“She was mistaken, I could not save her. I could not change anything. I knew it myself with undisputed clarity, but at that moment I could not disappoint her.”
Andras stopped again for a second, placed both of his hands flat down on top of the table and pushed off it, getting up from his seat heavily.
“What did you do?” I asked, afraid to breathe.
“I fought,” he replied, standing across the table from me. “She believed that I would fight for her, so I did. There were too many Soldiers and Council members, though… I never stood a chance. I knew I would lose even before I started, but I did it anyway. I fought with everything I had. I was overpowered, subdued, tried and sentenced on the spot. I spent a century in Inferno and never returned to the Council after I was freed. I never could participate in their feedings again.”
“And the girl?” I wasn’t sure if I wanted to know, but I needed to ask.
Andras shook his head.
“I never saw her again. I’ve never even tried to find out what happened to her. I failed to help her.” He began to pace nervously along the patio, the tattered hem of his robe sweeping against his shoes. He looked nothing like the collected, sharp, at times sarcastic, Andras I met before.
Based on my previous experience, I thought the incubi to be indifferent and cold-blooded, with Sytrius being a rear exception. Now watching Andras, an incubus who spent a century in hell for trying to help a human, listening to his story told with so much feeling and passion, I was beginning to believe that maybe incubi were more diverse than I initially thought. Maybe feelings like compassion and affection were more common among them. Maybe their sense of justice was not that different from that of humans and could further be developed if given a chance?
“I still think about her often; she haunts me…” continued Andras. He was talking more to himself now, pacing back and forth in front of the table, looking at the patio stones at his feet, reliving the past. “Her joy and happiness seemed like a permanent part of her very being there in the woods by the river… impossible to extinguish. But there was nothing left of her joy on the cross, just pure terror. When she saw me, she had hope… and I couldn’t…”
The pain in him was unbearable. I could no longer stand to watch him torturing himself like that and acted on impulse.
“Andras.” I got up and walked around the table, stopping right in front of him and halting him in his tracks. “It’s in the past now. It’s done. You did your best. Even if you failed, you paid a high price for it.” I wasn’t sure if I was helping, but I felt I had to do something to stop him from drowning in his past completely. I put my hands on his arms just above the elbows, not that I could physically stop him from pacing, it was just an attempt to ground him, to bring him back to reality.
He raised his eyes to mine and the breath caught in my chest from the vivid life I saw in them. Being this close to him, I could see clearly the warm liquid amber of his eyes that was speckled with gold flecks brought out by the rays of light bouncing inside. It was mesmerizing, but it wasn’t just the beauty of his eyes that startled me. It was the realization that the life and clarity in his eyes differed drastically from the dullness in the eyes of the other incubi in the house. In fact, the vividly coloured irises and the flawless whites of Andras’s eyes reminded me more of the eyes of Sytrius, despite the fact that Sytrius’s eyes were steel-blue and Andras’s were golden-brown, the clarity in them was almost the same.
My earlier misgivings returned about the eloquent way he had told me his story, about how many details he used and how well he remembered his feelings from a century and a half ago.
“You’re feeding somewhere, Andras… “
Chapter Thirty Five. Natasha.
“You’re feeding somewhere, Andras. Somewhere else… You have more energy than the others.” I said it as a statement, not a question, because I was sure of it now.
I didn’t witness their feeding out in public last night. I still didn’t know for sure how they did it here, but I could see clearly now what I had been suspecting all along.
The signs of hunger were less prominent on Andras’s face, his mind much sharper, and his speech much more fluent than those of the other incubi in the house. Moreover, now I knew that his memories were still very much alive, at least as far back as one and a half century ago. Sytrius could remember patches of his past as far back as almost 600 years when I met him, but they were just that: disconnected pieces of images and echoes of emotions he had experienced, not a solid detailed story like I just heard from Andras.
He lowered his eyes immediately when he heard me, hiding something, and fear took hold of me. Did he lie about no longer being on the Council? Why? Was Sytrius too quick to trust him? As much as I believed Andras myself, he still was centuries older than me. He had that much more time to perfect his skills and could have easily manipulated me without me realizing it. I let go off his arms and stepped back slowly, calculating in my mind if I would be able to reach a room, any room in the house, and lock myself in it if I ran right now.
Andras squared his shoulders, having decided on something, and met my eyes again. He spotted right away that I was nearing the fight-or-flight response, with the strong lean towards the “flight”.
“Oh no, please Alyssa. Don’t be scared.” He took a step back to give me space and raised his hands, palms facing me, to show that he had nothing to hide. “I would never harm you. It’s just that I’ve never told anyone. She is my most precious secret that I guard with everything I have.”
“She?”
He nodded and motioned at the patio chairs again.
“Take a seat, please. I will tell you, but you will have to promise me not to tell anyone about her.” He walked over and lowered himself into his chair again.
“Not even to Sytrius?” I asked, doubtful that I could keep the promise then.
The corners of his mouth rose in a smile that didn’t reach his eyes.
