“Ah,” I responded coolly although I must admit, my contented frame of mind suffered a slap at hearing Vander’s name. That made it more than likely Meg’s monsters absconded with him as well. I did not want to voice my thoughts in case she had not already concluded the same unfortunate assumption. I did not want to worry her overmuch. She had so much to contend with already.
“Then perhaps Vander and Agent James will find each other and together, make their way back to us,” I said with a casual shrug.
Dulcie laughed without any mirth. She put her head in her hands and ran her fingers through her hair, the strands of liquid sunlight contrasting with dirt and bloody viscera. Broken and smeared like an old sword, but just as sharp and deadly, her relentless beauty never failed to impress me.
Always so beautiful.
“What the fuck did I ever do to the Universe?” she asked. She meant it in jest, I suppose, and her feeble smile said as much, but the words were genuine, and her question exasperating. Lately, the world at large, it seemed, had it in for Dulcie and everyone who cared about her.
Could it be retribution for your relation to Melchior? I wondered, but it would not have been a helpful thing to say. I pulled the interrogator’s chair—since this was ostensibly a debriefing, or so they kept saying although everyone knew why we were really here—around to Dulcie’s side of the metal table before sitting down beside her.
“Perhaps the Universe is jealous.”
“Of what?”
I shrugged. “Any number of things. Your steadfast friends? Your fiendish good looks?”
“Shut up, Bram.” She sighed, but for a moment, I thought I saw a smile. “Most everyone prefers to think Meg is dead.”
“I would like to think so as well, but collectively thinking that does not make her any less alive.”
“Hades, and they think he’s dead. They probably think I killed him.”
“Agent James?” I asked.
“Yeah.” It was her turn to sigh.
“Dulcie, he fell through a portal,” I affirmed. “Yes, it was a rather unfriendly looking portal, from what I’ve heard, but a portal nonetheless. Portals themselves cannot kill, and besides, you had nothing to do with its sudden appearance.” I glanced up just to make sure the cameras were listening.
Dulcie scoffed. “Nothing? I’m about ninety-nine thousand percent sure the portal appeared precisely because of me. It dragged Casey back through it, like it was sent to take him somewhere… maybe, to Meg, which, aagh, fuck.” She ran her hands over her face, stretching the skin on her temples. “The expression on Sam’s face…”
“Think not on it,” I said sternly. “For there is nothing we can do about the unfortunate circumstances now. Instead, we must put our heads together to devise a way to reach Meg and rescue your friends.”
“That’s the most sense you’ve made in I don’t know how long,” she said as she glanced up at me in surprise. “Still doesn’t change the fact that all of this happening is due to me.”
“Meg only remains alive because of me. If you would like to assign the blame, I am your most appropriate candidate.” I looked at the camera, imagining the flunky who was certainly taking copious notes on the other side. It didn’t matter. The bureau was already painfully familiar with the sordid history between Meg and me. It was the one and only parcel of information I afforded them before disappearing into the ether after Meg’s monstrous, little massacre at the capitol. Disappearing without a word would have looked more sinister than even I could abide. I often tread away from the straight and narrow, but an enemy of the state? That I am not.
“And,” I continued, “if we are speaking technically, this all boils down to your father and his proposal that he augment you.” After a moment of searching for a better word, and finding none, I did not intend to make Dulcie sound like a science experiment gone awry. In truth, however, she was.
“Augment me?” she repeated, spitting the word out like mud from her mouth. “Dear, old dad.”
“Dear, old dad,” I echoed. “Dulcie, I am afraid you are a victim of circumstance. You are central to a strategic plan that was decades in the making and not your fault. You are no more to blame than anyone else is in the world. Meg’s reach is vast and strong, so things would have eventually gone afoul between her people and the Earth, with or without you and your unique blood.” I blinked when I realized my hand was lying on her shoulder. I resisted any attempt at a reassuring squeeze, expecting it to provide no more comfort than a cold vise. “The shield does not beckon the sword; it simply rises in its own defense.”
