The Eternals Page 25

  “Hear me!” cried Vladivar. “In respect of the old ways and in honour of our forefathers, I claim this woman as my own. And I trust you claim me, my dear?” He spoke softer, but with no less persuasion.

  Linka nodded her acceptance and rolled up her sleeve, as I felt something roll down my cheek. She must have worn a tight-fitting garment of grey beneath her wedding garb, the marbling most unusual. Vladivar brandished forth a wicked looking ceremonial dagger in response. It hovered over her vein like the sword of Damocles. I had to act.

  “I oppose this!” I roared and kicked at the stonework trying to make the viewing slot wider. Vladivar seemed undeterred by my outburst as all his men looked up.

  I kicked and kicked with all my might, stone fragments flying about like hailstones at my rage. But through the red mist that blinded, I saw the dagger slice my darling's arm.

  “NO!” I screamed, forcing my way through the rock as it tore through my clothes to my cold skin.

  Vladivar removed his right gauntlet and unhesitatingly cut at the veins of his own arm.

  “NO!” I bellowed again, shoving the last of my frame through the window and out into thin air.

  The drop took an eternity. The dais appeared to move further away the more I tumbled. An all too real nightmare, I fell towards my own private oblivion. Linka and Vladivar joined arms and the blood of two Eternal houses mixed to rule as one.

  Too late, I crashed into the stone steps at their feet, a broken man long before I hit the floor.

  “Good evening, Jean, we're so glad you could join us on this most special occasion,” cooed the new king.

  Rough hands fell upon me, but I didn't care. The pain from my body was nothing compared to that in my stilled heart. I couldn't take my eyes of the woman who was my world. She stood beneath the veil impassive, unmoving, a lifeless mute before the evil that was her husband.

  “Not so tough now, are you?” came the slobbering tones of the Marquis in my ear. A swift blow followed; it was weak like the man who dealt it.

  “How dare you strike him!” Vladivar boomed, as the drum beats started anew. He leapt from his podium and sideswiped the Marquis into the far wall. “Only I get to do that,” he hissed.

  The blow almost took my head off, but my gaze never wavered from Linka's face. Even as my eyes filled with liquid, I would not turn from her.

  “How does it feel to be a nobody, tovarisch? Do you like it?”

  My tormentor spoke loud enough for everybody to hear.

  “Better to be a nobody than a somebody nobody likes,” I rattled off, but with less than my usual verve. I spat blood onto Vladivar's feet in mock defiance. He ginned through feral features and slumped back into his throne.

  “Now, my noble Lords and Ladies,” Vladivar began with a flourish, “I vow to rule Europa with a fair hand and to prove it, I shall show you how we'll deal with the likes of…well, scum. I hope you don't mind being addressed as such?” Vladivar added with a smirk in my direction.

  A laugh erupted from two of the guards restraining me. A quick glance from their master silenced them.

  “You see, my fellow members of the Hierarchy, there will always be those who defy our word, possibly even cause us annoyance just like Jean here, but there are many ways to deal with them. Our pathetic friend that lies at my feet, his rightful position, is not intimidated by physical violence. So, I hear you cry, what to do? Break him!” he cried, slamming his one gauntleted hand down on the throne. The room shook.

  “Oh, get on with it will you. I'm already bored and I'm getting a terrible crick in my neck too.” I feigned indifference, but my unwavering gaze betrayed me.

  “Would you come here a moment, Jean?”

  Vladivar indicated for the guards to fetch me to him. They did, without care.

  “Jean has been a very naughty boy. He's caused all sorts of problems to all sorts of people. Has he not, Vincent? Oh, I apologise, the Marquis de Rhineland is indisposed.” Vladivar glanced to the globular pile slumped against the distant wall. “I think it's now time he paid for some of that trouble.”

  Vladivar stood before me and drew the ceremonial blade that looked less so from a whisker away.

  “Hold him steady!” he barked at those pinning me to the dais.

  “I'll kill you from the afterlife if I have to, you bastard!”

