My Immortal (22 page)

He must have sensed her withdrawal, because he shook his head, reached out, and grabbed her hand. “Don’t do this, don’t pull back from me. Let me explain. You know who I am now, know the man I try so hard to be. If I could give it all back, if I could redeem myself, make right all the wrongs I’ve done, I would. I’ve learned from my mistakes. I was young, I was foolish, selfish. That is not who I am anymore.”

Marley stumbled backward, the expensive new sandals he’d bought her sticking to the brick floor. She clutched his cell phone in one hand, turned and ran yet again, terrified of him, of her own feelings, of the sensation that her entire world was caving in upon her, heavy bricks of truths raining down, smacking and smarting.

“Where are you going? Marley, stop!”

But she couldn’t stop. She ran down the path away from the house, through the lane of oak trees, past the slave cabins, shadowed and ominous and hushed in their dilapidation. It was dark, but the moon was high, and she wanted to disappear. Just run on and on into the night, until it was all gone and she was back home, just Marley Turner, family martyr, where none of this existed, and she and her sister were safe.

Damien was chasing her. She could hear the pounding of his feet, but he was barefoot and slower than usual, maybe an aftereffect of shooting himself. The sugarcane fields loomed in front of her, and to the right, the swamp. She had the overwhelming urge to run straight into the murky water, to just splash in to her chest and to let oblivion take over, sinking under the cold, dark curtain, where sound and time and reality stood still. Nearly there, she was startled when Damien reached out, grabbed her arm, yanked her back.

Off balance, she screamed, and they collided, dropping to the ground hard, the air shoved right out of her lungs. Stunned, she lay on her back, head, chest, and leg aching.

“Are you insane? You can’t just stroll into the swamp! What if I lost sight of you? You just gave me a fucking heart attack,” he said, leaning over her, resting on his hip, hands in his hair, breathing hard.

He sounded so damn indignant that Marley just stared up at him, hysteria bubbling up and out with a laugh. That he could speak as if the situation were normal, as if he were normal, struck her as ludicrous. He had just
shot
himself in front of her.

“Would it matter if you had a heart attack? You can’t die.” She choked back the laughter, but a sob burst forth. “Oh, God.”

“Shhh, Marley, come on now. It’s alright. Everything is alright. I know this is a shock.”

“That’s the understatement of the millennium.” Marley turned, not wanting his face so close to hers, his mouth and breath hovering over her.

“I’m the same man I was yesterday. The same man you’ve been talking to, laughing with, making love to. You and I, that hasn’t changed.”

“Of course it has!” Tears were in her eyes again, and she tried to wiggle across the dirt away from him, but he pinned her down with his arms, his chest. “You’re not the same man at all. I thought you were Damien du Bourg, a man who inherited this plantation from his ancestors, a man who lost his parents, his wife, and was an innocent victim of fate.” Another sob crawled up her throat. “That’s not who you are.”

Damien looked away. “That’s true. I am certainly not a victim. This is all my doing and I take responsibility for that.” Then he swiveled back, locked eyes with her. “But I am the same man nonetheless. What I say, what I do, is real, is the truth, is the man I am today.” He brushed her hair back, giving a shuddering sigh. “I have tried so hard to walk the line between what the Grigori demons want, and what I can live with as a man, and I have so much remorse for all of my mistakes, all those I’ve hurt. If I could undo the past I would, in a heartbeat.”

He looked sincere. He looked very much in pain, dripping with regret. Her heart swelled, wanting to trust, wanting to believe. The torment on his face was familiar to her. She’d seen it a number of times since she’d met him.

Marley couldn’t reconcile this Damien, the one she had thought she’d known, with the Damien that Marie had described. It seemed like they were two men, but if they were one and the same, then either she or Marie was wrong. And given her lack of experience with men and her naïve inclination to believe everyone was truly good no matter what mistakes they made, it would seem that Marie was a better judge of character than she was. Then again, maybe they were both right. Maybe Damien had changed. And while she desperately wished that was true, it seemed foolishly optimistic. Leopards didn’t change their spots, and right now, still in viewing distance from them, one of his adult parties was in full sexual swing, and she had never seen Damien express any remorse for his part in producing them.

