Volterra
13 July 1789
“You will be seen as backtracking on your earlier position, Brother,” Caius snapped. “You will appear insufferably weak. Of course, if that is what you wish…”
He shrugged.
Aro got the message. When he answered, it was in a level, authoritative tone.
“No man who has the power to kill those who disobey him is ever weak, Caius. Perhaps it is you who need to rethink your position.”
The older vampire frowned, but sat in his chair with a huff. “Fine. Aro, you do what you wish. You are not beholden to me, nor I to you. I’ll simply be glad to be rid of him.”
To be rid of him. Aro massaged his temple.
The talk with Marcus a few days before had decided him. Of course Aro could destroy another simply for the desire to defect. He had done it before, and Caius was well aware. But to give Caius the satisfaction of destroying Carlisle just gave him one more thing to lord over Aro. So it was decided. If the Englishman returned—which Aro felt he would, he still had many possessions here—he would be banished. Asked never to return to this place. But Aro would order the guard not to attack. To lose Carlisle would be to lose this fascinating experiment which had such potential for helping them understand their nature.
“I do not understand why you choose not to destroy him,” Caius muttered.
“It is simple, my fiery Brother. We let him go so that we can learn from him.”
“He learns from us. What have we to learn from him?”
Everything, Aro thought. But his answer to Caius was measured.
“Imagine he succeeds at living this life of his. Continuing to deny his natural food source. Becoming a physician.”
Caius raised his eyebrows, but said nothing. Aro went on.
“He will show us how best to do this, Brother. We have to send out our sisters and brothers who are gifted; Heidi must use her extraordinary allure to draw in our prey. Why? Because we stand out so badly. What if we simply understood how to blend in?”
The white-haired vampire cocked his head, a small smile appearing on his lips.
Marcus, however, rolled his eyes. “Always the exploit, Aro. Only you could take such an extraordinary man and find a way to use his uniqueness to your eventual gain.”
A cold rage shot through him, but just as quickly he suppressed it, saying coolly, “It is a collective gain, Brother, which is exactly what we hope for from any of our kind.”
Caius shrugged. “If we allow him to leave, it is only fair that he be supervised.”
At this, Marcus actually stood. “Only fair? He arrived here of his own free will. He has transgressed none of our laws—in fact, he transgresses no laws, including the ones we so regularly do. He arrived as a visitor, and he ought to leave as one.” He frowned. “Aro, I would argue that we should put this question of tracing him to a vote, except that I understand that I would lose. So I simply beg you to reconsider. Carlisle has not wronged us. He has simply not agreed with us. And if we’ve crossed such a line that we now feel a need to keep an eye on everyone who disagrees with us—well, the list is long, Brother.”
With a swirl of black fabric, he disappeared from the Great Hall.
“Idiotic,” Caius muttered, a bit loudly. He pushed himself from his chair, turning to face Aro. “Do what you wish, Brother. But when the Young One exposes us all and you are forced to destroy him—remember that I counseled you otherwise.”
Then he, too, disappeared.
It took Aro the better part of an hour to leave his study. When he did, he walked to the Englishman’s room. The desk was bare, save for the mortar and pestle and a few crumbs of the last herbs the man had been working with.
A tiny sliver of sunlight stretched across the stone floor from the slit of a window in the room. Aro was reminded of the day, not so long ago, when Carlisle had stood before them in the Great Hall, turning in the sunlight and sending rainbows skittering over the walls.
He’d appeared fascinated with himself; even as he explained that what had once been extraordinary would no longer even be believed. Science would rule, and their kind defied science…
Humans were not afraid of them any longer. For all intents and purposes, they had ceased to exist.
Carefully, Aro began to put the other’s things in order. There were so few of them—a handful of journals, the mortar and pestle. Carlisle’s only truly significant possession was a hulking wooden cross which had appeared the last time he’d returned to Volterra from England. When the others laughed, he shrugged and explained that it was carved by his father, and he wished to keep it.
It stood leaning against the wall now, and Aro moved it so that it was nearer the other man’s couch, running a hand across it as he did so.
The cloak still lay puddled where the other man had dropped it, in rippling on the stone like a puddle of ink.
Aro picked it up, turning it over in his hands.
It would have been interesting, to have Carlisle with them. He hadn’t lied about that. To have a voice that valued something entirely different; someone who saw the world in a way that Aro found uncomfortable.
But now—
Carlisle’s chamber had a small fireplace, and Aro flung the robe into it. It was aflame before Aro even realized he’d ripped the torch from the hallway. The flame licked at the fabric, slowly shriveling the fabric into ash.
Watching the robe burn ate at him in an odd, unexpected way. It would have been different, having Carlisle among them. He was nothing if not a singularity; his uniqueness would be an asset and would strengthen them.
But it would also keep him from ever wanting to join them.
The fire burned for the better part of thirty minutes, and when the room again went dark, Aro left.
Several hours later found him standing in the Great Hall, with all of those from the compound assembled. They stood by rank: darkest robes in front, the closest to the inner circle, fanning out to the lightest gray, the ones he could easily lose, and who, frankly, often destroyed one another in their squabbles.
The orderliness pleased him. The situation had set everything else into disarray; but here were his guard, in order according to their importance to him.
Neatly. As they should be. Only one of their number was missing, and he was the reason they were assembled in the first place.
Aro rarely called the full guard. If he traveled, he took Renata, or perhaps Charmion, or, Alrigo if he needed brute strength. When he needed messages to go to the guard, he told them in pieces and let the message spread. After all, he would double-check the accuracy of the transmission later, with each and every member.
But to see them here now before him was comforting.
He stood.
“My good people,” he said. “I’ve asked you here because as you know, one of our number is not with us.”
Around the room, heads nodded. The whisperings grew more intense by the day, he knew. Where had the Englishman gone? France? Back to England? Would he return? And if he did, would Aro destroy him?
The others began to murmur.
“Silence,” Aro ordered quietly, and at once, the room went still.
