Chapter Seven—The Meeting
Delia and Alexander had only seen the boy from a distance and had responded to his resemblance to their father; but the distance had spared them from what they were now experiencing, which was taking all the self-control each of them possessed to keep their thoughts and feeling to themselves and not have any kind of visible reaction to him.
The plan was for Alexander to talk to the boy. They were both male, and hopefully that would put him at ease. However, as he sat there, Alexander wondered if he was going to be able to do anything because the boy's presence was so jarring. On the surface, he was handsome, like Damien, with that same severe part in his hair that his father once had, and the same sharp blue eyes. However, it was only the physical aspects he shared with his father. Apart from other things, the boy lacked Alexander's and his father's natural ability to put people at ease. No doubt owing to the fact that for starters, the boy probably hadn't been taught much social etiquette, or wasn't aware of his body language; but there was something else. It was like the boy was made up of two halves that didn't go together, or like trying to view an object in a shattered mirror. Alexander wanted to look away from the boy, but kept smiling at him.
Delia also sat there trying to look as inconspicuous as possible, but she was also finding it difficult to be in his presence. If there had been any doubt up until this point that he was the cause of everything wrong here, those doubts were swept aside. He was a nuclear reactor leaving a cloud of toxic waste in his wake.
But worst of all for both of them was that horrible disjunction between what they were seeing and feeling: the face of Damien...father, love, caring, warmth, kindness and them...everything that both of them hated for, in Delia's case, half her life. To both run away and run towards...but they sat and smiled.
"Hey. I'm Alexander; that's Delia," Alexander tried to keep the tone informal, but warm. Too friendly, and the boy would know something was up.
The boy stood there staring, looking from one to the other.
Alexander smiled. "Yeah, I know, we don't understand it either. One morning, we were in one of the plants at work, the next thing we know...we were here."
For now, they had decided to keep mum on the fact that in their world, Damien was alive.
"Where's George?"
It was odd to hear Damien talk with an English accent, he had long ago lost his, and to sound so young. Alexander only shrugged. "I don't know. Paul dropped us off and then he took George and left...probably so we could have some privacy."
"We're thirsty...may we have something to drink?"
And it was like he noticed her first time. She sat, smiling up at him, trying to look younger than she was and to rid herself of her authority in order to look and feel as non-threatening as possible. She was both the ace up their sleeve and their greatest liability. Paul had told them that he had spent little time with people his own age, and he disliked women and had warned them that he might react badly to Delia, but Paul didn't understand, and neither did they explain it him, that they saw each other differently than they saw people. For the first time in his life, even if he only vaguely felt it, he would be staring at others who looked like him...a female who looked liked him.
He came over to the both of them and they remained sitting, which was difficult for them to do. They were their father's children and they wanted to stand their ground, literally; but sitting there allowed him to think that he was holding all the cards which was fine with Delia and Alexander.
He turned his attention to Delia, taking her in from head to toe. Alexander could only imagine what it was like for her, being checked out by someone that was, for all intents and purposes, her father. Alexander had to fight his instincts to back him off, but that would have looked strange, so both Delia and he just let him do what he wanted. For now.
He moved away from Delia and went to one of the cupboards, got three glasses, went to the fridge and pulled out a pitcher of yellow liquid that Delia and Alexander guessed was lemonade. He poured it, came back to the table and handed out the glasses. He then sat. Delia and Alexander reached for theirs and took a sip; it was delicious. His hand reached out for the glass and then he stopped, as if was adjusting himself and then kept reaching for the glass and then daintily brought it up to his lips.
"It's very good." Alexander took another sip.
"George made it."
He turned to Delia...waiting for her opinion? Hoping to impress her? They weren't sure which. They could feel his attraction to her, but mixed in to it were healthy doses of shame, disgust and hate for her. Neither Delia nor Alexander let on that they could feel what he felt, though he either was not aware that he could tune into them, or the connection inside himself was so broken, he was no longer capable of fully feeling something that was like himself.
"It's very good...like Cecile's. She's our cook. Alexander makes lemonade...well limeade I guess since I prefer limeade...over...um...lemonade," Delia's voice had trailed off at the end, both feeling worried and stupid for her inability to make small talk.
The boy looked at Alexander and didn't bother hiding his distaste that Alexander bothered himself with something as plebeian as making limeade. The silence between the three was overwhelming, but it seemed to only bother Delia and Alexander.
"If you don't mind, we'd like a tour of the house. It's beautiful."
Under normal circumstances, Alexander's comment would have been bullshit, but Delia sensed in Alexander a genuine interest in the boy and he smiled at Alexander.
"Okay, then let's go."