She shrugged me off and I allowed my hand to fall away. I closed my fingers in an effort to capture her warmth in the palm of my hand, which actually lingered for one, two, three precious seconds! Then, the priceless warmth vanished.
Dulcie stared at the table with her arms crossed, seeing something between the folds of metal that warranted a smoldering glare.
“Agent James will be fine,” I said. “I am certain of it. I believe he is a Siphon, am I correct?”
“Yeah, but they’re totally fucking useless.”
“For their established purpose, perhaps they are; but I suspect he is capable of more than we could ever suppose.”
“What do you mean?”
I had her attention now. “Everyone we encountered was, once upon a time, utterly ordinary. However now, that the world is collapsing around us, and a mysterious Darkness is reaching through the walls of reality to wreak unholy havoc… Now we are different. We are much more than before. The world has a desperate need for us, I believe. Agent James would not still be here if he were not completely capable of caring for himself.”
Dulcie started frowning at me now. “What?”
“What?” I repeated.
“Don’t repeat my what, I meant, what the hell are you talking about?”
“Exactly what it sounds like,” I replied. “You felt the power Meg draws upon. It is evil, and very old. The kind of power that awakens dormant skills that would have remained hidden within us. We are here for what may or may not be the end of the world; and that means we matter.”
“I swear to Hades, Bram, if you say I’ve been chosen or something—”
“I would hardly venture that far,” I said. “My point is that Agent James was engaged in this conflict for a relatively short time, yes, and it did not kill him, at least, not yet. I doubt something as innocuous as a portal could be his undoing.”
“Because… why? Are you suggesting the Universe is ensuring his survival or something?”
I shrugged again. “Perhaps. Your fate has been pulled and stretched like taffy, more than any of ours; you should know better than any of us what it means to wind up being special. Agent James purposely ingrained himself in this war, and now has arguably survived the worst of it. His fate, whatever it may be, is tied inextricably with yours now, the same as all of ours. He will be fine.”
“Since when do you believe in fate?”
“Since it became a necessary fact of existence,” I replied.
She stopped talking and I took the sweet opportunity to stare at her. Her skin was translucent and pale, the light nearly shattering its smoothness. She was blessed with a flawlessly fair complexion. Her pale, honey-blond hair was more beautiful than it had to be, but I noticed a different air about her now. She was still as a statue or a mountain and as vast as the sky against which the clouds of all others were calculated and gauged. Her eyes were diamond-sharp, and they did not pierce mine when they looked at me. No, they scraped whatever they perceived, like jagged teeth being dragged across the soul. She might as well have been painted with unbridled passion in the colors the dusk turns the sand on the beach.
She was truly a vampire, and in a way I could never hope to be. Meg managed to turn Dulcie into something even more miraculous than the firebrand she already had been. Something eternally damned. It made them a family, in a way, a mother and daughter, but Dulcie and Meg could not have been more polarized
. Meg was proud and fearless, lacking true understanding. Dulcie, contrastingly, was so brave, selfless, and brilliantly stupid when protecting the people she loved. Reckless and incompetent, like a meteor carving valleys through the sky, and burning everything in her path until it was no more than dust and cinders, the ashes from which no man could rise unscathed.
I never expected to be caught in her path.
She deserved much better than this. She deserved much better than me, certainly. That was news to no one. She deserved better than the world she was born into, and better than the bad hand of bloody cards she was dealt. Every year, it seemed as if she drew a new hand, yet her possibilities diminished to fewer and farther between. Increasingly, her cards seemed to always to catch on fire.
She stared at the corner of the table, where the metal was chipped and scratched, her expression fading as her thoughts spun round and round.
“It is none of my business,” I said slowly.
I waited a moment for her to stop me, expecting her to say something akin to “If it’s not your business, why are you asking?” But she remained deathly silent. She even stopped breathing. Perhaps she no longer needed to process oxygen.
