"This is where you live?" I looked around the room. The word squalid immediately came to mind, but I squelched it as coming from a too middle-class background, and tried instead to see it as an unbiased visitor might. The drapes that hung in front of a grime-encrusted window didn't look the exact color of vomited Pepto Bismol, but they weren't off by much. A rickety desk to my left had one leg about two inches shorter than the others, while the veneer at the corners of the desk peeled upward. The bed next to the table had a distinct sag in the middle. Two flabby gray pillows and a mottled brown and green bedspread topped it. Behind me a wardrobe missing one door appeared to have recently been the domicile of several families of incontinent mice. A cracked mirror above a rust-stained sink completed the room's accoutrements. "I'm sorry, I gave it my best shot, but I'm going to have to go with my initial impression, and that's god-awful."
"I don't live here," Adrian said, setting a beat-up black leather satchel on an obscenely overstuffed chair that was apparently upholstered with some sort of shiny bok choy. The satchel immediately slid to the ground. "I simply stay in this hotel when I'm in Cologne."
I crossed my arms over my chest, covertly rubbing my arms to warm them up. Evidently the Hotel Geh Shlafen didn't include a heat source in their rooms. "Which brings up the question of exactly why we're in Cologne. I thought you said we're going to England."
"We are." He unbuckled the straps on the satchel and dug out a small shaving kit. "But I prefer not to travel during the daylight hours, so we'll stay here until this evening."
"Here?" I looked around the room, ending at the saggy bed. He couldn't be thinking what I was thinking he was thinking. Could he? "Together? Us?"
"Here, together, us. You may sleep on the bed. I will use the chair." He pulled a straight-edge razor from the shaving kit and laid it on the sink.
"You're shaving?" I asked, intrigued as he lathered up a small shaving brush. "Wait a minute! You can't shave, you're a vampire! Everyone knows vamps don't have beards!"
"Everyone is wrong," he said carefully as he finished applying the lather to his face, the scrape of the razor along his left cheek sending odd little thrills down my back. I've always had a thing for men shaving - it was such an intimate act, one that hinted that Adrian was as comfortable with me as I was with him. Which, considering that we'd only known each other a day, gave credence to my growing belief that I was his own personal soul-saver. I shoved that thought aside and turned my attention to less confusing issues.
"Hey! You have clothes in here!" I pulled a black cotton pullover from the satchel. "What's the deal with that? I thought vamps could, you know, materialize their own clothes!"
He glared at me in the broken mirror as the straightedge swept along his upper lip.
"First you have to shave, then you can't magic up your own clothes, and just what's this?" I shook a familiar object at him. "A toothbrush! Who ever heard of a vampire needing a toothbrush? You don't eat, for Pete's sake! And I have never, ever read a book where a vampire needed a toothbrush. Obviously, you need to get with the times, Adrian. How old are you, anyway?"
"Four hundred and eighty-one, not that my age has anything to do with me needing to shave or brush my teeth. I assure you that no Dark One I know can materialize clothing out of nothing. We are not magical sprites, Nell. We're damned, tortured men, children of the red abyss, nightwalkers bound to eternal torment, but that doesn't mean we have poor hygiene. We shave, we brush our teeth, and we bathe regularly. Does that answer all your questions?"
"Wow." I sat down on the bed, sliding backward into the dip, ignoring his rant to dwell on the weight of his age. "Four hundred and eighty-one. That means you were born in... uh - "
"1524."
"Wow," I said again, having a hard time wrapping my mind around that idea. Oh, I didn't have difficulty believing he was immortal, but the things he must have seen! The events he had lived through! The knowledge he had gained over four centuries! "You're a historian's dream come true! It makes me drool just thinking about what's in your head."
He washed off the last of the shaving soap, carefully drying his things before tucking them away, his eyes the color of a bright blue topaz. "You do not want to know what's in my head, Nell. Not even if you were my Beloved could you cope with the things I have done, the monster I have become. I was not named the Betrayer without reason."