  Vladivar ignored my threat and positioned the sword across my neck. I thrashed, tried to fight, but I was like a child in the arms of gods. There was no strength left in my immortal shell. Vladivar smiled, flipped the blade, and drew it across my throat, slicing clean through the chain that held my cross and through to the skin below.

  The guards tensed, as I writhed in their grip, my blood trickling to the floor.

  “Now, now, Jean, it's just a little nick,” Vladivar gloated.

  “He's all yours, just as I promised, my dear.” He patted Linka on the shoulder.

  As if snapped from a trance, she eased herself to a knelt position and carefully lifted the black, lace veil from her face.

  It was her breath that hit me first, fetid like a swamp. Then, the eyes, no longer emerald green, but black and pure venom. But the grey, crumpled face that sneered before me, a dried up prune of desiccation, was the worst. The thing spoke to me with the ragged voice of death.

  “Bonjour, Jean?”

  I passed into darkness, realising the fangs sunk into my neck were not those of Linka, but Chantelle.

  Chapter Twenty-Nine

  -

  Escape

  “Jean, Jean, wake up.”

  I heard something like a whisper from the beyond.

  “Jean, I'm begging you, my darling, please open your eyes.”

  Perhaps, it was an angel?

  “You must open your eyes; I can't live without you.”

  It sounded like Linka, but so far away? So distant.

  “Oh, Jean, what has she done to you?”

  I reached out from behind a curtain of tangible night. My quivering hands thrust against the obstruction, but couldn't draw it back. Darkness consumed me.

  “Drink, Jean.”

  Something sweet seeped into the oblivion.

  “Drink deep, my love.”

  A torrent of sticky liquid washed against and through me.

  “That's it, Jean, drink up. Oh, thank goodness.”

  I was awash, drowning in a nightmare of my own doing.

  “Now, open your eyes.”

  A great weight rested upon my face. I stirred, heaved at it.

  “That's it, my darling, do it for me.”

  A voice of golden honeydew poured through the midnight world and I grasped for it with all my might.

  “Jean, quick open your eyes, I cannot feed you much more.”

  And in a flash of celestial emeralds, I awoke, feasting upon she who meant more than life itself. I drew back nauseated by my desperation.

  “Linka, I thought I'd lost you,” I rasped, relieved to see her wound already healing.

  “You are not so fortunate, my love.” She cradled my head in her lap like a baby.

  The world about me coalesced. We were in a small cell of sorts, a windowless world with but one iron door to break the symmetry of the stone walls.

  “I must disgust you,” I managed after a moment's disorientation. “Why would you give your blood to save your sister's murderer?”

  “I love you. I had no choice as did you in trying to save me.”

  “But, Chantelle,” I managed, trying and failing to lift myself.

  My sister died centuries ago.

  “And don't I know it,” hissed a voice from behind a small square of half light set with iron bars.

  “Spying again, sister?”

  “On you, alwaysss, sister. Not so golden now, are you.” Chantelle hissed and wheezed like some ancient serpent.

  “I see you cheated death, dear sister.” Linka spoke with a voice of stone.

  “Just.”

  “What's that like?” Linka's eyes flared with
bejewelled radiance.

  “Better than permanent death, I suppose.”

  I watched as onyx eyes, devoid of colour, moved from my love. The face, a dishevelled wreck, unrecognisable but for the high cheek bones and once luscious lips that so mirrored Linka's own, set me with a look of cold steel.

  “Ah, Jean,” Chantelle oozed. “A man meant for so much more. You were to be the prince to my queen. How the best laid plansss fall apart.”

  “I know not of what you speak, Chantelle, but any anger held for me should not be apportioned to Linka. Your sister had nothing to do with my mistake.”

  “Ah, but she did.”

  The voice spoke in tones meant only for Hell.

  “All so rushed…just a small bite…a taste…but you drank so deeply, didn't you, Jean?”

  “I couldn't help myself.”

  “That idiot Marquisss said the blood in my veinsss would be irresistible to you, but I never thought so irresistible.” Chantelle paused a moment, her sallow, crumpled face almost sad. “Never mind, eh, monsieur? What's done is done.”

