The Queen of Swords: A Paranormal Tale of Undying Love

by Nina Mason

  She got up, careful not to jostle the bed, and crept over. Sliding out the chair, she sat and stealthily lifted the lid. There was a file open on the screen. A word document. Without intending to, she started reading.

  The village we’ve moved to this time is called Wickenham, but looks just like all the others: huddled shops, whitewashed cottages, an auld stone church, a village green. The bookshop, tho’, is well-stocked with tarot cards & other occult items, so perhaps Wickenham isn’t as provincial as the other bergs we’ve hung our hats in over the years.

  Swallowing, she lifted her gaze to the name of the file. Book.doc. Book? Was he writing a memoir? If so, he was using the same epistolary style in which Bram Stoker had written Dracula, an interesting-albeit-outmoded choice.

  A wee while ago, I popped down to the library, thinking the movers might have put my diaries with the other books. The room was dark as I entered, so I flipped the switch as I entered, nearly choking when I saw Branwen sitting there, eyes as hungry as a panther’s. She was in one of the wingback chairs flanking the fireplace, wearing only a flimsy robe, an obvious entrapment.

  “I thought you’d gone to bed.” She endeavored to meet his evasive gaze.

  “I couldn’t sleep.”

  “Well, I know a great cure for insomnia.”

  As she stood, her robe opened, exposing more than I cared to see. I clenched my jaw and looked away. “I’d prefer a book.”

  I moved to the bookcases, praying she wouldn’t follow. Pulling a random title off the shelf, I pretended to read as I stole wary glances at her, relieved to see she remained in the chair. But—bloody hell—she now had a book. I strained to see the cover, afraid it might be one of my diaries, but relaxed when I saw it was only my copy of The Perfumed Garden of Sensual Delight, the 15th-century Arabic sex manual, tho’ perhaps the realization should have alarmed me more than it did.

  “Listen to this.” She proceeded to read me a few passages as I rolled my eyes, annoyed at her & my own damndable libido.

  “Do you have a point?”

  Her mouth curled into a cruel grin. “Do you go to those lengths with your East End whores?”

  My ire rocketed, but I made no retort. Why could she not see? Prostitutes fulfilled my needs without strings, while she had more strings than a bloody kite factory. Turning my back on her, I started hunting through the boxes lining the rear wall. Just as I leaned over one, I felt something brush across my backside. Before I could react, she was on me, bending me over the box, jerking back my arms.

  She swallowed to cool her own rocketing ire. The scene played as clearly in her mind as a movie. Branwen in a barely-there wrap running her hands over his ass. He seemed upset by the assault, as he should be, though perhaps not as upset as he ought to have been. Why in the name of the goddess did he still live with that horrible creature?

  I tried to break free, but could not. Branwen is at least a millennium old & incredibly strong. I heard a click; felt the cold burn of silver encircling my wrists. I yanked hard, trying to break the cuffs apart, but the chain held. I shut my eyes & attempted to dissipate, but nothing happened.

  She began to fondle me. I did my best to resist, pressing my lips together & commanding my body to ignore her ministrations, but to no avail.

  “Damn you, Branwen. Can you not see I don’t want you?”

  She gave my prick a pointed squeeze. “Your lips might say no, but your cock is crowing a different tune.”

  “That means nothing,” I protested.

  “You got hard looking at that human tonight, didn’t you? And don’t you dare try to tell me it meant nothing, either. Because I have eyes....”

  Her mouth tasted sour. She didn’t like what she was doing, didn’t want to read any more. So why did she find it impossible to tear her eyes away from the words on the screen?

  “You’ve been a bad boy & need to be punished.”

  “Fuck you,” I snarled. “I’ve got a perfect right to look at anyone I please...& do a good deal more than look if it pleases me.”

  Granted, it probably wasn’t the wisest thing to say under the circumstances, but I was not about to take her bullshit lying down.

  “Let me go, Branwen,” I hotly demanded. “I’m not your bloody plaything.”

