The Mark of Cain (7 page)

He looked her over like he was surprised she’d
picked up on that. He probably thought her to be a dumb blonde. Most people did
before they got to know her.

“Like I said, I’m fine.” He then turned to check on
Eric again.

She grabbed his shoulder as he bent over, wanting to
turn him back facing her so she could get the truth. That was when everything
once again began to make sense.

As she touched him, he called out in pain.
Surprised, she pulled her hand back only to find it covered in gore. But how?
The answer popped into her mind as though it had always been there, waiting for
her to connect the dots. The gun had gone off, which had scared the robber
away, but the bullet hadn’t hit anything around them. Some part of her had
always known that it had hit Inac.

Unable to pretend like he was fine any longer, Inac
fell to his knees. From the dim light of a street lamp, she could see that he
was getting paler by the minute. She could also now see that part of his black
suit jacket was shiny; wet looking.

She dropped to the ground, putting her hands under
his jacket and over the river flowing from him, some part of her registering
sirens in the background. Wanting to comfort him as he collapsed fully to his
back, she lied for the first time in her short life.

“You’ll be okay. Don’t worry. You’re going to be
fine,” she told him, hoping to soothe him, as well as herself, with the lie.

But he really wasn’t going to be fine because she
wasn’t even sure whether she was putting pressure on the wound or not. There
was just so much blood. Blood everywhere. All over her white dress and clumping
the hair that had fallen out of the silver sticks when she’d been hit.

The truth was, Inac was going to die before those
sirens could arrive.

“You’ll be okay,” she lied again, unsure if he could
even hear her now. His eyes had rolled up until she only saw the whites, and
his breaths were coming in shallow gasps.

“You’re okay. You have to be okay,” she repeated
over and over again into the night.

***

“You’re okay. You’ll be okay,” a voice kept
repeating in Inac’s mind, superimposed with another voice from a long time ago
that had said similar words.

“You good. You be good. Sleep,” it had said in its
native tongue.

His mind was hopping between the two, trying to
figure out which one was real. The latter one won.

“You good. Sleep,” the voice commanded again when he
tried to move. Even the small movement he made caused unthinkable pain to surge
through his body. “No move.”

“Where…?” was all he managed through his throbbing
throat before he lost consciousness.

He wasn’t sure how long he slipped between
consciousness and unconsciousness—time really had no meaning to him—but he knew
that it was many days.

“How he live?” he heard that familiar voice ask. Now
that he was feeling a little better, he could pay attention enough to
comprehend that it was a female.

“No know,” a deep masculine voice boomed.

It took him a while to save up enough energy to
croak out, “Where am I?” Though he already had a clue from the crude dialect
the two were using. He knew he must be far beyond any civilization. Probably
near, or in, one of the many lush jungles across the land.

It was interesting how that worked. All humans had
originated from the same village but, when some had left with him, and others
had later moved away to begin their own villages, their languages had evolved
until they only had small bits of the original language left. He hadn’t met
anyone who spoke the original language in many, many moons. Mostly, he came upon
people like this; people who spoke so simply, the beauty of words no longer
present.

“Spike Rock,” the man answered.

He’d known that he was in the middle of nowhere, but
Spike Rock? That was a village so isolated deep in the jungle that they likely
had never met anyone who hadn’t been born there. In all actuality, they
probably didn’t even know there was a world outside of it.

“You know Spike Rock?” the man asked.

Instead of answering, he asked, “What happened?” It
was only when they didn’t answer that he realized that he was speaking in
his
native tongue. “How me hurt?” he amended.

“Black jungle beast eat,” the man answered. It
seemed the girl wasn’t going to speak now that he was doing better. He still
hurt, but he felt much better than before.

He opened his eyes. Above him was craggy, damp,
storm-colored rock. Now that he was paying attention, he could feel the cool
air blowing through the cave, bringing with it the fragrance of the jungle: the
thick leaves and the rich soil, the oversized flora and fauna, as well as a
slight feral scent that spoke of the black jungle beast. Underneath him was a
bed of the same lush jungle leaves that he could smell so perfectly. That
explained why he was so comfortable. He was used to sleeping on the hard jungle
floor, so this was wonderfully cozy.

He took stock of his body, making sure that the
great animal hadn’t eaten any of his limbs. He was lucky; however, when he
turned his head to look at those helping him, pain once again shot through his
body.

“No move!” the girl said as she flung herself
forward to make him stay still.

He cupped a hand around his neck, feeling wetness
there. When he pulled it away to determine why it was wet, his fingers had a
semi-liquid green substance on them. Medicine. It must be covering his wounds.

Suddenly he recalled what had happened. He had been
traveling through the jungle to no place in particular when a giant black
animal had pounced on him from its hiding place in the trees. Like most great
animals killed their prey, it went straight for his throat and spine with its
sharp teeth. Thinking about it now, the thoughts he had in the moment surfaced.
When most people would be too focused on their struggles to pry a strong mouth
from their neck—and about how the animal gleefully lapped up their blood; about
it digging its claws deep into the flesh of their shoulders and limbs so that
it could clench around their bones to steady itself—all he had thought about
was how he hadn’t aged in who knew how long, and now he would finally die the
horrendous death people believed he deserved.

He shouldn’t be alive now. No matter what medicine
the villagers had used, he should be dead.

