Avalon Revamped (20 page)

“Cynthia!” Jeffries cried. “Cyndi! Get help. Please help me.” The last word got lost in a muffle as Avalon clamped her hand tight over his mouth as she continued to feed. Slurping and gulping.

She must’ve been hungry.

Before long, Jeffries stopped pretending, and his face went blank, except for a hint of anger, contempt behind his darkened eyes.

No one controlled him, not even for a moment. It was he who was in control. Always.

He would be particularly angry tonight, and I, no doubt, would be punished for it. If he remembered. I knew how pushing one’s will worked. It could erase conscious memories and the like, but it couldn’t make the deeper mind forget. Somewhere, he would know. Viscerally, he would know, just as his many victims knew. Even when their conscious minds blamed themselves or denied the violence, deep down, their bodies and minds reacted to the violation as if it had been as overt as the physical attack before me.

Avalon finished and wiped her mouth with one sleeve while keeping him pinned against the wall with the other arm, but he didn’t struggle anymore. He just looked at her through angry slits, as snakelike as he was on the inside. Still, a human’s conscious mind would forget, and Avalon compelled him to do just that. She turned and apologized to me, then disappeared into the bustling street. While still in a daze, Roderick picked up the scarf Avalon had ripped off, and tied it tightly around his neck.

“Cold night,” he said. “Better bundle up. Cyndi, are you all right?”

“Just cold.”

“Well, why are we standing around out here? Let’s get to my place. I’ve got a hearth ready for us.” His voice held a forced tender tone, trying too hard to appear compassionate, which meant he felt anything but.

It would be a rough night.

§

I had been punished, all right, but he did so with great mastery. Gaining verbal consent for one thing, then taking it further, crossing boundaries we had set as lovers. Ignoring my reactions or indications to stop. Worse, mixed with the punishment and violation was joy and ecstasy. Proclamations of love and adoration. Explosive orgasms.

It was not true joy, however not genuine pleasure; like an opium high, it was manufactured.

The withdrawal proved it.

“Your tea, Constance.” Everett’s voice was kind, soft. He knew how drained I was when I returned from a night with Jeffries. “Please, end him soon. I can’t bear to see you like this any more.”

“Yes. The time has come. I almost did it last night, but after the attack in the alley…I had an idea.”

“Is that what’s stopping you? Be honest with yourself, Constance. Could it be you don’t want to let this one go?”

“Everett, please. I’m a professional.”

“My apologies, mum. But the way you speak of him...”

“True joy lay in its subtleties, Everett. Peace and true love might not be as passionate, but one would find that's a good thing because it was real. Passion, after all, means to suffer, from the Greek pathos. A few hours of ecstasy is not worth the months of agony to follow.” Was I trying to convince myself? “A lifetime destroyed for a few moments of pleasure. Like poor, poor Polly, and another former lover, the patron who hired me. She’ll never be the same either, but she’ll heal, more or less, because she got away. Polly, on the other hand. She’s doomed as long as she’s tied to him. I aim to set that woman free.”

Everett didn’t say a word, but rather just sipped his tea and took up his pet poppet from the others again, jabbing a pin in its eye.

“Perhaps I have indulged for too long,” I admitted. “Tomorrow night. I shall do it then. With some luck, I’ll have some assistance.”

“Heart is still as black as the day you made it,” he said, jabbing the pin in the thing’s heart. “As long as their heart remains black, or even when it turns red, they haven’t yet suffered the sum of all their victims. It’s not until the heart turns white, then, and only then, are they released from their prison, from their slice of purgatorial eternity. Is that right?”

“You know it to be true, Everett. He still has lifetimes to suffer. Worry not.” Laughing to myself, I reflected on the image man had of succubi. Demon women who seduced men and devoured their sexuality.

Well, they were part right, but not in the manner they suggested.

Tomorrow it would be Jeffries’ turn to be devoured.

