Outside her bedroom window, the Portland rain proved once again relentless.
Not that it mattered now. We both knew I was not going anywhere for a while. The unknown variable was how the conversation would unfold once she was well enough to discuss her future.
How she knew me, knew of me, I could not say. Raphael’s lack of information was, once again, working to my disadvantage. I would need to somehow pull these truths from her, without revealing how much I did not know.
Inexplicably, the image of her which resonated most from our earlier exchange was the pain in her eyes when she said to me… After all this time, you come back now?
IX
Gabriel sat on the edge of my bed, perched like a gargoyle. If I didn’t know better, I’d say he was meditating.
Well, maybe he should, after what he’d done. Chopping his hand off, like a damn maniac!
“How are you feeling?” he asked without looking up.
“Shouldn’t I be the one asking you that?”
“About that. I’m sorry. I saw I was losing you and needed to prove something to both of us.”
I pulled the blanket to my chin and turned to face him. His back, anyway. “And what, exactly? That you’re insane?”
Gabriel unfolded his stance and pivoted toward me. His blue eyes glowed in the moonlight flooding the room. “You’re someone very special, Autumn. Far more, even than you know.”
I snickered. “We have another word for that, where I come from.”
“I’m being very serious.”
“Okay, so let me be serious. You knew I would heal you before you did that. The Gabriel, or whatever you went by then, of my youth, would have known that. He also knew everything else there was to know about me. But this Gabriel, the one sitting on my bed, staring at me like I’m a scientific specimen, seems to only know that. Can you explain?”
The look he offered in return was first perplexed, and then slowly faded to warmth. “When was the last time you saw me? Before the accident, I mean.”
“Shouldn’t you know that?”
“My memory is not like yours. It operates outside of the usual space and time constraints you’re familiar with. Please, tell me.”
I should have been afraid. Or exhilarated. In any case, bouncing off the extremes of the emotional spectrum, looking for a safe place to land. Instead, I was intrigued. Here before me was the chance to know my guardian in a way he’d never allowed before. “You visited me all my life until you didn’t.” I paused. “The last time I saw you was the night I left New Orleans.” You kissed me goodbye with tears in your eyes.
A wall came up over Gabriel’s expression. No more reading into his facial tics. “I see.”
“You don’t remember the last time?” With a long swallow, I added, “Or you don’t remember me at all?”
“My memory isn’t linear like yours,” he said again as if that were an actual answer.
“I once asked you who you were. You wouldn’t tell me.”
“Perhaps I couldn’t,” Gabriel offered, not an answer so much as a guess.
I couldn’t wrap my brain around the idea of a non-linear memory, but even if things came to him out of order, wouldn’t I still be there, somewhere amidst the jumbled mess? “You’re telling me now,” I returned. “Today, I know your name is Gabriel.”
“Yes. A name I’ve had for some time.”
“How long is some time?”
He smiled. Said nothing.
“Okay, then. What else? You obviously know I can heal, and that doesn’t bother you or even seem to faze you in the slightest. Which means you’re either like me or someone—something—who has seen this before.”
Gabriel watched me but still said nothing.
“When you would come to me, no one but I could see you. Is that still true?”
“Yes.” He nodded. “And no.”
I sighed. “Care to explain?”
“Only those who need to see me can. No one else in your life was required to see me, so they did not. Thus, yes and no.”
I bit back a frown. “And why is it important that I need to now?”
At this, Gabriel showed the first signs of a crack in his countenance. “I can only answer as to why I’m here.”
I pulled myself to a sitting position, leaning against the brick wall where a headboard should be. “Then tell me.”
Gabriel leaned forward, his face uncomfortably close to mine yet also painfully familiar. “You are very special, Autumn. Far more, even, than you know.”
“The healing?” I laughed. “I probably shouldn’t be telling you this, but a lot of us back home can do even more.”
“Yes, there are many others like you,” he agreed. “Some who share your blood. Many who do not. That does not, in and of itself, make them special, however. Not by our ascribed standards.”
I tensed. Others were involved in this mess? “And who are we?”
“The Order. Of which I can tell you very little unless you choose to come with me.” He seemed to see I was about to throw another frustrated objection, because he added, “We are guardians of others like you, Autumn. And I do not mean others who can heal, or move items across rooms. I mean others who are like you, which is to say, indefinable by any mortal word in your language. Who you are can only be assessed by someone like me, with the experience to witness the differences.”
My head was tight, like a balloon overfilled with air, threatening to pop at any moment. “And that’s why you watched over me while I was growing up? Because you had to?” Did you pretend to love me?
“Had is a relative term,” Gabriel said after a short interval. With the hand that had only an hour ago lay severed on my kitchen table, he lifted mine. “I chose you.”
“But what does that mean?”
Tears erupted then, and I could do nothing to stop them. His words confused me more than his absence during the past three years, and the desire to beat my fists into him, or hold him in my arms and demand what he’d so easily offered and swiftly taken, were equally potent and destructive.
