by Su Williams
“Please. Nick,” I whispered through my torrid throat, while my life’s essence ebbed and surged into him. My hand fell limply to the floor, and my vision grew dark. My body felt empty, debilitated, the silence between heartbeats lengthened. A tremor crashed through my body and I closed my eyes to the coming darkness and my death. A renewed flash of pain as he withdrew his fangs from my throat ripped open the shutters to my soul. My lungs heaved for one last breath. I gazed wistfully at a smear of blood, my blood, at the corners of his mouth. He swiped it away with the back of his hand, and then stroked my hair with his bloodied hand.
“I love you, Emi,” he gazed compassionately into my failing eyes, “and I am sorry.” My perishing body hung frail and limp in the steely embrace of his arms. He rocked me as the last moment of my life drained away. My heart gave one last, futile thud. And slammed to a stop. My final breath, an arid breeze, seeped from my gaping mouth, across my barren lips. “I hate you, Sabre,” he breathed into my ear as he clutched me to his chest.
Then, the darkness of death consumed me.
Chapter 13 Monster
“What did you do?” Nick’s voice burned with quiet, yet unmistakable fury.
Something had happened to time; it had warped and bent in upon itself. Only seconds had washed away, though the waves of an eternity had eroded and altered the contours of my life. I had lived and died in those moments, felt the profoundest of love and the sheerest of agonies; felt my heart crash to a halt, its final beat an ache that yet lingered in my chest. I exhaled sharply, released the breath that anchored me. Sabre’s long sinewy fingers still wrapped like steel bands around my arms.
“She tripped,” Sabre lied, like a child caught in the act, but lying nonetheless.
Nick came to my side and pushed Sabre’s hands away. He pulled my body protectively against his. His arms wrapped around me for support. He steadied my quivering, and caressed my back. But I was too unhinged to be consoled.
Sabre turned and sauntered away with no response and stood in front of the unlit fireplace. Nick glared after him. “Are you okay?” he asked me softly while his eyes cast daggers at Sabre.
His words snapped me more firmly into the present. I pushed Nick away. “No. No. Let me go. Don’t touch me.” Despite my desire to run, I wobbled on the legs of a newborn colt and nearly fell without his support. Nick caught me and guided my dumbstruck body to the couch. My feet dragged like lead weights across the floor. He released me and quickly backed away. I drew my knees to my chest with a whimper. Then stared unseeing at the floor and rocked compulsively.
“What did you do?” Nick roared this time, and I ducked my head and covered my ears.
Confusion befuddled me, and something more profound than grief raged through me. I had just died at the hands of my dark, handsome angel who turned out to be every bit the vampire he so vehemently denied being. I followed Nick’s glare to Sabre. Their faces were cold, their eyes hard with fury that locked them together with a fierceness that frightened me even more.
Though breathless and dizzy, I began to comprehend that Sabre had pulled some sort of Dream Weaver prank on me. I didn’t find it in the least bit funny. “What was that?” I demanded.
Nick drew closer and kneeled beside me, but still kept a safe distance. His eyes grew dark with concern. “What was what, Em?” He sounded as though he knew, but needed me to tell him.
“It was like a dream, a nightmare, but it happened so fast.” My own voice sounded distant and dreamy, brittle as mica; my brain a Seattle fog at rush hour.
He reached for my hand, but I pulled away despite the compassion that etched deep furrows in his brow. “Em, please. I just want to help.” I finally nodded my consent and Nick held one hand out to me. My hand vibrated violently, electrified with fear as I slowly and carefully placed it in his. I still flinched when Nick, just as cautiously, closed his hand around mine, and he shot a glare of rage at Sabre. His presence nudged my mind, he stiffened, and a seismic quake shuddered through him. “Sabre!” he growled, his voice low and feral. He’d seen my nightmare, or whatever the little mind trip was that Sabre played on me.
“What?” Sabre whirled around, and feigned innocence. “I was just testing extraction of details, just like we discussed. Besides, she volunteered.”
“What? No I didn’t.” I protested.
