Midnight Rose

by Shelby Reed

  “You read those?”

  “Like five years ago.”

  Sighing, Gideon sank down on the edge of the bed. “Fine. So I can’t tell you something you don’t already know. But I can correct any ideas you have about Kate and me ‘doing it’, as you so delicately put it.”

  “She should’ve left a long time ago,” Jude muttered, his fingers blindly flipping through the CDs over and over again.

  “She chooses to stay. And she and I are not doing anything besides being friends.”

  Finally the boy glanced over his shoulder. “Why are you telling me this?”

  “Because you’ve been worried about it.”

  “I don’t care what you do.” He faced forward again. “Grown-ups are so screwed in the head.”

  Out of nowhere, anger pierced Gideon’s control. “Damn it, Jude. Don’t talk to me like that. It’s been a long time since I’ve swatted your butt, but don’t test me.”

  “You can’t hit me.” Jude turned to face him with infuriating impassivity. “I’m almost as tall as you now. If you hit me, I’ll hit back. Then you’ll have to fight me, and I know that’s not what you want.”

  A fresh surge of outrage washed over Gideon’s restraint. “You’re right. I don’t want to give you the kick in the butt you deserve. But tick me off any more than I am right now, and you’ll get it whether it’s the wrong thing for me to do or not.”

  Instead of shrinking from his father’s gritted threat, Jude smiled, a taunting expression Gideon immediately recognized from Delilah’s repertoire, or Davide’s. The smile of a being who senses its own enormous power. Which side does he favor?

  “I’m not afraid of you, Dad.”

  “I don’t like this side of you, Jude. Get it under control.”

  “But it’s you I get it from, right? Your side. Not Mom’s.” He drifted toward the photographs on the dresser. “Better be careful with Kate, Dad. Or she’ll die, too.”

  Gideon suppressed the urge to tear into him and headed for the door, his emotions roiling. “I won’t go down this road with you, Jude. We’ve always done okay, but this attitude you’re trying on doesn’t fit in this house. Check it before you leave your room today. And if you can’t, then stay up here where I can be sure you won’t hurt anyone. You’re not welcome downstairs if you can’t act decent and show others respect.”

  For an instant, contempt twisted Jude’s features. Then the darkness drained from him, like an evil spirit leaving the body of the possessed, and his face crumpled. “But what about when Kate comes back? Do I still get my Slurpee?”

  Gideon couldn’t reply. He didn’t know whom he was talking to anymore. A wild mix of rage and fear and realization battered him as he stepped out of the room and slammed the door behind him, one thought banging through his mind.

  He and Caroline had made a monster.

  * * * * *

  Engulfed in shadows, Gideon stood by Jude’s bed and watched him sleep.

  Somewhere in the graveyard stillness of the slumbering house, a grandfather clock chimed the early morning hour. He stared at the ashy smudge of lashes against his son’s pale cheeks, watched them flicker as the boy dreamed. He could sense Jude drifting from him in mind, spirit; felt the barriers piling one upon the other between them, and he knew Jude didn’t understand what was happening any more than Gideon could explain it.

  Restless, he crossed to the window, lifted a heavy curtain panel and stared out at the gradually graying sky. The sun was rising, another day to withhold the truth from his son, another chance slipped by to help him heal. Something had to be done. Jakome was right. Gideon no longer had a choice…but Jude did. Which side does he favor? The decision would be Jude’s.

  Throat aching with dread, he withdrew the small, leather-bound book that contained the Edict of St. Xanthia from beneath his arm and laid it gingerly on the bedside table, then set an equally ancient diary atop that, and a photograph, the only existing one of himself, taken days before he relinquished his humanity. The man in the sepia-toned photograph sat on a deck chair aboard an ocean liner, sea breeze tousling his dark hair. He was skeletal, pale, with black, hollow eyes in a haunted face. The man in the photograph was dying. On the back, in faded, fountain pen sweeps, was written, Our Gideon, March 1884.

  Resting his hand on the small stack of materials that documented his life, Gideon drew a breath to steady himself, gently arranged the items so Jude would see them immediately when he awakened, and stepped out into the dim hallway to pull the door shut behind him. Then, for the first time in a century, he closed his eyes and prayed.

