The Celestial Kiss (7 page)

When I woke up after just a few hours of sleep, it was of my own accord, my body restless with sleep, the same feelings coiled tightly within me like a snake waiting to strike.  I considered the pale purple walls, a false advertisement of comfort, and my anger only grew.  With it grew my need to escape before they drove me mad with their attempts at shoving their brand of normalcy down my throat.

I could break the glass of that window right now and jump, but when I looked out at the ground below me, my chest seized with the realization that I was higher up then I’d initially thought.  A blur of colorful flowers and thick thorns glared up at me; The trees in the distance looked like nothing more than splotches of paint in an impressionist work.  Stepping back, I took a deep breath.  Heights had never really agreed with me.

There was not much that I could do, short of bursting through the window and potentially plunging to my death.  It wasn’t the worst option, but there was still a fire within me, still hope that I could escape these people and their mysterious plan for me.   My eyes fell upon the door; it was a long shot, but maybe I could summon just enough rage to break through the wood or wrench the handle off.  Never had I had great occasion to test myself, and even I didn’t know the limits of my strength.  It was silly, perhaps, but what did I stand to gain by sitting cross-legged on the bed and dreaming of my revenge?

I thought of James’ teeth sinking into my skin, the fear, the helplessness I’d felt at his hand—and with all the force I could manage threw myself into the door.  Solid as doors usually are, I bounced back, breathless, and clutched my shoulder, which I’d foolishly used to guide my barrage.  One deep, steadying breath later I thought of Xian, of his vow that he’d never let me go, of the thousands of lies and broken promises and the words that had cut like knives.  My jaw set, I grabbed the handle, braced one hand on the frame, and wrenched.

The door flew open, knocking me back a little.  The giddy realization that Janna had forgotten to lock me in made me feel immediately lighter.  I gathered myself in time to get a peek of the empty hallway before creeping over the threshold.  I hadn’t expected to make it this far; how I’d find my way out of the house, particularly without being detected, I hadn’t considered.  But if I ran into anyone who tried to stop me, I’d fight...tooth, fang, and nail. 

The house was eerily silent as I made my way down the corkscrew staircase, my bare feet muffling the sound of my movement. I’d reacted so quickly I hadn’t thought to grab my shoes, and while running outside barefoot would hardly be fun, I couldn’t have escaped the house without my clunky riding boots drawing attention anyhow. 

When I landed on the ground floor, there was nobody to be found.  But there were so many doors, which anybody could emerge from at any given moment.  I had to pick one and run for it or risk failure.

Every door looked the same except for the one with the superior archway which lead to the hall I wanted to avoid, the dead-end where I’d been a dinner guest.  The quickening of my pulse warned me to hurry up and choose, but I did not know where to go.  Bemoaning my inability to stay awake during my capture, I threw caution to the wind and chose a door directly across the room, my feet sliding across the cold marble. 

I was assaulted immediately after tearing it open with a violent gust of wind, and looking up, saw a fork of lightning flick through the air.   If that and the earthy scent in the air were any indication, it was going to pour, and I couldn’t decide whether this would hinder me or make it easier to evade re-capture.
It’s not too late to turn around and wait for a better opportunity
, I told myself.  But if I turned back now I wouldn’t be able to forgive myself.  This opportunity may not present itself again.

The entire property was hedged in by tall shrubs that reached so high they formed a sort of wall separating me from the world beyond them.  Limestone carved a path before me, lined by the same hedges on either side, and it seemed the most obvious way out.  Narrow as it was, it would not offer me much chance to hide should I run into someone, and I couldn’t tell how long it went on or where exactly it let out, but it was all I had.  I took a deep breath, gathering my nerve, and a step, and then stopped short.

The arm that caught my wrist was firm, but not excruciatingly so.  I spun to see James and then promptly swung at him.  Before it could connect with his face, he caught that wrist too, pinioned beneath a steely grip.  Though his face betrayed no emotion, when he spoke he didn’t sound malicious.  Just tired.

“Where do you think you’re going to go, Lilith?”   

“Get your hands off of me!” I yelled, trying to jerk out of his grasp.  But it was unyielding.

