The Blood That Bonds (5 page)

“
Estranged?”

“
Something like
that.”

Theroen nodded, regarded her again with
inscrutable calm.

“
Why do you ask?” Two
couldn’t help it. She wanted to hear it out loud, wanted to know if
the intentions he seemed to be so clearly communicating were true.
Theroen shook his head slightly, looked away for a moment, smiled
his maddening smile.

“
The food is here,” he
said, glancing over her shoulder.

So it was, and it was very good. Theroen
watched her eat, sipping at his wine. Two had subsisted for years
on instant noodles, microwave burritos, and fast-food value meals.
She relished the pasta, with its dark wine sauce, full of tomato
and garlic, herbs and oil, tiny bites of chicken.

This was the best meal she had ever eaten,
but she didn’t eat a lot, ever mindful of the fact that this
evening had a predetermined end. Sex on a full stomach had never
been something she enjoyed, and for once Two wanted to enjoy the
act. She felt a connection with Theroen, too strong to ignore, and
found herself looking forward to the rest of the night, whatever it
might bring.

Dessert, a light pastry with exquisite dark
chocolate hidden away inside, came all too quickly and with few
words spoken, dinner was over. Two noticed that Theroen paid for
his dinner in cash, and that the tip he left appeared
extraordinarily large. Ferraris, fancy restaurants, gigantic tips.
A life unlike anything she had ever experienced. It was
fascinating.

“
What do you do for a
living?” she asked as they left.

Theroen smiled, said nothing, held the door
open for her. Two sat down.

“
Come on. I’m curious. Are
you mafia or something? I won’t mind.”

Theroen laughed. “No, not that.”

“
Then what?”

“
Let’s just say that I’ve
had a lot of good training on how to invest, from someone who’s
done it for an awfully long time.”

Theroen backed the car out. Two mused for a
moment, then laughed. “Will I get any straight answers from you
tonight?”

Theroen’s eyes gleamed. “Anything’s
possible.”

Whatever response Two might have had was
swallowed by the rush of wind as the car roared into motion.

* * *

The road, again, and that same feeling of
complete control emanating from Theroen. They moved west on
Flatbush Avenue, crossing over the Manhattan bridge and into
Chinatown. Theroen cut a haphazard course across the island,
avoiding heavy traffic and eventually joining with the fast-moving,
late-evening traffic on the island’s western side. They passed
Trinity Cemetery, and Two thought again about sitting at her window
and looking out over the rows of gravestones, waiting for death.
Right now those moments seemed far away.

They left the city and began the drive north
through Westchester County along Route 87. This was further out of
New York than Two had ever been before, and she supposed she should
worry about how she would get back to Brooklyn, but found it
difficult to care. She was racing along the highway in a Ferrari,
the distance between her and her unsavory past widening at nearly a
hundred miles per hour and, for the moment, everything felt
right.

Theroen neither spoke, nor turned on the
radio, but simply drove in silence. It seemed to Two that he was
giving her this opportunity to enjoy the car, the ride, the night.
A small idea, not unwelcome, began to grow within her mind: Two
thought that he was also allowing her the time to say goodbye.

They were cutting over west, again, now on
Route 17, following it along the lower border of New York State.
Theroen left the highway sometime before Binghamton and raced off
on a back road, through the woods, in the dark. The Ferrari was now
the only car around, traveling fearlessly, speedometer hovering at
more than double the posted fifty-five speed limit. Two, filled
with fear, energy, and a strange excitement that had something to
do with the car and even more to do with its driver, lay back, eyes
closed, feeling the wind rush through her hair, dragging it out
behind the seat.

“
Faster?” Theroen
questioned, and his voice was a whisper cutting through the noise
of the wind, the sound of the engine.

“
Yes!” Two cried, knuckles
white against the hand-hold molded into the door. Theroen stepped
on the clutch, shifted rapidly, stomped again on the gas pedal. The
Ferrari’s engine roared to life, throwing Two back in her seat.
Terrified, unable to stop laughing, she tried to watch ahead for
curves, deer, other obstacles, but couldn’t help peering at the
speedometer, watching it rise.

