Samuel’s own personality, wherever it had manifested from, had brought a love of poetry, romance and beauty in all its forms. This was the first time in his life that he’d found the courage to explore the possibilities of a relationship.
“At first, Samuel was safe,” Esi said quietly, looking down at her hands in her lap.
“Safe? How?” Gillian asked.
“Because I was ugly,” Samuel interjected in his bass voice.
Esi nodded. “I’m sorry, Samuel, but yes. I didn’t think I could look at you as anything but a friend.”
“And I would have been happy to be just that, your friend,” he said kindly, squeezing her shoulder.
“Then Perrin’s music mojo took us all by surprise,” Gillian added.
“Yes,” Esi continued. “I wasn’t expecting my reaction or Samuel’s.” She turned toward the Giant, worry plainly written on her face. “Samuel, you have to know that when Perrin’s music overtook us, it was so dark, I didn’t notice your physical changes until after . . .” She blushed scarlet.
“You didn’t notice that he’d gotten more handsome until after you guys had sex?” Gillian prompted her.
“No,” Esi whispered. “It didn’t matter what he looked like. I was willing.”
“Hell, Esi, we all were willing,” Gill said with a snort. “Perrin packed a huge punch in that music of his. No one within hearing distance of that music could have remained unaffected.” Something occurred to her then. “But that’s not what’s bothering you, is it?”
Esi shook her head.
“This isn’t about the sex at all, is it, Esi? It’s guilt over wanting to continue that happy, carefree feeling. You’re experiencing guilt because you believe that being happy is betraying Mirko in some way.” Gillian knew she’d hit the nail on the head. Esi paled, then slowly nodded her head.
Gillian waited for Esi to make all the connections herself. Samuel wasn’t quite so restrained.
“Sweetling, I did not know your first man, Mirko, but I know that if he loved you as you say he did, he would want you to be happy after his death. I know that, Esi, because that is what I would want too. Not for you to mourn for the rest of your life, but to continue living.” Samuel’s voice was warm and gooey as he gently took her chin in his massive paw and turned her toward him.
“I love you, Esi. As much if not more than Mirko did. I think he would approve of someone like me being around to cherish the woman he loved, now that he cannot.”
Wow, thought Gillian, Samuel’s got that romantic, articulate thing going on. She was silently cheerleading for the two of them. She couldn’t let them know how she would like it to play out. This was their life, their relationship; she was just the therapist and had to remain unbiased, at least outwardly.
“And,” Samuel went on, “I don’t think he would be jealous that you loved me as well. Your feelings for me cannot take away from or even touch the feelings you had for him. You are allowed to love us both. I don’t feel threatened by your memories of Mirko. You had a good life and a good marriage with him. It is appropriate that you remember that fondly and with love.”
Esi visibly relaxed, leaning into his barrel chest. “You always know the perfect thing to say, Samuel.”
A little awkwardly, he draped his mammoth arms around her and hugged her. Esi’s torso disappeared amid the corded muscle. “We will work this out, my love,” Samuel rumbled. “I want to marry you but I don’t want you to have any reservations.”
“Marriage?” Esi squeaked from somewhere around Samuel’s solar plexus. “You want to marry me?”
Samuel drew back and looked down at her, his face concerned and frowning. “Of course! You did not think I would just leave you after my time here at the Institute was over?” Then he slapped his own forehead. “Well, of course you did. I have not been as clear as I should have been. Forgive me, Esi. I want to marry you and I should have let you know.”
She laughed and scooted up onto her knees on the couch so she could hug him better. “Thank you for saying it now, and for understanding everything, Samuel.”
His enormous hands picked her up and sat her on his lap, and they started an intense make-out session. Gillian hastily got up and started for the door. “I’ll let you two finish working this out. I think you’ve got everything under control without my help.”
“Thank you, Gillian,” Samuel and Esi chorused.
“Think nothing of it. I didn’t do a damn thing.”
