My goodness. As if my head wasn’t big enough already...
There was a deep silence as the Ekhaya assimilated Azriel’s words, more than half of them as stunned as I. Many of them had already accepted my unequivocal rule, and the rest were willing to do so now just because I’d established control over the Ancients. And then came the applause, deafening and wonderful as it echoed throughout the chamber, and another burden slid off my shoulders. I felt lighter than I could remember feeling since my Conversion.
I wish it had lasted longer.
Azriel caught my eye, silent communication passing between us. He had more to say, privately, and my heart sank. The burden I still carried over the Gisele Incident snatched up its fallen comrade and devoured it whole, impossibly seeming to triple in size and weight. I nodded my understanding, and then raised a leaden hand in a final call for silence. Even the immediate obedience from the Ekhaya couldn’t lighten my mood.
“Stephen, I want the official transcript of tonight’s meeting delivered to my chamber before sunrise tomorrow.”
“Yes... Sire,” he added tentatively. I smiled half-heartedly and waved away his words with an absent flick of a wrist.
“That’s not necessary. Acknowledge my rule and respect my authority; that’s all I ask. This meeting is now closed.”
I watched in silence as everyone began to file out of the Great Chamber. Many of them approached me to pledge their support and show their gratitude to me for putting the Ekhaya back in order. I nodded and offered my thanks to each one, but I barely heard a word, focused only on the disaster that still lay ahead. At that point, I didn’t even care how bad it was; I just wanted it to be over.
After half an hour or so, only Azriel, Phobos and Kane remained. By lingering, Kane was making a show of support that I greatly appreciated, and Phobos stayed more for him than me. Though their support was more symbolic than anything else, Azriel understood what having them in my corner meant to the Ekhaya. After all, I couldn’t be expected to fix the Ekhaya’s problems if I couldn’t fix my own.
When it was time, I turned to face Kane, my hand going to his shoulder in an expression of gratitude. “Gotta face this one alone, bro,” I said softly, briefly squeezing his shoulder, and he accepted my words with a grave nod that said he would come running if I called. “It’s okay to tell Phobos,” I allowed, referring to the Gisele Incident, my hand dropping to my side. He nodded again, and I turned to Azriel, gesturing for him to lead the way.
◆◆◆
The Ancients’ chamber felt cold as I entered, but it might have been my mood that made the torches cast the entire chamber into a harsh, monochromatic realm full of unspoken recrimination. Maximilian and Octavian wore somber expressions, their eyes vacant and lifeless as they leaned against Octavian’s sarcophagus. Gisele was nowhere to be found.
“She chose not to return with us,” Azriel said as he came to a halt to my right, facing the other two Ancients. His words whipped through me like razors, and I wondered dazedly if, in my distraction, Azriel had managed to pull that morsel from my mind. After a quick shield check, I was certain that my mind was locked down tight; it must have been written all over my face, which was probably worse. I halted far enough back to keep all three Ancient vampires in direct view.
“Do you want to hear it from me?” I asked, forcing my hands and jaw to remain slack even as tension wound around me like duct tape.
All three nodded in unison. “Not because we believe Gisele misled us, but because perception colors truth.” Azriel was apparently the chosen spokesperson. My heart raced as three pairs of eyes bored into me, and I felt small and somewhat worthless as I dismantled my shield to show my willingness to be completely forthright. I relayed my version of what happened much the same as I had to Kane, without inflection or personal interjection. I relayed only the facts as I remembered them, each word like a tiny needle piercing the raw and Bloody fabric of my heart.
When I finished my tale of horror, which sounded even worse this time around, the three Ancients looked to one another in silence, comparing notes. I offered nothing further until they looked at me again, their eyes seeming to ask for an explanation of my behavior.
Or maybe I just felt the need to explain myself...
“I have no excuses,” I admitted in a raw, cracked whisper full of self-loathing, my voice so soft that Maximilian and Octavian leaned toward me. “I’ve never been so unprepared for anything in my entire life. In a split second, I was stripped of everything I am and everything I believe.”
