“Come. Come,” Chandraswami chanted, “let us leave this place.”
Cristien looked to Chandraswami and then to Lance.
“Hey, dude,” Lance said, still holding his wrist.
“You brought her back. You brought her back to me.”
“A piece of cake,” Lance grinned, tears hanging from his chin.
“I owe you,” Cristien said.
“Big time,” Lance told him.
Then he and Chandraswami pulled Cristien to his feet. He could barely stand. It ended up that all four of us had to carry him semi-conscious downstairs to our apartment. We put him on the couch, facing away from the wall with my blood on it. His eyes closed immediately.
Chandraswami and his wife made preparations to go.
“Drink this,” he told me, handing me a vial, “It will help you heal faster. Ten drops in some water when you feel pain.”
“Thank you for everything.”
“It was all your doing. Now we know why you became a demigoddess so quickly,” Yueliang said, smiling.
“Hey, aren’t you going to, you know, make something to change Cristien back,” Lance asked before they left.
“Our medicine, our light cannot help him in this form.”
“How long do you think it will take for him to change back?” he asked.
“We do not know. We will come by tomorrow, but call us tonight if you need anything,” Chandraswami said, giving me his card.
“Oh wait. Lily,” I whispered. “What will you do to her?” I was afraid of having her around still.
“There is nothing to be done,” Chandraswami said. “She is Lilith, eater of Innocents. Her reign in this form is over.”
“Lilith?” Lance exclaimed.
“The Lilith? The thousands of years old, first succubus, Adam’s first wife, Lilith? Cristien never said she was Lilith,” I stammered. I had read about her on the internet. She was real? She wasn’t just a myth? A chill went through me. “So, she doesn’t eat babies, she eats Innocents? Wait. Can she even die?”
“The body could not survive on the energy she stole from you. Your higher energy would not fulfil her will or her needs. She is gone. It is over. Do not worry. We will burn the body and do the rites. That Lilith is no more.”
“What do you mean ‘that Lilith’? How many are there?” Lance asked, but they kept going. “What am I, talking to myself?
I closed the door. We looked at each other. Then Lance rubbed his face and wandered off toward the bedrooms, and I collapsed by Cristien. That last bit of news took what little sanity I had left. I felt like shaking Cristien awake. How could he not tell me? Then I thought about it. I wouldn’t want to tell anyone my ex was Lilith. I’d want to forget it, bury it as deep as possible, change my name and move to a new country. Was that why his name was French and he lived in America now?
Poor Cristien. I peered at him, seeing his features in the light of the apartment. He looked terrible. I felt so sorry for him. I felt so sorry for us. I shifted a little, and the pain in my arms lanced through me. I gripped the little green glass bottle in my hand and slid to the floor. I was too tired to move. Lance came back into the living room. He motioned me to him.
“Can’t you come over here?” I asked him.
He sighed and came closer.
“You want your finger?” he whispered in my ear.
“No. Disgusting.”
“I thought I should ask,” he said, walking away.
“Wait, can you put some of this in water for me.” My wounds were killing me though they were nearly closed already.
“Sure, now I’m your daddy,” he said, taking it and going to the kitchen.
Lance returned with a glass full of jade-tinted water. He gave it to me then walked back to our bedroom. I took a taste. It tasted like Cristien. I wished I could tell him. I finished the drink and leaned back. I heard Lance flush the toilet, and he joined me again.
“Is it done?” I asked. “Can we go in?”
“What am I, the maid?” he said. “I’m wiped. I haven’t eaten or slept. Give me a minute will you?”
We sat on the floor, our backs against the couch. My eyes started to close when the silence was torn by a fierce snarl. Both Lance and I leapt away from Cristien. I turned back to see that he was just snoring. His snores sounded like death threats.
“Why don’t you, uh, roll him over, or wake him up?” Lance told me.
“Why don’t you?” I asked him.
Lance made a face, then got up.
“Where are you going?” I called.
He came back with two towels and a stick. He handed me one of the towels.
