Vision Quest (20 page)

A flicker of interest sparked in Ţapul's eyes. It was an ember that fueled Arik's bravery. "And if you're asking yourself 'Why me?' then let me fill you in on a little secret. I've known your name since before I knew what it meant. I've seen your face in my dreams." An exaggeration, a lie, really. Arik didn't care. Ţapul hadn't stopped him from talking. That meant something. If nothing else, it meant Arik could continue. "What I'm telling you is that I'm supposed to be here, and you're supposed to help me, and lest you end up on the wrong side of your own damn horror-story ending, you're going to damn well help me for no other reason than something out there is insisting that you must."

Arik paused, gauging reaction. "I don't need to tell you what kind of consequences you might end up facing if you piss off these forces."

Ţapul smiled the tiniest of smiles and lifted an eyebrow. "Did you just threaten to curse me?"

Arik lowered his eyes and shook his head. "No, sir." He shrugged. "I won't have to."

Ţapul laughed out loud, and shifted his weight to perch on the corner of the desk. "You're adorable." He lifted a hand, twirled it. "Crazy. But adorable."

"And you're gorgeous." Arik smiled. "Frustrating. But gorgeous. And not the only Romanian I've thought those words about. Must be a cultural thing."

"And this is the woman who is causing you grief?"

Arik snorted. "Man. But he causes me no grief. That emotion is all for him, unfortunately."

"I see."

"You don't." Arik turned back to the door. "But you will."

He tugged the doors apart, and Blaze all but tumbled into the room. Arik laughed, Blaze grinned, and Arik heard Ţapul rise from his spot on the desk.

"Mr. Ţapul," Arik caught Blaze's hand, and pulled him closer. "This is Blaze. Blaze, meet our Goat Man."

"And then we got the phone call and came here," Arik finished. He sat in an overstuffed armchair covered in gold fabric and red peonies. One leg was crossed over the other at the knee, and one foot was bouncing to a manic beat. "That's it. That's the entire story."

Mister Ţapul—Lucas, please call him Lucas, he'd said—sat in a chair that matched Arik's at another corner of their triangular seating arrangement. His dark grey slacks were impeccably pressed, his shirt had been starched within an inch of its life, but his shirttails were out, and the cardigan he wore was well-loved and patched at the elbows. Blaze liked him. Blaze liked anybody who approached chaos with an air of curiosity and fearlessness. It was rare and beautiful and damned handy.

After Blaze had fallen into the room, Lucas had suggested they sit and perhaps crack open a bottle of bourbon he'd found squirreled away in his sister's special liquor cabinet. Marjorie Ţapul had always been an eccentric, and it was in her house, cluttered as it was with scrolls and knick knacks that ranged from stuffed bears to figurines of Saints to grotesque and politically-incorrect statues of lewd acts and the judgements of them, in which they sat.  Lucas lived nearby in a townhome, or so he'd told them as they had gotten comfortable and had waited on Lucas' man to bring the drinks, and he was considering opening up Marjorie's house as a museum.

"An ode to the obscure," Lucas had said, laughing and thanking the handsome man who brought the bourbon. "She was a strange one, my sister. Was obsessed with religions, among other things, and the rituals that went along with them. But, I suppose, we're all afflicted with peculiarities. Some of us just have brands that are easier to hide."

"True," Arik had agreed. He'd been fidgeting and glancing at Blaze every time he thought Blaze wouldn't notice. Eventually Blaze had reached over and squeezed Arik's hand. Lucas had watched, a shadow darkening his face, though Blaze was almost positive it had nothing to do with homophobia and everything to do with regret.

"So," Lucas had prompted. "Tell me everything."

Blaze had been about to jump in and offer up an intricate lie that was composed of enough truth to make it believable. He had some skill in that area, after all, but Arik had shocked the hell out of Blaze and gone for broke. Arik had started with his father jumping off a bridge and had ended with their journey from the Fireward to the estate. Blaze had sank further and further into one half of a plush loveseat with gilded edging and dandelions dancing on the cushions, and he'd listened to Arik's frank, calm, but impassioned recounting of their lives together so far. Hearing it all put Blaze into a kind of fugue state. His lips went a little numb, and his extremities tingled like he was touching Arik when he wasn't. Blaze didn't mind; the reminder of their connection, real or not, was pleasant. It made him wonder if it'd be possible one day to have with Arik what he'd had with Doru; a constant link. To wake and walk and work knowing what your other half was doing, feeling, almost thinking ... Blaze couldn't contemplate the possibility too long. He would start to cry, here in this grieving man's inherited home, and he might not stop for a full cycle of the earth around the sun.