“We expect that he will return,” he went on quietly. “And when he does, no one is to harm him.”
The murmurs began again at once. Aro held up his hand.
“He has been asked to leave us,” he said. “To keep one who is such an—aberration—to our kind has proved useful neither to him nor to us.”
“Then why allow him to live?” a voice piped up. Alrigo, of course, his fists already flexing as he prepared for a fight.
“Because he has done nothing wrong.” This time it was Marcus who spoke. “We are not tyrants, and we will not become so. Our law is singular and it is absolute. When Carlisle reveals us for who we are, then we will take action. But as yet, he’s done nothing of the sort, and as such, we find no fault with him.”
The guard all stared.
“But he will be asked to leave,” added Caius, and there was almost a questioning tone to his voice, as though he needed Aro to confirm that this was true.
Aro nodded. “It is best for him and best for us. But I wished to make it clear to all that Carlisle is not asked to leave for transgression, nor is he to be attacked. Anyone who attacks him will be treated as though they have attacked one of us.” He gestured to his Brothers.
“Will you track him, Master?”
Rafael, the consummate tracker. Of course.
Aro pursed his lips. To be perfectly honest, he hadn’t come to an entire conclusion on this himself yet. Would he keep tabs on the blond? See if he would truly adhere to the odd lifestyle he’d chosen? Verify if he indeed, become a physician as he so fervently hoped?
“We will not follow him,” he answered. “But I will remain interested in him.”
Which was an understatement of epic proportion.
He waved his hand in the direction of the guard.
“That is all,” he told them.
For a moment, no one moved, and it wasn’t until he waved his hand for a second time that the crowd began to dissipate; first the lower guards sliding in pairs out the doors, and then the higher guards, who milled confusedly for several long minutes before following them.
When the last guard exited, Caius stood.
Instead of saying anything, however, he simply shrugged, and disappeared.
“You make him unhappy,” Marcus commented. “He would prefer the opportunity to kill.”
“Keeping Caius happy is not my aim. And we’ve lived together for two thousand years. He will come around.”
Marcus chuckled.
Aro stood, and made his way to his own chamber. He was there, studying the Solimena, when pale arms slipped around his waist.
“Arnza,” Sulpicia purred. She laid her head on his shoulder—as always, it fit perfectly. He’d chosen her for this—sought out a human for his companion, with the plan that she would be endlessly devoted to him. And she was.
She followed his gaze.
“In the painting, he looks so much like he could be there with you and Marcus and Caius.”
And he did. The painter had depicted Carlisle enrobed just as the other three were, although in the man’s imagination of them as gods, they wore robes of white rather than black. It appeared perfectly natural.
Except that Carlisle would never pose as such.
“With all those people in distress below him?” Aro chuckled. “Carlisle would never stand for that.”
His mate laughed. “You’ve mentioned this before.” Stepping out from behind Aro, Sulpicia put a tentative finger out to stroke the painting-Carlisle’s face.
“You’ll miss him,” she said quietly.
At once, Aro stiffened. “I don’t need him.”
“Of course you don’t need him. But that’s exactly why you’ll miss him. He is interesting to you, Arnza. Neither of you need the other.” She turned back to him, a sad smile on her face. “You know, if you had ever stopped trying to force him to be someone he’s not, you might have ended up friends.”
In one fluid motion, she was behind him again, gently squeezing his shoulder.
“I think this solution is for the best.”
And then she disappeared altogether.
They might have been friends.
He’d never thought of it in quite that way.
Aro stared at the painting for another long stretch; whether it was a half-hour or a half-day, he couldn’t be sure. Time was not that important to him.
Finally, he reached out, and removed the painting. Two seconds later, he stood with it in Carlisle’s chamber.
He leaned it next to the wooden cross.
~||x||~
Paris, Kingdom of France
14 July 1789
The smell of imminent freedom was what Garrett called it.
Carlisle would’ve called it piss and sweat.
The crowd surrounding the prison had grown every day they’d been here. They shouted at the walls and fired muskets into the air; demanded that the prisoners be set free and the governor sent to the guillotine. The crowd surged around him, pressing in on all sides so that he could smell their sweat and hear the blood rushing through their veins.
“Distraction,” Garret had called it, his reason for being able to resist being utterly surrounded by his prey. And it was true enough—Garrett stood at the head of the charge. They called him “The American,” and were impressed with his French and that he had come aboard the same ship as the American ambassador.
He stood near the front now, talking to several of the human protesters. He stood on a bucket, Carlisle believed, though he couldn’t see very clearly. But in any event, Garrett stood a good head and shoulders above the other people to whom he spoke.
“We cannot let deLaunay decide for us what the people shall have!” he shouted.
A resounding cheer.
“We demand the release of this last bastion of the elite to the people!”
The cheer which followed was deafening.
Carlisle, for his part, hung back, picking his way among the people. Most were men, disgruntled workers of Paris who’d gathered at dawn this morning, and a few defectors from the Royal Army. But there were women and children here as well. Some of the children seemed to be having a rollicking time, particularly the boys, who galloped about near their fathers, pretending to fire guns into the air and whooping.
He hoped they would be all right. The death of children had been a reality when he’d been a human, but it had become more and more difficult to take with each passing year of his immortality. He’d lived a hundred forty-five years now; fourteen times as long as a ten year-old boy.
It was impossibly cruel that the world would see fit to allow someone so young to die, and yet never take Carlisle.
In this frame of mind, he skulked his way through the back of the crowd. He nearly tripped over a young man, who sat on the stone road so that a tiny break appeared in the crowd above him. Bodies flowed around him, making him a pebble in a river of disgruntled Parisians.
The boy had his leg pulled up to his chest and had both arms crossed over it, rocking himself back and forth. He was crying.
Carlisle knelt next to him.
“Are you all right?” he asked.
The boy looked up. He had piercing blue eyes, and dark hair. When he looked up at Carlisle, however, he immediately recoiled, scooting away so as to put more distance between himself and the other man.
