The Relic Read online

  “Your daughter might be hurt to hear you say so.”

  Check and mate.

  Color draining from her cheeks, Pearl bit her ripe lip. Tugging it between her teeth in a gesture so disconcerted, so dumbfounded, that when her eyes went side to side as if taking in the room—as if the truth might be found on the sticky floors or on the mismatched furnishings—I twisted the dagger, so to speak.

  “Her name is Jade. She has… had... your eyes and the temperament of a lonely kitten. I like her quite a bit.” Tucking Pearl’s arm through mine, I pulled her resistant self from the restaurant. “She has your gift of sunlight. Appreciates fine cuisine. One day—when you are ready—a dinner would suit.”

  “I have a little girl?”

  “She’s in her seventies. Woefully neglected by her now decapitated father. Bitter, and absolutely in love with a warrior named Malcom. They are to be married soon. I expect a pureblood child will follow shortly after. Daywalkers are extraordinarily fertile.”

  “I have a child who’s the same age as I was when—”

  “When Malcom—the one you described as an angel—ripped out your fangs and brought you before Darius for crimes unknowingly committed.”

  Shame, horror, there was even a catch in her voice. “She must hate me.”

  “Oh yes, she does. But she also doesn’t know you exist. We all assumed her mother was a human Darius made a meal of. Even I, her grandfather.” Bloodlines were complicated, but my next statement was plain as night and proffered with a charming wink. “Or should I say stepfather, now that we are one? Either way, she’s a proper combination of our lineage and will therefore be on equal footing with all our fat-cheeked future babies.”

  Before us, the door of the bistro opened, one of the multitude of servants who prepared this corner of the city for our walk playing their part admirably—assuring everything was as smooth as the dark, silken hair of my bride.

  I deserved a medal!

  Maybe a kiss.

  Instead, and it was so unexpected that despite her miniscule strength, Pearl threw off my arm. She threw it off, shook herself as if to remove something disgusting, and turned on the sidewalk I had scrubbed clean only the night before.

  And she stomped away.

  “Darling, the food will get cold!” She wasn’t listening, prancing off as if I might actually allow her out of my sight. Trotting after her, I tried to smooth extremely ruffled feathers by calling out, “Come now. How could you think such things of your own children? Of course they won’t have batwings. You’re not spawning imps!”

  Tearing at her hair, my soul screamed, “Stay away from me!”

  This would not do. Nor would my budding temper serve. Unfortunately, a note of the demonic snarled through my voice. “We had an agreement.”

  Hackles up, she spun. “For a walk and a dinner. I walked, and I ate whatever that foul thing was.”

  “An oyster, breaded, and coated in mayonnaise. Worst in the city, according to the Yelp.”

  Her little filaments of rationality were snapping. I could hear it her thoughts were so loud. Not only that, she was actually angry. Not scared or horrified. Pissed off, as the youth liked to say.

  So angry she dared point a finger and yell. “You are absolutely insane!”

  Pot meet kettle.

  Yes, I rolled my eyes, somewhat giddy that we were having our first lover’s quarrel.

  “Did you just—”

  Smoothing my navy dinner jacket, I adjusted the cuff, inspecting the tailoring. “Yes, I did. I rolled my eyes at you, because you are acting like the baby you imagine flying around and snatching up tourists. My feelings are getting hurt. I do have those, you know. Just as I have infinite patience and will follow you, humming a jaunty tune, no matter how far you walk. And, yes, I know you walked from California to New York City. I know everything about you, Pearl, in this life and your last. Why not try to get to know me? Have I been so terrible?”

  Guilt… there it was. The weakness of all good souls. And my soul was pristine. Pristine with high color and a trembling lip. Regretting yelling at Satan himself, how cute.

  Tucking her hair behind an ear, she muttered, “What am I to do with you?”

  “Tolerate me.” Smile back in place, I strode closer and offered my arm. “Eventually, I’ll grow on you. You didn’t love me at first when I took you for wife in your last life either.”

  “Why not?”

  A valid question I would never fully answer. “It was a different time, and you didn’t want to be Queen. Unlike this incarnation, you had lived a life of pleasure. Like this life, you had been denied fulfilment. Back then, I swore to you you’d find it in our children, just as our mother had—”

  Aghast, she tripped on an uneven bit of pavement. “Did you say our mother?”

