The Immortal American (The Immortal American Series) (34 page)

At that he laughed very hard. He leaned his head back, as my husband had earlier, and actually fell backward because he was laughing so violently. I took a few more crablike crawls away from him, but then he straightened quickly, pointing a pistol at me.

I scrambled away, but he pounced. He pinned me down, the pistol’s barrel directly on my breastbone, right over my heart. He was pressing the gun so vigorously into my chest that I could feel the earth beneath seem to make the same shape of the barrel through my back.

“Do you still wear the gem I gave you?” he whispered.

Panicked, I tried to push the gun away, my throat tightened and my heart pounded so loud I was certain he heard it. But no matter how much I fought with both my arms, his one hand remained steadfast to hold the pistol over my heart. His legs held mine down as well. I tried to buck him off, but my body just crashed more into his.

“Fighting me won’t help. I’ve had almost two hundred years to gain my strength, and at the risk of sounding like a braggart, you have no chance of escape. Violet, do you still wear the necklace?”

I nodded slowly, hoping this might be the answer to calm his craziness.

With his one free hand he gently slid his fingers along my neck, feeling for the silver, then retracted it from between my breasts. The sun just then peeked its way through the clouds and the dark blue gem glimmered like the Atlantic Ocean might if it were iced. He smiled wistfully at the blue diamond.

Then he looked down at me with that damned small smile. “Mayhap you still have affections for me?”

I wasn’t about to say anything, not sure what might free me or chain me closer in his iron-strong grip. He shrugged, as if my not answering didn’t matter anyway. His legs tightened all the more against my thighs, pinning me further to the ground. One of his hands still held the glowing necklace fluttering in the space between us, and the other hand held his gun to my heart.

“This will sting,” he warned.

Frantically I tried to pry the pistol from him, but in the next second the excruciating bang from his pistol sounded in my ears. Gunpowder smoke filled my nostrils, then there was nothing.

Hannah sat in a meadow of bluebells, strumming her fingers along the tops of the flowers. Her hair glistened in a warm sun, but she appeared to have been crying. Suddenly, she turned and began to smile in my direction.

“I miss you so much, Sissy,” she whispered.

I wanted to tell her how much I missed her, that I wasn’t the same without her, that I was now a different person, but who I was I knew not. I wanted to tell her that I forgave her. That I loved her and I understood.

My lips were glued shut, and no matter how much I struggled they remained closed.

“Now I get to be your guardian angel.” She smiled again. “Seems fair to me.”

I tried to swallow, to take in a breath of air, but there was none to take. Suddenly, I remembered that Jacque had shot me through the heart. I was dead.

“You’re not dead, silly girl.” Hannah laughed like we were back at our family’s farm, sharing secrets. “My, but aren’t
you
the dramatic one. No, no, you aren’t dead. Weren’t you listening to Jacque? You’ll never die again.”

But the cold earth was trying to swallow me
, I wanted to argue. Just then my arms felt free from their bindings, and in a flash I opened my eyes to the smoky clouds, clutched at my bleeding heart, and could finally take in a breath.

“There, there,” Jacque whispered.

I was in his arms, and he was staring down at me with a lone tear descending his hollowed check, his black stubble slowing the moisture.

The pain in my chest was enough to remind me of when Jacque had poisoned me, as if my muscles were turning themselves inside out, then igniting on fire. I looked down at my bloody hands and the red stains on my shirt that encircled the hole in my chest. There was a hole in my chest. A gaping red-black hole!

There wasn’t as much blood as I had thought there should be, but then again I had thought I was dead.

I
should
be dead.

I couldn’t help but stare down as I watched something creamy white flash beneath the gaping wound. Like two sides of ivory clothe being sewn back together, I saw my very breastbone stitching itself whole. Gleaming white and completely healed, the bone,
my bone
, was intact. It was gristly to watch and felt as if searing hot needles worked on my body, but I couldn’t turn away. Just as quick as my bone reconstructed itself, I saw red-pink sinew suddenly appear and stretch over my unbroken bone. Lastly, my pink skin, like fingers reaching to intimately interlace with another’s, extended and blended the seams until there was nothing but my bruised skin under my bloody linen shirt. My corset was completely ruined by blood and the shredded hole in the center.

I fingered my still sensitive casing. The blood on either side of my skin was still so fresh it felt warm and wet, not yet cold and sticky.

Jacque adjusted his hold on me, reminding me of where I was. Perhaps, too, harking me back to
wh
o I was now.

I jumped from him and couldn’t believe how far I flung myself—at least six feet. Yet my legs were so weak, I fell on my knees instantly.

He sighed and nodded, still sitting with his legs crossed. “You have your strength back, I see.”

I clutched at my shirt, at my tender skin. No words came to my mind, but I managed a confused gargling sound.

Jacque ignored the noise. “Since I knew no Hindi,” he began, “I know virtually nothing of our condition; other than, of course, I don’t think I can die; I don’t age, and,” he paused and looked away from me, “I—probably you too—can’t have children.”

That I did hear. For some strange reason I couldn’t quite grasp, even with watching my own bone meld into a healed one, that I couldn’t die. But not have children?

“What do you mean?” My voice rasped.

He looked up at me, probably unsure of how odd my voice sounded, but then he quickly looked back down to the ground. “The man, the little man in the cave had said something about it, but I couldn’t catch what he was saying. He had pantomimed something about a baby, then shook his finger at me. At the time I merely thought he was crazy or trying to preach abstinence. He lost his patience with me and stabbed me in the heart. I’m sorry to have given you a similar demonstration, but it was the only way
I
understood. Even then I hardly wrapped my head around it, but now after so many years, after I’ve had to leave my home so many times because my own people become suspicious of the fact that I don’t age, after—after everything, I know I will keep on living. I don’t know if there is anything that will kill me from this curse. And it is a curse. Trust me—”

“What? What did you do to me? What do you mean I can’t have children?”