And rise. And rise. The
needle moved past 150 miles per hour, and Two, still laughing,
still terrified, shut her eyes.
We’re
going to die,
she thought.
We’re going to die and I don’t care, because I’ll
be in a beautiful Ferrari with good food and wine inside of me, and
I’ll be with Theroen. I’ll die with him, and then it won’t matter.
No one will know. I’ll just be the girl who died in the
Ferrari.

But they didn’t die, and finally Two felt
the car losing speed. Theroen was easing off the gas, bringing the
car down to a normal level. No more danger, but the joy remained.
Two wanted to kiss him. She felt warm in her belly, between her
thighs, places she’d sometimes thought dead since starting to work
for Darren. Theroen looked over at her, as if hearing these
thoughts, and Two gave him a radiant grin.

Was he ready? She asked him
with her eyes. Told him with her eyes: It didn’t matter that he had
paid for her. She
wanted
it, badly. Her clothes seemed hot and scratchy,
cumbersome.

Theroen stopped the car at
the side of the road, nothing visible for miles but trees and sky,
and Two’s first, confused thought was:
But
… there’s no back seat?
Then she laughed at
herself. Theroen was already getting out of the car. Whatever this
was, the Ferrari was not a part of it.

* * *

The woods were pitch black. Two felt smooth
ground under her feet: a path. She held Theroen’s hand, and he led
slightly, apparently unfazed by the total darkness. She could feel
wind on her face, and now it seemed as though there was a faint
glow up ahead, the trees ending. Another minute, maybe two, and the
silhouette of the surrounding forest was visible, backlit by
something up ahead.

Theroen stepped out and to one side, turned,
beckoned to her.

“
Oh my God,” Two said under
her breath, stunned. Before her, in sharp contrast to the urban
cityscapes she’d looked at all of her life, was a massive valley,
filled with trees, a small town marked only by a few illuminated
windows at its center. They were standing hundreds of feet above
this, fifteen feet from the edge of a steep cliff carved out of the
Appalachian foothills by the force of passing glaciers, tens of
thousands of years ago. It was a sight unlike anything she had ever
seen, and Two took it all in with eyes wide like a child’s. She
could see forever, a universe of trees, stars clearer than she
could possibly have believed.

“
Theroen, this is
beautiful,” Two whispered, looking around. She felt him shift
behind her, closer, a hand on her shoulder, turning her. His eyes
looked down at her, luminescent, catching the light from the moon
and holding it.

“
Did you enjoy the
evening?”

Two nodded. “Oh, yes.”

Theroen studied her a moment. “I won’t make
you do anything you don’t want to do.”

Two pressed herself against him. “Why don’t
you go ahead and start, and I’ll let you know if we get to that
point.”

Theroen smiled and kissed her. Two wrapped
her arms around him, her breath and his breath twining together as
one. It was an eternity, an instant, and seemingly over before it
began. She took a deep breath, let out a shuddery sigh, head
against his chest. They stood like that for a moment, and Two
reflected that of all the possible directions this night could have
taken, this might well have been the least expected, the most
unlikely.

And then his fingers, gently under her chin,
raising her lips to his again.

They lay together in the soft grass, clothes
in a jumble to their sides, forgotten, his lips at her mouth, her
throat, her breasts. Two felt on fire, out of breath, flashes of
heat and cold, goose bumps running in rippling waves down her arms,
legs, back. Theroen caressed, teased, her body registering the
contact of his fingers, the touch too gentle to satisfy. She
twisted her fingers into his hair, bringing his head forward,
wanting once again to share breath with him, to be connected.

Hard, against her, and Two soft, ready,
wanting. Open thighs, arched back. Theroen entered her and for a
time her past ceased to exist. She was brand new, every nerve
ending electrified, feeling everything for the first time. Two
couldn’t have explained what had brought her to this state, nor did
she care. She was content to live in the moment.