Carlisle frowned. It was the reaction he had expected when he was first turned; that every human would see him as exactly the beast he was and recoil. But he’d become accustomed to blending in, at least to a degree.
“Come, child,” he said quietly. “What troubles you?”
But as the boy stared at him again, Carlisle recognized him. He was the thief from the day before, the one whose looting of the patisserie had been unexpectedly thwarted by the extreme likelihood of a vampire attack. He was much younger than Carlisle had originally thought; in that flash of chasing him through the window, he’d seemed the right age to riot and loot for the sheer enjoyment of it, perhaps just coming of age, but still rambunctious enough to want to be a part of this destruction. Now, looking at the way the wisps of brown hair fell over the boy’s eyes, Carlisle realized he was much younger—twelve or thirteen, at the most.
And he was frightened.
“For my family,” the boy muttered.
“The bread?”
The boy nodded.
“That was noble of you, then,” Carlisle said gently. “You were in danger; that was why I chased you away.”
The boy only stared.
“Why do you sit?”
“My leg,” he answered, gesturing, and Carlisle remembered at once—the way the broken glass had gouged into the boy’s leg, drawing a good deal of blood, to say nothing of Garrett’s attention.
“May I?” Carlisle said, and as he did so, he at once doubted himself. What right did he have, asking to see someone’s injury? Yes, he could restrain himself when Aro presented him with a body, or even when all the others in the castle in Volterra were feeding, but to examine a wound?
The boy looked at him skeptically. “Are you a doctor?” he asked.
I want to be, Carlisle thought, and his stomach wrenched. He’d left Martina and her sister in Volterra. Had the baby been born yet? Was the mother in pain?
“I know a good deal about medicine,” he replied.
Reluctantly, the boy showed him his breeches. They were rolled up nearly to his hip. A wide gash, probably a third the length of Carlisle’s forearm, stretched down the boy’s leg. Its edges were jagged, and the entire area had turned a dark red and swelled.
At once, Carlisle began to run his fingers over the boy’s wound, holding his breath as he did so. There was considerably less blood than there was a gooey yellow substance. He wiped some of this away with his sleeve, causing the boy to cry out.
“I’m sorry,” he muttered, and in doing so, drew breath.
The smell of fresh human blood washed over him, intoxicating and sweet and lovely.
And yet…
He found he was still thinking. Still examining the skin, the way the two pieces met unevenly, and the way the yellow-greenish liquid seemed to stick the two parts together. He was fascinated by this.
“When was the last time you bathed?” he asked.
The boy shook his head.
“You don’t know?”
Another shake.
Carlisle had read something about this, though the article had been nothing but observation. Some physician here in France who was learning about wound care, who had begun advising the Royal Army to bathe more often, particularly if they had been injured. There was no good explanation for why, but there seemed a connection between the amount a soldier bathed and his decreased likelihood of dying from a wound.
Now, this boy wasn’t in any danger of dying, but…
“I’ll be right back,” Carlisle said, and in an instant, he was running down the street. It wasn’t long before he discovered what he sought—a bucket of water, carelessly left on a stoop, its owner nowhere in sight. Snatching it up, Carlisle ran back to the boy as smoothly as he was able.
Tearing a rag from the hem of his own shirt, he plunged his hand into the tepid water and began to gently wash the boy’s wound. The boy made a low grunt, but gritted his teeth.
The yellow substance washed away at once, which reopened the wound, causing it to begin to bleed again.
Instinctively, his entire body became taut. Every muscle coiled, ready to run the split-second he felt himself lose control.
But his fingers kept working. His mind remained clear.
An odd warmth rushed through him. He could do this. At once, he actually laughed. He dunked the rag in the water after each swipe to rid it of the blood—but it was unnecessary, it seemed.
He was inches from a bleeding, living human and he was fine.
The boy gave him an odd look as he sat with his leg outstretched, allowing Carlisle to work. When the wound was clean, it appeared pinkish, the blood flow already slowing as it began again to heal itself.
Ripping another rag from his shirt, Carlisle tied this clean one over the wound. A tiny splotch of red seeped through, but it seemed to be controlled. Carlisle pulled the leg of the boy’s breeches back down so that it covered the bandage.
“You should do that each day,” he told the boy. “I understand it is painful, but wash the wound, and put a clean bandage on it.”
“What will it do?”
Carlisle laughed. “You know, Boy, I am uncertain,” he admitted. “But it’s been found to help.” He helped the young man to his feet. There was a bit of a stagger, but then the boy was fine. He could put weight on his leg.
“Would you like to come to my home?” he asked timidly. “My mother would give you a meal for helping me.”
Smiling, Carlisle shook his head. “My good friend remains up there, exciting the crowd. He’ll not want me to disappear. But you ought to go. Have your mother give you a meal instead—and tell her what I said about washing yourself.” Mothers had a knack for insisting on that kind of thing, Carlisle thought.
“Thank you again, monsieur.”
Carlisle nodded, watching the boy disappear back into the crowd. Then he made his way back toward where he’d last seen Garrett. He felt like screaming with joy.
He had done it. He had treated a human, pressed his fingers into the sticky mess of human blood, and washed it away.
He could do anything.
As he began to jog, a bark of laughter bubbled up from his chest.
You see, Aro? I will succeed, no matter what you think of me.
His mind began to swirl with the possibilities. He’d leave Volterra, of course. But where would he go? Back to England? To France?
Or…he could go with Garrett…
This last thought caused his pace to quicken.
Carlisle ducked and weaved his way through the heaving mass of people, searching for the sandy hair he knew so well. But just as he began to reach the front of the crowd where Garrett had stood, a loud CRACK! split the air, and suddenly the people surged forward like an uncontrollable tide.
The drawbridge. They’d dropped the drawbridge. The Parisians swarmed into the outer courtyard, and suddenly the air became filled with the POW! POW! POW! Of musket fire—from the Parisians, yes, but also from the walls of the Bastille.