“I do not think I could ever ask you to keep a secret from Sytrius. If I had to ask you to lie to him, I would not tell you the secret in the first place.”
“Why tell me at all?” I probed.
“Because I want you to know that I have a personal interest in the fate of your future with Sytrius. Because I want you to trust me. Because I still hope to persuade you to help me in my quest for change of the law. Because I want you to see a partner in me, rather than an adversary. And finally, because I hope for your help far beyond the hearing and the Council. I hope you can talk to me about your feelings for Sytrius, so that I could gain an insight in emotions a human woman is capable of having for an incubus.” He smiled again and spread his arms out in a disarming gesture. “You see, there are so many reasons that there is really no choice for me but to tell you.”
“Okay,” I agreed. “I promise not to tell anyone except Sytrius. What is her name?”
Andras pulled in a lungful of air.
“Natasha. I met her less than a year ago in Minsk. I was stumbling through the streets late at night, looking for food, any food. I was so hungry it felt like too much of a struggle to even keep looking. I didn’t hear the sound of light footsteps behind me when I decided to give up for the night, leaned onto a wall and slid down to the pavement, feeling lowest of the low, not realizing what a wonderful gift I was about to receive.
“Her denim-clad legs came into my blurry view and then her sweet, concerned face as she lowered herself in front of me into a crouch. ‘Hey, are you okay? You don’t look so good,’ she said. ‘Do you have a phone number of someone I can call for you? Or I can get a taxi to take you home?’ Through the haze in my brain, I could feel her clear concern for me, the sweetest purest emotion ever felt for me by a human, and all I could do at that moment was to skim it greedily without even taking a moment to savor it, to appreciate the person who fed it to me unwittingly.”
He put his elbows on the table in front of him and lowered his head into his hands, burying his fingers deep into his thic
k hair.
“I think that was the very moment when I got addicted to the taste of her emotions. I hate being away from her now. I have to skim emotions of others to stay awake when I’m not with her. Yet, nothing tastes as good to me, nothing is as strong and potent as her feelings.
“Her compassion. It revived me then. The fog cleared almost instantly, and her beautiful face came into focus. I couldn’t let her go. I told her I’d walk her home, so that she could be sure that I was fine. Not entirely logical, but she agreed. Foolishly, she wasn’t afraid of me. She saw a big strange man unsteady on his feet, like a drunk in the middle of the dark street at night, and offered her help instead of running away. Her compassion has no bounds. I’m convinced it was the reason why she became a nurse in the first place. She works in a public hospital, and she was walking home from the late shift that night as she had done many times before, and as she still does way too often now. There are many dangers for a young woman alone on the streets in that city, Alyssa. It drives me mad to leave her behind when I have to travel out of the country.”
“Is that why you’re going back soon?”
“Yes.” He dropped his hands on the table and looked at me again. “I bought an apartment in her building, and I walk her to and from work every day when I’m there.”
“You walk with her or you follow her?” I clarified because I sensed that the difference between the two was essential here. I was right, as he looked away from me before admitting.
“Well, I follow her to work, making sure nothing happens to her. I… I don’t know what I would do if something happened to her. Keeping her safe is my mission in life now. It has become my main purpose.” His face hardened when he said it with an absolute certainty in his voice. “I’ll do anything to keep her safe.” He then added somewhat unexpectedly, “Alyssa, she is the real reason why Eastern Council put a hold on kidnappings.”
“What? How?”
“I told you, I couldn’t let her go. I really couldn’t. I walked her home that night and the very next day signed the papers for purchase of one of the apartments in her building, just to be close to her. I couldn’t stay away from her. Like a junkie needing a fix, I would ‘accidentally’ run into her now and then using my status as her neighbour, skimming every single friendly emotion of her. I never touched her, not without the gloves on, but it wasn’t long before she started letting me join her on her way to a grocery store, if I ran into her and told her that I needed some groceries too. I asked her to pick up my mail when I’m out of town, even though I never get any mail beside junk and flyers, but it gave me an excuse to come to her door and see her twice: first to drop off the key of the mailbox and then to pick it up. Three times, actually, if you count the time when I waited for her on the staircase a couple of days later to thank her for doing it for me.” He smiled sheepishly at me, as if he were admitting to a secret vice, which in a way he was.
“So, you see, she saw me often, and we talked more and more. I knew her name, age and address. I knew that her father left when she was a baby and that she was raised by a single mother who passed away when Natasha was still in high school. She stayed with an elderly aunt for a while who passed away too about a year before I met Natasha. Unmarried, with no family, not even a boyfriend, she was the perfect candidate… I just didn’t see it, didn’t want to see it.”
“Oh no!” I gasped as it dawned on me.
“It was by chance that I saw a list of approved names on the desk of one of the Council members. Her name was on it. She was scheduled to be taken within the next two weeks… I couldn’t do it again!” He groaned and pushed away from the table, startling me. “I couldn’t go through it again! Not Natasha! I hadn’t even said a word to the girl from Kupala night, but she still had become my personal torment and will still haunt me for centuries to come. If they took Natasha… the eternity of my existence spent in Inferno would not be enough to burn the memory out of my very being.”
