Into Eternity (The Eternals Book 3) Read online

“I'm fine, father, it is just a shock.” Aurora squeezed his hand.

  “Well, at least you've taken it better than Jean. He looks catatonic. Should I prod him?”

  “I wouldn't if I was you,” Aurora suggested.

  “No, I wouldn't if I was you, either,” I growled.

  “Hooray! He's still with us.”

  “I'm glad that's of such relief.”

  “Oh, don't start all that again. What was I supposed to do? I couldn't say anything. As I've told you on so many occasions, there really are eyes and ears everywhere. I even found a camera in my buttonhole once. The whirring disturbed a young lady who I was trying to convince to go for a swim in the nu…”

  “Daughter,” I interrupted pointing at Aurora.

  “Ah, yes, tricky stuff this fatherhood business. One must speak as one would wish to be spoken to.”

  Walter bit his lip and looked about as though wondering what to do next, settling for tapping out The Blue Danube on his seat. A scowl from me silenced his fingers and instead he settled on an alternative form of entertainment.

  “I'll tell you what, I'll give you both a bit of background. I owe you that. With any luck, it'll give you, Aurora, chance to recover, and you, Jean, an opportunity to calm down. Unless it makes it you worse, of course, you're hard to figure.”

  Walter looked at his daughter, who still appeared in shock, then spared me a glance before quickly dropping his eyes to the ground. He stirred the gravel with the toe of his boot making swirling patterns that resembled the moths in Gorgon's most private place. I left him to it, until in a blaze of determination, he scrubbed out his artistry, sat up straight and began his tale.

  * * *

  He came from a time and place far older than records admit, a time before creation when the world still settled. He claimed heritage to a long dead country, but I could never remember its real name, something-ania or such like. Apparently, although I cannot confirm it, he'd renounced the God that Moses had preached of and wasn't over chuffed when his son arrived to sort us all out in his stead – long-haired hippy that he was. Very sad eyes, though, very sad. I think it's fair to say my creator went a little mad if he wasn't already. Whereas seclusion and shadow had kept his longevity secret, had masked the butcher he was, and believe me, he'd killed thousands by then, he came out of the woodwork like a brooding pariah. My first girlfriend and I were by a moonlit river doing what young lovers do, when the dark beast sprung upon us. He smashed Miriam to one side, then set upon me. He caused me much pain, I can say that now without tears in my eyes, but I did not die. Perhaps it was a fluke? Perhaps I was an abomination in the making and just awaited the push? Who knew? Whatever, when he left me for dead and turned to finish Miriam off, something stirred, something feral, something even the angels feared. I rose from death like Jesus himself would, reinvigorated, empowered, ripped a branch from a tree and fought him. Bastard got away, though! It took hundreds of years to get him back, but I did. I'll save that little gem for another time. Anyhow, I digress, my bloodlust at its fullest, I bit Miriam, she who I loved beyond all things. I tore out her throat without remorse or regret and drank until my rage subsided. And so mine and our futures were shaped. Her blood saved me and became my obsession, the night my abode. Thereafter, they always would.

  * * *

  Walter sat back in his seat and heaved such a sigh as to drain the oceans. His eyes, hollow, he stared out into the fog like a corpse dressed in his Sunday best. He shook his head as though regretting what he'd said, or done, and placed a palm to his chest.

  “Does it hurt?” Aurora's words cut through the silence.

  “Not anymore.”

  “That intimates it did.”

  “You are correct, blood of my blood, as you are in so much.”

  “How did they do it? You were the first, the strongest?”

  Walter sniffed, shook his head again, then continued.

  “As I said, eyes and ears everywhere. Goddamn humans with their left over technological mumbo-jumbo! Jean's parents figured out how it all worked and traced her. I have to give them some credit, you know, the pair of them are incredibly gifted. I don't know where they get it from,” he said to nobody in particular.

  “Traced who?” I said.

