An Immortal in London: Corruption (2 page)

             
“You have been attacked?” he asked, confusion tainting his seductive tone.

             
“I was hit by an artic.”

             
“An artic?”

             
“A really big lorry.”

             
He frowned and his lips curled up into a sort of smile. I in turn smiled, my brow furrowing with confusion. It was the single strangest moment of my lifetime. I was stood face to face with death, and I was smiling.

             
“It would be unfair of me to challenge you now.”

             
I pulled the sodden neck of my pyjama shirt and nodded slowly as I walked closer towards him. His darkness was overwhelming, but I kept balanced on the edge of my control.

             
“What sort of a dead man offers pity?” I asked, my voice offering the strength that my body could not.

             
He took a step forward and I stopped breathing as his frozen fingers wound through my hair as delicately as a feather graces through a summer’s sky. “A man who has known pity himself,” he answered.  His eyes were captivated by mine; the moon shone within his and revealed a gold speckled green iris beneath the shadows that surrounded him.

             
“Your friends?”

             
He laughed and a wicked smile crept onto his perfect pink lips, “Those beasts are no friends of mine. You need not worry about them.”

             
“Why haven’t you killed me?” I breathed, his darkness piercing my senses as my light was doing to his. No dead man had ever failed to take an opportunity to attack me.

             
His finger tips graced my cheek and traced the cupid’s bow of my lips, “Why haven’t you killed me is more the question, you are after all one of the greatest hunters of your time.”

             
My lips parted and I could feel my heart hammering in my chest. “You shouldn’t believe everything that you hear. Rumour is a deadly creature.”

             
“As am I,” he whispered, as I spoke his lips came down to mine and the shock of the kiss stunned me into silence.

             
My light fell into his darkness and the shadows melted into the moonlight. Good and evil, old and young, pleasure and pain, light and dark, nothing was as it should have been, everything was wrong, but somehow that made it all the more right. I wrapped my arms around his neck and wound my fingers through his dark hair as his hands found my waist and pulled my body into his. The shadows called to me, and my light pushed me closer to him, two opposing forces working in unison to create a bond unbreakable by mere mortals.

             
The life that I had lived before that night was a distant dream, some other woman’s memories. He carried me in his arms to the house and lay me before the fire. The warmth of the flames caressed my body and I gave myself to the light, its warm embrace reminding me who I was each time my mind touched his shadows. His darkness held me close and tainted my mind, my heart, and my soul. He was truly corrupt, yet there was a longing in the shadows to feel the light to hold it close and to surrender to it. He had been infected by the corruption and darkness, and I was the cure.

             
I met his wild eyes and longed to know them. I had spent my life destroying the dead, hunting the enemy, but as I lay with my midnight lover I threw away my morals, my love, and gave myself to the shadows. My mind opened to a world of emotions that had gone unfelt for a lifetime.

             
He knelt over me and pushed my hair from my face, his eyes were alive with passion and fury. 

“Are you going to kill me now?” I asked, as I sat up and p
ushed my hair over my shoulders.

             
He looked at my milky white chest and shook his head, “It would be a crime against the fates to destroy such an angel.”

             
I knelt up to face him, “Nothing about me is angelic.”

             
“I dare to say that you are wrong.”

             
I bowed my head and smiled. He stood and held out his hand to me. I followed his scar with my eyes and he traced mine with his equally pale fingers.

             
“It’s beautiful,” I whispered.

             
He smiled and whispered softly, “Two of a kind.”

             
“If we ever meet again I will have no choice but to kill you,” I whispered in agony, as he pulled me into his arms one final time.

             
He smiled as he kissed me, “I will look forward to that day.”

             
“Victoria,” I uttered against his lips.

             
“Victor,” he breathed.

             
I stepped back and watched him run out into the storm.

             
He didn’t look back, and neither did I.

One week later I was in the heart of France. I sat at the Fontaine de la Concorde waiting for Kate. I looked at my watch and sighed, she was late.

              I looked up as a man ran towards me calling my name, a mortal man, “Miss Jewels?”

             
I stood and looked down at the man suspiciously. He was stout and wearing a very conspicuous mackintosh. I smiled and bowed my head slightly, “Monsieur.”

             
He laughed nervously and handed me a small brown envelope, “Kate wasn’t able to make it out today. I’ve been told only to come here and give you this. The key to your apartment and the address is enclosed in here.”

             
“Thank you, is everything as I requested?”

             
I knew instantly that there was something that he wasn’t telling me. I raised my brow and he squirmed under the pressure of my gaze. He wound his hands together and let out a breath. “There has been a slight change…”

             
“A slight change how?” I asked, my patience wearing thin.

             
He looked down at his shoes and then up at the clear blue sky. His face wrinkled as he tensed and said, “Another hunter demanded a key, it was weeks ago, Kate agreed.”

