No Such Thing As Immortality
Page 8
So James had been listening in at the hospital. Damn.
Silently, he relayed, ‘I was worried – and still am.’
Looking in his direction, I let him off the hook with a quick nod of my head.
Madeleine looked at me apologetically now, before saying, ‘I have to offer, although I think I can guess the answer … Do you want me to try and get inside her head?’
I shook my head quickly.
‘But I could find out so much. We could then know for sure, if she’s an innocent in all this.’
‘Thank you, but it would not be right.’
Madeleine, perhaps due to her superior age, could read the thoughts of humans as well as fellow vampires, but the process was painful for both parties. I couldn’t have Rowan hurt. ‘Besides, I know she has no idea what she is doing to me.’ I was sure of that.
‘Fine – but what about the blessed aunt?’
Now Rowan’s Aunty Hetty was another matter. I grinned, and nodded. ‘But let us wait to see what we can find out first. What has he managed to come up with?’
‘We have an address, not far from Rowan’s in London. But he needs to do some more digging. He … possibly got a little confused here.’
I raised my eyebrows and Madeleine acknowledged my query with a nod. ‘Yeah I know. It could be innocent enough, but he’s been dropping me emails with information over the last couple of days, including some stuff about her being arrested in the 1980s for her Greenpeace and CND activities. But when it got to the report itself, which was sent through tonight, he stated he’d been unable to find anything on her at all. After James’ tip-off regarding your hospital encounter, he was planning on visiting her home this afternoon. I would have expected stuff on top of what he’d already provided.’
‘Fishy,’ Frederick muttered, summing up my thoughts exactly. ‘And he doesn’t strike me as the sort of character to get confused.’
‘We’ll get him to give her another go before revisiting things.’ Sighing, Madeleine continued, ‘Back to Rowan … She currently works as an Account Director for a public relations firm in the City – Dynamic PR. She now lives on her own, has a cat called Tinks, does her grocery shopping in Sainsbury’s and regularly visits her sister on a Saturday in Wiltshire. She has near perfect human eyesight, but has some hearing loss and wears in-ear hearing aids.’
I hadn’t noticed that at all. Again, I thought how hard it was to be mortal.
Madeleine started giggling as she read further. I read her thoughts and groaned. ‘She is vegetarian?’
James snorted. ‘Only you, Nate!’
Madeleine giggled again. ‘She had an official caution from the police in 2007.’
‘Go on …’ I prompted, warily.
‘For causing criminal damage to her former best friend’s possessions. Apparently, before allowing her to reclaim items from the flat, she’d taken the opportunity to dye all of her clothes – from underwear through to cocktail dresses – scarlet, as it was more, quote, “in keeping with her status as a scarlet woman”.’
‘Nice one!’ chuckled Frederick, discarding his empty wine bottle and reaching for the next. I watched bemused, whilst he picked up from the floor at his side the sword he’d earlier entered the room with. In one swift stroke he had opened the bottle by decapitating it at its neck. ‘Although … you really aren’t going to want to get on the wrong side of her, bruv.’ He raised the bottle to his mouth and took a swig of wine.
‘Your two temperaments are going to be an issue, Nate,’ Elizabeth reflected. ‘You are both Taureans.’
‘Oh, for God’s sake, Elizabeth!’ I exclaimed. ‘You have been into that ridiculous human mumbo jumbo since the 1960s!’
‘Mark my words … stubborn, determined, possessive and ferocious temperaments. You could be in for some real humdingers!’
‘Somehow, I think I have far more important things to worry about than the characteristics supposedly bestowed on us from our human birth dates!’
‘Perhaps … but with James’ latest revelations – the making-up could be fun!’
Chapter Six
Homecoming
I shut the boot of Elizabeth’s Porsche Cayenne on our limited luggage, before holding the driver’s door open for her to climb in. ‘Thank you, sweetheart. I could not have faced the journey with James driving.’
We were heading to the London town house, kitted out with everything we both needed and liked to have around us, like so many of our properties around the world. I had to be near Rowan.
‘Hell will freeze over before James drives me anywhere again,’ I muttered, opening the driver’s side passenger door, whilst Frederick climbed in next to Elizabeth and lobbed his jacket into the back.
