Immortal Memories

by Hibbard, Michael

  He reached into his pocket, and found that she had not taken his wallet, but she had given him more than he had expected. As he became lost in the crowds of people, milling in and out of the surrounding pubs and hotels, his inspiration returned. He would write as he had never written before. Hopefully, he could catch that red fairy in the pages of his novel, so that one day she might find him again.

  So Long, But Never Good-Bye

  Baltimore, Maryland, December 1942

  “Why?” pleaded Olivia, looking at Grigor through long, black lashes, summoning crocodile tears. The radio on the dresser filled the room with Glenn Miller’s swing, intermingled with the bustle of a typical Baltimore at night. A light breeze carried the scent of December snow through a cracked window, rousing wisps of her scent and Coty L’Aimant perfume. Wine bottles lay like cannon shells on the bedside table, among lipstick smudged glasses and discarded undergarments. They had slept the entire day, partly from exhaustion but mostly from their reluctance to accept the events to come. He was leaving and there was nothing left for her to do except plead.

  “He must be stopped, is why,” retorted Grigor in an annoyed tone, growing heart weary from her unremitting lamentations. “We’ve been over this many times before and I won’t change my mind.”

  He was standing at the mirror, meticulously re-dressing into his officer’s uniform. He held the rank of Colonel in the army and commanded a small, highly specialized military intelligence unit focused on cryptography. Stationed the last two years at Camp Meade allowed he and Olivia to foster their love affair. Now he was going overseas to a secret Allied research facility and she would not be going with him.

  “I will never understand this misguided sense of patriotism you’ve adopted,” she said venomously, her blood boiling as she fought her natural inclination to lash out at the pain she was feeling. She did not want to feel this way; she had never felt this way before. No man ever left her -- she always did the leaving. Her beauty was that which inspires poets and painters to the point of being tortured and awestricken. Try as one might, one could never truly reproduce her beauty with crude brush strokes and pencil lines. Any attempt was a feeble one at best, leaving an empty rendition of her shell, devoid of her true essence. She was a living work of art -- eternal, elegant and eerily erotic. Any man she wanted was hers, willing to fall on their swords for a single moment alone with her. It did not matter if she loved them, only that she acknowledged them. Her contempt for men was profound, sickened by their sad, skewed sense of simian superiority. She would not submit to feral beasts led around by the bulge in their pants, full of grandiose thoughts and empty promises. She would devour them, entrancing them with her wiles, enslaving them to her will. She was Lilith ruling Eden, Helen captivating Troy and Nefertiti fooling Egypt. She was all them and no one would deny her the things she desired, deserved and demanded. But despite the indignation she nurtured in her bosom, she was vulnerable and afraid. Consumed by her feelings for Grigor her mind invoked long suppressed memories of fear and abandonment. Grigor was not a man; he was more than a man, so much more.

  “It is the only choice we have now,” he said, watching her in the mirror, his eyes reluctantly following the curves of her body, outlined by the ivory silken sheets, which drape over her. She was like a cat, stretched lazily on the bed, her eyes peering deep into his soul like a ravenous demon, waiting. She had ensnared him, like so many before, but he willingly submitted to her wants, though it pained him to deny her this one request. They could not ignore the mounting storm.

  “I don’t care,” she said, dismissing him with a finely manicured hand, burying her emotions in the down pillow, unable to hypnotize him with her weird way. No man had ever denied her, not for a single moment. Yet there she lay discarded by him despite her elegant limbs and smooth soft curves, seemingly cut from alabaster and set against the velvet darkness of night. She abandoned everything she had known as the war raged around them, and now with his departure, the sorrow became almost unbearable. She knew that she would see him again, but she did not want to wait. The events transpiring frightened her, though she would never openly admit it. She would never admit weakness in the world of men.

  “I know that’s not true,” he said, his heart softening at the sorrow she exuded, permeating the room like a fetid odor, palpable and oppressive. “This is to ensure that we can have a life, without this incessant struggle against a misguided nemesis. This war is his, and he must be stopped. I know that the genocide in Germany is of his design. Only he is capable of such unspeakable horrors on such a grand scale.”

  She peeked at him over her shoulder. She knew he loved her, and every gesture he made communicated this across time and space. She only just realized how deeply he felt in the last few days, hidden in that hotel room, their bodies so close they could be mistaken as one. It was meant to be, most of the time. It had taken her centuries to accept this, overcoming her enflamed sense of femininity mixed with a masculine vigor for influence. She was impossible to understand, even to herself; the perfect female enigma. She was reviled to accept that she loved him, but it was too late to deny it. He gave her reason to feel, and banished her fears of an uncertain future. She was world weary and eager to be happy for just a moment. But, that was over now.

  “Why you?” She asked contemptuously. “Why not Deakin or Shem? Haven’t we done enough already? What about tomorrow? Next year? What do you want, Grigor?” She sat up on her knees, barely covering herself with the silken sheet, denying him a full glimpse of her elegance, her red curls spilling over her shoulders lapping at her curves like fire, long and serpentine. She feigned modesty, not for its own sake, but for spite. She wanted to punish him, even though she knew he had no choice, but the knowing did not sate the ire burning in her bosom. Her perception was that he spurned for the “greater good”.