  Chapter Twelve

  Gideon’s head snapped up at the soft fall of footsteps descending the kitchen stairs. He hadn’t been reading the newspaper spread out on the table before him. The knot of anxiety in his gut kept him unfocused and incapable of carrying on even a perfunctory conversation with Betty, who seemed to sense something was wrong and went about organizing her pots and pans as though he wasn’t hunched over the kitchen table, head in hands.

  Before Jude even appeared in the doorway, Gideon felt the chilled wash of fear and uncertainty that preceded the boy’s entrance. It radiated like a force field, so powerful a presence that Gideon could nearly make out its black, simmering outline stepping over the threshold ahead of his son.

  “Betty,” he said to the cook rattling dishes at the sink behind him. “Would you take a break?”

  She glanced at him over her plump shoulder and nodded, her round face softened by concern. “Of course. I’ve been meaning to organize the upstairs china closets.”

  Untying her apron with speedy fingers, she passed Jude in the stairwell; Gideon heard the warm greeting she extended, followed by his son’s soft reply. Then Jude appeared at the threshold, eyes huge and black in a bloodless face. His shirttails hung loose, hair standing in damp, rumpled spikes like an urchin’s halo around his head. The Franciscan’s book was hugged against his chest. “Dad?”

  Gideon rose, searching his son’s face for a flicker of anything besides bald trepidation. “Want to sit down?”

  Shaking his head, Jude inched into the room, back pressed against the wall. “I just have to ask you a question.”

  Steady, Gideon told himself. Go easy. “Fire away.”

  “Did you…” Jude stopped, his throat working in a temporary loss of sound. His dark eyes darted around, wild with disbelief. Then the words found him, burst from him like tiny bullets ricocheting around the room. “You put that stuff on my night table, right? That stuff about you. Because you wanted me to know what happened to you?”

  “Yes.”

  He stepped away from the wall, visibly trembling. His teeth chattered around his words. “I read most of it already. The diary. It’s your writing.”

  Gideon nodded, swallowing against the urge to weep. Once again he was responsible for the agony on his son’s face. He’d prayed that telling Jude the truth would be the right thing to do. But God wouldn’t listen to a creature of darkness, no matter how bitterly the tears fell. He’d known the separation between God and man to be a consequence when he made his first kill a century before, and it hadn’t mattered then. The urge to feed had far surpassed the importance of an intangible relationship with a lofty creator.

  Now he was on his own.

  Gideon looked into his son’s heartbroken face and spoke without wavering. “I was hoping you’d have some questions so we could talk about it.”

  “I don’t want to talk about it with you.” Jude’s chin trembled. “You’re like, some kind of freak.”

  No one could argue with that. “That’s why nobody knows except you and me. And Mrs. Shelton, although we never talk about it.”

  Jude scowled. “She’s not scared of you?”

  “No.” Gideon hesitated. “Are you?”

  The thirteen-year-old crossed his arms and stared at his bare feet. “You drink blood. Like a vampire or something.”

  “The vampires in the movies are made up,” Gideon said. “Someo
ne took the truth and twisted it.” He sat down again, folding his hands on the table before him. Calm and steady. He could get through this without losing his cool, without losing Jude. If it wasn’t already too late.

  “So what’s the truth?” Tossing the ancient book on the table, Jude moved closer, sparks of fury snapping in his gaze. “All that book says is that you’re, like, this dead guy and you’re cursed and the only way you can be normal is if you drink some saint’s blood, but it’s poison. And it says people like you have no souls. Are you dead, Dad?”

  In spite of himself, Gideon nearly laughed. It rose in his chest, a mixture of disbelief and regret and self-abhorrence. “God, Jude. I don’t feel dead. Considering the circumstances, I feel pretty normal.”

  “But you kill people, right?”

  “No… No, Jude.”

  “Have you ever?”

  Gideon stopped, rubbed a hand across his brow. No lies. He would give his boy everything, even if it left him with nothing. The shakiness finally seeped through his words. “A long time ago.”

  “How many people?”

