The Relic Page 10

  Dry laughter preceded Vladislov’s threat. “Son, I could end you with a thought. And I’m very tempted.”

  As if they shared a private, dark joke, the old man chuckled. He chuckled as if he was not only fearless, but the more powerful between them. “I am the only thing you ever created that is good. You have no more power to end me than I have the power to end you.”

  When I had been dragged into Darius’ Cathedral, the world moved around me as it did now. I knew the son Vladislov claimed to have fathered. I remembered the dreams where they fought in the desert. But that man was not this man. Just like the angel’s form Vladislov had taken was not the monster I knew him to be.

  Turning his face from his offspring, Vladislov looked down at me. “You’re frightening her.”

  I did not return the glance. How could I? How could I look away from what might be standing before me? How could I reconcile an immediate and unintentional overflow of love and resentment? “Jesus?”

  Brown eyes soft, voice like cool water on burnt skin, Vladislov’s son said, “My father will work to convince you that there is no God. It will drive his every move to draw your love from Grace so he might drink it down himself. Do not listen to him. God is in all of us, even in him. God is the love we feel for one another and the forgiveness we strive to extend. Compassion, patience, acceptance, that is the face of God.”

  Lips came to my ear, but not those of the man speaking to me. They were the same lips that had been all over my body for days on end. “Do you see the flaw in his argument, my soul?” Vladislov stood taller, arm around me as he mocked his offspring. “Boy, it is true a priest was delivered every day to satisfy my bride’s indoctrinated need to confess her sins and ask for repentance. You see as clearly as I that she is as innocent as any might be. What sins might she carry? Yet she weeps. Did you hear her prayers? Did the Father you prefer to me deliver her? No, son, that figment of your imagination did not. I did. Just as I delivered you.”

  The old man did not rise to the bait. Instead, he smiled at me, gracious and calm. “It was a pleasure meeting you, Pearl. I hope, in time, we might get to know one another.”

  Groaning as if this conversation taxed him down to his bones, Vladislov said, “You may stay. But change out of those rags and wear the face I gave you.”

  It seemed a lighthearted exchange. “I will, Father, if you wear the face God gave you.”

  The nightmare at my side smiled, his bone-cracking hold on me easing. “And this is where I reply that every face is my face. To which you will say ‘Exactly, and they all came from God.’ And we will go back and forth for eternity yet get nowhere. How many rocks must I roll away after you’ve been mauled by the very cattle you seek to enlighten before you come to see the world for what it is?”

  “I see it clearly, and I worry for those who live in your earthly kingdom.” The old man’s attention turned to where I clung to Vladislov’s arm. “Though, if she really is your soul, there may be hope for all of us yet.”

  Though he turned to leave, the old man was interrupted by a monster thoroughly up to no good. “One more thing, son. There has been some debate between sweet Pearl and I. Your accidental religion with its myriad rituals has sparked some confusion. So you are best to end the debate. Is she or is she not my wife?”

  Everything in the old man’s expression seemed to say he had strong thoughts on the matter. “In the Jewish faith to which I was born and to which I adhere, the Zohar claims that a husband and wife are one soul, separated only through their descent to this world. When they are married, they are reunited again. You claim to be reunited. It would follow that she is your wife. No one who has seen my father and still became of one flesh with such a beast could be anything but wife.”

  I might have had wine spilt on my dress. My hair might have been embarrassingly mussed. I might have been uneducated and naive. But at no time in my years had I not recognized an insult. “Excuse me?”

  Vladislov’s fingers on my belly fluttered one by one, as if delighted. “She’s offended, but she doesn’t know why. How charming.”

  I was offended. I was baffled. And I was being discussed as if I were a sheep and they were wolf and shepherd. All because I could not find the words to ask what my brain clamored to know. Was this real? Was this some trick? Was I speaking with Jesus? How did he only know me from the thing called email? Why must I perpetually be the butt of some joke? Why had God forsaken me? Why had Darius been allowed to toy with me? Of all the saviors that might have come to save the sinner, why had it been Vladislov who carried me out of the dark?

