Vision Quest (16 page)

"No, but you think it's for a hurt done
to
me," Blaze said, and Arik's lips twitched. "What?" Blaze asked.

"Nothing. It's just that I've never heard you speak with an accent, before."

"I can stop. I learned to stop a long time ago."

"No, I like it, though it makes you sound ..."

"Older?" Blaze asked, amused.

"Sadder."

"That, too." Blaze sipped his drink. "I'll tell you what happened, and then we'll see."

"See what?"

Blaze shrugged. "What happens next. What you believe."

"If you tell me, I'll believe it. You wouldn't lie to me."

"Only once. I've lied to you only once."

Arik's lips parted, pressed, and he licked them. "I'm listening?"

"Okay. Well." Blaze got up, fetched the bottle, and poured himself another. "Once upon a time ..." He paused for Arik's soft chuckle. "There was a boy with auburn hair and fair skin born into a Roma clan who believed such things were the markers of great power. They called me
Stea
or
Bobot
, which means 'star' or 'flame' or ..."

"Blaze," Arik filled in.

"Exactly." Blaze settled onto the couch. "My clan or
Vitsa
was Zaituc, and the gifts were strong in our blood, as I've told you. We were a medium-sized clan who tended to stand apart, as our power was that of Fire Vision, which was both revered and feared. Many of my people could see things to come in the flames, and because I had red hair and I was a boy, it was thought I would one day be a strong leader, taking after my father.

"My father was
Rom Baro
, or head man, of my clan. He was chosen for that position by our
Phuri
, or elders, and my grandmamere was the
Phuri Dae,
or wise woman, who advised him most directly. She was very old—well over two hundred—and—"

"Wait, what?"

Blaze smiled. "And thought to have gained much wisdom in that time. It was to her that I was given to be trained in our art. It was said that being so close to flames and the pictures in them burned out impurities within the soul seeking knowledge."

"Impurities." Arik had the sorting-it-out face. "You mean diseases?"

"And other things, but yes. Hence her age and the longevity of my people."

"And this is why you look younger than you are?" Arik asked, half teasing and half terrified of the truth.

"I'll get to that." Blaze gestured for Arik to take a drink, which he did. "Anyway," Blaze continued. "I had the gift, I had my training, and when I was twelve, my father and our elders made a pact with a
Natsia
, or nation, of Roma. It goes family, clan,
Kumpania
or tribe, and then
Natsia.
The Machwaya were gaining in power and influence, and an alliance with them would have been very beneficial to our much smaller and unallied clan. The
Rom Baro
of the head family of the Machwaya nation had a son and a daughter, and I was betrothed to the daughter, Meerna. She was only eight, and even then, girls were not wed before they bled, so I had to wait until she was of age. Our circuit that year took us through Budapest and near the Machwaya lands, and I became friendly with Meerna's older brother ... Doru."

"I think I see where this is going," Arik said, quietly.

"Probably. Doru was older than me, seventeen, and being groomed to carry on in his father's footsteps. Doru was ... beautiful. Charismatic. He laughed all the time. He loved what I could do with fire, and, as it turned out, what I could do with my mouth." Blaze rubbed his eyes. They were dry, as though full of smoke.

"You must understand, in my culture, women were thought of as unclean. Men only married and mated for children. Women were powerful, but not to be trusted, and some clans and families almost celebrated homosexuality." Blaze had to laugh. "They were, of course, systematically destroyed by the ones who thought of pretty much any sex as an unclean act. But my family ..." Blaze shrugged. "It wasn't the biggest crime or sin. That was denying power or using it for ill. So fucking a boy? Less an issue than cursing said boy.

"Unless, of course, you were the redheaded, powerful son of the family leader who was engaged to the daughter of a powerful family in a massive nation."

"What happened?" Arik whispered.

Blaze closed his eyes. "I saw it in the flames. I was nineteen. Doru and I had been lovers for six years, and finally Meerna, was ready to be my bride. Two nights before our wedding day, I was seeking wisdom in a campfire, and I saw ... Well, what I saw sent me running. When I crossed into Doru's family camp, I was taken, hooded, and beaten. I don't know for how long. I remember the smell of the sack over my head, potatoes. I remember thinking they'd kill me with their boots and their fists, and I remember telling them that my father and my family would avenge me. They laughed at me, tied me, and dragged me by the ankles through leaves and brush. When they took the hood off my head, I was surrounded by the Machwaya elders and sons. Meerna ..." Blaze drank, finished his glass, and had to put it aside, else he drink the entire bottle.

