The Celestial Kiss

by Celine, Belle

  “I didn’t mean to intrude.” He said by way of a peace offering.

  “Because there is so much for you to intrude upon.” My voice came across huffy even to my own ears, and I made it a point to swallow some of my irritation. You’re here by your own choice now…play nice.

  “That’s why I’m here,” James answered, looking out the window behind me. “I thought maybe you might want to take a walk in the gardens…get some fresh air?”

  It was probably one of the last things I had expected him to say, yet it both excited and confused me. I hadn’t done something as quaint as take a walk in what felt like ages.

  My suspicion must have been obvious because James laughed. From that one little sound, I learned more about him than he’d told me since I’d been here—I made him nervous. “It’s beautiful out,” He appealed.

  I appraised him, tall and muscular, dark and intriguing, and made uncomfortable by me—a girl half his size. I’m sure this was not exactly a daily occurrence for him. He wasn’t my captor anymore. He didn’t control me. I didn’t want to be his friend, but I wanted him to realize that he didn’t have power over me. I wasn’t scared of him. That’s why we walked together through the massive home in awkward silence. Our footprints sounded like claps of thunder echoing through the empty halls…or maybe I was still scared of him.

  I felt lighter immediately after we crossed into the twilight, as though the wind that brushed the hair from my shoulders was also lifting my troubles away. I closed my eyes there on the top step, drinking in this unhampered freedom, and when at last I reopened them it was to see James watching me. He looked away almost immediately, leaving whatever thoughts he’d had unspoken. It would have been an opportune moment to ask what he’d been thinking, but I was distracted by the glimpse of smile I caught before he could turn away.

  His pace was casual enough that I was able to fall in stride with him, and we walked towards the fountain, lost in our respective thoughts. The absence of words was not at all as prominent as I had feared it would be, despite the never ending stream of questions that had become consciousness. A fringe of trees outlining the property seemed to sway along to the music of the wind whistling through the branches. It carried with it the promise of rain, an earthy scent with a note of something sweet that I couldn’t place, until I realized where James had led me.

  When I looked out from my window, it was at the north end of the property, at a perfectly manicured garden, and those dancing trees in perfect lines. Now, however, we were facing the opposite direction, and it was even more beautiful than the view I’d become accustomed to. Here, hedges lined the property, tall and dark with wild white roses spilling out from the spaces between. The roses owned the hedges and they had for a while, their splendor taking over the vast expanse of greenery. Only darkness seemed to exist past the overgrown walls, but here everything was bathed in moonlight. Suddenly, I felt very small.

  “Wow,” I breathed, in spite of myself.

  “I’ve grown up with it,” James said, as if that made it any less special. “I would look out here just about every day, dreaming of what I could do for the people that exist outside the protection of these walls. With time, I guess it started to look more like a prison than a haven.”

  “A haven.” I don’t know why I repeated it, but I liked the way the word felt on my tongue, light and full of promise. James stared out at it too, leaving me a moment to contemplate his words. Even surrounded by love and family, given the finer things in life and space to run, James had felt trapped. He’d grown up so different from me, and yet we had wound up essentially in the same place. “You don’t like it here?” I ventured.

  “It’s my home.” He spoke the words like they were an explanation in themselves, but my confusion must have been obvious. A little sigh escaped him, and he turned to me. Up until then, I’d only been sneaking glances at him. But now he had captured my attention. “I love the people here, but I don’t like the walls. I don’t like being separated from the people I’m supposed to be protecting.” His face was an accurate portrayal of the dismay in his voice.

  “It’s exquisite, though.” I leaned forward, enticed by the perfect white of one of the roses, and brushed my fingertips over the velveteen petals. James’ warning came a moment too late, telling me to stop after I’d already touched it, and I recoiled. My face burned, and I was fairly certain that even in the dark, he could tell. I considered apologizing, but my embarrassment was a quick segue into anger.

  “Are you hurt?” James stepped closer with a hand outstretched, all business.