I continued my thought. “But in the service of your general well-being, I feel I must ask.” I paused before inquiring, “How are you?”
She frowned, crinkling her brow, but still did not look at me. “In the service of my general well-being?” she repeated. My innocuous question seemed to perplex her.
“Yes,” I answered. “How are you… coping now … I mean, with everything that’s happened?” Coping seemed to be the right word. I failed to imagine any scenario in which Dulcie was completely fine, strong and fierce though she may have been. Her lifetime was not nearly as lengthy as mine, but tragically, vastly unfortunate. The questions on my tongue and in my mind were ones I had no right to ask but I wanted to ask them all the same. “I am referring to your vampirism and other new traits you’ve adopted, and your departure from the ANC. As well as the state of the union.” I swallowed audibly. “What about Vander?”
Dulcie stiffened.
I expected her to yell at or hit me. She could have shrunk into herself and said nothing at all. But instead, she turned to me with a blazing fire in her eyes, and her soul glistened like freshly fallen snow, the heart of a dying star, angry and broken, straining to extend its rapidly fading existence.
I took her hand without thinking and squeezed it gently. Her soft skin was so smooth, and pale as pearls in the darkness. She looked more like a vampire every day. That was the last thing she wanted to hear, of that I was certain, but every time I glimpsed her, she appeared infinitely more beautiful. Often, I dreamt of sculpting her flawless image in stone. I would replace all the lesser statues in my homes with effigies of the most perfect creature I ever encountered in all my four hundred years. The way she looked now, I knew there was no hope of that happening. No sculptor in the world could replicate what I saw now. Bronze and marble could never capture the shimmer in her eyes, or the sheen of her skin, or the reflection of orange light on her hair. No statue could emit her smell, her glowing aura, the light she carried with her into every room, a raging inferno one moment, a comforting hearth fire the next.
I once commissioned a portrait of her, which was now lying in a basement somewhere, which was solely painted from my description. She was daintier in the painting, with wider eyes, fully open lips, erect nipples and her blossoming breasts were scantily wrapped in sheer yellow gauze. She looked more pixie than fairy. I was so proud at its completion, I practically worshipped the artist in that sacred moment. At long last, I had my Dulcie, or so I had thought.
What a poor representation it turned out to be!
I looked into her eyes and glimpsed a sea of galaxies, feeling the cold air and the burning sunlight before I found my words.
“I am sorry,” I said. “The fault is all mine. I could have killed her, but my rage and my desire for revenge temporarily consumed me, and now we are here.” I squeezed her hand again, never blinking or avoiding her glacier-green eyes. “Forgive me, Dulcie.”
She pulled her hand away as if I burned her, and the movement was swift and reactionary. The glitter-and-gold sensation her proximity afforded me suddenly melted away like icy mist in the warm rays of dawn.
“There’s nothing to forgive,” she said solemnly. “I don’t blame you, Bram.”
I have not found it necessary to breathe oxygen in four hundred years, but at that moment, I perceived I was drowning.
The door opened and the interrogator strode back in.
“I am going,” I said before the interrogator could open his mouth. I stood up and swept past him, forcing myself to move slowly. If I allowed my raw emotions to carry me through the room, they wouldn’t have seen me leaving at all. I would have been no more than a vague black blur and a flickering light, causing a sudden coldness to fill the air as I moved through it.
Dulcie might have seen me, though. Perhaps her new blood had that power.
What else could she see in me? I thought. Rather than taunting myself with speculation, I nodded at her as I closed the door.
###
I was inextricably possessed of an anger I thought long-dead, and I went to the room where Quillan sat. His door opened when his interrogator left and as the man shut it again, I slipped inside, similarly as I did with Dulcie. This time, however, I made a more concerted effort to conceal myself. If, by some miracle, the human agent managed to see me, he gave no sign of it, and continued walking with his clipboard and stiff back.
I looked at Quillan, sitting with his hands folded together on the table like a good, little schoolboy, and waiting patiently for his interrogator to return.
