Ascension (27 page)

“I am as jealous as ten jealous men, Eve. You have to understand that. I feel as if I have to banish him from my life now.”

“Don’t you
dare
,” I say. “He loves you. You love him. You’ve had each other for eight hundred years.”

“I don’t want you in the same room with him. I don’t want you ever to be alone with him.”

“Michel!” I take his face in my hands. “I love
you
.
Period
.”

“You fucked him and you enjoyed it.”

I shake my head in exasperation.

“If I could take it back, I would.”

He sighs and pulls me back into his embrace.

Then, he starts searching my past life by stimulating
my
memories.

Happy scenes of my childhood in our cottage west of St. David's in Pembrokeshire on the southwest coast of Wales, the warmth of the large kitchen with the bright yellow curtains at the window overlooking a spray of wildflowers in the garden and beyond it the ocean. The smell of baking bread in the old cooker stove my mother rescued and refurbished at great expense, the heat of the wood stove on my face and hands after playing in the surf. The scent of salt water in the wind as I play along the rocky shore, the seabirds wheeling in the sky above me, diving down in a circuit for the bits of bread I throw to them.

The clear crisp starlit nights when my father took me out to watch the meteor showers, lying on our backs on sleeping bags, oohing and ahhing as the meteors burned across the heavens. Watching the moon through binoculars, joking that it looked like it was made of blue cheese not Swiss, and then later, seeing Saturn through our backyard telescope and taking a long-exposure photograph with our new camera. Hours of piano lessons spent alone in the quiet study, surrounded by floor-to-ceiling shelves of books and family photographs, practicing arpeggios and scales till my fingers hurt.

Then, the trip to
Hungary
, the narrow streets and limited horizon such a change from the wide-open spaces of the Pembrokeshire coast. Dirty old buildings, the cobblestone streets of the old market square, the babble of an incomprehensible language surrounding me. The crisp white blouse and woolen skirt of my uniform, my mother patiently braiding my long black hair into coils on my head as was the local fashion among girls of my age. To the one memory I want to deny –
Boston
, the university, my mother's death. I try to shut h
im out and he rises up and looks
at my face.

"Don't shut me out," he says, his voice thick with emotion.

"Not there," I say, covering my eyes.

His voice pleads.

"I won't go back there, I promise. Just let me in."

I close my eyes and think about him, welcoming him in. It works immediately,
and
I feel him enter my consciousness as if a wind has blown in through an open window. He begins searching through my memories, and settles on one from before my mother died. I was seated in a salon in
Prague
just before we moved back to Boson, playing the piano surrounded by my father's friends and some prospective teachers. The huge room has high ceilings and windows, the walls covered in gilded paper and full-sized portraits of eighteenth century lords and ladies. I play on an old grand and those gathered to judge me sit and listen, assessing my skill, my touch, my interpretation of the music. I play a theme from a Beethoven concerto and there are tears in my father's eyes. I'm so happy, pleased that my father's proud of me. I crave his approval and work diligently in order to get it, performing to his standards so I'll get more attention.

Michel moves on, searching for more memories. One from a few years earlier in
Wales
in which I lie on the couch beside my mother, sick with a cold, my throat aching, my nose plugged. I'm happy though, because she's stroking me, smoothing my hair, my head in her lap. I'm perfectly content to be home from school watching cartoons on television while she reads a book.

Another memory of walking home from school in
London
with my babysitter. Rain falls and I stop to explore the streams and puddles formed along the gutters, the tiny rivers carrying leaves and twigs along to the drains. We make a boat out of a piece of paper from my backpack and I kneel, umbrella over my head, and watch it float along on the water's surface to the drain, spinning in a circle as it reaches the larger puddle.

Christmas in
Boston
, attending the cathedral in the city for Mass, the incense, the stained glass, the priest in his colorful vestments, the murmur of the congregation repeating the litany. I enter the church, dipping my fingers in the font, genuflecting at the side of the pew, the wooden bench hard against my bony knees, enjoying the sense of awe I felt being in such a holy place.

