Bitter Fruits

by Daltry, Sarah

  “Breathe,” he warns me.

  “What a bitch,” I say. Scarlet and I have had arguments, but neither of us would just shrug and blow it off if the other was missing. I wouldn’t blow it off if anyone I knew were missing! I take a deep breath and let Caleb relax me. As fun as it would’ve been, fighting Elizabeth would not only have been unproductive, but it also could’ve gotten me in trouble. Being here in this empty and antiseptic stairwell is ideal at the moment. With nothing to go on, however, we’ve a hit a wall and it frustrates me. I like answers and I like feeling useful.

  “What next?” I ask, needing a plan, anything to keep my mind from itself.

  “I don’t know,” Caleb admits and sits on the top step.

  I want to peel my skin off I am so anxious. I sit beside Caleb and think, trying to piece it all together.

  “Here’s what I don’t get,” I say. “You and Alec have been around, together, for eternity or whatever. Don’t you ever compare notes? Figure out where there are loopholes? If you found one-”

  “I found one by taking the one thing that mattered to him. He didn’t care to discuss possible flaws in the structure of our curse after he thought I killed his girlfriend.” He runs his hands over his thighs and knees, his own anxiety augmenting mine.

  “He believes you’re cursed to destroy everything that he associates with. He thinks you killed Teresa, that you had to kill her, but you didn’t. It is probably worth a mention, since it could change everything.”

  “I didn’t kill her, but she died eventually. What he doesn’t see is that I did him a favor.”

  “How so?”

  “He came back from the grave to find traces of her, hints that she’d died, killed herself, in fact. He never had to watch her die for real, let each day seem endless - even for one like us.”

  “How did she die really?”

  “Cancer,” he says and the heartbreak is still with him. It tears at me to see that he can still feel so much for a girl who has been out of his life for so long. I think about being immortal; it seems like, over time, you would lose your ability to miss the people you loved. Sooner or later, you’d become numb. Yet both Alec and Caleb have shown that the pain just stays with you, on a degree no human being can ever appreciate.

  “Sorry,” I say. “But he never saw her again after he came back? She didn’t go to him? You said she loved him. Why wouldn’t she-”

  “I had to wipe her memory.”

  “Cool. You can do that?”

  Caleb laughs at my distraction. “Yes, but not really the point?”

  “No,” I smile. “What do you mean you had to, anyway? What would’ve happened if you’d let her see Alec when he came back?”

  “I don’t know, but it’s how these things work.” He’s closed off, though. There’s something else.

  “You were jealous,” I say.

  He doesn’t say anything. The skin along his fingers and knuckles is drawn and white. Alec doesn’t know; he thinks Caleb had to kill Teresa. He’s spent fifty years believing she died, but the whole time, it was just selfishness.

  “You let him think she was dead - because you couldn’t bear to see him happy.”

  “It was more than that. I didn’t know how long it would be, what the trial would be like, the toll it would take. Also-”

  “You need to tell me,” I say.

  “The week before - they had a fight. He was growing moody, knowing what was to come, worrying about returning, what she would find. He knew that I was close. I’d been watching them. She left him, headed to a pub in town, and drank herself silly.”

  “And went home with you?”

  “I’m the monster. I never had much joy. I can make women come home with me, allow me to feed on them, trick them into wanting me. What I can’t do is make them love me. She talked to me that night, at the pub; she told me her story. When I brought her home…”

  “Caleb, she was a drunk girl looking for a way to hurt her boyfriend. It meant nothing to her.”

  “I know,” he says and his hands tighten against his thighs.

  “What happened?”

  “I had the worst intentions when I met her at the pub. I wanted to show him that she wasn’t worth losing everything for. However, when she looked at me that night, the way no one ever had… I thought maybe there was a chance I could be something else. Something other than what I am.”

  I link my hand through his. “Just because she didn’t see it doesn’t mean it isn’t true. What about your Mark?” I don’t know why it’s where my mind goes, but I want to see if it’s different this time.