They found rhythm, moved against each other,
soft on hard, delicious friction. Two gasped, strained, clutched
her fingers into the skin of his back. It had never been like this,
building to this pleasure so quickly. As they neared the height of
their passion, Theroen bent his head as if to whisper into her ear,
but instead, as Two took a deep, gasping breath, he drove the sharp
points of his eye teeth into the soft flesh of her neck.

The pain was immediate, exquisite, the
sensation so overwhelming that it seemed if anything to enhance the
eroticism of the moment. Pleasure and pain indistinguishable. Two’s
gasp locked in her throat – she was unable to breathe, unable to
scream, unable to move. Theroen fastened himself to her, powerful
arms holding her in an embrace that Two could not have broken, even
if she could have moved.

As the draining sensation began, as the pain
receded, as the world began to fall into black, she realized that
her passion had reached its apex. Her body clenched over and over
again, in time with her heartbeat, in time with her hips, which
still moved against his. The pleasure coursing now through Two’s
body was above and beyond anything she had ever before
experienced.Her arms tightened momentarily around Theroen, and then
fell away, her breath let loose in a soft sigh, muscles relaxing.
Death, desire, acceptance.

And then, darkness.

* * *

Chapter 2

The World Within the World

Somewhere dark. Somewhere wet.

Two woke to the sound of water. Droplets
formed; it seemed she could hear them expanding, growing to
monstrous size before gravity inevitably trapped them in its hold,
pulling them to the earth. Every tiny splash an explosion, a single
drop becoming many, many becoming infinite. It was as if she could
hear the impact of every molecule, and for a brief moment she
believed her mind might split, trying to deal with the sound.

And then: just darkness. Just water
dripping. Just her ragged breathing, the feel of cold, damp stone
under her cheek. She could smell wetness and rot in the air, mold
from the stones, the dim scent of sex still on her body. She was
naked, cold, disoriented. Confusion gave way to fright, fright to
panic, and Two scrambled into a sitting position, gasping.

Dim, not dark. A candle guttered somewhere
to her left. She could make out the area around her in vague
outlines. As her eyes adjusted, she saw her clothes in a jumble on
the floor to her right. This was something to think about,
something to take her mind off of the questions, the fear. She
crawled to the clothes, picked them up. Panties, jeans, shirt.

Feeling more human, more herself, Two set
about trying to remember how she might have arrived at this place.
Slowly the events of the previous night pieced themselves together
in her mind. The car, the restaurant, Theroen. Driving fast, taking
her somewhere, doing something … but that piece wouldn’t come. In
its place, everything was a dark red, filled with the noise of
rushing water and the thud of some distant drum.

Brighter now, her eyes adjusting, able to
make out details where before there were only silhouettes. Two saw
a table, a chair, a simple bed off which she might have fallen
during her sleep. A toilet in the corner, behind a screen. A small
sink with a mirror above. The walls in front, behind, to her right
made of stone.

And to her left, iron bars from ceiling to
floor, forming the fourth wall of the cell in which she was being
held.

Two stared at these bars,
unable to gain control of her limbs, let alone make any pretense of
moving. Cold shudders of fear ran down her back.
Trapped
, her mind
repeated over and over,
I’m
trapped
. At last, with an effort of will
greater, perhaps, than any she had ever made, she shoved these
thoughts away. Forced herself to look around. Tried to find
something to occupy her mind.

The mirror. The sink. Two stood on shaky
legs, a newborn colt attempting to walk, steadying herself on the
table. She could feel tear tracks drying and tightening her face,
though she could not remember crying. She ran the faucet, splashed
water on her face, looked into the mirror.

Terror. Recoiling with a cry, tripping over
the chair, crashing to the floor, the skin on her palms shredding
on the cold stone. The image in the mirror had been Two, and not
Two. Her eyes, brilliant green to begin with, now glowed with that
odd luminescence. Her pale skin had changed subtly, imperfections
wiped away, bags under her eyes gone. Her teeth as she grimaced
were sharper, more pronounced, particularly the canines.