wanted to blow chunks.

  His next words were noticeable by their blandness. As if he were trying too hard to make them sound nonchalant. “You must feed again.”

  “What?”

  He didn’t repeat himself.

  “Cerdewellyn will just take it out again.” See how I avoided using the work suck? she almost said.

  “There is no other option. That is the plan. It is very…him.”

  “You don’t sound impressed.”

  His muscles flexed as though he was shrugging, but he was so immobilized it was hard to tell. “Cerdewellyn is not direct. Even now, he behaves surreptitiously. Weakening me in the shadows. He sends you to make me weak. A great villain does not act timidly.

  She swallowed hard, stuck on one thing he had said. “Do I make you weak?”

  “Come and feed. Then go. Find Cerdewellyn, attempt to attack him.”

  She nodded. “This has a certain Groundhog Day quality to it.”

  He looked at her blankly.

  “That’s the Lucas I know. Inscrutable and out of touch with pop culture,” Valerie muttered.

  “Yes. It is one of my better attributes.”

  “You mean compared to the bloodshed and plotting for world domination?” she said, sarcastically.

  For a moment, he looked sad, then his expression cleared, and he was his cold, distant self. “Do not be a fool for me, Valerie Dearborn. It is one of my better attributes, because my personality is one of death and violence. Soulless. You keep trying to forget it.”

  “No, I don’t.” Yes, I do. “Okay. Maybe you’re right. I do get that you’ve done bad things and that you are evil, but—”

  His voice was loud, angry, and he leaned forward, making sure she caught a flash of fang as he growled the words at her. “You do not get it. I know you will come back for me. I see it in you, Valerie. You are not the first girl to become enamored of me. I have bedded more women than you can count. And you still look to me with hope that you are different. You are so desperate to believe that I protect you because you are special. Because you have reached my dead, black heart. It makes you a fool. Cerdewellyn uses us both. Take my strength and try to leave. You do it again and again until you succeed—or he does. That is the end. There is no plan where we leave together, no happily ever after. You and I have no future beyond your death or mine. You keep seeking to redeem me. You keep looking and hoping. Painting me in emotions I do not have, nor can have.”

  That was the last straw. She was sick of his bullshit. “You know what? You go to a lot of trouble to reassure me how evil you are. And yet, here I am, and you keep offering to feed me. If you’re so evil, then shouldn’t you just snack on me instead of warning me away? You’re a contradiction wrapped in a hot package. But I’m onto you now.” She stood up shakily and went towards him. She saw his eyes widen in surprise, and then his jaw hardened, and she knew he was trying to get his shit together, keep his emotions to himself.

  She went forward and wrapped her arms around him, holding tight to him in a moment of desperate weakness, a piece of debris in the middle of the ocean. Valerie reached out to him mentally, trying to touch his emotions and see what he was really feeling. His words said one thing, his actions and body language something entirely different. But she didn’t have to take him at face value anymore. He was chained up, weak, and emotional as all get-out. She could touch him, and know what was truth and what was a lie.

  Inside, Lucas was like a hurricane, churning up everything, all of his emotions whipping through him. But there was a calmness in the middle, the small eye of the storm where he knew what he felt with certainty. She focused on that part of him, wanting to know what he really felt.

  He was filled with grief.

  His voice startled her. “Get off me.”

  “No,” she said, and tears filled her eyes. He drew in a breath that was ragged, and she wondered if he was crying. If she looked up, would she see the real him?

  “There is no real me. You think to be my savior? Hope that you are different from anyone else?” A pause, she heard him swallow. His body relaxed, and he took a shaky breath. Calmness went through him, tinged with resignation. “I know where this leads.”

  She felt his body relax, as though he were done with pushing her away. His tone was low, barely more than a whisper, and she felt like what she had in this moment was the real Lucas. The one she’d hoped for, but only imagined. She listened hard, wanting to memorize every word, so she wouldn’t forget. “I have cared, Valerie. I have cared, and I have tried, and it always ends in death. Sometimes I fear I will never die. The world will end, and I will still be here. It scares me. As much as it c
an, it scares me.”