“Why do you do it?” she whispered. “The parties, the themes, the cocktails…I thought it was meant to be a sort of punishment for yourself for cheating on your wife, a sort of defiance, or coping mechanism to keep yourself distanced from women. Safety in sex, stay away from relationships…but if you’re not the victim, not the suffering widower I thought you were, why do you do it?”

He shrugged. “Because I have to. It is my burden, my never-ending task, to promote sexual sin among mortals. That’s what I agreed to do in exchange for eternal life. It was a very bad bargain on my part.”

“Do you enjoy them?” she whispered, not exactly sure what she was asking. “The parties?”

“No. Not for a long time. I told you, I’ve changed.” Then he sighed. “It amazed me how quickly I did change, how soon I was tired of my task. Within a month, maybe two, I already regretted the choice I had made. I already wanted nothing more than to live with my wife and pretend that night had never existed.”

“You were married to Marie,” Marley said stupidly, shocked all over again to realize that everything Marie had written was the truth, the brutal, pain-wracked truth. “You cheated on her, you were a cold, heartless husband when she was suffering.”

“What are you talking about? What do you know about Marie?” Damien stared at her in censure. “What do you know of her suffering?”

Marley figured her promise to Anna was no longer valid now that she knew Anna had been toying with her, Anna’s motives unclear but suspect. “The letters Marie wrote to her friend back in France. I read them all. I read what she said about you, how you were cruel at the beginning of your marriage, impatient with her, how you took her virginity on the ship when she was violently seasick.”

“What letters? There are no letters.” Damien sat back in shock, horrified. “But if you know about the ship…how could you know that? Let me have them, Marley. Let me read her words.”

“No. She didn’t want you to see them.” Marley didn’t know why she said that, why she felt the need to argue, to protect Marie’s memory, and to protect herself, her very real and frightened self, who saw Damien and wanted to believe in his goodness so very, very much even when evidence to the contrary stared her in the face. “She hid them from you because she was afraid of you.” That wasn’t entirely truthful and she knew it. In the second half of their marriage, Marie hadn’t been afraid of him at all, but Marley was so hurt, so disgusted with herself, so afraid that she had no sense of character if she could fall in love with a man who was a lecher, an aberration. No matter who he was now, he had said those things to Marie, done those things. Asked for immortality from a woman he’d only known long enough to lift her dress and have sex with her.

Marley felt foolish, felt naïve and embarrassed by her own behavior. She’d come for her sister, and instead she’d taken her clothes off for the first man to pay her a speck of attention. She had fallen in love with him, or thought she had. “You forced Marie, even when she was seasick,” she repeated, wondering if she was trying to convince herself he was cruel so she’d feel less stupid, less ashamed of herself for succumbing to his practiced charm.

Damien just shook his head though, looking certain, even if a little puzzled. “She was not seasick that night, I would swear to it. She made that up because she hadn’t wanted to marry me. She was trying to prove a point, trying to torment me, to show me that I wasn’t good enough for her, and that the only reason she had deigned to marry me was because of my money. She was beautiful, delicate, petite, and she made me feel like a barbarous oaf, so that I couldn’t forget that I was not of the aristocracy. But Marley, you have to understand, I have told you I was spoiled, I was selfish, I was young and stupid. Marie was young as well, and naïve, and later I came to realize she was shy and perhaps even insecure. We started poorly, that is true, but we came to an understanding, I thought, we came to enjoy each other, and share some happiness, love.”

Marley closed her eyes, unable to think, to breathe, to reason, her emotions sporadic, random, vacillating. There were too many things to think about, to dissect, compartmentalize, and the most obvious place to begin was with Marie. “I know…I know. That’s what she said, that she came to love you, but she also felt that you led her down a path of moral destruction. Ultimately she blamed herself.”

“I know that she blamed herself and I can’t stand that. It was my fault, it was all my fault. I made a bad bargain with Rosa when I was drunk and angry with Marie, upset that we were being denied a child, disgusted with myself for not being good enough for her, for not being the kind of man she wanted.”

“Why did you do it? Ask Rosa for such a…thing?” His answer might scare her, but not knowing was worse. Marley stared up at him, wanting to understand, wanting to hear that his heart wasn’t black and vile and irredeemable.