“Men are altogether afraid of women’s sexuality and innate power, aren’t they, Everett? So frightened, in fact, too many men find it necessary to belittle and slander and control women. To hold them down. To force them to submit and remain downtrodden, if not physically then indeed emotionally and mentally. Do you think that’s why? Everett? Could it all boil down to cowardice?”

“You know it does in most cases, mum. After centuries of proof, why do you ask for my validation every so often like this?”

“For precisely that. Validation. Support. Although I am supernatural, I am also a woman. Human, yet inhuman. Mortal, yet immortal. I’m a paradox, Everett, and it’s maddening.” My hand trembled, so I clutched the rocker’s wooden arm to steady myself. It didn’t help. “Sometimes, I feel too much like a woman, a human, and not enough like the destroyer. I’m confused. Yes. Jeffries is getting to me. You’re right. I’ve waited too long, and I’m getting entangled like Miss Pooter. It brings it all back, Everett, and I need someone to pull me out of it.” Tears welled, and it became difficult to catch my breath. Images pelted my mind.

Not now. Please.

Everett rushed to my side and put his arm around my shoulders, shushing me and rocking me as I cried. The original trauma rushed back as if it were yesterday. The span of five hundred years gone in a blink.

Hugging my knees close to my chest, I wept, as Everett held me tight. “I didn’t deserve that, Everett!”

“No, my dear. You didn’t deserve that.”

“I didn’t deserve to be treated thus. All I ever did was love him. How could he have done that to me?”

“He was a monstrous man, Constance. A horrible monster, and his friends, too.”

“There wasn’t enough openings for them to go all at once, so they created more,” I cried, folding into Everett’s embrace.

“Shhhh. It’s over now. You’re safe now. He did horrific things to you, and it wasn’t your fault. Besides, he got his punishment. They all got what they deserved.”

Yes they did. It was my wrath, the power and love for myself, that enabled me to exact my revenge, but they got off easy. Too easy. Yet, the past was the past. No going back now. It wasn’t until a few decades after my transformation that I realized by killing them, and other rapists and abusers, I delivered them peace. Relief. Escape. While their victims had been destroyed, traumatized for life. Haunted by the memories and shattered by their actions.

So I had developed this new method.

“That’s true!” I said, pulling out of the flashback, allowing rage to replace sorrow. Everett acted remarkably well, having to do this every so often. Sometimes those toxic memories came out of nowhere and brought horror and fear, pain and loss. I would never get over how it still felt so real.

“You’re a powerful woman, Constance. It has been an honor to serve you these past decades.”

“I am, indeed. All women are, Everett! If women had the slightest idea of their power…but centuries of misuse, rape, and bullying has broken the female spirit, for the most part.”

“Yes, mum, but you do what you can to repair that. You save a lot of women from agony, and you deal out justice when justice fails them. That’s what succubi do.”

“Yes. That’s what we do! We take on the pain and exploitation and violation for women. We sacrifice ourselves again and again to free women from their chains.”

“It’s noble work.”

“It is! I have a purpose, Everett! My existence is necessary, and someone like Jeffries can’t take that from me. A snake like Jeffries will pay dearly for this.”

I turned to the looking glass and watched the last tear drop from my hazel eyes. The liner beneath my lower lids, trickled down my cheeks. After all this time, five hundred years, and the memory of my attack still triggered such profound sadness, regret, and fury. The mixture of conflicting emotions enveloped in such trauma was maddening in and of itself.

The attack was horrific enough, but sometimes I thought the worst trauma was what I endured afterward. The looks. The doubts. The gossip. Everything from what a harlot I was to take on five men at once to how I must’ve deserved it. Perhaps the worst was those who just didn’t believe me. Those who said I was saying so to get attention, to get even for my husband having an affair. After all, what should I expect being so outspoken, not staying in my place?

“Enough.” I scolded myself.

The anger rose, and my eyes turned from hazel to black. The pink bow of my lips became a scowl. I breathed in, filled my lungs with air, held it for a moment, and then let it out with an audible whoosh. Again and again, until the rage subsided.

