The Quest for Immortality: From The Tales of Tartarus

by A. L. Mengel

  “Give it back to me, and I promise you will live.”

  *~*~*

  The afternoon sun was stifling, but was filtered through the oak canopy on Andelusia Avenue.

  Darius stood in front of Antoine’s estate, just on the sidewalk, on the other side of the yellow police tape.

  The house was now a crime scene.

  It was a burnt-out shell, soot stained cinder blocks with rectangular windows but not much else. The smell of burning embers still filled the air.

  The windows were blown out.

  Some soot stained white shears blew in a light afternoon breeze. He drew in a deep breath as he stared at the former shell of the house. A massive fire. Just the other day. The house was basically burned to the ground. And news reports were saying it was suspected arson.

  But at this moment in time, that did not matter to Darius. He knew that he had to go inside.

  He had to.

  But something was keeping him from going inside. Because he remember when he first returned to Miami, when he sat in the afternoon sun, before the fire, that he saw the shadow in the door. And something told him that the shadow was still there.

  But inside…was still darkness.

  And Darius knew that he had to go inside, he had to find The Cup, see if it was there. For maybe Antoine tucked it away somewhere. Maybe it survived the fire.

  Just maybe.

  He lifted the tape, and ducked underneath, fishing his way up the front path, through worn and weathered gardens, trampled by firefighters’ heavy boots, grown wild and untended since Antoine was gone. But Darius stopped at the front steps. The front door was gone. Just a shell. But the afternoon sunlight would not penetrate the darkness at the door.

  I’m here, Darius.

  I’m here, waiting for you. Just like I did when I came to your room so many years ago. Now I’m waiting for you here. Come on inside, the water’s nice!

  Darius shoved his hand into his jeans pocket and pulled out his cell phone He punched the numbers with a shaking hand. “Delia? I’m here. Just like you told me to. But I know he is here. It’s Tramos. I can sense his presence.”

  The line was silent for a moment. “You have to face him, Darius.”

  And then, shortly after he ended the call with Claire, he called Delia. She answered with her small, tinny voice. Darius told her the same thing. “He may be there,” she said. “But you need The Cup. You have no choice. Only you can change your own destiny.”

  *~*~*

  Darkness fell on the city of Miami and all became eerily silent.

  Those who were about by day were gone and tucked away in the sanctuary of their homes, while the streets were empty. Just as the sun dipped down into the horizon in a sea of painted reds and auburn skies, it happened.

  It was the day that the corpses came.

  No one saw or even knew where they came from, but once the sun went down, they came out. Hundreds upon hundreds of them. And Doug didn’t even notice when they came.

  He had fallen asleep in his limo.

  But when he woke up, he thought the bourbon had been playing a trick with his mind. But when he opened the door, and the pungent stench of death overcame him, after he vomited on the sidewalk in stinking mess, he knew that it wasn’t the bourbon that was fucking with his mind. There really were dead bodies everywhere.

  And there he was, wondering where the man had gone. The mysterious man.

  Don’t speak! They are listening! They are all around us!

  His words replaying in Doug’s mind like a metronome. Who was he talking about? Whatever it was, Doug was determined to see if it had anything to do with the corpses. It seems that when he had fallen asleep in the limo, something drastic had happened to Miami. Where had all of the people gone?

  And then outside there was a deep thud, rousing Douglas from his semi asleep state. Where was he?

  He looked around in the darkness, but it was so dark that his eyes could not adjust to the light. He could not tell if there were others around him, and he did not dare call out.

  Thud.

  Some sand fell on his face, he snapped his eyes shut and tried to rub the sand and small rocks out as best as he could. He sat up from the position he had been lying in.

  *~*~*

  CHAPTER TWENTY

  This is the quest for immortality.

  The quest has already begun.

  It began the moment that Darius stood in the Frankfurt airport, the very moment that he stared at the sunset and then looked down at his aging hand, the hand of which the skin was no longer taut and youthful – the skin that had so quickly grown spotted and wrinkled. It happened too quickly, it happened so quickly that Darius started to fear that he would soon die and not have much time left to regain his immortality.

  But he returned to Miami.

  He had to.

  He had to get back to Antoine’s estate, to look for any type of clues, anything that might give him an inkling as to where Nesmaron might be, and how he might have been created.

  So when the familiar bong! sounded and the fasten seat belt sign was turned off, Darius eased out of his seat and reached into the overhead bin to collect his bag. He could already feel the aches and pains of age setting in; he was sure that he looked older to everyone sitting around him on the plane.

  He had to find a mirror.

  The passengers crowded the aisle, and he impatiently shoved his way closer to the doors, to the galley behind the first class cabin where two polished yet weary looking female flight attendants were waiting next to the door.

  There was no sign of the red haired flight attendant who had woken him up somewhere over the Atlantic. He wondered, as he watched the door open before him with a slight hiss, and then he stormed through the door as soon as the stark blue and grey jetway was revealed, sending the two flight attendants against either wall, both with wide eyes and a look of shock on their faces.

  Darius ignored the voices behind him. He pressed on, his feet booming and shaking on the floor. Just in front, not far ahead, was the door to the terminal. And it was open.