“You of all people should’ve known that she wasn’t ready to meet Alicia, Jason,” Octavian chided gently, the same way my father had whenever I had done something to disappoint him and he felt that he was partially to blame.
I lowered my head, accepting the rebuke. “She was so jealous of Alicia. So jealous...” I whispered, my voice trailing off under the barrage of guilt. “I thought having them meet was the best thing for all of us. I didn’t see it then, but I do now. If there was any benefit to their meeting, it was mine alone.”
“How could you have thought otherwise, even for a moment?” Maximilian questioned, his eyes sympathetic.
I felt like I was four years old as I shook my head, which hung so low that I wouldn’t have been surprised to find my nose inches from the dirt floor. “I wasn’t thinking; I thought I’d already figured it out. I should’ve known that meeting Alicia would only validate Gisele’s jealousy. I guess I’m not as smart as I sometimes think,” I said with a self-deprecating smile that felt more like a wince, my halfhearted attempt at levity failing miserably.
“We rarely are, Jason,” Azriel offered with a humorless smile. “Least of all Gisele. She thought all mortals were worthless, and she assumed that meeting your mortal would only reinforce that belief. Imagine her shock when it didn’t quite work out that way, when she saw something in Alicia. Something she believed no mortal could possess.”
“Ohh God,” I moaned, understanding it all in a flash of jolting revelation akin to grabbing hold of a live wire. More than anything, Gisele hates to be proven wrong, so she puts up a ridiculously fierce fight to deny any fallibility whenever it happens. But the fight isn’t the problem; to a certain extent, everyone does that. The fight is a smoke screen that covers the real problem: the chain reaction of insecurity that pummels her every time she is wrong about anything, no matter how trivial.
Remember when I told you that a part of Gisele is still very young and uncertain?
Unfortunately, Gisele rarely utilizes the portion of her brain that logic calls home, and when she does, her logic center is so excited to be picked for this mental game of kickball that it goes crazy, using mishmashed scraps of yarn to piece together every twisted thought in her head and present her with a Remedial Art 101 conclusion that couldn’t find logic on a training retreat for Vulcans taught by Surak himself.
“If my love for her was strong enough to fight the Hunger, then it was stronger than my love for Alicia could ever be,” I sighed, and for a moment, I could feel the marrow in my bones aching. Ironically, if not for the disaster that became of having Alicia watch me feed, I probably could have fought off the BloodHunger. Then again, if I hadn’t been such an idiot, or if either one of us had taken a moment to put aside our own problems and make room for the other’s...
You would think that was something two people who claim to love each other would do, wouldn’t you?
All three Ancients nodded in unison, agreeing with both my statement and my thoughts, their faces mirroring the same sympathetic expression. “When you succumbed, she had her answer,” Azriel continued, and my legs began to tremble so badly that I figured I was going down. Somehow, I managed to stay on my feet, but my heart spilled onto the floor as if it no longer wanted any part of me.
“And someone to blame,” I murmured, staring at the floor as if I could actually see my heart beating away in the dirt. Thump-thump. Thump-thump. My eyes stung as the Blood tears welled up, and I fought po
werfully to keep them from falling. None of the Ancients responded, opting instead to give me time to compose myself. It took a minute or two, and in the end, it was my anger at another approaching breakdown that helped ratchet down the lid; two pathetic bouts of bawling in one year is more than I’d ever allow. Finally, I was able to lift my head again, ready for round two.
Maximilian threw the first punch, and it was a doozy.
“She certainly found someone to blame, Jason, but it wasn’t you.”
“What?” I gasped, my head shooting up so fast that a deaf man could have heard the vertebrae in my neck crack. “Why not me?”
“She’d never blame you, Jason. She can’t. Her love is strong but adolescent; it lacks the seasoning of both experience and heartbreak. She still equates purity with perfection, and she can only accept the control love wields over her if it is pure. Even then it is difficult at best. She knows that her love for you is her last vestige of humanity, and despite what she says, she needs it desperately. She is terrified of what will remain if she loses it, so she does everything she can to sustain it, including self-delusion.”