Arik had told their story with a financier's account of detail, and he'd addressed the floor and the fireplace, mostly, but Blaze had watched Lucas. The Goat Man's eyes had widened once or twice, and he'd drained his glass dry by the end, but there was never once a glimmer of derision or damnation. Just interest.

Blaze approved, both of Lucas and of Arik's choice to spill all their guts, and a painful burbling began again in Blaze's insides. It had started in the shower, after they'd finished and were washing up. At first, Blaze thought he was getting sick or ill and was about to start bleeding out, but nothing like that had happened.

In the car, when the twisting, turning, knotty sensation had happened again, Blaze had huddled closer to Arik, breathed, and thought the feeling was ... vaguely familiar. Distant, like one might remember old, old physical pain. With agony, Blaze knew, you remembered the sight of the knife piercing your skin. You remembered the well of blood, the horror that you really were so much meat and fragile bone, and the knowledge that such vulnerability would, most certainly, kill you. The pain itself was a sidelined ghost. It had happened, but its particulars were lost in the nightmare of your life draining out of your body long before it was time.

And now, with the silence looming in the library and the fire crackling and the wind blowing branches to rat-tat-tat against the tall windows, Blaze felt the churning in his guts a third time. Or maybe it was the fourth. Or maybe ... it'd been there ever since he'd seen a man with dark hair and kind eyes in his Vision dreams.

Hope. Blaze was pretty sure what he was experiencing was desire for things to get better and the hope that maybe, just maybe, they could. Hope was a badger trying to chew its way out of Blaze's innards, and Blaze was happy to let the little fucker do what it wished.

"Huh." Lucas went to take a drink, discovered only melting ice, and reached for the decanter the servant had left behind. "So you think I can solve your riddle and you're telling me that you," Lucas looked at Blaze over the rim of his glass. "Are over three-hundred-and-fifty years old?"

"We don't really expect you to believe it," Blaze said.

"Fuck that," Arik said. "I
do
expect him to. He needs to."

"No, actually, I don't."

Both Arik and Blaze turned to Lucas. "I don't," Lucas repeated. "I don't need to believe it at all in order to think about it. That's like saying I have to believe in Santa Claus to research Saint Nicolaus. Or that I have to shake hands with Satan to study Dante's seven rings." Lucas shook his head. "It's a hell of a story, gentlemen, and for what my opinion is worth, I think it's as real as anything can be to the two of you."

"Want to see him cut his finger off?" Arik asked. "It's inspiring on the belief front."

"No, no," Lucas said. "I think I can do without that. Though I have seen a man brought back from the dead."

"Excuse me?" Arik asked.

Lucas nodded. "Mmhm, I was in a god-awful little shack two hours outside of Saint Petersburg. I was interviewing a woman who was, as best as my research could tell, the last of a line of witches descended from a cult that was one of the earliest records of groups that worshipped Lilith. Or, well, their version of that figure. Anyway, a man had died and his wife and son brought his body to the woman's house while I was there. She let me stay, saying that I wouldn't believe what my eyes would see, anyway, so there was no harm. She took the end bones of the wife's fingers and the pinky toes of the little boy and mixed them into some sort of vat. She poured the substance down the dead man's throat, and just after midnight, he sat straight up, wheezed, and asked for a dram of vodka."

"Sweet Jesus." Arik put his hands on either side of his head, as though worried his brains might explode out of his ears. Blaze drank.

"No, sweet witchcraft." Lucas looked at Blaze. "That woman sound like the sort who cursed you?"

"Similar."

"Could it have been the same woman?" Arik asked, and Blaze loved the man's ability to tie final straws together at their frayed ends.

"No," Blaze said.

"How do you know? You've survived all this time. Why not her?"

Blaze studied the amber color of the bourbon. "I know because she's dead."

"How do you—"

"You killed her, didn't you?" Lucas asked.

Arik's eyes went round and though he paled to the color of snow on the sides of city streets, he swallowed and waited for Blaze to answer.

"I never said I was a good man." Blaze couldn't make himself speak louder than a mumble.