Five hundred years, and I remembered it, felt it, as if it were yesterday.

Yes. They got off far too easy with death. Death was, indeed, a relief.

“I can't do much, Heaven, and Hell, knows what a ubiquitous problem violence against women is, but I can do something, however small in the grand scheme, to balance the scales.”

“That you do, mum. Quite a lot to balance the scales. All in all.” The doorbell chimed, interrupting Everett’s support and care of me.

“Answer the door, would you, Everett?”

“Of course, mum.” I wiped the tears from under my eyes, smoothing out the smudged makeup, and waited at the top of the stairs for the announcement. Everett opened the door and addressed the caller, then turned and said, “Miss Avalon Bainbridge to see you.”

Excellent, we had a lot to discuss.

ARTHUR

The Wellington. I had taken Avalon on our first date here. Perhaps it wasn’t the best idea to bring Chastity here tonight. I thought it might help me forget Avalon, or maybe it was to keep her closer.

I didn’t know what to do or what to say. I wasn’t sure how I felt.

Before this, it had always been so easy to move forward, forget the last, as they were all but placeholders for Catherine. Just warm bodies to please me. All falling short of the perfection that was Catherine all those centuries ago.

Avalon, too.

Chastity would be as well.

They all were.

Now Blackwolf and that harlot Nadine had shaken me to my core, making me question things I hadn’t done before. Or, at least, not for some time. Self-examination and all that nonsense. So trite, so very dull and pointless. Such a waste of time and energy when there were far more interesting things like the sweetness seduction followed by betrayal. Indulging in lust and love, albeit short-lived. For me, it was enough. One fanny was as good as the next, after all.

Chastity chattered on and on across from me, but I wasn’t listening. Just laughing when seemed appropriate and nodding my head. Time to focus on this beauty before me.

New memories, moving on, and all that. Forget Avalon and her need for control.

That was what I must do. It was what I always did, and I excelled at it, after all. Never let it be said that Arthur Tudor was tamed by a woman. Imprisoned, more like.

Yet, as I looked around at all the couples together, I missed Avalon all the more. Here before me sat this glorious creature, much more knowledgeable in the ways of love and lust and ecstasy than Avalon.

Yet, I longed to be with Avalon.

Yet, I felt empty without her and furious with her.

Yet, I loved her and hated her for making me feel vulnerable.

Might Thomas and Blackwolf and that blasted medium be right about me?

Balderdash.

Just push through it, man.

“You’re distant tonight, Arthur. Is everything all right?” Chastity said touching my arm. Her amber eyes studied my face for any understanding of how I could be so distant tonight and so attentive the last time.

Women, I didn’t know whether to pity them more for their stupidity or for the pain I caused them.

No, the pain they felt.

I had always been honest about my intentions.

Well, more or less.

“Forgive me, sweetheart, a lot on my mind, I suppose. With these disappearances and all.” That should shut her up. I’d say anything to be free of the interrogation that would follow if I spoke of my doubts. Women said they wanted to know my thoughts, but then when I told them, I was punished. Always. With a thousand questions and those looks of judgment and disappointment and heartbreak. Why couldn’t they just bend over and take it when I wanted it and shut up the rest of the time? Was that really too much to ask?

“I’ll never forget that smell in McFerret’s cabin. Ugh! Oh, it turns my stomach now to even think about it. Perhaps, it’s best not to while we’re eating.”

“Of course. Forgive me.” Such a delicate creature, wasn’t she? We ate in peace for a moment or two, but then I couldn’t get my mind off McFerret. “It is rather odd, though, is it not? The statue. The nasty black pus? Do you believe in witchcraft, Chastity?”

“Witchcraft!” Her eyes widened and her gloved hand flew up to her outburst. She lowered her voice, looking around to see if anyone had heard. She blinked at me once or twice, then shielding her lips from the rest of the restaurant—as if anyone was paying attention to anyone but themselves—said, “Are you mad? Speaking of such things in a public place? Of course I don’t believe in such nonsense. Do you?”