  She rubbed her cheek against the smooth skin of his chest. Was this was what crash survivors felt like? She just wanted some human contact before the end. He rested his cheek on top of her head. If he could hold her, he would. Right now, he seemed vulnerable enough that he would.

  He spoke very quietly, like a small boy confessing his sins. “How cursed am I that I can cause so much pain and death and yet live on? What sort of demon is hated by the heavens so much that he never gets his due?”

  She held him tighter. She could feel the pain coming from him. The misery. His self-loathing.

  Lucas laughed. A hard sound. Maybe the worst sound she’d ever heard—worse than fingernails on a chalkboard, worse than Marion screaming before she’d been put in that box. Maybe worse than the sound of her mother when she….No.

  “If I am not evil, what am I? There is no devil inside of me. Nothing to exorcise or pray for. I am a fluke. A cosmic affliction. Something perverse and dreaded. Get off me.”

  She took a step back. His voice was seductive, with a hint of a blade underneath it all. “I make you come. That is the hold I have over you. And that is not real. It is not a man and a woman it is one monster to another. It is power coursing between us, pleasure and control. That is not a pure desire or love. It is lust. Consumption. Danger. That is what you want from me.”

  “And you don’t want to give me that much. Do you?”

  “No. I cannot. My time here is done, Valkyrie. I will continue to feed you, and try to protect you, for as long as I can, but the day will come where he will break me, or he will kill me and…that is right.”

  She drew back, looking at him through a haze of tears. “So you’ve given up?”

  “I gave up long ago. Drink from me and leave. My anger did not sway you; my evilness is something you brush aside, so let me show you the worth of my affection. What happens to those that I love. Then perhaps you will finally let me go.”

  “I don't understand."

  “My memories. I will let you see them as you drink from me. And then…then you will be happy to see me dead.”

  What would he show her that he knew would make her not love him? And oh, she didn’t want to see it. She wanted to stay here, hold him, and pretend he could be other than he was. She wanted to be the ostrich.

  With a last look, as though she knew things would be forever altered after she saw his memories, she brought the knife to his neck, nicking him lightly. The taste was immaterial, the idea that blood was gross was irrelevant. She was too deep into him now, into the end of them to care that his blood was disgusting.

  She leaned in and drank.

  *****

  “And when you wake up your mama will be here. We will do something fun. Go to the ocean. Shall I tell you of the ocean?”

  Margaret's cornflower blue eyes were dull, struggling to stay open, and he knew the end was close. He would talk for a little longer and then...He knew what would happen then. He heard Marion screaming in the hallway, demanding to be let in, to see her little girl, swearing she would kill Lucas if he did not open the door this instant.

  Margaret would slide away. Into the everafter. To another world in the sky, and he would still be here. Another beloved child whom he would outlive.

  Was this his punishment, Lucas wondered, to see the end come for an innocent while he continued on? Healthy and evil. And one day he would not remember her: the little bow shape of her lips, how she could go from smiles to tears in an instant over the slightest thing. But she was little. And that was what little girls did.

  He wished he did not know that.

  Grief made it hard to swallow, even to speak.

  He would forget her. He longed for it and dreaded it. Any moment now she would die, and who would remember her pure innocence, but two monsters forgotten by the devil? Although she was not his flesh and blood, she was still his. A child he would forget.

  “I will remember you,” he said, vowing it. Lucas was ashamed to realize he had said it aloud. Her eyes focused on him, trust shining through the pain. She loved him because she did not understand evil.

  She thought he was good. Her savior. The father she had never had. Was it wrong to let her die when he could save her? When, even now, Marion’s desperate shrieking demanded he save her?

  He would let her die rather than become like them.

  Again.

  Just like his children centuries ago. History repeating itself. He was making the same decision. Was it wrong? Was this villainy or kindness to let her go when he could make her open her eyes again?