He watched the girl as she added more of the green
mixture to his throat, then to deep gashes along the rest of his body. She was
a pretty girl with darker skin than he had ever seen in his travels. It was
like the soil he had once planted his family’s crops in back when he had been a
farmer. That was so long ago….

“Me Niku,” she said, giving him a small smile that
was blinding against her dark skin.

He smiled back; she could distract him from the pain
with her different features.

“Me Aemuth,” he replied, giving her the name he’d
gone by for the past six hundred and forty-three moons.

Niku stayed by his side for days before he was
strong enough to leave. But he didn’t leave. Niku had fallen for him and wanted
him as her mate. She was pretty so he took her as such, much to the excitement
of her father. Aemuth spent thirty-nine content full moon cycles there before
Niku noticed that all the marks from the attack had disappeared from his neck
and body.

The tribe already thought him different because of
his lighter skin, as well as the fact that he was twice the size as most of
them. And then there were the black designs that covered his right arm, the
right side of his chest, abdomen, and back. Tattooing was in other parts of the
world, but not here. Not in a place where it wouldn’t even be visible on the
skin.

Those things had all made them fear him, but now
that his marks from the great beast had disappeared, they thought that he must
be a demon here for their blood.

One night as he and Niku, round with his child, were
taking an evening stroll along the river, the hunters all charged toward them,
trying to kill both of them to rid their village of him and his spawn. He tried
to jump in front of Niku to protect her, but they came from all directions,
making protecting her impossible.

They jabbed him with their spears, the sharp stone
tips cutting deep into his flesh. When that didn’t work, they tried to burn him
with their torches. They didn’t succeed before he killed most of them to get
away, leaving his dead mate behind. He then ran through the jungle, losing them
before passing out somewhere in its foliage. It was when he woke and found
himself healing that he realized that maybe he
couldn’t
die. He knew
that he didn’t age, but those spears had cut through into places that would
kill anyone else. Like the spear they’d buried in Niku’s swollen stomach….

He felt a twinge of sadness. He hadn’t been in love
with her, but she’d always been a good mate. She had always treated him with a
respect he wasn’t used to, because he was a wanderer with no home and no
people.

It was that event that made him realize that he
would always be different. He would always be alone. When God had first cursed
him and told him that he would never age, he had been ecstatic. He could own
the world. But now that he knew that he could never
die
, eternity seemed
to stretch before him like an unfathomable crevice devoid of even the barest
trace of light.

That was the beginning of his depression. He spent
countless moons trying to kill himself, becoming more animalistic the more he
failed. Soon he no longer resembled a man as he fell further and further into
his hatred and pain. His black hair had grown long into thick, circular snarls
caked with mud, as was the rest of him. And his beard was denser than any
forest known to him. With it all, he knew that he was no longer human.

He tried everything he could think of to end his
life until he had only one more way that he could think of to try. He looked
down from the cliff at the water far below, where it violently crashed upon the
jagged rocks. There was no way he could survive this. If the fall didn’t kill
him, then surely he would drown.

Taking a deep breath, more for courage than for
anything else, he jumped….

***

Inac’s eyes sprang open the same moment Aemuth
collided with the ocean floor. He hadn’t thought about that life for thousands
of years. His depression and the time that followed on the ocean floor had made
him become someone so unholy that he just didn’t want to think about it. If he
did, then he was worried that the same animalistic rage would overtake him once
again.

“Inac?” a feminine voice asked.

He turned his head to the side, his throat no longer
feeling as though it had just been ripped out by a panther. When he saw Hara
sitting there, looking down at him, he smiled.

“Hey,” he said through his gravelly throat. She was
so beautiful with her perfectly arched golden eyebrows drawn together in worry.
“How are you?”

“How am
I
?
You’re
the one who got
shot.”

He shrugged, sending a sharp pain following his
tattoo down his right arm as well as into his back and chest.

“I’ve had worse,” he said truthfully.

“But you could have died.”

“So could you if I hadn’t jumped in when I did,” he
said, lightly touching the vivid red and purple bruise on her cheek. He was
happy things had happened the way they had. He had to get Hara into his life,
as well as she had to trust him so he could ruin her. If getting shot for her
didn’t give her unwavering trust, then nothing would.

She leaned forward in her chair to grasp one of his
hands with both of hers, doing her best to keep from touching the IV there. “We
were really worried about you.”

For the first time he noticed the arresting shade of
her lavender eyes. They were natural, too. Just like the impossible color of
her hair. In all his years, he’d never seen something as unique as her.

“Oh
we
were, were we?” he joked to clear the
air of the magic she’d unknowingly cast. He wasn’t used to being so attracted
to a woman before. He would enjoy playing with her before he killed her.
Really, it was a pity she had to die. The world would be a much colder place
without her beauty.

She gave a nervous giggle before looking down at her
hands. She was obviously as shy as a unicorn. Her affinity for them now made
sense. She herself had the innocence of one, as well as she was as rare.

“Well,” she said, glancing up at him before glancing
back down as her already rosy cheeks deepened in color. “
I
was worried
about you.”

He couldn’t contain his grin. He had her right where
he wanted her. Before, she’d only been fantasizing about him. Now she was in
love. Soon, she’d have her first kiss, followed closely by her losing
everything else she held precious….

“Well, as deeply as I am touched at your concern, as
you can see, I’m fine.”