Chaos.
Screaming. Shouting. Gunfire. Cursing.
And a sudden yelp of pain…
From the corner of his eye he saw a man fall. Quickly, Carlisle darted to him, picking him up. Blood already seeped through the man’s shirt, a tarry, dark substance.
A gunshot wound.
Carlisle gulped. This would not be as simple as washing a the leg of a fifteen-year-old boy.
“Sir,” he called to the man. “Sir! Can you hear me?”
But the eyes remained unfocused, and the chest heaved only twice more. The eyes closed halfway, and the limbs went frighteningly limp.
Horrified, Carlisle dropped the body. It flopped to the ground with a sickening, hollow sound.
He’d never held a dead human before.
Arms tingling from where the man had lain, Carlisle began darting between the people. The gunfire and shouting continued, but his ears were open only to cries for help.
He dragged a woman and her child out from beneath a fallen wagon. He covered a young boy who’d landed in direct line of fire of the guards of the Bastille. He dug musket shot out of a man’s leg wound with his bare hands—in his desperation not to have another die in his arms, he didn’t even notice the way his palms and wrists became covered in blood.
There was shouting and gunfire and smoke, and screaming and crying and surging and running—and in the midst of it all was Carlisle, darting back and forth, catching fallen bodies, creating makeshift bandages from anything he could get his hands on, helping men and sometimes women and children stagger their way to the edge of the horde.
The first cannon blast shook his whole body. A hole appeared in the rock of the nearest wall.
A deafening roar rose from the crowd.
Where did they get cannons? he thought for a split-second, but at once plunged back in.
These weapons were deadlier. He’d have to work harder.
Time ceased to matter. It was two minutes, or two hours; Carlisle couldn’t be exactly certain without stopping, and stopping was not possible. His clothing soaked from pink to red to tarry black as he dragged bodies from the fray. He washed their wounds, gave them what water he could draw from the putrid Seine, left them lying free of the fracas.
He didn’t see Garrett, and could only assume that his companion had charged off at the beginning of the battle.
He kept working.
At last, however, from somewhere Carlisle picked out the shout, “They open the gates! DeLaunay surrenders!”
And the crowd surged once more, this time into the inner courtyard, cheering.
Carlisle remained outside.
Gun and cannon fire had been replaced by silence; screaming and shouting by moaning and crying. Those who were able surged into the inner courtyard, leaving only the wounded and the dead outside. There were scores; bodies lying in the path of the revolutionaries. People trampled into the dirt. Men dragging themselves to safety.
He wasn’t sure where to begin.
“Médecin!” someone called. “Médecin, over here!”
It took Carlisle a moment to realize the person meant him.
How many had he helped, he wondered? How many would live?
“Médecin!”
It was a young man, beckoning to Carlisle with his whole arm, as he held his friend upright with his other.
Doctor. Martina and her sister had called him that for several years. But today, for the first time, it felt true.
From inside the stronghold, he could hear cheering.
“Liberty! Liberty! Liberty!” came the chant.
Liberty.
Doctor.
A smile creeping onto his face, Carlisle jogged toward the beckoning man.
Chapter Notes
Forward
Back
Chicago, Illinois
October 17, 1918
“Black Thursday”
The morning of October the seventeenth dawned bright and warm, as though somehow God Himself had decided to chase away the chill of the oncoming Chicago winter. That the influenza had occurred in the fall seemed so appropriate; the worsening weather mirrored the death and destruction taking place among the people. So it wasn’t until the sunlight flooded into Carlisle’s room that morning that he realized how long it had been since he’d seen it.
His apartment had a large, east-facing window. Usually, he kept its curtains tightly drawn, in case another should somehow happen to see into his home. But he threw them open this morning, allowing the sun to bathe him so that every inch of his exposed skin shimmered in the light. He stood and turned around in it.
The mark of his kind. The sign of immortality, this bit that made him so unlike humans. He remembered seeing it first, in the forests of his homeland. Now the lore was that the sun should destroy him, but at the time of his turning, his kind hadn’t even been so much as legend. He had no reason to believe the sun would harm him, and when he’d stepped into its rays, he’d been amazed by his own appearance.
But this was what kept him here, he thought at once. Locked in the apartment on a beautiful fall day, unable to go out, and unable to go to work.
He wondered if the weather would be good for his patients. Certainly there would be mothers and fathers who tried to smuggle their children into the sunlight—either for the benefits of the fresh air, or simply to give their child one last glimpse of sunbeams before their eyes closed forever.
Desperation. He saw it again and again. Husbands and wives, mothers and children, even some children with their parents. One last touch. One last hope.
Would the Masen woman push her son closer to the window today? She continued to ignore Carlisle’s admonitions to stay in bed, instead getting up to care for Edward. From Carlisle’s standpoint as a physician, her behavior was ludicrous: the boy had been all but dead from the moment he’d arrived in the armory; the influenza having ravaged his body like a wildfire over dry underbrush. But Elizabeth had been well, and no doubt her own illness was directly due to her inability to take herself away from her son.
And through all this, Carlisle passed almost unnoticed. He was no more than another physician, there to diagnose, to predict the hour of death, and to confirm death when it came.
He couldn’t die. But if he were human, who would be there to see that he got to see one final sunbeam?
He knew the answer to that question.
Backing away from the window, Carlisle went to sit on his bed. It was new, replaced from the one he’d destroyed only a week ago in his anguish. He’d covered it again with his aging quilt, given to him by the Ladies’ Aid association at the hospital where he’d worked some thirty years before. Like the sun, it was bright; yellows and blues and whites, as though someone expected his home to be cheerful.
They knew nothing.
Were he to trade places with any of his patients, there would be no one. No one who would risk their own health for him. And had there ever been? Certainly not the brothers in Italy. If anything, they would be willing to kill him for risking theirs, not the other way around. Or his friends—Garrett, the feisty American whom Carlisle saw only once or twice a decade. Eleazar, who’d proved to Carlisle that one could escape the Italian Brothers without unending fear of pursuit.