"Tell me," Arik said.

Blaze watched the fire dance in the darkness of Arik's eyes. He died and was reborn and died again in the desire to manipulate fire as he'd been born to do. There'd been a time, so long ago, now, that Blaze could hardly remember it and never thought of it, because it was more painful a loss than even Doru, damned as he was by such a prideful admission, that he could have gazed at the flames' reflection in Arik's irises and seen their secrets. He would have known the way and could have led them both on the right path. He would have solved this riddle, this personal Quest, long ago. Which was, of course, why the witch had taken such a gift from him.

"My curse was that so long as her blood was upon this earth, so was I doomed to wander it." Iron bands wrapped around Blaze's chest, making it hard to breathe and harder to speak. "I would never do what she had done. I couldn't fathom it. But I kept tabs on the family lines. I could tell you the dates when each of them died out. None exist today.

"And when I learned that she still lived, some hundred years after I'd woken in a clearing soaked with the blood of my family, my lover, and my own veins, I ... I had to see. She'd made it to the New World, and she'd carved a niche for herself by becoming the incarnation of evil spirits. I found a trail of terrifying stories. I found a camp of Natives. I found a path into the darkest part of the forest nearby, and I found her lair." Blaze paused to drink and to smile at the silent, flickering fire; his stolen best friend. "Everyone sleeps," he said. "Even a sorceress. Especially an underfed, old sorceress. And cold steel solves a great many problems."

For a while, only the wind spoke in scratches on the panes, but finally Arik said, "Good." He stood, he bent, he kissed Blaze's hair, and he said, "Good," again, before shakily turning toward Lucas. "Bathroom?"

"Out those doors, first hall on the left, first door on the right."

"Thank you." Arik kissed Blaze again and left.

"He's a good man," Lucas said, after a moment.

"He is." Blaze wondered if dying would be like this: an ache for what and who you loved, a rush like you were about to dive off a cliff with a parachute that may or may not open, and a deep, abiding melancholy that was finally awake and stirring in your bones because somewhere, somehow, you knew the end was nigh.

"Soft, maybe. But good," Lucas commented.

"Not soft." Blaze tore his gaze off the doorway. "Not like you mean. He's seen plenty. He just still feels it all."

"I see," Lucas said, though Blaze knew he really didn't. "So the family lines are all gone?"

"Yes."

"And yet ..."

"I'm still cursed. I had noticed."

Lucas gave a startled, small laugh. "I'm sure. Have they ever found any evidence of strangeness in you? Of this curse?"

"They who?"

"Doctors and the ilk."

"Ah. No. There've been tests run. I've not always been able to avoid it. I bleed, some good Samaritan takes me somewhere, and they find nothing. My blood is normal. My organs function just fine."
It's my soul that's the problem; it's cursed.

"So you're stuck, then? In time but not place?"

"Forever young. Forever wandering."

"I'm sorry," Lucas said, quietly and horrified.

"Thank you."

"I think you know I can't help you."

"Oh?" Blaze said, because it was the most vague thing he could say.

Lucas waved his hands. "I could tell you a hundred stories of strange things I've seen. But if what you say is true, none of them would be a surprise to the likes of a person with your experience. I know history. There are dozens of books, here, that my sister had and that you could read, all about people and religions. I've got thousands more tomes at my home and access to even more online. But it's all ... struggle and horror. And it's other peoples' struggles. Other peoples' horrors. It's not personal to you and what you're going through, any more than anything else is. History is nothing more than a series of right turns that take us straight back to the sins of our forefathers. I don't know if we ever ... overcome them."

A flash tore through Blaze's mind—

SINS OF THE FATHER

—and he hissed, one hand flying to his temple. It was a Vision of sorts, though it was very, very rare for such imagery to hurt.

"Are you all right?"

"I'm fine," Blaze lied. "You were saying?"

Lucas's look was wary, but he sipped his drink and continued. "I love that you two came here, today. It's the first time I've felt alive in years. When your boyfriend marched in here, demanding answers ..." Lucas chuckled. "It was like seeing myself from the outside in. But I don't think I can help you. I don't have any insight. I've had none of your kind of Vision while I've sat here, listening to your macabre and incredible story. I'm just an old man." He paused. "An old queen. Who went searching for answers in books because I couldn't figure out the greatest riddle of my life."