James smiled, but it was sad and held the promise of disappointment.  “I can’t let you go yet.”

“What are you going to do to stop me?”  Malevolence seeped into my voice, pouring out as a taunt.  If I’d taunted Julius like this, he’d probably kill me plain and simple.  Xian would silence me at any cost.  But James?  I didn’t know much about him, but I wasn’t so oblivious that I didn’t realize he was a rogue asset with everything to lose.  He refused to kill me because of his morals, he refused to set me free because of his morals, and he refused to keep me because of his morals.  He was backed into a wall with nowhere to go, and so any threat he could offer up was empty; we both knew it. 

“Whatever I have to.”  It was a warning, but it lacked conviction.  Despite the words, James looked principled as ever.

I tore one wrist free and glared at him, wishing that my hatred could burn a hole right through him. “Try me.”  I challenged, my chest swelling with arrogance.  “I can do or say anything I want because it doesn’t matter what sort of punishment you come up with.  Nothing could be worse.”

James released my other wrist as though I repulsed him.  “Worse than what?”  He growled.  I had hoped to touch a nerve—apparently I’d just torn one open.  “Than being stuck here, being clothed and fed and having a roof over your head?”

Whatever possessed me to tell him what I did, I’ll never know.  The truth was my only hope of salvation; perhaps the fact that I hadn’t wanted the life I’d been given would grant me some sort of clemency in whatever followed this life.  Besides, he didn’t get to act like he was offering me sanctuary.  “Nothing could be worse than the seventeen years I’ve already wasted away.  Just go ahead and try.”

“Oh,” James choked on a cold, hard laugh.  “You mean that nothing could be worse than returning you to your life of excess, where sin practically hangs in the air you breathe?  Nothing could be worse for you than getting drunk all day and sleeping with every guy you see and draining humans of their blood just because you think it’s fun to watch the life slip out of their eyes?  Don’t insult my intelligence.”

He pressed me into the stone wall, and his words cut so deep that I didn’t even feel the exterior of the house scraping my arms.  “You have no idea what you’re talking about!”  My teeth ground around the hatred that was simmering within me.  His assumptions infuriated me more than anything else that had transpired between us.  “You think you know me because of what I am?  You’re a child, sheltered by a life of promise.  You can think whatever you want of me, but don’t you
ever
tell me how I feel about that part of my life!”

He fixed me with an odd look that I couldn’t quite place, something between sympathy and disgust.  “I know more than you might imagine.  More than I care to know, if we’re being perfectly honest.”

“Oh yeah?”  The claim provoked me.  “Prove it.”

James laughed, and found his grip on me again; Fingers snug around my wrist, he began to pull me into the house.  Defiance burned in my heart, reflected in the eyes I stared smugly at him with.  I hadn’t come this far to give up now, and so I dug my heels into the dry stone.  When he realized he’d have to drag me the whole way, something flickered within him, and I flinched away as his arms wrapped around me and I was thrown unceremoniously over his shoulder.  “Let me go!”  I screamed in his ear.  I kicked my legs and pounded my fists into his strong back, but it was useless.

My screams echoed all throughout the creamy marble walls. I spewed a litany of expletives and made every reference I could think of to call him a dirty dog, a wild beast, a worthless, entitled little boy.  A few people poked their heads through the doors, wide-eyed as they watched us wordlessly.  No one seemed bothered by my plight, least of all James.  Where we were going was of no consequence, because I flailed until we reached a room where he locked the door and threw me down in a chair.  I scrambled into myself, ready for the fight, but he turned his back on me and crossed to the wall, where buttery curtains draped the distance.  Looking around, I realized the whole room was covered with them, floor to ceiling.  When he drew them back I expected the evening to press in around us, but what it unveiled was a wall of books.  Floor to ceiling, every little nook was full of them, their proud spines arranged in a multitude of jewel tones, embossed words glancing out at me with the hazy moonlight that poured in from the oculus upon the ceiling.  This room on the main floor of the house easily stretched the height of the second story. 