  “Sunyin?”

  “Yesss, Sunyin, the original elixir, so to speak. Taken from the last true human. My blood was his blood that night, and for a time I revelled in the power of our ancestors. I was a goddesss, Jean,” she trailed off. “I shall be again.”

  “Then, I was seduced?”

  “Oh, Jean, to be the seduced rather than seducer. Something you were unaccustomed to, non? Look what you've made of me.” A small bag of ash fell from the corner of one eye; she made no attempt to hide it. “If only Linka had remained locked away, secure in her solitude, my oh so beautiful sister. So rushed…so rushed…” she whispered, almost to herself. “I should have told you from the start how my sister was a killer. Who'd find attraction in a murderesss, not you.”

  “I should still love your sister if she'd annihilated this whole damned planet, though I know your words untrue.” I grasped Linka's hand a touch tighter.

  Chantelle's eyes flicked to Linka. “He knowsss nothing?”

  “He knows nothing,” Linka replied.

  “Delightful,” she said licking her dry lips with a desiccated slug of a tongue. “Delightful.”

  “Know what?”

  Chantelle ignored my question and continued her decrepit renditions.

  “You could have had it all, Jean.” Her voice sounded dredged from the bowels of the earth. “Kill our father and I as the eldest sibling would have inherited Europa. Who'd have thought it so hard a task?” she wheezed.

  “Then you were the letter sender,” I said, ignoring her ravings.

  “What letter, monsieur?” she replied, as I spotted a flash of silver hung around her ashen neck.

  “I do not know what I am saying. I'm still confused,” I covered and looked away.

  “Now look what you've forced me into.” Chantelle continued oblivious to my words. “With you at my side East and West would have trembled before usss. We would have been all-powerful. Thisss world would have been oursss for the taking. Never mind, never mind.” She sounded like a pair of bellows bereft of air. “Yet, Vladivar hasss stepped into the breach with a vigour I did not know he possessed,” she persisted. “He so lustsss for power, and Worthington'sss demise was so convenient. Your ineptitude has gifted me a prize I thought we should have had to take together. Ah, Vladivar, my tyrant king.”

  “You make perfect bedfellows,” Linka's calm voice interjected.

  “All such a rush dear sister, so many yearsss of planning spoiled by your reappearance.”

  “I couldn't remain locked away forever.”

  “Bah! You should never have had the opportunity after what you did to our mother.”

  “I did nothing,” Linka protested.

  “So you say, so you say,” Chantelle rasped, her head lowering for a fraction of a second before black eyes burned bright once more. “I shall leave you to explain and return later with Vladivar. My husband so wishesss for you both to be dead, but I insisted on looking into those deliciousss eyesss of yoursss, Jean, just one last time.”

  “I am truly sorry, Chantelle, whatever your scheming deserved it was not to be turned into the thing you have.”

  “Maybe, maybe not?” she wheezed. “What's done is done. On the plusss side, whilst I rule in ruinsss, you shall be mutilated and unremembered. I think mine the better deal.”

  “You would!” Linka hissed.

  “Shh, dear sister, your ordeal will end soon. The golden child shall no longer be a thorn in my side, and I shall watch the world die asss itsss queen.”

  “We'll see,” Linka returned with no real conviction.

  The crumpled creature that was once the third most beautiful woman I'd ever known shuffled off into the bowels of her new kingdom. I was glad to see her go.

  “Dare I ask?” I quipped.

  “Well, I still owe you a story if I have time to tell it.”

  “You don't have to,” I offered, trying to raise my hand to her sweet face, unsuccessfully.

  “I do. I really do. You need to know what you've fallen for.”

  “I'm not fallen yet, not whilst still I breath.”

  “I suppose.”

  “Linka, you must never give up hope. I have learned that to my cost of late.”

  “Is there any hope left in this world, my love? The sun dies and with it all we have known. You and I will soon be fossils, or dust.”

  “There may still be centuries left, my love. There's still time for happiness.”

