The Celestial Kiss (12 page)

It was too invasive.  How was it possible for a man to bite a woman he’d never before met, and in doing so effectively glue their souls to each other?  What about choice and free will?  What about a consensual agreement?

“The bite alone does not create the covenant, dear child.”  The King smiled.  “If the Creator believes in the choice, His approval seals it.”

“His approval?” 

“Your shoulder.”  The king nodded his head at me.  “That scar would be gone if he disapproved, as if it had never happened.  Your paths would diverge, and you’d likely never cross each other again.  It’s a symbol of your attachment.  Just as that scar can never be removed, that bond cannot be broken.”

“So that’s it?  I’m stuck with him now for all eternity because he attacked me outside of a greasy truck stop?”  Hysteria crept into my voice, echoing in the dark halls.  I almost laughed, because it was just absurd. 

A pair of men who stood together a few feet away looked up from their conversation, as if ready to react should I decide to bite the king’s head off.  I hadn’t even noticed their presence; I suspected they resented that.

“As I said, it is not just because he bit you.  In one way or another, your destinies were twined, otherwise the Creator never would have approved of it.”

“Oh,” I said, because it was all that I could think of.  I felt breathless; his words were an anvil, the weight of which threatened to crush me.  “I’m bound to your son for the rest of my life.  Is that all?”

“I’m afraid not.”  The King’s voice was gentle, but firm.  “The thing that James hasn’t come to terms with is that a vampire and a werewolf are natural enemies.  They can’t coexist in the same body.”  I stared blankly at him.  I’d lost all ability to show any emotion, sarcasm or no.  “On the next full moon, when your body begins the transformation, the vampire in you will attack the werewolf that manifests.  You will quite literally tear yourself apart.”  His eyes were somber.

              “I’m dying…”  I concluded, remembering the touch-and-go pain, the way it seemed to make me into somebody else. 

              “There are stories…”  His eyes danced over me, his words hesitant.  “Myths, as far as I know…of a woman who did manage to exist as both, but in my experience, it hasn’t happened.”

              I wondered what he meant about his own experience, and why he had even bothered telling me about the myth in the first place.  “But that does me no good,” I said.  “James had told me how long I had to live, but I didn’t realize what it meant.”

“As I said, you are a guest.  You are free to leave whenever you wish…I’ve made it abundantly clear to my son’s that they are not to fight you.  But I needed to make sure that you knew exactly what you were dealing with.  You are bound to my son until the day you die, not more than a few weeks from now.  And even after.”

“Maybe I should have told you before,” Janna sighed.  “But I had hoped James would tell you himself and I didn’t want to pile everything on you all at once.” 

It was cold, despite the weak morning sun.  I tugged on the sleeves of my shirt, covering my hands with them because I didn’t want to look at her or have her look at me.  But she was, with some form of pity that made me self-conscious.  She’d practically begged me to take a walk with her, and so far we’d only managed to circle half of the property while she pointed out little things along the way.

I’d spent the entire night trying to make sense of all that the King had laid bare for me, but I was no closer to understanding any of my circumstances than I had been before going to see him.  I’d decided on a few certainties:  1—I was dying.  2—I could leave, but it would not give me any satisfaction. 3—I was dying.

“I’m not delicate.”  My surly grumble was proof of that.  But while I wanted to be mad at her, it wasn’t her fault.  James had gotten me — and himself—into this mess.  He should have told me what the consequences of his actions meant, not tried to ignore it or pawn the task off on his ailing father.

“Of course not.”  A grin cracked her face, as if she knew she’d been let off the hook.  I wasn’t letting go that easily, though.

“What, exactly, does it mean for me?”

“I’ve only heard about it before, so I can’t tell you first hand.”  She offered a disclaimer.  “As far as I know, things are pretty normal as long as the vow is unbroken.  I know,
normal
is relative around here.  It is only under circumstances of betrayal that things could become bad…the offender is executed as penance for their sins.”  She’d looked away at the last few words, but gathered the courage to flick her eyes back to mine.  I surprised her with a simple shrug of my shoulders.

“What else?”

