When she realized I wasn’t going to respond, she understood my reluctance and accepted its cause with a grim half-nod, recognizing that sort of cheap, mental sucker punch as a tactic she wasn’t above using. I have only one memory of being mortal. I remember as a young child hoping and wishing to one day find a pure love, someone to possess my soul. It is the only part of my mortality that has survived the years, which is ironic as I no longer have a soul to possess.
“You have a soul, Gisele,” I whispered softly. “And what’s ironic is that you dream of possession when you’ve never been willing to be possessed. Love isn’t about perfection, it’s about surrender, and while the dream sustains you, the reality scares you to death.”
Surrender requires reciprocity, Gisele responded immediately, her defenses out in full force, and I realized that I was never going to get through to her while she was like that. I also realized that I wasn’t likely to get through to her at all, but for some bizarre reason, I was still willing to try.
Stowing my shield, I entwined my mind with hers and shivered at the cold, dark realm that had become her refuge. Wrong. Truly loving someone can’t depend on them loving you back. It’s a leap of faith, not something that needs to be tested every time it slips a little. I couldn’t see that with Cassia, but I see it now. With you.
Gisele thought about this, her face a rigid mask that matched the bleak, barren landscape in her mind. I could feel her resisting the warmth my mind tried to infuse, but it was getting weaker. As inexorable as the tide, my mind lapped in and out, traveling a little deeper with each pass, and for a moment, it actually looked like she was going to let go and fall without caring where she landed.
Ohh, how looks can be deceiving...
A storm of denial swept across her mindscape and beat back the tide, and she took shelter in its eye. It makes no difference now. You love her more than you love me.
Ahh, Gisele. Since the beginning, you’ve been afraid that might be true, but you were even more afraid that it might not, so you’ve done everything you could to make it true. Until this moment, you failed. No matter what you did, it was always you. Only you. I surrendered most of my humanity the first time you drank from me, and the rest of me wasn’t far behind.
I released Gisele, and she dropped to the floor, gasping for breath until I reached down to grasp the nape of her neck and pull her to her feet. “I realized tonight that my journey with Alicia is finished. I never figured that would lead me back to you, but here we are. Here I am, still hoping that I can save us both...” I paused for a moment because the rest of my thought was too painful to utter, but eventually I could not keep it, or the pain, inside any longer. “But I guess I can’t save anything; I deal in endings, not beginnings.”
I tightened my grip on her neck, using the pressure to tilt her head to the side. I closed my eyes as I lowered my head, unable to look at her. “So be it,” I whispered, my breath on her neck.
“No, Jason,” Alicia whispered, but her voice rumbled like thunder through my mind, halting my head’s downward motion. For a moment, I thought her mania had reared up again, wanting to savor this moment, but the soft tone of her voice told me otherwise. I was afraid to look up and confirm one way or the other, so I picked a spot on the wall to look at.
“She’s already dead, Alicia. Inside. I can’t change that.”
“Maybe,” Alicia replied, acknowledging my point. “Or maybe she never really learned to live in the first place. If that’s what it is, give her the time to find that life. Show her that you can forgive, because I think you can, and I know you want to.”
I started to shake my head almost immediately, welcoming back denial with open arms. Alicia had no right to be this insightful, and I turned to tell her so, but when I opened my eyes, I saw only warmth and compassion in her expression, and it took my voice. My whole body went numb, and my hand fell away from Gisele’s neck.
“Jason, your situation is fucked up, and there aren’t many who can understand half of it. Maybe I could have, but we both know that’s impossible now.” Alicia turned her attention to Gisele. “You have that over me, an advantage as unfair as it is unchangeable. I can accept it, why can’t you?”
Gisele had no idea what to say, and she opened and closed her mouth several times while searching for words, but in the end, she said nothing, so Alicia turned back to me. “There aren’t many, which makes it especially important to hold onto the ones who can. There are enough people in this world who’ll try to take them from you. Don’t do it for them.”
Apparently, madness had not been my only gift to Alicia; I smiled in relief. “Maybe you can’t understand my situation, Alicia, but you do understand me, and I really needed that.” I paused for a moment to look at Gisele. She continued to be floored, and it was hard to say what hit her the hardest, that Alicia had stayed my hand or that it was able to be stayed at all. “I hear you, I do, but I’m not ready to listen. I might never be ready, but I’ll leave the door open. I hope you understand.” Alicia nodded, and I could tell from her expression that she was being truthful. “I also hope you understand that I’ve taken you as far as I can. You’re on your own now. I’ll make the arrangements.”
“I know,” she said, and though it was a sad moment, I felt remarkably free and buoyant. I moved to Alicia’s side and leaned in gently to kiss her goodbye. It was sweet, it was tender, and it was right, and when I pulled away, I brushed one hand through her hair and then turned to Gisele. It was obvious from her posture that she posed no further danger to Alicia, but I felt the need to warn her anyway.
“If you hurt her after I’m gone, I promise there’ll be no place on Earth safe for you.” Gisele nodded silently, her lip quivering and Blood tears welling in her eyes. Satisfied, I turned and continued on past Gisele and out into the hallway. “Don’t try to find me. I’ll be back when I’m ready,” I called over my shoulder before the door swung shut behind me.
