by Keary Taylor
CHAPTER TWENTY-NINE
When I woke it wasn’t just my neck that hurt. My entire body felt as if it had been hit by a semi-truck, pulled through gravel mixed with shards of glass, and then dropped off a ten story building. My head throbbed so fiercely it felt as if a few of those shards of glass had to be protruding into my skull. As my brain sorted out all of the pain, my stomach heaved and I just managed to roll to my side, the contents of my stomach shooting into a bucket that was unexpectedly on the floor.
With a sharp intake of breath, I rolled back onto my back. Every movement sent new, raw shots of pain pulsing through my veins.
It took me a few moments before I realized I didn’t know where I was and I felt sure I was not in the same place I had been when I’d fallen asleep last. Opening my eyes as little as possible, I looked at my surroundings.
There was very little light in the room. There did not appear to be any windows and the only light that did come into the room streamed in from a door that was open on the far wall. The room seemed to be bare of anything besides the bed I was lying on and a simple wooden kitchen chair. As far as I could tell the walls were plain white and I couldn’t see the floor.
“The time I first saw you,” I heard Cole’s voice at the foot of the bed and watched as he stood, then took a seat on the chair. “I knew I had to have you. It was so strong, the drive, it nearly drove me mad.”
I glared at Cole, sitting so relaxed with one ankle crossed over the other knee. I had never truly hated anyone in my life but hate could not even come close to being the right word for how I felt about Cole.
“It should have been easy to find you, for us to be together. Had you been the person who was on trial I should have simply had to go into the depths of hell and look for you. There wouldn’t have been anywhere for you to hide. But when I saw you I knew there was something different. You were so frightened and yet you seemed to know exactly what to expect. None of the other council members seemed to notice you were not who you were supposed to be. But I knew something was wrong as soon as I looked into your beautiful face.”
My body started shaking as hate and disgust flooded through me. I wanted to make him stop. I didn’t want to hear what he was saying, to know the full truth of how he had come after me from a reality that should not have been real.
“It was then that I decided I had to have you for myself. It took me a little while but I figured out a way to follow you back into the world of the living. It was so strange, being back. The world has changed a lot since I last walked it. I suppose a lot should change in a few hundred years.”
My mind was so twisted with fury I could not even make myself comprehend what his last few sentences meant.
Cole sat forward, resting his elbows on his knees. He stared into my face for what could have been a few intense seconds or several long minutes, I wasn’t sure. His eyes were so severe, I could not look away. They drew me in, called to me like water would to a man who had been stranded in a desert for days without it.
I snapped my eyes closed and turned my head away. Something was wrong with those eyes. They did strange things to my thinking and I didn’t like it. There was a power behind them that was all the more evidence he was not human anymore.
“You’re dying, Jessica,” Cole said, his voice hard and clear. When he didn’t say anything else I looked back at him, trying to be careful to not lock eyes with him again. His eyes were hard, his jaw clenched, his fists knotted into balls that rested on his knees.
“I’m sick,” I said with disgust in my voice as I struggled to sit up a bit. “That doesn’t mean I’m dying.”
“Actually it does,” Cole said, his voice low. “You remember that lovely little conversation you had with your father yesterday? Everything he said was the truth. You were dying when you were a child. He made a plea to have more time with you and that plea was heard.
“You’ve been living on borrowed time for the last fifteen years but that time is quickly running out. Do you remember what your father said was wrong with you when you were a child?”
I didn’t want to consider what Cole was saying but I couldn’t help but recall the conversation. My father had said I’d had a horrible fever, chills, headaches, body aches, I couldn’t eat anything without throwing up. Exactly like I was experiencing now.
“The same thing is happening again. Like I said, you’ve been living on borrowed time in exchange for standing trials. Time is up though. You don’t have long left now. You’re already becoming more like me with every passing day.”
I didn’t have to wonder for long what he had meant by that.
“You don’t normally need to sleep for as long as people do. As an angel, I never sleep, nor do I eat. My needs are not the same. I know how everything looks so disorienting and clear to you now, it’s the same with your hearing, but this is how it is for me always. You are making the gradual transformation into what you should have become fifteen years ago.”
I closed my eyes as the room started tilting. I wanted to deny what he was saying, to tell him he was wrong. The most frightening thing was that everything he was saying made impossible sense. Things like this should never make sense.
“You will be standing your own trial in not too long. Do you know where you will be judged to go when that time arrives?” Excitement seemed to be rising in his voice as Cole continued.
“You should know as well as any council member that it takes a life of good living to be exalted. Are you sure you’ve done enough?”
He paused a moment as if to let me consider his question. I squeezed my eyes closed and shook my head, trying with everything I had to block out what he was saying.
I heard the chair squeak slightly and a moment later felt the bed shake as Cole sat on the edge of it.
“I can guarantee the after-life will not be as horrible as it could be if you agree to one simple thing. Stay with me. Give yourself to me as I wish to give myself to you. I can even get you into a position of power if that is what you want. A seat on the council is yours if you simply agree to be with me and me alone.”
He picked up my hand that lay limply at my side. He brushed two fingers from my forearm down to my own fingers. A strange tingling sensation shot through my veins though it was not at all the repulsive recoiling sensation I was used to when Cole touched me. It was quite the opposite and before I even allowed myself to do so, I wished he would do it again.
“I can make you a very happy woman, Jessica,” he whispered. I could feel his intense eyes burning into my face but I could not look away from the hand that held my own. He traced his fingers up and down again and I shuddered from the pleasant sensation.
“Hell’s not that bad,” I was startled by how close Cole’s whisper was, his lips brushing against my ear.
