by Kate Martin
Tension suddenly flooded Rhys's body. Like he was afraid of what the General would say.
“The VFO has made it quite clear they are serious about moving forward with their plans,” the General said, pushing a single sheet of paper aside on the table. “We have long prepared for this, but I find myself with new concerns I had not anticipated. Until I say otherwise, I would ask you all to go nowhere on your own. A safety precaution that I’m sure you will scoff at, but an order nonetheless. I have no intention of letting my family become pawns to be captured or destroyed in this battle.” As he finished he met Rhys’s gaze.
Another chill scurried across the back of my neck—but it was gone as quickly as it had come, and I couldn’t determine if it signaled approaching doom, or if the General had just freaked me out.
For the sake of my sanity, I went with the latter.
Chapter Seven: This World and The Next
The heat of my skin was unbearable, but the chill that accompanied the raging fever threatened to eclipse it. My chest tight, each breath I attempted set my lungs ablaze. My head throbbed and my vision blurred. Focusing on anything for longer than a moment was impossible. I gave up and shut my eyes. There was nothing to be seen in any case. My family had stopped visiting for fear of spreading the illness to my younger siblings, and night had fallen, cloaking everything in darkness.
But they had left the window open, and when the breeze shifted I woke from my fevered sleep and stared into the dim moonlight that lit a path through my room.
I recognized him instantly. My life. My love. He stood in the pale light, shadows accenting his eyes and the angles of his face. My vision was failing me, but his posture seemed odd. His shoulders slumped forward, and his entire body shook with tension. My angel had never looked so worn down.
A violent shiver rocked me against the plain sheets of my bed and made my vision swirl. My stomach rolled, but I hadn’t eaten in days.
When my senses returned, he had come closer, kneeling at the edge of my sick bed. Moisture glimmered in his eyes. I reached a shaky hand out towards my beautiful hallucination. “Rhys.” My voice was barely audible and broken.
“Bryn.” His cool flesh met mine, his fingers closing around my own. The sensation caused me to gasp—then cough.
It took some time for me to be able to speak again. “Am I dead?” How else could my lost beloved touch me, soothe me, in this way?
He shook his head, unkempt hair falling into his eyes. “No. No, you’re not dead.”
Not dead. What a strange notion. I had been waiting for death to come for some time now. Ever since he had disappeared. The illness was simply my transportation.
“Are you?” I couldn’t manage any more words than that. Each breath tore me apart.
Rhys said nothing, only looked away, bringing my hand to his face where he cradled it against his cheek.
I sank into the bed and let myself relax, but I didn’t dare close my eyes again. If I did, I had no guarantee he would be there when I found the strength to look once more. “Tell me,” I whispered, “are you well?”
His tears were cold ice against my skin. “I fear I don’t know which answer will give you the most comfort.”
I smiled, and my lips cracked and bled from the strain. “I knew you hadn’t left me.” My throat locked up and I struggled to breathe. Rhys continued to hold my hand tightly in his. “I knew,” I continued, weary and exhausted from fighting my weak body, “you hadn’t been killed.”
“God, Bryn. I would never have left you. Never. And if I had known you were sick, I would have been here so much sooner.”
My breath shuddered, barely providing me the air I so desperately needed now that he was here. “I know. I don’t blame you.” Each time I drew breath it felt as though my throat were no wider than a needle. “Tell me. Everything.”
He kissed my clammy and heated hand. “The truth is nothing you should concern yourself with.”
Worry crept up my spine. Perhaps I was dead. Perhaps so was he. But if he had come to take me to the other side, why would he fear telling me of heaven? We had lived good lives; God would welcome us with open arms. But my Rhys’s eyes held nothing but fear and sorrow.
“You are alive, are you not?” I struggled for each word. “You must tell me. I must know.”
“I don’t know the answer, Bryn.”
Tears racked my body, even though I had no strength for it. “What does that mean? You are here. Do we go to heaven together, or not?”
He kissed the side of my mouth. “You will see heaven, Bryn. I am sure of it.”
I reached clumsily for him with my other hand. “You?”
He caught my hand in his, holding both now, but looked away again. My heart ached for his gaze. “I will spend my eternity here. At least for now. Someday, I will find my way to you again.”
“How can I go to God knowing I leave you behind, miserable?”
“You must go for both of us.”
When I strained against his hold, he guided my hands, supporting them as I held his face. He felt so deathly cold, and even with my broken vision and the lack of light I could detect a paleness to his face. I knew him so well I didn’t need anything more to see the change. “You’re different. What is it?”
He was quiet for a long moment. Sleep—no death—called to me, but I refused for fear I would never hear his voice again. I was not ready to part from him.
“I have been stricken,” he said finally, my poor heart soaring at the sound even as his words caused it to break, “with a disease unknown. It has no cure, and will tie me here to this earthy realm for some time still.”
“How sad . . . that both of us should see our ends like this.”
Releasing my hands, he drew himself up beside me in my sick bed. I wanted to protest, to push him away, but I hadn’t the strength, nor the will. He set his forehead against mine and wrapped me up in the safety of his arms. He was so cool, and my fever so hot, I leaned into him.