             
“Levi,” I uttered under my breath, I smoothed out my furious features and smiled. I took one of his shaking damp hands into mine and smiled calmly to him, “Thank you, I’ll be on my way now. Tell Kate that I’ll see her soon.”

             
He nodded far too vigorously and almost fell over as he scuttled away.

             
I opened the envelope and made my way to the small, typically French, city apartment.

             
The key fit snugly into the bronze lock and clicked open. I dropped my bags by the door as I closed it behind me.

Lying fast asleep on the sofa was the aforementioned unwelcomed hunter. I pulled open the curtains and blinding sun light burst into the room.

“Good morning sunshine.”

I turned to my house guest and smiled tightly, “What on God’s earth do you think you are doing?”

“When I saw my favourite granddaughter’s name on the list I couldn’t help myself.”

“I am not your granddaughter.”

Levi sat up and ran his hands through his thick black hair, he was my junior in mortal respect, but his true age he never revealed, whenever he spoke about times gone by he never specified the year. Levi was Gabriel’s creator, hence his
hysterical
taunt.

“What are you doing here anyway?” I asked, “Gabriel didn’t…”

“If I have been rightly informed Gabriel didn’t know that you were sent here either. It appears to be something that we both have in common; we detest confiding in the old man.”

“Informed by whom?”

“He always spoils the fun doesn’t he? I put it down to jealousy.”

“Levi?” I asked, with my arms either side of his head, leaning over where he sat on the sofa.

He leant forward and pushed a strand of loose hair behind my ear, with a whisper his hot breath fanned my face, “How terrible to see the truth when the truth is only pain to him who sees.”

I stood back and put my hands
onto my hips, “Sophocles, really?”

“Great man,” he said casually, as he stood and walked around to the drinks cabinet. “Brandy?”

“Sophocles…” I shook my head returning to verbally abusing my least favourite
relative
, “Don’t make me hurt you.”

“Oh I’d love to see you try,” he smirked, “Can’t I tempt you at all?”

I walked around to him and pinned his right wrist to the wall, I held my left hand to his heart, an immortal’s only weakness when faced with a hunter. He rested his left hand onto my chest and with little effort at all he used his right arm to pull my body against his, my fingertips were threatening to break his flesh, but still he smiled, tempting me, daring me.

“Do you have a death wish?”

“Perhaps,” he whispered, his eyes burning hot on mine.

I dropped his wrist and stood back from him, “You can’t stay here.”

              “I’m not going anywhere,” he said, handing me a glass.

             
I took a sip and put my glass down shattering it on the back of his hand. With a sigh I left the apartment. He didn’t follow me. Levi didn’t follow anyone. I couldn’t stand him. He had a habit of being everywhere. My entire immortal life was spent playing cat and dog with him. He was selfish, cruel, cocky, and worse than all of that he was stronger than me.

             
When I returned twenty minutes later I slammed the door behind me, and dragged my bags into living room. Levi was lounging on the sofa once again staring aimlessly out of the window. The broken glass still littered the floor.

             
“Are you just going to sit there?” I asked, pulling my rucksack over my shoulder.

             
He turned around and sighed when he saw my mass of baggage.  He stood and to my surprise took my case and rucksack from me leaving me only with my hand luggage.

             
“How many pairs of shoes do you need for a war?”

             
“One for each arse I kick.”

             
He looked over his shoulder at me as he dropped my rucksack onto my bed, “I see you haven’t changed one bit.”

             
I put my bags down and sorted my hair out in the mirror.

             
“I take that back,” he said, as if suddenly seeing something in my eyes, I feared that he could see or
feel
what I had done, what Victor’s shadows had done to me, but instead he uttered,  “you have better hair.”

             
I ignored him and sat on the end of my bed unzipping my case, “Feel free to go back to doing nothing.”

             
He shrugged and left the room, looking back only once, I pretended that I didn’t notice and continued to sort through my almighty collection of three pairs of hunting shoes.

The first week passed by in the same fashion, we would take it in turns to make sarcastic or cruel remarks and the other would shrug and walk away. But on the second Sunday something changed.

             
I sat with my head bowed at the back of the tiny church which lay hidden on the outskirts of the bustling city, and drowned in my thoughts sent a naïve prayer to whoever was listening.

Each time I closed my eyes I would see nothing but Victor, and hear nothing but Sedric’s voice calling my name from a place deep within me that had opened up on that dark night. I shook my head to rid myself of the thoughts, when I opened my eyes Levi was stood over where I sat looking down at me quizzically.

“Are you okay?”

I pushed my hair from my face and nodded, “What are you doing here?”

He looked around and held out his arms, “Oh did I walk into a church, I didn’t notice. It’s a miracle I haven’t burst into flames.”

I moved my coat so that Levi could sit beside me. “I didn’t think that you were this way inclined.”

