by Dianna Hardy
“So what if she loves him?”
He stared at the small, man-fairy-thing that had become his personal Yoda. “Is that a serious question?”
“Yes. He’s the baby’s father as much as you are. Do you think she shouldn’t love him? The poor woman has two lives – has had her life literally split in two. Does her loving him mean she loves you less?”
“No, but I kinda wasn’t planning on sharing,” he glowered.
Teigas smiled. “Lots of things have happened that you weren’t planning on. You gotta go with it, change, adapt—”
“And let him have her?” he bit out. “Is that what you’re saying?”
“I’m saying that you’ve had her for fifty years longer than she’s had you. What is truly yours never leaves you if you let it go.”
Amy’s words floated towards him on the hot desert breeze, as if she was right there next to him: I’m yours.
Maybe it was that perceived reality shit again, but fuck did it make his heart ache.
“Be honest with yourself,” continued Teigas, “are you more pissed off that she loves another, or that she might leave you to be with him?”
He all at once felt stranded at the thought of her leaving him. God, he’d already thought he’d lost her twice: once in Hyde Park after the Shanka portal was closed, and again when he’d wondered, for a split second, if she would choose to not follow him back through the wormhole.
The morning after he’d rescued her from 1956, he’d lain with her on her couch and vowed that he would love her, even if she could never love him. Because the thought of losing her drowned him.
“Exactly,” stated Teigas.
Pueblo scowled.
The imp ignored him. “If losing her is the trigger, then everything else is irrelevant, and you can’t lose her if she’s truly yours.”
“What kind of fucked up logic is that?”
“It’s the logic of mergence. Everything’s become one. Duality is disappearing. Get rid of the notions of ‘right’ and ‘wrong’ – unlearn it. There is only ‘being’. There is only what is.”
“You make it sound so simple.”
“Oh, it isn’t simple. It’s a skill in trust, in yourself and the circumstances that have brought you to this point. Do you think that the fifty years we’ve spent cocooned in our own little bubble has been for nothing? Everything happens for a reason, Dessec, but it takes great mastery to trust in that. Have you heard of the Bird Magi?”
“Magpies?”
“Don’t be a dunce. Bird Magi. Great magicians who dedicate their lives to working with bird magic, to the point where they practically become one with the animal. Birds are fascinating. They have always had the ability to travel between dimensions and the magi know this. It can take years to coax a bird to them, and it is only done through letting go and trust. They must let go of the bird at the end of every meeting they have with it, watch it take to the wind, and trust that it will return. Some birds do and some birds don’t … but the ones that do, build a bond with their would-be masters and return time and time again until they choose to rest their wings and earth themselves. In that moment, bird and magician become one, and the magician learns the art of flight and freedom, while the bird learns stability and security.”
“I would ask what your point is, but I’m scared to…”
Teigas stood and dusted himself down, with Pueblo following suit. “You coaxed her, bonded with her, she disappeared, you found her, your bond grew, you were forced apart again… You need to give her the freedom to fly, and she needs to choose where to land. There is no partnership, no unity, without choice. If she’s yours, she’ll come back to you.” The imp fixed his eyes on Pueblo. “But if you don’t let her go, you’ll never know if she really came back.”
Chapter Four
To this day, I had never heard a prayer so clearly, so strongly, and so coated in pain, hope, fear and love … it was impossible not to respond. It was not a decision made lightly, but on the purity of your mother’s need, and purity of need is what makes a prayer tangible, my boy – a living, breathing thing.
Your mother had to push you out even though your heart had stopped. Her anguish was so great. I had just landed in the delivery room on the force of her prayer. Remaining invisible, I held you before anyone else did, the second she gave birth to you. I shared my blood with you for the briefest of seconds – some freaky psychic surgery if you could actually see it – being immaterial (and immortal) comes in handy like that. From the outside, it looks like a miracle. From the inside … ha! It is a fucking miracle!
Anyway… My blood filled your small body, it altered your genetic coding and restarted your heart.
Now, that was a picture – the look on all the nurses’ faces when the monitor fired up again.
You’ve got to understand, angels are forbidden to create – I shouldn’t have done it. Shouldn’t have been able to. But I wasn’t exactly supposed to find the Holy Grail either…
Your mother was a changed woman that day. I know that may be hard for you to believe, but you gave her hope when she had none, and you became her strength. One thing I’ve learnt about humans: you can’t judge their strength by the size of their actions, but by the devotion of an act, no matter how small.
That day, and for the rest of the week that you both remained in the hospital, she asked all staff to keep her husband away – he hadn’t wanted to be part of the birth anyway. She refused all calls from him and insisted he be told she was too ill for visitors. He’d been spewing some verbal shit at her just before she went into labour. She didn’t want your newborn ears subjected to that crap.
It was the only time she ever defied him.
She didn’t stop smiling for five days.
I stayed with your family for eight months after that, never visible, of course. I would have stayed longer – I would have stayed every year, for years, but I got called upon to help a witch with his daughter – another prayer that was impossible to turn away from.
