Vision Quest (23 page)

Arik rinsed filth from the sides of the bath, then grabbed a towel from the rack. He wrapped it around Blaze and lifted Blaze from the tub. "A couch?" he asked over his shoulder, in the general direction he believed Lucas was standing. "A bed would be better, maybe, hmm?"

A couple of weeks of connection was all they'd had, but they'd been the best weeks of Arik's life. He'd said himself that the pain had to end. No more puppet, he'd insisted. No more whoring for the Universe. Blaze deserved freedom. Lucas was right.

He touched Blaze's cheeks, eyebrows, and jaw. He fisted Blaze's hair, and trailed his fingers down Blaze's neck. Then he leaned as close to Blaze as he could, felt the gathering tears fall from his eyes, and rested his lips against Blaze's ear. "I love you," he whispered. "And it's time. Renounce the curse's hold on you. Walk away, Blaze. And don't stop until you're free."

Arik hesitated, weighing his words on his tongue before letting himself say them. "I believe in you."

The bedroom had been lit with a small fire, and a dressing coat draped over the end of the bed. Arik's mother would have gushed over the dark, thick drapery and the velvet, claw-footed furniture. The four posts on the bed, at any other time, would have inspired playful games of binding and teasing. At that moment however, all Arik wanted to do was leave. Drag Blaze off to somewhere safe, and spend the next several days clinging to Blaze as if their lives depended on it.

Instead, he stripped Blaze out of the wet clothes—just for an hour Lucas had said, just until they'd dried—then wrapped Blaze in the dressing coat, and tucked Blaze under down and wool.

The first stream of blood came from Blaze's ear. Within seconds it was too hard to identify the source of any of it. The pain that streamed off Blaze's body was intense enough to numb Arik's heart and mind to any further thoughts of loss. "Keep going," he chanted in silence. "Keep going."

"Arik?" Blaze's voice forced Arik's eyelids up and he blinked for several seconds at the unfamiliar room. "Arik, are you awake?"

"Yeah," Arik mumbled, his garbled words belying the reply. "Everything okay?"

"I remember some of it."

There was so much sadness in Blaze's statement that Arik's heart wept for it. "Do you want to talk about it?"

"Yes." Blaze paused. "No. I don't know." He turned in Arik's arms to face Arik. "I loved him, Arik."

Arik nodded, bracing himself at the lance of hurt the statement brought him. "I know."

"He forgives me." Blaze reached up, but his fingers only hovered over Arik's cheek. "And I forgive myself. For doing that to him."

"You didn't—"

"Hush," Blaze said firmly. "And I forgive myself for the terrible things I've done."

"You've done more good than—"

"Hush," Blaze repeated, louder, firmer still. "More than anything, I forgive myself for loving you instead of him. Because I do, you know. Love you. Thank you for listening to devils you didn't want to hear, for watching horrors you didn't want to see, and helping me find peace inside the chaos."

Arik snorted. "You're not the only one who has thanks to say or regrets to forgive. We have time to do that later. Rest now."

With a smile Blaze let his fingers fall on Arik's face. A soft buzz of connection lighted between both of them, and it made Arik's heart skip a beat. For all of about two seconds. Then everything inside of him seemed to fall with disappointment. He gripped Blaze's arm in a rush of panic. "It's still there. Fuck, Blaze, it's still there!"

He sat up, dragging Blaze with him. "It's supposed to be gone! That's why you suffered! That's what all this was for! Why the fuck is it not gone?"

"It's gone," Blaze said, quietly. He caught Arik's hand, pushed aside the robe, and rested it on his chest. Arik's eyes closed, memories of a heated night in a boring hotel bloomed in Arik's mind, and ended with the thought of a single charge being snapped between his fingertip and a door handle.
Infused
, he recalled his thought,
by Blaze
.

Maybe a person never got rid of the charge of true love. Maybe real connection came with surprise wonders that the worldly mind didn't understand.

"And maybe," Blaze murmured, "they left us a gift."

"What do you mean?" Arik asked, but Blaze was lost in Arik's eyes. Distracted by the shade of Arik's skin. Entranced by Arik's bare chest and the dark curls around his navel that disappeared beneath the belt and slacks that he still wore.