“I am not even exactly sure anymore,” he said quietly. “But I remember how I felt that night, remember the rage I felt that Marie was disgusted with me, that Marie, my own wife, despised me. We had an argument, or rather, I yelled at her, and she gave me that wounded, terrified look she had perfected so well, the one that made me feel like a villain who had kicked his best hunter hound. I had women fawn over me every day, yet my own wife could not stand me. I was drunk, as I often was in those days, and I was frightened that I would pass from life the way my mother and father had, without warning, with little fanfare. I was afraid of death, angry that our child had died without ever living. Angry that with all my money, I could not buy Marie’s respect or affection.”

Damien shrugged. “They are not feelings I am proud of now. But I wanted to live forever, to control the world before it controlled me, and I suspect, if I am being completely honest, that I wanted Marie to desire me the way I desired her. Her honesty, her goodness, her morality, all nurtured my respect for her, at the same time I disdained her because of her disgust of me. I was jealous of who and what she was, even as I loved her.” He gave a rueful sigh. “I did not choose the best way to express my feelings, did I? And I have lived with my stupid, egregious mistakes every day for over two hundred years.”

“Damien.” Marley felt her anger deflate, if that’s what it had really been. She couldn’t stay upset with him, not over Marie. She heard his sincerity, felt it, had known that he was suffering from guilt and pain and loss since the very first moment she’d met him. Whatever his mistakes in his long-ago youth had been, he had paid for them over and over. “Damn it, I’m sorry. I’m making it worse and I don’t know what I’m saying. I know you’re sorry…I’ll give you the letters. Maybe if you read them, you can finally get closure. You both deserve it after all this time.”

It seemed like she should say more, but her head was still swirling, her thoughts muddled and thick. But her panic was fading.

Damien stared down at her. “You’re amazing, do you know that? Truly amazing, with a huge heart and a compassion that I admire, cherish. I have no idea how to even attempt closure. But thank you, for believing me. Believing in me, and for giving the letters to me. And please…I want you to know that you’re the only woman I’ve loved since Marie. The first woman I’ve had sex with in a hundred years.”

Marley blinked, the back of her head still in the dirt, stunned. “And I thought my dry spell was long.”

He gave a startled laugh. “It was intentional. I knew that I had to fulfill my end of the bargain, but that didn’t mean I had to take personal pleasure from what I knew was wrong. Maybe that doesn’t make sense to you, but it was my defiance, my way to try and retain some sense of self, some bit of my humanity. The Grigori gave me power over women, to seduce and charm, but I’ve focused my attentions on the shy, the unattractive women, and I…I pleasure them, empower them with their sexuality.”

This she didn’t need to know. Her compassion bled out. “That’s very flattering. I’m so glad you shared that with me, glad you empowered me, a shy, unattractive woman.”

He made a sound of frustration. “I don’t mean you. I mean other women. You have been a challenge to me from the start…a complete reversal of my experience with every other woman. You were able to resist me, and yet I couldn’t resist you. I told myself no, but I had to have you, wanted to revel in the way you seemed to see me, the man, not the seducer. I thought maybe…maybe you were attracted to me for myself, my personality, not my appearance. Not the demon charm.”

So in the end he wasn’t so very different from her after all, wanting love, needing to hear he was worthy. Marley’s heart softened. “I was. I am.” She reached out, touched his cheek. “Yes, you are a very attractive man, but what I fell in love with was the inside.”

He kissed her fingertips. “I couldn’t tell you, you know. ‘Hey, I’m a demon servant’ isn’t something you blurt out when you first meet someone.”

“I guess not.” And no matter how much she wished it had never been said, wasn’t real, it was, and she had no idea what to do with that skewer slashed into her beliefs, her life. “So can you tell me how Marie died?”

Looking away, he frowned, hesitated. But then he said, “She found out about me, the immortality, about Rosa, and she was so horrified, she killed herself. She took medicinal herbs, way too many, ten times more than the house slave told her to take, which convinced me it was intentional. She had requested an aid to incite menstrual bleeding…to prepare her womb to conceive again, she told the slave. That doesn’t make any medical sense now, but in those days, it would have. But she took too much, and when I found her, she had bled to death. I have never seen that much blood in my life…it was unreal. The mattress was soaked, sagging with the weight of all that blood. It was everywhere, hot and wet, and sickly sweet in smell, and she was very much dead. And with Marie died my chance for happiness, for redemption.” Damien turned back to her, brushing his finger along her cheek. “Or so I thought, until I met you.”