  “Serena, of course. This all came much later long after we'd met and she'd deserted me. I couldn't find her myself, no matter how hard I tried, and I'd looked for…”

  “A very long time,” I interjected.

  “Yes, very long.”

  Merryweather strayed for a second, his mind lost to time as it so often was. He gulped, looked to Aurora, lifted his chin high, and continued.

  “I was convinced she and her children resided somewhere in the Arctic Circle, but it is a most inhospitable place to search. I tried, though. Oh, how I tried! But having a golden orb dangling under the horizon, which might kill you the first time it raised its ugly head, was never conducive to an in-depth search.”

  “If only you'd known then what you know now,” I suggested.

  “Indeed. Goddamn sun!” he hissed. “Sorry, Aurora.”

  “No need to apologise,” said she.

  “So how?”

  “They promised they had the means to reunite us. I'd been alone so long, so very long. You couldn't blame me for believing them, I'd have believed anyone. I loved her even more in absentia than when we were together. Believe me, that's saying something. I'd even have forgiven her dalliances with other men and taken her children as my own.”

  I imagined Grella for one would have had something to say about that but kept my opinions to myself.

  Aurora squeezed her father's hand, her eyes having never left the circular scar on his pale chest.

  “I'd have done anything to depart this world in her arms; your parents would have done anything to prevent it. They said the price of my happiness was my heart. Why should I have cared, it wasn't doing anything?”

  “I guess you didn't realise how much you needed it until they'd taken it.”

  “Not even then. They lied, you see. They had no intention of reuniting us. It wasn't until I lost patience with them that they showed their hand.”

  Walter clutched at his chest, his knuckles cracking like smashed walnuts.

  “What did they do?” I asked, as Aurora glanced up and shook her head.

  Walter looked me dead in the eye and said, “They squeezed it, Jean, nothing more, nothing less. I can't describe the pain, the exquisite agony, and I have known much in my lifetime. I have seen a people spring from my blood, in essence, all my children, have watched them murdered, butchered, decay, yet none of it compares to the hurt they caused. It took centuries to recoup and by then their plans were laid and I all but forgotten.”

  “But you had the communication device?”

  “That came much later, and I made sure I received it before I paid the price.”

  “What price?”

  “More of a deal, really.”

  “What deal?”

  “Now, I don't want you losing it after you've being done so well.”

  “Have I?”

  “Not really, but I'm expecting the worse.”

  “What did you do, father?” Aurora gave him the most worried look I'd ever seen.

  Walter put his left hand inside his jacket, rummaged around in a deep pocket and withdrew an envelope, some paper, and a pen. “Sorry,” he said. “I really am.”

  “You wrote the letters.”

  “Was that a question or a statement?” he pushed further back into his seat.

  “You made the threats.”

  “I had no choice,” he pleaded. “I really didn't.”

  “I did all that I have because of you.”

  “I only wrote them, Jean. They thought you'd recognise them if the wording was theirs. I did as asked in my best script and handed them over. I had no idea where they took them.”

  “For my parents. You did such a terrible thing for them.”

  “No.”

 
; “You would've sold me out to be with her.”

  “You might not believe this, but no, I would not. Not after what they did. I might have been desperate, Jean, but I was never stupid. I never had a hope of being with Serena again, at least, not because of them.”

  “So you manipulated me!” The red mist descended and I felt myself charged with the power of a race. Walter saw it too but surprised me yet again.

  The dandy stood and pulled what remained of his shirt from his scrawny, bare chest. “Look,” he said. “Look at what they did, Jean. They cannot put it back. I know that now. Even if Serena and I were as one, they'd finish me before I could ever hold her. I have known it from the moment they tortured me. I will never have what I wish, could never have it, for they would see to it.”

