Chasing Embers

by James Bennet

  All of which begged the question: who? The jagged mouth grew wider now. What was it about that maw that he couldn’t see? No explosions. No melted glass. No fucking clue. Eclipsing this was his niggling shame at his exit from the bridge. It wasn’t in his nature to run, but if escape meant that he got to warn Rose and live to pursue the mystery further, then he’d push his pride to one side. And of course, he would get to see her again, even if it was for the last time…

  These hopes followed Ben down into Brooklyn.

  Vinegar Hill. Six blocks of Federal architecture huddled along the East River, a district wedged between the Brooklyn Navy Yard and the Manhattan Bridge. By day, a latticework shadow bled across the district, and by night, a necklace of bulbs in the sky. Factories, vacant lots and warehouses dotted the antique charm, flaking graffiti and dented road signs, mixing the neighbourhood’s small-town feel with a declining modernity. A power plant thrust derelict smokestacks above the cobblestoned streets, rust-ringed fingers supporting the dark. Neon blazed from liquor stores and boutique windows. Music lilted drunkenly from bars, joined by the blare of Hudson foghorns and the round-the-clock growl of traffic. Litter jigged past fire hydrants and along sidewalks, where restaurants shone in intimate gold, roast chicken and charred vegetables mingling with the river’s brackish tang, garbage, oil and fish.

  Trees brushed against the brick façade of the familiar Gold Street warehouse, the building converted into apartments. The five-storey structure looked east over Wallabout Bay and yet another bridge, the scattered shores of New York stitched together by steel and ingenuity. The Towers apartment block was like all the others in the area, offering the boon of rent control and a short commute to the island. The only thing that made it different was the woman who lived here.

  Rose McBriar, the daughter of a fourth-generation Irish immigrant, worked part-time as a waitress downtown, surviving in the city on a scholarship and tips. Last summer, Ben’s generosity had secured the place on Gold Street, a fair-sized penthouse that was way beyond her means. Before they met, Rose, a grad-school English student, had been living on the cramped campus of Long Island University, but as their relationship had grown more serious, Ben had wanted to support her, provide them with a space of their own. Deaf to her protests, he’d dipped into his ample funds and bought the apartment. In the end, she’d only accepted the place on Gold Street because her digs over on Rockwell Place had been a goldfish bowl and Ben was no fan of strangers. For a year, Gold Street had been his home too, a beautiful blink in the long gaze of history. It hurt to come back here, but the thought of Rose in danger hurt more.

  The roof garden was handy, if small. Plant pots leapt and ornaments dived as Ben clumsily alighted. His hind legs, each the size and thickness of a tree trunk, made short work of the flower beds, roses and tulips spewing petals in the air. His forearms, the muscles like rope around a ship’s capstan, ended in three splayed claws that scraped across the wooden decking, the planks splintering under his weight. A spade crumpled as if it was tin foil. A trellis crashed over, shrubs flooding the garden table, sending a half-finished bottle of wine into a terminal somersault. Fairy lights flickered through the dust. The surrounding balcony shuddered and shook, an invisible train rattling past, a section of railing twisting. A clothes line snapped, damp lingerie, bedclothes and towels trailing in the scattered soil. Under a billowing sheet, Ben’s body bubbled and warped, lessening the load on the building. Great wings beat at the air, and then rustled inward like collapsing tents. Pink skin flooded in, covering his ruddy scales, moulding his quivering mass back into human form. His arrow-tipped tail whipped back and forth, smashing panes in the little greenhouse even as the long appendage thinned and shrank, coiling up into his spine. His horned snout crumpled, melting back into anthropoid guise. Josh Homme on steroids. Right. The embers in his eyes winked out, extinguished by the transformation, replaced by anxious glimmers of green.

  In this fanfare of destruction, blasting petals, crushed pots and whirling dust, Ben stepped, completely naked – clothes could not survive the change – from the large sheet pooled around his feet. He did this just as the door to the roof flew open and Rose McBriar, a shocked blonde blur, came stumbling out into the wreckage.

