An Immortal in London: Corruption (3 page)

Levi’s lips curled up into a dangerous smile and
he stood to accept.

Before he had even the chance to shrug off his jacket I ran at him and pushed him back. He caught himself and pushed the coffee table across the tiled floor
, it sped across the room almost knocking me off of my feet, I jumped over it and up onto the sofa. I leapt down onto him, my legs around his waist, my right hand holding his arms, my left over his chest. He kissed my wrist and spun sending me gliding across the room. He caught me and turned, holding me against the wall, my legs and arms were pinned. His hand was on my chest above my heart, I was dead.

He kissed my cheek lightly and whispered, “I win.”

He walked away and sat back down, tearing off another piece of bread.

“I’ll win one day,” I said lightly, as I sat back down next to him and tore a piece of bread from my birthday baguette.

“I know,” he said thoughtfully.

“It’s too quiet, don’t you think?”

He took a breath and looked out of the window, “What are you thinking?”

“That there isn’t a corruption,
at least not here, because it sure doesn’t feel like any attempt at a corruption I’ve witnessed before.”

“I was beginning to think the same; it would make more sense after all for such an attack to occur in London, it being the heart of the living immortal community.”

We met each other’s eyes and ran to our rooms and began to pack, instantly recognising our fatal mistake. I ran to the nearest phone box and called for Kate.

“Hello?”

“Kate?”

There was a pause, “Who is calling?”

“It’s Victoria, listen I need to speak to Kate.”

I knew the exact words that
she would say before she uttered them. I held my left hand to my chest and rested my head against the receiver. I put the phone down and ran back to the apartment my world shattering around me as my feet pounded against the tiles.

Levi was walking the last bag into the living room as I put my hand onto his arm and said, “Kate’s dead.”

              “The corruption?”

             
I shook my head, “We were right.”

             
He ran his hands through his hair and looked down at his watch, “We’ll make it to London before tomorrow afternoon.”

             
“How long do we have?”

             
He met my eyes and there was no trace of the vulnerability that I had seen earlier that day, “A week, if that. The dead don’t waste their time, it won’t be long before they realise that we know.”

“Make thick my blood,” I uttered
mirroring the words of Lady Macbeth. “I will kill all of them.”

Levi smiled down to me and without any prior warning took my hand in his.
“Come my Lady,” he replied with bark, “we mustn’t keep death waiting for us.” Before we left the apartment he graced his fingers across my cheek and smiled softly, his brow furrowed in concern, “You’re not to tell anyone that I have a heart.”

“I’ll take it with me to my grave.”

“So you will,” he uttered, as we walked out into the cool evening, the sun setting on our peaceful little paradise, making way for the days of chaos and disorder that were waiting beyond the horizon.

182
8

I was sat in Gabriel’s library
in his London home looking at the words printed on the page of the novel, but not reading any of them for what they were, none of them had any meaning, not now that my family were all gone.

It was just over one year since I left Killin with Gabriel.

              There was a knock at the door which I ignored, as I did most things. As voices conversed in the hallway I kept my eyes on the print which had begun to merge into a black pool of ink on the page.

             
I looked up as the library door opened and Gabriel walked hastily across to me and with his hand under my elbow forced me to stand.

             
“Well Gabriel, you have been busy,” said a woman with such ancient beauty I couldn’t take my eyes from her. Her long white hair flowed over her shoulders, and her black eyes were soft yet deadly. She stood tall next to a man who could not have looked less angelic.

             
Gabriel laughed nervously, I had never seen him so, and he walked me across the room. “Katelyn, this is Victoria Roseanna Jewels.”

             
Kate kissed my cheek with her satin soft lips and smiled across to me, as I stood before her I noted that I was an inch taller than her; however that was the only way in which I bested her.

             
“It is a pleasure,” I uttered, keeping a smile on my lips, one which I had begrudgingly held there for the entire year.

             
“And I am Levi,” the dark man said as he thrust his hands into his pockets and kept his calculating eyes on mine.

             
I bowed my head slightly and they both laughed. Gabriel looked up to Levi and said with great pain, “Levi is my creator.”