“Nothing else makes sense.”

She lifted her glass of wine, continuing the pretense for everyone else’s sake, but the embarrassment rose in her cheeks. After a bout of nervous chuckling, she said through a plastered smile and clenched teeth, “Can we talk about this later, please?”

“I just can’t get out of my head what that medium said today. She said Nicholas, wherever he was, was suffering. In a lot of pain, and, she said, he deserved it.”

“What a dreadful thing to say!” Chastity pulled her napkin to her lips, shocked. That, at least, took her mind off her pretense. Yes. Women. So much empathy for complete strangers. Astounding. “Who said this? Avalon?”

Oh, Avalon. My heart ached at the sound of her name, and Chastity must’ve noticed for she stiffened. “No,” I managed, bringing myself back to the conversation. “Madame Nadine. A medium, fortune teller.”

“Are you truly going to believe a charlatan like that? Honestly, Arthur. You’re not that young; surely you aren’t that naive! It’s for sport only. You can’t take anything they say seriously, my love. Regardless, it was a dreadful thing to say. Pay her no mind.”

“Dreadful, indeed. That’s what I thought”—especially since I
knew
Nicholas—“She accused Nick of all sorts of heinous acts, and, come to think of it, I think she accused me as well. Preposterous.”

“She sounds mad, of which I have no doubt, the fraud. How could she possibly know, even if it was true? Balderdash, all hocus pocus nonsense.”

“That’s what I said! How could she know? But she said she did know these things, and the way she looked at me. The things she knew, Chastity. There are certainly a lot of fakes out there, but this woman was genuine, I believe. No, I am not naive.”—the nerve of calling me such had sealed her fate, my mind made up—“Not in the least. Give me some credit, woman, but this harlot Madame Nadine knew far too much to be a fake. It was unsettling, to say the least.”

“Oh, Arthur,” she said, reaching out across the table and touching my hand. “I’ll be sure to get your mind off of it later. I promise.” Her coy smile sent blood traveling downward, but I found myself pulling my hand from her touch. “What is it, Arthur? You’re scaring me. Is everything all right?”

“Everything is just fine,” I lied. “Finish your dinner.”

“Arthur. Tell me. Please. If we’re to be together, then we must be honest with one another. Know each other, intimately, and not just in body.”

The very thought would have harrowed my very soul, if still had had one. “No, Chastity. Actually. Everything is not all right. I cannot do this anymore. With you.” I sat back, stone-faced, daring her to defy me or argue.

“What?” she said, lips parted in surprise. “Whatever do you mean, Arthur?”

“Us. I mean, there can be no more us, Chastity. I’m in love with Avalon, and this is all just too wrong. There. I’ve said it.” My flat voice pained her as much as my words, after having been so tender and loving.

No mind. She was a grown woman. Surely she understood it was a romp, after all. Nothing lasts forever.

“Is that so?” She pulled her lips in tight until there was nothing to them but a thin pink line. “All the business about a proper courtship? Was that all a lie, Arthur?”

“I meant it at the time.”

“You meant it at the time,” she said, her voice a broken whisper. Her eyes glistened with unshed tears. Looking down, she took a deep breath and composed herself. When she looked back up, there was no sign of hurt, which I found a little disappointing. I did like to see the pain on their faces, knowing how much losing me hurt them. How much I meant to them. Hardness, even hatred was the only thing behind this woman’s eyes. That, and perhaps a touch of inexplicable joy. Strange. Twisting her napkin in her hands, she spoke, hostility dripping from each syllable, “You child. I truly should have known someone as handsome as you would be a complete dolt.”

“Now see here.” My whisper was harsh, but it was a whisper. Those at nearby tables stopped eating and looked over at me. The air became stale around me, making it distasteful to breathe. My throat clenched before I could say another word, but she had already started speaking again, interrupting me.