“Let me explain it the way we teach the children.”

“I’ll try not to be insulted.” 

Janna grinned.  “Okay, so you have a soul.  It is this beautiful thing, bright and shiny and inherently good.  The Creator made them, and then he gifted them to humans…his prized children.  But some of the angels were jealous of the humans, of how the Creator wrote these stories for their lives and then just watched them always, witnessing the steps they took and the paths they chose to get to the end of their story.  So, eventually, there was an uprising…the angels took the soul and ripped it in two.  Each human thereafter had only half of a soul…they lived their entire lives as though something were missing, because it was.  So they began to seek their other halves, and they learned that the Creator, of course, could mend the soul if they wished.  They did this by the bite…a mark that would show the world that their soul was intact.”

“You’re saying…” I laughed.  “You mean to tell me that James is my soul mate?”  I thought of how he seemed to avoid me, how he dodged my questions and had tried so desperately to trade me away.  Was he ashamed that he’d chosen me as the other half of him?  I didn’t doubt it. 

“That’s just how we learn it.”  She shrugged.  “I do believe, of course, that there is a plan for you…and I suppose that you were meant to cross my brother in some way, so…yeah, I guess it’s possible.”

I didn’t want her to see me entertain the idea, ludicrous as it was, but there was a small part that wondered whether it wasn’t entirely fiction.  I mean, it was a myth just like Prometheus and Atlas and Sirius…but it sounded almost like it could be truth.  Of course, accepting that soul mates did exist was a far cry from accepting that James was mine.  Even if I could wrangle the idea that I needed someone else to complete me, it couldn’t have been the man who was bringing my life to an end.  Furthermore, if it were more than just a way of explaining things too delicate for a child’s mind to comprehend, then that meant my soul mate, whoever he was, was out of luck. 

If I wanted to believe in it, and I wanted to look for a soul mate that wasn’t a werewolf, I could leave—steal and lie and cheat through the next two weeks of my life, sacrifice my morals and dignity in the name of freedom.  I could try to make something of the time I had left, try to find someone to fulfill me, but at what cost?  There was nothing I wanted to do so badly as walk and breathe freely, both of which could be done here.  Better to have never loved at all…better to never feel the waves crash against me or freedom race through my veins and then have it wrenched from me before getting to enjoy it all.  And I hated to consider it, but what if the King was right…what if James truly was my soulmate, or I was his?

I would stay—at least for now.

After my absence the night before, it seemed infinitely more shocking to my audience when I appeared for dinner at Janna’s side, donned in one of her demure dresses.  I surely looked as uncomfortable as I felt, both because I was not the type of girl to wear dresses and because I did not exactly thrive on the attention.  In fact, having all those eyes on me made me consider running to that secret chamber and taking the escape I’d been offered.  But Janna’s smile anchored me; I followed her, head held high, and slipped into the seat that had been left vacant between James and the King, who both turned eyes on me.  The King’s smile was small and genuinely happy, while James’ was forced and tight.

              The king and his sons immersed themselves in a conversation that seemed to be of great importance to them, as it spanned throughout a large portion of the evening.  I eavesdropped at first, then quickly grew bored when they did not so much as glance my way – instinctively, I knew that whatever it was that mattered so much to them was worthless to me.  My mind began to wander.  No longer a captive of their droll conversation, I took up a survey of the room.

              It was weird to see this array of people together in one room: short and thin or all-around large, men and women of all ages, with varying skin tones.  And each of them radiated a beauty entirely their own, the sort which showed them to be self-possessed and assured.  It was not the look of confidence that I’d witnessed among the vampires which branded them all the same, yet a sense of camaraderie, as though it was through this variety that they achieved their strength.  I envied them; their flawed beauty was perfect.  A lump formed in my throat…they were everything I’d ever wanted.

              “They’ve all spent hours gossiping about you.”  Janna whispered.  I turned to look at her around her brother’s head.  “You’re quite the scandal around here.”

              “I had no choice in that,” I reminded her grudgingly. 

              “I know.”  Janna’s green eyes sparkled, “But I figured you might appreciate the chance to do the same.”