  “What the—”

  She froze when she saw him, confusion elbowing shock out the way. In one hand she clutched a bottle – clearly the noise had interrupted her drinking, and he didn’t register the fact at first, the oddness of the booze, this dent in her usual sobriety. At the sight of him, she held the bottle up like a club, red wine dribbling down her arm. Rioja wasn’t much of a threat. Her gaze skipped over his newly formed muscles, pointedly avoiding the one at his groin. Her eyes caught and mirrored his scars; even healed wounds left their mark, and his memory of himself, this costume he wore, carried his past as a matter of course. Rose shook the bottle, the threat already growing feeble. Her other hand gripped the hem of her dress, bunching the washed-out floral pattern. Her ponytail was a pendulum, swinging back and forth. Too many late nights had darkened the skin around her eyes, visibly twanging her nerves. She blinked hard, her wintry gaze, like pale blue stones, returning to his face. Slowly, she lowered the bottle, her slightly pointed, elfin features trying to master her confusion.

  “Ben?”

  “Hello, Rose.”

  “What are you…How did you get up here?”

  He pointed feebly. “The fire escape.”

  “So you thought you’d come up here and trash the place?”

  “Not exactly. It was an accident.”

  “But…you’re naked.”

  He looked down at himself. “You never did miss much.”

  This reference to her past suspicions was absolutely the wrong thing to say. His sarcasm worked like an acid, dissolving her shock, and a frown crawled over her forehead, impatience pursing her lips. All the same, he thought she was pleased to see him. You didn’t get to eight hundred and sixty years old without knowing a thing or two.

  “I’m going to call the cops,” she said.

  OK, maybe you did.

  “Don’t. I didn’t come down here to give you grief. I mean, the garden…” He flapped a hand vaguely about him. “It’s…it’s a Central Park thing…”

  She raised an eyebrow at that.

  “There’s something I should have told you.”

  The eyebrow came down, felled by annoyance. “No shit.”

  At least she seemed prepared to listen, for however brief a time. The ghost of the obelisk in Central Park still haunted her eyes, a memory of a snowy day two months ago, a day that wasn’t Valentine’s Day and wasn’t their first anniversary, but had been pretty close to both. He guessed his admission kept her from running for the phone, anyway. That and maybe something else. Call it curiosity. Call it lingering affection. He didn’t dare to hope. Christ, it was good to see her again. Ignored calls, unanswered door, wrecked garden aside, it was definitely good. The centuries had held a fair share of lovers – some chained to posts, others not – but Rose was surely his favourite damsel. Why? The poetic version: she was a gem, her clear facets reflecting his soul. The truth: she was a gem he couldn’t quite own…Emotion fanned the coals of his heart, sparking memories and warmth. He couldn’t let their flames distract him. Right now, her suspicions stood like a knight before her, guarding the bridge to the chance of forgiveness. Ben reached out to grab her doubts by the gorget.

  “That night, before I left. I never really explained.”

  “No. You didn’t.” She looked so tired. So thin. “Do you remember what you said to me? In the bar. Do you remember what you said?”

  He did remember. He didn’t want to, but he did.

  “Rose, look—”

  “Ben, you better start talking.”

  Where to start? There seemed so much to tell her, none of which she would like. He’d always laughed them off in the past, these little mundane incidents betraying the mythical truth. Like the morning he’d been cooking her breakfast and
the frying pan had flared up in the kitchen, a fiery pillar engulfing his arms. When Rose came rushing to his aid, she peeled back his charred shirtsleeves to find his flesh untouched by burns. It happened so quickly, he told her. Somebody up there must like me. Or when he had picked her up for a date and she’d waved down to him from her bedroom window. He’d informed her over the lobby intercom how much he liked the smell of Chanel. Rose buzzed him in, pale and mystified. How could you tell what I was wearing from five floors down? A nervous cough, a gallant grin. A classy girl like you? Lucky guess…

  The Central Park thing wasn’t so easily explained. How could two months feel so long ago? Once upon a time.

  “Well? Do I call the cops or not?”

  But he still didn’t have the balls to tell her. He didn’t think now was the time.

  He grimaced and rubbed his neck. “Dial 911. Order a pizza. One is just as good as the other. I came because you’re in danger, Rose.”

  For a moment she just stared at him. Then, “You come up here drunk and butt naked after six weeks away – God knows where – trash my garden and scare me half to death, and now you tell me you’re here to help. My hero.”

  “Like you haven’t been drinking? What’s with that, anyway? Your father—”

  “Oh fuck right off.”

