On the Far Side of Darkness (23 page)

“I’m sorry,
cher
,” I whisper. “It’s been a while. But I haven’t forgotten. I never will.

“I’ve found someone. I’m going to make the same offer I did to you. I don’t believe I’ve misjudged her, she’ll be strong enough. I hope so. I couldn’t go through that again.

“
Au revoir
.”

I fade back, slide to the edge of the roof. After I check to make sure I don’t land on Diane, I let myself fall. I can’t jump this far but I can drop. When I alight there is hardly a sound.

Diane starts at my arrival and turns to face me. There’s something in her features, a trace of wonder about her eyes, fear in her lips. Somehow, I don’t think it has to do with me.

“What is it?” I ask with concern in my words.

“I sensed someone standing over there,” she replies, pointing further into the darkness. “I looked and there was a woman. I could see her clearly. She was almost as tall as you, blonde hair, grey eyes, rather buxom. She wore a long blue dress. She smiled at me but looked envious and sad. I heard her speak but her lips didn’t move. ‘Be good to him. Be strong for him. I wasn’t and I’m sorry for that.’

“Then she disappeared. Just…vanished.”

Diane tries to smile, “I should be used to strange things happening when you’re around but that was a bit much.” There’s a quiver in her voice, telling me how unsettled she is.

I’m staring at the spot she indicated. Stepping past Diane I whisper, “Jocelin?” It doesn’t seem possible. But then I don’t seem possible.

A hand falls on my shoulder, squeezes gently. “Did you know her, Georges?” Diane asks.

“Yes,” I tell her. “I’ve been coming here for over one hundred and fifty years. I wonder why she chose now to appear.

“Come.” I turn and lead her back to the street. “I’ve a place we can go to talk.”

Exposition

Our place to talk is a small apartment I maintain. It’s not my haven, far too exposed for that, but it serves a purpose. Here I can interact with humans. I have the occasional soirée here. Comfortable and intimate, I can’t think of a better place for Diane and I to speak. We’ve hours available to us as it’s not even midnight yet.

I’ve made sure the liquor cabinet has the bourbon she prefers. I draw her a finger of it. We sit on the couch and look at each other for a long moment. Her face is set, she knows what I have to say will require great fortitude on her part to understand. I find I’m still reluctant to speak. So much to say and I’m so uncertain, still, how she’ll take it.

It turns out I’m wrong about Diane’s motivations.

“Before you start,” she says, the words bursting out, “I want to say I’m sorry. For that last time I saw you, when I was so cruel. I don’t blame you for leaving after that.” Her face grows puzzled and her eyes tear. “I didn’t know why I acted that way. I still don’t. It’s frightening not knowing.”

“You have no need for forgiveness. I didn’t leave because of what you did, and I know exactly why you acted that way.”

She gapes at me. This wasn’t at all what she expected.

“Do you remember that student we encountered,” I ask her, “the one who we met at that faculty function?”

Diane nods and distaste twists her mouth. “Yeah. I remember her. Ms. Richardson you called her. A nasty piece of work she was.” Then her face scrunches and tears flow down her cheeks. “Why would I betray you with her?”

My response is instinctual. I slide over and wrap my arms around her. Diane clings to me tightly, her chest heaving with sobs.

It  takes some time before my lovely lady ceases weeping. I pull away and she tosses down the rest of her drink.

After I replenish it I restart our conversation. “Well, as it turned out, Ms. Richardson was far more than she appeared to be.”

Diane meets that statement with a blank stare. “I don’t understand.”

“She was a mage. Mandy had been hurt very badly. In her rage, she’d found a book. It allowed her to summon and control things from beyond our world. She used them to change people, alter their minds, make them into slaves.”

The blood draws away from her skin. She goes from fair to pale in an instant. “That dream! God, I was frightened. And I was, different, after that.”

“The occult arts work best when the victim isn’t aware, so changing you when you were asleep makes sense.”

“But why?!” Diane’s face has its color back and a ruddiness of anger fills it. Her eyes and mouth show she still doesn’t understand.

“Ms. Richardson and I ended up in conflict. I was marking her papers fairly. She had enslaved the Dean of the university almost as soon as she started attending the school. So she’d gotten out of the habit of working.

“Because of this she was very unhappy with me. She got the Dean to try and force me to change her marks. I wouldn’t. Then she found out about you, and she used you to get to me.”

“That bitch!” snarls Diane. Tears start to flow once more. “She raped me.” These words are a stammering gulp. “Worse than that.” Her voice vanishes under soft, angry, bitter sobs.

Again, without thought, I slide over and wrap her in my arms. She clings, her tears soaking my shirt. I can’t blame her for her reaction. I understand the horror of being made into an unwilling, unknowing plaything.

It’s a half hour before she pulls away. I pull tissues from a box on the coffee table and give them to her. She wipes her face and blows her nose. Her eyes are bloodshot but the set of her mouth shows the crisis is behind her.

“What happened to her?” Diane asks then.

“We fought, she almost won. She was a very clever young lady. At the very end, she called up a very powerful creature, set it on me. I was as helpless as a child before it.”

Diane blanches at that. She has an idea of how powerful I am. Something even more so is hard to imagine.

“I broke the barrier that protected her from it. The demon turned on her. What it did was so hideous even I couldn’t stay to watch.”

“Good,” Diane remarks, her jaw clenches in fury. “I hoped she suffered.”

“Please don’t say that,” I ask. “She was foolish and evil, but no one deserves to suffer like that.”

Diane gulps and turns her face from mine. “I’m sorry. You’re right. To wish her pain doesn’t make me much different from her.”

I take her hand. “Understandable. You’re human after all.” I smile in both reassurance and humor.