Gillian was smiling and lighthearted as she shut the doors behind her. That was the way therapy was supposed to go. One or two well-placed therapeutic phrases and they were on their way to resolving their own problems. Generally it wasn’t that easy, but hey, she’d take it.
CHAPTER 3
GILLIAN sat, pen in hand, notepad on her lap, trying desperately to focus on what the hell her newest patient was getting at. His story, much like the Phantom of the Opera, was familiar to most people. What most people didn’t know was that Dr. Henry Jekyll, aka Edward Hyde, was alive and well and living in Paris. Well, normally he was. Right now he was a surprise addition to her client list, thanks in part to Helmut’s Paramortal Psychology public relations campaign, and partly due to the same article that had brought Perrin to the Institute.
Henry had a not-so-classic case of what would have normally been called dissociative identity disorder, if he were fully Human. The Paramortal term for it was fragmentation syndrome, or FS, and in Henry’s case, it had been self-inflicted. Technically, any Shifter had FS by default. It referred to the Being literally becoming something or someone else for a space of time. Shifters were notoriously well-adjusted as a whole, except in the case of some with ancestral curses, like Charles Chastel, everyone’s favorite Loup-Garou, now deceased.
The dear doctor had been a little too overly ambitious in his experimentations with various Victorian-era pharmaceuticals in an effort to discover whether mankind could divest itself of its beastly nature. Fortunately he used himself as the proverbial guinea pig instead of a patient, or he might have been up on attempted murder charges.
As it were, the tonic he imbibed worked a little too well, literally splitting him in two. The low point in his discovery was finding out that two complete people now resided within his skin and were constantly fighting for supremacy. It made for an exciting life for Henry and an enormous headache for Gillian, who was essentially contending with two people telling the same story in varying degrees of hostility and trying to out-shout each other. It wasn’t helping that his face and body contorted with each sentence, finally settling on a horrific mishmash of features that would have done any Gargoyle or Sluagh proud.
Henry was trying to explain how the tonic had somehow unnaturally extended his life beyond normal parameters, while Eddie was viciously interjecting the seventy-five reasons why they shouldn’t be at the Rachlav Institute of Paramortal Healing since they weren’t really Paramortal, and why being a raging psychopath with an infinite life span was a good idea.
Gillian had to disagree with him on that particular point. Henry had unintentionally stumbled on a formula that, despite everything else, extended a Human life span considerably. According to the fellows at Interpol who had brought him to her, there had been some murmurs of interest in the formula on the black market. The respectable doctor and his counterpart had been sentenced to a newly devised house arrest arrangement that was masquerading as a glorified witness protection program. It kept him alive and kept the formula off the streets, which suited everyone except Eddie for the time being.
Eddie had actually been the one on trial for several murders committed when he had control of their shared body. Henry had nothing to do with the atrocities, but was an accessory before the fact since he’d devised the soul-splitting formula in the first place.
All levels of law enforcement were doing their best to stay on top of the challenges brought to the table by now having to incarcerate and prosecute various non- Humans instead of just hunting them down
with dogs, stakes, pitch-forks and torches. Generally the ruling body for the individual Paramortal stepped in and handled the issues on a case-by-case basis and in accordance with their own specific set of rules.
Once in a while, someone did something so outrageously horrid to a non-Paramortal that the Human-run courts were allowed to step in and handle the problem. That was when the FBI, the CIA, Interpol and the International Civil Liberties Union got gray hair, took large amounts of antacids and antianxiety medication and did a lot of praying, knowing they might be teetering on the verge of an interspecies incident by whatever course of action they might take or might try to prevent. Sometimes it just didn’t pay to be one of the good guys.
Aleksei, Osiris and Dionysus had put the wheels in motion for their respective countries to join Interpol’s informational network. Knowledge was power, Osiris said. So everyone being able to access any possible activities by the Dark Prince and his friends and track them was a good thing. Who said Vampires were stodgy and not progressive?