“What’s this for?” I asked, watching him wrap it around his throat.
“To give us a fighting chance if he wakes up cranky.”
“Oh cut it out,” I said. Then he poked Cristien with the stick. Cristien reached out, batted the wooden pole, severing it cleanly in two before rolling over.
I wrapped the towel around my neck. Lance sat back down next to me.
“We’ll sleep in shifts,” he said. “You first.”
“I just need a few minutes to close my eyes then I’ll be fine,” he said, sitting down with the mop still in his hands.
The minutes turned into morning.
I woke up and saw Lance and Alexa sleeping, heads thrown back in identical fashion and with their necks wrapped in matching aqua blue towels from my bathroom. Alexa was also wearing a blue sari, an Indian dress. I almost laughed out loud at what I was seeing, but when I sat up my claws ripped through the leather of the couch. The sound woke them up with starts. Lance produced a broken stick, which he pointed at me like a battle staff, then dropped.
“Hey, dude,” Lance said. “How you doing?”
I looked at my down-covered claws, at my ruined couch, and remembered everything, so I didn’t feel like laughing any more. Alexa got up and came toward me. I stared at the scars on her arms that I had made, and I wanted to weep. I turned away when she knelt by me.
“Cristien? Are you okay?”
I had no words to tell her how I felt. To tell her how devastated, how sorry I was. I had heard her calling to me last night, but it was like a dream, like I was dead, so far away. I couldn’t come back. I had wanted to, but it was so hard. It was such a long journey back to myself, back to her.
“It’s alright,” she told me. “It’ll be fine.”
I didn’t know how that could be.
“Are you hungry?” she asked. She waited, but what could I say? “I’ll make something.”
She got up and moved toward the kitchen. I looked after her then saw Lance watching me. I looked away, feeling ashamed, ashamed of looking at my own wife.
“I’ll,” he said, pointing in her direction before running from the room.
And why shouldn’t he run? I was a monster. If my hands were so gruesome, I couldn’t imagine what my face looked like. I was afraid to see it. I lifted my hands to touch it, but was taken aback by my own claws. When was this nightmare going to end? When would I change? Would I ever change back? I had to. I just had to. My prayers were interrupted by arguing coming from the kitchen. They were fighting in hushed tones. I could hear pans moving around.
“I’ve got it,” Alexa yelled.
“Fine,” Lance said, walking out. His annoyed expression changed to fake benevolence the second he saw me. “I’m going to finish cleaning up.”
He stalked away. A few minutes later Alexa came out with a white bowl. I assumed it was leftover soup. She was gorgeous in the blue dress, like a princess. She looked around and immediately realized there was nowhere to put the bowl. So she got the coffee table. She set the bowl down and dragged it across the floor, making a terrible noise and mess as the soup spilled.
“Sorry,” she said, stopping in front of me.
I looked at the bowl. I even reached for it.
“Oops,” she squeaked, “I forgot a spoon.”
“I don’t think that will be necessary
,” I told her, wiggling my bear claws.
“Oh. Yes. Well,” she said, her expression vacillating between horror and sadness. She looked exhausted.
“How are you?” I asked. It was easier for me to talk about her, to concentrate on her. I could push down everything in me, not feel for myself, but I always worried about her.
“Me?” she asked, sitting on the coffee table. “I don’t know. I died. I guess, I think I’m fine. I don’t know. And you?”
I sighed, “I don’t know either.”
“Cristien,” she began and ended, helplessly raising her hands and then lowering them. Then she reached out and patted the back of my arm. It was the most awkward thing I’d ever seen her do.
“It’ll be okay,” she said.
I nodded, though I didn’t believe her any more than I had the first time she had said it. You would think that with everything I felt for her I could be honest and tell her I wasn’t all right. I was scared for the first time in my life and really needed her to try and make this okay somehow.
But I had never counted on anyone ever, and she was a child. I couldn’t ask her to take on such a burden. Besides, I didn’t know if she could bear it, and I didn’t want to give her any more reasons to leave me. I picked up the bowl and lifted it to my mouth. It was scalding hot. I set it down.
