And he stops. Just like that.
We're on a long, straight street, tenements segregated from the pavement and road by shoulder-height iron fencing. He grabs part of this outside the block where he now stands, and he can't be out of breath. So it must be some other reason that necessitates steadying himself. He's no more than forty feet away from me, fifty at most, and from that distance, I could swear I see his shoulders tremble.
"Why..." Still gripping the iron fencing in one hand, he looks over his shoulder at me again, only this time, he isn't running. He's given in and stopped. "Why can't you leave me alone?"
This would be the point where, were I still human, I'd take a deep lungful of fresh air and try to clear the fog of confusion. All I can do is stand here with my hands on my hips, not taking my eyes off him in case he takes off again. I always used to feel easier if I knew where Adam Locke was, and that was never more true than it is now.
"Adam, I don't know what to say."
"You've never spoken before. I don't see why you have to say anything now." Yes, he's definitely trembling.
I frown. This confusion isn't getting any easier to deal with. "What are you...? I don't know what you mean. I always spoke to you---" I gulp back nerves and memories "---before."
Adam lets go of the fencing but stays upright, even manages to turn around. He's wearing dark jeans, a black sweater, and a leather jacket.
Welcome to the twenty-first century. There could be, probably are, a thousand Adams that I've missed out on.
"No." He shakes his head, takes a step closer.
Okay, this is progress. "You only spoke to me when you were..." His Adam's apple--- I could almost laugh at the unintentional pun---bobs before he speaks again. "Alive."
"But I'm..." No, never mind. It would be untrue. I'm still around, but technically not alive.
My ID papers state "undead," so it's a moot point.
His footsteps make little to no sound on the pavement as he edges toward me--- Padlock indeed---and my feet get itchy. Whatever Adam wants, I want the opposite. He's getting closer; I want to run away.
But I stand my ground.
He halves the distance between us. It's evidently as much as he can take. For now.
Only occasionally does a car pass us by.
There are no other pedestrians on this street; none that I notice anyway. On the other side of the street is a park; at least, I assume that's what it is. Low boundary wall, trees shadowing the horizon, what looks like the shape of a gate or an entryway; the sodium glow from the streetlamps distort what I can make out. And it's all surprisingly empty.
Hollow. What I registered in passing as I pursued Adam now recedes even further, becomes a faded background to our reunion.
"I don't understand what you want," Adam says. "You haunt me and never said anything until now."
"Adam, I haven't been anywhere near you.
Not for years. I've been avoiding you."
Adam cocks his head, nears me still more.
Oh, those two little vertical lines above the bridge of his nose, how familiar they are. Furrows of concentration. They show when he's in the throes of passion, as well; right before he comes, he---
No. Right before he came. Our sex life is in the past. Any mutual attraction is over. Done. Dead and gone.
But I can't help remembering.
"Why now?" he mutters.
"Because..." I shrug, a slow rolling of my shoulders that's more about shaking off the guilt and confusion and anger than expressing my uncertainty. Should I tell him about Will? "After all these years..."
"Why speak to me now?" It's like Adam isn't even listening to me, not specifically to my words, just the fact there's noise coming out of my mouth.
Now I have to grip the fencing as he stands within touching distance for the first time in a lifetime.
"You've never spoken before." Adam's capable of moving so much faster, but the slowness with which he lifts his hand to my face makes me bite my lip in fear. "You've never chased after me.
You've never spoken."
Somewhere in the back of my mind, the penny doesn't quite drop, but it begins to wobble. Adam, talking as if he's seen me before, since he killed me. He's not comfortable with my appearance, but definitely familiar with it. As if he's seen me when I haven't been around. My doppelganger. My ghost.
Adam curls all fingers but one into his palm and tentatively runs the tip of his forefinger down my cheek. A nerve fires, and I feel it twitch just below the surface of my skin; I wonder if he does too. The gentle stroke becomes a bolder prod, as if he still doesn't believe I'm really here, and why would he?
I jerk away from his touch. He looks at me like I'm a museum exhibit. To him, maybe I am.