They were his friends, yes. But they would not stand for him the way Elizabeth Masen stood for her husband and son. No one loved Carlisle like that.
His jaw clenched.
But you did have someone, his mind spoke up. At the very beginning, when you first came into this world. Then you had someone who was willing to lay down her life for yours and did so.
It had been three hundred years since he had experienced a love like Elizabeth Masen’s. Perhaps that was why she so fascinated him. To have a mother…someone who would gladly sacrifice her own health for yours, someone who would not leave your bedside…it would be unlike anything Carlisle had ever known.
Women would make him quilts, defer to him as the doctor, love him for who he was as a man with power and knowledge. But no one would look to him as a son, or as a husband. There would be no Elizabeth Masen in his life.
Because there couldn’t be.
His fingertip made its way around the pattern of the quilt. To be loved, he realized, was to be known. And to be known was something he could not allow.
One of his only possessions, save his books and his art, was an old grandmother clock, which sat on his shelf, keeping the time. Its ticking was at once comforting and frightening—the steady beat, like the heartbeat he no longer had, but at the same time the reminder that while Carlisle lay here, the world and its time marched on without him. Humans would continue to die. He would continue to become at once older and yet stay ever the same, tick after tick.
He flopped down onto the bed, staring up at his ceiling, listening to the clock. It was seven-fourteen in the morning. Sunset was usually around six-thirty.
There would be no armory today. And perhaps more frightening, he had not said goodbye to Mrs. Masen and her fiery son.
Would he lose the chance?
Would the Masens have made it one more evening?
“Please,” he said quietly, to the empty room. “Mrs. Masen, please make it.”
Staring at the ceiling, Carlisle lay still and listened to the tick of the clock.
~||x||~
So this was what it felt like to drown, Elizabeth thought as she lay. Every breath she drew seemed wet, difficult to pull. Her lungs felt full, as though instead of light air, there was instead water, sloshing from side to side. She could only draw the shallowest of breaths, and when she did, her breath rattled.
It was the same sound she’d been hearing from Junior’s bed for at least a day now.
Coughing, she swung her legs over the edge of the bed, leaning in toward Edward. He was curled up on his side like a baby—hadn’t she heard somewhere that this was what humans did when they died? Went back to that same position in which they had spent such a long time curled up in the womb?
Her child’s knees were tucked up nearly to his chest, his hands clasped together and pulled tightly to his abdomen. He shivered constantly now; the extra blanket she laid on his body in the night did him no good. She wasn’t even sure if he was awake or asleep—Edward didn’t seem to know his own surroundings any longer.
As though to test this, she laid a trembling hand on his shoulder. “Edward? Edward, it’s Mama.”
There was no response.
She wasn’t sure if the hacking sound that came from her was a cough or a sob.
This was what it would come to. This dingy room in Cook County Hospital; her child succumbing to his own death mere floors from where he’d been born. All her worry about Wilson’s war, and what had really been waiting to take her child away from her was influenza! The same illness he’d suffered so many times as a child to no lasting detriment; for a day or two she’d have a quiet child, only to see him become well and begin tearing up the house again within the week.
The thought almost made her laugh.
“Do you remember, sweetheart?” she whispered. “Do you remember how you used to whoop and holler? We bought you that horse—the head on a stick. How old were you then? Were you four? And you pretended to be a cowboy, galloping around the house so that you destroyed everything in sight.”
A floral-patterned china platter had been the casualty of the stick horse. She scolded Junior so loudly he’d cried, and Senior took away the horse for a week.
She wanted that boy back. The one with too much energy; the rambunctious boy. The one who couldn’t be contained. She wanted this boy, the one curled up here and shaking with his rattly breath to turn back into that one. The pale skin would color again; the sunken eyes would brighten.
And even without a little stick horse, perhaps she could see to it that he went galloping off somewhere…
A chair sat at the end of her bed, and she stumbled to it, barely managing to drag it so that she could sit at Edward’s bedside. His hands were away from her, his back exposed. She could count the knobs on his spine. How was it that the back of the tiny, red-faced baby that she had swaddled only seventeen years ago had become this broad strong back; that the child she’d nursed had grown into this man? And how could it be fair that he would lose his life before he even reached twenty?
“I am so sorry,” she whispered, and was met with a yawn. The hands flexed; the back stretched, and for a moment, his eyes fluttered open. He stared at her, causing her heart to pound.
“Edward? Teddy?”
But his eyes were blurred, unfocused. No longer the sea glass green that gave her child such depth—they were cold, flat, lifeless.
Her mother’s voice came back to her, as clearly as though she sat in the room also. “Your eyes make you look bewitched, Libby. Your eyes look like they belong to the Devil himself.”
Like they belong to the Devil himself…
Her mind swirled. First she was in the waiting room, here—yesterday? Three weeks ago? With Senior…
“This is your Husband?”
“Edward. His name is Edward. Edward Masen. Senior.”
At once, seconds later in the room outside the men’s ward, as he’d pressed the items into her hand.
“Your husband’s effects.”We don’t usually”—the cough— “I simply thought your son might want to carry his father’s things.”
Then, just as quickly, in the armory, the rows upon rows of ill people lying in their cots. Her child, in the doctor’s arms…
“I’ll do my best. That’s what I can offer. My best.”
The hospital again, the nurse who knew him so well.
“He knows things…he’s wise.”
Wise.
Striking eyes. She had them. Her son had them. And so did this doctor.
Was this why? Why he’d shown up everywhere they were; why he’d come down to take care of Senior? Why was it, exactly, that the blond doctor with the strange yellow eyes kept showing up? Why was it that he sat with her when her husband died; carried her son when he was too weak to walk; given them a room to stay together?
Was it fate?
Her mother didn’t believe in fate.