Jesus. How could this possibly be going worse than I had expected? I fully expected Gisele to reevaluate her feelings for me, but I never thought for an instant that I would do the same. Our entire relationship was perched precariously on a bubble of delusion, hers and mine, and it was rushing toward the sharp edge of realization.
“Jason,” Azriel whispered, the warning in his tone drawing my gaze. “Let your thoughts go where they must, but be careful not to push them along. Your relationship with Gisele is troubled, but it can be salvaged. The Hunger is stronger than any of us, including you, and even the strongest of armies must first dig in before they can hope to defend against an assault by a superior force. You may share the blame for being unprepared, but I doubt you could ever have won that battle. She will understand that, in time,” Azriel finished quietly, confidently, and then he glanced to Octavian as if urging him to speak.
With a small sigh, Octavian complied. “A few days ago, you taught me that weakness is as much a part of us as strength. Hating weakness only makes it worse; it is only through acceptance that we can hope to keep it from being the larger part,” Octavian added, the wisdom in his words taking me completely by surprise. Where was this outpouring of compassion coming from? “It’s always been there, but I viewed it as weakness until you showed me how very strong it can be.”
Tears threatened again, and as my anger had burned itself out under the smothering weight of sadness, it was only a supreme act of will that kept them from spilling down my cheeks. It was as if the three Ancients had morphed into my older brothers, bearing gifts of help and solace instead of blame and guilt. I was punishing myself more for my actions than they were.
“That is as it should be,” Maximilian stated, his heart warmed that I recognized this meeting for what it was intended to be. They wanted nothing other than to help all of us through this, and in seeing that, I understood that all of our prior differences and confrontations had been relegated to the past, where they belonged. Here in this chamber, we began building new relationships, built solidly on the cement foundation of trust and understanding.
I looked up, and my eyes shifted from one, to another, to the third, and back again. We shared a profound moment that allowed color and warmth to bleed back into the chamber a drop at a time. And then, by silent agreement, we were back to business.
“As hurt as Gisele is by this, she’s twice as embarrassed,” Azriel said.
My eyebrows furrowed in disbelief. “Embarrassed?”
“Yes. Because of what’s happened, she’s begun to see the flaws in her ability to love. She’s not yet ready to accept them, but she’s taken the first step.”
“That sounds like a positive statement, Azriel, but I hear a “but” in there somewhere,” I replied, and each of them seemed surprised by my perception. They exchanged knowing looks with one another, mentally drawing straws over who would break the next piece of bad news. So far, the entire conversation had consisted of them telling me things that, deep inside, I already knew, and my knowing did not make the saying any less necessary. I could tell by their hesitation that they really wanted me to come up with the next piece on my own, and I was pretty sure I had, but I saw no reason to change the format of our discussion and quite a few not to. Self-delusion had convinced me that I could correctly interpret every situation I found myself in, and that hadn’t been working out so well for me...
Octavian pulled the short straw, and it was clear that he wasn’t at all happy about it. He opened his mouth to speak several times, stopping short each time to restructure the words that eventually came. “You may not want to hear this, especially from me, but you must realize that, eventually, you will be forced to choose. With Gisele, there can be no other way.”
I stared dumbly at Octavian, blinking in painful and awed silence at the crushing power and screeching truth of his words. Hearing the words aloud was so much worse than thinking them, and I swallowed around the lump in my throat, which may have looked like I’d swallowed a tennis ball by that point. “I know,” I whispered, the words tumbling dead and lifeless to the floor at my feet.
The walk to my chamber was a journey of miles rather than feet. I don’t remember seeing anything; it was all a blur, as if life were shooting by me at Mach 2. One weary foot in front of the other, my body on autopilot, I walked numbly from corridor to corridor. I encountered no one, the entire Ekhaya giving me a wide berth, as if my heavy heart was a plague that could be transmitted by sight.