And he stares down at his hand, that frown never leaving his brow. "My God." He makes a fist, straightens his fingers, then flexes the muscles of the hand that made contact. "It's like you're real. You're really real."
I want to make a joke of it, come over all Pinocchio and say, "I'm a real boy!" but I know inappropriate humour when I think of it. "Of course I am. I'm right here, aren't I?"
"Fuck." Staggering backwards, Adam puts his hand out to grab a hold of the fence, and instinctively, I jump forward to catch him.
My arms round his waist, I pull him upright, try to get him steady on his feet again, but he feels like a---and I can't believe I have a sense of humour twisted enough to even think this, despite my recent qualms about inappropriate jokes---dead weight in my arms. "I've got you. Are you all right? Can you stand up? Just try putting your weight on one foot, and---"
"Nathan?" Adam grips my upper arms, so tightly I couldn't let him go even if I wanted to.
Eyes narrowed, he stares into my eyes. "If it's not you, it's someone very like you, but..."
His hands are on me. His hands are on me.
Not on my skin, but by God, Adam Locke's touching me. For the first time in seventy years.
And it's like those years never happened.
Apart from one very important fact: the last time Adam Locke touched me, I was alive. Living and breathing.
And bleeding profusely.
"It is me. As I live and breathe. But for the fact I don't live. Or breathe. But you know..."
Another shrug, taut this time, because of Adam's unending grip on me. I can barely move with him touching me. Inappropriate humour, again, Stephenson.
"You're dead?" His grip on me loosens, and I only let go of him when I'm sure he's able to stand on his own two feet.
I tell myself it's altruism that keeps my arms around him until the very last second. Given who I'm with, who I'm talking to, it would be insane of me to want to touch him ever again, but a part of me does want that and can't be denied. Maybe it's curiosity, a need to confirm to myself that yes, he really is here, right in front of me. A need similar to Adam's own.
"Jesus. Fucking Jesus." He staggers back, but in a way that shows he's able to stand up on his own. He's stunned, not thrown off his feet anymore. "I thought...I thought..." Adam lowers himself onto steps leading up to the front door of a tenement block, which tells me just how hard this has hit him. Shaken, he has to sit down to gather his thoughts. He rests his head in his hands, fingers clawing at his hair, as if he's trying to pull something out of his mind which will explain all this. "What the hell happened?" At last, he raises his head, and it's dark, true, but the nearby streetlamps and my own night vision tell me his eyes are red-rimmed.
He can cry. He can cry after all. The realisation hits me like a punch in the solar plexus.
Adam Locke, brought to tears by my appearance.
Speaking of my appearance. "Adam, I need to ask you something."
"Oh, ask away, my friend. Ask away because believe you me, I'll have plenty of questions to counter with once you're done."
I gulp down fear, wondering exactly what information he'll demand. He's willing for our conversation to continue after our reintroductions a n d hi-I'm-still-alives are done. M
ore than willing. Willing to the point of ripping my throat out---again---if I try to walk away tonight.
"You, uh, talked about seeing me? Before now? And I never spoke to you, is that right?"
He laughs, resting his chin on interlocked hands. One balled fist cradled by another. "I saw you. I kept seeing you. Everywhere. Every fucking place I went, there you were." He shoots a glance at me, pure ice and hatred, fighting to overcome the tears. He must have drunk recently, or there wouldn't be enough fluid in his body for the tears to form.
Part of me hates him for that. The fact that he's been able to carry on as normal, even while being haunted by my ghost. My life has been spent running, avoiding, hiding, fearing, looking over my shoulder. His? Who fucking knows. But if I've been haunting him all this time? Good. He deserves it.
" F o r years, Nathan. Years. I couldn't go anywhere without seeing you. Will wouldn't have anything to do with me for so long, then it all faded. A little. Memories. I felt sick the first time I drank blood afterwards. I felt like I was washing you away. The taste of you in my mouth was all I had left."
