“Do you want anything to drink?” Devon wandered back toward the living area where Clyde sat in contempt. “We’ve got… well, we’ve got beer.”
“No, thanks. I’m driving tonight.” Danielle shuffled after him.
Devon leaned against the back of the couch. “So, what did you need to tell me?”
“Could we talk in private?”
“Is this about saving the world?”
“Erm, yeah.”
“He knows everything, so you might as well go ahead.”
“Actually, I came by to congratulate you on that concert. You guys did really well.”
Clyde sat up for the first time since she entered Devon’s apartment. “You were there?”
“I was in the back. Guess you couldn’t see me.”
“I saw you.” Devon suppressed a grin. Clyde rolled his eyes. “Glad you went.”
An awkward silence throttled them.
“Well, guys, this is a total bag of fun, but I’m getting out of here before… well, whatever’s going to happen.” Clyde slithered off the couch. “Bye, Devon. Have fun saving the world with your new girlfriend…who’s your other girlfriend’s ex-girlfriend… man, that’s messed up.” He pulled open the door and stumbled out before Devon could protest.
“Is he going to be okay going home like that?” Danielle asked.
Devon shrugged. “He doesn’t live too far away. Beer?”
“No, thanks. I have to drive home.”
“Oh yeah. You okay?”
“No.”
“What’s wrong?”
Danielle sighed. “I have a headache.”
The light next to the TV went out. “Headache problem solved. Sit down. We’ve got things to talk about, I’m sure.”
She sat on the far end of the couch. Devon slumped into the other seat, half-drank bottle of beer in hand as he propped his feet up on the coffee table.
“I don’t know what to talk about,” Danielle admitted.
“Sex? Drugs? Rock and roll?”
She ignored those first two things. “I’ve definitely heard worse music in my days.”
“Thanks. Believe it or not, that means a lot to me.”
“I’m surprised you didn’t end up taking one of those screaming softball players home.”
“Tempting,” Devon said, “but I’m not sure what’s going on with Alicia. Although she called me last night to say something about a break.”
“Have you seen her?”
“Nothing aside from a couple phone calls.”
“She was there tonight, you know.”
Devon sat up. “Really? I never saw her.”
“Yup. She stared at me enough for me to notice.”
Any hope on Devon’s face was dashed after that. “Guess that means she still wants you?”
Silence fell between them once more.
“The other day, when I saw her,” Devon began, “I asked her if she was gay.”
“Pretty sure she’s bi. That’s never been news to me.”
“That’s pretty much what she said without saying that.”
“She’s in denial, though.”
“But which way?”
Danielle shrugged. “As far as I know, I was her first same-sex relationship. While we dated, she always asked me about labels. I didn’t care as long as she was into me.”
“Guess that never died.”
“No shit. Surprised me.”
“Not me, really. I suspected that she was… well, not totally into men. At least she has good taste, right? Me and you.”
Danielle eyed the beer in Devon’s hand. “Give me one of those if we’re going to talk about women.”
She snapped the bottle out of his hand. Devon guffawed. “You drink a lot when it comes to relationships?”
While he smiled, Danielle scowled. “Maybe. I know it’s not an answer to problems, but after she broke up with me, I drank a lot. I could’ve sworn the world was ending.”
“For all I know, it could end tomorrow.”
“No need to be so dramatic.”
“With her? Yes.”
“Touché.”
A change in topic was necessary. “So how did your whole band thing start?”
Devon looked at his guitar left sobering up in the corner of the room and said, “You know the general story. Kid grows up without his parents, everyone is poor, kid stays after school a lot and learns about computers and instruments.” He further explained, “The band teacher used to let me stay after school and help him tune and fix the instruments. When he wasn’t around, I haunted the computer lab and either played games or helped the teacher there fix up the older relics. Hell, you probably used to own one. It was the late nineties.”
Before she could take a drink of beer, Danielle choked on her spit. In the late ‘90s, she was in college.
“So in other words,” she said, “because Mommy didn’t have the time, you became a computer and guitar prodigy.”
“I wouldn’t say prodigy… but yeah, I like to think I’m good at the things I do.”
Danielle spat out most of the beer she drank. “Jesus Christ, did you piss in this?”
“What? I thought you drank beer.”
She gave the bottle an incredulous look before taking another swig. Thoughts of Alicia did that to her. She never drank alcohol for flavor, anyway. “Yeah, but not self-brewed stuff. Did the guy who make this know what he was doing?”
“I got a deal on it.”
“God, I hope so.”
Devon sat back in his seat, bitter thoughts swarming his head the more he drank. Was it the beer or Danielle’s presence that did this to him? After all, he had no idea that Alicia had been at his concert until Danielle told him. But to hear that she was captivated by her ex? Maybe it was never meant to be. Two days from now, Devon would probably get a call from Alicia announcing that their relationship was officially over.
Then what? What was Devon expected to do? Breaking up was probably for the best, but… he hadn’t even told her what was going on in his life and the role she may play one day.
Something seized his heart and punched him in the stomach.
