by Ramy Vance
“We all have a journey we must take, a destiny to fulfill.”
“Are you shitting me now?” I yelled. “We’re in a dank dungeon, suspended from the ceiling like curing meat, about to be tortured by a maniacal ex-archangel who, once he gets what he wants from us, is probably going to kill us. Well, you … I’m apparently supposed to be with him in the end. That said”—I gave Enoch my best disgusted look—“I think I’d prefer to die.”
Aldie chuckled. “That’s the Kat I know. Always using humor to hide her true feelings.”
“Here’s a true feeling for you: I want to kill you.”
“No you don’t. What you want is for me to stop speaking the truth.”
“Oh my god! We’re in serious shit and you’re going all self-helpie on me. Tell me Mr. Guru, how exactly is that going to self-help us now?”
“Self-help isn’t about the destination. It’s about appreciating the journey. And right now, I appreciate that this man believes in what the Fates told him and is pursuing that goal with great enthusiasm.”
“Ahhh! Please, please let me go so I can kill him. I swear I’ll tie myself right back up.”
Enoch chuckled before walking right over to Aldie and stabbing him in the gut.
So much for keeping up the banter.
↔
“WHAT ARE YOU DOING?” I yelled.
Enoch didn’t say anything. He just stabbed Aldie again and again.
“Stop it!” I screamed, tears streaming down my face. “Stop it. You’re killing him.”
Enoch turned, lifting up his green, blood-stained hands. “What? I thought you wanted him dead?”
“No … please stop.” I looked at Aldie; he was bleeding out. He’d be gone in a few minutes if he didn’t get help. “He’s dying.”
“And?”
“Save him. Please.”
“Why should I?” Enoch wiped his hands on Aldie’s shoulders—the only part of his clothes not covered in fae blood. “What will you do for me if I do?”
“What do you want?”
“You know.”
“How can you expect us to be together after all the evil shit you’ve done?”
“Don’t be coy with me,” Enoch rasped. He took a deep breath to collect himself. “I have been thinking about us, and I have realized that, in my loneliness, I believed we would wind up together at the end of it all. But the Fates never showed our union. Just that we would be shoulder-to-shoulder when we next see the gods. I may have read more into that vision than was there.” He pushed Aldie’s body and it swung back and forth, drops of blood trickling on the floor. “Give me the Soul Jar, Katrina … for his life.”
“I can’t.”
“I promise you this: no one else need be hurt. The jar.”
Aldie’s almond skin was pale. He was dying. And as much as I hated him for everything he did to me, I couldn’t let him die. I just couldn’t.
“I gave it to Deirdre.”
“Don’t play me the fool. I saw what you handed to the changeling. It was but a trinket. The Soul Jar is much bigger. Certainly, larger than—”
“Gabriel … he gave it to me in that form. He asked me to take it to Michael.”
“Gabriel is dead.”
“No … I mean, yes. He’s dead now, but he went to Yomi to retrieve it. He died to—”
“Of course,” Enoch said, lost in thought. “The angel knew my soul had been trapped in that damn thing. He knew of the dead gods, but there is more at play here. Why not leave the jar in the museum?”
“I don’t know. He just said I was to take it to Michael.”
“Those damn archangels are trying to find their way to the gods. They must be.”
“Enoch … Aldie. Help him!”
The force of my voice woke Enoch from his musing. “What? Oh yes …” The ex-archangel walked over to Aldie, pulled out a handkerchief from his pocket and placed it over his wound. Instantly the bleeding stopped, and the wound healed.
Aldie hung silent for an impossibly long moment before he coughed. “That was … something else.”
“The Veil of Veronica, used to wipe the blood and sweat from Jesus. It offered him comfort during his greatest struggle. Now it offers healing to all of us.” Enoch said, pulling out a cell phone from his pocket. “Now if you’ll excuse me, I have a necklace to retrieve.”
“Let him go,” I said.
“Most certainly not. I need him hanging right there so that I can stab him again should your words prove false.”
With that, Enoch stepped out of the dimly lit room to call whatever manner of horror served as his minion.
And what did Aldie have to say for his near-death experience?
“Well, this is interesting.”
MEMORIES, SWINGING DEATH AND GROWLING KATS
I t’s amazing how three simple words and a bit of torture can take you right back to where you were with someone you haven’t seen in centuries. I remembered back to the decade before we separated, what had happened to him and how he reacted then.
We were engaged, about to be married. Of course, fae engagements tended to last centuries, and wedding preparations alone took upward of years. Had we stayed together, our wedding would have been in June … fifty-seven years from now.
Not that I cared back then. I was in love, and whether we married didn’t really matter to me. So we prepared, hiring cake makers and a wedding dressmaker, caterers and the premier florist in all of the UnSeelie Court. But with the fae, hiring someone like that meant arranging the wedding around their schedule. Which meant waiting a long, long time. Like I said: fifty-seven years from today.
