Revenge and Remembrance
Chapter 1
Present day:Seacouver, Washington 1997
One hundred and fifty years older and almost a thousand wiser, I watched him again as he straddled a bar stool. He was dressed as sloppily as ever he was, though blouse, vest and trousers were gone and replaced with jeans and a sweater two-sizes-too large for him. He looked around suspiciously, wondering if it were friend or enemy approaching.
I opened the door and walked into the smoky jazz club, staring right at him and melting to see those pools of brown staring right back.
"A friend of yours?" a gray haired, bearded, but quite attractive man leaning over the counter asked my former master.
He grinned and stood, mumbling. "As our mutual friend would say, Joe, 'Something like that.'" He approached me with a laid-back stance, grinning, bowing and taking up my hand to kiss it.
"It's been a long time, Doc, er... Adam." It was a bad start. One hundred and fifty years and I couldn't come up with anything better than that.
"Yes it has," he said quietly, motioning to an empty table near the back wall.
* * * * * * * * * *
Switzerland 1817
I shivered and stretched, exaggerating my restlessness as I turned over and instinctively wrapped my arms around his thin but muscular form. He came to me, then, hardening my nipples and making me tingle in parts as unknown to me as the future to us both.
"Mmm," he muttered, nuzzling his face and distinguishable nose into my hair, fallen over my breast in the turn. His soft touch nearly startled me as a foot ran the length of my leg, toes ending at their place at the bottom, mingling with mine playfully.
The beauty of being with an immortal, I thought. If you kill him in the act, he comes right back, alive and spirited. I let the giggles that were bubbling inside of me out and spread my fingers over his 5000 year old skin, as soft as a newborn's.
"Mmm," he muttered again, taking one of my hands in his own and kissing its, then almost biting it as he worked his tongue all over. "So pale," he whispered, gasping in happy, short gasps.
I giggled and rolled on top of him, lifting my skirt and letting it glide like water over his naked form. "Pale like your horse," I answered as I felt him rise and come to me, his hands on my sides, digging hard into my skin. I arched my back and cried out "Death!" I swung my head back in pleasure, my long curls of blond flying for a moment, caught in the light breeze and then settling upon my back. I gave him the roughness and delicacies that accompanied the falling sun and rising moon. And he gave me more than poetry that eve as we hid in the old barn long after the sunset was ended.
I was the only one he had told about his horsemen fantasy, the only one he'd told about his immortality... so far as I knew. He had told his stories to all, shown his poetry to the house, made love with every women in the room... but I was the one who gave him back what he wanted... I was the one he went to when he needed an escape from the scene. I was the one he went to when he wanted to make it feel real.
"We should be heading back," he told my ear in less than a whisper.
"Yes," I said, reaching for my top and letting the over-sized chemise fall over shoulders, chest and back like a warm wind or a welcome breath. "Lord Byron will be starting his poetry without us."
"Poetry," he spouted, rising to his feet and brushing his long knit underwear off as strands of hay clung to the thick wool. "Poetry is but what you feel when you hear it. Words from his mouth can come alive only when I am with you."
I shivered again, more from the cold than the words. Then I stood on my toes, straining in height to kiss his cheek. "For a man born long before the age of chivalry you seem to know well how to please a woman."
"Oh, I do not need chivalry to please women." He finished to dress in his own over-sized garments, worn loose for the comfort. My master grinned and held a hand out to me to help me stand. "My charm does enough on its own, I daresay."
As if on cue, I giggled and pecked his cheek again before swooping down to tuck his blouse into his trousers. While there, I stuck my hand down against the warm skin of his rear, turning it to gooseflesh and producing a shiver of his own.
"Let us be off then," he said as I withdrew my hand and linked my arm with his, preparing for another night of excitement in Lord Byron's grand sitting room in which less sitting took place than anything else.
* * * * * * * * * *
On our way in, we passed two servants exiting while carrying a dead
goat with a slit throat and but one eye. I cringed at the sight, glad to have
missed that particular... poem.
"Ah! Doc and his latest mistress have decided to grace us with their
presence!" Byron announced across the room as he stumbled from a place
on the arm of a velvet chair to one on the bearskin rug between two rather
giggly ladies.
"Wouldn't have missed it for the world," he rang, laughter such as I'd
not before heard it: forced, nervous, uncomfortable laughter.
Byron might have detected it had he not been thoroughly pissed on
the strong ale and dazed powder from the bottles that lay scattered
throughout the great room. "Well then, Doc," Byron said with a bit of easy,
drunken slurring of speech. "Please! Entertain us-" He paused as he
grabbed a half-clothed lady from the chair and poured some drink upon her
stomach, lapping what did not trickle off with a thirsty flair. "-With one of
your stories!"