“I know you will,” Gisele answered, watching my departure until the door closed.
◆◆◆
Once again, Gisele and Alicia were alone in the room. Gisele stared at the closed door for a time, trying to catch a handful of her rampant thoughts and failing. In the end, she gave up and turned back to address Alicia. “Thank you.”
“I didn’t do it for you,” Alicia shot back, her tone venomous enough to snap Gisele’s head back. “It’s not about you at all; don’t you get that? It’s about him. I love him enough to know that he can’t lose us both in one day, even if he doesn’t know it.” Alicia noticed Gisele’s face darken. “Does that make you angry?”
“Yes,” Gisele hissed.
“Good, then maybe it’ll make you think, too. He loves you more than you seem to realize, which is weird because you can read his mind, but now I think I know why...” After her voice trailed off, Alicia remained silent, watching Gisele wage an internal war that did not quite want to stay internal.
“Why?” Gisele asked finally, giving up. Her first small surrender was not as bad as she expected.
“You have to be so devious to make it as a vampire. It requires cunning on a level I’ve never seen before, and I’ve seen plenty. Your lives are more deception than reality. You can't trust each other, you can't trust us, and you can't trust yourselves." Alicia took a breath, her eyes blazing with understanding. It had been a long, drawn-out battle, but she finally got it, and knowing that she was taking something so useful from all this made it easier to accept that it was over.
“You throw away your humanity to harden yourselves against what you have to do each night just to survive, because in the end, it’s all about survival."
Gisele felt like she was standing on the edge of a great cliff and at any moment, one of Alicia's explosive words would push her off.
"The problem is, without that humanity, it’s easy to forget that surviving isn’t the same as living. That’s what you really need us for. Our blood feeds your body, but our humanity feeds your soul, and our mortality remi
nds you to live, not just survive... Somewhere along the way, you convinced yourself that you're not allowed to live.”
Gisele’s jaw went slack, and it was only a tremendous exercise of will that kept her mouth from falling open. After a few moments of struggle, she tested surrender again by allowing her surprise to show openly, and again, it was not so bad. “That is more profound than any mortal has a right to be,” Gisele replied softly, a sense of awe and wonder in her voice. “I would never have thought that I could be lectured by you.”
“You learn something new every day,” Alicia responded lightly. “I know I do.”
Gisele smiled, the first one she had actually meant and felt in quite some time. “Only if you are open to learning.”
Alicia flashed an answering smile. “Good, then I have earned my life.”
“Yes,” Gisele agreed, approaching the bed and leaning over to kiss Alicia lightly on the forehead. Afterward, she put her lips to Alicia’s ear and whispered, “I think that you have. Goodbye, Alicia.”
And then she was gone, and Alicia was alone. “Goodbye, Gisele.”
◆◆◆
Gisele’s return to the Ekhaya was without fanfare, and she had never before appreciated the comfort of walking its earthen halls a fraction as much as she did now. Except for Octavian, none of the other Ekhaya members went out of their way to avoid her, nor did they make an effort to seek her out. It was as it had always been, and the return to normalcy threatened to bring tears to her eyes.
Octavian was clearly avoiding her. Whenever her wandering brought her close, he moved to another part of the Ekhaya, and though she had half a mind to force a confrontation, she remembered the adage about cornered animals and figured that it was best to leave him be. Some fences simply could not be mended, and they would stake out the boundaries of their new dynamic when he was ready.
She paused at the entrance to the Ancients’ chamber, a place where she had spent many nights of Slumber, and she no longer felt like she belonged. She entered the empty chamber and stared at her sarcophagus for a while, extending her psyche to fill the chamber and encountering the echoes of all the other Ancients, including Celeste, and for the first time, she found them unsettling and jumbled and just.... wrong. It definitely was no longer a haven for her, and if Jason did not take her back, she would have to find quarters elsewhere, but...
A wild thought jumped into her head, and she delicately skirted its edges looking for motives that should not have been there. When her thorough search turned up nothing alarming, she decided to go with it and Slumber in Jason’s quarters while he was away. Most of the Ekhaya would find that decision improper and perhaps even antagonistic, and Gisele would never admit otherwise, unwilling to disclose her true motivation to any of them: she wanted only to be as close to him as the current situation allowed, and his chamber in the Ekhaya held so much of him within its earthen walls.
That settled it. Propriety be damned. She was too tired to care anymore.
His chamber wrapped her like a pair of arms, solid and safe, and the smell of him was strong. She approached the massive bed, running a slow hand the length of the mattress. Images flashed, and she let them; if she was perfectly still, she could almost hear his voice. She sat down on the edge of the bed, staring at a wall she did not even see, and after a while, she let go of the discordant emotions that had guarded, wounded, poisoned and fueled her during her mad crusade. Here, in this room, she could admit to the insanity that had driven her to the brink of death, and she let that go, too.
This surrender thing was not so hard when one considered the alternatives.
A small smile broke on her face, and she was about to laugh before being interrupted by a knock on the door. “Come,” she said, an overwhelming sense of elation threading its way into her tone, and even when the door opened to reveal Phobos, that elation did not die.