“You don’t like it?” she asked. “I heated it up. I’ll make something else later. Is there anything you’d like? I think I can cook something. I’ve been living off macaroni and cheese and tuna fish sandwiches for most of the year now, but I can follow instructions. I can. At least, I can warm,” she said, rambling and laughing. “I’m not as good a cook as you, of course. But I’ll try. I . . .” she laughed some more, her expression stunned. “This is so ridiculous. I don’t even know what I’m saying. You must think I’m crazy or something. I’m sorry.” Then she started to cry and laugh at the same time. My not yet nineteen-year-old wife fell apart, and there was nothing I could do about it.
“Alexa,” I said, reaching out to comfort her, which made her cry and laugh harder. I withdrew my paw.
“Lance!” I yelled. “Lance!”
He came running in with a mop in his hands.
“Alexa’s upset,” I told him, motioning to her with my head.
“No. I’m fine. I’m just a little hysterical.”
She was still crying and laughing when he came over and helped her up. She buried her head in his chest to hide her face. She started sobbing outright.
“It’s all right,” he said, stroking her hair. “It’s been hard on all of us. You need to rest some more, that’s all.”
Lance led her away toward the bedrooms. I wanted him to, but there is nothing that hurts more than watching another man comfort the woman you love. It makes you feel like nothing. It takes away your manhood. I loved Lance. He was my best-friend. I trusted him with Alexa, with my life, and still it killed me to see him holding her, comforting her, doing for her what I was supposed to do. It was like I had no reason left to live. I couldn’t even contemplate the idea of staying this way forever. I had to change back. This nightmare had to end.
“Hey,” Lance said, peering at me from the hallway. I guess he didn’t dare come any closer. “I put her to sleep in my room. I thought that would be better than anywhere else.”
“Thanks,” I said.
“She’s been a real trooper,” he told me.
I nodded.
“She’s been through a lot. I’m surprised she didn’t break down earlier.”
I nodded again then said, “I look that bad huh?”
He came a little closer, shrugged. “Not as bad as she did, but she’s all pretty now, so we have hope.”
“This is really bad,” I confessed.
“Yeah,” he nodded. He took three more steps. “Really bad.”
“I’m not going to hurt you, Lance,” I told him, tired of him pussyfooting toward me.
“I know. But it’s hard to get used to you like that,” he said. “Part of me is screaming ‘run!’ and the other part knows it’s you. I’m a little confused right now. You know, I always said a little color would improve most anybody, but dude, you went overboard.”
“Sorry,” I told him, “don’t feel much like laughing.”
“Yeah, I know,” he said, sitting down on the coffee table where she had sat. “So, how are you?”
I shook my head, “Not so good, Lance. The sight of me caused Alexa to snap.”
“It’s not you. It’s everything,” he told me, slumping. “She’s had to face death twice, face it and kick its ass. Cut her some slack. She had to go into that kitchen where Abe tried to kill her. I was trying to get her to let me help, but she said I was doing too much, and she insisted she was okay. She probably had a flashback. I think you should take her away from here as soon as you can.”
“I don’t think I’m going too far like this,” I told him.
“Well, after. You both need a vacation big time.”
I couldn’t agree with him more. “Did Chandraswami tell you what happens next?”
“What do you mean?” he asked, sitting up.
“With me. When do I change back?”
Lance shrugged and scratched his ear. “He didn’t say really. He kind of left it as a wait-and-see kind of thing. It’ll maybe take a week, that’s what I think. Like all the changes with us. They usually take a week, right? I think a week, maybe more. I’d give it time. There’s no rush. You’ve been through a lot. You have a lot of healing to do.”
Lance’s voice started to edge with hysteria like Alexa’s. He was trying not to tell me I could stay like this forever, that no one knew. My whole life, my whole future, collapsed like a house of cards inside me. Then, mercifully, someone knocked on our door.