             
“Oh,” Kate said, as she pushed my mother’s cloak from my shoulders, revealing my uncovered arms, “A darling little huntress. How long were you planning on keeping this one from us Gabriel?”

             
Gabriel shifted where he stood and shook his head. “Victoria is grieving. Death is the last thing that she needs to be faced with. In good time Katelyn, in good time,” he said, his voice wavering. There was something about Katelyn and Levi that set him on edge, he was scared of them, at the time I was uncertain as to why, as I felt nothing of the sort for either of them.

             
I caught Levi’s mischievous smile as Katelyn walked around to me and took my left hand in hers, “She will be magnificent.”

             
Levi put his hand onto her shoulder and whispered something to her that I didn’t catch. Kate bowed her head and left the room. Kate turned to me and said quickly before she in turn left the room, “When you are ready, we will come back for you.”

             
I stood next to Gabriel and listened as the front door was swung open. I closed my eyes and furrowed my brows. Gabriel turned to me with a sigh and began to speak, but his words met deaf ears.

I dropped my mother’s cloak and ran out after them. Katelyn turned around and smiled as I stopped a few steps away from them. Levi stayed with his back facing me, showing not one ounce of patience.

              “Show me how to hunt, I want to learn,” I said, my voice much stronger than it had ever been in my mortal life, my determination one of a woman who I had no prior knowledge of.

             
Levi’s head turned and if I didn’t know him better I would have said that he smiled. Katelyn took my hand and together we walked into a world filled with secrets and blood.

2012

I opened my eyes in Killin, where my immortal journey
had started all of those years ago and looked across to Levi. He was watching me with cool calculation, waiting for me to return.

             
“Are you alright?”

             
I rubbed my hands together and nodded, “It won’t happen again.”

             
“We should be there soon.”

             
I nodded and looked down into the tiny town. It had been forty years since the battle in London began, and it was still being fought. The corruption had been, as we had reasoned, in the centre of the capital. When we returned from France there were very few immortals still in the city, most had fled from Europe all together. Gabriel was one of the few who had chosen to stay and stand his ground; he kept the dead at bay and had a pile of heartless bodies for me and Levi to destroy when we found him.

             
Each summer they would fall out, but as the winter rose and the days grew darker they would emerge, their numbers increasing steadily over the years. Levi and I had resolved to find the leader, our hunt for the mystery dead man began in 1981, but each shadow led us to a dummy.  Now, thirty one years later, we had another name, and the positivity with which I had started was long gone, lost in the millennium.

             
“Kirk doesn’t sound much like the name of a leader,” I uttered, looking down at the photograph of the young man.

             
“Rose doesn’t sound like the name of a huntress,” Levi said, looking down into the town, his eyes always looking ahead, looking for an answer.

             
With a sigh I pushed the paper back into my pocket, “My name is Victoria.”

             
“That’s
your
opinion,” he replied, smiling slightly, his eyes fixed on an empty shop. “There.”

             
I shrugged my coat off and left it beside Levi in the opening of the forest. Levi watched as I ran down into the town. The shop was an old fishing bait retailer. Dust covered every surface. Jars lined the shelves filled with rotting bait. Whoever had owned the place hadn’t stayed long enough to pack.

             
I could feel the shadows circling around my feet, I walked to the counter and with my index finger pressed on the dust covered golden bell. The curtain was pulled aside and I watched as Kirk walked out, tall and proud.

             
“The last hunter who came here didn’t live to tell the tale.”

             
“The last hunter who came here wasn’t me.”

             
He walked around to me, each footstep followed by his shadows. His thin clean shaven face housed two lifeless grey eyes, which were framed by rough unnaturally greying hair.

             
“How did you find me?”

             
“When people’s lives are threatened they will tell you anything you want to know.”

             
He laughed and put his hands into his jacket pockets, “Why did you want to find me?”

             
“Your name followed a very dangerous title."

             
“And what, dare I ask, may that be?”

             
“It’s not you,” I uttered, cursing the dead beasts that lived only to torture and torment my immortal life.

             
“Damn shame,” Levi said, holding in his hands Kirk’s black heart.

             
I looked up to him and our eyes collided.

We were two of the same, both desperate to escape the never
ending war of the living and dead, yet both too proud to say it aloud.

