An Immortal in London: Corruption (20 page)

I relaxed in his arms and rested my head back against his chest, “Why are they doing this to me?”

“Because you are the strongest one left,” he said quietly, holding me tighter, locking me in his arms, keeping me safe from myself.

“Do you think they did this to Katelyn?”

As I asked I could feel his body tense beneath mine and I turned around in his arms, taking my hands from his.

“Do you know something?”

“Victoria, this isn’t the time or the place.”

“Well I don’t see a better one coming, if you know something just tell me.” I rested my hands onto his chest in supplication and stared up into his dark clouded eyes.

He pushed his left hand through my hair and frowned as he looked over my face. “So perfect, how could anyone want to hurt you?” He took a breath and smiled before he dropped his arms and sat on the edge of the bed next to the unknown corpse. “I saw what they did to Katelyn through Levi’s eyes, he knew that she was in trouble, of course he was torn between helping her and,” he looked up to me and smiled lightly, “you.” He shrugged, “They broke
her, but she put on a brave face just like you have been doing. Victoria, they know that they can’t defeat you physically, so they’ll do just what they did to her, keep pushing until you beg to be killed.”

“Are you trying to tell me that Katelyn wanted to die?”

He walked back over to me and put his hands onto my cheeks, “There is only so much one mind can take.”

I closed my eyes and shook my head; I wandered to the window and hoisted it open. I hung my head out into the cool air and took several deep breaths.
I couldn’t believe what it had all come to. From where I began, this was not where I had ever thought I would end.

“How much do you think that mine can take?” I asked, pulling myself back into the room.

When I returned home I found Levi lying on the lawn, his clothes soaked through, as if it was a summer’s day.

             
“Looks like I’m not the only one losing my mind,” I said with a small laugh as I sat down next to him.

             
He turned to look at me and as his hand came up to my cheek that was when I saw his tears. I stood and ran back into the house. I stormed through and threw open the door to the servants quarters. George and Gabriel stood shell shocked at the foot of the stairs as I continued through like a lightning bolt thundering through the black sky the only thing visible during the storm.

             
She lay, cold as ice, her heart no longer beating.

God made man fear death so that he could die, true immortals fear not of death so they will never die
. She had said that to me when we first met. She had worn a black pencil skirt and a pale yellow shirt; she had come from her office job, her latest cover. I would never forget my wonder at her, how similar she was to her brother who had doted on her with such love in his heart. They pretended not to get on, to loathe each other, but behind closed doors they were inseparable. She was his world, his darling little sister, the last of his siblings.

I pressed my lips against her
s as my tears poured from my eyes. I closed my eyes tightly shut and prayed over and over that she would wake up. I buried my head into her neck and kept her held to my chest. My tears soaked her shirt and her hair clung to me.

Clarence would never hold me again. She would never shoot me that darling smile that I always knew meant trouble. Nor would she talk to me again. I would never feel the soft satin of her lips against mine ever again.

I let go of the breath that I was holding and sobbed, and sobbed until I had nothing left. The fates were cruel, they did not care. To me it did not matter that Clarence feared death, it was no reason for her to die. Suddenly my grief turned to anger. I would kill them all and I would make sure that paradise would not welcome their evil souls.

Gabriel and George pushed the door to where Oliver and Clarence lay open and walked over to me, both putting a hand on my shoulders.

“When?” George breathed.

“Not long ago,” Gabriel replied, his voice barely audible.

I took a breath and wiped my eyes. “Why did this happen?” I asked.

Gabriel looked across to George and neither spoke.

A sudden darkness overwhelmed the room and stood at the door was Victor. His eyes were fixed on Clarence’s unmoving body.

“Her heart was weakened before it was returned to her body; most probably it spent too long in the company of a hunter, or the dead. She hasn’t been with us for some time, not really.”

Gabriel and George’s hands fell from me and they stood back as I got to my feet and walked to the shadow of a man that loomed over us.

I look down to his hands and I saw the jar that had rested in the hands of the corpse.

“You didn’t have to bring it here, I would have gone back.”

“I couldn’t put you through that again. The other’s have been moved, they should heal in time.”

I met his eyes and smiled with the weight of loss in my heart. “Did you pass Levi?”

He nodded and handed me the jar. “He needs you now more than any of us ever have.”