  I’d have the sidewalks repaved to be even in this part of the city. No stubbed toes for my bride. “As I said, it was a different time. Earlier than even the Egyptian pharaohs western culture so obsesses over. So ancient that everything about our people was absorbed into new people. Into budding cultures, kingdoms, religions. But I digress….”

  And she’d had enough. “I’ve never had a gentleman caller, but from couples I’d observed at the Super Club, umm...” Toying with her fingertips as she mustered the courage to explain whatever this was, Pearl took a deep breath. “These would not be considered appropriate topics for courtship. Especially unchaperoned courtship.”

  Canting my head to the side, I puckered my lips, considering. Then I stole a peek—a little one. The fantasy sweet Pearl had daydreamed was of a man who wanted to talk to her, to introduce her to his parents, who didn’t care that she was half-starved, disgusting, and poor. Where she could pretend she was human and wouldn’t have to watch him slowly age and die.

  How sad to have lived a life never knowing she had a whole family waiting for her. A family who would never age. Who would love her.

  Uncharacteristically pensive, I murmured, “I see that I was right.”

  It would be that first baby that would make her love me. A beautiful, perfect cherub that would nurse at her breast and drink of my flock.

  But this I could not say, because it would just stir the pot. Pearl was already half-mad, and it would be centuries before that damage might mend.

  Fuck you very much, Darius.

  Oh, was I going to have another long talk with my son. The nightmares I would inflict on his mind. And I knew exactly what his next torment would be. Poetic justice.

  I would make him relive every single night Pearl suffered in the crypt as if he were she. The perfect sentence. One I could carry out over and over and over until the sun ate this planet and my people repopulated a new one.

  Tapping her foot in a feminine gesture passed down through the ages, I came back to the present to see Pearl’s arms crossed under her breasts. Her lovely lips turned down.

  “I was right.” I amended, “In saying I’d follow where you walked. But I was wrong on other counts. Screw the Yelp. I should have asked you where you’d like to be treated on our first date.”

  That threw her for quite a loop. Shoulders relaxing, my darling one lowered her arms. “I don’t even know what street we’re on, what year it is, or what I would have liked.”

  “Quite right. Furthermore, no more talk of Jade, or ancient history. It was uncouth to assume you’d be thrilled about children as if you’d waited an eternity as I had.” I was salvaging this beautifully, despite the way she unconsciously clawed at her forearm.

  So beautifully, in fact, that she said, “Well… we shouldn’t let the food get cold.”

  Offering my hand like a proper gentleman, I said, “Despite my failure to ask, which I won’t repeat, I do think you’ll be pleased. The Yelp is a hilarious mishmash of human snark and assholery. But, it has its uses. If you like, I’ll teach you how it works so you might live dangerously and pick where we eat next.”

  “I want to try fast food. Like from the commercials.” What a lov
ely glow came to her eyes before she announced, “Tacos!”

  My love was completely insane, but even I was aware of humans’ delight and the necessity of tacos. “Done. And then I will introduce you to something so popular I don’t even know how to describe the human reaction to it. A taco truck.”

  Our dinner was lovely. Pearl drank wine and ate her fill. So content that she let me feed her from a vein when we returned to our temporary home. Albeit the vein was in my wrist. And, unfortunately, she closed the door to her room on me when I tried to follow her in.

  I was only going to hold her, and maybe steal a kiss.

  Between her legs….

  So instead, like a mongrel without a world begging to fuck him, I took my member in hand and stroked out a release. My thoughts full of Pearl, listening in on her dreams and lightly inserting the arousal I felt as my seed sprayed my chest.

  Her mind responded in kind. In sleep, she orgasmed.

  7

  Pearl

  Back bowed, I woke to a symphony of sensation that left my gasp punctuated with a shameless cry. Pulsating from my pelvis, another wave of feeling broke. Leaving my mouth gaping on another relentless, unstoppable moan.

  Sweaty, panting as the dream faded and reality stole in, I sat up. Staring down where my nethers were covered by sleeping gown and blankets. Completely confounded.