‘I heard that – and you think my driving’s bad!’
I glared at James, now getting into my car, parked up alongside. Madeleine rolled her eyes at me from the passenger seat. It had seemed like much more of a hardship having to listen to James’ begging than giving into his pleas to borrow the Mercedes McLaren SLR for a few weeks. I wasn’t yet psychologically strong enough to drive any car, let alone that one, which had just come back from the garage. Predictably, my braking foot had gone through the floor.
Pulling away, we rounded the corner and I grinned as we passed Rowan’s newly repaired Morris Minor, abandoned on the gravel driveway. None of us had been prepared to drive it. Life, even as an immortal, was too short to travel nearly two hundred miles at a top speed of sixty-five miles per hour; I had arranged for one of the groundsmen to take it down later. If Rowan, who had left hospital yesterday, allowed me to return her car in person, then it would be the first time I had seen her since the hospital visit three days ago.
My grin rapidly turned to a grimace and I braced myself for the next onslaught, which I could feel coming my way. I met Frederick’s concerned eyes.
‘So she’s not easing up any, then?’
I shook my head. I had spent the last few days working on my ability – or inability – to function during Rowan’s conscious moments. It was getting easier, but not remotely easy enough, and negative emotions could still floor me. But staying away any longer was beyond me.
I couldn’t begin to identify what she was currently feeling. It had been easier when I could see her and gather clues as to what was causing particular sensations, and so much easier when I had the diversionary pleasure of being captivated by those incredible eyes of hers. When combined with her smile and intoxicating scent … it was enough to leave me, a two-hundred-year-old vampire, pretty much gaga. Picturing her now in my mind’s eye, the pleasure I felt at the image before me acted as a partial anaesthetic.
‘No, Frederick!’ I growled, catching an unguarded thought.
‘You know, that really isn’t a bad idea, Freddie!’ Elizabeth exclaimed excitedly.
‘I have no intention of subversively drugging her to lessen my own difficulties!’
‘But you’ve been saying it’s easier when she’s on painkillers – and you think she’s skipping them—’
My snarled, ‘No!’ interrupted Elizabeth. ‘And both of you swear now, you will not take matters into your own hands!’
I accepted their grumbled assurances, neglecting to admit that the thought had already crossed my own mind when matters had got extreme. But it wasn’t going to happen.
When Rowan became less emotive, I pulled myself up into a full sitting position and retrieved what I knew was going to be an issue from my inside pocket. I tentatively asked, ‘Can we put this on?’
‘What’s on it?’ Frederick asked, narrowing his eyes at me as he took the CD from my outstretched hand. I grinned. He really wasn’t going to like it. It was a compilation I had retrieved from Rowan’s car. ‘Try it and find out,’ I suggested, attempting a casual shrug of the shoulders.
Suspiciously, he inserted the disc into the dash and Meat Loaf’s ‘I’d Do Anything For Love’ blared out. I cringed, but his reaction was more vocal as he bellowed, ‘For fuck’s sake! It
’s not too late to put you in the car with James.’ I had to agree. It was a far cry from my usual Beethoven … but it made me feel closer to Rowan.
Elizabeth laughed delightedly, and batted Frederick’s hands away as he tried to remove it. ‘I love this song! I haven’t heard it in years.’ She proceeded to pump up the volume and start singing along at the top of her voice, bopping her head around manically.
‘I really appreciate this, Nathaniel,’ Frederick snarled. ‘So you’ve decided to share your torture now, have you? If you think we are having this playing all the way to London, you’ve another thing coming!’
‘What else is on there?’ Elizabeth cried.
‘You will have to wait and see.’ If I gave Frederick, most recently into heavy gothic rock, the heads-up that it included songs by Abba, Cat Stevens, Bonnie Tyler … and Take That, it would be out of the dash and through the window instantaneously. James’ earlier reaction to those particular entries on the playlist had told me that much.