"You know, you can't say something like that to me and not expect me to rise to the challenge." I suited words to action and got off the bed, stopping directly in front of him. "I'm still not convinced that I'm not this Beloved person, but I can assure you that I'm not going to push you into a relationship."
"That's good, because you're not - "
"I will, however, prove to you that you're not the scary monster you think you are. Oh, I know, you've done bad things, but come on, Adrian - you're cursed, seriously cursed! I might not be an expert on the subject of demon lords, but I'm willing to bet that bearing one of their curses doesn't mean you go around doing random acts of kindness. I also know that I wouldn't find you as nummy as I do if you were truly an evil person, so you can just stop frowning. You're not evil. You're not a monster. Don't forget I had a peek into your mind."
"You fainted after you did," he answered, his lips compressed into a grim line. It just made me want to grab him by the ears and kiss him until his eyes turned black.
"That was just the shock of finding out your soul had gone AWOL. It had nothing to do with who you are or what you've done. Want me to prove it?" I took a step forward until I was almost touching him. "Brace yourself, because Mr. Mind is about to have company. Now, let's see, what did I do before? Oh, yeah."
I stood very still, calmed my scattered thoughts, and held an image of him in my mind.
Nothing happened.
"What am I doing wrong?" I asked, opening my eyes. Adrian was standing before me, his arms crossed over his chest again. I gave the squealing, girlish part of my brain a few seconds to admire the way his silk shirt caressed his biceps, and how his rolled-up sleeves exposed the corded strength of his forearms. "When I did this before, whammo! I was in Adrian Central. But now it's not working."
"I do not choose to allow you in my mind," he said, his voice utterly dispassionate.
"Can you do that to your Beloved?" I was a bit taken aback by his refusal to allow me in, growing annoyed when I thought of the times he'd strolled into my head without my permission.
"If you were my true Beloved, no, I couldn't keep you out. There is nothing that can be kept secret between a Dark One and his Beloved, but as you are not..."
I put my hand over his heart and immediately sank into his consciousness, the howling emptiness within him filling me. I gasped with pain as it overwhelmed me, absorbing everything within me and leaving nothing but rage and agony. I fought to breathe, fought to keep my heart beating despite the ageless despair that consumed me.
Reality swirled away from me, time and place blending into an impenetrable miasma. Just as I began to fall into the heart of it, Adrian was there, holding me close, buffering the darkness so it didn't absorb me, his presence the lifeline I needed to survive. I clung tightly to him, struggling to control the emotions that were pouring into me, until slowly, atom by atom, I took the blackness and pain and torment, and held it trembling within me. I looked deep into Adrian's crystal-clear eyes, and knew what I wanted. I wanted his pain to be gone. I wanted his soul to fill the void that ached within him. I wanted the darkness to turn to light.
You've suffered long enough, Adrian. The words formed in my mind as his mouth descended upon mine, his heat fueling me as I transformed his darkness. For the pain, I gave him succor. For the emptiness, I gave him purpose. And for the black despair, I fed him hope.
You cannot do this. It is impossible. This is not happening. Denial was strong in him, but desire was stronger.
His lips burned on mine, his tongue a brand that scorched its way across my lips as it urged me to allow him into my mouth. I shivered with the sudden flood of erotic images that filled my mind, parting my lips to let him sink within.
I want you, Nell. I need you. My body cries out for you. But I cannot have you.
Why? I asked, running my hands down the planes of his back, tugging until I pulled the tail of his silk shirt free from his pants. I'm willing. I'm more than willing, I'm just as desperate as you are. Why can't we do this?
He groaned into my mouth as I sculpted my hands along the hot skin of his back. I felt the struggle within him even before he managed to tear his mouth from mine.
"We cannot do this because I am doomed. We have no future together, Nell. We cannot be together. I will not damn another innocent soul because of my sins."