  As if he could see straight down to my soul, as if he could pick through the mess of my thoughts, the old man said, “God makes us what we are, tempers the great by terrible trials. Had your life been anything other than it was, I could not hope that you are indeed my father’s soul. Which is why I fear that if you will not take him as your husband, this world will be doomed before all those living in it have a chance to find the peace of God.”

  First, there was a vicious chuckle. Then, Vladislov smacked his lips. He smacked his lips and then bent me back over his arm, thrusting his tongue into my mouth in a salacious kiss that stole my air. He even dared tear into my bodice to clutch a breast as if he intended to fuck me right there in the middle of the crowd. It wasn’t until I was breathless from fighting and dared bite him that he drew back, laughing as if the world were wonderful and my flustered state truly divine.

  Jesus was gone. The party moved around us as if nothing untoward had taken place.

  And I? I looked back at a monster who mouthed the word “wife” before he pulled together my dress.

  It was then I saw her. The bride dressed in white, who unlike the rest of the crowd seemed to be paying close attention to whatever had just passed. Our eyes met. Mine blue, hers glowing red.

  She sneered.

  And I loved her for it.

  I loved her as if she’d always been mine.

  15

  Pearl

  Over the course of my years, and especially of late, I imagined many things—about my future, about a world I longed for yet retreated from… about my unknown child. Thoughts of her unsettled me the most.

  My baby could have been anything, grand or monstrous. One look at her might have cut out my heart for a multitude of reasons that made me unworthy of such a gift. Not once in my life had I ever considered that I’d birth a child. I was cursed. I was sickly. Yet I had. Not that I remembered it, or her, or why, or how, or anything. I’d even tried to, finding only a black hole in my thoughts. And that hole was far too easy to fall into and so much more difficult to climb free of.

  Entire pieces of my brain had just been yanked out and filled up with sawdust.

  The few memories of Darius I had were enough. Never did I want to know the rest. But I burned with something deeper than anger, a constant pinprick behind my eyes.

  An infant’s creation, her time in my body, her birth had been torn out of my mind. A person I was entirely blind to, who I would have never known existed had Vladislov not told me she walked the earth, had no idea I was her mother.

  A disturbing, worrying, guilt-inducing horror I’d have to answer to God for. At the feet of my Lord, I’d have to explain my misgivings and disgust. I’d have to confess that the first mention of her did not bring me joy. It brought me horror.

  I’d have to ask forgiveness for the sin of bitterness-laced fascination. That I wasn’t at her wedding for her benefit, but for purely selfish longing to know who I was.

  A sick curiosity wrapped up in pretend obligation to a fully grown woman.

  Yet, one look at the woman my baby had become… and every last pang of disgust and uncertainty blew from my skin like unsettled dust when a tomb was disturbed.

  I grew lighter. I knew that somewhere stuck in the untouchable parts of my memory, I had felt that child move inside me and loved her.

  Had her first cries been beautiful? Had she nursed from my breast after I deliver
ed her into the world?

  I bet her head had smelled divine.

  What had she looked like as a baby?

  “You want to know, so I will tell you this.” Softly at my ear, a creature who could see into my darkness whispered, “True to form, he cut her out when your condition became inconvenient. Though you fought him despite your entrails spilling everywhere, Darius never allowed you the honor of holding her in your arms. Not after she’d drawn your attention away from him once too often. The squalling, naked, and bloody babe was delivered to the man Jade will wed tonight. You were never allowed to love her.”

  But I did love her. Right in that moment, I loved her as I have never loved anything. And it moved me to cuddle closer to the beast whispering ugly secrets in my ear—to lean on him as if there was nothing more natural than sharing the moment my heart felt whole for the first time in all my existence.

  As a bride, my baby was a vision.

