Authoress's Note: Okay. This is going to be really long…
1. I am sorry I haven't updated (if anyone cares). I have been really busy lately. The teachers all schedule tests (a "coincidence") during the same week. It might take me a while to get the next chapter up, too, because next week is Mabon and I will be at a religious festival. I will try to update as often as I possibly can, and I need to resume writing this, too; it's not like I have my own working computer.
2. I don't own "Yu-Gi-Oh" or "Behind Blue Eyes."
3. I really enjoy feedback. Please give me more. If there is something in my story that needs improving, such as character development, please tell me what I need to improve. Please note that the incomplete sentences were written on purpose. I also really like semicolons, but I try not to use more than about five per paragraph.
4. THIS IS THE LAST CHAPTER THAT WILL BE RATED PG-13. THE R RATING WILL BE ONLY A PRECAUTION SO PEOPLE WHO ARE ON THE SQUEAMISH SIDE ARE NOT OFFENDED BY SOME OF THE CONTENT.
5. Merci beaucoup to all of those who have been reading my story. I hope you enjoy it and accept my interpretation of Pegasus's character.
"I have hours, only lonely;
My love is vengeance
That's never free…"
- the Who
I fell asleep after I wrote the last part. The bloodletting made me very tired, and it was all I could do not to fall asleep. Now I am awake again, and it is almost dark. Soon it will be too dark for me to see this page; last night there was a full moon, so I could see, but tonight I do not know. My limbs feel like there are leaden weights attached to them. I can hardly move.
Yet I can still write. Even if he broke my hands, I would still write despite the pain. It is imperative that I finish, though my ghost might have to come back and take up the pen for me to do so. The eye burns every time I try to move.
When I fell asleep, there was a golden haze everywhere around me. I saw something in the darkness. It was a giant black horse with wings and there was gold light all around it. Its eyes were red, and there was all of this black smoke coming toward me each time it beat its wings.
It had talons instead of hooves; I saw my son carried away, and there was a great scream coming from his mouth. The boy is only six; I do hope no harm has come to him. I sent him to England to be safe while I went to Egypt as Cynthia told me to all those years ago. Most of what she said to me in those last days was the ramblings of a dying woman.
And what happened to Urania? Dare I write her terrible fate? But I must, for I had a part in her death. Maybe it was her destiny; if it had not happened, I would never have met Cynthia. I would not have had a son.
A year passed. Urania was soon to be seventeen, and I was fifteen years old. There were rumors of our affections spreading around by way of the servants, and we were eventually confronted by my father. Instead of damning us, he was very happy. It shouldn't have surprised me as much, for as the youngest son, I would have nothing when he died. I realized this later that night.
Seldom had we gone to the moonlit pool since that first night when she braided my hair; I tasted her lips on the hilltops. The next day, she wanted to climb higher than we had ever gone before. I could see her excitement. The trek would take an entire day to complete.
I remember how tired I was that night. The sweet perfume of the air drifted in through the window, and the curtains billowed. My vision was blurred from tears; I was not sad. My eyes had a tendency back then to tear, and I still don't know why they did that. Maybe it was that I had nothing to cry over until later.
Though sleep threatened to claim me, I heard leaves rustling outside. My eyes opened slowly, and I saw her form in the window. She was not in a nightgown; she was in her undergarments. I blushed slightly at this and sat up. I slept in tights.
She sat on the edge of my bed.
"Tonight was the night. Do you remember it?"
"Yes, I remember."
"You came to me in the darkness and bade me to come with you. Did you really want to tie my fate to yours?"
I took her in my arms and held her against me. "Yes. I have never met a girl before as beautiful as you are. You're something special, so very different from them."
In a way, I suppose my love of Urania prepared me for Cynthia. Compared to my beloved Cynthia, Urania was a mere shadow. If Urania was the Lady Guinevere, Cynthia was Queen Helen of Sparta.
"How am I different?"
"You are exotic. You think differently from them. You wear male garments when we explore. Urania, what do you seek?"
She looked into my eyes. "I want something to drown out my dreams of what happened. Something wants me to remember, but I don't want to! There is a voice in my mind that shows me images of how they were murdered…"
I stared at her. "You hear a voice?"
"Yes." She surrendered herself to an embrace. Her lips found mine and gave me a deep, passionate kiss. "I love you, Maxam," she whispered.
"I love you, too." An idea was forming in my mind. I wanted to go back to that pool. My mind lurked in the darkness… "We should go back to the pool tonight."
We stood together and I clasped her hand in mine. Slowly, I put on my boots so I would not make a sound. We climbed onto my balcony and I stood on the branch that hangs over it, the branch I would never let anyone cut away. It was my escape.
I wonder if it is still there.
Urania was beautiful in the moonlight; half of her hair was braided and the other half was left hanging free. My feet led me to the spot with a mind of their own, but my eyes were always on her. She didn't notice my eyes until we reached the water and I took my boots off.
After we swam, we rested on the rocks. She looked into my eyes.
"Pegasus was a winged horse. Bellerophon rode him in battle and slew the Chimera. Pegasus was care for by the nine muses, ridden by the Muse Urania to the mountains where a spring burst forth from his feet."
I stared at her. "But that isn't the whole story. Pegasus was born of evil. When Medusa was killed, he came out of her blood. White as snow, fast as lightning, damned even though he was used to slay monsters."
"But he rose higher than the Gods!" she protested. "He was made a constellation by order of Zeus! He was Zeus's thunder-bearer!"
"It doesn't change his origins. It doesn't mean he isn't damned."