His jaw line twitched. “You, more than likely, like me, will not be able to have children.”

“Why?”

“I don’t know. Perhaps it has something to do with the fact that now you will live forever. You don’t need to propagate yourself in a child. As I said the little man in the cave—”

“I don’t care what he said! Why do you believe you can’t have children?”

He was silent for a long moment. “I,” he paused, “have . . . not . . . had . . . a child . . . myself.”

“You’ve had opportunity? To make a child? I thought you said something about not being like your father, not–”

“Never raping.
Oui
, I never raped a woman. Never.” He inhaled sharply, then slowly drew out his breath. “That does not mean I was chaste.”

I gasped. God, I wanted to slap myself for my loud reaction. I recovered quickly, however. Nonetheless, Jacque wore a small quirk of a satisfied smile, which I wanted to smack off. Was going to punch off once I knew more of the wildness he spoke of when he referred to our shared condition. “Tell me more. How do you know you can’t have children now? Mayhap you couldn’t have children before you drank the water?”

“I impregnated one of my mistresses well before I left for India.”

I swallowed, very aware of how my heart ached. It had to be from the burn of being recreated, not from any jealousy for a man I should hate. He had killed me twice now!

He shrugged and looked up with a small lopsided smile. “I wasn’t as emotionally matured as I am now. Although being the recipient of me forcing you to drink water that has made you immortal, you may not feel I am wholly developed.” He kept a small smirk despite my not laughing at his self-depreciating humor. “I—I—only had mistresses that wanted me. I swear, unlike my father, I never forced myself on any of those women.”

I gritted my teeth. “I don’t care.” I lied. “I don’t care about the women you were intimate with.” Yet through all my bravado I embarrassingly added, “You have a child?”

He sipped in a breath. “My mistress miscarried. She was seven months along. She died shortly after.” A streak of legitimate pain crossed his eyes, making the dark azure, just blue.

“I’m sorry . . . sorry for your loss.”

He nodded once curtly.

I didn’t want to feel sorry for him, so I continued our conversation. “You have had mistresses since? And none of them were with child?”

He nodded. “Correct.”

I swallowed. “That doesn’t mean
I
can’t have a baby. I’m a woman. Perhaps the water works differently with women.”

He looked up. His eyes returned to resolved dark blue, but he forced a quirk of a smile on his visage. “Perhaps. As I said, I don’t know very much about our condition.”

His grin was made of cold marble. He’d turned statuesque. He was hiding his true emotions, for which I didn’t blame him. He was trying to give me hope, and in the furtherance of that I could almost think a kind thought about him. Almost.

“How can I tell Mathew about my condition?” I slumped to the earth.

He shrugged nonchalantly. “You could shoot yourself in front of him.”

I felt my own nose flare at Jacque. “You know, one day I just might strangle you for this.”

He actually smiled. “Do try. I know I need the punishment.”

“Is there anything that
will
kill you?”

He shot a glance at me. His eyes could not hide the hurt I’d caused in that instant, but the next he concealed his everything. “I know not. There might be something.”

I shook my head. “How on earth am I going to tell Mathew all this?”

He shrugged only one shoulder this time, seeming to care even less as the conversation meandered.

“How am I going to tell him that I can’t age? Wait, what if I
can
age?”

“I doubt it. You heal quickly, which I believe also inhibits your aging process.”

I nodded. Then my nodding became maniacal as inspiration set in. “Wait! Do you have more of that water?”

One of his eyes twitched, as he shook his head.

“You found the water in India?”

He nodded. “The water vanished after I drank it, Violet. I only had that little bit in my flask, because I had learned from the days of running to capture as much water as I could before I drank from the puddle, never knowing I would have the time to sit and drink or keep running.”

I regarded him for sincerity. I could tell from the strain in his voice that he knew what I was after. If I couldn’t die, then neither could my husband. I needed Mathew to take a sip of the strange spring water. I needed my husband. He was my savior when the world took everything away from me. I was such a fool to waste so much time not truly appreciating him, for betraying him with my desire for Jacque, for so many things I knew I was a devil of a woman, but somehow Mathew still loved me. He loved me, and his love saved me.

How could I have no ending? How could this be?

Yet I’d seen my own skin become whole again. If I hadn’t seen it, felt the fire and ice of healing so quickly, then I wouldn’t believe any of this.

Jacque interrupted my tornado-like thoughts. “The little man in the cave said something about either there being more immortals, like us, or that there was more water somewhere on this earth.”

I looked up into his black blue eyes. “So we could go back to India to find him, your little cave man. What if he . . . couldn’t die too? What if he was alive, but just not back in that cave when you went to look for him? We could search for him, couldn’t we? Then Mathew could—or wait! What if there is something out there that is the opposite of the water, and it would make me . . . die again. I mean, that I
could
die again, so I could live a normal life with Mathew? Do you think there such a thing?”

His statue face cracked. He visibly winced, but nodded. “Of course. There could be something like that out there. Perhaps I didn’t do enough searching for that little man. Perhaps he is still alive. We . . . all of us could travel to India to figure this out. At my expense, of course. You and Mathew could call it your honeymoon.”

His voice broke, but he kept a smile on his face. It was strained and awkward, but I was grateful for it. I didn’t know what I would do if he would show his true emotions.