“When you have lived as long as I, you have to believe in something.”

I looked down at my clasped hands and smiled, “You know something,” I said, as I sat up and looked at him, “I’ve known you for
almost a century and half yet I know nothing about you. I think I know more about my electrician in London and I only see him once a year.”

He laughed and
held a look in his eyes that I had not seen in him before, “What do you think you need to know about me?”

I met his eyes and delicately pulled the zipper on his jacket down an inch and traced the top of his scar lightly, “What happened to you?”

He put his hand over mine and dropped it onto the bench. He zipped up his jacket and cleared his throat as he turned away from me. “You don’t need to know that.”

I turned to face the alter
as Levi was doing and bit my lower lip as I uttered two words that I never thought I would, “I’m sorry.”

He turned his head slightly to look down at me and his lips melted up into a brief smile before he took a breath and stood, “Kate
lyn’s expecting me.”

“Oh, I’ll come too.”

He laughed and shook his head, “I didn’t think that you were that way inclined?”

I instantly understood and
threw my head back with a disgusted sigh.

“Try not to get yourself killed whilst I’m gone.” He walked towards the church door but before he left, he turned around and called back to me, “Oh and Roseanna, happy birthday.”

Birthday, I hadn’t noticed the date as the days ran past me, forcing me to keep looking ahead. I was one hundred and sixty six. I laughed to myself quietly and took a deep breath, how wonderful to see so much of the world, nothing to stand in my way.

I waited for five or so minutes before I left the church and took a slow walk back to
the apartment. It was peaceful, quiet, and alive. In any other situation I would have been happy that it was so, but for the fact that we had all been called to France to prevent a supposed corruption and there wasn’t a speck of death in the air.

I turned on the radio and sat next to the spot in which Levi had made his home. Levi had gone to see Kate which meant only one thing; I had never taken an interest in his love life before, but I felt an urge to protect him, but what from I couldn’t discern, the vulnerability that I had seen in him in the church wouldn’t leave the surface of my mind.
I wasn’t certain if they had ever been together, they had always seemed too much like brother and sister to be anything more than friends, but perhaps I was wrong.

As I was singing along to whatever song had been playing on the radio the door to the apartment opened and Levi strolled in with a baguette in hand.

I turned and leant over the back of the sofa, “What happened to Kate?”

He took off his jacket behind the sofa
and walked to stand in front of me and shrugged, “I didn’t go.”

I frowned and whatever tension I had been holding for the half hour that he had been gone evaporated and a smile melted onto my lips, “Why?”

“Do you ever stop asking questions?”

“I’m still holding onto the hope that curiosity kills the cat.”

He lifted his brows and held out the baguette.

I looked from the bread up to him and waited for an explanation.

He laughed at my quizzical expression and took out a candle, he buried it into the middle of the baguette and lit it with the lighter that he always kept in the inside pocket of his jacket, “Happy one hundred and sixty sixth birthday little Roseanna.”

I laughed, and stood to blow out the candle, making a silent wish that I would live to see another
one hundred and sixty six years of a world uncorrupted by its hidden evil.

“Thank you.”

“That’s my selfless act of the century out of the way,” he said, as he sat down next to me and put his legs up on the coffee table. I pushed them off and ducked as he threw the end of my birthday baguette at my head.

He looked over at the radio and shook his head; I turned around and tucked my legs under my body, and asked “You don’t like music?”

“More questions?”

“You don’t like music,” I said, turning my question into a statement.

He laughed and shook his head. On his way to his bedroom he turned off the radio and when he sat back down he was holding a guitar.

“Where’d you steal that from?” I asked.

“When have I ever stolen anything?”

I could have answered his question honestly, but instead I sat and listened.
I remember how it sung at the control of his masterful fingers. He gave the instrument a voice. He did like music, and in those brief seconds listening to him play I fell in
love
with music.

His eyes flitted to me as he played and he bowed his head with a smile as he saw my own effortless smile of simple happiness and awe.

He sat back and took a breath, standing the guitar at the side of the sofa, “So that’s two opinions of yours that I have proved wrong, dare I aim for a third?”

“What was my first?”

He ripped a piece of the baguette off and before he tore it with his deadly white teeth said, “That I am the anti-Christ.”

“I didn’t…” I stopped myself and shrugged, “
You can hardly blame me.”

He laughed and wiped his mouth, “As long as people think that of me they daren’t cross me. That is how we survive.”

“You’re right of course; I’m not one to judge.”

He laughed and nodded, “That’s why I always liked you. You are just like me.”

“You liked me? Well I never, Levi actually has human emotions, there is your third,” I laughed and he rolled his eyes and nudged my shoulder, pushing me over, making me stand to stop myself from falling. “Is that a challenge?” I asked, pushing up my sleeves.