“Oh shit, the cops,” Lance cried, running to the other room before returning with a sheet to throw over me. I laid down, attempting to be inconspicuous, with a big white sheet on me. Then he opened the door.
“Oh,” he said. “Come in.”
I heard a light step.
“Chandraswami sent me to watch after you,” a soft, accented voice said.
I pulled down the sheet.
“Cristien, Yueliang, Swami’s wife,” Lance said.
A little Chinese woman in a red silk top and pants was holding two shopping bags. She smiled at me.
“Hello,” I said.
“And how are you?”
I was getting tired of being asked that.
“Fine,” I lied.
“Hmm,” she said, laughing, and then turned to Lance, “Incu . . . Lance, it is time for you to rest. You look terrible.”
He ran his hand over his hair and then his clothes.
“It’s been a long couple of days.”
“Yes, and it will be longer for you if you do not sleep.”
“But I have to clean the bl-room.” He had started to say ‘blood’, but changed it to ‘room’.
“I will clean it. Do not worry.”
“I can’t let you do that,” he began, but she took him by the arm.
“Where is your bedroom?”
“Down there, but Alexa is in it.”
“Is there another room?”
“Yeah, but it was Abe’s, the guy who killed Alexa.”
“Then you must sleep in your room on the floor,” she said leading him away. He looked back, but what could I do? The little woman took him by the wrist as if she were his mother, and he was a six-foot-seven child.
Yueliang returned alone. She came toward me, stopped near the coffee table, then looked down at the soup.
“That will not help you,” she said and went back to her shopping bags. She pulled out what seemed to be a metal canister. She separated it into three bowls. She put them on the table and gracefully served me from two, into ten little silver saucers she had gotten from the last.
Then she sat on the floor before me. I didn’t move.
“You say you are fine?” she said. “You will forgive
me if I do not believe you.”
I smiled a little. “Yes, I’ll forgive you.”
“Tell me what are you thinking?”
I sighed. I was thinking a lot of things, but the loudest most persistent thought was “Why me?”
“That is a very old question. Why is there suffering? Why do we suffer? We suffer so we may learn to stop suffering.”
There was amusement in her dark eyes, but I saw nothing funny in my situation.
“I meant why has this happened to me?”
“Because you wanted it to,” she said seriously.
“I wanted Alexa to die, so I could turn into a demon?” I asked.
“Perhaps I should say you needed it to.”
“And why would I need this to happen to me?”
“That is what you must learn.”
“I have no clue,” I said dryly.
“Shall I give you one?”
“Please,” I sneered.
“You have separated the light from the dark inside yourself. You have held one as opposing the other. But they cannot be separated. They are the two faces of the same coin. One cannot live without light or dark. Too much light, and we are blinded. Too much dark, and we are blinded. We are creatures of shadow. Only when there is balance, the most precarious state, can life exist. We exist on the edge of a knife. One way or the other, and we cease to be. You must accept this in yourself.”
I blinked. I wanted to shake my head from the barrage of words she had hit me with, but I tried to be a polite monster.
“And how exactly do I accept this?” I asked, motioning to myself.
“That is your journey. You sit there now, thinking things cannot be worse, but in reality neither can they be better. This moment is perfect. Nothing is lacking. Every breath is perfect. See the utter beauty of this time and know joy. You wonder how can you see it? You think that life is a canvas upon which only white should be painted, but white is emptiness, nothingness. It cannot be enjoyed. Instead life has many colors each necessary, even the dark.”
“And how is this pain necessary? How is my loss of everything I am necessary?” I demanded.
“Perhaps so that you can discover that you have lost nothing,” she said. “Imagine three men playing a game of cards. One wins, one loses, and one has what he came with. If you stood at the door of the gambling house and asked each what kind of day it was, the man who won would say, ‘It is the best day of my life.’ The loser would say, ‘It is the worst day of my life.’ The man who still had his money, would say, ‘It is an okay day.’ But the day is the same for each. Not their words, nor their hopes, nor perceptions change the nature of the day. You perceive yourself as evil. Does that make you so?”
The Innocent Page 31