He looked at me and I glared back. The air in the room turned cold, as though it were intimidated by the two of us.
“What are you doing in here?” he asked.
I shrugged as I leaned against the door. The atmosphere condensed around us, holding its breath on a dare. “Killing time,” I responded, which I found dry and funny, seeing as how I am already dead.
“Why kill it in here?”
I shrugged again. “Why not?”
The malice, I think, was audible in my voice. Or maybe he could tell I was imagining myself snapping his neck.
“We don’t have time for a disagreement,” he said, his face as stoic as ever; and he still remained more than amiable. Small wonder he deceived our poor, sweet-hearted Dulcie.
“You may not.” I put my hands into my pockets and leaned back slightly. “I have all the time in the world and an uncanny fondness for personal grudges.” I cocked my head and ran my tongue across my lips, trying to recall if I ever drank blood from an elf before. Yes, once. Melchior. His blood was certainly much sweeter than his soul. “And I also harbor a particular distaste for you.”
“I already made my peace with Dulcie,” he announced. “She forgave me.”
“She should not have.” She should have ripped out your heart and made you eat it, I thought. Or gutted you and strangled you with your own intestines. Not that Dulcie would ever resort to such vulgar, gratuitous violence, but still, it should have been an option.
“I know,” he said. “But it was her decision, not mine. And maybe she lied. Maybe she only said she forgave me to make me feel better.”
I could scarcely imagine that scenario. Dulcie would never be caught forgiving or being kind to someone who lied to her so blatantly. Then I considered Quillan, her old boss, an elf whom she loved dearly for so long… so perhaps it was not completely impossible.
“Perhaps,” I said, striding forward. “But Dulcie’s forgiveness is no longer something you need to concern yourself with.”
“I don’t care about nor do I need your forgiveness,” he said.
“That is a pity. I would so love to disappoint you.”
“Bram, you never fail to disappoint me.” He looked up at me, clasping his hands together in front of his face and rest
ing his chin on his knuckles. “You’ve disappointed everyone for as long as we’ve known you.”
“It was never my goal to impress anyone.”
“Maybe not me, no. But Dulcie?”
I stiffened. Quillan blinked slowly and leaned towards me as he spoke softly. “You can’t possibly think I’m the only one who ever betrayed her,” he said. “Can you?”
I stood up a bit straighter and adjusted my collar. “I have never pretended to be anything more than what I am.”
“You don’t have to.”
“How many times have you nearly gotten Dulcie killed?” I replied, my tone of voice growing harsher.
He swallowed. “That was a long time ago.”
“Not so very long.”
He pressed his lips together, cocking his head to the right with unmasked irritation. “Like you have any room to talk!”
“I beg your pardon?’
Quillan turned to me and stood up. “You were in the smuggling game decades before I got involved,” he said. “And now you’re telling me it never occurred to you that Melchior and Dulcie were closely related?”
“It may have crossed my mind,” I responded. “I am sure it crossed yours. I was, however, under the impression Melchior thought his daughter was dead, or missing, but he simply did not care. It was never anything he confided to me on our rare and unpleasant visits. I did not betray Dulcie. She was never deceived about who or what I am. You? You were someone she trusted.” The word was ripe with bitterness, and sharp as a razor. It broke the mood like glass. Anger came with it, boiling up in the back of my throat hot as magma, an upheaval of sudden and unwarranted homicidal impulses.
I suppressed them and continued, clearing my throat. “You lied to her.”
“I lied only to protect her.”
“You lied only to protect yourself,” I corrected him. “I have always walked the line between your worlds and I believe that is why you never arrested me.” Quillan wanted to run me in me from the moment we first laid eyes on one another. Learning that I was useful, however, he apparently decided he had bigger fish to fry. “Dulcie always knew that. I am a gentleman and a criminal, I never pretended to be anything noble. You, on the other hand…” I trailed away, shaking my head.
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