“I do not want you to contract this illness that kills me,” I said as he breathed the same breath as I.
“My own illness will prevent it.”
I believed him, staring into his eyes, touching lightly his eyelids, cheeks, nose and lips. Never before had God made anything so perfect. “I am so very tired.”
He stroked my hair and kissed me. A kiss that tasted of tears. “Sleep now, love. I promise to remain here with you, and I promise to send all my love with you on your travels.”
“Find me,” I said. “I do not want this to be the last time I look upon your face.”
“I will find you again even if I have to battle the devil himself to do so.”
Again, I believed him. “Then kiss me. Kiss me as you would have on our wedding day.”
He pressed his lips against mine. I closed my eyes, and surrendered myself to the calm peace that lay just beyond all my pain.
The cool night air and the chilled grass were the first sign that the memory had ended. The heat of Bryn’s fever still lingered close by, reminding me of the pain and the weakness she had felt for days on end.
A tear slipped down my cheek, rolling towards my ear and finally dropping off into the grass. I lifted a hand to wipe it away after it had already gone, and stared up at the last of the stars in the night sky, twisting the grass between my fingers as I lay on my back in the backyard.
It seemed Aurelia’s new tricks had worked.
After the General had released us with his ultimatum that shackled us to the buddy system, Aurelia had taken me to her rooms for some one-on-one learning. Her new approach? Meditation, paired with some incense that I hadn’t dared ask about. While with her, I’d remembered an afternoon after Rhys had disappeared from Bryn’s life. Her family had tried to convince her to move on, to forget him, but she had never budged. After relaying the information to Aurelia, who was satisfied with the results, I had gone outside to be alone. While still a long way from remembering everything, I certainly remembered a lot. And rem
embering so much all at once made me feel like the past would overrun my mind, leaving no room for my memories of this life. I couldn’t possibly have enough storage space for all these lives.
But really, I just didn’t want to remember any more of these painful, confusing, and heartbreaking events. They were better left in the past.
“There you are.”
I sniffed away the tears that threatened to come and looked to see Rhys materialize above me. His hair matched the sky, the night, just as it had the last time Bryn had seen him. His shoulders were slumped, and though he tried to hide it, his expression was quite similar to how he had looked in my memory.
“What’s wrong?” Sitting up, I could better see the tension in his shoulders.
He blinked, surprised. “Wrong? Nothing’s wrong.”
“You’re lying.”
He sat facing me and took my hand in his, tracing my fingers and the lines on my palm. “Things are just complicated at the moment. We have been receiving letters from other families and clans. We have lost friends in the attacks by the VFO. And there are reports that the cariosus still roam in certain cities, taking refuge—or being given refuge—during the day, and terrorizing the humans at night.”
Something in his expression was wrong. “Did a friend of yours die?”
“People I have known for centuries have been lost, yes.”
“I’m sorry.”
“You wouldn’t have liked them.”
“No? Why not?”
“They were very much the vampires of myth and legend. They enjoyed their power, and hunted regularly. But they still respected the order of things, and they were loyal friends.”
“But they died protecting humans from these failed things?”
“The humans and each other, yes.”
“Then I can like them a little.”
“That’s kind of you.”
I shrugged. “I try.”
“What were you doing out here?”
“Oh. Nothing really. Just thinking.” Something told me not to tell him I had remembered Bryn’s death. He seemed sad enough as it was. Besides, it wasn’t a lie. I had gone outside to think.
“Did you remember something?”
“What?”
He traced around my eyes with his fingertips. “I’ve seen you after a memory enough times now to know the signs. You get this look in your eyes.”
“My memories are more like visions lately. Is it like that for everyone?”
“Sometimes. For the more influential, or important, life events. Other times you’ll remember things the same way you remember what you wore yesterday. I think you’ve experienced both now.”
I nodded. “Lots of the vision type lately, though. Truthfully, it’s become a bit old.”
“What was it this time?”
“Eh, I don’t think I’m going to tell you.”
“Well, that certainly narrows the options of what it could be.”
“How so?”
“There are few things you wouldn’t want to tell me about. Eva’s death most likely being the highest on that list. But since I didn’t find you screaming or otherwise traumatized, I think I can safely assume that wasn't the one.”
“Does that mean when I do remember it you want me to tell you?”
“When you remember it, we’ll have a lot to talk about. And it won’t be just between you and me.”
“Sounds fun. So, what other things wouldn’t I tell you?”
“Anything pertaining to your relationship with your husband during Jacqueline’s life.”
Good call, hadn’t thought of that one. I shuddered. I did not want to remember doing things with that faceless man that I hadn’t even done with Rhys yet. I’d seen so little of that life so far. Those memories would stay away if they knew what was good for them.
“And what else, Mr. Smarty-pants?”
“Bryn’s death.”
Neither of us said anything else for a long stretch of time. I weighed all the pros and cons of telling him what I had remembered, but even with my new improved memory, I couldn’t hold on to anything long enough to determine if the good outweighed the bad.