  What on earth?

  “I heard a cry! Are you okay?”

  Clutching the sheets to my breast, my head shot up to find Vladislov shirtless, wearing drawstring pajama bottoms, wiping his chest with a towel. One he then dropped on the floor as if it had never been in his hand. All the while stepping closer to my bed.

  And still, I tingled, turning my eyes from his half-nakedness and trying to piece together some semblance of an answer. Because what could I have said?

  Mortified, unnaturally hot, all I wanted was to fan my face or hide under the covers. But I had cried out rather loudly, and of course someone would have heard.

  “A dream.” Not that I could remember it now, or even recall my name in that moment. “I’m fine. Sorry if I worried you.”

  The bed dipped, and a male wearing no shirt sat next to me. He did this despite my discomposure, even resting a hand on my blanketed knee.

  Leaning closer as I stiffened, shivered, and blushed, he said, “You look rather flushed, Pearl. Do you need anything? Water? A cuddle?”

  My nipples were hard, poking against the simple cotton of my nightgown, covered by the sheets I clutched to my breast. And my breasts themselves… ached.

  Water would be perfect. An entire frigid bath of it.

  Instead, I was given heat. Heat in the voice of velvet offering solace. “You’re shivering, Pearl. Shall I warm you up?”

  Before I might think of something coherent that might drive him off, my bare arm was stroked, a wake of pure fire left where I had been touched.

  And it burned so beautifully in places it should not that I groaned in frustration.

  “This won’t do, my dear.” Gathering me to him, Vladislov somehow already under the covers, I was pulled to that naked chest. “Let me hold you.”

  Finally, my tongue unhinged. “You’re not dressed!”

  Words waving off my valid complaint, he embraced me all the tighter. “In this era, men do not sleep with an upper covering. I like to keep my costume fitting with the times. Wait until you meet Vampires who still wear powdered wigs or mud for clothes. Ridiculous.”

  There was a heart beating under my ear. There was warmth further invading the thin cotton of my nightclothes. The smell of smoke, spice, a cedar forest at night.

  The body of a man intimately touching me in a way that wasn’t carnal but extremely intimate. Even tangling his legs with mine.

  A man so strong I wouldn’t be able to stop him when—

  “I didn’t come in here to have sex with you, Pearl.” That big, warm hand moved up and down my spine. “You cried out, and you need comfort.”

  Which sounded reasonable.

  But half-naked? Touching me? Another, last, impossible series of twitches left the place between my legs clenching at emptiness, when his leg shifted just so.

  Gulping air, I succumbed to the tail end of a shiver and… finally, mercifully… whatever had possessed me abated.

  My wits returned, and though I appreciated that the flaming blush of my cheek was hidden, tucked as I was under Vladislov’s chin, the entirety of this situation was wholly improper.

  Shushing me, rocking my body as one might comfort a child, he said, “It’s late. The sun is going to be up soon. Close your pretty blue eyes. I’ll be here, always.”

  Arms somewhat awkwardly caught between us, I debated on trying to move. Unsure how to accomplish the feat without touching hard muscle. How to position my head so the hair on his chest would not tickle my lips.

  “You’re still shivering. Here.” Out of the darkness, a membranous weight landed over my body. A wing attached to a very human body. One Vladislov tucked around us as if to shield out the rising sun, the world.

  Leaving the pair of us in a vacuum.

  The only two creatures wrapped in night.

  Twisted together in limbs, in flesh. Opposing forces completely and utterly intermeshed.

  To the music of his heartbeat and my breath.

  “This isn’t seemly.” My complaint was halfhearted, as such heat made me drowsy.

  Self-satisfied, a grin in his voice, he replied, “What could be more natural?”

  Is that what married couples did? Did they embrace this way?

  No creature had ever held me in such a fashion. Not that I could remember… though the journal had mentioned nights I had been happy in my cell.

  So this had to be a trick by the infamous trickster kissing my crown and mumbling to me in some unknown language.

  “It takes practice to learn the role of wife. To be plucked from the garden and placed in the bed of a king. To discover the power you wield. How at the crook of your finger I would topple worlds. How at a kiss from my lips you’ll know pleasures that will make my name sing from your spirit.”