  “I told her it was an injury, not to touch me. She wasn’t interested in me, but at the time-”

  “Right. So what happened?”

  “In the morning, she discovered some of his things. She had no idea that we were… that I was-”

  “Her anonymous one night stand became something terrible, something unforgivable. She went looking for a way to hurt him, only to do the one thing that would destroy him,” I say.

  He shakes his head. “It didn’t bother him. He said they could work through it; he loved her that much. But when I came for him… She saw it in the newspaper first. There was no way to explain.”

  I understand so much more now. The problem with Alec and Caleb is that they think they are doing what’s right by keeping secrets, but it was their secrets that ruined everything fifty years earlier. Now Alec believes that Caleb killed Teresa out of jealousy, when, instead, he did what he felt was right.

  “But how did he come to think she killed herself?”

  “She came to see me. In the prison. She had left a note for Alec, was threatening to kill herself. She told me that she knew what we were, that someone had come to her-”

  “Lilith.”

  He nods. “It was too dangerous. She was talking of dying, of letting Lilith change her. There was no other way. I wiped her memory and sent her to start again. I wanted him to think that I had some decency left, that I wasn’t the one…”

  “But it backfired. Because he thought you drove her to it, that he drove her to do it because of what he was.”

  “Yes.”

  “So why keep it from me now? Why not tell me everything? If Teresa had known before…”

  “Nora, we’re immortal not imperfect. We don’t have the answers to the heart any more than you do. Now that you do know, however, would you make the same choice?”

  “If I could turn, be with you forever?” I ask.

  “Yes.”

  I nod. “I would.”

  “And that is why you are a risk. If you turn, we cannot break the curse, but unless we break the curse, we can never truly know love.”

  We sit silent for a moment, contemplating the conundrum. I shake the heaviness off me and bring the conversation back to Teresa, to what triggered what’s happening between them now. “So he never saw her before she died? When she died for real?” I feel the agony Alec must have felt. I imagine what it would be like if he was suddenly taken from me and then I discovered several decades from now that he’d been here all this time. Only to learn that he was now actually gone. It would be like losing him all over again, a suffering too great to bear.

  “No. Like I said, neither of us ever talked to her again.”

  “So, how do you know what happened to her?”

  “I followed her.”

  “For how long?”

  “Thirty something years,” he admits.

  “Wow.” I can’t imagine losing either Caleb or Alec, but the idea of keeping tabs on them for thirty years, of watching them go on to have lives without me - it’s a thousand times worse. I wonder if Alec or Caleb really ended up suffering more. For Alec, he had to live with the guilt that he caused Teresa’s death, but for Caleb, he had to watch her live, love, and then die. “That must have been tough.”

  “You have no idea.”

  “No,” I say. “I really don’t. But what of Alec all that time? How did he not know?”
>
  “It’s been a long time. We aren’t inseparable. And that time, well, he wiped the slate clean. He told me that we would break the cycle this time because he would never be my brother again. Except in name. So, only for the last year or so, as the cycle comes to a close, we end up linked, brought together; otherwise, we avoid one another as much as possible.”

  “You’re brought together so that you can do what must be done?” I ask.

  He nods and takes my hand. “I hate it. I just want it to end. I would die to have it end.”

  “But that isn’t an option,” I reply.

  “Do you say that because it isn’t - or because you don’t want it to be?”

  “Both,” I answer. I kiss him, wanting him to understand that what I told him is true. Even if sacrificing himself for Alec were a choice, I wouldn’t let it happen. There has to be another way, a way to keep them both from harm.

  “What brought you here?” I ask. I can still taste him on my lips.

  “Lilith. We think she’s been here,” he says.

  “Here? As in on campus?”

  “Your professor-”

  “Henry,” I correct.

  “Henry. He’s been looking into stories of Lilith. There is one legend in particular, one that has a great deal of truth in it.”