“Do you want to talk about her death?” I asked quietly, leaving the decision to him.
Rhys lifted my hand and kissed the tip of my longest finger. “We both remember it now, is there anything to talk about?”
I didn’t like when conversations turned in directions that made him look at my hands instead of me. “I don’t know. I was dying, you were dead.”
“Very dead.”
“We can’t change the past.”
“No, we cannot.”
“Seeing you though, it made her feel . . .” I searched for the right word. “Whole. No, that’s not really right. She had worried so much, fought with everyone over what had happened to you. Seeing you, knowing she was right, that her faith in you had not been in vain, it made her happy. And just knowing you were alive, that was all she wanted. Even with as miserable as you looked, I think she knew you would be okay eventually.”
Rhys finally looked at me. I almost wished he hadn’t. The level of sadness in his eyes was something no human could ever achieve. This was five-hundred-year-old grief. Yet when he reached out and gently touched my face, I detected little of that sadness. “I wish I had known then what I know now, so I could have told her I would have found her again in this world, not the next.”
“It didn’t matter which world.”
“I suppose not.” He touched the sixpence resting against my chest, his thumb brushing over the years-worn image.
“Do you miss having it with you?”
“No. I like knowing it’s right here.” He tapped it once.
“Me too.” I placed a quick kiss on his lips, then stood. “I have something I have to do. Will you come with me? Someone has to.”
He got to his feet. “What do you have to do?”
The light of the sun was just beginning to creep over the edge of the world, brightening the dark sky, and swallowing the stars. “I have to talk to Sara. It’s Saturday, and she always wakes up early to go to the little coffee shop downtown.”
“With everything that’s happened, what makes you think she’ll continue her tradition?”
“She’s never missed it before. Even when her grandfather died. Sara is a believer that you can’t let the bad stuff stop you from doing things you love. Life must go on. I just have to hope she’s willing to brave the unknown in order to hold on to her normal. Besides, it will be daylight. The humans still think we burn, don’t they?”
“Yes. We left many of the bodies of the cariosus for them to find smoldering in the sunlight. But Sara has seen you in the day, and now she knows what you are.”
“Which is why I have to talk to her. Everything was so crazy that night. I don’t know if she told anyone about me or not. If she did . . . well, the General won’t be so happy about that, will he?”
“I think he did have plans for your false humanity, but if it has been compromised, we can work around it.”
“I still want to talk to Sara.”
“Then we’ll go to the coffee house, and if she doesn’t come to us, we’ll go to her.”
The sheer number of people waiting in line and sitting outside sipping their gourmet coffee and espresso surprised me. I guess caffeine addiction overruled any lingering fear of vampires. Rhys and I each held a logo-imprinted cup in our hands, but they weren’t filled with coffee. Both of us had fed before coming, and Rhys had slipped into the shop, stolen a couple of empty cups and handed me mine with a smile as though he had bought me my morning treat.
We both stood far off from the majority of the tables, out of sight so we wouldn’t be seen until we were sure Sara had come, and planned on staying.
It was nearly ten o’clock, and I was about to give up on her when she finally came around the corner and got in line.
Rhys leaned in and whispered in my ear. “Are you sure you want to do this?”
> “Yes. I have to.” I spoke softly enough that no human would hear.
“And if she makes a scene and exposes us both?”
“She won’t.”
“If she does, we will both have the Council breathing down our necks.”
“She won’t make a scene. I know her.”
“I trust you.”
That statement landed on me like a lead weight. I would either buckle under the pressure, or fly away with elation over his faith in me. Neither was an option, however. Sara walked out of the shop with her coffee and sat at her favorite table, on a grassy patch under a maple tree.
I kissed Rhys for luck and courage. “Stay here. I don’t want her to feel crowded.” And then if she did make a scene, it would only be me exposed. Not Rhys.
Empty cup still in hand, I walked as humanly as possible to Sara’s table before Rhys could argue.
She had a book with her, as she always did, but it wasn’t open. It sat neglected on the table beside her, a sheet of paper beside it, her hands both tightly wound around her cup. Whatever the shop had concocted that morning, it was icy and topped with whipped cream.
I stopped just short of her table. “That looks good.” My voice was quiet. The uncertainty in my words shocked even me, and made my stomach roll with anxious anticipation.
Sara’s head snapped towards me so fast I was surprised it didn’t fall off. Her earrings jangled, and one long lock of blonde hair fell into her eyes. A million emotions passed over her face before fear and shock settled in. “What are you doing here?”
“I need to talk to you.”
“No.”
I hated things being like this. “Can I sit?”
“No.”
I sat anyway. Pulling the chair out, I placed it a little closer to her, rather than be across the table. This conversation should have been more private, but I gave her the distance, and the public space, she would need to feel safe. I hoped. I caught sight of the paper on the table. It was a schedule grid, for college courses. For the local community college. So much for her dreams of California or North Carolina. The world had been turned upside down. “Sara, please, just listen to me.”