And this is where fate steps in. This is the part where angels don’t know everything. For that witch would be Etienne Green; his daughter, Katherine, and her future daughter would be your soul-bonded.
The precise moment I understood Katherine was pregnant by Darius and that she needed to protect her baby, was the precise moment I knew your role: I would not be the only one to protect her child.
But with that began a different story.
Mine with you ends here.
You carry my genes in your blood because your mother loved you so much, her prayer rocked the skies.
And I love you too.
Everything you are, and everything I know you’ll become.
My son.
Gwain
28th October, 2011
Just hours before he’d died.
Karl slammed the book shut for the hundredth time; for the hundredth time, still unsure what to make of it all. His heart felt squeezed of all blood. Christ, it was hard to breath. In fact, breathing had been hard for the past few weeks.
My son.
He wanted to hurl the damn thing at the wall. He wanted to rip the leaves out and burn them, but the antiquarian in him couldn’t bear the thought of ruining so much history. His history.
The book was the size of an encyclopaedia and looked to have been bound around the mid-nineteenth century. It had been the only thing in the safe, along with a letter about magic and a sword or relic or some shit he just couldn’t get his head around right now along with all the other information swimming in it. It didn’t even feel like his own head sometimes.
In the book were notations of things Gwain had done throughout the centuries, some of them downright bizarre (and he’d learnt a whole bunch of stuff about Van Gogh he really didn’t want to know), right up until there was nothing at all – no entry written – for about fifty years, then, all of a sudden, there was the above, written to him; about him.
And then there were the newspaper clippings and other tri
nkets that seemed to follow pivotal points in Karl’s life: the faded photographs of his BMX rally days in his early teens, random moments he’d wished either of his parents had been around to see, a keyring and an old, 1902 two-pence piece, both of which he thought he’d lost when he was ten… Clearly, Gwain had found them. He’d been there. Gwain had been there the whole fucking time.
Oh yeah. And there was also the small matter of inheriting half the bloody world.
That swimming in his head turned into a typhoon, and he manhandled the gigantic book back inside the top drawer of the bedroom chest and shut it.
My son, whispered his mind. There’d been a lot of whispering in his mind recently.
He brought the heel of his palm to his forehead in an attempt to shut it all out.
“Hey.”
He jumped as he turned, caught completely unawares by Elena’s entrance. The grey light of dawn encircled her. Usually, he found it enhanced her beauty – hell, he’d find her beautiful encircled by a mass of creepy crawlies – but right this second, oddly, it reminded him of the fact that she was a Shanka demon; half of her ruled by shadows. “Hey. I didn’t hear you.”
She smiled. “I was quiet.” Then her eyes dropped to the closed top drawer before meeting his again. “My mum’s being stubborn about being rejuvenated.”
He went to stuff his hands into his pockets, then realised he was wearing nothing but his boxers. “She’s been through a lot. She’ll come around.”
“What about you?”
“Me?”
“You’ve been through a lot.”
He shrugged. “We all have.”
Her eyes dropped to the drawer again, and shit – he really didn’t want to talk about it. It made his heart hurt, because he talked to Elena about everything – always had – but this…
“Maybe if you—”
“Elena—”
“But—”
“Don’t.”
Annoyance flashed through her eyes, which made him feel even worse. In all their years together, they’d never argued about anything that he could think of.
“Look, I don’t know what to say, okay? I don’t know how to talk about it. Nothing I say can change anything – it can’t fix the past or the way things are. I’d rather not wallow in something I can’t change.”
Her hazel eyes softened. “Would you change it if you could?”
He exhaled. “And where would I start?” Angrily, he shoved his underwear off, irrationally annoyed at the absence of pockets, and made for the shower – might as well greet the day head on. “With the mother who got herself killed, the father who killed her, or the other father who could have stopped it all if he’d actually given a damn.”
He slammed the bathroom door harder than he’d intended, ignoring the little upset sound that came from his girlfriend.
No, not just his girlfriend: his soul-bonded.
… was the precise moment I knew your role…
He ignored the faint knocking of the bathroom door through the streaming of the shower hose.
…I would not be the only one to protect her child…
“Karl.”
…the only one to protect her…
“We need to talk about this.”
He turned up the power of the jet. It did nothing to drown out the whispering.
…my son…
“Karl!”
He heard mild expletives, something about being childish and not being himself, and then the bedroom door shut behind her.
He breathed a sigh of relief, although he couldn’t deny that his chest remained tight with an ache that he suspected was a little bit of guilt and a whole lot of hurt. Still … he couldn’t go there.
…protect her…
He didn’t know how to go there.
…my son…
Because what the fuck was real anyway.
~*~
“Good morning!” chirped Paul, a.k.a. Etienne, a.k.a. Elena’s grandfather. He beamed his smile as he collected mugs, coffee, tea, bread and jam from the kitchen cupboards, and Elena wasn’t sure whether to feel glad that someone was showing positivism – no matter how forced – or pissed off that it was her grandfather, out of all people, seemingly able to take the apocalypse in his stride.
