“Nothing,” I shrug. This isn't exactly an area of expertise for me.
“They test their mate.” He gives me a naughty grin. “Did you know that? Did you have any inkling that eagles have such high standards they'll only mate with someone they consider worthy of their grace, skill, power.”
“I had no idea.” But that's truly interesting. I like that. Test your mate, weigh their heart, gauge the level of their commitment. I can relate to that. Be an equal, or move on.
My emotions sink lower with that realization. I have no equal. I'll never have an equal. I'm half angel, no human comes close to that. On the flip-side I may never equal a human either.
He ignores my loud thoughts, being subtle when he speaks to the wide open sky, “It's a game to her. She takes a twig, flies up high, and drops it. Her worthy mate will catch it in his beak while it free falls to the ground and return it to her. She repeats this process higher and higher, to her own limit, and only a mate that catches and returns it every time gets to bond with her.” He gives me a piercing glowing stare, “Seithe, that's what her heart is. You catch her every time she falls, or you don't court her. Your mate is not there to pamper your ego, or your heritage, she is there for you to keep safe, as her equal, and only when she knows you can catch her no matter how fast she falls, only then do you get her heart. And vise versa. She has to know she can count on you or it's a no fly zone. You only mate with someone who can fly to the same heights with you. Someone who just by their existence urges you to try harder, reach deeper, to be a better man, to fly to heights in a future you right now can only dream of. Only equals pass this test, only the resolute and fully committed to the chase and the catch. To be each others safety net, only they will last through the storms because where an eagle nests the winds are fierce.”
A worthy point, but I'm more interested in the other item he mentioned. Fighting.
“Tell me about how eagles fight,” I say, feigning disinterest and concentrating on the plume I'm holding.
“To attract a mate and defend their territory they fight in the air. Potential mates clash up high in brutal dogfights, locking talons and plummeting in death spirals. It sometimes ends in death because they're so tenacious and fearless they don't stop their clash to survive or avoid impact.”
“That's just stupid,” I say, looking at Arelstin.
“You think so? I don't. It's the ultimate sacrifice for love.”
I'm looking at the feather, wondering if I'm supposed to lay down my life for love. Am I? That seems self-defeating.
He breaks the buffering wind when he says, “Their eyesight is five times sharper than humans, they see more colors than humans too which overrides camouflage. Each of their eyes has two fovea for sharpness of vision, humans only have one.”
Stopping his lesson, he arches both eyebrows and stares at me pointedly.
I stare back, not knowing what the heck he expects me to say.
“You're capable of flight, Seithe. You have sharper vision, better reflexes, and see more of the spectrum of light than any human. You will face death and survive it no matter how brutal the clash. Eagles are not afraid of death, and when a storm approaches they fly toward it fearless, because they relish the air currents that pull them up that high. Storms come to your life for this reason. It's not a time for self-pity but a time to face the challenge like an eagle. Use the violent wind to pull yourself higher, because only when you're that far above the turmoil do you have the broader picture and know exactly when to drop out of the sky to catch prey, or impress the woman you love. Perception is everything. Timing is everything. An eagle is a predator, never a victim. They need no one but one mate to share their view with.”
I nod. Dive into the storm. Race it. Face it. The way I did inside Indigo Vamporium, the way I did with the Ningen. Some fights are worth the clash because the outcome transforms you, for the better.
I'm seeing a picture emerge. I'm chosen, because of it my hair is now whiter than god's. I'm a lone eagle. It's lonely at the top of the food chain. The only thing worth fighting for is love, and to protect your territory. I see it now. I have to fight for Taz – for Ellie.
I'm half angel, that makes me a warrior of the highest echelon, like the eagle is to the sky.
Nodding, I release the feather, watching it caught in the hands of the wind, tossed around to fall in an erratic dance to the bottom of the mountain.
It's served its purpose, I don't need a feather any longer.
I am the feather.
Looking out over Table Bay, at the fisheries in their neglected buildings, at the wharf and the Victorian and Alfred tip of the Waterfront, my heart's as heavy as the setting sun, sinking to the ocean floor, ruptured with corrosive darkness.
