“I have wandered this realm for so long. Waiting for you and him. I wish I could have done more. I wish I could help more now. But I’m tired, little Vega. My power is gone.
“The demon sleeps inside him, but when it wakes again, it won’t be so easily dispelled. If you can’t leave him and join me in the afterlife, then return to the world and save him. God be with you, my child.”
Tears dripped down Vega’s cheeks as he faded away. Not a true death, he was only returning to whatever peaceful afterlife his selfless deeds had earned him, but she felt the loss just the same.
Palms pressed into the grass where he had lain, she cried with abandon. “Death, over and over. So much loss. I…can’t do it.” Lost in her misery, she blocked out the shining world around her and the smell of thousands of roses in bloom.
Zane’s hand came to rest on her shoulder, and she jerked away, her screams echoing in the quiet of the day. Vega scrambled backward. No longer willing to be the martyr for their love, she fought to gain her footing in hopes that she might escape.
“Vega. It’s me. What happened? Why are you so scared?” He chased after her, confusion and hurt shining in his eyes. “Baby, talk to me.”
She froze, body trembling and breath hitching in her still sore throat. “Stay away from me!”
“But, Vega, what’s wrong? What happened? Where’s the priest?” Zane fell to his knees a few feet away, his face upturned.
“You…you tried to kill me,” she mumbled between sobs.
He moved with careful slowness, walking on his knees until he knelt at her feet. When he reached her, and she did not resist, he pulled her into his lap and gently rocked her as if she were a child.
“Sh. Don’t cry, Vega. I’m sorry,” he whispered as she curled against his chest. “We can do this. We can beat this. We can’t give up now. We’ve come too far, fought too hard. Just hang on, okay?”
When she only sniffled in reply, he tilted her chin up so their eyes met.
“Tell me you still believe in me. Say you still believe in us. I can’t fight this without you. I love you.”
Vega swallowed back her sobs, but tears danced on her lashes like liquid diamonds. “I love you, too. I don’t know if we can do this. I don’t know if we will survive, but I know we are stronger together than we would ever be apart.”
Their lips met, and together, the two faded into a bright wash of light—fated to return to the world they had not fully shared since before the war and Eurynome had entered their lives.
Zane and Vega awakened, side by side on the wet tiles of the bathroom floor. Trembling and shaking in each other arms, they kissed passionately for a long while, the feel of holding each other a novelty to them after all the time they had been forced apart. Even as they stood, they couldn’t stop touching, staring, and trying to grasp that they had survived.
When at last they pulled apart, Vega whispered, “God, it’s no wonder I hate the smell of roses. Death and roses seem to go hand in hand. During all those lifetimes I lived and died, and the eternity you spent as Eurynome’s slave, our souls rested in a rose garden. What a perfect freaking sentiment. Pretty, twisted, perfumed thorns meant to draw someone in and hurt them. I never want to see another rose again.”
Zane chuckled softly as he gently wrapped her in a towel and took her hand. Stepping into the hallway, the lovers breathed a sigh of relief, before Vega gasped. Eyes locked on the kitchen door, she began to cry again.
Eurynome was gone, sent back to the depths of Hell. Vega had been freed from the curse and able to live without his interference. Those who had hurt her were dead and gone. Only two things still plagued the couple who had spent countless lifetimes fighting for their love. The demon inside of Zane, and the dead woman on the kitchen floor.
The house reeked of death, and Zane’s nostrils flared as a flash of darkness crossed his ice-blue eyes. Muscles tensed, he murmured, “The death eater wants out, and the bastard has claws.”
“Zane, you okay?” Fear laced her words like poison.
In a quiet growl, he responded, “Go in your room. Get dressed. Stay here until I come back. Lock the doors. Don’t let me in unless I can talk like I have some sense. I’ve got to go move the body.”
Her fingers wrapped around his bicep, unwilling to let him go. “You can’t. It might reawaken the demon.”