  Perfect in every conceivable way in my eyes. Even the obvious evil of her.

  That was how God had designed her, and God was flawless.

  The arm around me grew all the more reassuring. “And if you follow that logic, then you must also concede that you are perfect. I’ll even concede that this might be the only topic upon which your false God and I agree.”

  God loves his children just as they are. God is love. The immeasurable love I had for my child was the love God had for all things. Even Vladislov.

  Even Darius.

  Who had harmed my child by taking her from me.

  A thought that led to a complicated resentment it was not the time to indulge in. My eyes, my devotion, were for one being only that night.

  Jade, her limbs draped in exquisite white lace as she observed me in return.

  I knew that high forehead, the more feminine lines of a jaw from my worst nightmares. The aristocratic nose. She was her father made female.

  The vivid red of her lips oddly highlighted eyes that burned of hellfire.

  There was nothing in that regal woman that had the look of me.

  “You’re wrong. Her eyes, my soul. They were the same shade as yours.” Pulling me before his body so I might rest against his chest and enjoy a better view, Vladislov wrapped me tight in his embrace, causing the woman to cock a sculpted dark eyebrow. “Blue as the burning core of the hottest flame. When the day comes for you to know one another, she will find comfort in recognizing that part of herself in you.”

  I’d never thought much of my eyes, but I would every day from that night forward. I would look in the mirror and see this child, even if that was all of me she had.

  “There are portraits of her from when she was younger. I will have one brought to you before sunrise.” I could hear the smile in his voice. “You’ll see much more of yourself, all the softness. She hides it now with her paint and sharp tongue, because she believed her humanity a weakness. But you are very much a part of her. As Jade grows in confidence as a queen, she will let go of the idea of being only part of herself and embrace the whole.”

  Watching me, Jade unconsciously touched elegant fingertips to a ruby encrusted contraption circling her throat. It was similar to mine in the sense that it covered from jaw to collarbone, but far less delicate than the collar around my neck.

  Even from a distance, I could tell it made her uncomfortable. That it must chafe and be difficult to move in. Edges of it even appeared sharp, a constant scratch against delicate skin.

  Leaning farther into my personal demon’s warm embrace, I whispered, “You said her throat would be bare.”

  I felt him smell my hair, nuzzling into me intimately no matter who darted startled looks in our direction. Positively sentimental, he cooed, “Isn’t it romantic? Malcom won’t let her take it off, though it clings and annoys. He wants his love to know he’s always there and she’s always his.”

  I didn’t like that one bit.

  “She fights it, believes she hates it. But she’s lying to herself. That girl needs the reminder as much as she needs his rule. Jade might be Queen of the Americas, but he is her custodian. And I swear to you, all life on the planet is safer for it. Your daughter is a right bitch when she’s in a temper.”

  Hissing under my breath, I dared break the spell of observation and cut a glance back to the man who insulted my daughter. “Don’t say that about her!”

  Vladislov chuckled. “She has your fire too. I doubt you realize how fierce you can be. Not one in a billion would dare speak to me as you do. Not even Darius had the balls. That makes you better than him.”

  I had never been fierce a day in my life. Women were intended to be meek. Which led to the oddest feeling that I had just been insulted.

  Which, of course he knew. He even laughed. “You pretend to be meek, because that is what you believed was expected of you. But you’ve ripped out more than one throat in your lifetime—you just have to be pushed far enough to snap. You fought your tormentor for your baby. And you’re here, in the midst of the most powerful of our kind, staring down a woman who dislikes your presence… because you are her mother and you have every right to do so.”

  I began to tune out Vladislov’s latest soliloquy just as I would tune out my patrons when I walked from table to table offering cigarettes. In that moment, it didn’t matter what he thought. All that mattered was my girl.

  Who had caught herself touching the collar and pulled her hand away as if mildly embarrassed. Until a man with hair as bright as hers was dark approached and took her in his arms.