  “Jude, I didn’t keep—”

  “More than three or four?” Jude’s voice cracked, tears welling in his eyes. “A lot? Did you scare them? Did they try to run away from you? I would. I’d get away from you and run, and you’d never find me.”

  Gideon closed his eyes. “None of them ran.”

  “Why not? Did they trust you? Because you seem so normal and all, but really, you were just planning to hurt them.” A look of stony horror crept over his pale features. “I don’t want to live here anymore,” he said, voice quavering. “I feel sick.”

  Recognizing the familiar pallor in his son’s face, Gideon shoved his chair back and quickly retrieved a trash bag from beneath the sink. When he held it out, Jude snatched it from his hand and glared at him.

  “You’re making me sick. It’s not right to lie, Dad. Keeping all this a secret is the same as lying.”

  “I know. I’m sorry.”

  “Why didn’t you just give me away after Mom died? Why did you think I’d want to live with you?”

  “You’re my son,” Gideon said, numb with despair. “It never crossed my mind that you wouldn’t want me to raise you.”

  “Well, I don’t now. I want to get away from you.”

  “There’s no place to go, Jude. I’m all you have.”

  Tears of frustration welled in Jude’s eyes, turned them to liquid obsidian. “If I have to live here, I want you to stay away from me. I don’t even know you.”

  Gideon sighed. “You do too know me. I’m the same dad who wiped your nose and your butt when you were little, the same one who loves and protects you and always will. You’re going to get used to the truth eventually. It’s part of who you are.”

  “No!” He jumped back, fists shredding the white plastic bag. “I’m not part of this. I’m not like you.”

  Ah, Gideon thought with an odd, creeping resignation. The moment is finally at hand. “But you are,” he said softly. “Part of you is like your mother. And the other part, Jude, is like me.”

  “I’m not.”

  “The stuff in the black bottle you take every night isn’t medicine. It’s blood serum. You have the same needs I do.”

  “Shut up.” Jude shook his head, tears glistening on his cheeks in opalescent streaks. “It is too medicine. It tastes like crap, so I know it’s medicine. I have a problem with my blood, and that’s all.”

  “You can’t handle the light because you’re like I used to be. People like us have to be very careful in the sun.”

  “I’m not listening to you—”

  “And if I don’t explain this now, you’re going to figure it out the hard way, like I had to. Please, Jude. Just sit down and—”

  But Jude wasn’t listening. Gaze darting about in search of an escape, he bolted around the kitchen table and lunged for the back door, choking on hard, wretched sobs.

  Before Gideon could move, before he could grasp what was happening, the boy threw open the door and plunged into the hot morning sun.

  “Jude!” Gideon scrambled after him with no thought to the vulnerability of his own eyes. He caught up with him a few feet outside the kitchen door, grabbed him around the waist and tackled him, smothering him with his body. “Oh, Jude. God. My God.”

  The acrid scent of smoke and singed flesh rose into the blinding light, and for an excruciating moment, all Gideon could do was huddle over his son, his breath coming in harsh, torn gasps against the boy’s feathery hair.

  Beneath him Jude cried softly, burned by the fleeting exposure to the scalding, relentless rays, and by the searing truth that would render him forever changed.

  * * * * *

  “Ms. O’Brien? Ms. O’Brien, are you awake?”

  The hushed, frantic sound of Martha’s voice on the other side of the bedroom door pulled Kate from a deep, dreamless world. She bolted upright, sleep-blinded, and fumbled for the robe she’d laid across the foot of the mattress. “I’m coming, Mrs. Shelton. Just a minute.”

  A chilled draft shivered around her ankles as she stood and knotted the robe’s belt around her waist. Something was wrong. Dread settled like a knot in her stomach as she crossed the carpet to the door, and she felt the change in the atmosphere even before seeing the panicked look on the older woman’s face.

  “Mrs. Shelton, what’s wrong?”

  “Gideon’s taken Jude to the emergency room. I’d planned to meet him there, but I think you should go in my place. Take my car.”

  Horrified, Kate left the door open for Martha and dashed to yank out the bureau drawer where she kept her jeans. “But Jude was fine yesterday. What could’ve happened?”