  She laughed & the next instant I was on my back, arms pinned beneath me, wrists smoldering from the silver, chest smoldering with fury & indignation. I gritted my teeth. The comingled smells of faery blood & pussy were beckoning like a siren’s song. I focused on the pain to mitigate my desire.

  “For the love of Christ. Take off these bloody cuffs. They’re burning like hellfire.”

  “If I take them off, will you shag me properly?”

  “No.”

  “Well then.” She began to unbutton my fly. “You leave me no choice.”

  I roared & jerked my hips away before bellowing, “Get yourself—& these fucking shackles—off me now.”

  “Not until you tell me who she is.”

  “I don’t know,” I returned, shaking with rage.

  “Then why do you have a portrait of her?”

  My heart blazed at the thought of her having my missing portrait. “That’s not of her, you daft cow. It was painted two hundred years ago. Now uncuff me before I—”

  I had half a mind to stove in her head with the fireplace poker the minute she freed me—if she ever got round to it, that was.

  “Did you kill her?”

  “Of course not.”

  “Did you love her?”

  “Uncuff me,” I barked, ready to explode. “This minute. Or, I swear to God—”

  “Why didn’t you turn her and keep her with you always?”

  “Because I loved her.”

  She shook her head. “I don’t understand.”

  I scoffed. “Aye, well. You wouldn’t, would you? Seeing how you don’t know the first fucking thing about love.”

  I knew I’d finally struck a blow when she climbed off me. A glance over my shoulder told me she was retreating toward the fireplace. With a sigh of relief, I struggled to sit up.

  I heard her sigh. “How can you say that? I do love you. You know I do.”

  “You call this love?” I shook my arms to rattle the cuffs.

  There was a long silence before she spoke again. “Why don’t you ever look at me the way you looked at her?”

  I snorted with disdain. “Do you seriously have to ask me that?”

  “I wouldn’t treat you so badly, you know, if you showed me a bit of affection now & then.”

  My whole body tensed when I heard her coming up behind me, but eased some when I felt her unlocking the cuffs. The moment I was free, I got to my knees & closed my fly. My wrists were raw & welted & my arms ached like a son of a bitch—but the discomfort would pass—far sooner than my anger.

  “Please don’t hate me.” She batted her eyes like an ingénue, fueling my rage. “I can’t help the way I am.”

  She was right about that. It was a gancanagh’s nature to seduce & destroy, just as it is a duz’s—tho’ I, at least, made some effort to battle my darkest tendencies…

  Cat looked up from the monitor, jaw clenched, chest tight, mind churning. Holy crap. Branwen was a gancanagh? For whatever reason, she’d just assumed the O’Lyrs were like Graham. From Celtic mythology, she knew gancanaghs, old Irish for “love talkers,” excreted some kind of narcotic substance which made the object of their seductions physically addicted. The sex was supposed to be so out of this world, a human partner could never again satisfy the person. Afterward, they jilted their lovers, who rarely survived the withdrawal.

  Should she warn Avery? Part of her said she should, but another part—a dark, spiteful part—called it poetic justice. And what about Graham and Branwen? Their relationship was peculiar and dysfunctional, but what could she do about it? Nothing, it seemed. Besides, when he left her on Monday, he’d be leaving Branwen too—the only good she could find in this whole heartbreaking scenario. Shaking her head, she we
nt back to reading, a blatant yet irresistible invasion of privacy on a par with reality TV.

  She went back to reading, soon discovering he’d drawn the Queen of Swords the day they met, just as with Catharine—meaning he’d already known she’d turn up when he saw her in the library. Fearing she was running out of time, she took a deep breath and skipped to the next passage—dated today. Had he written it while she worked on her dissertation?

  Maybe things will work out this time. I drew The Fool—the impulsive risk-taker—but as recommendation or warning? Meanwhile, she drew the Ten of Cups, not Death, which surely offers some cause for hope…

  What she’d read gave her pause. He’d drawn The Fool? Why had he not said? He might not understand what the card meant, but to her it was obvious. Why couldn’t he get it through his thick Scottish skull they were meant to be together? She didn’t come back to punish him, she came back to save him. To help him open his heart. To bring him out of the darkness into the light. Of course he had a soul, dammit. He had to. Because they were soul mates.