Elizabeth shook her head so furiously her chair rattled. It was the influenza. It was her own mind closing in on itself, deciding that it was near its own end. The doctor was only a doctor; one with a great deal of skill for his age, yes, and compassion…but he was only a doctor…
Edward shivered, and at once Elizabeth reached for him. She would hold him; she thought, as she had seventeen years ago. His skin was hot, and even though he lay here, starving, he was heavier than she.
Caring for him will be the death of her, she heard the nurse’s voice swim in her mind.
But she’d held him in his first moments of life, and if these were to be his last…
As she reached out, she lost her own balance and fell, her head striking the edge of his bed.
Blood gushed down her forehead and her cheek, dripping down to her chin and pooling on the floor.
The room spun.
Because of the fever?
Because of her head?
She closed her eyes.
~||x||~
Carlisle was frantic by the time he arrived at the hospital. The sun was late going down for October; perhaps that was the curse of the beautiful day.
A day he’d been unable to enjoy.
After the influenza passed, he thought, he would move to the country—buy a home somewhere near completely open pastures, where he could run and hunt freely and where others wouldn’t see him on a sunny day. He liked cities for their density; it was easy to be anonymous in a city. Blend in with the humans, and none of them batted an eye when you didn’t want to get too close. That was what cities were for. No one bothered to get to know you. Cold, perhaps, but in its own way, comforting.
But limiting, too.
His throat felt oddly tight as he pushed his way through the huge double doors. How would he find the Masens? He’d been thinking of them all day. Elizabeth, with her incredibly motherly nature; Edward Junior with his fiery temper.
Please, some part of him said as he pressed his way into the corridor, please let them have survived the day.
The room which he’d fought so hard to give them wasn’t far from the door—this was on purpose. It made it easy for him to check on the two of them the moment he arrived. The other doctors and nurses had taken notice, some had even asked if perhaps the boy was his nephew. He insisted he did not know them, but talked about the way Elizabeth’s presence seemed to calm her son.
“If they’re both to have the best outcome,” he explained to his supervisor, “then keeping them close for as long as possible is the best idea.” He promised to write it up as research when he was done; to make it scientific.
But how did one quantify the effects of a mother’s love?
The room was oddly dark when he arrived, even the electric lamp was turned off. It was of little consequence to him; Carlisle saw as well in pitch darkness as he did at noon. The boy’s state was virtually unchanged. His shivering seemed to have stilled to a point, and all that issued from his side of the room were the raspy, rattling breaths of imminent death.
Elizabeth lay on her bed, seemingly unconscious, a fresh bandage on her temple. He frowned. When had this happened, he wondered, making his way to her bed and running a finger over her brow. The blood there was fresh, no more than a few hours old.
“Elizabeth,” he muttered, “what did you do?”
She didn’t so much as stir.
The boy’s lips had turned purple the day before yesterday, but now Carlisle could see the splotches on his arms. If he focused, he could hear the capillaries breaking, one by one. Edward’s breathing was shallow and labored—but for the first time in several days, so was his mother’s.
It was the first time Carlisle had encountered Elizabeth Masen unconscious. Each time he came into the room, she was caring for her boy—giving him extra blankets, rubbing his back, holding his hands.
“You’ll weaken,” he warned her, but she only rolled her eyes.
“Edward is more important,” she repeated every time.
But tonight, she did not lean over Edward’s bed, and her own blanket remained fixed firmly around her torso. Someone had given her an extra pillow—a nurse? Which one?—but its effect on her coughing was minuscule. Her lungs couldn’t drain, and no amount of propping would solve that.
A chair sat between the two beds. She must have moved this here, he guessed, and at once he could imagine the scene; the mother leaning over her son as he lay. In fact—
He looked more closely. Yes, there it was. The tiniest amount of blood on the bed frame. Someone had cleaned it with a rag—amazing, seeing how short the hospital was on nurses now, but it of course hadn’t been cleaned nearly to the point that Carlisle couldn’t sense it.
Of course. Elizabeth had fallen trying to care for her son.
“Oh, Elizabeth,” Carlisle whispered. “I’m sorry. I’m sorry this has happened.” Now it was he who sat in the chair between the beds. He took Elizabeth’s hand in his. At once her fingers interlaced with his, no doubt sensing the coolness of his body.
Carlisle bowed his head in shame.
He’d hoped.
He’d prayed.
He had promised.
And he would fail.
Edward’s breathing was even, with shallow breaths that rattled on their way in and out. How many times had Carlisle heard that sound? The breaths growing close to never drawing again. The erratic tattoo of a heart on its way to giving up.
And before he knew what was happening, he was crying again.
He meant to whisper to Elizabeth that he was sorry, that he had done his best. He meant to apologize, to let her know that for a brief moment, he’d felt a part of them; that he’d remembered what it was to have a family, and that he would mourn them.
He meant to admit defeat.
But what came out was a prayer.
Carlisle didn’t pray often—ironic, he felt, given that he’d grown up the child of clergy. But when one lived eternally in the flesh, it seemed somehow less important to square oneself daily, or even weekly, with the Lord. And with who he was, he was hardly worthy to pray on behalf of another.
He was a killer by nature, even he never killed.
Praying was futile, he told himself long ago.
But this night it was all he had to cling to.
“God,” he began. “Lord, I am sorry. I am sorry I haven’t been able to keep this family together. I regret the mortal foolishness in promising them that I would. I know my own limits. I confess that I am not humble before them, but I will be humble before you.”
He thought back to the destroyed bed; the junk heap, the ashes. Standing despondent outside the window where the small family played board games. The Masens would have played games in front of their fire, enjoyed popcorn, sang and laughed. They were a family.
And he had failed them all.
Carlisle had lived for almost three hundred years. He’d practiced medicine for nearly two centuries of that. How many scores of patients had died?
How many scores of patients had he lost?
And why was it that these two made him feel as though he was losing his own life with them?
For them to live would be a miracle. But miracles were exactly why one prayed.