It's the last time I go into a church except for her mass and the last time I felt any connection to a god. The next day my mother dies in front of me, gasping from a bite wound on her neck, bright red arterial froth foaming at the wound, dripping from her mouth as I lean over her and try to stem it.

Stop!
Grief overwhelms me and I shut him out, covering my eyes, the memory far too real, the emotions too intense.

"I'm sorry." He takes me in his arms. "I didn't try to go there," he says. "You went there."

"No I didn't," I say and wipe my eyes. "Why do you want to go there?"

"I don't. You keep thinking of that day as if you really want to go back, but you're afraid to do it alone."

I don't reply, just lie there with his arms around me. Like before, bits of him seep through when he can't hold it back and I understand the great loneliness the vampires feel as immortals, my heart breaking at their despair at ever getting back what they'd lost. Only in these brief moments when they connect with a mortal and even more so with an Adept can they begin to feel as they once did. Human. I have to forgive him because this bliss of union is almost too much for a human to bear. It will be mine for as long as I want it – until it's time for me to leave and kill Soren.

CHAPTER 25

"We know the truth, not only by reason, but also by the heart."

Pascal

"I want to meet with someone in the Council,"
I say the next evening, after the sun sets and Michel comes to me.

"We'll talk of that later," he says, sitting on the sofa in the library, opening his arms to me. "Come, feed."

"I'm fine," I reply and pace the floor in front of the window. "I've been thinking all day. Soren will have to think you and I have parted. We'll have to either break up or I'll have to be taken from you somehow."

"Yes. Now, come here," he says again, patting his lap. "Don't wait until you're sick. Have some now and you'll be good all night. You can feed again before dawn and then you'll be good all day."

He holds his hand out to me, as if impatient to have me comply. I stop and considered his offer.

"If I feed more often, is there any chance that I'll become more addicted?"

"You'll get used to taking less, but more often. To change the schedule would mean you'd be uncomfortable for a while, but no, you won't become more addicted. At least, not physically."

"But mentally? That's possible?"

"Anything's possible, Eve. But not likely. You're too strong."

I step closer, not yet convinced I need to feed yet. "You're not going to make me do the crawl on my knees submission thing again, are you?"

"Not unless you want to." He smiles, just a quirk on one side of his mouth.

"I'm not into the worship scene. I'm an atheist. Sexual submission is a whole different thing."

He tilts his head to one side. "Still don't believe in God?"

"Why would I? There's no evidence. I tend to need evidence before I accept something is real." I step a bit closer, enjoying just looking at him sitting there bare-chested. Behind him, his wings are unfurled. The place where I'd fed the previous night has healed.

"What evidence would you accept?"

I take another step in front of him, considering the question only half-seriously.

"A very powerful smite of some kind, I suppose. Maybe a big booming voice from the heavens saying 'I am the I am'." I grin and he smiles back, shaking his head.

"Even those could be manufactured."

"I was joking."

"I wasn't," he says and pats his knee. "Come."

"I see you haven't brought me a vial of your blood again."

I sit on his lap, my arms slipping around his neck. He looks in my eyes.

"The
re will
be no vials of blood between us."

"You like it when I feed off your body." When I say it, desire surges through me, surprising me with its intensity.

"So do you," he says, his voice dropping to a lower register. "I guarantee drinking blood out of a vial would be a pale substitute for the real thing." He brushes my hair away from my neck and when he licks the skin over the original wound Julien made and over which he bit me, I feel a jolt of lust. It's healed quite well – faster than normal, but there's still a pair of marks where he bit me.

"I need something as well," he says.

I stiffen and pull away.

"Do you think it's wise? Am I well enough to lose more blood?"

"Yes," he says, lowering the strap of my nightgown to expose my shoulder and breast. "You've recovered. You have my blood in you. You'll heal much more quickly and replace your blood volume more rapidly than normal."

His words don't calm my fears.

"Don't you have some donor blood? I don't know if I feel right about this…"

I try to stand, but he stops me.

"Don't be afraid," he says. "What happened the other night won't happen again. I promise you."

I hold a hand over the wound on my neck, unsure.