  Suddenly, clarity flashed. Everything she’d done since the moment of her birth—every action, every decision, and every book she’d chosen to read—had led her to him. The vampires, the Scots, the witchcraft, the tarot, her schooling, the job. Even the estrangement from her parents.

  Everything happens for a reason.

  There’s no such thing as coincidence.

  Sucking in a breath, she checked the bed. He still slept, but for how much longer? Her heart burned with the desire to read every single word he’d written. He’d told her some things, but only a fraction of what he’d lived through. What had he been like as a man? What had he done in the years post-curse? How had he lived? How much history had he seen? What did he think? What did he feel?

  She checked the bed again, smiling at his prostate form. A mixture of fondness and fear inflated her chest. Losing him would tear her in two. Biting her lip, she returned her gaze to the screen and squinted against the glow as she scrolled back through the years, stopping for no particular reason when she reached the year 1815. He would have been “cursed” at that point, but only just. Quivering with anticipation, she began to read:

  17th September. Living in Edinburgh (if you can call it living), in the slums of Cowgate, sleeping in the streets, feeding on the dregs of humanity. I seem to have developed a peculiarity enabling me to sniff out the worst of them. Even so, guilt and self-loathing plague me unceasingly.

  Feeling pressed for time, she skipped ahead, scanning at random.

  14th March. Pass the days roaming empty rooms. Tho’ the castle is boarded up now, it does not stop the trespassers who come almost daily to strip the woodwork & fixtures. Yesterday, overheard two of them say the wraith of the young laird now haunts the halls. No one, therefore, will come near the place—except thieves, apparently. My only amusements are seeing their faces when I suddenly appear & watching them run away empty-handed after I have taken my fill from their veins . . .

  Stirrings behind her froze her heart and raised her eyes from the screen. Was he awake? Breath held, she closed the computer and waited, paralyzed with guilt, for him to say something. He made no further sound. A glance over her shoulder told her he’d rolled over and gone back to sleep.

  She chewed her lower lip. Reading more would be risky. Did she dare? Was there time? Oh, what the hell. As she opened the lid again, she shot a nervous glance over her shoulder, relieved to find him dead to the world. Her hands trembled as she ran her fingers over the keyboard. She was suddenly afraid—afraid to learn what terrible secrets it might contain, but also burning with curiosity. Sighing, she moved her eyes to the dogs who lay at the foot of the bed with their back legs outstretched—a pose that made her think of the old cartoon superhero Underdog.

  There’s no need to fear. Underdog is here!

  All Wallace and Bruce lacked were the capes. The thought provoked a smile, quickly supplanted by a pang of guilt. She scrolled through the file, which was massive, stopping this time at the heading London, 1940. She took a breath and let it seep out. London was not the place to be in 1940.

  1st October. I’d been watching the sunset when tonight’s air raid began. A cacophony of horrors assaulted my ears: wailing sirens, buzzing planes, whistling bombs, booming blasts, the pop of gunfire, shattering glass, the screams & cries of the frightened & injured.

  With the war on, we lacked the resources to remain in the countryside, so we’d leased a brownstone in Soho. Unfortunately, it had no cellar, so, when the bombing started, we had much to consider. Were we impervious to bombs and fire? It wasn’t as tho’ there was a survival manual for Unseelies trapped in a war zone. Collectively, we agreed we could not go into the shelters. The allure of flesh & blood would prove too tempting.

  When the sirens stopped, I stepped back to the window. In the flickering glow of the blazes, I saw humans pouring out of the shelter, stumbling over the rubble of fallen buildings, making their way back to their homes, praying no doubt their homes would still be there. More than a million had been destroyed so far. How long until ours suffered the same fate?

  “The worst is over.” I turned to the O’Lyrs, who sat white-faced on the davenport behind me. “For now, anyway.”