"Meerna had been killed for her association with me, the unclean, unlucky son of fire. And Doru had been treated much the same way as me. He was tied and on his knees in front of me. They'd cut out his eyes. And while I was made to watch ..."

"Oh God, Blaze ..."

"While I watched, they stripped him, raped him, cut off his penis, and finally slit his throat."

Arik dropped his empty glass and tried to reach for Blaze, but Blaze pulled away. He'd never finish if Arik touched him. "The lie I told you was when you asked if I'd ever felt the
punct luminos
, the spark ... the connection with anyone else other than you. I told you no, but ... with Doru, I had it. With us, it's gentler, actually, at least for now. It is only when we touch skin, but with Doru, it was all the time. When he was closer, it sang louder. When we touched, it screamed for joy ... and when he died, I watched him fade and ... I
felt
it, too."

The silence lingered until finally Arik let go of a shaky sigh. "Jesus Christ." He sniffed and wiped tears off his cheeks. "The police? The authorities? What ... were they caught? Did your family fight them?"

"No. That night, while I watched Doru's blood dry on the ground, a woman who was the wise woman of one of the other Machwaya families, came forward. Her family had power, too, but it was darker. A blood-fed power. She sent everyone away, and I was alone with her and the corpses of my lover and my bride-to-be. She told me that her family had to destroy my family, else we see what she and her sisters were planning for the nation. It had been the plan to poison us all at the wedding, but my transgressions had given her another way. A faster, bloodier way that would feed her abilities all the more. She apologized to me, for what I had come to represent and for all I would suffer. She was evil and crazed, but like all truly mad people, she had her version of compassion."

Arik made a quiet noise of pain, and Blaze pressed on. "That night and over the next three days, my entire
Vitsa
was slaughtered. I was kept in that clearing with the rotting bodies, without food or water, and the wise woman worked a curse. She used pieces of Doru and Meerna, bits of herself, and a lot of my blood. She made me drink. She cut me. She bled on me. She did all sorts of unspeakable things. I remember most of it as though I was watching it, not living it, and I have to think I was near dead because of that."

"And this is
compassion?
" Arik blurted.

"No, the curse was. Instead of killing me, she enhanced my gifts, though she took away my ability to see what I wished to see. Instead, I would receive Visions of those men who were like myself, who needed my help on their paths in their lives. She could not give me back Doru, but she could give me countless men who would want me as Doru had wanted me, even if it was only for a time. She could not give me back my family, but I would carry on my family's creed to use our skills to benefit others, and I would do it for far longer than any of them naturally could have done, even my grandmamere. And she could not undo her magics or her need to destroy us and me and Doru, but she could ensure that my curse would end when the last of her blood dried from this earth."

"The last of her ... Well, how long is that?"

Blaze smiled, ruefully. "Well, it's been three-hundred-seventy-one years, and I'm still here. So who knows, really."

"Three ... hundred ... and ..." Arik blinked. Arik sat up straight. Arik squinted at Blaze. Then he laughed. "Are you trying to tell me that you're ..."

"Yep."

"And that you
died
when you were ..."

"Cursed," Blaze corrected, one finger held aloft in the air. "I was cursed when I was nineteen. I'm still pretty lively."

Arik got up, unconsciously moving away from Blaze, who couldn't blame the man. "And pretty, for that matter," Arik said.

"I know. I'm well-preserved."

"Which means you, what, can't die?"

"Nope. I've tried it. In between Quests, I mean."

Arik was backing away slowly. "Wha ... What are you saying?"

Blaze studied Arik, sighed, and got up. He circled wide, making sure Arik knew he wasn't giving chase. "Ever seen
Groundhog Day?
Bill Murray? It's like that. I've tried drowning, guns, knives, jumping out of a plane and not opening the chute, and pretty much any other peaceful or horrible way you can think to die. Doesn't work. I black out, wake up somewhere else, and am fully whole. The Universe doesn't seem to mind those little side jaunts. It's only when I buck against the curse's plan for me that I start to melt from the inside out, and then I get to feel like I'm dying. Or wish I was."