With each new mile we passed, I concluded Rowan was having a very frustrating day. Or at least I thought it was frustration. It was my best guess, and bearing in mind her mobility issues, it would fit. But I was far from the best person to identify emotion, having avoided it at all costs in both my mortal and immortal forms. In acknowledgement of the fact, I had spent time in my library attempting to learn more about the painful subject. I shuddered as I recalled the re-familiarisation exercise. It really hadn’t provided the clarity and comfort I had sought.
I had never considered it whilst mortal myself, but evidently humans rarely feel one emotion alone – being able to be generally sad, for example, but then also furious about a particular incident. It was never going to be simple, but it was discovering more than thirty emotions/feelings that simply began with the letter A – before, that is, I had slammed the books shut and fled, panicked, from the library – that had put paid to the exercise. How could I hope to make any sense out of them? And how on earth was I going to cope with feeling them?
Rowan was, therefore, not the only one feeling frustrated. And I was feeling particularly so today, because I wasn’t there to help her. I hated the thought of her struggling up the stairs I had discovered on my reconnaissance a couple of nights ago.
We had reached the outskirts of London. Meatloaf was playing for the fifth time thanks to Elizabeth, and Frederick had stopped complaining. It hadn’t got him anywhere, and in the end his objections had been half-hearted; the pleasure he was taking in Elizabeth’s enjoyment was plain to see.
I was lounging in the back of the car, trying to decipher Rowan’s feelings in more detail. A couple of minutes ago she had become even more frustrated, I thought, and I wondered if it was also impatience that I was feeling? What was she doing to feel this way? Whatever it was, I wished she would stop, because it was causing me significant issues.
During my deliberations, she disappeared. There was no slipping away. She was just gone. My heart began to race. I checked my watch: 1.31 p.m. on a Saturday afternoon. Why would she be sleeping? Normally when she fell asleep, my connection with her gradually waned as she dozed into unconsciousness. Yet she had just gone from acute frustration … to nothingness.
‘Elizabeth … Frederick.’ There was undisguised panic in my voice.
Alarmed, they both turned to look at me.
‘What time do you make it?’ Perhaps she had fallen asleep. She had never fallen asleep in the afternoon, even when in hospital. But perhaps it wasn’t the afternoon. Perhaps my watch had stopped …
‘1.31 p.m.,’ Frederick replied, tentatively. ‘Why?’ He fixed me with his piercing blue-eyed gaze.
‘Something is wrong. She has gone! I don’t think she is asleep, but she has gone!’
‘Calm down – tell us what happened,’ Elizabeth urged gently, turning the music off.
‘She was really frustrated about something and then I just lost her! Something is wrong …’ I let my panicked mind race through possibilities. ‘What if she has fallen down the stairs and broken her neck? What if she is dead? Oh, dear God – something is very wrong!’
‘Calm down. She’s probably fallen asleep. Nothing bad has happened. We know Clare’s staying with her … remember?’
Despite her words, Elizabeth put her foot down on the accelerator, and I caught her worried glance at Frederick.
‘Nate, she’ll be fine,’ Frederick reassured.
‘Elizabeth – pull over – I WILL DRIVE!’ I couldn’t help that it came out as a pained roar.
‘You are in no fit state to drive, and I’m taking it to its limit!’
‘Pull over then and let me fly!’
‘It’s broad daylight. You can’t fly now!’
‘Elizabeth – pull the damned car over – NOW!’ I knew I was at my most intimidating.
Frederick twisted around to look at me again. ‘Calm yourself down. If we hit traffic when we’re further in – then you can fly.’
I knew this was a big concession. Flying in daylight over London was beyond foolhardy, but it still didn’t satisfy me. I looked desperately out of the window to try and gauge where we were.
‘We can be there in seven or eight minutes,’ Elizabeth insisted. ‘There’s nothing you can do.’
‘I will call her!’ I desperately tried to find my new phone. ‘I have not got my phone! Where is my phone? Frederick, give me your phone!’
‘I’m not giving you my phone. You are in too much of a state to talk to her. We’ll be there in a few minutes and you can see for yourself she’s okay.’ He was sounding worried.
‘FREDERICK – GIVE ME YOUR DAMNED PHONE – NOW!’ I was not in control.
He looked at Elizabeth and she gave a slight nod. As soon as I had snatched it from him, I started putting the number in; it wasn’t number ‘1’ on Frederick’s speed-dial. It took three attempts to get it into the tiny handset due to my shaking hands.