Another flash darkened his eyes. “You wanna do it?”
Vega bit into her lower lip.
Pulling her close, Zane whispered, “It’s okay. I can do this.” He laced his fingers with hers and brought their hands up between their chests. “Together, we can do anything, but let me do this for you.”
“I don’t need you to clean up my messes, Zane.” Though she meant the words, they hadn’t been uttered with much heart. The last thing she wanted to do was hide a dead body.
He pressed his lips to her forehead. “I’m a killer, Vega. This is what I do best. Go change your clothes, pack everything you need. We are leaving this house tonight.”
Finally relinquishing, she kissed him once more. “Hurry back to me.
Chapter Two
It felt as if days had come and gone as they had battled Eurynome, talked with the priest, and found their way back again. Yet, it had only been hours since she’d attempted to take her life. The exhaustion and mental strain scraped along her nerves, but Vega felt stronger than she ever had.
Without him next to her to provide warmth, she shivered. Still dressed in bloodstained bra and panties, and her hair still wet, the sudden chill in the house climbed her spine like icy fingertips and sent her searching for clothes.
In her bedroom, Vega threw on a pair of lose sweats and a t-shirt before going back to the bathroom. Cold water stood in the tub, red from her blood. Eyes squeezed shut, she slipped her hand into the water and pulled the drain. Thoughts of her attempted suicide filling her mind, she fought against the guilt and shame of all she’d done. Diana, Bill, Shelley, and countless others from her past lives—their deaths laid heavy on her shoulders.
Even with Zane’s love, the pain and grief did not fade. Her heart soared with thoughts of him, but plummeted with the knowledge that her selfish choices had caused so much grief for so many others. Vega’s stomach lurched as the blood swirl into the drain. It did not escape her that the people who’d been Eurynome’s playthings in his scheme to destroy her might not have faced such horrors if she’d not been born into their lives.
Vega turned on the hot water, and desperately scrubbed the filmy pink line running around the porcelain sides. She ignored the blade, glistening at the bottom of the tub, afraid to touch the instrument of her demise. Something about the gleam of the sharp edge made her uncomfortable and sad.
When at last the tub shined, no proof of her sacrifice remaining, she used the cloth to extract the straight razor. After carefully pushing the blade into the handle and wrapping the wet towel around it multiple times, she shoved it into the nearly full wastebasket.
Still trembling and feeling as if she could fall asleep and not wake for days, Vega stumbled from the bathroom and into her bedroom to pack. She grabbed some clothes, a few papers, and some personal items. The bric-à-brac in her room suddenly seemed impersonal. With the money from her real parents’ estate, she had no use for the cheap hand-me-down and thrift store clothes or discount make-up. Her drawings had all been destroyed, and nothing else seemed to matter. Her life in the small house was easily condensed to less than a half-full shoulder bag.
From room to room, she moved as if she were made of stone. Her limbs felt heavy and stiff, weighed down by the deaths of so many. She collected some jewelry and things left behind after Diana and Bill’s deaths, tossing them in the bag.
“I should be happy,” she told the empty house. “I’m leaving here today, just like I always hoped I would. I have money. I have Zane.” She gathered the box of her real parents’ things and placed it next to the door. “There’s nothing here left to miss, everything was poisoned a long time a
go.”
No matter what she said aloud, she couldn’t drive away the mysterious cloud of sadness hanging in the air. Her every memory had been created while living beneath the sagging roof, none of them happy, but they were hers just the same. Sliding into the stool at the kitchen counter, she made herself a cup of coffee, and stared out the window as she always had.
“Too much death here. Too much pain.” A small smile played across her lips as she remembered sitting in the same spot and wishing Zane was real. “I’m leaving this all behind.” With the finality of the situation upon her, Vega added the last piece of her new life to the bag—a checkbook and a debit card that provided her access to funds she’d never dreamed of having.