  Grigor turned from the mirror, arms resting at his side in silent resolve. “Olivia,” he said gently, ruefully. “You know I do not want to be anywhere else but here with you.” He walked over and touched her cheek gingerly, and placed a wisp of a kiss on her lips and gazed helplessly into her emerald eyes, captivated. “Immortality is to be savored, not spent in this constant struggle. We cannot allow him to succeed, and with each passing year, he is becoming stronger. His weirdness surpasses both of ours combined.”

  He kissed her again to try to get her to understand - always the warrior and the bard. He would experience these horrors and write them down as a warning to future generations. Hopelessly optimistic that the world would change, but deep in his heart, he knew that as long as Gabryal existed that there would always be suffering.

  “He’s insane. What would you have me do?” He whispered between their lips, searching the flames within her eyes. He did not want to deal with what was to come, but she knew he had this uncontrollable need to do the right thing, even at his own sacrifice. There was no arguing.

  She knew the choice was either to let the world be consumed in the fires of greed, lust and wrath or sacrifice him to save millions, perhaps billions of lives. It was the most profound display of altruism she had ever seen, simple and undeniably good. She felt his life was worth far greater than the sum of all the wretched lives that had made these events come to pass. It was not Gabryal, alone, destroying the world; he was never alone. An ever-growing army of sadistic sycophants followed him, eager to please their murderous leader, even at the cost of their own mortality, their own eternal souls. She did not know how one man would be able to withstand such a tempest of hatred and discontent.

  “I am sick to death of this fight with him,” She sighed, slumping back to sit on her heels, still watching him, hoping that he would come to his senses and see how deeply she loved him, needed him. “Why can’t we just be happy? Why can’t we just run far away from here and live out our lives in peace?” She shook her head with child-like desperation and fear. “I don’t want to continue like this anymore…”

  Grigor reached forward, placing a hand in her r
ed curls, and pulled her against his chest in a warm embrace, consoling her, hushing her, soothing her. Reluctantly, she embraced him too, her shoulders trembling with restrained sobs. For all the time they had known each other, they had never entertained a romantic relationship. It was unrealistic for them, being oceans and centuries apart. Now, it was impossible to rebuff, like the path that lay before him, cutting through nightmarish landscapes to the heart of evil. They could not undo the love that flourished in their hearts, yet another unfortunate casualty of war.

  “Shhhh,” he whispered, kissing her ear. “You know we can’t do any of that. This is the burden we must bear so that the world will continue to survive.”

  “I don’t want to survive if I have to live alone waiting for you to return. Stay with me,” She pleaded, holding him tighter. “Stay with me and we’ll live on room service and lie in this bed until the walls crumble around us.” She looked up at him, her eyes red and full of tears. “I will make you forget all of this ---”

  “I will not forget,” he said with a sigh. “I will never forget.” He lifted her chin to meet his lips, kissing her gently once more. “And neither will you.”

  So many years had passed since the death of his family, and still he could not forget the fear that contorted their faces and wounds that bloodied their corpses. He saw their deaths mirrored in all of the senseless murders and vile massacres that had plague all of humankind. Now so many innocent souls were being tortured at the hands of Gabryal, along with all of the people who were suffering as a result of this damnable war. He could not overlook it, any more than he could overlook the death of his own family, before he awakened to the curse of immortality. He had seen war, and he knew war. He knew that men like Gabryal would never stop. Unopposed he would conquer the globe and then kill his misguided followers. Cleansing the world once and for all; Gabryal’s warped sense of peace and absolute control.

  Olivia buried her face in his chest sobbing lightly, a melodic sorrow in her soft cries; she knew what he said was true, but that did not change her own selfish wants, a life without strife, a life where Gabryal did not exist. She had fooled herself into believing she could hide in that hotel and everything would right itself by some strange force of cosmic will. A childish wish, a foolish dream.

  “Do you really want to waste our last night together, full of tears?” He whispered, hiding his own sorrow at their inevitable separation. He did not know how long he would be gone, and he did not know when he would see her again, but he knew, as he had countless times before, he would see her again.

  Gabryal had planned this latest attempt at world domination very carefully. And unlike times before, he had gained a formidable force behind him. He was killing with wanton impunity, much more iniquitously than any time before, feeding off the hatred and biases of his dogmatic followers. There was no way any of them could overlook this for anything other than what it truly was, absolute, unwavering evil. If they, too, stopped caring about the world, they would be no better than Gabryal.

  She remained unresponsive as the day slipped away into night. Soon a driver would come to spirit him away, along snow kissed streets to board a plane leaving for an undisclosed facility close to the front, far away from her. Once he was able to ascertain the situation in Europe, he would formulate a plan and then he could send for her. He needed to get to Bavaria, soon, and that had to be his focus. As much as he wanted to take her with him, it was uncertain what awaited him in Germany. But, there were no guarantees, no promises he could make to ease the ache of separation for an unknown stretch of time. It was sadly ironic that she had severed herself from the world for so long, before Grigor, now she could not bear detachment again. She thoughtlessly entertained her vices, hidden away from the rest of existence in her mansion on the moors, unfeeling, uninterested and unwittingly empty. Now, she would die every day that she awoke to an empty bed.