One particular Interpol agent who was pulling “Weird Shit I Can’t Tell My Family About” duty was an Irish Shifter named Galahad Upchurch. He was leaning against the library doors, keeping an eye on his fractured charge and shaking his head as Gillian tried to calm the agitated man. Gill didn’t like it one bit that he was in the room, but Eddie had a habit of breaking furniture and people if he gained sole control of the body for any length of time. A Vampire or Shifter was required to manhandle him to the ground if necessary until Henry got control again.
“Dr. Key, may I approach the three of you?”
“Yes, Special Officer Upchurch, you certainly may.”
“Please call me Galahad; it’s less of a mouthful.” He smiled at her and walked toward their seated area.
Galahad was tall, dark and very handsome. His dark auburn shoulder-length hair was pulled back into a masculine ponytail, accentuating his chiseled jawline. His eyes were a dark evergreen color that Gillian had never seen before, but which was striking against his tan complexion.
Reaching them, he put a firm hand on Henry’s constantly reshaping shoulder. “That is quite enough from both of you. Let her do her job and try to get you into a functioning capacity or this is not going to work.”
“He wants me to be a lemming!” Eddie bellowed, asserting himself for the moment.
“I want us to both survive, you moron!” Henry bellowed right back, clearly not intimidated by his other self.
Gill wanted to bang her notepad against her face, but instead she tried to be helpful. “Look, Galahad explained the situation to me, so let me ask you if I understand your goals for this therapy correctly.
“You have avoided capture, kidnapping and being murdered for your formula for a very long time. However, now, with more sophisticated technology and identification requirements, you discovered you have been under surveillance for at least . . . five years?” She checked her intake forms to make sure she was correct.
“Yes,” the two of them growled simultaneously.
“Okay, so you contacted Interpol and asked for asylum. What they offered you was a new identity in exchange for the formula. Have I got everything straight so far?”
“Yes, but I want to take this opportunity to make a new life for myself . . . for us . . . He wants us to remain as we are, where we are most comfortable in Paris, and take on anyone who wants to steal the formula. He says it will be exciting.” Henry’s voice became higher pitched and more sarcastic.
“I said it is worth being a target if it means we will still know we are alive instead of living in some remote Icelandic fishing village!” Ye Gods, Eddie was loud.
“If you’re assaulted by any of these groups that want your longevity formula, you’re both in danger of dying,” Gillian pointed out. “Plus the fact that if the formula can’t be modified to leave out the splitting-people-in-two thing, there are going to be more like you running around and having the same problems.”
“Saints preserve us.” Galahad sighed.
“No saint, no God and no half-assed therapist can help us. Do you not understand that?” Eddie was definitely in need of some form of horse tranquilizer to lower his volume.
“Henry . . . Eddie . . . ” Gillian was having empathy fits over Eddie’s homicidal rage versus Henry’s righteous anger.
“Perhaps it would be simpler to address the two of them by the name they’ve chosen for their new identity,” Galahad said helpfully.
“Is that all right with both of you?” Gill raised the question.
At their nodded assent, she asked, “What would you like me to call you?”
“Chester.”
“Chester?”
“I like chests, and he keeps the formula in one.” Eddie howled at his own hilarity. Everyone else groaned.
“Chester Vangarde,” Galahad said, rolling his eyes.
“All right, Chester, I am willing to do this but you guys really have to come up with a plan on who’s going to talk when during these sessions. I am having a hard time concentrating on what issues are important to each of you and I want to give both of you my attention and show you that I respect both perspectives.”
Grudgingly the two halves agreed and, by the end of the next hour, had developed a semblance of a plan with Gillian on how to get their therapy on the right path. To say that Gillian was relieved was a vast understatement. She had a hell of a headache and wanted some aspirin and a very cold soda. After standing as witness while Galahad locked Chester up in the crypt for some quiet time, Gillian thanked them both and then headed upstairs.