“Please, Lord, save them,” he said, squeezing Elizabeth’s hand in his. “Save them.”
“Save him.”
The words were so quiet at first Carlisle wasn’t even sure they’d come from Elizabeth. But then, as though his prayer had somehow awoken her from a deep sleep, she sat bolt upright. The green eyes she shared with her son—those striking eyes—stared blankly into nothingness.
Did he even know he was here?
“Save him,” she repeated. And then the eyes did fix on him, sharp and unyielding, as hard as emeralds.
“Save him!”
Carlisle swallowed. The promises had all but done him in. The promises had brought him here in the first place, terrified of the death of these two who, by their own tenacity had somehow brightened him; had made him at once finally feel as though he belonged to them.
And when they died, he would be alone once more.
No more promises.
He gulped. “I’ll do everything in my power,” he said.
The green eyes widened. “You must. You must.” Through some reserve of power, Carlisle wasn’t sure, she shook his arm, her eyes piercing him once again.
“You must” —a cough— “do everything in your power.”
His breath caught.
Had he imagined the emphasis? In his power, as though his power was not the same as hers? It was a cough. It had to be a cough—an extra expulsion of air, and because he was paranoid, he was imagining things…
But then Elizabeth squeezed his arm again, the emerald eyes bored into him.
“What others—cannot—do”—she drew a deep breath, and the effort of it seemed to nearly knock her backward— “You—must do. For my Edward.” For a moment, the eyes closed, and Carlisle thought that certainly, that must be the end. But they flew open once more, and she croaked one last word:
“Please.”
Then the eyes closed and she fell back to the pillows.
Carlisle dropped her hand as though it had burned him.
He backed away from the bed, his hands shaking. Elizabeth lay there, unconscious again, it seemed. The frightening eyes were closed now, but an expression of discontent was still etched into the lines of her face.
What others could not do.
Was it possible she knew?
It was not until something solid met his back that he realized he’d backed himself all the way to the wall like some sort of frightened tomcat. It wasn’t such a stretch to imagine standing here, hissing in fear.
Never had anyone discovered his secret, or even come close. And yes, he’d spent more time with Mrs. Masen and her son—exactly the sort of thing he usually avoided for his own safety—but he’d done nothing unusual. His inability to showcase his true abilities infuriated him, held him back, but he kept it all safely tucked inside lest anyone even begin to suspect…
Elizabeth had done considerably more than begin to suspect.
Did he run? Certainly, no one would fault him for running away. Dozens of doctors had, and nurses, too…just came in one morning and disappeared the next. What did he need? Some of his artwork, his books—these things could be in trunks within the hour.
But Elizabeth Masen would die within the hour.
Then why did she want to scare him so? There was nothing for her to exploit.
Except…
Carlisle let himself take a step away from the wall. In the other bed, the boy slept fitfully; though whether it was sleep or simply delirium from the influenza, Carlisle couldn’t tell. He made little mewling noises as he shivered, and with each breath he seemed to fold more completely on himself, keeping himself warm like an animal or a baby.
Save him.
His stomach wrenched so violently that he was sick, right there in the hospital room, with such suddenness and speed that he had no time to even gather a bowl. It splattered onto the floor, a sticky, pinkish mixture of blood and the odd substance that had replaced blood in his veins.
Carlisle wiped the back of his wrist across his shaking lips. He was still trembling.
He couldn’t do that.
If Elizabeth Masen truly knew what he was, she would never ask for her son to join him. If she knew how alone he was—the crushing weight of centuries coming to bear on a single man. The way his choices set him apart from others of his kind; the way he walked such a delicate line, neither fully human nor fully beast, finding home and solace in neither world.
She couldn’t have meant that.
Her breath came shorter now.
A woman burst into the room, wide-eyed. She regarded the vomit on the floor—he panicked: did it look human enough?—but then spoke to him directly.
“Doctor Cullen you need to come. To the women’s ward. You have to come.”
He frowned. It was odd, that this other nurse would come to fetch him.
“Where is Dorothy?” he asked.
The other nurse blinked. “I beg your pardon, Doctor?”
“Where is Dorothy?” he repeated. “Dorothy has been caring for these patients. Where is she?”
The nurse’s name was Lucille, he remembered, and she was young, maybe nineteen or twenty. But she looked as young and as frightened as any other right now, as she began to back her way out of the room.
“Where is Dorothy?”
She shook her head. “Did no one tell you? She’s gone, Doctor.”
The blow of the word was physical, as though the young nurse had struck out at him with a bat instead of a statement. He felt suddenly winded.
“Gone?” he mumbled feebly.
The woman nodded, still in an odd posture as she tried to avoid his eyes.
“When?” His voice squeaked at an oddly high-pitch, as if his voice box had suddenly decided to have a second go-round with puberty.
“This afternoon, before your shift began. It hit her in the morning, and she went delirious. Never came to. It was only six or seven hours; there wasn’t anything anyone could do.”
Nothing anyone could do.
Carlisle let out a strangled yowl, causing Lucille to jump.
“I’m sorry, Doctor,” she mumbled, slowly stepping backward. “I didn’t know you hadn’t heard.”
He stalked to the other side of the tiny room, placing a hand against the wall and dropping his forehead against the wallpaper. Lucille seemed to freeze in place.
“I’m sorry,” she repeated.
“Leave me.”
The words were low and dark, half-growled. A timbre he fought to keep out of his voice; to his ears it made him sound more animal than man.
“Doctor, they need you—”
“Leave me!” He slammed his palm against the wall so hard the room shook. Lucille jumped. At once, she began nodding furiously.
“Yes,” she squeaked. “Take your time. The women’s ward; whenever you are ready.”
Then she disappeared, leaving him again alone in the tiny room.
He wanted to cry. He needed to punch something. The sick feeling in his gut persisted, making him even more angry: why was it that God would rob him of human interaction and yet give him these horrid human responses?