I grabbed both edges of the front of his shirt and ripped it open. I think he was as surprised at my action as I was, but I didn't let that stop me from yanking off the rest of the shirt. "Mmmrowr!" I purred, throwing myself on him.
"No! I will not let you do this!" he snarled... in between hot, fevered kisses that came close to melting the fillings in my teeth.
He spun us around so that I was caught between a cold, rough wall, and a hot, hard vampire. I sucked his lip into my mouth and used both hands to clutch his hair. "I'm your Beloved, dammit! You're going to let me save your soul, and like it!"
"You'll do nothing of the kind," he growled, whipping my sweater off over my head and staring with sizzling hot eyes at the swell of my breasts above my bra.
"Kiss me," I demanded, tugging his hair.
"No!" His lips possessed mine, his body hard and aggressive, slamming me back into the wall, his groin pressed suggestively against mine. I wiggled against him, mimicking the sinuous movement of his tongue as it bullied mine.
"Feed from me," I begged when his lips parted from mine only to trail kisses of fire down my neck to my chest. Almost five hundred years of experience weren't for naught - with a quick move he had my bra off and flung across the room, the steaming heat of his mouth making me stand on tippy-toe with delirium.
"I won't," he growled just before he took my breast in his mouth, the sharp sting of his canines as they scraped tender flesh soothed by the gentle caress of his tongue. I arched against him, aware but uncaring that he was tugging off my jeans with one hand, his other hand tangled in my hair, my mouth busy as I tasted the salt of his skin. I kissed a path up his neck to the spot behind his ear that I had been dying to nibble on, my hands skimming down the velvet steel of his arms.
"Need me," I moaned as he yanked my underwear off. I swirled my tongue around the curve of his ear, rubbing my now naked body against him, my senses overloading with the feel of his bare chest on mine, the soft hair teasing my breasts even as the rough texture of his jeans abraded more sensitive flesh. He dropped to his knees with a groan, his mouth suddenly possessing me in a way that left me gasping for air, my legs boneless as his tongue flicked and teased and tasted until I clutched his head to me and gave in to the passion he fired.
"Never!" He lifted my still trembling body and followed me down to the bed after shucking his jeans and boots. His body covered mine, all male strength and heat, but it was the sharp hunger within him that had me arching against him, my hands exploring the wonderful territory of his back and adorable behind.
I scraped my nails up his spine as he spread my legs. "Love me!"
"I cannot," he swore, his eyes a deep brilliant blue that burned deep into my soul a scant moment before his hips flexed. Like a brand he seared a path deep into my body, filling me, possessing me, completing me. The red hunger swelled in him, blending with his desire to join with me until it was a piercing white need that consumed me even as his mouth lowered to my shoulder. Pain sharp and hot faded into pleasure as his teeth sank into the base of my neck. The pleasure in the act of him taking life from me was almost as great as the orgasm I teetered on the brink of, his body moving against me with more and more force, our minds joined, his pleasure feeding mine until I honestly thought I would just simply die from the ecstasy of it all. In that moment, in that shining, brilliant moment of clarity I knew we were joined in a way more fundamental than a mere joining of bodies. We were meant to be together, and nothing he could say would change that.
Tell me you didn't feel that. Tell me that wasn't the greatest thing you've ever experienced. Tell me I'm not your Beloved.
His tongue lapped at my neck as he rolled over, holding me tight against him so we were still locked together intimately. Within him the pleasure faded, the blackness returning as sorrow and anguish banished the joy of our joining.
A cold chill clutched my heart. Tell me, Adrian!
His breath was harsh on my ears, his chest heaving beneath me, the sweet, salty taste of him filling my mouth as I kissed his collarbone. I wanted to weep for him, weep for us both. Please tell me.
An agony of truth filled his mind, spilling over into mine. I felt it. You are my life. You are my breath. You are the beat of my heart. You are my Beloved.
I smiled into his neck and relaxed against him, my body still trembling with little aftershocks of pleasure. I didn't want to put a name to what I was feeling for him, I just wanted to enjoy it.