My master wrapped an arm around my waist and escorted me to a spot
among the feather pillows. "My words are not as delicately placed as yon
Byron's, but I shall try to thrill your very blood just the same!" He spoke
to his audience, every man and women in attendance, though he looked only
at me.
A woman laughed at his remark, and moved to him in flowing garments
and slow, soft movements. She held a bottle of wine to his lips and he
grinned as he drank, wine thus seeping at the corners of his mouth.
Then he took a mouthful without swallowing and turned to me with the
oddest look upon his face. I laughed as well to see it, one eyebrow raised,
the other eye itself closed, his nose wrinkled and his cheeks puffed with
the drink. He smirked, expelling air but careful not to laugh and let out the
precious liquid. I put my lips over his and together we opened our mouths.
He grabbed me suddenly and guided my body back against the pillows as
he went on top, letting the wine pour as a waterfall from his mouth to mine
like bottle to goblet.
When I had swallowed the mouthful, he let me back against the pillows
entirely and wiped his mouth like an animal with the hem of my dress. Then
he took a deep breath of the stuffy room and began the epic in which he
held a staring role with an overly-dramatic voice. "The woods were thinner
then, in that time of myth and mystery. We lived within and without as if
magic itself flowed through our veins and beat inside of our breasts instead
of that rich blood we all have at this time." He turned to me for a
demonstration, a sharp knife in hand, a permission-asking look in his wine-
dazed eyes... the eyes so brown and rich that I could not refuse them. I
gave him a nod with my own eyes, blue bells as bright as the flowers. So
took up my hand in his own, so delicate, so gentle. In a swipe and a sting
I saw the bright redness dribble from my wrist, following the faint vein
lines of my forearm to the crook of my elbow. "The magic that seeped
through us was... indescribable."
It was then I realized what he meant. I knew. I understood.
His fingers closed upon the cut, sealing it... but letting select drops
out still. Then he looked at me and I smiled and let him remove his fingers
entirely. I was ready. He continued.
"The nights were long and the days even longer... and the dwarves
and trolls of legend came forth from the earth as we called out to them on
our pipes of all sizes and all tunes."
I began to feel a little lightheaded and regretted taking the wine, but
could not regret the way in which I had taken it. The wine... Byron had
undoubtedly added more helpers to it than usual.
"And once, once only, we had visitors. A strong, well-built man with
his gentle female companion. I could not help but gawk," he said lavishly,
dropping to all fours and staring open-mouthed at a lady across the room
from him. "Her features, so perfect. Light in places and so dark in others."
He chuckled with the next line, "With every singe curve a woman should
have and being possessed of them in all the right places. Well, I nearly ate
her up!"
"Ravishing scoundrel!" one of the women exclaimed.
He nodded with a happy smile and rose to his feet. Quieting his voice,
"When a band of what seemed like elves came scampering to the visitors!
Attacking! Spilling their blood... until she was dead. Her beauty forever
preserved with the last beat of her heart. Dead."
At those words my eyes turned from his own handsome and perfect
form to my slashed wrist... and I realized that it lay now in a large pool of
my own blood. I meant to call out. I meant to tie my handkerchief around
to stop it. But I was already too weak to speak. Too weak to move. Too
weak to breathe. I closed my eyes, wondering where I would be when I
awoke again... or if I would awake again.
He continued with his story.
* * * * * * * * * * * * *
"Three bloody hours you took," I heard his voice say as my ears
began to hear again.
I coughed and let my eyes fly instinctively to my wrist, which held a
gash no longer. "That was why you told me about immortals," I mused,
gazing as if with new eyes into the deep brown pools that were his eyes.
"You guessed it," he said, moving a hand quickly to reveal the sword he
had hidden beneath his clothes, the gold hilt poking up neatly, perfectly,
as perfect as he was.
"Why kill me?" I asked, feeling for my hair and then pulling the mass
of it to one side, over my shoulder but behind my ear.
"So your beauty will be forever preserved," he said with a glance out
the window.
I realized suddenly that we were not only completely alone but not at
Lord Byron's house any longer. We were in a horse-drawn carriage, moving
fast with bounces and jumps. I sat up and looked out the window, myself,
seeing the first bit of moors I had seen in what seemed like ages.
"And," he added, taking my hand in his larger, tougher one. "So that
we may be free from that place together to feel our own sorts of poetry."
"Mmm," I purred, reaching forward and stroking the hilt. "Is that
what you call all of this? Poetry?"
He smiled his sideways smile and squeezed my hand. "No, though you
may if you like. I call it magick."
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