He pressed the hand he was holding to my face, and, his free one slid under my chin.
“It means I want you with me for all of eternity.”
X
How?
I had many questions, but that one jumped around at the top of the pyramid.
How was it Autumn had years of memories involving me when none of them had been real?
Not only memories but recollections of friendship, guardianship.
Love.
Autumn had loved me for nearly all of her natural life.
Lost me.
Mourned me.
And now, beseeching me, was falling in love with me again.
And I, her guardian, had allowed her to believe I remembered.
Had gone along with her memories as if they were also mine.
Then her memories became mine.
I want you with me for all of eternity.
Not the words I intended to say. Part of them, yes, but alone they held a far different weight than when packaged as a whole.
And I, the impenetrable angel, the stalwart holdout of the seven, had her face in my hands. Her eyes burned holes in my soul.
How, I ask?
The assessment was done, but oh, how I’d faltered on the other tenants.
Observe, but beware of intruding. I’d come into her life, confused her with memories I, as yet, did not understand.
Guide, but beware of influencing. I’d led her to believe in that which her heart wanted most. In doing so, I had devalued my purpose.
Autumn pressed me into the satin of her bed, falling over me. Her tears showered small drops across my bare chest.
“I can’t believe you’re back,” she whispered. Heaviness saturated her words, the kind which accompanied compartmentalized pain. “You’ve come back for me.”
“Autumn,” I sighed.
Protect, but beware of domination.
I tangled my hands in
her dark hair, watching as the moon caught the strands and turned them purple. Her hand snaked down between us and her head fell back as she pulled me inside her.
“You’re here,” she said again, rocking atop me to the rhythm of her own tortured memories, coming back to her in the form of atonement.
I flipped her over, no longer simply going along with the ruse to pacify her. I craved the solace of what she offered… all of her. Every last drop. Every corner. Dark and light. She was mine. Mine. Mine. Mine.
Love, but beware of attachment.
And this, the moment of joining, the completion of two souls, was the reason the seven archangels were directed never to pursue affections for our acolytes, no matter the potency. Other ways existed. To give in, the loss of ourselves was almost certain. The cost too great, after all we’d worked for. Centuries of work, lost.
Our own care left abandoned.
XI
Gabriel asked me to leave with him.
I hesitated only briefly before I said yes. I didn’t require all the answers. Maybe I should have, but I didn’t. I was unwilling to lose him again, no matter the cost.
He didn’t tell me where we were headed. Said he couldn’t, and I believed him, an understanding that kept me alive after he left me the first time. A belief in him, that was.
My only sadness was we would not be leaving right away. He wanted me to finish what I’d started in Portland. You leave no unfinished business, had been his exact words, and perhaps he saw regret in me later, but he wouldn’t allow argument on this point. I will come back for you. Finish your school. Return to your beloved home and spend time with your mother and brother. You may not ever see them again. Can you live with that?
I said yes again without hesitation. I loved him that much.
How, after all he’d done?
Anyone who had walked a day in my shoes would understand. The pale, scraggly girl with no friends and abilities that scared her to death. A child who had lost her father before ever meeting him. Lost the triplet brother in a horrendous, preventable accident when she was too far away to help. The young woman who had loved only one man… one who had given her all the things life had taken away.
Yes, you would go, too. Leave it all behind.
I don’t expect anyone to understand. Aidan wouldn’t… though he’d try. My mother most certainly would not.
Which was why, in the end, it would be easier for them to believe I’d simply vanished.
Gabriel had started a fire in the brick hearth, something I’d not done in the two years I lived there.
“I guess that works,” I joked.
“I have to go soon,” he replied without looking back. Something in his demeanor had changed. I couldn’t read him from behind.
“What is it?”
He stood, setting the poker back in the holder. He turned to look at me. His eyes were blue fire. “We shouldn’t have done that.”
My whole spirit sank. I had no words for such a terrible confession.
“But we did,” he went on. “And now there is no going back. When we’re somewhere safe, I’ll explain everything. But know that, with what we did in there, we no longer have a way to go back to the moment before it was real. Before we were real. Forgive me, Autumn, but I’ve taken the choice from you.”
“My choice?” I recoiled. “That option has always been to be with you. Always! You act like making love to me was repulsive, or a sin. I waited years to be with you and never gave up hope you would come back to me. Never!”
“I know.” Before I could register the change in the air, Gabriel’s arms were around me, his lips atop my head. “I only meant that I had a responsibility to protect you. Not only from the world, but from myself, and my own weaknesses.”
“Loving is not a weakness.”
“It is for me, Autumn. And now I’ve compromised us both.”
“So, what? You don’t want me to come with you anymore?”