  I gazed into his impassioned eyes and saw nothing but my own black-shrouded reflection

  “They hate me with a passion unbridled, Jean. Not unlike humanity did with their own creator for a time. They would see themselves reunited with the one where they feel their true heritage lies. The need to leave this planet and depart with those they so resemble has gnawed at them since the moment they were born. They would do anything for it, Jean. Anything! And I would do anything to stop them. And I have. It is they who have done everything against you. They who have manipulated you. All others are but pawns in their end game, their desire to escape. But this pawn was always good at chess and I have outmanoeuvred them.” Walter puffed out his chest and stuck his chin in the air. “Too dramatic a pose?”

  “Just a tad,” I growled, livid and confused.

  “I care not, I've earned it. I have gained so much for my troubles not least my beautiful, perfect daughter. Believe me, Aurora, when I say I could be no prouder of the woman you have become than anything else in the whole of creation.” Walter stroked Aurora's milk-white hair and continued. “What's more, there is nothing they can now threaten me with. You see, at long, long last, I am content. After an immeasurable span of time, I am happy, and it is a sensation I can almost feel. They have given me a daughter. In their folly to control, they have released me, and I would release you from them. And although they do not yet know it, I have.”

  Walter's eyes blazed with unbridled ferocity. He glared at me not in anger, but determination. It was a look I was unaccustomed to him possessing, it suited him. He gazed wide-eyed and marvellous, unblinking, unbothered. My own fires subsided before his majesty, before the man he had once been. Like a doused fire, I cooled. Then, and only then, when he knew me contained, he pulled Aurora close and spoke.

  “You might ask how I can be so confident before the eyes of those who think me mad. You don't have to answer that, either of you, because I know you do. I would too. Yet despite being hamstrung for an eternity, I have fooled them. I have moved Jean around as they wished, never allowing him to settle, to think, to believe. And, by surreptitious means, I have at last brought he and you to the one place on earth they cannot see. Thanks to the Sunyins, in particular, their father.” He bowed to his left and the old Sunyin, who I'd not even known there, returned it in his always dignified way. “No, Jean, as they have planned, so have I. The moment a fertilised egg flickered to life in Serena's womb, a life created in a test tube of the Marquis' workshop, I have planned. From the instant Aurora's sparking somehow ignited two more, and I became aware, I have waited to be with you all in the one place were the eyes and ears of those who've used me can no longer see and hear – the Marquis was ever cautious. I have herded you to the one place where someone has turned everything off.” Again, Sunyin bowed at Walter's inclined head. “I have at long last given meaning to my life without them ever suspecting. I have brought together those destined to never meet, one girl and one boy. I have united those two who were never meant to be.”

  “You mean three, you've forgotten Linka.”

  “My apologies.”

  “Accepted.”

  “So, Jean, in many respects, my true heir, the only male born in an infinite amount of time, he whose legacy can be traced through a bite right back to the original, me. You who are the one Eternal without the stain of humanity upon you, never having met nor interacted with them, a pure soul, unburdened by the past, capable of reproduction, for why else would humanity save those destined to die, here you are at last.”

  Walter spread out his arms and waited for a hug.

  And waited.

  And waited.

  And waited.

  “Don't be too overjoyed, will you. It's only taken an infinite amount of years planning and hundreds more to get you here.”

  “Father?” Aurora asked.

  “Yes.”

  “If all Eternals are made from the same, you.”

  “Yes.”

  “Does that not make Linka and Jean…”

  “What?”

  “You know.”

  “No, I do not?”

  “But they've…”

  “And?”

  “You know…” she said again.

  “So what?”

  “It is not right.”

  “I think I may have to have a little birds and bees discussion with you! They are not brother and sister, my dear, it is no more and no less right than everything about our elongated existences. Every Eternal that lives is inbred to some extent or another. All but the originals, anyway.”

  “The Hierarchy,” Aurora confirmed.

  “Yes, those bitten by one and blooded by the other. That's another long story. The Hierarchy are the product of two, where mind and body realigned to become a diluted version of their makers.”

  “Makers?”

  “Your mother and I, of course.”

  “She is the only true other, then?”