  He leaned down and kissed her on the forehead. Margaret’s hand squeezed his. “The sun is out,” she said weakly.

  It was bright outside. So bright that the world should be embarrassed. As if a god or the gods or nothing were happy that a child was dying. It was a torment to know that great tragedy could come, and yet the sun could shine. The world would not be affected by this small death.

  Lucas blinked away tears, and found Margaret staring at his hair. Her hand lifted, touched it, her fingers sliding through the heavy mass. “It looks like the sun. Mama won’t stop crying. Why?”

  “She wants you to get better,” he said.

  “Have you told her what you are? She would not cry if she knew.”

  He froze—heart, limbs, emotions, everything. “What? What am I?” She couldn’t know.

  “An angel. You came here for me, didn’t you? To take me away. And that is all right, because you will stay with her, won’t you?”

  Even now he could not be better than what he was. So he lied to her. “You will be fine. You will stay with your mother and I.”

  “I don’t want to leave mama and you. Where will I go?” she asked, voice trembling. Lucas almost took his own dagger and stabbed himself through the heart. As if he knew or could tell her.

  “You will stay here with us.” But they both knew it was a lie. He felt incapable of saying it with conviction. Should he compel her? Was that a kind thing to do? She knew she would die. The sores that covered her flesh looked like the ones that covered the dead bodies heaped in a pile by the side of the road as they had fled Blackfriars. She had clung to him, and he had pressed her head against his shoulder, so she would not see. Would not smell the death. But she had seen it, taken the rot inside of herself, and even though he wanted to shelter her, she recognized her own death marks on her soft skin.

  And again, the question was there, like a ghost knocking on the door, pounding through him to the beat of his own heart. Should he save her? Should he change her?

  But he couldn’t do that to this little girl any more than he could have changed his own. Damn her soul for all eternity. Make her life one of blood and death. Take away the sun and friends. There was no greater curse than immortality. She would never grow up, never have a family, a young man to love. If he changed her, she would stay a child. Stunted and dark.

  No, if he loved her, he would let her go. And yet, somehow that seemed impossible; that death could ever be the right answer.

  “The ocean is blue. The pond outside is dark and green. But the ocean is blue with white tips. Water rushes outward to meet you and tickle your feet. Then it pulls away, wanting you to chase it. When I was a boy…we played chase with the ocean. But it was very cold, and our feet would lose all feeling from how cold it was.” Maybe he should walk into the ocean and let it cover him too. Make him numb, take him away. “The ocean is also loud. The water makes a noise as it beats against the rocks and the shore. If we had a boat, we could sail into the ocean for days, weeks, even months and see nothing, but a vast land of blue water.”

  “Where does it lead?”

  What should he say? “It goes…” He had to get it right. It was important. What would his daughter have wanted to hear? “It goes to heaven. You sail on it; you keep going and going. And then you reach heaven.”

  He could hear the relief in her voice. “That is where you will take me.”

  He nodded
clumsily, thought he could hear God laughing at him. “It is.”

  “You will come see me. Angels always come to heaven, don’t they?”

  “Of course I will. I can’t think of anything I want more than to see you…” he stopped. Choked on the feelings. The nightmare shoved in his throat. “Of course I will see you. I will stay with you. Your mother and I will get a boat and come find you.”

  She smiled. And that was how she died. With a small smile, listening to his promise that he would find her. That what he wanted was to be with her. A final lie. For he couldn’t be with her. Not a devil like him. He could sail the seas until the day he died, for a hundred years, maybe a million. The sails would shred to nothing, the boat rot away beneath him, and still he wouldn’t find her.

  Not someone damned like him.

  He opened the door, and Marion stopped screaming. Her eyes were wild, and whatever she saw on his face was enough. Marion screamed, and she flew at Lucas, fingers raised like claws, scratching down the side of his face. He let her hit him, made himself touchable, vulnerable, and felt her fingers dig into his skin and shred it.

  A small punishment. Something he deserved. He felt the marks healing already. Too soon.