Sabre snorted and shook his head. Something inside me pulled on a memory of offering to help Nick in his training.
“No! Not with this one!”
I scrunched my eyebrows together in an attempt to congeal my brain. Nick’s words only confused and unnerved me further. What did that mean ‘Not this one’?
“We never specified. We have to research, Nick. You said so yourself.”
“I did say that. Just not this one.”
“Wait,” I interrupted. “Wait just a minute. What are you talking about? What did Sabre do to me?”
“I pulled a Jesse James,” Sabre broke in, and swaggered haughtily in front of the fireplace. “I stole a memory from a conversation you two had about…”
“Immortals,” I interjected.
“Vampires,” Sabre corrected.
“I remember. That was private.”
“Not to me,” he spat brazenly.
“You pompous, arrogant…” I couldn’t continue I was so furious, angry tears boiled in my eyes. Nick’s stony face was chiseled into rage, his eyes locked in a hard glare at Sabre. He reached for me as I stood, but I pushed his supportive hands away. I stumbled away from him, then retraced my steps. “So, I’m some sort of experiment to you? Is that it?” I screeched at him. Furious didn’t even begin to describe my anger.
“Em, let me explain,” Nick tried defensively.
“Explain? That you’re some kind of psychic, psycho freak who gets his jollies by playing with my head?”
“It’s not like that, Em. I swear,” he pleaded, his dark eyes implored me to believe, and I was almost convinced. I wanted so badly to believe him; to believe that my angel hadn’t fallen from grace, that he wasn’t truly the demon that I once feared he was. But maybe I was being gullible. Maybe I had believed him too easily already.
“Sabre thinks so,” I retorted.
“Yeah. And Sabre’s an ass,” he said briefly, matter-of-factly.
“I thought you were best buds.”
“We are. Doesn’t make him any less an ass.” His lips threatened to curl into a smile, but he resisted.
“I’m going home,” I announced and turned to leave.
“Will I see you this evening?” he asked, his voice tainted with a hint of desperation.
“I don’t know, Nick. I don’t know.” My voice was whisper thin and my composure thinner. I staggered toward the door, keeping a wary eye on Sabre, and teetered between fury and trepidation of this strange man, this friend of Nick’s.
I drove the short mile north in record time. In my current state of agitation, I think I could have run it nearly as quickly. My cell phone buzzed as I pulled under the carport.
Emari. Please. Let me explain.
I ignored Nick’s texted plea until I’d gotten inside and loved on Eddyson. The pup’s tiny bays were my welcome home. I hugged and petted and tussled with him for a few minutes, then let him out in the yard. I plopped myself down on the couch and flipped open my cell phone.
I don’t know Nick. That really scared me.
Eddyson scratched at the door. I let him in, bundled him in his baby blanket and cuddled him while his shivers subsided.
I know Em. I really am SO sorry. I should have known better. I shouldn’t have brought you. I shouldn’t have left you alone. I am SO sorry.
“Hmph! What do you think, Little Man? Should I give him another chance?” Eddy cocked his head in that silly curious puppy way. I giggled and stroked his cold ears to warm them. “OK. If you insist.”
Eddyson says I should give you another chance.
Smart dog.
It remains to be seen if he takes after his master.
Tonight? I’ll make it up to you, I promise.
9:00 give me a chance to mellow out first.
As you wish.
Chapter 14 Sword’s Song
“The truth is, there’s a lot about Sabre that I don’t know,” Nick said as we sat on the couch talking later that evening. Nick built a fire in the fireplace and angled the couch toward it. Eddyson lay curled up between us napping, his mid-evening nap. “I know he’s basically a good guy. He’s been around a lot longer than I have, by more than one hundred fifty years.”
I rubbed my face with my hands and massaged my temples as if that would clear up the completely bizarre, inconceivable, absurdity of this whole thing. I was having trouble surviving the mortal seventeen years I’d lived so far, my mind just could not fathom centuries as opposed to decades.
“So Sabre just knew you were a Dream Weaver when he saw you?” I asked, and ran my hand down the length of Eddyson’s body in hope of finding a source of peace.