"Blaze?" Arik murmured, the initial panic gone, but the impatient curiosity apparent. Blaze shook his head, and he lifted Arik's hand from his chest to his face. Blaze nuzzled Arik's palm, kissed it, and he caught sight of the fire in the stone hearth across the room. Blaze watched the dancing flames, and an old, old ache welled up inside him. Arik caressed his cheek, the
punct luminos
tingling and arcing, and Arik inched closer to Blaze.

"I feel as though I lived in a bubble," Blaze said softly, and Arik squeezed Blaze's knee with his other hand. "No," Blaze corrected with a small laugh, "I lived in liquid fire. Heat so hot it was molten. I retreated there, when the witch's blood infused me. When she cursed me, making herself immortal within me and ensuring I'd be rendered near dead with agony should I dare force her true death." Blaze shook his head. "My fire, the last of what was left of my family and our magic, it protected me; kept me safe within where no harm could reach the real me. And now the last of the witch's blood is truly gone, burned out from where it lurked so long in its last, cursed vessel. It's gone, and I am free and I ... am alive. And here. With you. And I feel ..."

"You feel?" Arik whispered, and he bit his lip.

Blaze looked at Arik, whose eyes widened at whatever they saw in Blaze's. "Aware," Blaze said. "Awake. As though from a long dream. I can remember every moment of every one of my too-long years. I can remember the way Doru smelled. All the faces and smiles and sadness in every man I helped. But I can also remember ..." Blaze brushed Arik's lower lip with his thumb. "The first time you kissed me."

"I remember it, too," Arik said, quietly, as though afraid to disturb the peaceful spell that had overtaken the old room in the older house lit only with their own little fire.

Blazed inclined his head in a single nod. "I know the precise moments my life changed. When I fell in love, when I fell to the curse, and when I first saw you in my dreams. And I was there for them all. I was ... That was me. But now ... It's as though I'm
all
of my former self. And for the first time, all of me is in this moment with all of you." Blaze traced the line of Arik's jaw, felt the rasp of stubble and the heat of skin, and a pink flush began to creep across Arik's nose. His chest rose and fell in a faster rhythm, and Arik's eyelashes fluttered when Arik dropped his gaze to stare at Blaze's mouth and then lifted it again to meet Blaze's eyes. "
Dragul meu,"
Blaze said. "My beloved. My lover. My ...
Arik
." Blaze rolled the word off his tongue with his native syllabic emphasis, and Arik's breathing skipped. "Who saw me, understood what afflicted me and how, and then had the courage to ... save me."

"It was mutual," Arik muttered. "The saving." He kissed Blaze, though briefly and chastely. The spark ignited with enough force to make them both gasp, and Blaze held Arik's face in his hands. "So the gift is that you remember it all?" Arik asked, and he made their foreheads meet. "Survived with sanity intact and you're both who you were and who you are, now?"

"I think so. Which means that this ..." Blaze traced his fingertips across Arik's shoulder until the man shuddered. "Is still ours. Because once, it was mine and mine to share with those whom I love. The legacy of my family and of my people. And ..." Blaze swallowed and stared again at the fire across the room.

Seconds passed, maybe minutes, and Arik scooted closer until one of his knees was bent and behind Blaze and the other leg rested across Blaze's lap. Arik kissed Blaze's shoulder, slowly and gently, and crept along a line to Blaze's neck. Arik may have had a thousand questions, but the man didn't ask a single one. Blaze was grateful. There would be time to tell Arik everything—the good, bad, ugly, and beautiful—and Blaze would. Blaze wanted to. He couldn't remember feeling so alive and whole, and he wanted to share everything and every second he had left with Arik.

And he wanted ... he needed ... he had to know ...

"Arik?"

"Mm?"

"I think ... I need to show you something." Blaze swallowed, fear rumbling low in his body. Real fear that he'd not experienced in possibly centuries.

"What is it?" Arik asked.

"I ... I have to try something."

"Blaze, what's ... you're shaking."

"I know. I'm scared."

Arik enveloped Blaze in an embrace that tugged a soft moan from Blaze. "What are you afraid of, baby?" he murmured.

Blaze grinned and turned his head to kiss Arik. "I like you calling me that."

Amused affection flickered across Arik's features. "Okay. Baby."