  “No. Why would I be hurt?” I demanded. My pride was wounded, but I didn’t think that was what he meant.

  “The roses. They didn’t burn you?”

  “Of course not,” I snapped, because it was a stupid question. I turned my eyes back to the offending rose and glared at it as though it were to blame for my scorn.

  “Not even a little?” James prodded.

  “What do you care?”

  He laughed, and I thought it was because I was wearing him thin with this negativity, but I caught the glint of amusement in his eyes as they appraised me. “You’re very intriguing.”

  I held his gaze until it became uncomfortable and I had to look away. James shook his head, as if he had come to his senses, and stepped forward, cupping one of the roses between his fingers. “Wild moon rose. It’s the most potent to vampires. Although, I suppose you’re not really a vampire.” His eyes flitted over me, like he was still trying to figure out what I was. That made two of us. “It grows on the graves of the most devout, and it springs right from their ashes. It’s a sacred flower.” He pulled the rose just gently enough to remove the bud and after a moment’s admiration, he offered it to me and let it fall into my hand, careful to avoid my touch. He watched me, almost expectantly, and then turned away. “They were planted around the wall for our protection. But like I said, sometimes it’s hard to tell the difference between what we’re keeping in and out.”

  I wasn’t convinced. “This whole place…it’s amazing.”

  “It’s an illusion,” James explained. “We remove ourselves from the humans and the vampires, and then get upset when some become so comfortable behind these walls that they forget their role in life.”

  “Which is what?” I ventured. He’d told me that they were the protectors of human, but in the modern world, what did that mean? Surely at one time the role had been literal, when the wolves had stood guard outside the family’s quarters like in the painting I’d seen the other day. Now, with the abundance of technology and the supposed superiority of the human race, what did it mean to them?

  “To dedicate our lives in service of the humans,” He said. “Not to just be here as a line of defense or a safeguard against attack. We should be out there, as political leaders and teachers and well-intended strangers, shepherding humanity into leading moral lives, patrolling the streets, protecting innocence from evil—whether that is in the form of vampires or other humans.” The way he spoke with such unveiled passion appealed to my sense of curiosity. They were beautiful words, and he clearly meant them.

  I bit my lip, but I couldn’t hold on to my thoughts any more than I could keep my words from coming out full of contempt. “Is that what you were doing the night you attacked me? Cleaning up the streets?”

  He sighed. “We were having such a nice moment.” His lips faltered around a smile, before he really looked at me. “I don’t blame you for being bitter.” James’ eyes were honest and unashamed, not wavering under my accusation. “I would be.”

  Bitter was not the kind of person I wanted to be. I’d been a lot of things—callous, weak, indifferent, and emotional; I didn’t want to be any of them. Leaving my father’s home had been my chance to start fresh, to cast off all the negativity I’d held onto for so long. The apology was on my tongue when James spoke again.

  “The night I bit you, I was out of line. Julius and I had been in a fight just before we crossed path
s with you. I knew he’d been out all night drinking, and I was on edge as it was.” His eyes had drifted to the sky, whether because eye contact was uncomfortable or because he was confessing his indiscretion to someone greater than me. “And then we ran into you and …I still don’t know why I did it. I mean, I wanted to get Julius back before anyone noticed he was gone, and I wasn’t in the mood to deal with you…or rather, what I thought you were.”

  It wasn’t really the answer I’d expected. I remembered seeing Julius in the diner, pinning a man to the wall by the collar of his shirt. Was James just cleaning up his brother’s mess?

  While I was feeling more open to the idea of forgiving him, if James wanted my trust, he would have to earn it. “Why?”

  His face was grim, and I noticed a very fine line around his mouth. He was surely just a little older than me, but it seemed that the inherent stress of being the king’s heir had weighed upon him. “Julius has a pure heart, but he is probably the most… intense person I know. I think that everything he feels is more acute, be it passion or misery. His highs are higher than mine…his lows are lower. He’s been through a lot.”