May God have mercy on you, Beloved, for you will find none in me.
"I'm not going to grow fangs now, am I?"
"No."
"Good." I traced a swirly pattern idly across the curse that bound Adrian's chest, admiring both the strength he possessed and the gentleness he'd shown me. "I don't think I could cope with a bloodlust, although I have to admit I find it incredibly sexy when you... you know... dine on me. But I can do without the fang issue. So, any guesses as to why yours suddenly went retractable?"
He opened one eye and gave me an outraged look.
"Oh, right. Recovery time. Sorry. I forgot that men don't like to chat right away. You rest. I'll just lay here snuggly warm and remember how wonderful it felt when we merged together."
He groaned as my hand slid down over his belly. "Is there any reason you feel the need to draw wards on me?"
I propped myself up on my elbow and looked at his chest and stomach in growing horror. "I didn't... I mean, I don't remember how... I've never really drawn wards before."
"You drew a binding ward on Sebastian," he answered, both eyes open now, his irises a speculative light blue. Glimmering faintly in the dim gray light that seeped in through the curtains, an intricate pattern of green spread across his chest and down over his stomach. Beneath the swirls and curves and dips of the pattern, the harsh, sharp lines of the curse glowed red. "It takes a strong ward to hold a Dark One."
"I know I did it, but I don't know how! It just happened!"
His disbelief was strong in my mind. I shook out the mental welcome mat and allowed him in to see the truth for himself. "You must have had some sort of training. People do not just draw powerful binding wards by accident."
"It's kind of odd having you in my head," I mused, running my finger along one silky auburn eyebrow, smoothing out the frown that had formed. "I'm not quite sure I like it. Except when we... you know. Then it's really fabulous. And before you say what I know you're going to say, no, I haven't forgotten any Charmer training. I was never trained. Not formally. I met with a Wiccan a couple of times, that's all."
"But something happened to you, something so horrible you will not allow me access to the memory." His fingers touched my left cheek. What happened to you, Hasi? What happened, to leave the left side of your body weak, and a dark place of sorrow in your heart?
I looked away, biting my lip against the unexpectedness of his endearment (Hasi, a literal translation of "bunny," is a German term often used by lovers), and needing to pull away from his questions.
"I'm not allowed to ask?" His voice was a deep velvet rumble along my skin that had me shivering in sensual delight.
"No, you can ask. It's only fair, since you've put up with me asking you all sorts of personal questions." I took a deep breath, reminded myself that I'd been more intimate with him than with any other person, and looked him dead in the eye. "I killed my best friend when I was twenty. I had a stroke after that."
He stared at me, plainly waiting for more. I curled up on his chest, hiding myself so his cerulean eyes couldn't see into my soul.
"That is all you are going to say? That is all the explanation you are going to give me?"
"The stroke is why my smile is crooked, and why my left side isn't as strong as the right," I said to his nipple. Beneath my cheek, his chest rose and fell, warm and strong and alive, and I wondered how anyone could think of a Dark One as the undead.
It is a matter of some misconception, the silky voice whispered through my mind. Why did you kill your friend?
I heaved a mental sigh and knew I wasn't going to get away with not explaining the whole of my painful past. I stroked along his chest, feeling the slight tingle of the curse as my fingers crossed the path of its pattern. "I told you I couldn't charm the curse that binds you. That's not only because I don't exactly know how to charm, but because the one time I did try, my roommate ended up dead, and I spent three months in the hospital after having fried my brain."
Adrian's mind curled itself around mine as memory of that horrible night filled me, images dancing before my mind's eye of Beth's smiling face as she urged me to try to untangle the curse woven into an altar cloth said to have been owned by Tomas de Torquemada, the infamous Spanish inquisitor.
"Come on, Nellie," Beth had said with a hushed giggle that night so long ago as she unlocked the door to the antiquities room in the university museum where she did her work-study time. "Aunt Li said the curse is right up your alley. All you have to do is unmake it like a ward."