“Ohh, forgive me,” Phobos offered quickly, turning to leave without hesitation.
“Phobos,” Gisele called out, and Phobos stiffened and came to a stuttering halt. She turned to face Gisele, her expression carefully neutral, and as Gisele pushed herself to a standing position, even though the movement was not abrupt or even all that rapid, Phobos flinched and then mentally kicked herself for flinching. Her shield snapped into place.
Gisele raised her hands, palms outward in a gesture of peace, and Phobos cocked her head to one side, her body language testifying that she obviously did not expect that kind of withdrawal from Gisele to be anything but strategic. Slowly, and as innocuously as possible, Gisele rounded the bed and crossed to the furniture in the other half of the room. She sat down on the reclining chair and then turned back to Phobos. “Please, sit with me for a moment,” she asked, gesturing at the love seat.
Phobos looked as if someone had just dropped her into the Twilight Zone, but she did as Gisele asked out of sheer curiosity. She had an absurd sense of deja vu as she lowered herself onto the love seat, a bit ridiculous considering that the last time she occupied this particular piece of furniture, she was recovering from a hasty Blood Trade with Jason in preparation for a confrontation that had been sparked by Gisele.
Only a revenant could find the symmetry in that one.
“I don’t know where he is,” Phobos admitted, anticipating Gisele’s reason for entreating her company.
“It would not matter if you did. I did not ask you to remain so we could talk about him.”
“Really? What else could we possibly have to talk about?” Phobos queried, her voice lacking anything harsh or antagonistic. She was truly and utterly confounded.
“I am not a revenant given to apology, but if I were, you would be deserving of several.”
Phobos blinked twice and would not have been surprised if Chicken Little ran through the room shouting his famous message. “I don’t know what to say, Gisele,” she admitted, knowing quite well that it was probably redundant given the expression on her face.
“There is nothing you need to say. In fact, the less you say, the better.” Phobos closed her mouth immediately and nodded slightly. Gisele looked away for several moments, ruthlessly forcing her stomach to stop flipping around as she attempted to gather her nerve. When she managed to find some, she looked Phobos unflinchingly in the eye and pressed on. “I have said and done things to you that were undeserved, mainly because I lacked the strength and the nerve to direct them at the proper individual. I will try very hard to avoid such displacement in the future.”
Phobos stopped trying to understand why this was happening and instead concentrated only on accepting it, which was a monumental task on its own. Obviously, whatever had happened between Gisele and Jason had changed her, apparently for the better, and Phobos was not about to discard that simply because she had thought it impossible. Not wanting to say anything that might tarnish this profound moment, Phobos bowed her head deferentially.
“Good,” Gisele finished with a small smile, appreciating Phobos’ discretion, which made her feel less like vomiting.
Phobos returned the smile and realized that the conversation was finished. “If you’ll excuse me, then?” Phobos said, showing more respect than was necessary, but it certainly could not hurt.
“Of course,” Gisele returned, and soon afterward she was alone again.
◆◆◆
I stood on the roof of Jeffrey’s high-rise apartment building, looking out over Central Park. The city was so breathtaking at night that it calmed me for what lay ahead: a final attempt to cut my last tie to mortality.
Procrastinating, I opened my phone and dialed Life and Liberty Security Services. Two days had passed since the meeting with the Brothers, and I had been avoiding this final detail. It took more than twenty minutes to get Darius Richter on the phone, but when we were finally connected, he did not sound the least bit sleepy.
“David,” Richter said, and there was a subtle quality to his voice that I was unable to identify.
“Darius,” I replied. “You’ve obviously bee
n debriefed by now.”
“I have. My people tell me that you were extremely... fortunate... to get SERENITY out of it alive.” Fortunate. Hmm, that was tactful of him. I’m sure Bondermann told him that it was either pure dumb luck, or I knew more than I’d let on. An event usually cost a life (or more), and the only thing stopping that life from belonging to the principal would be another offered in trade by the security team. No one, no matter how skilled, should have been able to make it out of that event with his own life and his principal intact.
“More like shit lucky to even be talking to you now,” I admitted simply to lower Darius’ radar a bit. I did not want him dwelling so much on the events that he started asking questions I had no prayer of adequately answering. There was no way I could bullshit Darius Richter about something like that; I simply did not have the knowledge of weapons and tactics to make up something plausible. Thankfully, he chuckled like he was supposed to, but it was a humorless sound.
“I apologize for my abrupt departure and any inconvenience it caused you or your people. I couldn't afford to hang around any longer; I needed to take a more proactive approach.”
“Are you closing in?” Darius asked, which was a sort of code to inquire if the DEA was preparing to wrap up Operation Poisoned Trough.
“Ohh, definitely not. I’m so far out of band on this one, I may never find my way back, but it doesn’t matter anymore.”
Darius quietly chewed on my words for several moments. “And if I feel I should inform someone of your extracurricular activities?”
“I know you’ll follow your conscience, Darius, and even I wouldn’t insult you by asking you to do otherwise. We’ll both do what we must, and what’s meant to be will be.”
Corrupting Alicia Page 44