“Well, there are certain benefits to being an apparition; one being that you can identify others like yourself at a glance,” he explained.
“It’s amazing that he just happened to find you,” I commented.
“I don’t really believe much in luck,” he replied.
“No, I don’t guess I really do either.”
“Despite being the offspring of an abomination, I still believe we are basically human and subject to the same blessings as man.”
“Abomination?” The word appalled me used in relation to Nick. “What are you talking about?”
“Many believe that the angels that roamed the Earth having relationships with human women, the ones that created the Nephilim, were actually the angels kicked out of Heaven with the angel Lucifer. So demons.” He shrugged. “It’s all theory, but theory based on documents as old as the Septuagint and the Qumran. The Greek translation of the Bible,” he continued in response to my furrowed brow, “and the Dead Sea Scrolls.”
Nick brushed his index finger up my forearm, raising a path of goose bumps. I shivered and snuggled up against him for warmth. He sighed with relief that the walls I’d erected in fear were quickly falling.
“You don’t really believe you’re an abomination do you?” I asked. I couldn’t believe that a merciful God could find any bad in the kind and tender heart of Nickolas Benedetti. But what did I know about God’s mercy?
“I suppose, technically—being the offspring of demons. I don’t believe Caphar are evil by nature, but just like a human, they can be turned, lured to the dark side. Rephaim have willingly taken that plunge.”
It was a Rephaim that pillaged my home. Icy fingers climbed my spine. Was there yet another monster, a real one, lurking in the shadows.
“So, Sabre? What’s the rest of his story?”
“The world may never know,” he sighed. “He’s very private about his genesis. I know mostly about the time since I’ve been with him. He’s a researcher, of sorts. That’s what he was talking about. We agreed that we would do some tests on humans when we could, so we could learn more about our abilities, more about what we can and can’t do, to try to expand and refine.” A dark shadow crossed his face, and then vanished behind a smile. He traced a vein on the back of my hand with his finger. “I’m really sorry for what Sabre did to you this afternoon. He’s a bit reckless sometimes and doesn’t really care who gets caught in the middle.”
“So, honest to God, I’m not going to find out somewhere down the road that you really are a vampire?” The terrifying memory of my death at Nick’s hands surged through my mind, sent waves of electricity pulsing through my entire body. A warm emotional spark of remorse coursed from Nick’s fingertips and shot straight to my heart. I had no doubt in his sincerity.
“Honest to God, Em. Most of us are just normal people.”
“I would say there is absolutely nothing ‘normal’ about the two of you, but I do apologize for the psycho-freak comment,” I smiled trying to reassure him that I wasn’t afraid anymore. “Tell me what you mean by ‘most of us’.”
Nick groaned. “Em, I don’t want to frighten you. There aren’t many of us in the first place, possibly a few hundred in America, and the vast majority are just good people. Nightmare Wraith are a rare and egregious breed.” He shifted nervously. We were both content with the current state of my ‘nightmare control’. His concern at adding more horror stories to the nightly bedlam—as if Sabre’s little tale of terror weren’t enough—was tangible.
“You know what? I think I’ve had enough excitement for one day on the Dream Weaver Train. How about we put that one off for another time?” I suggested.
The tension in Nick’s face softened with relief and gratitude for the escape. He leaned toward me. I could feel the warmth of his breath on my face. “There are much more pleasant things I could show you,” he said.
I bristled at his terminology, but replied, “Such as?”
“Another fun fact you may not know about us is that we can pick up a memory from objects as well as people—memoryprints, like fingerprints.”
“Really?” Now I was in awe. “And that’s what you picked up on from the kitchen door when Jesse was here and around the house the other night?”
He nodded, his brow corrugating slightly. “It has to be something that has had pretty solid contact with a person, or the memory must be heavily, emotionally charged.” The memory of his face when he left the stockroom earlier returned to me. Without a doubt, memories of the violence that took place in that small space splattered the walls like blood-spatter at a murder scene. No wonder his body trembled so violently in my arms.