"And I'll say the same thing I said to your aunt, Beth: I don't know a thing about wards and curses. It's all Greek to me. Just because she thinks I'm adorable - "
"A Charmer, not adorable, you idiot," she replied fondly, flipping on her flashlight before hurrying to a tall locked cabinet on the far side of the room. "And Aunt Li should know."
"So she's a big noise in the Chinese Wiccan society - that doesn't mean she knows everything, Beth. She was remarkably vague when it came to explaining to me just why she felt I was going to be able to undo a curse. And as for those wards, she only showed me a couple. I can't even remember what they were for."
Beth sorted through a collection of keys on a ring as big as my wrist, selecting one to open the cabinet. "Well, you're really good with getting knots untied. How hard can a curse be?"
I laughed softly as she pulled a small wooden box from the cabinet, opening it to reveal a soiled, tattered piece of blue wool material. Beth seemed oddly reluctant to touch the cloth, instead shoving the box at me, gesturing for me to sit on the floor. I touched a finger to a rent in the material, noticing that despite its age, the gold embroidery on the cloth was remarkably preserved. "So this is it? The famous cursed altar cloth?"
"That's what Dr. Avery says. What do you think?"
I examined the material, trying to remember everything I'd learned thus far in my European history classes. "Mmm. It's old."
She rolled her eyes as she dropped down next to me, watching as I pulled the cloth from the box. "Duh! I meant, what do you think about the curse? Can you un-curse it?"
"No. I didn't understand anything that your aunt rattled off about curses, and how they were supposed to look like patterns or something. It just doesn't make sense! How can a curse look like a pat..." My voice came to a halt as I realized that my fingers, of their own accord, had been tracing an intricate, curved path along the altar cloth. I squinted at it, noticing for the first time the odd pattern of weft that had been woven into the rough cloth. It swooped and swirled, sometimes spiraling back on itself into tight coils, a detailed and beautiful maze of pattern. I'd always loved mazes, taking no little pride in my ability to solve even the most complex maze in a fraction of the time it took others. "Wow. Someone really had some skill. Look what's woven into the material."
"What?" Beth leaned her dark head close to mine to peer at the pattern my finger traced.
"That. See the red thread? It's very fine - probably silk or something - but it's woven into the cloth."
"Maybe it's the curse," she suggested, her voice strangely hushed. A joking response to such a silly suggestion died on my lips as a little shiver went down my back at the strained note in her voice. For a moment I was very aware that we were the only two people in the administration section of the museum, alone in the dense darkness. Just my best friend, a strange piece of cloth that reputedly witnessed some of the most horrific atrocities of the Spanish Inquisition, and me.
I tried to ignore the sense of foreboding that seemed to seep into my bones, shivering as I shook out the cloth to examine the pattern. "If it is a curse, then it will be a piece of cake to uncurse. It's nothing more than a really complex maze."
"That's what Aunt Li said about the wards she showed us earlier - that they were nothing more than intention and a pattern."
"Mmm." I spread the cloth out on the carpeted floor, crawling on my knees around it, directing Beth's flashlight as I tried to find the starting point of the strange pattern of red thread. "I think this is it. What did your aunt say I had to do?"
"I don't know! You were the one who was supposed to be listening."
"You're the Wiccan-in-training - you should have paid attention!"
"Wiccan, not Charmer." Beth's face loomed pale in the darkness. "I think she just said you had to unravel the curse to destroy it."
"OK." I took a deep breath, curving my lips into what I hoped was a confident smile. "Here goes nothing!"
I put my finger on a tiny knot of the thin red silk, tracing the intricate design, following the complex trail as it worked from the left center of the cloth outward.
"It's glowing," Beth said, her voice high and excited. "Look, Nellie! Where you touch it, it glows bright red, like it's neon or something."