"How do I know that Soren hasn't compelled you to kill me to punish you?"

"That's not his endgame."

"What is?"

He shakes his head. "Don't ask me what you know I won't tell you, Eve."

Then, my anxiety decreases and I relax, heaving a sigh, but it happens too quickly to be of my own accord. Michel's trying to calm me using his powers so he can feed on me. I block him, shutting him out immediately so that I no longer feel his mind at the edges of my consciousness.

"Don't do that," I say and try once more to stand up. "Don't manipulate me."

"Don't shut me out." For a moment, we just stare each other down. "Eve," he says, pulling me closer, his greater strength easily overcoming my paltry resistance. "You're mine. This is what we do."

I cover my eyes. "I'm not yours. I'm my own."

"So stubborn," he says. "Tell me you don't want me and I'll let you go."

I hit his chest lightly playfully.

"I do want you, but have you ever heard about a thing called equality?"

"We're not equal," he says softly. "Pretending that it's so is, I would think, unscientific."

"Pretending it's so is necessary for this to work," I say and lean in, pressing my cheek against his. "I'm human in that way, I guess." I pull back. "I may not be as powerful as you, or as old, or as wise, but I have just as much right as a sapient being to determine my own wants and desires."

"I know your wants and desires, Eve. Besides, those who have power have the right to take what they desire," he says.

"Might makes right?" Sadness fills me that he can make such a bald assertion. "Might may win, but do you really want to force me?"

"Of course not. I want you to offer yourself willingly as I've said from the start. I'm not a monster. But I know you want this just as I do. Because of your past, you feel this need to fight everything, to reassure yourself that you have power. It's to make up for all those times when you didn't have power."

"Don't remind me."

"Don't you see? That's what your resistance is about. In resisting, you only deprive yourself of what you really want. Being with me is what you really want. Being my submissive is what you really want. It's Fate."

"I don't believe in Fate."

"Nevertheless, like vampires and fallen angels, Fate exists in spite of your refusal to believe. All of us tread a very fine line, trying to influence Fate. She only listens so much, and in the end she has her way despite our best efforts. Just give in."

 
"Give in to you."

"Yes," he says and closes his eyes. "Give in to me. Surrender to me. Acknowledge that this is your fate and your desire and you'll be happy. Finally, you'll be happy."

Emotion wells up inside me.

"I can't," I say, my voice breaking.

"You can't what? Be happy?"

"I can't surrender."

"Eve," he says and runs his fingers through my hair. "Wasn't last night good?"

I shake my head. "It was beyond good. It was," I say, struggling with words to describe it. "Bliss."

"Yes, it was." He cups my cheek. "Take the bliss. You deserve it. You've suffered so much pain."

"It scares me," I say, remembering. "I feel as if I'll lose myself. Be consumed. Disappear."

He nods. "I understand. I promise you that you won't." He bends down and kisses the curve of my breast. "If anything, you'll come out stronger."

"Why?"

He runs his hands down my back.

"You'll understand what's important."

He kisses me, and I let him. There's no connection between us and I enjoy the feel of his lips against mine, his tongue touching mine, his arms around me – a separate being experiencing my own emotions and senses. I can almost feel him trying to get in and I know that unlike me, he feels that lack of connection as a painful reminder of his loneliness rather than a sweet pleasure. I want to delay the connection so I can just enjoy as my own desire grows, building as his hands explore my body, cupping a breast, rubbing a thumb against a nipple, then sliding his hand up my thighs to the soft flesh between.

He needs to feel my response to his touch – his own desire isn't enough. For him, it feels empty, disconnected. Incomplete. So I let him in.

He trembles as our senses join and for a moment, the wave of desire from him overwhelms me. He pulls his lips away from mine and, with his eyes still closed, he tilts his head to the side and runs his fingernail along the skin beneath his ear, opening up a seam from which his blood flows. I lean down and cover it with my mouth, sucking, his response so strong that my body convulses with pleasure. Coupled with the rush from his blood, I barely needed his touch between my thighs to climax, my body shuddering as he bites my neck and drinks from me.