“I will accompany you, if you do not mind. Chester has had his outing for the day and is supposed to be studying all aspects of his new identity.” Galahad sprinted up the stairs past her and opened the door.
“Thanks.” Gill acknowledged the gesture. “How long is he kept locked up every day?”
“Most of the time.” Galahad didn’t mince words. “He is far too dangerous to allow in a noncontrolled environment, so he is either escorted by an agent or he is under lock and key.”
She frowned. “I don’t like any situation where a person is isolated most of the time. It really doesn’t help anything and causes a lot of resentment.”
“Understood, but we honestly have no place to perpetually house him. We periodically move him from one secure area to another, but there is no continuity. He would have been on trial for his crimes except for the ICLU insisting that his formula made him a target, and that to prosecute him rather than protect him would sign his death sentence.”
“Where the hell has he been all this time?” Gill wanted to know. “There haven’t been rashes of strangled prostitutes or offended aristocrats around Paris recently . . . He’s been somewhere, surviving without help, since the nineteenth century.”
“He was found unconscious, barely alive, in a forgotten section of the Paris catacombs by a group of Vampires. I do not know which one in particular. He was allegedly under a spell, but most think he had mixed another tonic that put him into a state very much like hibernation. We’ll never know for sure. You see what it’s like trying to get a straight answer out of them.” Galahad chuckled. “I do like him, though.”
“Yeah, he’s a riot,” Gillian said dryly. “How’d you get this assignment, by the way? Were you a bad Werewolf?”
He laughed again. “Not that I am aware of. I was a reader of Stevenson’s stories who thought it would be most appropriate to watch over his creation.”
“That is very kind of you, Galahad,” Gillian said, meaning it. “There are not many who would be as tolerant of him and his situation. Thank you for helping.”
“My pleasure.”
“I have to run, but I will see you around the Institute.” Gill waved and hurried off to talk with Daed about some possible medication for Chester to level out his moods.
After she explained the situation, Daed rummaged through half a dozen books to determine whether it was better to treat the mood shifts as just
a psychological problem or to take into consideration that Chester actually shifted, at least internally. It was one of those situations that made Paramortal psychiatrists wonder what the hell they were thinking when they declared a specialty in medical school.
He stopped abruptly and stared at Gillian, cocking an eyebrow. “How does he feel to you?”
“What?”
“Your empathy. How does he register?”
Gillian frowned and thought about it. “Not like a Shifter; more like a Human with dissociative identity disorder but without the clear individual personality parameters. Emotions scattered . . . all over the place . . . completely chaotic . . . nothing you can hold on to for any length of time.”
“Okay.” Daed grinned. “That helps a lot. I’ll do some research on creating sort of a drug cocktail for him. If I don’t have all the meds on-site, I’ll drive into town and pick up what we need.”
“Great.” Gill grinned at her former boss. “I think we have a good chance with his therapy if we can make the meds work.”
She strolled down the castle hallway, deep in thought about how she would organize her notes on Chester.
“Buona sera, cara,” Aleksei’s deep, velvety voice intoned next to her left ear.
“Shit!” Gillian managed to untangle herself from the ceiling. “Dammit, stop doing that!” She punched him in the chest halfheartedly.
He chuckled and swept her up in an embrace, nuzzling her hair with a kiss. “How are you, piccola?”
“Busy. Put me down.” Gill squirmed and he set her on her feet.
“Honestly, Aleksei, I appreciate your enthusiasm but I don’t have time for slap and tickle in the hallway when my mind is on other things.” She glared up at him from her vertically challenged vantage point.
He smiled down at her, warming her from her toes to her hair. She shivered under his intimate regard and smiled back, despite herself. “I have to finish working and then we can play.”
“I look forward to it.” He ran a long, aristocratic finger down her cheek and traced her jawline. “Have a good evening, dolcezza. I will attend to my own responsibilities.” A quick kiss and a caress on her bottom and he was gone.
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