She looked away, obviously biting back an insult. I let my fingers trace her arms. I tried to remember the myth of Urania. She was the Greek Muse of Astronomy.
"The heavens are opened and the future told in her celestial sphere." I saw her head turn slightly; she was listening. "She was the one who saved Pegasus from the gab fly Zeus set upon him. She wept for the fallen horse in the spring they had created. The magic waters of the spring gave her the gift of song. She kissed the winged horse before he died…"
Urania turned toward me and looked into my eyes. "Yes."
We kissed again, and it is a kiss I will always hold in my memory. Not even Cynthia could take the kiss from my mind. Her lips tasted like raspberries, and her mouth parted and our innocent kiss changed to something far deeper. I tasted blood in my mouth and immediately knew something was wrong. Urania was not kissing back. I jumped back and stared at the fallen body; her eyes were closed and there was blood coming out of her open mouth.
He was standing where she had once been, a bloody dagger in his hands. I took a step back, but he did not rush toward me to silence me. Instead, he took the blade to his mouth and licked her blood off, then picked up the body and gave her a deep kiss. I realized she was not dead yet, only paralyzed, and the thought made me sick.
Midnight Blue's hair was a pale blue and his eyes were the color of a clear blue sky. I could not take my eyes off what he was doing to her; I was frozen. I saw him push her hair back and he went for her throat.
I screamed.
The forest held the scream so no one could hear it. He dropped her body and walked toward me. I tried to run, but I was too terrified to move. His mouth was stained with blood.
He ran his hands through my hair before tilting my head to the side. "You are beautiful, my little angel, so beautiful I might not kill you… yet."
His mouth clamped onto my neck. I felt a hard pressure has he drove his fangs in. The forest seemed to pulsate with energy and a shimmering was coming from the trees. I would know it later as "aura."
"Please no…" I whispered to him.
To my surprise, he obeyed. I thought he was finished with me. I cried out when his fangs left my neck, for without them embedded in me I felt an absence. He drew his wrist toward his mouth and let his fangs slash at it. I was terrified, for I knew what he would do with the blood. My own mouth was stained with Urania's.
In the instant his wrist touched my mouth, I knew what peace could mean. It was as close as the wrist that fed me his blood. How to describe the taste! If you have stepped in a cold waterfall, so cold it feels like tiny daggers stinging you, that is what it tasted like. Like a freezing waterfall, every drop sent ecstasy through my body.
Forcefully, he shoved me away. My head connected with a tree and the world started to spin until all I could see was darkness.
When I awoke, I gasped for breath that didn't seem to be in my lungs. There was pain in my body, and my vision was so sharp that my eyes hurt. Poison, I thought. It has to be poison. But I was not in the clearing, I was in my room, and warm blankets were on me. Everything in the room had a shimmering to it, an aura.
The sunlight was so bright that I had to shield my eyes. Half-blind, I stumbled out of bed and made the room dark. No one was there, but I saw evidence of what may have been a week or so in unconsciousness. Someone had a pitcher and cloth by the bed, and that someone was not in the room anymore.
I looked in the mirror. I was so different that I barely recognized myself. I looked starved; I was too thin. My skin was pale. I brushed my hair aside and saw two needle-like scars from where it had bitten me. I looked into the eyes of my mirror image; my eyes were slightly different, a dark amber ring around my irises and a slightly paler amber on the inside.
The room tilted around me and I rested my hand on the wall for support. I heard someone about to enter the room, and I stumbled back to the bed.
Gabrielle came in. Of course it was Gabrielle; no one else would have cared if I were dying in bed.
"Maxam?" she asked me.
Maxam is a nickname I picked up when I was about five years old. My father called me Maxamillion. My mother called me "little boy," and my siblings called me Maxam or Peggy. I hate the nickname Peggy. It reminds me of a board game. I was only called Peggy when they wanted to annoy me.
"Gabrielle."
"We thought you were dying," she told me. Her eyes were filled with tears. "I thought I would lose my little brother."
"How long was I unconscious?"
"About two weeks. The doctors had given up all hope. They thought you were dead, but I refused to have your body prepared. They can't tell a pulse from muscles twitching."
I laughed at that remark. My eyes fell to something that was on her left hand, a simple gold ring. It glittered when she moved it.
"Who is the lucky man?"
She stared at me. "You're very observant, Maxam. I'm engaged to Vincent Theodore Watson. You might remember him from that dinner party several months ago. I find him very charming; he is very influential in the town. We are to be married next year."
"I thought you said no one liked you." Gabrielle was in her early twenties, and though many boys swooned over her, she called it "infatuation" and wouldn't give them a second glance.
Gabrielle smiled. "He's not like the others. This one is sensitive to my needs. His mind isn't only on sex like everyone else. No offense, little brother, but I think men will do anything to get inside a woman's pants."
I stared at her. She had never spoken like this. "Gabrielle!"
"It's true."
"I would never think of doing such a thing to any girl."
She laughed at me. "Of course you wouldn't! The only thing on your mind is smuggling paints into the house for your art."
"Urania is dead," I told her. "She was murdered the night I fell ill."
"I know. Her body was found in the fields. How did you hear about this?" Her voice was now completely serious. "You didn't—
I gasped. "Of course I didn't! We went out that night. Someone attacked us. He was the reason why I fell ill."
"Someone attacked you…"
Gabrielle is the only one I trust in the entire family. I wouldn't think of hiding anything from her. I pushed aside my hair and showed her the marks at my throat.
"He bit me."