“What did you do?” I whispered. “You did save her somehow?”
“I thought about the way to save her every single minute since I saw her name on that list. I would gladly fight for her, but I knew from experience that it would not accomplish anything. Running away with her was the last resort. She barely knew me then, and she still barely knows me now. I didn’t know how to convince her to leave her life and her country behind to run away with me, short of kidnapping her myself before they did. Luckily this time, I had a little more warning and could come up with something else. Well, in desperation, I ended up hiring a prostitute and convinced the Council that we could get more from a willing Source than from the one taken against her will.”
“You did?” My eyes went wide. Was that really a solution? So simple, yet still rather unethical.
“Yes. It did take me a few tries to find just the right woman, someone who understood that she was hired to experience pleasure not to give it, and that she would not be paid if she faked it. No matter how convincingly she could pretend, it had to be real.”
“Oh, my God… Is that what Eastern Council is doing now? They suspended kidnappings to hire prostitutes for the Feedings?”
“Well, that would be the most simplified version, but yes. Since then I hired a few more in addition to the first woman, mostly through the word of mouth. It was easier to recruit new women once they were assured that they will be safe no matter what and that they will keep some degree of control over the proceedings. And, Alyssa, the most peculiar thing is… there are a couple of women who are not prostitutes at all. In fact, they refused to get paid as long as they can keep their own schedule. They come to the base only once or twice a month, and according to some of the incubi on the Council that I heard from, the sexual energy from these women is the most spectacular!”
“Of course it is!” I couldn’t hold back the excitement myself now. “Andras, of course it would be. You gave them a chance to safely play out a fantasy!”
“Yet, you don’t have the same feelings about your own experience as a Source?” His eyes narrowed immediately, and he looked at me inquisitively, as if waiting for an answer to a riddle again.
I did not take his curiosity for prying this time. Now, I realized that he genuinely was trying to understand me. He had a good reason to search for a better understanding of human women. It looked like I had to be a moral guide for yet another incubus.
“Well, there is a huge difference, Andras. You gave these women a degree of control. You allowed them to have a choice. They come to the base on their own accord, and they feel safe there. They know that they are free to leave at any time and to come back again only if they choose so.”
“Would any woman want to come to the base and let her body be used for Feedings if she was given the same control and freedom of choice?” He asked quickly. “Would you ever consider doing it again?”
“Um...” I inhaled, trying to separate my mind from my personal feelings for a moment to answer him as objectively as possible. “No, I don’t think I ever would. This type of things is not for me… but it never was even before I was taken. I have always preferred a little more traditional um… lovemaking. It doesn’t mean that it couldn’t change in the future for me too, but to give you an answer of right now, no. I would not come back to that room, even if I had a full control of the proceedings and knew that I could leave at any time. This is the beauty of human women, though. We are all different! It can take a man a lifetime to learn all aspects of a woman’s mind and body. What one woman craves, other might find shocking, and yet another one may say it was shocking but would still crave it herself in secret.”
Andras shook his head, his dark eyebrows furrowed in thought. “Women are complicated creatures,” he mumbled to himself.
“Ask human men!” I laughed. “Generations of them have spent centuries trying to figure women out, mostly still unsuccessfully. And we are the same species! There is one common thing for all women, though.” I added in a more serious tone of voice, making sure he would
n’t miss the point of our conversation. “None of us would want to be forced into anything against our will. Even the women who come to the base willingly now would not do so if you forced them. It they were kidnapped and put on that cross, without anybody explaining anything to them, they would mostly be scared, and any sexual energy that you would be able to get out of them would be far from…” I searched my memory for the exact word he used to describe it. “…spectacular.”
“Free will?” Andras cocked his head at me with visible amusement now. Maybe talking about his own torments and secrets with me freed his mind in a way. Maybe something he learned from our conversation held a true value to him personally. In any case, he looked much more relaxed now.
“Exactly. The famous human free will.”
“Does Sytrius understand it?”
“He does,” I answered without a doubt. Just hearing Sytrius’s name made me feel his absence more acutely. He had only been gone for a few hours, but my world seemed already slightly askew without him in it.
To my relief, the nervous clingy feeling I had for him in Toronto was now completely gone. I missed him without the feverish need to hold his hand every passing moment. Generally, I seemed to feel a little more stable and balanced now that the immediate danger of being re-captured was no longer there.
“Is that why you love him?” asked Andras unexpectedly, going back to his inquiries about my personal feelings. Only now I knew the true purpose of his interrogation too: he must be concerned about the way Natasha was feeling about him. Did he hope that she could love him too one day?
“This would be one of the reasons, yes. But there are so many more, Andras. Some of them I wouldn’t even be able to name because I don’t have the exact words for everything I feel for him. Sytrius told me that he could see my love for him inside of me. He saw it in me before I even realized what it was. Does Natasha have affection for you? Do you think she likes you?”
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