Blaze chuckled and pulled away. He got up, stripped off the robe, and tossed it onto a chair. He circled to the foot of the bed, and Arik crawled to the end of it, watching intently. Blaze paused and faced the fireplace, and for a horrible moment, he couldn't remember how the magic worked. What had once been as natural as breathing was now lost to him, and in that instant, he mourned enough for three hundred years. The weight of loneliness that he'd felt without his God-given gift bore down upon his shoulders, and Blaze sucked a sob.

"Blaze?" Arik asked, worried.

Blaze waved a hand to show he was okay. He took a watery breath, letting the tears flow. At one time, such things were offerings and parts of spells. Maybe, here and now in this age of Internet and space travel and marvels, they could work the same way as they had in the time of wagons, simplicity, and magic.

And he knew, too, that if this didn't work, it'd be more than okay. Blaze was a free man, and he had Arik. The miracle of figuring out the curse and it being broken paled in comparison to Blaze having a man to love who loved him. Next to that, any loss suffered was minor. If Blaze couldn't speak to or wield his Fire, he would nonetheless be a man gifted with a partner with whom he could grow, share, live, and die. Maybe the time he had left to walk the earth would be enough to convey to Arik what that meant; how impossible such an existence had once seemed, and how it made the entire universe balance to be given the chance to have it.

Tears of grief slowly changed to tears of gratitude. Blaze knelt. He bowed his head.
Please
, he entreated to anything on the side of good that might be listening.
Please grant unto me one last kindness. Allow me to have, hold, and use the gifts that were once bestowed upon many and that were stolen away into darkness. I am but one man with one pair of hands and one soul, but give me your grace, and I will touch as many as I can with the light. And I will start with the man who saved me.

There was nothing but silence punctuated by Arik's breathing, and Blaze slumped, opening his eyes. The fire crackled, popped, and flung a tiny ember onto the rug near Blaze's knee. Without thinking, Blaze picked it up. The glowing mote sat cradled in Blaze's palm, and it winked as though it giggled.

And then Blaze was no longer in the goat man's bedroom.

He was in a million homes in a million fires over a million years.

"Every fire that was still is,"
said Blaze's grandmamere, the voice fluttering the very fabric of the universe. "
And every coal that burned is part of what you hold, and every ember that you touch knows its past and its present and something of its future."

Blaze was warm, so warm ... and connected ... and ... giddy. One with the fire, which was hungry. Eating. Consuming. Eager. Blaze was lit from within and burning hotter the closer he was to the ground. He could touch the night; be with the treetops and the wind and be part of the stars. And every heart he warmed, every soul who came near him, he could glimpse. He could know them, if only for an instant.

And Fire ... in turn ...

"Knows me," Blaze whispered, and somehow he had moved from the rug to the flagstones in front of the cheerful baby blaze. And Arik—

Oh, LIKE him! Like him ... save him ... warm him ... like him! Keep him warm! Old man, he'll be. Live long. Happy. See? See?

— was there, speaking urgently in warning, but Blaze reached into the dancing red-gold-orange, cupped his palm as though gathering water, and brought out a bit of Fire who wanted to play.

"Holy shit," Arik muttered, and together they stared at Blaze holding naked fire flickering in his hand.

"It likes you," Blaze said, cheeks sore from smiling.

"It ... what?"

Fire whispered, babbling a mile a minute, so happy to find someone who could hear. "And it missed me," Blaze said. "And says we'll be old men together, someday, holding hands on—"

Big wet ick thing. Next to. Ew. Ew.

"—the beach." Blaze laughed. "This one's very young."

Arik looked from the fire to Blaze and back again. "I really, really want to understand, here, Blaze."

Drawing away from the elemental awareness in his grasp, Blaze focused on Arik. He oriented himself to the present with skill that he'd not, in fact, forgotten, and he took three deep breaths. "Fire is alive, but not like you and me. Or maybe it is, and it's closer to our understanding of an Oversoul or even a god. It's connected to every time it's ever been lit. And some Fire is connected to what
will
be. And it ... talks to me. Shows me things. It's sort of words, it's sort of pictures, but it's ..." Blaze swallowed and realized he couldn't continue because he was weeping.

Arik put an arm around Blaze's waist. "This is what the witch took from you?"

"It's what was buried beneath her blood inside me."

"Because if she hadn't ..."

Blaze nodded. "It's why she destroyed my family, like I said. We would have
seen
her. And when she chose to let me live, she had to stop the same sight and power."