He began the tour in the cellar, which they had seen already when then they were here the first time. They took each floor in turn and every time, the boy pointed things out, or explained things to Delia first, but he spoke more frequently and more profusely with Alexander. He took them through the house, showing the siblings things that they had already seen when they had come on their own. On the second floor, they skipped his bedroom and the stairs going up to the chapel. He took them up to the other parts of the house, places that they hadn't bothered with when they had come here before.
They moved outside the house and they explored the grounds. He pointed out areas that he liked to walk in and as they walked, the trio became a pair, with Delia sticking out like a sore thumb. They walked ahead of her, every once in a while, one or the other would look back at her and sometimes, they'd laugh.
Delia frowned. What could they be talking about? And then fear gripped her...what if he tells the boy about us. She directed a laser beam of hate at him, but he didn't turn around, which confirmed for Delia what she and Alexander had suspected: that the boy was too broken to feel anything that was like himself.
And then there was her brother. Delia directed no such hate his way, not that she wasn't feeling it, but he would be able to sense it and she wanted to keep things to herself. She always suspected that Alexander would have been happier with a brother and now she could see that it was pretty much the case as the two of them walked, talking in hushed voices like they were the best of friends.
It was an hour later that they found themselves back at the house, where Alexander offered to cook lunch for everyone and the boy went off to use the bathroom. He was was no sooner out of the kitchen, then Delia turned to Alexander.
"You two are certainly chummy."
"It's nothing."
"What did you two talk about?"
"Nothing."
Anger rose in Delia. "Don't give me nothing. That was a lot of giggling and chattering away like school girls. Are you going to start braiding each other's hair next? Did you tell him about Damien, about the plan...about us?"
He merely gave her a mysterious smile.
"Fuck you, Alexander." She turned away from him and no more did she begin to panic that the boy had gone up to chapel to check on Damien, then he came through the door.
"Why don't you let Delia make lunch. Isn't that women are supposed to do?"
"Because Delia can't cook. Isn't that right?" He looked at her.
She smiled darkly at him. "I don't cook. I do more important things like work." She turned and looked at the boy. "And I'm not a woman. You're not a man; I'm not a woman. And don't bother making me anything. I don't want anything you make." She addressed herself to her brother again.
Alexander only shrugged and continued making lunch.
Delia would have liked nothing more than to leave and go find Paul, but she didn't trust Alexander around the boy, so she plunked herself down at the kitchen table intent on keeping on eye on both of them.
Alexander eventually finished lunch, roast beef sandwiches and tomato soup, and put down plates in front of himself and the boy and they ate, all the while making conversation, with Alexander putting the boy in a better mood than he'd probably ever been in for his whole life, and as Delia sat there, watching and listening to the pair of them, she realized that she was jealous of the boy. It was an odd feeling, one that she had never experienced. Before she and Alexander had feelings for one another, she didn't care about any of the girls who liked him; and after, she knew that Alexander was hers and nothing any girl, or boy for that matter, could ever do would ever change that.
But that's not completely true, is it? You have some idea of what it feels like to be jealous, don't you? There was the woman who would be able to do the one thing that Delia knew in her gut, heart, and soul that she'd never get to do: bear children for Alexander. But for right, now she was seething green over the boy and his closeness with Alexander, for how long would it take until she was not only replaced, but gotten rid of?
"I said, don't you talk?"
"Delia's not much of a conversationalist."
"I don't do much of anything, do I? According to you, that is."
"When the time comes, you'll give your life for me, that's your work."
"What are you, anyway?"
Delia turned and looked at the boy. But...what was she, apart from her brother's protector? Every fear that Delia had about being useless came screaming to the surface of her mind, but she tried to push all that fear away, to speak with confidence about who and what she was. "I'm Damien Thorn's daughter. I bear the mark, so that makes me somebody."
The boy turned to Alexander. "Is this true?"
"Unfortunately, yes."
"Do you blame Kate for murdering Damien?"
"No."
The boy snorted. "You wouldn't. One bitch defending another."
"I blame the nazarene. Why was Damien in the church? The nazarene. Why were the daggers created? To kill Damien and make the world a safer place for the nazarene and his followers. It's logical that she killed him. He killed Peter, so she killed him."
"You'd side with some...person over your own kind?"
She felt Alexander's disgust. "I'm not siding with a person over anything, but it's understandable..."
"No, it's not understandable. She killed him, it shouldn't have happened. Damien Thorn should be alive, not rotting in a grave somewhere."
She smiled at the boy. She felt his deception, he didn't bother hiding it, but he had no clue that she could see through the lie.
"Do you know what's going on here?"