  I was silent, reluctant to accept this as truth, because it would only make Julius more (for lack of a better word) human. Besides, he was royalty, born to a great destiny. What in his life could have possibly been hard? These people seemed to have everything: a comfortable lifestyle, a huge family, and the freedom I’d have killed for. And they were squandering it. I looked at the rose in my hand, twirling it by the stem.

  “Julius is older than me by three years,” James confessed. It was a funny admission, and it caught me off guard enough to look at him. His hands were in his pockets, and he was now looking back at the house as though he were expecting Julius to emerge from it. “The throne would have been his, under different circumstances.”

  I nodded, because that made sense. He did seem to have an awful big chip on his shoulder, and that sense of entitlement…

  “I’m not sure it’s a responsibility he ever wanted. I’m not sure any of us ever wanted it, to be honest. But my brother is very…unbalanced.” He looked troubled. My mind turned immediately to thoughts of drugs and dependencies and mental illnesses. God willing, I wouldn’t have to witness any of that. He was bad enough sober. “Julius acts on emotion instead of logic…he doesn’t consider consequences or all of the options.”

  James made it sound like a bad thing…which, I guess for a King it would be. But it struck me that perhaps Julius and I were more similar than I wanted to believe. I too, reacted with emotion.

  It was quiet as we both contemplated his words. The sun had dipped under the horizon a while ago, and while the sky was still a medley of pinks, the temperature had dropped with it. Shivering against the passing breeze, I wrapped my arms around myself and looked up at the few dimples in the sky, stars burning millions of miles away. I’d read once that they were all probably dead by the time their light reached us, but if that was true, then there was an understated beauty in death.

  James looked too. I couldn’t help but wonder if he was thinking the same thing as me.

  We stayed like that for I don’t know how long before James let out a long, low breath. I watched him from the corner of my eye, stretching his thick shoulders, rolling his neck. He offered me his hand. I stared at it in instant disdain, but when I looked up at him, it evaporated. There was no anger or disgust, no hatred in his eyes.

  Tentative, I dropped my hand in his. A warmth spread through me then, and in its succession, a downy sense of peace.

  Chapter Thirteen

  I wouldn’t exactly say we were friends, but there was a definite shift in the energy between James and I. It wasn’t even as though we’d had a soul-bearing heart-to-heart last night. But something about the way we had shared the silence and the moon and the stars had changed things. I knew now that he wasn’t as certain as he’d seemed from afar, and that even he felt like things were beyond his control despite his position of power. The fact that he’d told me anything at all about himself, about the person he was at his core, made it hard for me to hate him. And so throughout breakfast, I offered him pleasant and meaningless conversation and just-enough-to-be-polite smiles.

  I hoped my new-found compliance would pave a path to the answers I wanted, but I didn’t have a chance to ask for them. James was gone immediately after he stood, and Janna shepherded me to the side as soon as we exited the room. “I was hoping you’d help me with something.” She smiled. I squinted at her, wondering what she could possibly need from me.

  Twenty minutes later, we were walking through a darkness so obsolete I thought it may never end. She’d lead me to the indoor courtyard where I’d met with her father and told me only that she needed my help in the city before disappearing into the black tunnel. She didn’t answer when I demanded she tell me why we were going there, and after a few moments of staring hesitantly into the infinite darkness, I followed. I caught up to her in just a minute, using her flashlight beam as a guide to her. That beam lit up the walls, smooth stone much like the one inside; I knew by the sloping path that we were headed underground and took a deep breath, trying not to think about it.

  Water dripped steadily in the distance. It sounded like it was on the inside of my skull, a trickling echo that set me on edge. I turned to Janna, though there was nothing to see other than the back of her head. The tunnel was too narrow for the both of us to walk side-by-side. “What are we doing?”

  She turned to appraise me, those soft eyes running languidly over all five and a half feet of me. “I’m giving you a reason to stay.”