Movement to our left catches my attention and I see a russet furred animal, followed by three more. “Holy cow that's a big guinea pig. Is it radioactive up here?”
Arelstin laughs, “It's not a guinea pig. Locally they call it a dussy, but it's truly a rock hyrax. They live in large groups and love it up here. They're most active at twilight and dawn, and are a tourist attraction in their own right.”
“Oh,” I nod, worry gnawing at me again. Out of compulsive habit I take out my iPhone and read Tasmin's last text message again.
Sighing, I stare at buildings with windows which glitter like the facets of a diamond.
“Are we done?” I ask, eager to get home.
He nods, vanishing, leaving me alone.
Moving through space and time from our private spot after closing time on Table Mountain, I reappear overlooking Noordhoek draped in twilight, the setting sun casting so little light it's an anomaly.
I choose to sit quietly on a boulder, high up on the side of the mountain overlooking the vista. Sunset syrups the shimmering waves, oozing golden gloss.
Night smothers so fast, snuffing the dying ember on the horizon, bringing with it a seeping chill. My spirits droop with the dark, knowing it's another night she's missing, alone out there going through trauma.
Clouds gather in alarming speed, spurring me to move when the first rain begins to pound the ground.
*
Tasmin:
My world is a shifting floor of outer space, infinite, bottomless, malleable. The scarlet teddy keeps playing a poem, recorded somewhere in his belly, over and over...
It loops endlessly like Satan's laugh in the catacombs of the damned. It drools black ink across my thoughts, serenading me in words turned tinny by the hollow heart.
Watching, waiting for you to see me
I've waited years for you to need more
Like a blind woman you don't acknowledge or see
You have holes for eyes, me you ignore
I'm done being invisible, the time has come
Recognize what I am, forge your allegiance little one
Mercy is yours if you open your doors... and see me.
Black coalesces into gelatinous balloons, bulging at me with every word. Bruises ring my wrists in blemish bracelets and my tush is numb from the morgue cold floor. Tears irrigate my eyes, deforming the darkness further.
I'm losing my sanity, nothing stays still. The floor gyrates up in hungry swells ready to gobble me up, the walls bubble and melt, dripping crumbling blisters to pool across the pit, creeping closer to me in stealthy gloss.
Like a blind woman you don't acknowledge or see...
Rolling away to shut out the paranormal pantomime, squashing my cheek in the slurry of decay, a face ahead wavers and ripples. Sucking freezing sips in through my lips, I watch the eyes that watch me. He's gazing, unblinking, waiting for my dying breath or my submission into the straitjacket of depravity.
Contemplative eyes, dark stubble smudging his chin which keeps drooping to the floor and bouncing back up like a cursed yo-yo. Poised in front of his mouth is a cigarette longer than a chopstick, wafting a white prayer to heaven.
Dark hair hangs to cheekbones, hiding the outer half of his eyebrows, the glint of a
piercing in his brow shines hope in the ominous crevice of his obsessive stare.
The noodle shrinks, glowing hot when it's caught in cruel full lips, the fingers holding it captive are rough with shriveled scabs.
Fighter's knuckles. They bleed to inflict punishment.
He grants me a possessive smile, saying across the chamber in a hallucinogenic mangled voice, “Would you like it if I took your eyes? You don't use them for anything worthwhile. The last thing you will see, is me.”
The teddy intrudes inside the silence which gathered while I drifted away, through the murk of evil dimensions which slide and tilt across the landscape of my mind, giving me nothing stable to cling to, speaking accusation again, the cadence banging harder than my heart.
Like a blind woman you don't acknowledge or seewarbles, elastic, wondering through the prison's bricks, marching up and down the walls.
…you don't acknowledge or see...
… …you don't acknowledge or see...
It draws me to his eyes, lost in the vacuous dreamscape buried in the depth of his irises, the whites of the corneas haunting the bottomless darkness in shallow rings... mirrored orbs.