              She had an intoxicating personality…though her brothers gave me nothing but trouble, she offered genuine compassion…friendship.  Despite my suspicion the fact that gossip was not my cup of tea, I was intrigued. 

Janna was more than happy to give me the scoop on the guests whenever she wasn’t drawn into conversation by another party.  I didn’t trust myself to remember the names of so many people, but by the time dinner began to wind to a close I knew who was courting whom, every scandal these people had ever been involved in (there weren’t many) and I could identify the council members who helped the King in making decisions like whether or not to kill me.

              Occasionally, someone would look up and lock eyes with us, to which both Janna and I would smile and continue talking in hushed tones.  But there was one man, whose invasive stare I could not brush off with a smile.  There was something dark in his eyes…an unspoken, unfounded hatred. 

              Janna seemed to notice the shift in energy, just as I noticed the shift in her voice.  It was subtle, but I caught it all the same. 

              “Olias.”  She whispered the name as though it both intrigued her and left an unsavory taste upon her tongue. 

              I willed her to continue, but she seemed lost within her thoughts so I resigned myself instead to trying to commit to memory all that I’d learned.  I scanned their faces as she told me things that were entirely irrelevant, bewitched by their lives, until dinner wound to a close.  The twine of conversation thinned as the crowd departed in droves and I realized that it was actually kind of exhausting, pretending to be mild mannered and self-contained.

“Lilith,” My name rang through the room, just loud enough to gather the attention of all that remained in the hall.  I looked up from my thoughts to see the man that Janna had informed me was Olias.  He watched me with curiosity etched into the faint crinkles around his eyes.  He did not look old, exactly, just like his lifetime had been unkind.  “That’s your name, right?”

              I tensed, feeling the eyes on me, a hunger for knowledge that I had seen in Julius a few days prior.  James was close enough to me that I felt him stiffen just a little.  “Yes.”

              “Interesting name, that.  There’s quite a bit of biblical lore tied up in it.  Did you ever ask your parents what they were thinking, giving you a name with such baggage?”  The malicious gleam in his eyes told me that, although he wanted the answer to that question, his timing was intentional.  He’d voiced the very thing that had undoubtedly been toying at everyone else’s minds.  The little bit of chatter that had remained was suddenly gone, and everyone was looking at me now.  A sideways glance at Janna yielded an imperceptible shake of her head, and though I couldn’t be sure, I took that as a sign to feign ignorance.

              “I never thought much about it.”  I refused to take my eyes from his.  I could recognize a challenge as it was presented to me. 

              “Well, it’s certainly unique.  And yet, you seem to be a mirror to the legendary beauty of the original Lilith…the temptress of Adam.”

              “I wouldn’t know,” I said, “As I’ve never met her.”

              Olias laughed.  His face was decidedly attractive, in spite of his too-confident swagger.  “Nor have I.”  He tapped his temple.  “But I can imagine.”

              I looked desperately at Janna for salvation, and she stood, beckoning me to follow.  “It was
lovely
to meet you,” I lied.  The eyes that were trained to my back followed me out the room, with no relief until we’d cleared the splendid archway and disappeared into the hall. 

              “What an ass,” I muttered.  It felt good to drop the princess act. 

              “Yes,” Janna agreed.  “It is rather marvelous.”

              I blinked, trying to ascertain whether she’d been serious.  She glanced at me from the corner of her eyes.  “He doesn’t like you,” She said, as if that hadn’t been glaringly obvious.  His words themselves hadn’t been malicious, but the way he looked at me, and the way he’d spoken...  It was as if I had offended him simply by existing, which—given my existence—was an acute possibility.

              “Oh, really?”  I mumbled.  “I hadn’t noticed.”

              To my surprise, Janna actually laughed a little.  “It’s a story for another day.”

              Suspicion narrowed my eyes.  “Why not today?”

              “I’m busy.”  Her answer came so quick, I knew she was brushing me off.  “Sorry.”

              I shrugged like it did not offend me and kept walking.  “Maybe I will come by later?”  Janna called after me.  But I was already down the hall.