I leant up onto my toes and kissed his cheek lightly before I rested the jar next to Oliver’s bed; I turned to Gabriel and motioned to Oliver’s body. He bowed his head and waited until Victor and I had left the room before he scuttled to the jar and made preparations to place the heart back where it belonged.

As Victor and I walked through George’s house I couldn’t help but feel that what
ever tension had been between us over past forty years had evaporated there and then and completely vanished into the air.

             
Levi was stood at the end of the drive waiting for us.

             
I ran down to him leaving Victor to walk slowly alone. I pushed his hair from his face and wrapped my arms around his shoulders, relief flooding into me as his hands found my waist. I kissed his neck and promised him in a breath of a kiss that I would fix everything, as he had promised to me.

             
Victor’s hand separated us for a second as he rested it onto his ancient enemies shoulder. “I can arrange the rites,” he said, his voice heavy with understanding of Levi’s pain.

             
Levi did not speak. He simply looked away and relaxed his arms around my waist. I graced my fingers onto Victor’s bare wet arm and forged a smile onto my iron lips, “Find them for us.”

Once Levi was asleep I crept from our bed and walked out and across to the room that had once been mine alone. I dressed and dialled an unfamiliar number.

“Hi Pat, this is Victoria.”

Her voice filled with recognition, “Victoria, darling. Why are you using Levi’s phone?”

I was surprised that she had his number, but it was a petty thing to think about. “I need to see you.”

“Now?”

“Preferably, yes,” I said.

I crossed the town to the small café in which we first met and I stopped outside of the long glass window and couldn’t believe my eyes. Pat was sat inside smiling back at me. On her table were two mugs.

“
How did you get in here?”

She
shrugged and smiled, “I have my ways.” She noticed my impatience and grief and rested a hand atop mine, “What is it?”

“Claren
ce,” I began, unable to find the words to tell a mother that her daughter was dead.

She closed her eyes and nodded slowly, “I felt it.” She moved her lips as if to smile, but faltered, “Why have you come to me?”

I furrowed my brow and shook my head, “You are her mother, why wouldn’t I have come to you?”

“Losing your mother wasn’t the only reason why you never knew about me,” she uttered. “Like I said when we met, I wasn’t the most notable mother; I was preoccupied a lot of the time.” She met my tear glazed eyes and took a breath, “I cried throughout my pregnancies, I didn’t ask to be a mother, I didn’t
want
to be a mother,” she sighed and pushed her hair behind her ears, “The truth was that I was terrified. I had friends, girls who I had known all of my life who left this world without seeing their children’s faces. I was there when they were giving birth, when they died.”

I felt a sharp pain in my chest, but I continued to sit there as I was, watching Clarence’s mother speak of a fear that I had once felt, a very long time ago.

She smiled and wiped a stray tear from her cheek. “They were strong girls; I was no different from them. After my first I spent months in complete denial that I had a child, I would ignore his cries, and I refused to take him to my breast. I ran away one night, he was only a week or so old, but I couldn’t face listening to him cry for me. When I returned to my husband he tried to understand, but he was a warrior, a beast, he was no woman. They never understand. Then came Clarence, and Levi, my blessings never seemed to end, I see now why they saved me.”

I placed my hand over hers and released the breath that I had been holding. “I’m sorry.”

She nodded and stroked the back of my hand, “I’m sorry that you lost another sister.”

The weeks of endless snow had begun. Each snowflake drifted through the skies helpless to the winds that ushered them to their final resting places. Snowflake upon snowflake covered the streets o
f London to be trodden into slush, grey brown matter that added to the desperation that carried throughout the air in the city that thought it was capital of the world.

             
“It’s cold,” I said quietly, laughing as the words left my mouth with a cloud of white breath.

             
There was no answer, there never would be. I brushed the layer of snow from the top of his gravestone.

             
“I’m glad that you don’t have to see this.” I rested my head again the stone with his name etched into it and closed my eyes. “I wish you were here, but you know that. This world isn’t what it was. We could have had our life here, everything about this world is accepting, they are different the people. I suppose it’s because they’ve seen it all. Men can be with men and the coloured people are welcomed, most of the time. It is incredible, but it’s not what it was.” I sighed and laughed again, I hadn’t know where I was going once I left Patricia, but as I passed the cemetery I knew where I should go so I followed my heart to Sedric’s plot. “Girls have freedom too,” I said as I closed my eyes and held back my tears.