His last words shook my head clear and I jerked my hand out of his. “I may believe you that I might be dying,” I hissed as I finally met his eyes again, feeling the fire that burned behind them as the hatred poured out of me. “And if I am, so be it. But I will not be your queen of the condemned. I’d rather be a lowly, unimportant damned angel than your lover in hell.”
Cole’s expression was hard for a moment but quickly melted into a smug smile. “We shall see,” he said before he rose and walked toward the door. “I would consider my offer very seriously, Jessica. I am not lying when I say you only have days left. Don’t wait too long.”
With that he left and I could hear him lock the door from the outside. I was plunged into darkness, locked in a prison with no windows and the leader of damned angels as my keeper.
X
There was no way to mark time as it passed other than a general guess from how often I was sleeping. This was happening frighteningly more and more often and I guessed that I was sleeping nearly once a day. The trials
were happening all too frequently, though Cole did not return to them again.
Another form of altered consciousness was taking over me as my condition worsened progressively. I did not recognize what it was at first. It started only as a feeling of loss, of feeling like I had lost everything that mattered most in the world to me. It was difficult to tell that this strong, overwhelming feeling of despair was not completely coming from me. While I had no guarantee that those I loved the most were safe, I had given Cole no reason to hurt them. I had to believe that they were safe.
The hallucinatory visions soon followed. They were so strong and so vivid it was difficult to believe that they were not real. I wasn’t entirely convinced that they weren’t real in some way.
The first ones were of Alex. After searching for me for so long he had given up hope. His despair was heart wrenching as I watched him cry out my name, watched him sit awake in the dark at night. I wanted to call out to him, to assure him that everything would be alright.
His grief couldn’t last forever though. The visions that came next were of Alex meeting another woman and quickly falling in love. He gave the ring he had bought for me to her.
I saw Sal, alone and scared in the mental institution. The staff was telling her that she had to leave and go home. They also told her that I had gone missing and that they presumed that I was dead. When Sal was alone in her room on what was to be the last night of her stay, she took her razor, ripped it apart till she could get the blades out, crawled into the tub, and slit her wrists. The staff found her the next morning.
The phone rang in my parent’s familiar home and my mother answered it. They told her the same thing Sal had been told. My mother did not even look sad. No tears of grief spilled onto her face.
The most horrifying thing about these visions was the very real possibility of them having actually happened. Alex shouldn’t have to grieve over me for forever, no matter how much it shattered my heart into a million pieces to imagine him being with someone else. What was to keep Sal from actually attempting suicide when she heard that her one true friend was gone forever? And as depressing as it sounded, it was not hard to believe that my mother wouldn’t cry over the un-confirmable possibility of my death.
I tried to keep reality separated from what I hoped wasn’t. What would Alex think happened to me? Would he have any reason to suspect kidnapping? It would have been difficult for someone to sneak onto the yacht and take me, without me making any kind of sound. Would Alex think I had left him in the middle of the night? I had no reason to think Cole didn’t leave some sort of note for Alex, telling all kinds of horrific lies.
And Sal? I guessed she had about a week left in the institute before they would make her leave. What would happen to her after that? And when they couldn’t get a hold of me? I could only hope that somehow Alex might be able to help her and possibly take over my role in her life. She seemed to like Alex enough.
Thinking of such devastating reality seemed to make my condition spiral downward all the faster. Pain was a constant companion; my skin burned fiercely with the fever while its polar opposite of chills shook my body uncontrollably. I had not eaten since I had last seen Alex, though I had no desire to do so.
I couldn’t deny what Cole told me. I was dying and I knew it.
My thoughts wandered on their own accord, in an attempt to distract myself from the pain, to future possibilities. What life would become if I truly had lost and would lose everything and everyone important to me. I did not even have the strength of mind to block out the thoughts of Cole’s offer.
Taking everything and everyone else out of the picture, would it really be so horrible to be with Cole? He could be charming and flattering and obviously he had feelings enough for me to go to so much trouble to come after me. Certainly an eternity of looking into the perfection of his face couldn’t be so terrible.
I considered something else he had said as well. He was right; it took a lifetime of good living to be exalted. People in general were good but it was so easy to do something to condemn yourself. Had I done enough to gain blue eyes? What true good had I done with my life? I had abandoned my family years ago and lost most care for them. I had shut everyone out of my life. I had been selfish enough to drag Alex into this mess. I may not have been a criminal but what had I done with my life to better those around me? If I was to receive my own branding, certainly it would be better to be with Cole than to be one among the thousands, tens of thousands?
Cole had said that hell wasn’t that bad.
Thoughts of Cole filled my head more and more frequently. I found myself pondering over his perfect features over and over. The strong set of his jaw, the straight line of his nose, those intense eyes. Any athlete would have traded his soul for Cole’s body and build.
The memory of Cole’s touch haunted me in a nearly painful way. I wanted him to touch me like that again. I wanted to feel his skin against mine again, just for the thrill it gave me.
Imaginings of what the possibilities could be with Cole consumed me. I thought of lying under a blanket of stars, wrapped in those impossibly strong arms and knowing they would never, ever have to let me go. I pictured how his hands would trace up and down my arms, wrap around my waist. How his lips would feel against my own.
The sound of his voice flooded my ears, telling me over and over how he loved me as no other man could love a woman. He told me of how he would do and had done everything he had to to be with me. He whispered how beautiful I was and that he never wanted to be with another woman in the rest of his existence.
As time continued to pass I did not know what was real anymore and what was not. My state of consciousness was so loose I could not tell if Cole was really there, beside me on the bed, whispering those words to me, touching me in the ways I longed for, or if it was only a figment of my imagination. It didn’t seem to matter anymore. The feelings of unreality were better than the pain that ripped through me.