  “Stop there, sir,” a thunderous voice boomed as Darius was stopped in his tracks just before the threshold to the terminal, by a giant blue-uniformed security guard staring down at him.

  Darius did not move. He stopped in his tracks, set down his bag, and put up his hands. “I am sorry,” he said, waving his arm as if brushing off the event. “I did not mean to cause any harm.”

  “Sir, where are you coming from? Where do you live?”

  But Darius did not answer. He couldn’t. Because he was clutching his chest in painful mortal fashion, and he quickly dropped his bag to the floor with a thump, and fell to his knees.

  The guard lunged forward, nearly catching Darius as he collapsed. “Sir!” He called back to the gate agents who had begun to gather and watch Darius fall to the floor to get assistance. “Get someone now! I think this man is going into cardiac arrest!” he continued. The guard laid Darius on the floor, spreading the lapels of his grey tweed jacket and undoing the buttons on his shirt.

  But when the shirt was fully open, he gasped. His eyes wide, staring down at Darius on the floor, a bright glow illuminated his face. “What the fu-?” he said, stepping back.

  Darius laid unresponsive.

  But his chest was glowing. It was glowing bright white, so bright that it was illuminating the area. The security guard remained frozen, leaning against the stark grey wall, his eyes misty and glassy and focused on what was before him.

  “Davis!” a voice called from inside the terminal. An entourage of blue shirts arrived behind the man in the doorway, but the man in the doorway stopped and froze. He didn’t call back to the paramedics to come in with a defibrillator; he didn’t even turn his head around to see the group of men pressing to get inside the door and question.

  But all of the activity had seemed so distant to Darius.

  Like he was inside a shell, filled with echoes. The voices were unclea
r, but bouncing off the walls.

  And so distant.

  So very distant.

  *~*~*

  And then he closed his eyes.

  And then, he opened them again, and he was back in the cemetery again.

  Once the last shovelful of dirt was on top of Antoine’s grave, Darius sat back, his arms hugging his knees, and caught his breath. He was dirty and he was sweaty. He was exhausted and his energy was spent. Oh, how he longed to be immortal again. This would have been so much easier.

  After several minutes passed, he slowly rose to his feet and gathered the equipment – the same equipment that Antoine had used several years previously to exhume him, and began the walk home as the sun began to paint the early morning sky in delicate pinks and light blues.

  During the walk, Darius made a mental commitment to himself to find Roberto. He had to find Roberto and resurrect Antoine. His life depended upon it. Darius knew, and he felt his tiredness and increasing weakness as a mortal and knew that time was desperately trying to catch up with him.

  And he knew that time was running out. He looked down at his hand, noting some new age spots.

  He once looked like a young man, but now, just days after the defeat of the Metatron, his hair had thinned and turned grey and his skin was aging and spotted.

  He was tired.

  And he had a feeling in the pit of his stomach, a gnawing feeling that came in waves; a feeling that he had to think about and try to remember. And then he recalled that he hadn’t eaten in days.

  He had to get some food.

  And then he remembered that there was no food in his Chateau, there never had been.

  As he hoisted the bag over his shoulder, and as he raised his head towards the opening of the cemetery - the opening framed by a curved iron gate overgrown with ivy, he paused. There was a woman standing just under the gate, and the short, straight red hair seemed vaguely familiar as he locked his eyes upon it through the sea of stone markers.

  The woman was dressed in black, and a long flowing black coat. She leaned against the side of the gate, crossing her legs and folding her arms as if she were waiting for him.

  Darius breathed in deeply, and then exhaled slowly, and turned back to look at Antoine’s grave one last time.

  I know you will, Darius, I know.

  *~*~*

  Darius stopped, his mouth open, a look of contentment coming over his face. He smiled.

  Antoine was there.

  And Antoine had heard him.

  “Thank you,” Darius whispered towards the grave, blowing it a kiss.

  And the woman was still waiting for him.

  Darius stopped and stared at the woman.

  He opened his mouth to speak, but stopped himself. He knew who she was. Now he knew.

  “Darius.” She spoke softly, leaning against the grave marker, calm and still in the cool and moist night air, her legs crossed and her feet lost in a sea of swirling white mist.

  “You’ve found me,” Darius said, stopping a few feet short of the woman.

  “No, I haven’t found you. You have found me. You know that I have been following you, just as I have been following you for many years.”

  Darius looked down at the ground, saw her shuffle her feet, and said nothing. He knew. He knew who she was. And he knew that she had him now, she had him right in this cemetery, right where she wanted him.

  “Do you not know why I am following you?”

  Darius knew. He knew that for years, and he knew when he was lying in this cemetery himself, he knew when Antoine dug him up and pitched him the idea of Sacrafice.

  “Darius!” She said shortly, walking towards him, closing the distance. Darius backed up a few cautious steps. She smiled. “You are mortal now.” She stopped and gave him a look of disbelief. “And you think I didn’t know that as well?”

  She came closer, and Darius froze in a new sense of mortal fear. She brought the back of her hand up to his face, lightly caressing his cheek. “I have known you, my friend. I have known you since you took what was mine, since you took it so many years ago, and so many nights. I have never lost track of you, Darius. No matter what you thought, I was always there.”