  “What legend?”

  “You see, as I told you,” he begins. “I didn’t need to be turned. I was already immortal. When I was cast out, it was with the threat that I would create a race of monsters so evil that the world would remember me as the father of all that it hated. So when my brother came to me-”

  “After he turned,” I add.

  “After he turned,” he continues, “I just wanted to fix it, to make it right. He told me he had met a woman, a beautiful woman who had shown him that love was powerful and would save us both. She was everything he said she was. Her eyes and lips something your painters could never capture, her body-”

  “I get it. So this ridiculously hot chick offered you what?”

  “A chance to cleanse myself. She said that I was punished because it was my fate. However, fate can be changed, destiny adjusted. In exchange, I needed to swear allegiance to her. She told me that it was my father’s fault, that I was born cursed because of him.”

  “So you were a tool for her, a way to exact revenge on the man who wronged her,” I say.

  “Hell hath no fury,” he smiles.

  “All right, listen. I am absolutely positive it was at least partially his fault.”

  Caleb laughs. “Probably. Anyway, I agreed because I was foolish and racked with guilt.”

  “Abel’s death,” I say.

  “Right. So, I agreed and she made love to me for days. It was-”

  “There are some details you guys can totally feel free to leave out, you know.”

  He smiles. “Nora, Lilith is a monster who seduces and destroys men. You don’t need to be jealous.”

  “Still,” I argue.

  “Besides,” he says and his hands move to the button on my pants. “If you want me to prove that you are far more of a woman than she ever was, I would be happy to oblige you.”

  I should say no. I should be focusing on the evil we are facing and not the burning between my legs. I should not be jealous of ancient history and should not need Caleb to prove that I’m more to him than an evil demon. I certainly should not be willing to spread my legs for him here in the dirty dorm emergency stairwell. However, should is a tricky concept and his fingers are far more convincing than all of the shoulds. He tosses my pants aside, letting them land in the corner of the landing, and then my panties follow. I don’t even take off my shirt as his head moves between my legs and his tongue slips inside of me.

  “Caleb,” I moan.

  The landing is cold and hard, but I can’t speak while Caleb’s tongue works over my clit. I need him, all of him, regardless of place. I clutch at his head, my fingers buried in his dark hair, and he brings me to climax within minutes. His tongue slips in and out of me, tempting and teasing. My hips rise from the floor and I push my thighs against his face as he continues to draw the orgasm out of me. The sounds of my pleasure echo through the stairwell, but there is no way I can stay quiet. I fall back to the floor as the last shock registers. As he moves away, his fangs brush my cunt and I love the sharp tease. This might be dangerous, but it is certainly fun.

  If I thought he was satisfied making me come once, I was wrong. Caleb undoes his belt and slips his pants down to his ankles, revealing his excitement. I remember seeing him at the party and wanting to touch him then. He grins when he sees me smiling at the memory.

  “There is plenty more for you, sweetheart,” he promises. He pushes into me on the stairs and the uncomfortable floor is forgotten. I reach for him and pull him in deeper. He looks at me and smiles, fangs obscuring his bottom lip. Those eyes, I think, and then thought fades from me as he begins to drink. My orgasm is quick, because Caleb knows just how to touch me and just how to move. His thrusts are timed in such a way that he both tantalizes and satisfies. When he comes, his fangs are still plunged into my vein and I can feel his orgasm through every inch of him as well as myself. He sucks a few last drops and we both dress quietly.

  “See?” He teases.

  “Fine. You win.” I decide to keep it to myself, but my happiness is short-lived. I start to think about Alec. If Caleb is feeding off me, which I am enjoying, how is Alec getting sustenance? He said he lived off passion, but without me there... I know it is beyond hypocritical to feel envious about Alec’s needs, which are physical and not emotional, while I am back here fucking his brother. Still, I hate picturing him with another girl, even if it is just for feeding.