  “Why don’t you go put on that green evening gown I like?” He said to her with a gentle nudge. “I’ll take you for a nice supper, and perhaps we can go see that movie you like again.”

  “Casablanca?” She said, looking at him with a glimmer of happiness in her eyes. “Really?”

  She knew he abhorred romantic movies, a warrior hopelessly unable to comprehend the affairs of the heart. She had pestered him for weeks, making him promise to bring her when it opened. She knew he found it revolting, but he did it for her. She was a hopeless romantic, despite her dominant exterior, always a woman inside. He was the only person she had allowed to see her cry, other than her father in ages past. However, she did not want him to know that she was trembling inside, all of the time.

  “Yes,” He smiled submitting, hoping to give her one good evening, one that both of them would remember when the stars burned out and they sat alone on the shores of existence watching as time fades into the cosmic tide. “Now be a good girl and go get ready.”

  She returned his smile with a forced one of her own, and then ran her finger over his name badge gingerly. “Anything you say, Colonel Blair.” She winked as she pulled herself away, wrapping the sheet around her as she went to the washroom.

  Colonel Blair was his current persona, the one he needed in order to achieve his goals in finding Gabryal. She hated that he chose the life of a soldier, but found it oddly amusing that he fit the part so well. She knew he had fought many times, against her many years before. The last year, the last few days, made her regret that part of him, which ironically was one of the traits that drew her to him.

  After dressing herself, repairing the damage hours of protest and sobbing had imposed upon her demeanor and appearance, she watched him silently from the doorway. He was whistling to himself, admiring his appearance in the mirror in the clean, pressed uniform. She could not help but stare; he was handsome, rugged and confident, his true features were chiseled like a Grecian statue with deep blue eyes that both chilled and warmed her. He could look into her, seeing the things she did not want him to see. If they were to abandon this love affair, would he ever be able to view her as anything more than his plaything.

  “What do you think?” Olivia finally said shrugging off the thoughts of self-doubt, leaning provocatively in the doorway, dressed in an emerald evening gown.

  Each time he saw her, it was like a bullet to his chest, hitting him squarely in the heart, causing him to hemorrhage pathetic, schoolboy compliments. “Wow,” he replied with his mouth slightly agape. “I never get used to it. Every time you leave the room and return, it’s like I’m seeing you for the first time again.”

  He stepped away from the dresser, and closed the gap between them, grabbing her around the waist and pulling her in for a long, tender kiss, urged by the longing in his chest. She sighed against his lips, closing her eyes as she allowed the moment to take her away from all of the things she dreaded about the hours to come. The impending separation was killing her, and it was alien, hateful, and excruciating, but it must be. She reminded herself repeatedly that they would be reunited again, at some point.

  He broke away, smiling down at her lazily, dreamily. “Shall we?” He motioned to the door, grabbing her fur coat from the rack. “I’m famished.”

  She turned so that he could put on her coat, the dress open in the back, swooping down to reveal her soft, perfect skin, teasing him with a scandalous view. He kissed her neck before he put the white fur over her slender shoulders. And as he stepped to the rack to grab his own overcoat, there was a knock at the door.

  She raised a brow at him, and he returned the same puzzled look before walking to the door to open it. She stepped up behind him as he swung the door open.

  A young blonde haired man, with blue eyes, equally as striking as Grigor’s, stood with coat draped over his right arm.

  “Yes?” Grigor asked the man. “Can I help you?”

  The man stood, beads of sweat beginning to roll down his face as he looked between the two of them, then to the nametag on Grigor’s uniform. Time seemed to slow down, everything happen
ing between a tick and a tock. The man turned his hand ever so slightly, revealing the muzzle of a revolver concealed beneath the charcoal colored wool of the overcoat draped over his right arm. Two flashes of light and the rippling sound of shots echoed through the dull air of the hall, impacting delicate flesh and muscle. Olivia screamed and Grigor surged forward with inhuman speed, knocking the gun from the man’s hand with a swift arc of his left arm, followed by a sickening crunch as a fist connected with the center of the man’s face, breaking his nose, blood squirting in all directions. The man, stunned, fell backwards against the door on the opposite side of the hall, causing it to rattle against the jamb.

  Grigor leapt at the man who struggled to get to the gun that landed a few feet away, but Grigor overtook him quickly, grabbed the man by the back of the head, and smashed his face into the wall, causing the plaster to shatter. The man gurgled a howl of pain through a bloodied face.

  “Who sent you?” Grigor screamed, pinning the man against the wall with his forearm. His eyes gleamed and glowed with a hateful purplish glow as his Weirdness mixed with rage, “Who?” He used his abilities to probe into the man’s mind, searching, raping his mind wantonly. He was a sleeper, but there was something else inside staring back at him.

  The man smiled a toothy, terrible grin, blood dripping from his jowls like a wolf after the kill. “You,” the man said gurgling, his face already swelling, eyes filling with blood. “You cannot win…Grigor.” His voice was different than it had been before.