****
Zane stood on the edge of the construction site. The ground had been packed and leveled, ready for the concrete to be poured. Once he buried the woman’s body and smoothed over the wet dirt, no one would even notice. Within a week, the foundation would hide her forever. Maybe, decades later, when human hands or natural disasters tore down the building, they’d find her. Until then, she’d be hidden away, and he and Vega could at last be together—free of death.
The large, plastic yard bags he’d wrapped Shelley in crinkled as he pulled her body from the car, making him think of the crackling of dried flesh on bone. Inside him, the monster flashed a hungry smile, its sickness still able to reach his brain. Even the smell of stale and rotting death made the beast churn.
Weak from the priest’s attack, it did not have the strength to claw up from the dark hole inside of Zane, but it was still there. He could feel it, an evil foaming at the mouth and hungering to destroy.
Zane ignored the thing as he hefted the woman across the muddy terrain and dumped her unceremoniously into the deep hole he had dug. He tried to feel remorse, anger, or a sadness for the loss of a life. He pushed at his inner barriers, the space around where the poisoned presence of the demon resided, to find some splice of humanity still within him.
His hands folded over the handle of the shovel, and he rested his chin on his knuckles as he probed his soul like a man exploring an infected tooth with the tip of his tongue. The pain would come if he kept forcing his way deeper, and that was what he wanted. He needed to feel death as a human, not as an eater of souls.
The love he felt for Vega burned hot in his thoughts, the rising fear of what he faced turning the edges into wild sparks. Emotions swirled and bubbled like a lava moat all around the dark, angry void, but remorse was not among the melee. Zane turned his face to the sky, the corners of his mouth pulling downward as he forced himself to think of the spiritual consequences of all he had done and seen throughout his decades chained in Eurynome’s hell.
“If I survive this,” he whispered, “will I ever be forgiven?”
****
The sound of the car pulling into the driveway sent Vega scurrying to the door. As she peered out the small window, she breathed a sigh of relief. Covered in mud, shoulders slumped with exhaustion, and head hung low, Zane stalked up the drive. She knew it wasn’t the death eater controlling his body because the man carried himself as if the weight of the world stood on his shoulders, and the demon walked without a care in the world.
Zane looked up as the door opened, seemingly mesmerized by the light from within silhouetting her beautiful figure. He smiled as he admonished her. “I told you to keep the door locked until you knew it was safe.”
“I knew,” she countered, stepping out onto the stoop and into his arms. “I’m ready to go. Don’t make me spend another moment in this hell.”
“I’m ready to go too, but I need to clean up first, my love.”
Vega looked up at him, a cool expression masking the worry her voice could not hide. “Where did you take her?”
Easing her back, Zane looked down at his mud-ridden clothing and dirty hands. “Don’t ask. I don’t want you to know. Don’t think about it ever again.”
“Some of Bill’s clothes are still in the house. They’ll be too big, but they will do until we can stop for more. Go get in the shower, I’ll bring them to you and then load up the car while you clean up.”
A mischievous grin brought out the dimple in his cheek. “I’d rather you join me.”
Laughing aloud, she led him into the house. “I’ve had enough of that bathroom for one day. You go ahead. When we finally have each other again, I don’t want it to be here. Not in this house, not with these ghosts watching us, and not with the memories still so fresh they wound me.”
Zane leaned in, gently kissed her on the forehead, and silently nodded he understood. So quietly she barely heard him, he whispered, “And the ghosts inside of me? Do you fear those as well, Vega?”
****
Less than a half of an hour later, Zane and Vega sat next to each other in the front of the VW. With her legs tucked up in the seat, she laid her head on his shoulder, and he slid his hand between her knees. The whole world stretched out before them in the form of a night sky and an open road.
“So where are we going, babe?” Vega asked.
“Back to where it all began.” He lapsed into a long silence, lost in the memories of his youth, before asking, “Do you remember that day clearly?”
“No. Not really.” Vega stared out the window as she watched the dark landscape speed by. “It comes in flashes.”