  “OK, OK, sorry.” He steered the conversation back on to safer ground. “I know how this looks. Just…you have to trust me, OK?”

  “You Brits. You’re crazy. I don’t have to do anything. The only thing I have to do is kick your sorry ass out of here.”

  What could he tell her? That the four hundredth and twelfth descendant of an outlawed noble English family had burst in on him tonight in an East Side bar and tried to kill him with a bewitched broadsword? Or that the cigar-smoking grande dame of an underground coven had chased him halfway across Manhattan in a classic Rolls-Royce, resulting in him diving headlong off the Brooklyn Bridge? And that somehow it had something to do with an African diamond stolen from an exhibit at the Javits Center, and that this in turn had something to do with him because, you see, he hadn’t been entirely honest, and when it came right down to it, he wasn’t even human…

  No. Now definitely wasn’t the time.

  “Rose…” He reached for her. “You’re mine, remember?”

  She slapped his hand away. “Yours? Like a trinket, right? Or a doll.”

  “I didn’t mean it like that.”

  “Yes. You did. I don’t know what the fuck is wrong with you. You’re not right. You’re not normal.” Ben opened his mouth to protest, but the wheels of her anger rolled right over him, her arms jerking in a mime of grievance. “I bought us a place, he says. A place where we can be together. And a few months later, Central Park happens. Central Park and that damn obelisk, and will he answer my questions? No. And then the drinking starts, and where the hell is his money coming from anyway? Is it really his inheritance? What does he actually do? More importantly, what did he do before he met me? So I ask and I ask and then, that night in the bar, he tells me. Dumb dangerous jobs for dumb dangerous crooks, he says, and then—”

  “Rose!”

  “Then he ups and leaves.” She spoke softly, her storm blowing itself out. “He takes me away from my friends, away from my life, and he locks me up here in my ivory tower. Like a fucking…doll. Then he just runs away and he doesn’t say goodbye.”

  Silence settled over the garden, the shadows clinging to the debris. Fairy lights sparkled in her hair and glimmered off her skin. The moon shone down, cold and unmoved. There was no way to ignore her tears.

  “I’m sorry. I wish I could kiss you and make you forget.”

  “Yeah? Well you can’t. I remember everything. Even the weird stuff. The stuff you’re never going to explain.”

  “It’s not that simple. You and me…we’re different, Rose.”

  “Yeah, you said.” Resentment tugged at her upper lip. “And you should’ve known better. Better than to get involved. Better than to make me…” She caught her breath, jettisoned the words. “You know what your problem is?”

  “Like the back of my hand.”

  She let that pass, continuing regardless. “You saw me as treasure, a jewel you had to protect. That’s why you bought this apartment, so you could keep an eye on me. But I’m not your possession, Ben. I’m not part of your stash. And when I wanted the truth, you couldn’t handle it, could you? You turned tail and ran.”

  Ben didn’t know what to say to this. Over the years, several women had almost torn out their hair trying to tell him, and he was forever trying to learn. He naturally treasured their company; they were all princesses, all damsels to him. He’d hate to admit it, but if it had been down to him, he’d have locked them all up in an ivory tower. Possessiveness was part of his nature. Jealousy coiled in his heart. Over the years, it had caused him no end of trouble, from barroom brawls to bitter rows. With Rose McBriar, he liked to think he was getting better, that he was mellowing with age, but the sad understanding trickling from her eyes laughed in the face of that one.

  He coughed away guilt, focusing on the matter at hand.

  “Rose, listen. I’ve run into a little trouble and I don’t want to see you get dragged into it. It could be nothing. I could be paranoid. But until I figure out what’s happening, I need you to go to your sister’s in Vermont. You can catch a train up there tonight. Just pack a bag for a week or two. I can wire you all the money you need.”

  “Vermont? Ben, I have my exams on Monday.” The bottle of Rioja shook in his face, a testament to heartbreak. “Haven’t you heard a damn word I’ve said?”

  “Yes, and we’ll talk about it. Honest. But if you stay here, exams will be the least of your worries.”

  “What are you saying?”

  “Some fuckers tried to kill me tonight. Twice. And one of them mentioned you.”