“I’m sorry. I shouldn’t have made you go in that room.”
He brushed my chin with his index finger. “No one made me. I chose to do it—to protect you from it.”
“It must have been horrible for you, though.”
“Well, certainly not something I’d like to store in the archives,” he huffed a quiet laugh, but I could tell by the glisten in his eyes that the memories still plagued him.
Everything in me screamed to distract him. “So how does an object hold a memory?”
“We think the object holds some sort of electrical impulse that contains the memory. Unfortunately, the more the item is touched by different people the more diluted the memory becomes.” Nick had seen me through Jesse’s eyes on the night of the assault. I was sure I did not want to see those images. It had been bad enough to feel my face and body so torn up and bloodied, and even worse to know that Jesse saw me that way. Those images, burned into his brain forever, wounded him, and worse, exhumed something dark, onerous and best left forgotten from his past. I found myself wishing for the power to erase those memories away for him.
I broke free of my reverie. “Can all Dream Weavers do this, memoryprint thing?” I asked.
“No. Only a few and it appears to be innate in those who are able. Either you have it or you don’t.”
“What about psychics? I’ve always thought they were a load of hooey, myself, but sometimes they make you wonder.”
“There are some true psychics in the world, but most of the people who claim psychic powers are a crock. They use trickery, and general verbiage to lure people in. Like everyone doesn’t have an Uncle Bob.” Nick chuckled. “The world has developed ways to test individuals to see if their ‘powers’ are real or not.”
I thought for a moment. “So what about Dream Weavers? Can they be tested too, so you can learn more about them?”
“Most Weavers believe in staying as separate from humans as possible. It’s one thing to have testable psychic power, and another being an immortal with psychic power. The immortality becomes the focus of study rather than power. In the rare event a Weaver has agreed to testing, they have chosen to either not reveal that aspect of themselves or they’ve walked away when studies pried too close to the truth.
“Sabre worked with a scientist a few decades ago who went overboard into the immortality issue and
the guy actually tried to drug and detain him. But it’s kind of hard to keep things a secret from us and Sabre figured out what the good doctor was planning to do and…let’s just say the implant he gave that guy was way worse than what he did to you.”
I shuddered again, the images still too real in my mind. Even though I knew Sabre implanted them, it didn’t make them any less real to me. Nick squeezed my hand sympathetically. “I can make them go away,” he whispered softly.
I was puzzled at first what he meant, and then I realized he was offering to remove the vampire memories for me. I studied his eyes, his sincerity, his compassion, all of the good things he was to me, and I decided I didn’t want to lose any memories of him, ever.
“Tell me more about Sabre. That’s a unique name.”
“Sabre is a unique man,” he said, his sundry emotions flashed behind his eyes. I knew he felt enormous respect for Sabre, but he also only knew just pieces and parts that Sabre grudgingly revealed to him and what he gleaned by living with the man for decades. He smiled reluctantly and I saw his eyes focusing on something in the past. “Sabre was born in England in about 1754. He doesn’t share memories that far back, so I don’t know much about how he came to America, and just bits and pieces of what he’s done since. He says he got his name from his adopted father, a ship’s captain. It had something to do with his favorite childhood toy.” Nick held out his hand to me, his brows crunched together in frustration. “I’m really not a very good story teller. Would you mind? Can I just show you?”
“Um, sure. I guess,” I timidly placed my hand in his. “Be gentle,” I said retracting my hand. “My last experience left me a little head shy.”
“As you wish,” he murmured as he lifted my hand to his lips and kissed it. Already a gentle peace washed over me. I watched him through half-closed eyes, allowed the heat that surged from the contact of his hand to filter through me. “Here, rest your head on my shoulder. Close your eyes and relax,” he spoke with the quiet ease of an expert hypnotist. I drew in a deep breath, and followed his instructions obediently, willing my breathing to slow and my muscles to relax. Darkness enveloped me in a shroud, my body buoyed on a bed of warm air, a sultriness that lay heavy over me like a summer day in Memphis.