  “It’s not the PCT this time.” Tears sparkled in Martha’s eyes as she watched Kate step into a pair of jeans. “I don’t know what happened. All I know is, Jude was running out the kitchen door as I came around the corner this morning. The sun was already hot and bright. Gideon was right on his heels—he managed to catch up with him, but…” she trailed off, her face pinched and pale.

  Distress danced frenetic circles around Kate’s thoughts. Jude exposed to the hot, relentless sun, even for a second, meant agonizing injury. It was suicide. What would send him running out of the house? “Oh, Mrs. Shelton. Why would he go out in the sunlight? Was he even thinking?”

  “Not from the looks of it.” Martha dropped wearily to a nearby chair and propped her forehead in her hand. “I don’t know what happened before I got here. Jude’s been so moody lately, so difficult. He and Gideon must’ve had some sort of disagreement. Gideon chased him down and tackled him on the back lawn, but by then, Jude had already sustained burns. I’ve never seen anything like it. Everything the sun touched just blistered. His face, his arms…thank God he was wearing long pajama bottoms. We hustled him inside and wrapped him in wet sheets and blankets. Then Gideon drove him to the hospital in Putnam.”

  Myriad questions caught in Kate’s throat as she hurried for the bathroom to finish dressing. “Was Jude conscious?” she called, her fingers trembling around the toothbrush.

  “Screaming and crying—I’ve never seen him in such a state of agony. And Gideon…” Martha’s voice faded from the bedroom, and Kate knew her distress was too great for her continue.

  Shucking off her nightshirt, she slipped on a bra, fumbled with the clasp, dashed back through the bedroom and snatched a clean T-shirt out of a nearby drawer.

  As she pulled it over her head, Martha said, “Oh, Kate, I’m so grateful you’re here. Gideon has no one.”

  “He has you,” Kate said as evenly as she could manage. She stepped into a pair of flats, grabbed her purse from the dresser and stopped to lay a comforting hand on the older woman’s shoulder. “Listen for the phone. I’ll call as soon as I know what’s going on.”

  Martha didn’t respond. Her shoulders were trembling from the heaviness of her despair.

  * * * * *

  The day was glorious, the sky
cerulean and cloudless. Squinting at the injurious sun, Kate hurried across the hospital parking lot, her thoughts whirling and tangled. She had no idea what to expect, only an uneasy certainty that father and son were both in acute pain.

  The emergency room was surprisingly busy. Swerving around two nurses chatting in the entry, Kate scanned the wide, brightly lit room and didn’t see Gideon. A television mounted on a nearby wall blared Saturday morning cartoons. Somewhere beneath the din, a woman’s voice paged for Doctor Banks to come to ICU.

  The world here seemed too fluorescent and cold, too unprotected. Her anxiety to reach Gideon swelled. Was Jude burned so badly they had admitted him?

  She approached the check-in desk, where an elderly woman with a volunteer tag waited to help incoming patients. “Excuse me, but I’m looking for a man who brought in his thirteen-year-old son with severe burns. It would’ve been in the past hour.”

  The woman checked the clipboard and nodded. “Yes, they’ve already been seen. Are you a relative?”

  Kate swallowed the urge to lie. “I…no. I’m a friend.”

  “No one but immediate family is allowed beyond the doors, but you can take a seat in the waiting room and I’ll let the nurses know you’re here.”

  Discouraged, Kate thanked the woman and wandered the length of the waiting area, ignoring the curious stares of weary patients and families as she passed by. It reminded her of a bus station with its screaming brightness, unyielding plastic chairs and blaring television. She swerved around a yellow toy truck that rolled into her path, offered its young owner a distracted smile, and kept walking.

  At the back of the room, a set of narrow windows overlooked a hallway where a stretcher and a cart of medical equipment half-blocked the view. Bracing against the wall, she stood on tiptoe and craned to see beyond the obstacles. Astonished relief propelled her heart straight to her throat. Gideon stood twenty feet down the hall to the right, leaning against the wall beside an examination room. His dark head was bowed, palms covering his face. The picture of hopelessness.