I blink, losing him, forgetting the angel has onyx wings and a rotting smile. Struggling to unzip my eyelashes, a floating ember hovers above me like lava ready to singe my soul. Black veils my face, forcing my cheek into the harsh concrete of disgrace, licking my lips with a smoker's stain, slithering inside to suck my tongue and wither my brain.
“You won't be half as fragile, or beautiful, without your eyes. But you will be all mine.”
Madness bores holes into me, ravaging my sanity and leaving me as burrowed as a sponge. My stomach wrings, my mouth watering uncontrollably as if I'm going to be sick.
Locked in his profane conclave, my heartfelt desire is simple.
Mundane.
Grant me fresh air.
Hot ghosts exhale into my mouth, choking me with dead air and narcotic incense. My eyes milk over, washing the man into a lost wasteland of cataracts, blinding me to this insipid reality.
Watching, waiting for you to see me... need more... blind woman... you ignore... done being invisible... allegiance... see me... … you don't acknowledge or see... see me...
Murmur... resonate... echo... debilitate... emancipate... desecrate...
See me.
I~
Feel~
Breath~
Fingering the peeling cracks in the ceiling that droop down to linger tendrils on my face, glossy starling hair, eyes so close... scourge runs a slimy tongue inside the corner of my mouth.
I pray I am dreaming.
Glass marbles roll across the floor, smashing together, fracturing the realm and shunting me viciously into a dungeon of brutal bones that clamp my flesh and bite through skin, running blood into dirty fingernails, turning the exploding nebulae into a tidal wave of festering crimson to weep over scabs and bruises.
Diving into the darkness until I'm lost in its depths, endless revulsion starves my hope, free falling through the jagged flux of sinister silence.
Something ruptures inside, where my heartbeat kisses my breath, the locked chest of hopes and dreams where potential hides... smashed to smithereens when an Unholy gouges through the fragile frontiers of my psyche.
Psychically demolished, a deeply ingrained childhood fear nooses my soul, flooding me with phobia... of the dark.
The teddy bear has no eyes.
Now I'm the one blinded with potions brewed for perversion.
I didn't see him! I was blind. The teddy has no eyes.
It was a clue!
Clarise.
Chapter 22
Tasmin:
A door twists open in warped shrieks, scarring decayed cement in a grinding squeal, simultaneously scything my nerves into tatters along with the transcendental silence.
A shape melts through the mirror, slowly becoming a face. He gives me a frugal smile; shadows flaming off him to creep into the corners of my soul. Knowing I'm not alone in this nightmare is a vaccine for the malaise inflicting my mind.
The black martyr creeps stealthily closer, scavenging sweetness when he spiders his fingertips across my lips, trickling them down my neck to cover the rattles of my unsteady heart.
Tilting his head, hair shadows his eyes in a mask. The minister of Mephisto smiles again, his voice as soothing as a cello weeping in the belly of the labyrinth. “You're such a pretty poison.”
Addicted to the fading seduction of broken silence, I smile back, hoping to keep him in my nightmare. The celestial sinner amputates the moment when he crawls so close he blocks out the nocturnal fingers grieving faint light into the mausoleum.
Fetid chemistry sparks across my numb lips with a shrill kiss. Instincts scream, pulverizing my breath, saturating my body in a blanket of thick persecution, stifling the hope I held like the moonbeam he stole.
His tongue infests my mouth with vindictive prayers. Warping in loops of light and dark, the sensation fragments my lucid moment into shrapnel of laughter which plants slugs into the walls as surely as a gun firing a bullet.
“How do you manage to taste so clean and sweet? I could lick your lips raw,” whispers a man into the crag of my carnage.
Diminished by the weight pressing strong fingers on my neck, I'm imprisoned in his sentimental smile, washing gentle hope across night's canvass.
Attempting to move, the crushing is too much, as strong and cutting as lonsdaleite. It's sharp.
His dark eyes glisten with malicious secrets, desecrating and confusing the very depth of me. A hammering pressure pounds inside my head, making me gasp at the wavering apparition.
“Stop struggling, it pisses me off,” growls the darkness.