“Do you ever get scared?” When Danielle did not immediately respond, he said, “I think about this shit a lot. About us. About our mission. About who we used to be. Don’t you?”
A frog jumped down Danielle’s throat. She washed it down with beer. “Not really. I’ve told you that I don’t care.”
“Don’t you want to regress?”
“No. Why, do you?”
Devon looked away from her accusing eyes. “I think it would be offensive not to. I mean, I am curious about what I was like then. I wonder if most of my memories were good.”
“Doubt it, if we were mercenaries. Shitty life.”
“I don’t get that kind of feeling. I think, all things considered, I had a good life.”
“Good for you. Whenever I dream about that shit, it’s always nightmares.”
“Maybe your nightmares are your brain trying to access those dormant memories?”
“It’s really fighting for a cause, then. Sometimes I’m scared to go to sleep again.”
Devon took her empty hand on the couch. Danielle did not react. “Well, I’m scared.” His confession had been trapped in his throat a moment ago. “I’m scared of dying, because I can’t remember what it’s like. I don’t want to die again. I don’t want to remember that. And I don’t want everyone to die. I don’t want this planet to die.”
“Nothing’s going to…”
“I don’t want you to die, either.”
Danielle clamped her mouth shut. Devon’s hand tightened around hers. In a moment of insanity, she squeezed back, but only because she remembered pain and the taste of blood in her mouth. How many times had she died a violent death? Danielle did not know, but Sulim knew.
Devon was the one more in tune with his past self. Danielle envied how he accepted Sonall and lived in peace with his existence. She, on the oth
er hand, refused to believe someone else could live inside of her, control her dreams, and force her to do its bidding based on times lost a thousand years before. Reincarnation was one thing – spiritual imprisonment was another.
Yet she also pitied Devon, for if he continued to embrace Sonall and eventually regress, he would be alone. Danielle had no desire to see her past self again. She wanted nothing to do with such connections. She could squeeze Devon’s hand all she wanted, but Sonall would have to realize that Sulim did not live on the other end.
At best, Sonall would have to live with an old goodbye present.
Danielle slammed the beer bottle down, startling Devon into releasing her hand. Her head turned, eyes meeting Devon’s flustered countenance in the shadows of the room.
“Kiss me.”
“What?”
“I said kiss me.” Danielle snatched his hand again. “I’m giving you the chance. This is your only chance. Kiss me like you have always wanted to kiss me.”
The command was directed at Sonall, who barely recognized the woman before him. Danielle’s face was softer than Sonall recalled and her tongue sharper than steel. But her eyes were the same. Sonall knew her eyes. They were the same eyes that glared at him when he disobeyed her, that glistened when she daydreamed, and would search every corner of the room for somebody who did not belong. Sulim lived inside those eyes.
Sonall, trapped inside a young man’s body, pined.
Still holding her hand, Devon caressed the smooth cheek in front of him. Those eyes never left him as he closed his and leaned forward.
Danielle pulled away. No trace of any kiss stayed behind, for both of their lips were dry.
Or at least, that was her perspective. Devon, on the other hand, held back the excited arousal slamming into him like a sledgehammer. Somewhere in the depths of his memory, the man he used to be stirred. The man who wanted this woman, even though he knew it was hopeless to ever win her love.
So, he kissed her again.
She tolerated it for three seconds before pushing him away. “Okay! Jesus!” Devon backed off long enough for Danielle to catch her breath again. “I know I’m a good kisser, but let’s know our limits.”
“Sorry.” Devon turned away.
His palpable embarrassment wasn’t lost on Danielle. “It’s not that you’re not good or anything. I’m just not sure I could do it.”
“Do what? You mean…?”
Yes. That thing. That tension that had hung between them since the moment they met. No, not sexual tension, although the blasted Void knew that two souls constantly reincarnated long enough began to cement certain attractions between them. Hadn’t they been married before? No, Sulim and Sonall didn’t share that kind of bond in their short lives, but was it so unfathomable that the universe keeping them together would lead to something like this?
“You mean sex?”
Danielle covered her face. “Thanks for saying it out loud. Now I’m mortified.”
“I’m not mortified.”
“Because you like me. Like that.” Danielle kicked her legs up. “I can’t believe it. You’re dating my ex-girlfriend. We were born in the same city. You and I… we’re tied together like that, aren’t we? No matter how we die, we’ll always be reborn, so we’re stuck together.”
“Is that so bad?”
War raged within her. Why couldn’t she get away from him? Why couldn’t she be free from the spiritual shackles keeping her from her true place in the Void? Danielle’s soul was so heavy because it was never meant to exist in this state for so long. Her bodies aged and died. They were reborn again, whether it made genetic sense or not. No matter who mothered and fathered her, however, she was always the same.
Even though she couldn’t remember. She didn’t want to remember.
Sulim was a disease within her. That woman died a thousand years ago. Danielle didn’t care how. She didn’t care why. She sure as hell didn’t care if Sulim was married, had children, or lived a life of celibacy. What she did care about, however, was that this woman continued to invade her brain and turn her pleasant daydreams into nightmares.
As for Devon? He was no one special, no one offensive to her livelihood. He didn’t ask for this fate any more than she did.