  Her face paled to rival the moon. The bottle in her hand returned to her side, the dregs sloshing. He hadn’t wanted to scare her, but they could stand out here all night raking over the coals of the past. And all the while, Fulk and the CROWS could be creeping closer, eager to stuff the meat of tragedy into a hollow threat. Sure, Fulk had wanted to put him on the back foot, but it wasn’t a risk he was willing to take.

  “Rose. Please…”

  He reached for her then, the walls falling down. Shock, sorrow and trepidation screamed like a whirlwind around her, but she slapped his hands away, unforgiving. He leant in to kiss her, smelling bergamot and wine, but she turned her head, her neck stiffening. When his arms closed around her, she sagged a little and he realised he was right: she was pleased to see him, despite her angry words. Some of the coals rolled aside, uncovering the rekindling embers, flames that hadn’t died. Then she grew rigid again, her words tight as she tried to push him away.

  “I miss you,” she said, quiet and fierce. “I hate you.”

  Defeated, Ben rested his head on her shoulder, smoothing down the flowers on her dress. He let her anger hit him like a wave, tasting her muted fury at her love for him. Since he’d first crawled out of his egg, it had always been this way. Some women went for the knight. Others wanted the beast. Neither stood a chance of a happy ending. Until Rose. Rose who only wanted the real him, a secret he could not share. There among the scattered tulips, in a cold and silent embrace, the two of them said welcome home.

  Rose made him sleep on the couch. In the early hours, with the moonlight slanting through the apartment windows and Ben snoring like a king under his blankets, she crept out from her bedroom in her nightshirt and stood looking down at him.

  Why him? she wondered, a fretful finger tugging at her lips. With all his secrets and lies? All the trouble that seems to follow him…

  But she knew why. Even in sleep, his ruffled hair and strong bones rendered him handsome; his almost sensuous lips, the lines and depressions that lent his eyes a permanent sorrowful cast tugged at places in her she fought to suppress. She had found an appealing strength in him, true, a
strength that was unlike her father’s, whose heavy hands had left their marks, rendered invisible with time, perhaps, but inside her nevertheless. Ben’s strength lay under gentleness, a need to do good, even when it went against the grain of him, whoever he really was, and in that sense she felt he was lost, wandering – what was she but a lighthouse, calling him home?

  Maybe once upon a time. It was too late for her to believe that this could have a happy-ever-after. It was time to wake up.

  She sat down beside him, perching gently on the edge of the couch. She stroked his face, a soft, sad soothing. More than anything, she wanted him to see the real her, the woman she was who didn’t need protecting, but in all these months, she knew she had only caught a fleeting glimpse of him.

  “Oh Ben,” she whispered. “You still think I’m the one who needs saving.”

  Then, with her golden hair shrouding her tears, she tiptoed across the apartment, closed her door and climbed back into her big cold bed.

  In the morning, Rose woke him up by tossing an old pair of jeans, a faded Led Zeppelin T-shirt and a patched-up bomber jacket on top of him. Breakfast was civil, but terse. Before leaving the Gold Street apartment, Ben dug around in the bedroom closet and unearthed a pair of trainers, lurking in the gloom like stuffed rats. All these clothes he had left behind with Rose, six lonely weeks ago. Once he was dressed, she told him he looked like a tramp, but Ben guessed that was better than a streaker. He couldn’t afford a run-in with the law. Besides, his destination was far, far away. The clothes wouldn’t last long anyway.

  His transformation on the Brooklyn Bridge had left him at somewhat of a disadvantage. His wallet, cash and credit cards inside it, was somewhere on the bottom of the East River. Ditto his keys. His other belongings – a couple of shirts, slacks and smalls, fake passport and battered copy of poems by Lorca – were back in the Village, stuffed in a bag at his cheap, under-the-radar hotel. He didn’t think it wise to return there. So he and Rose caught a cab to Cadman Plaza and hurried down into the subway. It was only a five-minute walk from the apartment, but Ben didn’t want to risk the streets, especially this close to the bridge. If Fulk could find him in an East Side bar, then he could find him in Vinegar Hill. His fear was a subtle disease, infecting everything around him. The way that Rose sat close in the back seat, her hands wrapped tightly in his, told him all he needed to know about her state of mind. Here in the Five Boroughs, dark alleyways ran everywhere, frequented by drunks and gangs. Also by witches and black knights.