I lie still, asphyxiation demolishing my ability to focus. Panting for breath, the room spirals, whirling round and round, forcing me to close my eyes for fear of dizzy disorientation turning to a faint.
“That's better. Tantalizing Taz, what a rare delicacy. What a delightful treat you've turned out to be.”
I try to ask why, but my voice comes out in a diaphanous wisp of breath.
“Look into my eyes.”
Struggling to obey, I manage to lift the lid of a mountain, looking up at the seeping dark irises so close above my own. They waver and wrinkle.
“Windows to your soul. They're so vulnerable you almost make me feel guilty,” the heavenly voices caress the velvet night.
One voice fractures into many.
It subdues my frightened fever, sucking my pulse back to sedate, the weird vision cozy.
Adoration blossoms, lulling me into safety, tugging my eyelids, relaxing my body into the pervert's penitentiary.
Warmth exhales across me, sucking on my skin, shriveling my sanctity, scratching over my skin with the roughness of picked scabs, collecting mementos with teeth.
“Sleep, let the dream take you away, wander across the pond of nightmares and meet me on the other side,” he purrs softly, intimate and loving.
Toxic touches my mouth, falling across my tongue.
Open lips fill my lungs with sulphuric haze, which burns and chokes, making me spasm and cough.
Held tight, the straitjacket buckles around me in arms of leather, scenting my soul with smoke and shame, so desperate and afraid, the security of the embrace squeezes. I lurch against a naked chest, ghostly pale in moon's dying kiss, bringing me haven.
Seeking sanctuary inside the hallucination which haunts my dreams, I sag weakly, too tired to struggle, succumbing to the dark drama waiting for me when I close my eyes.
Lights explode, voices whisper while rifling through the drawers of my sanity, billowing cold obsidian down the corridors of my mind.
“You don't see me. You never see me,” he accuses with a bitter tongue. “I don't exist to you. This time you will remember me. Your blood and mine, in a binding spell, will lock you to me forever. You will never escape, your slumber belongs to me Tasmin. You're mine in the ether. You'
re the channel to his demise. He'll kiss you and taste me on your tongue. You'll kiss him and remember me.”
Fingers stroke my cheek, lips wet and warm on my eyelids.
“In the darkness I am lord. Your scars are mine, your dreams are mine, and in the end I will prevail.”
My pulse escalates, heat burying me in a furnace, panic pulling a hijab of terror over my face. Desperate to stop the opiate playing psychedelic Twister with my body, I push, unable to break the hold, weeping, frantically mumbling for help.
“You're thirsty. It's time you had the drink of the fallen. Let me quench your desire.” He laughs, it's scandalous and cruel.
Cold metal presses to my lip, filling my mouth with the horrific tang of blood. Retching, the thick warmth of it curdling my taste-buds, I fumble, scratching and pawing, blind against the tantric trauma playing movies across my eyes.
My heart hurts, the pounding so harsh I'm sure it's swollen and engorged like the tongue attacking me, licking the waste from my lips.
“Would you prefer something a little stronger?” He giggles, it's infinite, snaking and hissing, slithering deathly vipers across the melting floor. They're so bright, glowing, their unblinking eyes luminous in the dark.
Only when I open my eyes do I manage to comprehend it's not real, it's a supernatural visitation.
Blinking, the bottle bulges and mushrooms, pouring into my mouth, scalding my tongue and liquifying my breath. The bleeding masculine arm drips onto my chin, sliding me under the satin scarlet of wet heat.
Muscles ripple, veins grotesque and livid, the man is bleeding on me!
It tickles, pooling at the base of my throat. Prone, out of breath, clutching to the monster for fear I'm falling over the end of the world, shadows dance across the wasteland, claustrophobia bangs a claw-hammer over and over and over in my chest.
Zips ring in my ears, my forehead against cold hard compressed dust, my bones rubber and useless, weak, infantile, I curl into myself, holding my knees, wishing heart and soul I'd wake up from this horrific dream.
The hot pressure forced on me in skin's silkiness lassoes a wail out of me.
Indigo Vamporium Page 13