Another strangled yowl clawed its way out of him, and then he slumped against the wall.
Dorothy. Gone.
Her gentle voice came back to him. “I’m not your mama, Doctor.”
But she had been, he thought. She had taken that role, however briefly—wiping his hands free of ink, chiding him for foolish behavior, urging him to continue in the path which was best for him and his patients.
“Stupid, stupid, stupid,” he told himself, the words calming him like a meditative chant.
Twice. He’d fallen twice in the midst of this disease. To the Masens, who he knew he couldn’t save, and to Dorothy, who he hadn’t realized he’d needed to.
He let himself have hope. Like an idiot child, he had pretended for a moment that these people cared for him, and it was intoxicating, their love…
The word startled him.
Love?
Had this been love?
These people barely knew him. How could they love him?
Maybe it wasn’t that they’d loved him, he thought, as his gut seemed to twinge once more, and his chest actually ached.
Perhaps it was that for some reason, something about this moment, something about Dorothy, and Mrs. Masen, and her husband and her firebrand of a son—some constellation of things had formed a key and had unlocked something Carlisle had locked down centuries before.
Perhaps it was he who loved them.
Elizabeth’s breath hitched. Her heart beat frantically, as though it would tear from her chest. He could hear it from across the room, where he still stood, plastered to the wall by his own anger and fear.
She’d made her plea. She’d protected her child. And now she could go.
“Stay with me, Elizabeth,” he whispered.
But like so many, she didn’t listen to him. Her breath came in short, rattling gasps, slowing, slowing…
The last exhale might as well have knocked down the building next door. It seemed to echo in the room: long, low, final. He was certain the whole hospital could hear; and he waited for someone to break down the door, to come in with a clean winding sheet, to begin carrying her to the morgue.
Certainly, everyone around him knew what happened here.
But he only stood in the darkness, and no one came.
It was a full three minutes before he tiptoed over to Elizabeth’s bed and laid two cold fingers on her neck. Her body still scalded him, but that would change shortly, he thought. There was no heartbeat. No comforting gentle thud; no reminder of the bit of humanity which separated her from him.
She was as dead as he was, now.
But Edward…
The boy was having difficulty also; it was as though he could sense his own mother’s passing. His breathing had suddenly grown more labored, his chills more intense. The cot rattled against the floor.
Carlisle laid a hand on the boy’s shoulder. It was bony from his time in the hospital; Edward had lost at least a half-dozen pounds since Carlisle had picked him up at the armory so many weeks ago. Yet even ravaged by influenza, his body was strong. For a moment, Carlisle imagined the boy running, jumping, twisting in midair. Faster, stronger, more lithe than he had ever been before…
He shook his head. No fantasizing, he chastised himself.
The boy was human. And humans died.
He sat alone in the darkened room. Elizabeth’s face remained pulled into a frown; even in death, it seemed, she was not at peace.
But what if she had really understood?
In one swift motion, he snatched Elizabeth’s body into his arms, where it hung limply. He would carry her down to the morgue. The morgue was three floors down, in the basement. That would allow him enough time to drop this insane idea.
Under normal circumstances, they would lay bodies out on tables, allowing for autopsy if necessary, or preparing them to go to the undertaker otherwise. But in the midst of this, the morgue was packed and reeked—the uptick in the weather outside had made it warmer inside, too. Bodies lay everywhere: two abreast on the tables, on the long shelves which lined the walls, in nearly every inch of the floor. If it were possible, the bodies were wound carefully in sheets and tagged with their names—yet many had been dumped here in haste; with no sheet, and no name.
So many would go to a steam-shovel grave, dumped in with hundreds of others, without anyone ever knowing who they were. No one would mourn Elizabeth, who’d lost her husband and bravely fought for her son; no one would tell her story. No one would talk about how her son wanted to go to war, how he’d lost his life here in Chicago instead. No one would feel badly for him that he’d watched both his parents die as a young man.
No one would even know who Edward Masen was.
He found a corner where her body would fit. The startling green eyes were flat now, utterly devoid of life. He pressed them closed, and then, by some strange impulse, leaned in and kissed her cooling forehead.
“Thank you,” he whispered.
He wound her carefully, as though even in death, she might feel discomfort. Then he gently laid her among the others.
The walk back to the tiny room took seconds—he wasn’t even certain he’d walked at a human’s pace, and the thought frightened him.
He was losing his mind.
Edward Masen still lay on his cot. He still breathed, a steady, raspy in and out. His chest rose only slightly, and every breath was punctuated with a wet cough.
No one had come in. There weren’t enough nurses. There weren’t enough doctors. Not enough hands, eyes, not enough space in the morgue.
He lifted the boy into his arms. The body seared him, the fever seeming to brand Carlisle everywhere his skin made contact with Edward’s.
Out of the room, Carlisle headed for the stairs.
There was a back door in the morgue; it led to the alleyway behind the hospital where the hearses could come to collect a body to the undertaker. If anyone saw him go in, they would assume the boy had died.
And no one would see him leave.
The boy whimpered.
“Shhhhh,” Carlisle hushed, as though he were trying to calm a baby. “Hush, now, Edward.”
Pushing open the morgue door with one hand, he picked his way carefully through the bodies; tiptoeing between the rows of bound humans. Elizabeth lay near the back. He stopped before her body, and knelt with Edward in his arms.
So many failed promises. But now, he would make one he could keep.
“Thank you, Elizabeth,” he whispered, holding the boy with one arm while he laid a hand on the mother’s cheek. “I will take care of him. I will never leave him. You showed me how to love him, and I will love him as you love him. For all of forever.”
Nothing stirred, including the boy. The morgue was entirely silent.
“Save him,” Elizabeth’s words echoed in his mind.
He gulped, and this time, it was to the boy’s still-burning forehead that he pressed his lips.
“No, Edward,” he whispered, “save me.”
Then he pressed open the door and raced into the cold, unforgiving night.
Chapter Notes
Forward
Back