Gabriel lowered his face to mine. His breath smelled sweet, like fresh honey. “The exact opposite is true, Autumn. If I were to leave you for long, I would wither away. That’s the choice I made, back in your bedroom, and it has lasting implications for both of us. We’re now a part of each other, in a way you can only begin to understand. For better or worse.”
“I can deal with anything, Gabriel. Anything, with you.”
He pressed his lips to mine, a lingering softness that stole my energy. “I will return.”
When I opened my eyes, he was gone.
XII
Could there be a future for us in the Order? It was not a matter of attempting to be covert about what we’d done. No secrets existed amongst the Seven, even secrets worth keeping.
Or so I thought.
Upon my return, I waited patiently for the day I would return to Autumn, bringing her with me, my last and final acolyte. So very much more than that now, due to a single moment of weakness.
Then Raphael returned.
Once an archangel had assembled his seven acolytes, his departure from the monastery was swift, and he did not return. Imagine my shock, then, to see him standing before me.
He held his hands in front, eyes sad. “What have you done, brother?”
“So you know?” I answered. “Well, it is done. And I will not walk away from her to prove my mettle.”
Raphael approached me slowly. “You know not what you’ve done, brother. There was a reason I did not choose Autumn for my cavalry.”
I bristled. “Oh? You left no guidance on the matter.”
He shook his head and knelt in front of me. His eyes beseeched me. His words would haunt me forever.
“It was I who visited Autumn all those many years.
“I who watched over her.
“I who guided her.
“And I who loved her.”
I started. “You? How is that possible?”
Raphael smiled sadly. “Look in the mirror, brother. We are all so much alike. Is it so strange she might mistake one for the other?”
“No,” I said, backing away. “No.”
“I walked away because I loved her. A love that crippled me and prevented me from following the tenants of the Order as I vowed to do.”
“No…”
“And now you have taken her and made her yours,” Raphael accused. His tone was less harsh than I deserved. I had let her believe it was me, myself believing perhaps she was a prophet and saw what I did not. I never imagined… never dreamed…
“Why did you not tell me?”
“To speak of it would be to enhance the sin,” he answered. “To walk away, without a trace of what I’d left, was the only way. Did I think you might see what lay within her and recruit her to your cavalry? Perhaps, yes. It’s rather hard to miss it. But I never dreamed of an ending such as this. I did not expect this deception from you.”
The shock of this revelation left me tingling from scalp to toes. It was Raphael who loved Autumn, and her in return. What I had done was not only a violation of our own tenants but of my very brotherhood.
A crime I could not ever take back.
I trembled before him. “How do I make this right?”
“Your atonement is not mine to give,” Raphael answered. He backed away from me, toward the door. “I know this only: You cannot undo what you’ve done. You cannot go back. There is only forward from here.”
“What happened between Autumn and me is not one-sided,” I said, more to myself. “I’ve never known anything like this, in all my wandering, brother. Not ever.”
“Neither had I,” he answered. Sadness hung over him. “But perhaps you are the stronger of the two of us. I could not bear the weight of forsaking my vows. You, by contrast, could not bear the weight of never having loved.”
“I do love her,” I said, true words, I believed, even before I’d consummated that love. The moment I’d laid eyes on her, the magnetic pull of Autumn Anabella Sullivan drew me into a world I’d never asked for and never known.
“I see that,” Raphael said as he approached the door. “And now you must work to be worthy of her.”
And I would.
I would bring her into my cavalry as an extension of me, for that was true, for better or worse.
Autumn. I’m coming.
Banshee has been brewing in the back of my mind for years. I had asked myself, many times, what if Adrienne wasn’t the only one to survive that car accident that made her an orphan?
Having grown up in a household that enjoyed soap operas (myself among those watching), one element I always struggled with was that dead wasn’t always dead. When your favorite met with untimely tragedy, there was a good chance they’d be back in another dozen episodes. There were no stakes. Nothing to lose. Nothing on the line.
I try to avoid that in my work. When someone dies, they are dead unless the narrative supports a compelling reason why they should not be. In Banshee, I couldn’t—and didn’t—go back and rewrite history. St. Charles at Dusk remains the story of how Adrienne Deschanel survived a tragedy and found her way back to Oz. Instead, I sought to provide another means for Giselle to live on… one that changes not only how we view that fateful night in the bayou, but the Deschanel family as a whole.
It will be up to you to decide if Giselle’s fate was a blessing or a curse.
For Charles, Cordelia, Nathalie, and Lucienne
Whose stories ended that fateful day in the bayou
I
I was eighteen when I died.
I’d been moments from throwing down a full house and winning the game with my elder sister, Nathalie, in the back seat of our family’s town car. Ah, to see the delicious frustration as I finally bested her. I’d waited the whole ride for it.
Disaster happened awfully fast. Crunch of metal. Hissing engine. Wheels spinning. The fleeting scents of fetid swamp water and sultry summer air.
Lagniappes Collection II Page 14