  “You’ve already given me a reason to stay,” I reminded her. “Although I’m not happy to have come into your brother’s life this way, I don’t think anyone deserves to die…which is what I gather will happen if we break the bond.”

  Janna shook her head. “That’s just it, though. You’re staying out of guilt. You’re staying because you don’t want to be responsible for whatever the Hell comes after you leave. I want you to stay because you believe in the cause.”

  “For someone so religious, you sure throw that word around easily.”

  “Hell?” Janna laughed. “It’s just a word, Lilith. And I am NOT religious.” I gave her a look somewhere between surprised and confused, and she returned it with a laugh. “I’m spiritual. There’s a difference.”

  “Sure.” I muttered, because this wasn’t a conversation that I was ever comfortable having; particularly not when I had to remind myself to breathe. The chances of the walls caving in were statistically low, right?

  Janna wasn’t ready to let it go, though. “Tell me that you don’t believe in something greater than yourself…” She said it like a dare, but when I looked up from the ground she was watching me, incredulous.

  “I don’t know what I believe in. I never have.”

  “Well,” Janna straightened, the beam of her flashlight dropping as the path before us opened wider. The darkness began to recede; my heart raced with joy. “Maybe I can change your mind.”

  The tunnel let out at the mouth of a cave, somewhere in the woods. I’d have said it looked familiar from my flight, but I’d be lying to myself since all the rocks and trees and dirt looked the same. Janna knew where she was going, and she walked confidently in the direction of horns blaring and cars whooshing by at speeds excessive enough to rattle the tree tops. Across the street was the very same diner I’d thought could serve as my refuge. My eyes flitted to the alley where James had attacked me. I glared at Janna, mouth open. “What are we doing here?”

  Janna glanced around, and then her eyes fell on the diner sign. Her mouth formed an ‘O’ when she made the connection. “This is where…?” She shook her head. “Of course it is. Julius has a thing for the blonde waitress.” She rolled her eyes. “Hey, that truck stop has nothing to do with this, ok? Come on.”

  We didn’t cross the street; rather we stayed on our side of the road and walked for what felt like miles, unti
l we came to an innocuous metal shelter, the size of a chicken coop. It smelled the way I imagined a chicken coop would. Fortunately I didn’t suffer long, because a few minutes later a great big bus came to a noisy stop in front of us. I followed Janna on and she slipped enough coins into the machine for the both of us.

  The bus didn’t agree with me, which was fine since I didn’t agree with it. We sat, knees pressed together, avoiding the disinterested eyes that glazed over us. The air seemed to have thickened once the doors closed, and with that it became hotter. The stench of so many people pressed so tightly together set my heart to pounding, which in turn set my head to throbbing. “Would you just answer my questions already?” I snapped.

  Janna fixed me with a sideways glance, smiled at an elderly woman with her hair pulled under a plastic cap, and then stared straight ahead. I clenched my fists and released them. Janna was the closest thing I had to a friend; punching her would certainly jeopardize that. And on a moving vehicle with a few dozen spectators, it would also draw unwanted attention. I felt like a moving target as it was.

  We stayed like that, squished onto a blue vinyl seat, as the woods gave way. Almost immediately after, buildings began to appear like out of a pop-up book, tall and glossy. Janna stood and I followed her off the bus, tripping over the last step as the thing lurched, preparing to leave before I’d even made it off.

  The noise was the first thing I noticed; it was immediate and all-encompassing, vibrating in the air. Horns and music and static and voices and the rushing wind all twined into one loud mess. The next was the smell…I didn’t even know how to describe that, though it was not entirely unpleasant. “Welcome to the city.” Janna smiled.

  I tried not to look as disappointed as I felt. When I’d run from Xian, from my father, I’d thought the city would be my safe place. Though I’d never been, I expected it would magically solve all my problems. I’d disappear in the mesh of other people, find Samuel, and then go from there. And now, I was standing there in the heart of it all, knowing that my time had passed.