"The fact that the world is this close to nuclear destruction...no, why don't you enlighten me."
"What do you think?"
"I think whoever's responsible for this is stupid, childish, self-centred and, most importantly, is going against what God wants."
"God?"
"Satan. Or don't you think of him as God? Or do you worship the nazarene's father? Maybe whoever's responsible for what's going on has forgotten Him in all of this."
"Satan wants destruction...my father wants destruction."
"Bullshit. When has Damien ever wanted destruction?"
"My father told me so. I do what he commands."
"Is that so? Damien tells you that, does he?"
"What do you think it's about?"
"What it's always been about...turning them from their god to ours."
The boy smirked, but Delia wasn't done.
"I'm not Paul, nor any other person, so I understand. It's about control; it's about giving them the illusion of choice and freedom. Their god gives the illusion of freedom, at least christians understand that part. They understand that there are consequences to their actions, but they are naïve children who look forward to some heartwarming homecoming with their father. They need to be reminded that they can't come home to him without excepting his precious nazarene first...his most important child...his favorite child. What does nuclear war get Satan? What does Satan win in that? Fuck all. Creating a new world won't be pretty, but it sure as shit won't be nuclear Armageddon. And it won't happen with Alexander, or his son, or his son's son. It will take generations of molding the human race to our way of thinking until the day comes that we reveal to them that their glorious new world is the result of Satan...not the christian god, not themselves, but Satan." She was standing now, leaning across the table, her voice now low, "and I know that for a fact, because that's what my father told me."
It had come out before Delia could stop herself and while she let no reaction show on the outside, inside she was kicking herself for being so stupid. She could also feel Alexander's anger coming at her, and while she couldn't be certain exactly as to why Alexander was angry at her, it was clear that he hadn't told the boy anything.
Sadness and grief and sat in her heart and she now no longer cared if they stopped the boy or not; she had lost the love of her brother and as far as Delia was concerned, life was no longer worth living.
The change in the boy was remarkable. His face softened and he looked from Alexander to Delia.
"He's alive?"
"Yes, he raised us."
The boy sat there looking stunned. "She didn't kill him?"
Delia shook her head. "No. We didn't say anything earlier...Paul told us that Damien died...we didn't want to make you feel bad."
The boy sat there, a blank expression on his face and Delia didn't know how to continue. She cleared her throat, "He's a good father; he's the best father. He always made time for us. He came out to Harvard to see Alexander's football games and my track meets. He used to go to parent/teacher conference night." She smiled. "You should have seen the looks on people's faces as he'd show up and take a seat at one of those tiny desks. You have no idea how many parents sent nannies or au pairs to those things...or didn't bother with it at all. I got onto the honor roll the first term of high school and he came to pick me that day. After I told him, he took my hand, and we walked back into the school and my name was at the top of the list and he stood there with me. I was valedictorian, and Alexander was salutatorian at our graduation...no parent was prouder than Damien was of us. He never shooed us away when we were little and as we got older, we knew when to come and see him and when to leave him alone. He taught us Greek and Latin. He told us both who we were...who we really were. He encourages us. We'd do anything for him and not just because he's our father or the Antichrist, but because he's earned our devotion and love by being a good father."
While she had been telling the boy about Damien, she had been crying. She could feel the hate coming from her brother and she'd probably never see her father again. Delia's family was disappearing before her eyes and all of her deepest and darkest fears that she was nothing, an accident, or worse, were running rampant through her head.
She was watching the boy and logically she registered the look of loss, grief and loneliness etched on his face. She was trying to feel as sorry for him as she had earlier, but her sympathy for him was apparently a finite resource and it had been depleted.
He had closed his eyes and she could feel the agony that he wore on his face, but it began to shift and transform, first to jealousy and then seething hatred that came straight at Delia.
"Pathetic, absolutely pathetic. Love. Love is weakness. The world is pain and agony and anyone telling you any differently is lying. Anyone who purports to feel anything else is pathetic. What happened to him? Is that what being a father did to Damien Thorn, the Antichrist...the harbinger of Man's destruction? Turned him into some doddering sap who loves? I'm glad my father died so I didn't have to see him sink to the depths that he has with you. He should be trying to wipe the miserable human race off the face of the planet...instead...he attends baseball games and goes to see your teachers? You can see that he's wrong, can't you?" He looked at Alexander.
Alexander had been doing a lot of thinking while he was with the boy, mostly about Delia. Their father had given her too much power and leeway and let her think that she was more important than she was. Sure she had the mark, but it meant nothing; it was there only so Damien would look after her. Delia's only job was giving her life for him if the situation ever arose. What had he been thinking all those years ago when he had went to her, his heart in his hands, and asked her permission for her sexual favours. She was his and what she had was his to take. He turned his attention to the boy.