Christ. I lick my lips, wanting to say something. The generous, positive, altruistic, gentlemanly part of me, the part that's able to maintain a friendship with Alyssa, the part that clings to humanity, wants to comfort him somehow, and my hip twitches, but the step goes untaken. I can't take one step closer to the man who's responsible for this mess, for goodness' sake. I can't forget what he did. I won't let myself.
"I thought, why bother trying to deny what I am? I'd already killed you, so who the hell cared what I did? Nothing mattered anymore. If I wanted something, I took it."
"Adam." I nearly ask what he means by that, but I don't think I want to know. So I remain silent as he reminisces.
"And that was what made the memories fade. Or so I convinced myself. The more I threw myself into being a vampire, the further away you went. Oh, I still saw you occasionally. Every so often."
"How often?" I wonder why it matters.
Possibly it doesn't. But the gentleman in me is overridden by the sadist now, and I want to know how often Adam's guilty conscience swam to the surface and reminded him of what he thought he did.
"At first? Everywhere. Every day. But that was only for a few weeks. Then it was every week. Every month. Every year. After a few decades? I noticed years went by with no sign of you. I thought..."
I can't hold back any longer. I take that step, and my heel clicks against the pavement, echoing.
No traffic shoots past. The whole world has left us alone. I can only pray no one looks out of the window of this block and scoots us away, taking us for party-goers or revellers who have overindulged. Although, if that happens and Adam reverts to type, I bet he'd show his fangs, threaten them with God only knows what.
"I thought you were dead." He looks up at me again with those red-rimmed eyes, still not crying, and I almost admire him for his fortitude.
"I was. But Will..." Uncertainty about whether to bring other people into the conversation makes me hesitate but there's no way to explain what happened without mentioning Will. "He's the one who brought me to life again."
Adam's jaw tenses as he grinds his teeth; he always does that when he's angry. Or should I say always did. Some of his habits may have stayed the same, but I'd be very surprised if he hasn't picked up new mannerisms in the past sixty or seventy years.
He shakes his head slowly, once, twice, then leaps to his feet, fists balled, and my heart leaps in readiness to tackle a fight-ready Adam. "He..."
One word, and he clenches his jaw again, strides over to me, and I jump.
Christ. No, Adam. Not another fight.
"He..." Slowly, he raises his fists, but I'm not scared anymore. He screws his eyes shut and bows his head, looks like a man who wants to punch the nightmare images inside his own mind, rather than the real, flesh-and-blood man before him. "He kept you from me." He opens his eyes again and glares. "Will kept you from me. All this time. He---"
"No." I shake my head, and Adam stares.
"No, he didn't. I did."
The stare morphs into a disbelieving frown.
"Nathan, he brushed me off for years. He told me it was better we didn't communicate for a while, until he'd, how did he put it, dealt with the aftermath of what you've done, Adam. We found each other again---" (I can't help but wonder if "found each other again" is Adam-speak for "I tracked him down like the obsessive character I am.") "---and after a few cursory words, we never spoke of it again. Never spoke of you again, I mean. Phone calls, coded messages." Adam shrugs, hands thrust deep into his trouser pockets.
"I never...There was never any reason to speak about you. I missed you. I fucking missed you, and Will was disgusted with me, or so I believed. And he let me think...you both let me think..."
Lightning-fast, he moves one hand out of his pocket and jabs an accusatory finger right into my chest, making me stumble back a step. "You let me think you were dead."
Whatever my reasons were, he's right. I did let him think I was dead. I begged Will to help me, and he did. For years, we deceived Adam, but he deserved it.
"Why?" He cocks his head, studying me closely, as if the answer to his demand plays itself out in my features. "Why did you do it?"
Though my throat rasps as I try to speak again, I manage it. Just. "I could ask the same thing of you." A long, long pause. "In fact, that's the one thing I've been waiting all these years to find out."
Chapter 11
"HAVE A GOOD EVENING, GENTLEMEN."