  “Are you okay?” Caleb notices my concern immediately.

  “Yeah, I’m fine,” I say, figuring Caleb may be ancient, but he’s still a man. “I’m fine” has never failed a girl yet.

  “Well, anyway, before we got carried away, I was saying,” he says. Amazing how well it works, I think. “I thought that Lilith was saving me, was giving me a chance at a new life, a new beginning.”

  “Right, but of course, she tricked you.”

  “Yes,” he admits.

  “Did you both stay with her?” I ask.

  “At first, we did. However, she didn’t care for us as she promised. Instead, she used us to taunt our father, to bring him into ruin.”

  “There’s nothing in the Bible about Adam being ruined,” I say.

  “Right, because all of your stories have always been totally accurate.”

  “Fair enough. Okay, so he was ruined. How?”

  “His guilt ate away at him. He blamed himself for what happened with my brother and me. We tried to ease his pain, to let him know that we had found a new way to live. At first, he was relieved and overjoyed to see us. After Lilith was done with him, though, he was a broken shell of a man. I don’t know what passed between them, but he wanted to tell Eve-”

  “Your actual mother, despite the fact that you call Lilith your mother,” I point out.

  “Eve was pure and loved our father, as well as us. We don’t have the right to claim her bloodline after what we did.”

  “Fine. Eve...”

  “He wanted to bring her to us, or us to her; she was devastated. However, Lilith wouldn’t let him go. He stayed with us for a period of time and something passed between them; eventually, he returned to Eve and his other children and we never saw him again.”

  “Great. So Adam goes on vacation after the murder of his son and leaves his wife for his ex. I can’t imagine why that’s not in the Bible,” I say.

  “You know, he was human, too.” Caleb’s sympathy for his father runs deep and I’m impressed. I don’t think I could forgive my own father in similar circumstances and Caleb has had eternity to be angry. Although maybe that’s what tempered it.

  “What happened when he went back?” I ask.

  “Like I said, he was broken. His life continued without us and we stayed f
ar from them. Eve did her best with the remaining children and man did not fade from the earth. I did not give rise to a race of monsters. So all seemed to be well, considering.”

  I look at him. “Considering what? That two of her kids were now immortal and screwing the woman who made them that way? Oh, yeah, and said woman was also somehow linked to Eve’s husband?”

  He rolls his eyes. “You know, you are a pain in the ass. It would be a lot easier if I just killed you. Think of how much trouble we would save.”

  I kiss his cheek. “You love me, though.”

  He nods. “I do. Pathetic,” he says, although his smile reveals the truth. Caleb’s entire attitude has been stripped away; it is hard to remember that he is a murderer. A murderer that has killed repeatedly throughout human history.

  The abrupt recollection stirs me. Being with him has made me feel normal, despite what’s been taking place in the wings. But Caleb isn’t a normal guy. This is not a normal relationship. In fact, it’s the worst thing I could’ve done. I shiver, thinking about my actions. Not only have I cheated on Alec, but I have also given myself to a man who has brutally murdered Alec in the past. His brother and his killer. If there is a more unforgivable act in my history, I can’t think of it.

  The stairwell closes in around me and I grow warm. I can’t handle any more of this. What I’ve done, what I’ve thrown away and lost - I don’t have the right to call Lilith or Caleb a monster. I am the true monster. This is unbearable. I just had sex with someone who has murdered the kindest man I’ve ever known hundreds or thousands of times throughout eternity. And it’s not just the sex; it’s the fact that my heart is open to him, that I’ve fallen for him.

  Without a word, I run down the stairs, eight flights, until I am outside. Of course, Caleb manages to beat me there, but I needed the physical agony to erase my mistakes. He sees me out of breath and angry, and he does not move to touch me. His eyes reveal nothing of his own thoughts but I know he’s confused - and probably equally contrite.

  “Why did you suddenly run away?” He asks.