But if there was one thing she’d learnt from it all the past three weeks, it was that she didn’t want to wallow in crap that she bottled up and refused to let go of – the crap being her feelings towards her grandfather. So, she smiled back. “Good morning.”
Amy wandered in from her bedroom looking bleary-eyed.
Her mother hadn’t come back out of hers yet, and Karl was still in their en-suite bathroom.
Paul had taken the room nearest to Amy’s. He seemed to always be the first one up and Elena wondered if he’d always been an early riser.
“Morning?” yawned Amy. “Mornings still suck post-apocalypse. And you’re making coffee? That’s just mean.” She glared at Paul.
He pointedly ignored the stare and grinned wider instead. “Sorry, darling, but the masses still want coffee.”
“I want coffee.”
“I can make you a weak one, but just one, okay?”
“I like it strong,” she all but growled, then looked murderous when he chuckled.
“Six decades hasn’t tempered your passion for the beverage. You know, that stuff cost a bloody fortune back then – or it did the way you liked it, freshly ground.”
Elena looked away from them and studied her fingernails. She never quite knew what to say when they talked about ‘the past’. The whole thing still freaked her out if she was being honest, but maybe she wasn’t the only one, because she caught the slightly bewildered look on Amy’s face before she masked it.
Paul had his back to her and didn’t notice. “So, would you like me to make you a coffee?”
A pause, before her softened tone reached all ears – soft, but determined not to be outdone. “Will it be as good as Gina’s used to be at the Moka Bar?”
An electric silence followed, until Paul broke it with a, “I’ll do my best,” his voice a shade thicker than a second ago.
Clearly, Elena wasn’t privy to whatever used to happen at this monumental ‘Moka Bar’.
“You always did make a good coffee,” replied Amy, gently.
Elena bit back an exhalation. She had to get out of here. Her succubus had been persistently hungry recently, and she knew it was to do with all the emotional (and obviously sexual, even if neither of them wanted to admit it) tension flying about between these two, not helped by Amy’s pregnancy hormones. But all the extra … er … sex with Karl she’d been having, which she needed to pacify the demon in her, just seemed to agitate him at the moment. That cut her deeply, but he was going through stuff, so she let it slide and hadn’t brought it up with him. Who’d have thought a man would get annoyed with too much sex. Sheesh.
“Karl and I are going back to the house this morning.”
Amy threw her a curious look as her grandfather continued making the breakfast. “You are?”
“Figured it’s about time – can’t hide up here forever, as nice as it is.” And it was nice, with a twenty-four hour concierge, a gymnasium on the ground floor, complete with a residents-only, heated, indoor swimming pool, games room, cinema room, and a very posh cocktail bar spanning the whole of the 48th floor, which was one floor above Gwain’s apartment. “What about your flat in Croydon?”
“If it survives the riots, someone else can have it for £800 a month.”
Elena grimaced. Despite Karl’s house being ransacked, Wimbledon had faired better than Croydon in the days following the apocalypse.
“Besides, I’m loving the swimming pool,” she grinned. “I’m heading there after breakfast.”
“You are?” frowned Paul, as he brought the cafetière over.
“Yes, and I’ll be fine out of your sight for sixty minutes,” she snapped.
His frown deepened and Elena winced, actually feeling sorry
for him for a fraction of a second. Amy and pregnancy were proving to be a mercurial combination, not to mention explosive.
He cleared his throat and changed the subject. “I’ve contacted a doctor who used to work for The Council. He’s had some experience with more unusual pregnancies and he has an appointment free at eleven o’clock. I’ve booked it. I think we should go.”
Amy fidgeted in her seat, suddenly looking a little pale. “What will he do?”
“An ultrasound, I suppose.”
“But I’m only six weeks gone. Isn’t that a little early for a scan?”
“Not if you want an actual diagnosis.”
“Paul, I know I’m pregnant.”
“So do I. We all do. But this isn’t a human child. It’s only sensible to … make sure everything’s okay.”
“Of course it’s human,” she stated, indignantly.
And this time, Elena threw in her own frown. “Er ... and also a shifter and part-demon, its conception made possible by fairy magic via a time loop. Amy – go see the doctor.”
The blonde witch stared at Elena, and then at Paul, and alternated between the two a couple more times before finally throwing her hands up in defeat. “Fine. But I’m swimming on my own,” she said, aiming those words directly at Paul.
He clenched his jaw. “Fine. But I’m reinstating our magical connection so I’ll know if you’re in trouble.”
She opened her mouth to argue, then seemed to think better of it as she placed a hand across her abdomen. “Fine.”
“I take it everyone’s fine then,” came her mother’s wry tone from their right. Dressed for the day, she made her way towards them … the way an eighty-year-old did.
Elena bit her tongue before her frustration could make itself known.
“Katherine.” Paul rose from his chair and took her arm to guide her down into her own seat, and wasn’t that one freaky, eerie sight: him young, her old.
“Thanks, Dad,” she said.
Yeah. Eerie.
The door behind her to her left opened, and Karl walked out, blond hair damp and tousled, white T-shirt showing off the contours of his chest; casual jeans bringing out the blue of his eyes.