I watched, breathless and confused, as he drew back all the curtains, revealing a study so vast, so loaded with books, that I felt they would swallow me—not that I minded.  “Consider yourself lucky,” James said, disrupting my awed speculation.  “This is the library of Eden, a place where no human, no vampire, and very few werewolves have ever been.”

I swallowed the lump that had formed in my throat and tried breathing around it as the few things I’d ever heard about Eden tried to come to me.  All my anger had dissipated.  I didn’t have a place for it when surrounded by such exquisite beauty.  “It’s amazing.”  I said, nearly breathless.   I wanted to examine the shelves more closely, to pluck a book from them and dive right in head first.  But I couldn’t stave off the curiosity as to why James would bring me here, unless he figured it was so well isolated he could kill me without a witness.

It was as though he could read my mind. “You want to know what I know?  You’re here to learn.”

I cautiously crossed to him with my arms folded into my chest, and we stood several feet apart at the only window, looking out into the night.  I hadn’t realized there was water nearby, but I could see it clearly from my vantage point, an entire ocean spanning the coast.  I wouldn’t have been able to see it but for the waves that crashed against the shore, large and wild, provoked by the rolling storm clouds above.  The chaos of the sea fed off the chaos of the sky, and the sky fed the waves in turn. 

I could have stared at the assault on the shore for hours; it filled me with an unwarranted sense of peace, as if I were lending the waves all of the pent up fury from my own life.  James drew my attention to a large gold-framed painting on the next wall, around which the bookshelves continued uninterrupted.  The canvas work was made from oil paints in the vein of baroque art and easily stretched the width of my arm span.  It was divided into three different panels, each one distinctive in its own color scheme: white, blue, and red.  The one that caught my attention was the blue panel in the center—the airy afternoon light was clean and simple.  Men and women clustered around a table in the midst of a lush garden, seemingly in the middle of a meal.  It exuded tranquility and innocence.  The panel to the left of it was white, but it was hardly boring.  The same garden was the subject of the section, but this depiction was slightly less airy and more realistic.  More earthy.  It depicted a set of wolves, sitting on either side of the table, facing us with wise-looking eyes.  The humans at the table did not seem to be aware of their presence.

The last panel was the most contrasting, lit up with shades of orange and offering a much different scene.  The humans that had been dining carelessly in the meadow now lay sprawled out across the length of canvas, little pools of red encasing their grotesquely arranged bodies.  A figure in a cape knelt at the neck of a fallen man.  I didn’t need that tell-tale cape to know what that figure was.

“We are enemies, Lilith.”  James cast a brief glance at me.  “You and I.  Not by our own discretion or the choices of our ancestors, but by the very birth of our races.”

I looked at him with quiet disdain, secretly imploring him to state something other than the obvious.   James shook his head the slightest bit, so that I wasn’t even quite sure that the gesture had really happened.  “We are enemies because of our instincts…blood and bones.  Since the first demon was created, the human legacy was put in jeopardy.  The vampires, feeding upon the blood of the innocent, were a plague of Biblical proportions, which could be countered only by a
protection
of Biblical proportions.  The Creator made my kind to protect the humans from the demons and to influence the humans to do good.”

"Yes, yes, werewolves are good, vampires are bad.”  I rolled my eyes, and found the painting again before muttering, “I know."

To my surprise, James was shaking his head at me again.  “It wasn’t pretty.  The resentment that sprang up from this fueled the first war.  The vampires would not heed our requests, causing the war between angels and demons, werewolves and vampires, which lasted nearly a century.  In that time, the humans began to pick up on what was happening, and the truth became hard to hide.  They thought us all to be evil creatures because they did not know the difference between a vampire and a werewolf.  They couldn’t comprehend the threat a vampire posed, nor could they understand the protection we meant to offer.  The humans began to hunt the vampires and werewolves alike.  But the Creator was unhappy, for the humans were harming themselves even more by coming after us, and so he sent down his angels to convince the world that we were not real, not vampires or werewolves or anything other than humans.  Since a majority of the town had been turned or attacked by that point, the remaining few families made it a point to ignore our existence.  They were told that if they denied our existence, we would disappear.  They’ve been looking the other way all this time.