“Enough, Arthur. Go back and play with your toys, as that’s all we are to you, isn’t it? Well, I am not a toy, dear boy. Not in the least. A romp would’ve been just fine with me, but then you began making love to me, telling me I was so much more than that. How dare you awaken love for your selfish desires, when you are not prepared to follow through.” She stood, facing me full on, hands on hips, not caring that people around stared at her defiant stance and raised voice. “Figure out what you want before involving another heart, Arthur. You are quite old enough to take responsibility for your actions, or perhaps you’re not. You are a coward and a spoiled little boy.”

Second time someone told me that today.

She threw her napkin down upon her half-eaten dinner. The entire restaurant had stopped eating and chatting. All eyes were on us. Now it was my face that burned in shame, something I didn’t feel often. No. I didn’t like it one bit.

“One day, quite soon, I suspect, you will learn a very harsh lesson, Arthur York. Hearts are not trifles to be toyed with. The price for doing so is higher than you will wish to pay. By then it shall be too late. Someone will hold you accountable, Arthur, and I suspect it is long overdue. Good night and goodbye.”

Silence followed, and not only because Chastity had stormed away. Not only because the entire restaurant had frozen mid-meal to watch my humiliation, because they—one by one, two by two—went back to their dinners and conversations, with only a lingering glance or two in my direction.

Their lips moved again. Their cutlery hit their plates. Their glasses clinked over the candles.

Still, no sound reached my ears, not even the hiss of my own breath.

Nothing.

Chastity’s gone. Avalon’s gone.

I could start again. I always did start again.

Over and over and over.

Then I saw it. The pattern. The one Thomas had mentioned.

Over and over and over.

Each woman, a placeholder for the next, for the last. Dating back centuries to Catherine. What made Catherine so perfect?

Too inexperienced? Too pious? Too needy?

We were in love, yes, but we were barely adults. Frivolity. We had forever. King and Queen of England, that was our future.

Then I died.

She still became Queen, and I hated her for it. I longed for what we lost, such a short time together. Ever since, when I tried to love again, I looked for the perfection of an imperfect dead woman. Long dead. She represented some perfect love I fancied I once had. We were but children, weren’t we? At least in the ways of love. It was new and exciting. We were rich and powerful. We had the world at our command.

Then I died, or was reborn into this death.

I hated her for it.

Yet, she was perfection, wasn’t she? We had stayed up nights talking and laughing and fighting and loving together. I knew her better than she knew herself, and she knew me better than I knew myself. I respected her. We shared our thoughts. We shared everything, as equals.

I didn’t control her, ever, nor she me.

We shared.

My eyes stared at nothing. The waiter came and spoke, but it didn’t register.

We shared everything. That was the difference. I loved her because she was perfect. She was perfect in her imperfections. I loved her and cherished her because I knew her, I was invested in her. We were invested in each other.

Catherine was far from easy, but every ounce of effort was worth it.

I had never put forth such effort again, never invested myself in another person. I expected every new woman to be Catherine, but they weren’t Catherine. No one was or would ever be.

I suddenly realized I didn’t want Avalon to be Catherine. I wanted Avalon to be Avalon, and I wanted to know her imperfections, her thoughts, her dreams. I wanted to hear her opinions and share mine, without control.

Oh, Avalon!

“What have I done?” I said to the waiter, who was now shaking my shoulder. The Maitre’D came over and spoke in worried tones. “I have to fix this,” I said to them, then stood and pushed past them.

“But sir,” the Maitre’D said. “Your bill!”

I spun around and around in the middle of the restaurant, dancing with myself, laughing into the air. Pulling pound notes from my pockets, I tossed them up in the air and let them rain down on those around me. Gasps of delight and horror mixed with their laughter, my own hysterical laughter.

“I can fix this!” I exclaimed. “I know now. I understand now! Avalon, my love, I’m coming for you!”