But was it so wrong to acknowledge that connection between them? Did it go against whatever natures they possessed? Would she still be the same woman, and he the same man if they made utter fools of themselves in the name of spiritual experimentation?
Damn. And she thought the sexual experimentation she conducted in college was embarrassing.
Her hand searched for Devon’s.
What’s wrong with me? Danielle asked her conscience. I’ve known this guy for, what, two weeks? He’s eight years younger than me and lives in a different world. But weren’t they from the same world? Weren’t they always from the same world?
“So, Devon…”
“Danielle.”
Their hands tightened until pain and sweat was enough to make them mutter incoherent things. Sonall stirred once again within Devon, the old spirit begging for his new incarnation to act. Danielle, too, experienced pangs of need in her heart. A remnant of Sulim that she would continue to suppress. She had killed her, after all.
The point of no return remained before them. One of them would snap first.
The force of two men was soon upon Danielle.
She let Devon take control. Gave herself over to the tide crashing upon her. Why not? Why the hell not! She had dated worse. She had made more terrible mistakes. What was it to her if she indulged Sulim for one night?
They burrowed into the couch, hearts racing and bodies tangling. Danielle forgot whom she kissed and how they were related in this never-meant-to-be life of theirs.
Strange, how a seemingly simple kiss could both be the most frightening step of his life and the sanest of hers. Fate would have usually conspired to make it the other way around.
Once that sensation of taking control, empowering themselves through the few actions they could choose, and the bittersweet feeling of touching someone the other was so spiritually connected to took over, there was no going back. Devon and Danielle surged over the cliff of no return and dared to spit in its face.
“Why does this feel so good?” Danielle asked the air between them.
“I don’t know.” Devon’s frenzy consumed him, like it was his first time all over again. “It feels…”
Their heartbeats froze at the same time. “Safe,” Danielle muttered.
“See? You can feel things too, it’s not only me. Maybe we’re supposed to stay close.”
He had a funny definition of close. Yet when they embraced again, Danielle putting her arms around him as he shifted his weight on top of her, she found herself agreeing. Yes. Close. Close was good. Close meant they could feel each other’s hearts beating and claim that other soul. It was reassurance that they weren’t alone in this terrible fate.
The next time they kissed, it was slow and considerate, a contrast to their flustered declarations from earlier. Devon’s hand traveled up her leg and dove beneath her jacket.
Someone knocked on the door. Danielle shoved Devon off her and leaped up before anyone could catch them together.
“Heeeey Devoooon!” Clyde’s voice thundered through the apartment. “Hey, man, open up! I forgot my bass, dude!”
Devon fell off the couch on his way to opening the door and chastising Clyde for bothering him. Clyde, still stilted from too much beer, pushed Devon aside to grab his forgotten bass near the coat rack. Danielle was ready to follow the drunk out the door.
“Oh, hey, Danielle.” Clyde twiddled his fingers at her as he latched onto the handle of his bass case. “Why are you still here? Dude, it’s dark in here, turn on a light!” Clyde smacked his friend on the shoulder. “You sweating? Take a shower, bro.”
Danielle was right behind him as he left. “I gotta go,” she said. “I’m not interested in you like that.”
“Yeah.
Sure. I understand.”
Danielle bit her lip. “We’re cool, right?”
“Sure.”
She put her hand on the doorknob, a wave of sadness overcoming the parts of her screaming to get the hell out of there.
“Goddamnit,” she muttered.
“You okay?”
Danielle hesitated, her mind willing her body to leave. Yet she remained frozen, toying with the edge of madness. Leave the room. Get away from him. Go home. Sort this shit out. Get. Away. From. Him. She still couldn’t move.
She blamed Sulim. The woman who would make her a slave in her own body.
“What’s wrong?” Devon placed a light hand on her shoulder. “Need help?”
She shrugged him off. “I’m going to tell you this once,” it was her thoughts, but not her power making her speak. “I know why we must’ve been together so much in past lives. It’s because we’re trapped in this thing together, and we depend on each other, and we seek solace in the fact the other person is still alive. But we also know that it never works.”
“Yeah?”
“Anything happening between us in this life would be doomed to failure. You know that, and I know that.”
“For whatever reason, huh?”
Danielle turned to him. “I felt good back there. I can’t explain why. But on some level, I feel like I have to tell you, that after two weeks I am scared shitless of losing you… again.”
“Because we’re partners.”
Cracking a smile, Danielle released the door handle. “If I stay, promise me one thing.”
“Anything.”
The solemnity now flushing Danielle’s fair face wavered between comforting and callous. “Don’t call me by that name.”
TWENTY-SEVEN
This was always sure to happen at one point or another. Two people could be as dissimilar as possible, but once they were thrown into the Process together, their souls were intractably bonded until the end of their existences.
Such was the fate of Sulim and Sonall, who had been as different as night and day in their original lives. For even though Sonall developed a lust and love for his partner in the mercenary world, he had always known that loving Sulim di’Graelic was one of the most futile endeavors a man like him could undertake.
Rebirth (Cross Book 1) Page 28