  Gut in knots, she threw another glance at his sleeping form. Did she dare read anymore? As much as she yearned to, she still needed to come up with a way to keep him from going back to Scotland. She checked the clock in the bottom right-hand corner of the computer screen. It was after two. She really ought not to read anymore, but temptation was heaping tinder on the fire of her curiosity. Scrolling again, she stopped when she reached 1941.

  19th January. I can’t go on watching from the sidelines while Hitler perpetrates his evil on the world. It’s still my world & I’m still able-bodied. I mean, bloody hell. Don’t I stand a better chance of surviving the war than most? & what if I don’t? So bloody what? Who is there to mourn the loss? So, after weighing the pros & cons of military life, I’ve decided to take the plunge.

  He’d enlisted? What a brave, selfless, and incredibly stupid thing to do. She bit her lip as she read on about him going back to Scotland, joining the Argyle & Sutherland, training at Stirling Castle, and shipping out to Singapore.

  5th September. We’re under almost constant attack by planes, tanks, & snipers. The sound of exploding grenades & machine-gun spray has become the background score for the drama of daily survival. Already, I’ve learned to block most of it out. I had to, especially after my friends started taking bullets all around me. Otherwise, I’d lose my mind. I can’t think about what’s happening or what it all means. I can only think about what’s right in front of me & what I have to do to get through the next thirty seconds...

  She took a deep breath to calm her nerves. So, that was the war he’d fought in. World War II. She had mixed feelings about it. On the one hand, she didn’t approve of war. Most were no more than the senseless slaughter of young men over ideological and territorial disputes. On the other hand, someone had to do something to stop the Nazis.

  The weirdest part is not all of it’s bad. Don’t get me wrong. Most of it is pretty bloody horrific. The savagery—but also the bloody jungle. Slogging through muck up to our knees, slashing through dense foliage with naught but a bayonet. A noxious stench hovers like a permanent cloud. And the bugs! Bloody hell. They get in our eyes & noses & bite like midges. At the same time, I’ve never felt more alive, never felt anything as heady as marching into battle behind the stirring drone of the bagpipes or so rousing as the roar of the battle cry as we charge the enemy. It always brings to mind my Granda’s stories about the Highland charge & how it used to make the sassenach soldiers quake in their boots. I adored his stories as a lad, but appreciate them even more now. The crying of the wounded, tho’, is pretty hard to take. I’m just glad I’ve got special talents to help ease their suffering. One way or the other.

  She could guess what he meant. Draining those with mortal wounds, healing th
ose without. Bully for him. She believed in euthanasia, believed people shouldn’t be made to die a slow and painful death because of upside-down thinking about the will of God.

  12th September. Ours seems to be one of the few British units prepared for the hardships of jungle warfare—thanks to our commander. We’ve performed heroically, slowing the enemy advance & inflicting heavy casualties, but are frequently called upon as buffers to protect the retreating army. I don’t get it. Why wipe out your best men trying to save the rest? I can’t help thinking it’s because we’re Scots—just so much cannon fodder in kilts, in other words, as far as the English command’s concerned.

  25th September. We’re royally fucked. Not only have we suffered heavy losses, they’ve now pulled our bloody commander—so he can teach the others how to better prepare their men for jungle warfare, if you can believe it. It’s a day late & a quid short, if you ask me. But such are the ways of so-called military intelligence.

  She made a face. Wasn’t military intelligence an oxymoron? Like jumbo shrimp or living dead?

  24th October. Heading back to base camp from Slim River, I burst into a clearing strewn with gore—severed arms, legs, torsos, & heads; contorted faces frozen in agony; disowned hands; dead, staring eyes. Our guys. Ambushed. As I turned to warn my platoon, a bullet screamed out of the bush. The force of the shot blew me back. I landed in slop, barely conscious & racked with pain. Somebody knelt beside me & checked my neck for a pulse. “Sniper,” I croaked, “in the trees.” They took off, leaving me for dead, which I would have been were I mortal. An hour or so later, when I arrived back at base camp, nobody said a word. I’m known as a bit of a miracle in my battalion, tho’ no one makes a fuss. We all ken by now unexplainable things can happen in war.