"You're right. Damien spent far too much time doing things that had nothing to do with being the Antichrist. We could have done much more if he wasn't wasting his time being a father."
The boy smiled. "You're here now, and we can work together to bring about Man's destruction. What Damien does or doesn't do where he is is his problem. We're here and you and I can fix this." But he wasn't done; he looked at Delia. "That you bear the mark is a disgrace and a mistake."
"It was so Damien would look after her, but her only real job is dying for me should the time come. Our father spent far too much time taking care of Delia, worrying about her and taking time away from work, time away from me, to see to her."
"It's always women; they destroy greatness. Kate murdered Damien, she murders your father by stealing who he is, by making him vulnerable. By taking his time away from doing what he should be doing to..."
Alexander watched a smirk grow across the boy's mouth. "What? What is it?"
He stood. "Now I understand. How clever Damien was to have bred himself a daughter to use. What interesting things you and he must have gotten up to, being passed around to all those who couldn't have Damien. It was your duty to protect and serve your father and your brother and what you did for him, you will do for us."
It was all so clear to Alexander now. All the time she and Damien had spent together. How ready she had been to have sex in Damien's bed...no doubt to mock him. She had told him that there was no one else but him, but Aaron Chambers had wanted her from the time Delia had hit puberty. He wasn't sure about how much "passing around" had occurred, but Paul and Thomas spent a lot of time at the house. He had refrained from telling the boy about him and Delia, afraid the boy would take her from him, but they would share her and if she became too disobedient, they would simply get rid of her.
The boy was too far gone and Alexander was too much under the boy's influence to tune into the fact that Delia was quite literally out of her mind. She stood there shaking, not with fear, but with rage. She wore her nails short, but they were pressed so tightly against her palm, she had drawn blood. Delia had been taught to control her anger, but there would be no controlling it now. She let out a snarl and saliva flew from her mouth and she launched herself at the boy, knocking him back so that his head smacked the refrigerator door. Her hands were at his throat, choking him, smashing his head against the kitchen floor.
"Pathetic?" His head met tile. "I'm not the one who has my father's dead body in a chapel corrupting the house of God!" That same sound as Delia smashed his head into the floor again.
"I'm not the one who is so stupid, he doesn't know that the nazarene hasn't been reborn!" She had no intention of stopping; she would smash him to little bits for taking her family away from her...for turning Alexander against her.
The boy was in shock and once he regained some sense of himself, he tried to get into her mind but he couldn't, but the mention of Damien's body had filled him with terror, and he reached up and kept punching at Delia until she fell back and he skittered to his feet and ran out of the kitchen.
Delia tried to go after him, but she felt strong arms around her.
"No, no you don't. We're going to go to that church and get that body and put it back in the chapel where it belongs and take care of Paul. Then you and I are going to sit down and have a nice, long conversation about the nature of our relationship because things are going to change between us, Delia. I'm through with waiting for you, with asking for things. He's right. You're ours now, and we'll take what we want from you."
Delia only shrieked and fought and kicked at her brother, trying to get away.
There was cursing from upstairs and it was getting closer and the kitchen door was flung open and the boy stalked in, calling Delia every name he could think of.
"Where is he!?"
Delia snarled, spat at him, trying in vain to kick him.
"I know where he is. In the church not far from here."
The boy came forward, and grabbed Delia's face in his left hand.
"Hold on to her."
Alexander tightened his grip on Delia, his arms under her armpits as she bucked under the confinement trying to get to the boy.
"We've just started with you. There's rope. We'll tie her up and keep her here. Alexander, you and I will go get the body..."
"Paul's there, too."
"Traitor. Well, we'll deal with him, bring Damien back here, and then, your sister is going to find herself very occupied for the next few hours."
But he suddenly stopped talking, and then, a howl rang though the kitchen, and the boy collapsed onto the kitchen floor, a marionette whose strings had just been cut.
Slowly, a red haze began to lift from Delia's mind, and she looked around, and for a fraction of a second she was frantic because she couldn't see Alexander, but then she felt the arms around her, and it didn't take much movement on her part for his arms to fall away from her. She turned around to face him, and with one look at her brother, she broke down, tears running down her cheeks.
He had a vacant expression on his face, as if he were in a trance...as if he were lost and nobody would ever find him. His chest was barely rising and falling with his breathing. There was no point talking to him, so Delia did the only things she could do: she went inside his mind, and it didn't take long until she found him, the part of him that only the pair of them shared, and the second she found it, she felt her heart break all over again.