"But that's impossible," Arik said stubbornly. And adorably. "All of this is, really. I mean, I might buy that this nightmare with your families happened, but ... I mean ..." He raked his fingers through his hair.

"I'd say I could prove it to you," Blaze said. "Thanks to the Internet and the constant data stream, there are scanned pictures of me that date back to the thirties. There's a tiny cult based in Germany who thinks I might be Jesus. Even the Zaituc clan has a Wiki page. But ..." Blaze shrugged. "If you're like the last guy who tried to comprehend all this, you'd just tell me that—"

"The evidence can be doctored," Arik said. "Photoshop. It's all ... It could all be altered. There's no way ... Oh God." Arik ran into the doorframe leading into the bedroom. He wrung his hands. "There's no way. You can't be crazy. You just can't be, Blaze. What fucking God would put us together after all that shit went down with my ..." His eyes flew wide. "Am I supposed to make sure
you
don't jump off a ... do you need a ... Do I even
know
a shrink? My therapist is good, but she's not
that
good. Christ ..."

"Arik."

"Yeah?"

"Do you love me?"

Arik's entire countenance softened, and he crept closer. "I do. I was lying when I said I was falling. I've already—"

Blaze chose his words carefully. "Are you watching?"

Arik stiffened, freezing in his tracks. "What?"

"Are you?"

Blaze could see Arik trembling from where he stood, and it killed him, but Blaze waited until Arik nodded and said, "Yeah. Blaze, I'm ... I'm watching. What are you—"

"Then watch this."

Blaze picked up the knife he'd used to open the Scotch, slammed his left hand down onto the table, and sawed his index finger off in a few, brutal hacks of the honed blade.

"Do you need to sit down?"

Blaze's voice was remarkably calm, and Arik caught his gaze and held it. Arik opened his mouth, tried to force his tongue into motion, and succeeded, mostly, with a choked, "No."

Whether Blaze winced at the pitch of Arik's voice or at the expression on Arik's face, Arik didn't care to take a guess.

Just a game, right? Just a trick of his mind, wasn't it? Psychosomatic, if I recall—

"Maybe you should sit down."

Blaze stepped forward, reached out, and Arik couldn't stop his body from flinching away from the touch. The look that darkened Blaze's face twisted through Arik's guts as if it was a tangible thing—a snake. With hooked fangs. On fire.

"I'm fine." Arik tried not to speak through his teeth. He attempted a smile in order to loosen the clamp of his jaw. Both failed miserably if Blaze's unspoken, but obviously wounded response was any indication.

You wanted to see the disease. You wanted to know. You, and you alone, opened Pandora's Box. You do not get the option of losing your mind when you finally get to see what's hiding inside.

They should have been on their way to an E.R. They should have been staunching the flow of blood—
black blood
—with towels and shirts, trying desperately to keep track of a digit in dire need of reattachment. Except ... there'd been no need. There'd been no gore. Instead ...

Arik pulled a breath far shakier than the previous one and snapped his eyelids wide when they tried to fall. Vertigo was so much easier to fight with one's eyes open.

Instead there'd been the slow creep of a finger that should have been lying dead towards a hand that should have been spouting blood, and a nauseating squelch and shuffle while skin found skin and merged. Reattaching. Becoming whole. The process literally unfolding, refolding, and Lord-God-Almighty-tentacling in some space-oddity, science-would-love-to-study-this-shit amazement right in front of Arik's eyes.

Arik had been stunned. Blaze had just looked sad.

"M-maybe water ..." Arik stammered.

"Fuck water." Blaze sighed. He snagged the bottle of whiskey and handed it to Arik, foregoing the offer of a glass. "Drink."

Arik stared hard and long at the hand wrapped around the bottle. Perfectly normal. Beautiful, even. Still with the long, slim fingers and the pale, unmarked skin. That hand had been around his cock, those fingers in his hole. They'd twined, palm to palm, each digit wound as they'd lain in bed, letting the connective sparks that existed between their skin shine. But that had been when a hand was a hand, and a person was a person, and mortality wasn't a joke.