She faces me again to smile back. “Thank you.”

That familiar expression of inquiry forms on her face. It’s probably my favorite look. It suits her so. “So why did you leave,” she asks then, “if not because of what I’d done?”

“To protect you, from me.”

“What?!” she gasps.

“My existence is like that. What I am seems to draw odd circumstances to me. I often end up in conflict with others, supernatural and otherwise. As events this week have shown.”

Diane nods, discovery shaping her features.

“I didn’t want that to happen again,” I continue. “I couldn’t bear to see what Mandy had done to you. But the only way I could think of to keep that from happening again was to be away from you.”

“I wish you’d trusted me,” she notes. “I can take care of myself. If I know what I’m facing.”

“That’s why you’re here.”

She nods again. Diane’s quiet for a few moments. That expression that shows her mind is working shapes her face and she stares at her knees. Finally she looks up. “So, what changed your mind? Why did you contact me and ask me to come here?”

“Because I love you,
cher
. As Marie noted, I haven’t been happy since I left.”

The next moment she’s leapt into my lap and is kissing me ravenously. I answer in kind. The most wondrous joy fills me. Diane is still mine.

We break the kiss and snuggle. My love sighs happily. Remaining that way for several minutes we bask in our warm emotions.

“So you think you can protect me now?”

“I’m going to ask you to change things so you can protect yourself.”

She sits up, straddles my hips and looks into my eyes. Her face is uneasy, she has some inkling of what I’m about to ask. “What do you mean?” Her hands take my shoulders, grips them for support.

I take a deep breath. Not necessary but I find it calms me. “Join me, Diane, please. Become like me. You’ll be able to protect yourself then. We’ll be together forever. Time won’t separate us.”

Her fingers dig into my shoulders, hard, and she gasps. My beautiful lady takes herself from my lap. She sits down on the couch, grabs her drink with a tremoring hand and throws it back. Then she ruminates quietly for long moments.

Turning to me once more she asks, “Will things be the same?”

“Yes and no. We’ll still love, but we’ll be both empowered and bound by what we are.”

“What sort of powers?” she inquires.

“Physical strength. I’m strong enough I can throw a small automobile about its own length. At first you won’t be quite that strong, but you’ll become stronger as time goes on. Like humans, we grow into our powers.”

She looks away again, nods, both unnerved and interested.

“Your senses will be sharper. Night won’t be a hindrance to you. Your vision then will be almost as good as a human’s during the day. Your hearing and sense of smell will be sharper as well. As all predators are.”

She jerks a little at my first mention of what she’ll be.

“You’ll be fast, and one power you’ll gain is the ability to move much, much faster. But that power is like an afterburner on a jet, it burns blood very quickly. Too much and you’ll starve yourself in seconds.”

Diane gulps as I say what her sustenance will be.

“You’ll gain more subtle abilities as well. At first, you’ll have a very strong presence. You’ll be able to focus that and affect people’s emotions. You can raise their fear and passion. Lower them as well.

“Eventually you’ll be able to affect their minds, make them forget things or remember what you want them to remember. You can give simple orders that they will carry out.”

Her face snaps to mine. There’s a scowl there, and one eyebrow is raised in a question.

“Rarely,” I answer. “It wasn’t necessary. Also, I couldn’t bear to do such things to you.”

Diane deliberates for a moment. She gives me a weak but understanding smile. “Don’t do it again,” she warns.

“I shan’t.”

“What sort of boundaries will I have?”

“You’ll only live at night. You’ll never see the sun again. If you do, you’ll die, painfully. You’ll burn to ash in moments.”

Diane swallows at that revelation. Giving up the day, finding that sunlight is now a death sentence, is hard to fathom.

“Your body will be dead,” I go on. You won’t breath nor will your heart beat. You won’t urinate, defecate or sweat. You won’t laugh and you’ll never cry again.”

Perplexity shapes her eyes and mouth. “I’ve heard you laugh. You smile. I’ve seen you sad as well.”

“You’ve heard me chuckle. I can’t laugh. I believe it to be tied to being, well, dead to all intents and purposes. I can show emotion but the more automatic body functions don’t happen. So a belly laugh or a cleansing weeping are beyond me. As they will be for you.”

Diane’s face turns away again. She looks pensive as she tries to understand what I’ve told her so far. A wry smile fills her features after a moment. “I guess that means I won’t get my period any more. That almost seems a fair trade.” But the tremor in her voice lets me know she has some idea of the price she’ll pay, what she’ll lose.

I continue my explanations. “Your only food will be blood. You don’t have to kill but you will have to feed. If you don’t, what you are will get out of control.

“And what you will be is a monster. You’ll want blood, all the time. You’ll like the power you have and you’ll like using it. You’ll like the fear you create in others.”

Diane closes her eyes and sits still for a while. I’ll say nothing more until she responds.

Finally she opens them again. “You’re a very bad salesman, Georges.” This is said with that wry smile.

“I’m not selling, I’m explaining.

“But one thing I will explain is that things won’t be that different. Humans have dark drives as well. Many fall to them, revel in them. However we and they have the same free will. We don’t have to act as the monsters in us dictate.” I emphasize the ‘have’. “We can be restrained, careful, even good. It is our choice. It’s always our choice.”

“That’s better,” Diane tells me, “Make the mark feel empowered. That it’s their decision.” The smile on her lips shows she doesn’t mean this quite as cynically as it sounds.

“Have you done this before, Georges? Asked someone to become like you?”

“Once. A century and a half ago.”

“What happened?”

“A month after I changed her, she climbed to the roof of a church and waited for the sun to come up.”

My love pales. “Was that her I saw?”

“It sounded like it could be.”

“Why, why did she do that?”