Rowan, pick up, please. Pick up, Rowan – Pick up!
‘Christ Almighty! – voicemail!’ My mind was racing. What could I do? ‘Morley! Morley is based in London. Perhaps he can get someone over there!’
‘Number five,’ Frederick muttered. When I got through, it went straight to his messaging service.
I roared into the ridiculous piece of technology that was currently doing nothing to help me – or Rowan, ‘DAMN IT! Where the hell are you? What the hell do we pay you for? This is an emergency! CALL ME BACK – NOW!’
She could be lying dying at the bottom of those stairs – because of me. She had broken her foot – because of me. I had killed her! I was beside myself. I had never known anything like it. What would I do if she had died?
I saw Elizabeth and Frederick exchange a more worried look. Neither was letting me access their thoughts, but there was no question they were accessing mine.
‘Nate—’ Frederick started to say.
‘IF YOU TELL ME TO FUCKING CALM DOWN, I WILL BE IN THE FRONT OF THIS CAR BEFORE YOU CAN—!’
‘I’m stopping!’ Elizabeth interrupted, pulling over into a bus stop.
I was out, and launching myself into the sky simultaneously. I heard Elizabeth in my head say, ‘We’ll follow on the ground.’
I had no idea whether anyone saw me take off; I had no idea whether anyone saw me in the air. The speed I was moving at was likely to be in my favour – but I didn’t care. I had to get to Rowan. So what if I blew the lid on us? Vampires could fend for themselves – Rowan could not!
Images of her broken mortal body filled my mind and I couldn’t dispel them.
When I reached her home, a delivery man was at the blue communal door on the ground floor of the Victorian, red-brick terraced property. He was pressing her doorbell, but was now turning away.
Something wasn’t right. I had to get in. I could smash the door down, but what if she was lying just behind it? A window was open in the ground-floor flat. I would take my chances. If someone was in, I would move so quickly they wouldn’t even see me.
&nb
sp; And then I was in the hallway. She wasn’t there. She wasn’t lying broken and deathly white at the bottom of the stairs. So where was she?
I was at the top of the stairs. Her door was locked. But I could hear water running; it sounded as if it was coming from her bathroom. Dear God! She had been killed in the shower, like that Psycho film, or she had slipped on the bathroom floor and smashed her skull. I hammered on the door, before getting impatient after half a knock.
I was back outside within the blink of an eye. One of the windows of her flat was open a crack. I took to the air and … then I was in her living room.
The bathroom door was in front of me, ajar. Completely and utterly terrified of what I might find, I gently nudged it open with a hand that appeared to be shaking.
I was overwhelmed by a sense of relief so blissful that I would have cried for joy if I was able. She was standing there in the shower and she was moving. There was no blood. She was alive. I didn’t know how, but she was alive. I raked my hand through my hair before moving it to hold the bridge of my nose. I shut my eyes and took deep breaths to calm down.
And then realisation hit. She was standing there in the shower … and I was standing in her doorway. Bloody hell! But it was too late.
In that moment, Rowan Locke partially opened the door of her shower. She twisted awkwardly around because of the cast on her foot, presently encased in some kind of plastic cover, and switched off the jets of running water. And our connection was back. I could feel her frustration again as she attempted to manoeuvre. And, like a complete and utter idiot, I stayed rooted to the spot, transfixed.
She was beautiful. Stunningly beautiful. She was in profile and water droplets were glistening upon her pale smooth skin. I could see the curve of her hip and the side of her breast and …
But then pretty inevitably, as I could see her … she could see me. I was interrupted from my inappropriate appreciation by her piercing scream, which in turn led me to jump out of my vampire skin for only the second time in one-hundred-and ninety-five years. Instantly, I was clutching the door frame for support, to stop from sliding to the floor. Her shock and fear were crippling, and her heart was pounding. And I had bloody well done this to her – and me. Idiot. Idiot. Idiot. Her fear ebbed, but then confusion and embarrassment ploughed in, thankfully not remotely as debilitating as the fear. She was frantically trying to find a towel to cover her captivating body.