He lies me back on the sofa and this time, he pulls his mouth away when he enters me, no longer drinking, having taken only a mouthful. Just enough for the connection between us to deepen, growing stronger as his desire builds until the world falls away and there's only pleasure too sweet to endure.

Michel agrees to let me meet with someone
from the Council a few days later. He isn't happy that we're leaving the warehouse and it's only using an armed escort that I'm allowed out. He spends a very long time with me that night after I feed, our arms and legs entwined.

"I hate this," he says, running his fingers over my lips. "To find you, to claim you, and then to have you leave me."

"I'm not leaving you," I say and kiss his neck. "I'm going to kill Soren. It has nothing to do with leaving you. When this is all over, I'll come back."

"With Soren dead, there'll be big changes here. There'll be a turf war over who'll replace him among his coven. I'm thinking of relocating. Maybe leave this place. If you could go anywhere in the world, where would you want to go?"

I sigh, thinking of the places I've been before in my life.

"Somewhere by the ocean," I say without hesitation. "Maybe it's just in my blood. The sea."

He studies my face for a moment with an expression of resignation.

"Things are going to happen that will shock you," he says and strokes my cheek. "Since I agreed to let you try to fight Soren, I've been planning with my remaining contacts in the Council, trying to arrange things, letting certain information slip. Just follow your instincts. You and I will have to part for a time, but Soren won't deny you when he takes you. Just don't fight him and he'll be only too glad to keep you as his pet."
 

"Can't you tell me what the plan is?"

He shakes his head.

"Just know that you'll be taken from me. It will look like an ambush. You'll become Soren's possession – there's no way that he won't take you as his own given the chance. When the time comes you'll be given what you need to kill him."

"Why didn't he take me before?"

"Don't worry about that," he says. "He'll take you now. The less you know about this, the better, so that's all I can say."

I nod, the solemnity of his voice making me fearful. The prospect of killing Soren doesn't seem so appealing all of a sudden. I pull Michel closer, emotion choking me at the thought I'll be taken away from him soon.

"You agree that this is the way to proceed? Your friends in the Council do as well?"

"There'll be someone to replace him when he's destroyed, but this way we'll have an advantage. He's the most powerful of us now, and as leader of this gambit, without him, there's no one strong enough among his coven to take over and follow through. Just me and Julien. No one strong enough to challenge us. But the plan won't involve your death," he says, and brushes my hair away from my face. "I'll only agree to this if it means you're to survive and come back to me."

I kiss him, my arms tightening around him. There's no bliss for us that evening. Only sadness at the prospect we'd soon part.

Despite my growing ambivalence about leaving on this mission, I'm happy to walk the streets of my old neighborhood, past the bakery directly beneath my apartment where I buy black rye and crusty Italian loaf and the butcher a few rows down where I purchase pickles and ripe olives when I lived there. I bought most of my groceries at a small fruit and vegetable shop that sells fresh flowers.

Seeing the familiar landmarks drives home how much my life has changed in such a short period of time. We stop at my apartment so I can run in and check on my cats. Vasily arranged for someone to come by and feed them but they've been alone all this time. Michel comes in with me and walks around the room, and it reminds me of that day back in time when all this was brand new. Such a short time, but it seems a lifetime ago. He does the same visual tour of the apartment, picking up my possessions and smiling. He holds up a plastic Nemo fish I keep by my kitchen sink.

"A toy?"

I laugh and pour fresh kibble in the cat bowls. "I had a clownfish once and was very fond of it. When the movie came out I had to get one as a reminder." I spend a few moments giving the cats attention while Michel inspects my bookshelf, picking up my texts and flipping through the pages. I wash out the water dishes and fill them, then look around the tiny apartment. What a difference from the warehouse or mansion. The kitchenette in my apartment is the size of that in an RV. The shower isn't much bigger. But it was home once and I feel a sense of melancholia for my past life. The world seemed so full of promise to me then. I thought I'd actually have a normal life once upon a time, despite my horrible adolescence. Now? I'm not sure how long I'll even live. This is war. My mother died in the cause.