             
“Back to London,” I said, pulling the top shelf off of the wall in front of which I was stood. I took Levi’s lighter out of his pocket and lit the wood, laying it onto Kirk’s body.

Such a
simple fire would not have been enough to rid us of mortal remains, but as immortals function beyond the rule of the mortal world the fire acted as a vessel to take him to the other side, the place where we should have gone to before beginning our
second
life.

We left the store and ran together back into the forest, leaving the little store to crumble into insignificant ashes hiding every
last trace of Kirk.

             
“Where do these names come from Levi?”

             
Levi shrugged as I picked up my jacket. He was kneeling beside a small stream washing the blood off of his hands. “She’s a prophet of sorts,” he said, swilling his hands around, small red ripples following his clean pale fingers.

             
“Not a very good one,” I barked, sitting down in the grass next to where Levi crouched.

             
“She is a firm believer in destiny Rose.”

             
I lay back and looked up into the darkening sky, “Destiny,” I laughed, “my father would use
destiny
as an excuse for everything.”

             
Levi sat next to where I lay and looked down at me, I kept my eyes closed but could feel the weight of his glance, “So did Kate.”

             
I smiled as I felt him lay down next to me, “You miss her.”

             
“Don’t you?”

             
Neither of us spoke for a second. She had been more to both of us than either could find words to explain. She was my teacher, and the most valuable woman in my life. Upon hearing of her death Levi and I forged a bond that was eternal in every sense. The ropes that were bound around our wrists were made of immortal silk, untouchable, unbelievable, and unbreakable.

             
Not only had I lost Katelyn in 1970, but I had also lost Francis, but in the more literal sense. I hadn’t seen or heard off of her since that night. I had left a note for her and it had gone unread, and neither Gabriel nor any of my other contacts had any word for me. She wasn’t dead, I knew that, I could feel it in my bones, but whatever fate had done with her would certainly not be kind.

             
“Do you think that Francis is still out there?” Levi asked quietly, he had never cared for her, but his care for me had led to his help in my forty year search. His fingers were delicately tracing my scar, as they so often did.

             
I looked up into the mass of tree tops and clear dark blue sky and uttered, “She has to be.”

Later that week we returned to London. I stayed with Gabriel during the nights, but my father’s old town house, Rainbow’s End, had been cleaned and prepared for a more permanent visit for working during the days, and Levi moved back into his home which lay on the outskirts of the city. It was winter, December to be exact. Gabriel had held a ball each Christmas as the dead had always fallen out by the end of November, but not 2012, it was one week in and they were still hanging around.

As I ran through the city with Levi we both knew that something had changed. We had expected something big on the millennium, with the masses of people gathering in London it was an opportune moment, but nothing, not a peep,
they had disappeared in November just like they had done the previous years.

             
We ran back to his home after our nightly run of the city and drank in his lounge until the early hours the next day.

             
I cradled my drink in my hands and looked over to Levi, “They say that the world is going to end this year.”

             
“Is that so?”

             
I nodded and kicked my feet up onto the coffee table, “Maybe they’re right this time.”

             
Levi picked up my feet and dropped them onto the carpet, and sat down next to me, “It’s about time we had a break from saving the world.”

             
“Mm, let the government do some of the leg work for once,” we both laughed and I turned to him, holding out my empty glass.

              “I should get you home, can’t have the old man left alone with the dead roaming the city.”

             
With a sigh I stood and wandered to where my coat was hung in the hallway, “He hates this you know.”

             
“Why do you think I take so much pleasure in walking you to the door?”

             
“I guess it would be crazy to think you might be an actual gentleman.”

             
He held my coat out for me to put on and shook his head, “I have a reputation to uphold.”

             
“I’ve said it a million times!” I said, spinning around throwing my hands into the air, laughing, “What happens here,” I said motioning between us, “stays here.”

             
“Why do I tolerate you?”

             
“Because you promised Katelyn that you would look after me,” I said, sobering instantly, I met his heavy vulnerable eyes and whispered, “
Forever
.”

             
He pushed the small of my back and directed me out of his house, “Are you sure we said forever, I mean fifty years, that’s got to be reasonable?”