A chill shivered down my spine. The thin red thread of the pattern I had already traced was indeed glowing softly in the darkness of the room, as if my touch gave it energy, the light from it growing brighter as my finger curved and swooped along the cloth.
The frigid foreboding that had been within me ever since we stepped into the room grew so great that it was almost a tangible thing weighing me down.
"Something's wrong," I said, my teeth chattering, my heart pounding faster and faster as my finger followed the red thread unerringly along its labyrinthine weave. "I think I should stop."
"This is so cool!" Beth leaned over the cloth, her nose a few inches away as my finger swept past. "My God, the glow really is coming from your touch. I've never seen anything so amazing."
"No," I said, trying to quell the dread that suddenly roiled in my stomach. "This is wrong. Something is not right with this. I'm going to stop."
Beth glanced up at me, her eyes bright with excitement. "What's wrong, Nell? You look like you're going to be sick or something."
"It's this cloth," I said, horror crawling up my back as I struggled to pull my finger from the material. "I can't... I can't... dammit, Beth, I can't stop following the thread!"
"What?" She looked down to where my finger was swirling through a series of complex loops. "What you do you mean, you can't stop following it?"
"I mean I can't stop!" I gritted my teeth, grabbing my wrist with my left hand, trying to physically pull my arm back. I was so cold, my fingers had gone numb. "It's like I'm locked to the horrible thing! Help me stop it!"
"Maybe you are supposed to destroy it," she suggested, sitting back on her heels, seemingly oblivious to my distress. Despite the iciness that filled me, sweat beaded on my forehead, my skin all but twitching with growing fear. "Maybe that's why you can't stop," she said. "Oh, wow! Look at that! It's sparking!"
My finger dragged over to trace out the pattern as it moved to the right corner. Behind me, the part of the material I had traced over was not just glowing red, now little flecks of yellow light were starting to drift upward from the cloth like a burst of embers spat out of a bonfire on a cold winter's night. "Help... me... stop..." I ground out through my teeth, throwing my entire body behind the attempt to pull myself from the cloth.
"It's so beautiful," Beth breathed, running her hand across the glitter of yellow floating upward. "I've never seen anything so amazing in my life. It's like little fireflies! Don't stop, Nell, don't stop!"
"I have to," I yelled, the blood pounding in my ears making her voice distant and thin. I swear my eyeballs started to frost up. "This isn't right, Beth. Something's seriously wrong here. Please, help me stop it!"
"So beautiful," she cooed, her face a mask of pleasure as she fluttered both hands through the yellow sparks.
I watched with horror as my finger approached the center of the cloth, knowing instinctively that the heart of the curse lay there, a heart that I was suddenly sure was just as alive as the organ pounding wildly in my chest. As if drawn inexorably on, my finger swirled tighter and tighter toward the center, my soul filling with a blackness I knew would consume me. A voice whimpered pathetically, "Beth, please - "
As my finger touched the heart of the curse, Beth screamed, her voice cutting through my body as a blinding light burst inside my head. Before me rose the image of a creature so terrible, just to look on it tore bits from my soul. It held Beth in its arms, her body twisted and mutilated as she screamed and fought against it. The monster, the thing, the atrocity against nature, turned its attention to me, and for a moment I knew I could save my friend if I sacrificed myself.
The light and the monster - demon, devil, I had no idea what it was other than it was made up of the purest form of evil - slid into blissful nothingness as my mind made the decision I was too cowardly to consciously make, shutting itself off, leaving me floating senseless down into a bottomless abyss of sorrow.
Tears streaked my face as slow awareness brought me back to the present. I lay sobbing in Adrian's arms, comforted by his warmth and strength despite the guilt that wracked me, my body shaking with the remembered horror of my foolish arrogance in tampering with something I knew nothing about, torn with the knowledge that I had failed my friend when she needed me.
Adrian's embrace never lessened, his body cradling mine as I cried, clutching him, soundlessly begging for understanding, the gentle, warm touch of his mind more comforting even than the solid body that protected me.