  “I wish that was so, really I do, but I doubt it. The only happiness I've ever known has been in my short time with you. I would give anything to turn back the clock.”

  “We all would.”

  “I more than most,” she whispered. “I shall tell you of my past, then perhaps you'll understand.”

  * * *

  I was too tired to argue and decided that if I had to die, then doing so in her lap would be one of the better ways to go. So, I settled against Linka's soft thighs and allowed her gentle stroking to carry me back through the centuries and into another time and place entirely.

  * * *

  “I was the last newborn. My conception took my parents by such a surprise it coming after any other Eternal child's, your own, and that in itself centuries after any other, that instead of celebrating my birth he concealed it. My father, obsessed as he was by his own deformity…”

  “The size of his brain,” I interrupted.

  “Be quiet. His single fang, and you know it.”

  “I thought he lost that in a fight?”

  “A fabrication, my love. My father's mantra was a monarch should show no signs of inferiority, only superiority. He saw my birth as another sign of his abnormalities despite the wishes of my mother to celebrate it as a miracle. Her persistence in the matter saw her exiled to the monastery off the coast of France where the Marquis' Sunyins cared for her and her child, me. They led me to believe this was as much to experiment on them; how they would cope with their sectioning, as it was for my benefit. I believe my father would have had me killed, Jean, if it was not for this and my mother's interventions.”

  “There were rumours,” I said, “but I ignored them as gossip. I see they were not.”

  “They were not, or I would not be sitting here with you now. Father forced my mother to return as soon as she weaned me. It broke her heart to leave although I did not know this until later. She never forgave him. As a consequence, I saw none of my family for many years.”

  “That must have been difficult,” I offered.

  “Not at all. I knew no different, and so got on with living the life presented. I could not have had better care especially when the original Sunyin arrived at the monastery.”

  “You mean, he was not already there?”

  “Far from it, my love. He escaped Shangri-La whilst it somewhere within the Pyrenees. Apparently, it devastated the Marquis. Sunyins bond to his children, his brothers, drew him to them. They concealed him, they
are experts in keeping secrets secret. It was the old Sunyin who taught me almost all I know. I hazard to say, I'd have no knowledge of any significance without his unbiased tutoring. He is a man I could have no higher respect for.”

  “Nor I,” I added, my strength returning under Linka's caresses.

  “I think my mother's constant pressure wore my father down and the two visited along with my very unimpressed sister. They did not understand how I knew all I did, the old monk hiding himself to not reveal how, either. It was during their sojourn that my mother took her life.”

  Linka's voice trailed off there, so I continued for her. “I was given to believing your mother made the mistake of revealing herself to the sun.”

  “She did. But, it was not the sun that killed her, rather the heart she tore from her chest before plunging from the monastery into the sea. According to mother's last wishes, I told my father and sister we'd stayed all night on the monastery roof. I awoke to a pile of clothes, and they awoke to the fact I was the only Eternal to survive the sun. This was my mother's wish, her final gift, to instill my father with such dread of harming me, he would never dare do so. The Sunyins helped enhance my reputation by saying I lived by both night and day. My father saw me through different eyes then. I was to be returned to court as soon as my mother's death was forgotten enough to allow it. My reputation grew and preceded me. I can assure you, by the time I arrived, I was already well known to high society. I spent a long, lonely year at the royal palace under Albert's supervision, my one friend, until father deemed it time I be revealed. That was the night of the ball, the reason for it, but I guess Chantelle kept that from you.”

  “I could not say,” I answered honestly. “One dance became as drab as the next, and the reasons for them even more so. I cared not, Linka. Perhaps, I would, if things had differed. I hadn't listened to anyone for so long. I heard and saw what I wished, nothing more, and that was not much.”

  “No, Jean, I think Chantelle was so jealous of the attention I received after our mother's death she would have removed me from the scene earlier if possible. She had ambitions for the throne long before I was a prospective problem. Chantelle saw our father as an undeserving weakling. She wished to rule the Hierarchy whilst he sought only to dwell amongst it. All you did was beat her to the punch, it's as simple as that.”