  “And what about now?” Darius finally asked.

  “Now,” she said, stepping back a step and straightening her posture, exuding a more business look. “Now I want to make a proposal for you.”

  “What kind of proposal?”

  “Well let’s see Darius. I am guessing if you have an idea what to propose to you. You’re years are getting short, aren’t they?”

  She pointed to his hands, once fine and soft, full of youth and beauty, supple soft skin, now were old, pale and liver-spotted, and were the hands of an aged man. “You are dying, Darius. Your body is catching up to your soul.”

  Darius knew.

  He didn’t even nod his head, and he knew. He was dying.

  “What do you want me to do, Claret?”

  “You know what I want. And I believe you know where it is.”

  Darius sat down in the grass next to a marker. “I don’t.”

  She pointed deeper into the cemetery, towards Antoine’s grave. “But he does!” she hissed. She leaned in closer to Darius’ face, and he felt her hot breath on his cheek as she spoke: “He knows where it is! And I know you were there. Raise him!”

  “And as a mortal, now as I stand here, I know you are powerless unless you transform me.”

  Claret leaned against a tombstone and fished for a cigarette. She shook her head. After she blew out a stream of smoke, her head snapped over to his direction. “What do you want?”

  Darius looked down towards the grave, and then back over at Claret. “Why can’t you raise him yourself? As powerful as you are, you certainly can do it, can’t you?”

  “Yes, I can do it.”

  “So why don’t you?”

  She blew out another cloud of grey, sweet-smelling smoke and got up from the tombstone. “Because the cost would be too high. There are others that I answer to, you do understand that, don’t you? That I am not the ultimate being? That there are others?”

  *~*~*

  “I won’t live to see another day,” Darius said, looking at a large silver casket. He ran his hands along the smooth satin sheets, stopping for a moment and squeezing the small white pillow at the head of the coffin. “Sheets only fit for a king,” he said softly, musing.

  “Don’t you think it’s time you found her?” Delia said, standing next to him amidst a sea of different colored caskets. “Don’t you think it’s time you tried to live?”

  Darius stopped, but did not break his gaze. He could not break away from the elegant stitching, the ornate pillow. And the fact that he would be lying in one soon. “I could,” he said, not even turning to face Delia. “But I honestly don’t feel I have the energy.”

  Delia grabbed Darius’ arm, turning him around to face her. The look on her face was urgent and her eyes wide. “You must find her!” she said. “That is the only way that you will live. And I will help you find her, Darius.” She silently urged Darius to walk, to move closer to the door and out of the desolate funeral home, out onto the sidewalk to bathe in the warmth of the sunlight in the land of the living, and she continued.

  “You know what I always was taught, Darius?”

  He shook his head, looking Delia right in her wrinkled old eyes.

  “I was always told that there are those who come in to your life for a reason, and there are those who leave your life for a reason. And then you think about Antoine there, lying in Lyon in his grave, his ashes waiting there for you, and you wonder.”

  “About Antoine? That he wasn’t supposed to be in my life?”

  Delia shrugged her shoulders and opened the door with a creak. She waved to the mortician as they stopped on the sidewalk, the vibrant noise and life a stark contrast to the somberness and darkness inside. “What you wonder about is you,” she said, putting on a pair on dark sunglasses, and then she st
opped. “Will you look there,” she said with a half-cocked smile. “I think you may just have found who you have been looking for.”

  Darius snapped his head in the direction that Delia had been looking. “Where is she?” he said, his eyes darting around the horizon, seeing the facades of many small boutiques and crowds of shoppers, but no Claret.

  “Look there,” Delia said, pointing towards a large city bus that pulled up to a far block. “Look next to the bus stop – leaning against the tree.”

  Darius became visibly frustrated. “Dammit, Delia, I cannot see that far!”

  “Ah yes,” she said. “Well then, I do forget sometimes. But I know I shouldn’t. But be assured she is there. She is leaning against the tree down the way there, right next to that bus stop.” Delia nodded, her eyes fixated on Claret, and shook her head. “Yes, she knows we’re here, that’s for sure. And she knows we know. That’s how she works…she’s funny about it, you know what I mean, Darius?”

  “Yes.”

  “You do know what she is doing there, right?”

  Darius let out a small, exasperated chuckle. “She’s probably teasing me. She knows I can’t follow her.”

  “Come on dear boy!” Delia slapped him lightly on the wrist. “Wake up! You may be mortal but you have less limitations than you may think! Did you ever stop and think that she is beckoning you to follow her? And what makes you think that you can’t?”

  Darius stopped for a moment, closing his eyes.

  And when he closed them, he saw the grave, a mound of dirt, and he saw the shovel, as he threw it on the grave and told Antoine to rest in peace, knowing that his ashes were down below and the secret of the cup was buried with him. “All I see, every time I close my eyes, is death, Delia. I cannot get the picture of his grave out of my head. And I know he is there – right below – waiting and longing to be raised, but I know I can’t raise him. I no longer have the power.”

  “But you can follow her.” Delia pointed a bony, jointed finger at the bus stop, and waggled it back and forth.