Pandora's Ring (14 page)

“What does that mean?”

Marie smiled. “Whatever you want it to,” she said. “Because you’re an in-betweener. You aren’t beholden to anyone but yourself. Just like I wanted for you.”

“Should…should I tell Dad anything?”

“No, no,” Marie said. “He’s probably better off without knowing. If it comes up though, I suppose…I did love him.”

“Okay.” Samantha took a deep breath, blinking away tears. “’Bye, Mom.”

“Not goodbye,” Marie said. “Thank you.”

Gently, Samantha kissed her mother’s forehead, releasing her from life, releasing her from the fight and her debts. It was shockingly simple, as if she were merely wiping dust off a smooth surface, and Marie faded away beneath her hands. She stood, taking a breath. Maybe she’d never be able to fight like a Damned…but if this was her fate, then so be it. She listened to the souls around her, all clamoring to talk to her again, this time not in pain or horror, but joy and welcome. Samantha stared around, trying to find the new stars in the inky blackness around her. There were two, winking blue and yellow. Samantha smiled faintly.

“Time to go back,” she said, and opened her eyes.

* * * *

Eli looked down at his phone as he watched a practically comatose Samantha. Francis would let them know. Eli knew he would. He couldn’t help but be worried, not for their sake, but for his friend’s. If Francis was caught, if they realized where he’d been for the last two days...

Francis was more than a good information giver. He was a friend, and a good man. Eli folded his hands together, and went back to watching Samantha. Not a peep. It had been two hours already. He wondered whether her mind was suffering a slow down. Sometimes these meditations took much longer to the outside world than the performer realized, time passing much more quickly without than within.

The jangle of his phone about took him out of his chair, and Eli struggled with the screen to see the message as quickly as possible. From Francis. He pushed the View button and caught his breath.

SHE’S COMING.

Eli stared. Cyrene. Who else? He looked at Samantha. How much longer? He couldn’t move Samantha, but he worried. Cyrene would have the benefit of hell hounds and much faster transport than Francis. They had maybe four hours.

Still, it was another forty-five minutes before Samantha shifted and opened her eyes, gasping faintly. “Eli?”

“Here,” he said, and grasped her hands. She was shaking.

“Done,” she said. “I don’t feel so great, though.”

He stroked her hair, nodding. “Diego and Marie were another barrier between you and the multitudes. It’s gone now.”

She nodded and slowly made to sit up. Eli helped her, waiting until they were certain she wouldn’t faint before placing her shoes beside the bed. “Francis texted. Cyrene is coming.”

Samantha paled. “I don’t think I can fight her.” She looked at her shaking hands. “I’m not going crazy but…”

“I know,” Eli said. “That’s why we’re running. We can probably put it off for a few days so you can recover.”

Samantha nodded and shakily rose. Eli looked her over
 
and cursed himself. Supporting her was hardly more than carrying a paperback book around to him, but she was going through more than soul influx. Her mother, her life, her future had all just been decided. She needed him. He strode over, took her in his arms and gave her a deep kiss. She responded like a flower to water, sliding her arms around his neck. When he finally pulled back, she leaned into his shoulder. “Thanks,” she whispered. “I needed that.”

“I know,” he said, and pushed her hair back. “Sorry it took so long. Are you all right?”

“I think so,” she said, seeming to understand he meant her mother. “It helps she’s still here.” She placed her hand over her heart, and Eli nodded.

“And she’ll stay there unless you give her and Diego to another or free them.” He stroked her hair. “Ready to check out?”

“Way more ready than I was to check in,” she replied with a smile.

* * * *

Amazingly, the car they’d stolen that first night was still sitting at the side of the dirt road he’d parked it on. Eli shook his head. “Damn. Didn’t think it was that hard to find.”

“Did you want them to find it?” she asked.

“I wanted to give them a chance,” Eli said with a smile, helping her into the Subaru. “The guy we got it from was nice. He deserves his car back.” He made a face. “Even if it is kind of bloody.”

Samantha stuck out her tongue. “She really screwed me up, didn’t she?” Her expression grew stormy.

“Yeah. Bitch.” Eli shook his head.

Samantha was looking at him as he sat in the drivers’ seat and guided the car onto the road. He could sense the silence, the building question, but didn’t preempt it. Maybe she would decide to drop it like before. Finally, she asked, “You seem to have some history with her.”

When would he learn? “Yeah.”

“What is it?”

Eli was silent for a long time, wondering if it was a good idea to say it. Samantha was patient, and never took her gaze off him, and in the end, that was why he opened his mouth and forced himself to start at the beginning.

“I married young. Eighteen–to my high school sweetheart. She was seventeen, but her parents were onboard and so were mine. We were just meant to be.” His lips tingled as he pressed them together. “We had five years together. It was the fifties, so we did pretty well by today’s standards. I worked hard, she worked hard, we made a great life. And then she became ill.”

He chanced a glance at Samantha. Her face was dark, but he didn’t think she was angry at him. Just unhappy with where the story inevitably headed. Neither was he, and they were on the smooth asphalt of the highway before he continued. “It dragged out. She’d get better, the doctors would say full recovery. Then she’d take a turn down, and we’d have three months together. Then back up to a year. Then next week. Then two years.” He shook his head. “It was awful.”

“What was she sick with?”

“Cancer.” He sighed. “The last time, she got very sick. We thought…any minute, she’d pass. But she pulled through, and the first thing she said when she opened her eyes was that she was so tired.
 
