Nuit Noire (7 page)

The burst of fresh air when I finally make it out is welcomed, fanning my warm cheeks. But I do not revel in it too much, not wanting Gauthier to slip past me and attempt to get away.

He steps out a few seconds later, an uncomfortable look about him as it is now his turn to be afraid of me. It amazes me to think that all I ever had to do was attempt to touch him to make him squirm. Why didn’t I do it sooner? He was clear from the beginning about not wanting to be touched. If I’d thought of it sooner, I’d never have let him force me into that nightclub with him. I’d have always had the upper hand.

“Why can’t I touch you?” I ask him as soon as we’ve walked away from the main door, and I’ve made sure that no one out here is at a listening distance.

“Because I’ll hurt you,” he says simply.

“How?”

“Your energy, your breath- I’ll take it. I could take enough to kill you,” he answers begrudgingly, maintaining an equal distance away from me, backing away with each step I take closer to him.

“Why?” I ask. “Why will you take it?” By now he is leaning against the wall, a foreboding looking crossing his features as he eyes my outstretched fingers warily.

“Because that is what creatures like me do,” he resigns to answer.

“And what exactly are you?” I ask with trepidation.

“Sophia..”

“Tell me!” I say in a harsh whisper, taking another step closer to him, and yet another, until he is pressed tight against the wall, his gloved palms pressing against it, as though fighting an urge to pull me into his arms. Suddenly I too am now fighting against the urge to collapse into his arms.

“Don’t get any closer. I’ll tell you. I’ll tell you all you need to know. If you get any closer, you’d not stop yourself from coming to me. You feel it too, don’t you?” I nod fearfully, for I do feel it. The dizzying gravitational pull around him, the growing idea that I wont be safe until I press my body to his, touch him, press my lips to his, lose myself to him.

“What are you?” I ask in a ragged whisper.

“A draugr.” The word sounds foreign and incomprehensible.

“What is that?”

“An immortal being. A ghost, of sort..”

“But..” I start to reach out, but he quickly swings away so that I touch the cold brick where his head had been.

“I am not a ghost,” he says. “Not anymore. I am solid now. I used to be just a lingering spirit seeking to close up my unfinished business before moving on, when father touched me and made me into a draugr.”

“You have a body,” I point out, for as far as I know, spirits shouldn’t have solid bodies.

“I do,” he says, “because draugrs have bodies unlike mere ghosts.”

“How?”

“We have the ability to absorb energy from human beings, and that energy makes us strong enough to have bodies. It animates us.”

“By touch?” I ask, and he nods in answer.

“Yes, by touch, and without touch,” he says.

“Your skin?” He nods.

“Or even just by smelling, tasting,” he surprises me by saying. “It’s easier to control how much energy I take in from someone by smelling, breathing it in. That’s why people don’t die around me. Because I control how much I take, leaving them with enough to reproduce more, to keep going. However, by touch..” he stops then and shakes his head with defeat.

“Is that why you don’t touch people, or let them touch you?”

“Yes. And it comes with great struggle.”

“What do you mean?”

“It is so tempting to just give in to the temptation, for the high that follows after a touch is unequal to any other. To revel in the life essence that flows through skin contact in such staggering waves, intoxicating me, is..” His eyes have a wildness in them as he says this, growing once again from their dark pools into fiery orange pools that instead of scaring me as they had before, they now pull me in, urging me to get closer. Trancing me to lean in..

“Don’t!” He says sharply, though his breathing is laboured. “Please ignore that feeling to get closer to me. Ignore it.”

“Why am I feeling it now? It wasn’t there before,” I say puzzled.

“It was always there, Sophia. It just gets harder when you get too close to me. And you are- too close,” he says. “It’s no secret that I want you so much,” he confesses in a whisper, “and my supernatural abilities are subconsciously doing everything they can to draw you to me. Plus you feel the urge to get close to me, even more strongly than other humans, as your body is reacting to the bond we have, as well as our intense attraction for each other..” And with that, our spell is broken, and I rapidly step away from him with indignation.

“I’m not attracted to you!”

“You are.”

“No am not.”

“You are, you’re just too stubborn to admit it yet. In any case, father already confirmed that you are my mate..”

“You father breathed in my energy or whatever, and gave it to you, whatever that means. He did not confirm anything..”

“He did. You quenched me.”

“What? You are both insane and..”

“What colour were my eyes after I inhaled you? Weren’t they blue? Because orange is for hunger-” as he says this, he turns, so that I do not miss the bright bleeding orange of his widened pupils clear in this dark night. “And blue is for satisfaction,” he finishes.

His words send a shiver through me. I do not know what to believe, though I doubt he is lying. What purpose would it serve to lie?

“Why me specifically?” I choose to ask instead. “Why not any other girl but me?”

“Because once every few centuries a potential xana is born, one who could grow up to be a draugr’s mate. The intensity of a human being’s unwavering will to live is what makes him or her a potential xana. It is the potential xana’s intense attraction for her mate that makes her a true xana. A xana’s energy cannot not only be sucked away as with average humans, but he or she also has the ability to take in a draugr’s energy and use it to sustain himself or herself long enough until she can replenish her own. Doing this ensures that the xana does not die when a draugr takes her life’s essence, for example in case of touching. It is his or her abnormally strong will to live that makes this possible. I know you are undoubtedly my mate because father confirmed it. My mate is the only living being that can quench my thirst and not die. You are the only one in the whole world for the past five centuries that I desire so much, that a nonfatal wisp of you quenched my eternal thirst momentarily,” he finishes. I cannot help the excitement that rushes through my whole body when he says this. My knees weaken and I fear I may collapse into him.

“If all you need is a little of me to quench yourself, then why are you so scared that if I touch you I’ll hurt myself?”