What’s more, because the flower arrangement was more important than the dress, not only did it mean waiting for the florist’s schedule to free up, it also meant waiting for the florist to grow the damn flowers … And because Aldie’s parents were revered, the florist insisted on developing a new strain of orchid just for the occasion. We broke up before the flower was grown, but its petals were to be blood red to represent the human (and vampire) in me, with veins of deep, forest green for Aldie’s fae heritage.
But the fae were still trying to accept that the last son to be born into the fae courts was marrying an outsider—and a half-breed to boot—so waiting centuries also meant enduring the underhanded comments, snide remarks and passive aggression against us.
Everyone seemed to hate me, and hate our union even more (maybe that’s why I empathize with Others so well; I know what it’s like to be rejected just because you’re different) … everyone but Aldie’s parents.
They were the kindest fae you’d ever meet, and even though they were dark fae skilled in espionage and sabotage, they never treated me with anything but kindness.
And they were celebrated of sorts, both of them highly respected academics who were directly credited for ending the war with the Seelie Court.
They loved me. Every time they looked at me, their huge elven eyes would soften. There was no pity there; they knew full well what the other fae were like toward me, and they knew I was tough enough to handle it, too.
No, they loved me for reasons I never quite understood, immediately accepting me into their family.
Then they were killed. Poisoned with venom extracted from the Thistle of Salt, a highly deadly substance aptly named because nothing can grow once salted, and for fae, to not grow was to die.
Ultimately it was uncovered that a faction among the UnSeelie Court, resentful over how Aldie’s parents’ had ended the war, had come after them. Of course, that wasn’t until I was blamed, Aldie was blamed and the entire Seelie Court was blamed. But that is, perhaps, a story for another time.
The reason why all those horrible memories flooded back to me was because Aldie said those same words with the same detached tone when we discovered his parents’ bodies. “This is interesting.”
“You’re not fooling anybody,” I said.
“Excuse me?”
“This is interesting,” I repeated.
“And what exactly have you learned?” I meant it rhetorically. I wasn’t really waiting for an answer; instead, I was trying to find a way out of here. The binds that Enoch used on us were solid, and the pipes were firmly fixed to the ceiling. There was just enough space above the piping for someone my size to crawl along, if I could swing high enough. I tried, but quickly learned that there was no way I would be able to gather enough momentum to loop all the way around.
At a loss as to what to try next, I twisted to look at Aldie. I recognized the outline of Light-Bringer in his pants’ pocket—that old gift from his parents so many centuries ago. Of course he still kept it … even if it was just a lighter. It was from them. But besides holding it up to the sprinklers and hoping Enoch would melt, the lighter wouldn’t do us any good right now.
Aldie wore a pensive look on him, and I realized he was still considering my question—as rhetorical as it was. “All of it,” he eventually said.
“All of what?” I said, rolling my eyes.
“This,” he said with a voice full of vigor and optimism as he held my gaze with elven eyes that burned with intensity. “All of this. Think about what an amazing opportunity we have to learn about ourselves. How many people are truly tested in such a manner? How many are given such a golden opportunity to learn about themselves in this way?”
“And what have you learned about yourself, exactly?” This time I wasn’t being rhetorical—I really wanted to know, because I didn’t imagine he’d come up with anything good.
I groaned, pulling myself up. Maybe if I could swing my feet up, I’d be able to get up there. It was no use. Human bodies simply weren’t designed to contort that way.
“I’ve learned that I don’t like being tortured.”
“You needed to be stabbed to learn that?” If my hands were free, I’d be pinching the bridge of my nose in frustration. Instead I settled for major eye-rollings—as in, plural. Not that he noticed any of it. As callous as this was, I prayed that Aldie was experiencing some form of post-traumatic stress disorder, because I couldn’t come up with another explanation for his behavior right now.
Aldie rocked his hips lightly from side to side, causing his body to casually sway back and forth. If I didn’t know him better, I’d assume he was trying to escape. But I did know him better. He wasn’t trying to escape—he was enjoying the hanging sensation. He was also humming. I hated it when he hummed back when we were together. I hated it even more now that we weren’t.
“What are you doing now?” I asked in that same rhetorical tone which, if he were a normal creature, he would have understood. But Aldie, being Aldie, answered everything.
“Processing,” he mused. “I’ve learned that I don’t like being stabbed.”
“I could have told you that without you actually being stabbed. Could have saved you a lot of pain.”
“Pain is only unworthy when we do not learn from it.”
“And the pain of this conversation is teaching me how much of a pain in the ass you are.”
“Ahh, my dear little sphinx, how little you have changed. You still confuse temporary discomfort with actual pain. You have never stopped to consider what is it that truly hurts you, and because you are unaware of that, you do not know what your true purpose is. The day my parents died was the day I was set on the path toward my true purpose. Perhaps this day will set you on yours.” Aldie was far too calm for someone who had just been brought back from the dead for the explicit purpose of being killed again.
His calmness was utterly infuriating. “Right now, my true purpose is to get free so I can punch you in the nose. I hate to ask, but can you burn a wee bit of time and get us out of here?”
Aldie shook his head. “This torturer of yours is somehow stopping me from using my magic.”