The door to my chamber opened up before me. I walked through the doorway and proceeded directly to the bed, where I dropped face first without bothering to remove my clothing. I felt like I had just been fed through a pasta roller enough times to produce angel hair, and as I closed my eyes, I would not have been surprised if I slept for a thousand years.
◆◆◆
Well, a thousand years was apparently just wishful thinking, because I awoke promptly at sunset later that evening. The pain of the previous night was further away, but I could still feel it, waiting to pounce at the first opportunity. This reminded me of the BloodHunger, which was curiously silent, as if it had decided to take the night off because something else was already doing its job. I was determined to avoid handing the hovering pain an opening, and the only way I knew was to keep busy. Lucky for me that I had things to do before Alicia’s scheduled call, and keeping busy would also ensure that I didn’t go mad waiting on it.
I changed economically out of my rumpled clothes, placing them in the antique wicker hamper. I exited my chamber, leaving the sign on the outer door that would let the revenant housekeeping squad know to freshen my room, and soon afterward, the house marking the entrance to the Ekhaya was nothing but a dirty speck marring a blanket of whiteness as I sped off to Jeffrey’s offices in Manhattan. Because his business is still very much alive and thriving, I won’t mention the name; it wouldn’t do for someone to be walking in the city one day and have light dawn.
The attendant gifted me with a lovely smile as I approached the monstrous reception desk. Even though she had only seen me a few times, she recognized me instantly, as would any employee I encountered during my visit. Jeffrey insisted that all of his employees recognize his most prestigious clients on sight. This familiarity made some revenants uneasy, but Jeffrey’s employees were chosen as much for their discretion as for any business prowess, and I have no doubt that every employee in the company, right down to the janitor, would have taken the utmost caution not to give me so much as a second glance if they ever saw me outside Jeffrey’s offices.
Conversely, during each routine monthly physical, sponsored by the company, those same employees are marked by a minute quantity of my Blood, making them easily identifiable to any revenant. Before me, the mark was from Nekros, my revenant benefactor and former ruler of the Ekhaya. There was an unspoken understanding in the Ekhaya that Jeffrey’s mortal
employees were never to be harmed by members of the Ekhaya, and very few revenants outside the Ekhaya would even consider messing with branded mortals, for lack of a better term. To do so meant a visit from yours truly, and though every revenant might not know me, the power signature in my mark is unmistakable. For all intents and purposes, the employees at Jeffrey’s company were safe from all revenants.
“Good evening, Mr. Carter! How are you?” she asked warmly, her voice perfect and accentless, so utterly smooth and disarming that it had to have been rigidly practiced. Her brilliant green eyes were warm, skillfully walking the fine line between friendly and too direct. Her people skills were flawless, and I was impressed anew each and every time I saw her. Contrary to most businesses, Jeffrey’s best employees worked the night shift.
“I’m fine, Mary,” I answered with a smile I didn’t really feel, but I put some effort into it and was satisfied that it felt convincing enough. “I’m afraid I didn’t get a chance to call ahead. Can you let Jeffrey know I’m here?”
“Certainly, sir. Please make yourself comfortable while I call his office.”
“Thank you,” I replied warmly, taking a seat in one of the plush chairs to the left of the reception desk.
“You’re welcome, sir,” she returned in that same perfect voice before pressing a button on the console and speaking into the headset. “Mr. Carter is here to see Mr. Smith.” Just like mine is not Carter, Jeffrey’s last name is not Smith.
“I’ll be right down,” I heard the voice on the other end reply, the carefully cultivated voice of Jeffrey’s Executive Assistant, Jackie, much the same as Mary’s except for just the right amount of British accent. The accent is real, which makes me think of Jackie as both intelligent and educated - which she is - and also has the side-effect of being sexy and extremely personal, like she was put on this Earth solely to speak to me. This is, of course, the point.
Corrupting Alicia Page 23