She just wanted to get better or die, and dying was starting to look like the better option.”

Samantha leaned back against the seat to watch the road, practically empty even at noon. Eli knew she wouldn’t let him stop, so he carried on. “I became desperate. I begged a higher power to help us, to save her, at any cost.” He cleared his throat. “Cyrene walked in that night, disguised as a nurse. She said my wife would make a full recovery…if I signed my soul to walk the world as a Damned.”

“Why didn’t she just harvest you?” Samantha asked.

Eli shrugged. “A soul has to be desperate to damn itself. Really, particularly desperate. It’s rarely something that happens on one’s own account, but more often for someone else in one way or another. Positions open up often enough, recruitment is pretty steady.”

Samantha frowned, and then nodded.

“Of course, my beloved having just admitted she’d rather kill herself than suffer relapse after relapse…I said yes.” Eli shook his head. “Becoming a Damned isn’t fun. It isn’t even a neutral feeling. You are…destroyed, from the inside out, connected with so much wrong in the world, and then lose half your mind. Its years before a newly Damned recovers their mind, usually. Your mother being the one to damn herself must have let her keep her focus. The moment I agreed to Cyrene’s deal, I pretty much lost my mind, disappeared and went on a rampage. With the souls I ripped away, it only made me more insane.”

“Eli,” Samantha whispered, shaking her head.

“No, it gets worse. Don’t interrupt or I won’t be able to tell the whole thing.” Eli took a breath. He could feel it shudder through his lungs. Had he ever told a soul about it? He clenched the steering wheel. “Cyrene was good on her word. My wife made a full recovery and walked from the hospital two days after I left. But I hadn’t died. There was no body. There was no evidence. As far as everyone knew, I’d checked into the hospital, forgotten to check out and run away.” He sucked on a lip. “She didn’t believe it though. For five years, her friends told her I’d just bowed to the pressure of her illness and left her. My family said I must have been kidnapped. Her family didn’t believe I’d left either, but they thought I must have been murdered on my way home.” His hands were starting to shake, and he re-gripped the wheel. “But the fact remained, I was gone. And slowly, it got to the point where she couldn’t take it anymore. She begged a higher power to show me to her.”

He fell silent, unable to speak. He glanced at the speedometer, and forced himself to ease down from the ninety-five miles an hour he’d climbed to. Samantha was silent, but reached over and took his hand. He let out a breath, and the tension and pain which drew his soul tight eased.
 
The pain somehow seeped into her. He wondered what she was doing, but her face was smooth and calm. It didn’t appear she even knew what she was doing. He took a breath, but she spoke first.

“Cyrene answered that call, didn’t she?”

“Yeah,” Eli said. “Yeah, she did.” He half-bowed his head, taking the wheel in both hands again. “You asked how I was so nice for a Damned. When Cyrene showed my wife what I’d become, my–” his voice broke in bitterness, “–slavering insanity…my wife immediately offered her soul to bring me back to myself.” He swallowed. “And of course, Cyrene took the deal. So I snapped out of it…just in time to see her smile before Cyrene ripped her soul from her body.” He blinked, but was unable to stop a tear from tracing down a cheek. “And because I’m sane, the memory can still hurt me.”

* * * *

Samantha stared at him, static growing in her ears. Eli, married? Cyrene in possession of that woman’s soul? She wasn’t sure how she felt about it, how it re-drew the lines of love around them. She turned away to give them both a moment. She didn’t want him to see the disappointment on her face.

She’d definitely never dated a divorced man, much less fallen in love with one. This was much worse than a botched marriage though, and while she didn’t want to admit how petty she was, it hurt she wasn’t the only one he’d ever loved.

Of course she wasn’t! He wasn’t the only one she’d ever loved either–how in the world was this unfair? But something about the sacrifices they’d made for each other, the tragic Gift of the Magi which Cyrene conducted for them, made her question. Was it enough? Was she enough for him, and he for her?

Eli cleared his throat. “Maybe I should have mentioned that…before we had sex?”

Samantha blinked, turned to look at him and could only sputter, “Um, yeah, but
when?
”

“The car ride?”

“Because I would have totally been listening,” Samantha retorted, “you know, going crazy, bleeding from every limb. I would have been completely coherent.”

“Your apartment?” he asked.

“Didn’t you say you didn’t love me ’til the ring broke?”

 
“Pretty much. I guess that rules out the coffee shop too, then.”

“I was about two seconds from siccing the cops on you. Not so much.” She paused, and then suddenly laughed at the sheer ridiculousness of it all. “I guess I don’t have room to talk. Walking around with horns and hooves and skin like ivory… Being previously married shouldn’t be too big of a deal.”

“She’d like you,” Eli said, smiling at her. “You aren’t exactly the same, but somehow I think you’d make a great team.”

Samantha smiled, jealousy dissolved with his gentle teasing. “You’re just hoping I’ll agree to a threesome one day.”

“Maybe if I manage to kill Cyrene, I’ll ask.”

Samantha tilted her head. “What do you mean?”

Eli tilted his head. Samantha noted idly, his horns actually phased through the roof of the car. Useful trait, she thought as he shrugged. “What you did with Marie and Diego translates to the outer world too. I kill Cyrene, I receive all of the souls within her, including the Damned soul itself.”

Samantha nodded. “You’ll certainly have a chance in a few hours.” She grimaced. “At least I’m starting to feel better.”

“Good,” Eli sighed. “But let’s just keep putting it off, eh?”

“By all means.”

* * * *