  One man’s pleasures had forced blasphemy from my mouth.

  “I would never hurt you that way. What Darius did to you was a perversion of coupling. Your experiences prior to the crypt were against your will. You have never been made love to, and have good reasons for your fear.”

  In that winged cocoon, in the infinite intimacy of the moment, I grew angry.

  Not just about the things that had happened to me over the entity of my pathetic life. But about what I had seen in the weeks since I’d come out of the dark. Couples walking hand in hand on the street. Kind glances and loving strokes. Laughter.

  The films I’d been shown on that strange flat screen with their adventure and happy endings. Respect and jokes and fun.

  I was never going to know those things.

  How he did it—perhaps he grew a third arm—but suddenly my awkward arm was gathered, fingers trailing to mine, where they interlocked. “But you’re knowing them now.”

  “You say that as if this is real,” I confessed. “But I’ll wake up back in that tomb.”

  “Even if you should, it’s just a room. And there is no room on this entire planet that could hold you should you wish to leave it now. I can teach you why you never need to be afraid of that room. How you can move through space with a thought—to anywhere you desire. Or always to me, where my arms will be open. Where you will never feel pain.”

  Bitter and suddenly sad, I muttered, “Is that how you tempted Jesus in the desert?”

  “Tempted?” Dry laughter filled our secluded space, shook the chest under my ear. “I’ve never understood how the various versions of that story all got it so wrong. If you want to know what happened for those forty days and forty nights, you’re going to have to ask Jesus himself. Though his name is pronounced Yeshua.”

  “What you are saying is sacrilegious. Jesus ascended from his tomb to return to hi
s father.”

  “He walked out of that tomb after the stone barring him in had been removed. And he’s a stuffy, cantankerous bore. Constantly whining about the ways of the world yet refusing to appear and explain himself.” With a derisive snort, Vladislov added, “The second coming. What a joke.

  “And let’s not forget the other figures before him, just as determined to educate the cattle. Mani, Krishna, Romulus, Glycon, Zoroaster, Buddha, Heracles… need I go on?”

  The term cattle was not one I enjoyed. Reminding the nightmare wrapped around me, I said, “I’m half human. And I drink from you. Does that make you cattle?”

  The beast dared reach down and give my rear a quick grasp, chuckling. “I would gladly be your bull.”

  Unable to shake off the fingers entwined with mine, I couldn’t give him the swat he deserved. “That is not what I meant.”

  “But you wouldn’t blush if I didn’t tease. And I adore the way you blush.”

  Wriggling to get away only got me more encumbered. “Are you an octopus? Where did all these arms come from?”

  “Can’t a man give his wife an extra hand or two?”

  He was impossible. “For the love of all that is holy. Can you be serious for five seconds?”

  “I am the embodiment of seriousness.” Lips brushed over mine the instant he spoke those words. Which was impossible, as I was still resting on his chest and nowhere near that mouth. “Drab as he is, Yeshua, is the only person, outside of myself, who can tell you of our time in the desert. Since we both know you won’t believe a word out of my mouth, I’ll arrange for you to spend time together. Though sometimes it’s better to hold on to our delusions than face the truth of the world. Consider that should you really want to speak with him.”

  “Jesus is in heaven!” My snarl earned me another phantom peck.

  “Many people do consider Brazil heaven.”

  “I will not lose my faith.” By God, I would not.

  “Your faith?” Playfulness drained from the monster, fingers that had been tickling ceased movement. Form curling even more around me, like a centipede eating a bug, razor-sharp fangs found my throat. Scraping oh so softly over that tender place. They dragged from neck to my earlobe. Where he nipped, yet drew no blood. Where he whispered, “Your faith, you say? Was it your choice to be abandoned on the doorstep of a mission? Did you have a say in the education those monks graced you with? The beatings, the labor, the abuses of a particular priest? Did they not tell you to fear God and obey? Did they not take advantage of a dependent child with nowhere to go in a world that was savage and dirty, crawling with prospectors looking for gold? At no time was it your faith. It was and is your shackles, imposed upon you by a world that use religion as means of control. And if there is this God you imagine, she would agree with me.”