  “Yes. It is why the humans called us devils. We were not created by God, but by another. They claimed us beasts, heartless killers, and would only return when we proved otherwise. Even then, they claimed they'd only take two. I always said they were like bloody Noah.”

  “Who?” I said.

  “Never mind.”

  “Father?” Aurora said bluntly. “What year did you become as you are?”

  “Hmm, let me think.” Walter scratched at his hair and tapped his cheek. “It was the year Jesus died, so…”

  “Jesus!” I exclaimed.

  “Please, Jean I'm trying to think,” Merryweather grumbled. “And I'd rather you didn't spout profanities before my daughter. Now, where was I. Oh, yes, Jesus. Let me see, if I've carried my zeroes correctly, I should say about – he extended his arms – this many millions of years ago.”

  I thought Aurora was about to fall and swept my arms beneath her. She looked to have died a dozen consecutive deaths, to have taken Walter's mad exaggerations too literally.

  With great care, I helped her to sit down, Sunyin taking a seat on one side of her, and Merryweather the other. I remained standing.

  I attempted to take the poor girl's mind off things by asking the first inane question that entered my head. “So even after everything you've said and done, Serena would still not speak to you. That's got to be frustrating, Walter?”

  “You can call me stepfather if you like.”

  “I'll put it under consideration.”

  “Yes, well,” he mumbled. “And in answer, no. Even when I was given the means to talk to her, she wouldn't. I blame your parents for souring her mind. What kind of woman wouldn't want to speak to her lost love?”

  “An aggrieved one,” Aurora replied.

  “Why would she be aggrieved?”

  “Because she missed you.”

  “Only a woman could give that answer, eh, Jean?”

  “I'm saying nothing.”

  “Makes a change.”

  Aurora sat up straight a resolute look of determination written across her porcelain features. “I do not profess to speak for all women, but I believe if I loved somebody completely and knew myself dying, a pledged eternity to be impossible, I should not wish he who was my everything to see me, but rather slip a
way in solitary peace.”

  Walter sat up at that. His face was a picture of concentration, a mask of thought. One could almost hear the cogs in his mind turning over. He mulled over the possibilities, the implications, and most of all, the time involved. He was lost to the lie he had told himself.

  “So, she loves me?” he whispered.

  “Mother rivalled even I for unhappiness. We shared our twin miseries, though I never knew the cause of hers. I always presumed it me. I imagine seeing a part of you reflected in me must have made life very difficult for her. I did not decrease by the day as the others, had no need to bathe in lavender to conceal my decay, was alive within. How they must have envied me and yet still cared in their way.”

  “You're very understanding for a girl who's been treated so badly,” I said.

  “I now know her reasons, Jean. I cannot take back what she stole from me, but I can offer her the forgiveness she deserves. Am I not here? Am I not free?”

  “I suppose.”

  “So, you're saying she loves me,” Walter repeated.

  His expression had not changed. It was as if Aurora and he were stuck in a loop, where time held no sway and decisions were immaterial. He bathed in morbidity, his exuberance lost.

  “Father, does Grella know all this.”

  “Hm!”

  “Grella, does he know all you have told us?”

  “I suppose, he's had long enough to figure it out.”

  At that, Aurora stood up, turned to Sunyin and said, “Master Monk, might you be so kind as to accompany me?”

  A look passed between them something akin to a secret. It was Sunyin's visage that showed it, not Aurora's. For a fraction of a second, he looked different, not a vampire, not a monk, not a father, but the memory of a real man. He bowed to Walter and me, as did Aurora, and without another word, the two departed. Within seconds they were gone lost to the fog.

  Chapter Twenty-Three

  -

  Fog

  “Well, I wasn't expecting that, was you?” said Merryweather.

  “I'm way beyond surprise.”

  “Really.”

  “What else is left?”

  “Indeed.”

  “Maybe she needs a little space, either that, or she's sick of you already. I'd angle towards the latter, but who knows.”