  “Malcom. You can say his name.”

  She glowed, leaned into him, forgot about me entirely.

  “Jade is an absolute fool for that boy.”

  Malcom. That boy. Very normal terms for the veritable angel who had beaten me against a brick wall all those years ago, breaking my jaw as he ripped out my fangs. I could still hear him laughing as I wept, that memory more real to me than the horror I imagined Jade’s birth to be.

  “Shhhh, don’t tremble, Pearl.” Warmth stroked over my arms, a deep male voice offering comfort. “He is forbidden from so much as glancing in your direction. And rightly concerned that I might change my mind about his continued existence.”

  My Jade so clearly adored him that should Vladislov dare to harm a pale hair on Malcom’s head, I’d be very upset.

  Vladislov didn’t even try to conceal his irritation. “I know, which is what makes this so unfair to me. How am I supposed to relax when I really want to do unspeakable things but can’t because it will upset you? Pity me.”

  “You’re being ridiculous.” And oddly cute with the whining. Whining that worked its magic and left me smirking instead of afraid.

  Like an eager puppy, Vladislov curled around me. “I promise to behave if you’ll give me one kiss.”

  One kiss, quickly given before he might try to distract me further or delve his hands back into my dress.

  Even with the complete lunacy of the situation, it was as if a spark snapped when our mouths met. Chaste yet lingering. When it ended, Vladislov looked down at me, eyes glowing, a soft smile on his lip. “Now, shush. It’s beginning.”

  My daughter and the man who had delivered to a demon for torment because I had broken an unknown law joined hands.

  Beautiful side by side, Jade caught up in her husband’s eyes. Even the fool I was could see plain as night that nothing existed to her in that moment but him.

  If she loved him, so would I.

  Behind me, Vladislov muttered, “Ugh, you’re far too gracious.”

  “I forgive him.” And it was really that simple.

  Malcom, as if he heard our whisperings, let out a pent-up breath. I don’t know why I sensed it, but I felt in that moment that he wanted to glance my way, just for a second. Just to acknowledge what seemed like a gift.

  “It was a gift. His entire bloodline was at stake should you have refused. I had only granted him five years with Jade before the culling might begin. Now I’m in the mood to reconsider.”

&nbs
p; Lately, it had become simple to forget just who I was with. An ease had grown between us, even laughter. Passion that seemed to rewrite the very fabric I’d been cut from.

  It would just slip my mind in tiny moments.

  “Five years was generous and only granted because he led me to where Darius had hidden you away. Had I found the memory in his head, had he tried to hide it, an eternity in a tomb was only the beginning of what he might have suffered. But he came to me, he knew there was something vital in so small a memory. He knew, because Darius ripped out his heart, so Jade ripped out the heart of her father and put it in the chest of the man she loves. Darius lives in him in a significant way, so rethink your easy forgiveness in a sentimental moment.”

  “No. And you cannot tempt me from my decision either, demon.”

  “Fine.” A brisk, irritated fine.

  “And you will allow him to look at me, and speak to me.”

  From annoyance to amusement, a snap in temperament from one to the other that kept me on my toes and him interesting. “And here you thought to pretend you were meek.”

  16

  Vladislov

  My will poured over the gathered guests at the wedding party in such a way that Pearl was clueless as to my designs. I deigned who might hear us, who might so much as see her. Each glance she garnered was at my whim for a specific purpose. Whether it was to announce to other females with whom I had shared physical pleasure not to think to proposition me for more. Or to dash the hopes of those who clung to the idea that someday I might return their ardent affection. Or to ordain that this is your goddess and I am her slave. Or so males might know just what would become of them should they brush against her or think to tempt her from me.

  And they would. That was the game amongst our kind. They didn’t know I wore a plain face for a purpose. I didn’t flaunt my riches. Why should I? Their riches were my riches. The very blood in their veins, regardless of their sire, came from me.