He was dark and muddy inside, dirty and polluted. His essence, his colors, were dimmed, flickering neon lights ready to go out for good at any second. She wasn't used to her brother being like this. He was the steady one, the rock, the sure footing when things in her life turned upside down and topsy turvy. She reached out, and she could feel as he pulled away from her, and she could feel it in the flesh world as well as he began to move away, but she put her hands behind his neck, pulled down, and put her forehead against his.
She shared all of herself with him, and reminded him of everything that they were to each other, twins, siblings, jackals, best friends, mates, lovers, spouses, each other's life, love, and reason for existing. She poured her colours into his, but still she felt him pull away: he was aware, fully cognisant of what he had done to her.
I love you, Nander, forever and for always. Help me fix what's broken because I can't go on without you.
And she held on to him, physically and every other way until he began to cave to her wishes, and she could feel him change inside, lightening, evening himself out until he felt like her brother. His colours were still dimmed, as hers were and would remain so until they could get out of here, or the boy no longer existed, or at least she hoped so, but for the most part, he was Alexander again. They stayed that way for some time until Delia felt that she could leave him on his own. When she pulled away, and opened her eyes, she could see that he still had his eyes closed, crying, too ashamed to look at her.
"Nander, please look at me."
"Deedle, I can't."
"It wasn't you, it was them." She had hated the nazarene and the so-called god before, for what they had done to Damien, but they had hurt her brother. She would give anything to be the one to hurt them, to destroy them, to eradicate them out of the memory of every person on the planet...very, very painfully. "I need you."
He opened his eyes, which were puffy and red from crying.
"I'm so sorry."
He put his arms around her, and Delia put her head on his chest. She reached up and stroked his head, as best as she could given that he was now taller than she was.
"Nander you have nothing you have to be sorry for. I love you. I'll always love you. That was them, it wasn't us. We'll send the boy back home, and then either we'll stay here, or we'll go back home. We'll fix us when the time is right."
If Alexander Thorn had his way, he'd have had the ground open up and swallow him whole. He had disparaged his father, blasphemed his God, but worst of all, and unforgivable in his eyes, he had hurt Delia. It had never sat well with him that she was supposed to be his protector. She could always defend herself, but he had always stepped in to help, even if had to be under the pretence of being her partner in crime, because that was the only way she'd accept his help. Then, they had become more than siblings, and each day that they had grown as lovers, as spouses, he hated the fact that she was born to give her life if the situation ever arose. He was the male and it was his job to protect her. But now...he had done worse than hurt her. He had put her in a situation that could have ended her life, had gotten her raped, had accused her of having sex with Damien, and had stoked Delia's worse fears that she was nothing, and meant only to die for him. If he had his way, he'd die right here and right now rather than face what he had done to her.
But, he could feel the love that she had for him. The love that they had shared since before they had words, and he sent his love to her, and he had never felt so much relief in his whole life than when she accepted that love, and it became a circuit, like it always was, love flowing between the pair of them like electricity...the power that kept the pair of them going. They would get through this, and then they would deal, like they always did. Alexander would stay if he had to, and yes, they would talk to Paul and he and Delia would live as husband and wife here, even if they had to kill Paul if he couldn't accept their relationship. But there would never be a day that was spent here that Alexander wouldn't wish that he could go home and be with his father, his sister, their dogs, and their home. He would pull himself together because he wouldn't leave his sister alone to help clean up the mess that the nazarene and the so-called god had created.
"We're Thorns, Alexander."
He pulled his head away and looked at her, and fell in love with her all over again. He didn't deserve her, and yet, she chose to be his everyday.
"We can do anything."
"Damn straight."
He leaned down and kissed her, wanting nothing more than to stay here inside their love, but they had other things that needed doing. She pulled away.
"We'll do it together, Xander. We'll both get him to the church. I don't want you in there on your own, and I just want to do it together."
"Okay." They turned their attention to the boy. "Paul must have taken care of Damien's remains, and the shock must have been too much for him."
Delia shook her head. "Poor boy."
Alexander reached out for his sister's hand and took a deep breath. "Here goes everything."
And together, as gently as they could, they entered the boy's mind and told him to get up, and like a robot, the boy obeyed, got to his feet and stood there, as if he were waiting for instructions.
They walked the boy out of the kitchen and to the front door and out to the car. Alexander got into the back seat with the boy and Delia drove and all the while Alexander spoke to the boy telling him that everything was fine and soon it would be all over and he would be home.
It wasn't more than a five minute car ride to the church and once they were there, Alexander helped the boy out of the back seat and all three of them walked into the church.