“Because I cannot control myself around you, and you haven’t yet learnt how to take from me as yet. You still have to learn that before I can trust myself with you,” he tells me.

“Was it you at the pier that night?”

“Yes,” he says.

“You touched me,” I accuse. “How could you presume to touch me, knowing that your touch could kill me?” I ask angrily. “Did you stop to think that my father had just died and that my family has being grieving already?”

“I didn’t touch you really,” he says. “Not bare skin to bare skin. I came close enough, and the life that burst from you was so intense, that I was convinced you had to be the one. I strongly suspected you were to be mine even from before, because I started sending you messages as soon as you came of age. I’d beckon you to me, call you here, and I knew if you did finally come, then it meant you were my xana. You came.”

“Is that when I started getting my nightmares? Right around my father’s death.”

“I’m sorry,” he says. I shrug in answer. What ought I to say? I’m still not ready to say it’s alright that my father died.

“Anyway, it’s a total coincidence that we moved here, because I was not part of the decision making,” I tell him shrugging. “I was not answering your call.”

“Weren’t you?” He asks almost unconvinced, as though he knows otherwise.

“No, I wasn’t. Mom moved because she got a job offer here.”

“Was it the only job offer she got?”

“No. She got a handful or so, probably because the police force wanted to promote her after the tragedy of losing dad. There was an offer to Toronto, and another to Ridgeway as police chief on a small city south of Ontario. But I told her that everywhere I turned reminded me of dad in the nearby towns and cities, for I remember all the places, restaurants and pubs we’d sometimes go together on weekends and sing..” I draw to a stop here, realizing the implication of my words.

“Even though that particular decision was taken because I suggested it,” I start to argue, “We’d never have moved here if dad hadn’t died.” I point out.

“No you wouldn’t have.” There’s something about the way he says that sentence that makes me question what he means.

“I do not like that tone. If you’re supposing in anyway that I had a hand in causing my dad’s death..”

“I’m not,” he says. “Just because it played out like that does not mean that you willingly orchestrated it..”

“What do you mean orchestrated it!” I cry out in anger. “A deranged man broke into my house and attempted to murder my family. Dad died trying to stop him..”

“You could have stopped him,” he says quietly, sounding almost reluctant as he says it.

“Of course I’d have done everything to try stop him..” And then I remember. I remember how I’d frozen in fear, unable to move forward and help dad. Did I freeze up in fear willingly? No way. I loved my father. I love him.

“I never.. I froze up. I did not wish to freeze up,” I now cry.

“I know,” he tells me. “You never meant to stand and watch..”

“Oh god! I let my father die!” I cry in a whisper, sinking to kneel on the ground, and he sinks to land beside me, his hands falling helplessly on either side of me, looking at me sadly.

“I’m sorry,” he says again. “I’m sorry because my beckoning you set all these things in motion.”

“But how could it be that Jason Dunham came to be at our place that day? Did I cause that too?” The fact that he does not rush to fight me on this makes my heart coil even more inside my chest.

“Most probably,” he finally says.

“But how? I never had any contact with him. I’d never..”

“Of course not.”

“..I’d never lead him to our home. He came because he was angry at mom and wanted to make her pay, because she went on National television and revealed his identity, promising the people that the department would have him in custody soon..” I draw to another stop, and my next words are whispered bitterly.

“It was me. It was all my fault. I’m the one that told her to accept the chief’s request that she be the face of the Hamilton Police Department during that case, because I agreed with the chief, on the fact that as a mother herself, she will win over the people’s confidence that the police is doing all they can to capture Jason Dunham, the family butcher. I brought the serial killer to our home.” This time I do not cry, for an anger, a hatred for myself settles at the pit of my stomach, and it overshadows any underlying self-pity.

“I killed my father,” I say again, this time resolutely.

“No you did not..” Gauthier attempts to say, but I rise to my feet promptly and head out into the dark night, unsure of where I am going.

I hear him following me, but I am glad that he keeps his distance because I desire to be alone. I attempt to think, to ponder, to tear at myself, but at the moment my mind is blank, a bleak resignation having settled over me, a self-hate so deep rooted that I am unsure I could ever dig out of it again. My guilt is heavy but well deserved.

I keep walking for the next hour or so until I make it home. As I walk across our driveway, I send a text to my brother to let him know that I’m already home. He must be having too much fun to realize that I am not at the party anymore, for he hasn’t called me yet. I am glad for him. He deserves the fun. I’d robbed him of our father. I deserve to suffer, he deserves the fun.

My shower is long and the water is burning. I punish myself, scrubbing myself so hard until my skin is puckered, raw and sore. I then shut off the shower, walk into my room and slip into my beddings naked, with my hair still wet, my pillow getting damp a few seconds later.

I watch him climb in through my window, but do nothing to stop him. I want him to come. I want him to kill me, accidentally or otherwise. It is the fate I deserve.

He remains quiet as he settles on the narrow bed beside me, lying on his side and arresting my eyes with his burning dark ones that shine at me despite the darkness covering us.

“It was my fault,” he whispers to me in the darkness. “Not yours, mine. Blame me, not you. I called you to me. I pushed your hand, and hence set to motion the things that..”

His words are cut off for I suddenly move closer, my lips only inches from his, and exhale deeply into his lips. I feel the immediate tug as the connection is made, the initial surge of desire is mingled with the drowning pain as I feel my energy leave me, my heart struggles to beat against my chest, my lungs constrict and my stomach muscles clench so tight. I hear his gasp even as my body begins spasming, and I welcome the pain, as well as rush my consciousness towards the dark abyss just beyond my mind. I reach out to it just as I feel the connection of our breaths break.