The receptionist---not Jason this time, thank goodness---winks as we walk past his desk, and I throw a barely-restrained growl in his direction. I don't know what the hell he thinks is going on here ---actually, I do---but it won't happen. The only reason I told Adam where I'm staying, the only reason I'm allowing him to follow me now, is so we can talk. That's all. Talk. I'll explain to him what happened back then and why I kept myself hidden for so long.
And maybe, I'll finally get the answer to the question that's been bugging me since: what in the name of all that is holy did he think he was doing back then?
I throw open the door leading to the stairwell and lifts, not even bothering to wait for Adam and hold it open for him. I know he'll be right behind me, and oh, how metaphorical and Freudian is that little gem?
"And you used to be so proper and polite too," Adam throws at me, standing a couple of feet away, waiting for the lift to come.
I'm not sure if he's teasing or being sarcastic.
"You're perfectly capable of getting the door yourself, aren't you?"
"I am, but it would have been polite of you to hold it open. It might have been quite painful if it had slammed in my face."
I shrug. "It'd heal soon enough." Within hours, on a good day. Or rather, good night.
"Sometimes, I think you just don't care about my feelings, Sergeant."
I flick my head to the side, glaring with narrowed eyes, but he faces the lifts. Rocking back and forward on his heels, hands in pockets, he looks for all the world passive and innocent.
Please, God, don't let him be flirting.
"Oh, wait. I've just realised." At last, he turns his head to meet my gaze. "You don't."
Oh. It's like that, is it? I bite my lip before saying anything I'll regret, and face front again, hands clasped loosely behind my back. But it doesn't feel right, and I drop my hands to my sides, palms to my thighs.
"Admirable stance."
I won't give him the satisfaction of looking at him. Or answering.
"Army training, Nathan," he carries on. "You never lose it."
"Don't you forget anything?" Bang goes my resolve in an instant.
And there he goes again, the old Adam I used to know and love. Head tilted insolently, just a fraction, that smirk I want---no, wanted, past tense ---to slap or kiss, all at the same time. "Why, no, Sergeant. Memory like an elephant. Hung like one too." And his gaze drops momentarily to my crotch. He laughs when I flinch.
"Words you said not even an hour ago?" Another, softer, laugh. "Of course I'll remember. See, what I'm interested in happened decades before. There's a few things on which you'll have to fill me in. I'm a bit hazy on the details."
"Why the fuck do you think I'm here?" I throw at him, unspeakably grateful when the lift doors open. A couple get out, and the woman looks like a woman dressed as a vampire. Waist-length curly black hair, flowing skirts made of random pieces of chiffon. A pale, powdered face and scarlet lipstick. Maybe she's one of those who gets off on people thinking she's a human who merely looks undead, and her companion is just along for the ride. Someone who, in turn, gets off on the look of surprise on the poor, unfortunate mortal's face when they realise they're encountering the real deal, here.
It's just the two of us in the lift now, and I press the relevant button and, out of habit, resume my former posture.
I've never felt so uncomfortable in my life. So damn awkward.
"Shame there's no basement in this place."
This is going to be the longest elevator ride of my life, I can just tell.
"Just imagine how funny it would be if you'd looked at me and said, going down?"
"I see your sense of humour hasn't improved any in the past seventy years."
"Nor has your sense of honour."
I can't help it; my head turns of its own volition, and I glare at the bastard like I hate him. I do. He fucking half-killed me, and now he insults my honour?
"Oh, Sergeant Stephenson, still full of that military pride, aren't you?"
"You say that like it's something to be ashamed of."
"And where has it got you?"
My body's ramrod straight (but for that traitorous head of mine) and facing front, but Adam shifts now, turning his entire body to face me. The lift's entirely white but for the silver button panel, illuminated by one of those strip lights that cause migraines and seizures for an unlucky select number of the mortal population. For us, though, they mean the ability to see quite comfortably inside a sealed, vampire-friendly building, and the light it casts down onto Adam causes an unholy glare. Even chance wouldn't be sick enough to give him an artificial halo, but I will say this: Adam Locke sure loves the spotlight.
Bring Me to Life Page 12