“Sounds like Enoch. He has a magical item for everything.”
“You speak as if you admire him.”
I pursed my lips, annoyed that he was listening in on my thoughts.
Aldie didn’t notice. “And as to your earlier comment, I believe that one’s true purpose is to live to their fullest potential while honoring who they were meant to be. Punching me in the nose is only a part of that.”
I screamed. This time, it wasn’t from Enoch’s physical torture, but from the mental torture of being with this dark elf.
“Yes,” Aldie said, unshaken by my cries. “My little cat is finally embracing her lion’s roar.”
He lifted his knees up, gathering himself in a fetal position. That’s when I first noticed he still wore that weird gray, plastic chip around his neck. A trinket or something … I couldn’t quite make out what it was from where I hung. But whatever it was, he deemed it important enough to try to grab with his knees.
He managed to clasp it between his knees, and lifting them up to his mouth, he bit down hard on the plastic tile. Then he let himself hang again, dropping the tile on the ground.
“What are you doing?”
“Trying to—”
Enoch entered with a giant grin on his face. “Seems that Katrina does care for you, dark elf. Her words were true. The Soul Jar is being retrieved now.”
I thought about how my cowardice had put Egya and Deirdre in danger and hoped the two of them were smart enough to hand it over without getting hurt.
“Let him go,” I said.
“No,” Enoch rasped. “He stays until the jar is in my possession.”
“Then what?”
Enoch’s silence told me exactly what he planned to do.
VILLAINS WILL ALWAYS BE VILLAINS
“A wkward silences are awkward in the best of circumstances, but when they’re between you and your torturer, well, let’s just say that it takes awkward to a whole new level.
“But here we are, two hanging torturees and a torturer with nothing to say between us. What do you break the silence with? A joke? Some weird factoid about how golf balls were created and why they have dimples? Interesting story—”
“Will you please shut up?” Enoch said.
“What? My nervous ramblings are bothering you? Tell you what … why not cut me down and I’ll take my inner thoughts elsewhere.”
Enoch gave me a look that I’m certain once brought demigods to their knees. Since I was hanging, kneeling wasn’t an option. “You can give me your cold ‘I’m Judge, Jury and Executioner’ look all you want. As the torturee in this fucked-up relationship, I get to express myself, whether it be screaming and crying, or my inner thoughts babbling away.”
“I wouldn’t call it babbling,” Aldie chuckled. He had passed out for a bit—I guess dying and being brought back takes it out of you—and I wasn’t sure how long he’d be out. “I am really curious as to why golf balls have dimples.”
“Well—”
“Enough,” Enoch rasped. Then coughed. I figured that once upon a time, he used to boom his commands with a voice that was deep and resonant. But given how messed up his throat was, he couldn’t really do that anymore, and the effort irritated his throat to the point of near choking.
“Would you like me to get you some water?” I imbued my tone with as much insincere sympathy as I could.
Aldie chuckled. “Ahh, I remember why I loved you so.”
“Do you?” I twisted my dangling body so I could see him. “And do you remember why you left me?”
Aldie winced, before nodding. “I do.”
“And …”
“And?”
“And you left me because …” I let the last word hang in much the same fashion as I was.
“Do you really want to discuss our end while we hang on for dear life?”
“I do.” And I really did. Normally this kind of banter would be me probing for an exit. You know, the old fake a fight, distract our captor, get out of
here. But as I said those words, I was struck by how much I really did want to know and how little I was trying to find an escape at that very moment.
“Katrina, now is not the time.”
“And when exactly would the time be? We’re probably going to die here. Well, you’re probably going to die. Me—this weirdo seems to think we will be married one day. So if not now, when?”
“Hold on, he wants to marry you?”
“Desire and destiny are two different things,” Enoch rasped. He was dabbing his lips with a handkerchief and I saw blood stains on the cloth. Somehow, I didn’t think that blood was because he opened up an old wound. He was coughing blood and, in my experience, when you did that it was because you were sick. As in, dying-sick.
“I once thought I also desired her hand,” Enoch continued. “But after getting to know her better, I came to realize that a true union is not possible. She is the proverbial stallion that cannot be tamed.”
“Amen to that,” Aldie said.
“Amen to that?” I groaned. “First of all, Aldie, you are fae. Fae don’t amen anything. Secondly, are you really agreeing with the guy who just stabbed you?”
“I am.”
“Because?”
“Because he speaks the truth, and the ugliness of our current circumstances does not exempt me from hearing and agreeing with it.” Aldie spoke in the same tone he used when making one of his self-help, holier-than-thou points.
“Screw you.”
“Interesting fact about that term. Much like the golf ball, it too comes from Scotland. Scottish prisons, to be accurate. In the 1800s, prison guards would—”
“Shut up,” Enoch and I said in unison.
Aldie chuckled before another heavy silence came over us.
We must have hung like that for a couple minutes before the dark elf sighed. “If I am to live by my principles, then I must die by them, too.”
“What’s that supposed to mean?”
“When the gods left, they shattered one of the oldest lies they ever told—that they would be there for us always.”