I hadn’t seen Levi since I left his bedside. I hadn’t seen any of them.

             
Jesse handed me a plate of biscuits and shrugged as I frowned up to him. “Worth a try I guess,” he said as he sat down next to me.

             
“Are you using the good china?” I asked.

             
He smiled and clapped his hands together, “Eureka she’s back in the room.”

             
I bowed my head and sighed, “Sorry.”

             
“Don’t be, you’re not the only one who knows what it feels like to lose someone. You need time, they all do. Levi will be fine and so will you.”

             
“Your confidence in me is flattering, but unjust. Come here.”

I cut across the palm of my hand and he moved across and took it to his lips. The feeling of his lips, my blood, his racing heart beside my arm, my own heart stumbling to keep up, it was impossible to understand to imagine, but it was true, it was real. My life, my strength was passing through me and into the boy who I had taken as my own. It was the most wonderful feeling, to give life. I closed my fingers and he withdrew.

I washed my hand in the bathroom adjacent to the servant’s entrance and stood before the mirror for a second, hesitant, and fearful of my memories, as Jesse appeared around the door and rested his hand onto my shoulder.

             
“Levi is calling.”

             
I took my phone and held it to my ear desperately, “Levi?”

             
“Where are you?”

             
“I’m coming home. I’ll be there before you can say my name again.”

             
I smiled and kissed Jesse’s forehead before I ran from the house and stopped at the gate that barred me from the driveway, my hair soaked by melting snowflakes and my hands trembling from my passions.

             
His fingers wrapped around mine as I clung to the bars of iron. I rested my head against his but stood back as the gates began to grumble and parted, lending an opening for me to reach out and take him into my arms.

             
“I’m here, I’m here,” I whispered as I clung to him, knowing that he needed me more than I had ever needed him.

Levi was a god among men, well, that was what I believed once. He would look through a person, see through them until he found something that he wanted, needed, longed for and then he would take it from them.

There was a time when I might have been bitter about why he was in my life, how I came to be, and the reason why I lost my life, but there and then I was grateful for his all seeing eyes. He was no god, he was but a boy lost, looking for a home. His mother and father were hardly that, a mother or father, his life before was short lived yet endless.

              “How old are you?” he asked quietly.

             
“Twenty three, but you know that.” I turned onto my side and met his eyes, “How old are you?”

             
“How old do you think?”

             
“Older than me,” I traced the lines around his eyes, but shook my head, “No, you’re younger. Your eyes,” I said smiling lightly, “Clarence was older than you, wasn’t she?”

             
He nodded slowly and pulled at the ends of my hair, “Our brother, he died very young. I was given his name and his place.”

             
“Clarence was only twenty one, that makes you, no, surely you’re not…”             

             
He shrugged and pushed himself up onto his elbows, his huge body sheltering mine. As my fingers found their ways around his body his lips curved up into a devilish smile and suddenly I saw him for what he was. I traced my index finger around his bright young eyes and graced his youthful cheeks lightly.

             
“A teenager,” I whispered, not able to believe it myself.

             
He smiled once more and his lips came down to mine. His kisses were not those of a teenage boy, far from it. His body, my temple, was one of a man, a warrior. His deep emerald eyes shone down into mine and I saw his life, I saw his pain and his joy, the world in which he had lived was nothing of what surrounded us today. He was a man, no boy, he was an ancient Lord.

             
“I was a day off being twenty, or something like that,” he said as I sat up and stretched my arms above my head.

             
He caught my hands and wrapped them around his shoulders as he knelt in front of me, his hands at my waist.  I leant up and kissed him once before I relaxed down and ran my right hand through my hair. “Four years,” I sighed, “You look about thirty, you know that, right?”

             
“Ouch,” he said laughing. He pulled me up and twisted his hands through my hair, “Times have changed.”

             
I let out a knowing moan as I kissed him. “You wanted me to ask, why?”

             
“I wanted to tell you.”

             
I sat back and pulled my knees to my chest, his hands fell from my waist to rest onto my feet.

“She won’t leave you. I can feel your fear,” I said as I came up onto my knees and relaxed down, my feet touching the back of my legs. I put my hand onto his cheek and smiled, “I know your fear, but in time it will fade. You will forget it, life will overwhelm you again, you will meet new sisters, parents, friends, lovers, and you will carry on because they will never stop taking from you, and once you accept that you learn to love
quicker, letting go is easier, you learn to catch yourself when you fall.”