“We were happy. Just two kids, in love and ready to be married.”
She could hear sadness in his voice, but she did not lift her head to see the haunted look she knew would show in his eyes.
“You looked so beautiful. Your hair was blonde then. Did you know it seldom has been since? You were soft and silly, so easily amused. Yet, a fire blazed in your heart, and not even the threat of war could make you tremble or run.”
Vega sighed. “I saw you when I was dying. It all came back to me then, but now it’s like a dream fading away. You looked a little different than you do now. Your hair was darker, and you didn’t have all those nifty tattoos, but your eyes were still blue. You have always been strong, fierce, and handsome.”
“You gave me those tattoos, young lady,” he mocked scolded. “My appearance never changed before now, but when I crossed the void this time, your mind molded me into what you see now.”
Vega laughed. “I did a pretty good job.”
The smell of salt and ocean filled the car as a cool wind blew in the cracked windows, and Vega took a deep breath. “Zane, I’m scared. What if we can’t find the demon’s name? What if we fail? This is it. Like you said before, there are no do-overs.”
He took her hand in his, bringing her fingers to his lips. As he brushed a kiss across the knuckles, he smiled. “Together. We are together for the first time in so many many decades. I have to believe we will survive this.”
Chapter Three
Zane and Vega drove off and on all night, taking turns behind the wheel while the other rested. In the darkness, they passed through small, obscure towns—the kind of places that boasted a grocery store and little else. Over a set of unused railroad tracks and down a long and dusty gravel road, the small signs of a dead civilization began to surface in the gray of the pre-dawn light. A rusty iron plow rested in the tall weeds with a tree growing up between the handles. Stone stairs jutted out of the overgrowth, a path to nothing because the homes had long ago perished.
Vega reached over, pulling Zane’s hand into her lap and squeezing it hard. Flashes, brief memories of her childhood, snapped against her mind like a hard whip. As they rose to the top of a hill, she glimpsed a recollection of how the town had looked in its heyday—white washed, clapboard houses, muddy streets, and horse drawn buggies.
“Gone, it’s all gone,” she whispered, holding back the tears threatening to strangle all hope.
“It’s been gone for a very long time, sweetheart. It’s just a place to start.”
The Volkswagen’s worn shocks squeaked in protest as Zane edged it down the rutted road. The jarring bumps and slight skids in the mud
made him curse and slow the vehicle to a crawl, but Vega paid no attention. In the distance, on the rise of a tall hill, shadows formed gray arms reaching for the sky as it lightened with pastel streaks. As they drew nearer, she leaned forward, a memory tickling the back of her mind.
Eyes straining, she stared into the vague darkness, willing the shapes to become clear. With each lurching mile, the sky filled with more light and color. The shapes became clear, and the world around them seemed bathed in the majestic dawn. At last, Vega remembered.
“There.” The word was a hiss expelled between clenched teeth. “That was where the battle took place. It’s where Eurynome found us, and where I bargained away our lives.” Shame pierced her heart, the memory as fresh as an oozing wound upon her soul.
Zane glanced over, concern pulling his handsome features tight. “Looks like death never left that place. Those are tombstones on that hill.”
“I guess we know where to start.” Vega pressed her forehead to the window and breathed deep. She prayed for strength because she could battle a demon and face death a dozen times, but she wasn’t sure she could stand to see the place where her destiny should have ended.
After several long minutes of coaxing the small car up the slippery incline, they reached the top of the hill. The road to the graveyard had been well-maintained, much better than the main road. A wrought iron fence lined the twisting path, the dainty black roses rusting away from years of exposure to the elements.
Hundreds of graves filled the hillside, ranging from insignificant slabs to impressive marble statues. All were old, and many were crumbling. The graveyard, like the road, had been cared for a great deal. The grass was newly cut, fresh flowers stood like lone sentinels in vases on top of the gravestones, and the main gates looked as if they’d been recently painted.
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