             
“It is a fear that you should never have known,” he said, taking my hands and kissing them softly. “I don’t understand why you keep coming back.”

             
“Yes you do,” I said simply.

“Where did you run off to yesterday?” Jesse said as he caught my arm, passing by me on the street.

             
“What are you doing out?”

             
He held up his hands and shook the shopping bag, “I still have to eat.”

             
“I forget that you’re not
one of us
.” I laughed as he did and I pulled open the bag to look into it, “Very…”

             
“Fast, just how I like it.”

             
“Fast, right, there is nothing like a processed food sandwich.” I took the bag from him and dropped it into a bin.

             
“Hey, what did you do that for?”

             
“I’m going to cook for you.”

             
“You can’t have your progeny eating common food now, can you?”

             
I sighed, “I haven’t always had money Jesse, but even then I still had a half decent diet, it doesn’t take much.”

             
“Have you seen the price of carrots today?”

             
“I’m sure I can find the change somewhere.”

             
We crossed through the high street and Jesse waited outside of the green grocers, I handed him a bag of fresh produce and he pulled his face as he looked in. I shook my head and rested my hand on his shoulder, “Come on, this won’t take long. You take these and go sit down in the café over there; I’ll be in and out, five minutes.” I kissed his cheek and waited a brief second as he stepped off of the pavement and out onto the road. 

             
The wheels hit the black ice and I saw myself in the back window of the car as it graced past where I stood.  My finger tips felt the wet grey metallic body, and in my mind I could feel the flames licking my bare skin as I was thrown around what was once my home in Killin.

As my breath, body and mind returned to me I could hear shouts and sirens.

As I stood on the edge of the pavement my greatest fear struck me. Jesse lay in the snow, blood and bones exposed to the frozen air.

“
Clear the area, give him space. Is there anyone here that knows the boy’s name?”

The boy, my hand came to my chest. Lying in the snow, his skin almost transparent, he looked like a
child. I involuntarily stepped forward and stood above where the paramedic knelt above him. There were police, firemen, paramedics, people upon people crowding him, crowding me.

“His name is Jesse,” I said, “is he…?”

The paramedic stood, handing her equipment to another nameless uniform. There were five people working around him, their faces told me that they had given up on him, but they would take him to the hospital, pretend like there was hope for him, offer me useless words and leave me with his useless body to weep over him.

“Miss…”

“Jewels,” I said hurriedly.

“Miss Jewels, we will do all that we can to help Jesse. First we need to get him to the hospital, what is your relation to Jesse?”

“I’m his sister.” The lie slipped from my lips with any thought.

The corridor was empty, nurses would come and go, but none ever stopped. The coffee in my hands was cold. I pushed my right hand through my hair and sighed.

             
“You can sit in with him now if you want, ten minutes, then you’ll have to leave.”

             
She held the door open for me, I whispered a thank you and she wandered down the empty corridor.

             
I paused inside of the door and looked around the drab room, “How is anyone supposed to get better here?” I muttered, before I looked over to Jesse’s broken body.

“Me and my big ideas,” I said as I took hold of his hand and sat down in the pale blue cushioned seat by his bed. I kissed his fingers lightly and smiled as I graced mine across his cheek. “I need you to listen to me and remember everything that I tell you
. I need you to calm down,” I said and I laughed a little. “I can feel how scared you are, I’ve got knots in my stomach,” I sighed and squeezed his hand, “I haven’t felt this
sickness
in centuries.”

I shook my head,
“But that’s not important, what you need to know is that I love you. I will love you no matter what and that’s about the only thing that is certain right now, the only thing that I can promise you, because I can’t say if everything will be okay.”

I sighed and took a breath, “When I leave tonight I won’t come back, it’s too dangerous for me and you. When you wake up you will need to stay calm, breathe through your fear and confusion. Once you’re awake, focus on me, focus on my face, my voice, my smell. I’ll leave my scarf right here next to your bed. Find me, as soon as you feel me, come, and don’t hesitate. If anyone gets in your way, run, don’t stop.”

I rested my head against his hand and smiled, kissing it again, “No matter what, I mean it, you run as fast as you can and you come to me.”