A/N: I'm so, so sorry about the long wait for this chapter, but with school starting back and my big brother moving into the college dorms, it's been an understandably trying and emotional week. Unfortunately, I think some of my own mood spilled over to make this chapter a very somber one, and all the fluff I threw in doesn't seem to be enough to balance that. And in addition to everything else, this was a very difficult chapter for me to write. I've always been awful at transitions. =) Anyway, I hope that it's not as awkward to read as it was to write.
chapter four
Marianne had cried herself to sleep and her dreams had been long and dark and twisted, woven up with untamed fires and the reek of burning oil. It had been a stupid, immature thing to do, and the headache currently hammering in her temples combined with her dreadfully stuffy nose were decidedly unkind reminders of why she hadn't cried like that since she was five and her parents died.
She had promised herself she wouldn't be upset, but within an hour of Rowan, Kestrel, Jade, and Mark's departure, she had been absolutely miserable. And the worst part was that she couldn't even decipher what exactly had sunken her mood so low. She scarcely understood herself anymore; she wasn't the same Marianne now that her life was knotted up with Ash's. By some unseen motion, he had taken every hidden aspect of her and brought it to the surface, destroying the conscientious outer shell that had been hers for seventeen years in the process. Now she was violent, vulnerable, emotional, brash, and in lo…
She swatted irritably at the thought, tossing in bed.
Bed. She sighed, recognizing the slightly scratchy sensation of cotton sheets beneath her cheek. She had made a point of falling asleep on the couch this time, after learning there was in fact no guest room. She had even gone to the trouble of seeking out the linen closet so she could make up a nest of blankets and pillows for herself. And he had ignored that, scooped her up and tucked her into bed, no doubt sleeping on the cramped sofa himself.
It said a lot about the parts of his character he tried to keep secret, she supposed, that he chose to give up his bed so that she could be comfy. He was chivalrous. Generous. Romantic. Traditional. With enough propriety and good sense to know she wouldn't have welcomed a bedmate, even in the platonic sense.
But that did not make him any less infuriating. She was not some heroine from a novel to bundle up whenever he pleased and deposit wherever he felt fit, without a volition of her own. Their relationship--whatever that meant--was simply not going to work if he didn't respect her decisions.
She gave a more forceful toss, victoriously wrenching herself free of the blankets, and felt her breath leave her in one more leaden heave of her chest. She had successfully ruined another morning of rest by grappling with the tangle of thoughts cluttered around her problematic soulmate. She opened one eye, then the other; there was no sunlight spilling vexingly through the windows this morning because Ash had been thoughtful enough to draw the vampire-friendly blackout curtains. But it also had the unfortunate effect of plunging the room into a darkness similar to that found in an underground cave, and without vampire eyesight, she was hard-pressed to see her hand in front of her face. The only illumination in the room came from the clock, harsh red lights declaring it to be a half-past ten, and she used what little glow it gave off to stumble and curse her way to the door.
Breakfast had obviously been a onetime welcome-back affair because both the kitchen and the dining room were deserted. She glanced from the kitchen into the adjacent living room and affirmed that Ash was indeed asleep on the couch, over-long legs dangling over the end, and from the unnatural angle his head was tilted at, he was going to have an awful crick in his neck when he woke up. A bewildering tenderness swelled in her chest, pressing treacherously against her lungs as her eyes wandered his sleeping frame, independent of the reprimands of her rational mind. Lines that she had never realized existed had eased, and at that moment he didn't have the consciousness to look shallow or careless or enigmatic. He looked innocent. At peace. Vulnerable.
Exactly how he would never what her to think of him, she knew undoubtedly, a faint blush beginning to smolder impractically in her face. She sensed guiltily that it was a breech of some unspoken understanding to spy on him while he was incapable of defending himself, and hurriedly retreated into the kitchen to focus her attention on the pursuit of breakfast. Almost instantly she realized the disadvantages of being a human in a house owned and inhabited by vampires. All the groceries Ash had stockpiled for his stay in San Francisco had been easily exhausted between her breakfast and dinner, and now the cabinets and refrigerator were discouragingly bare. At length, in the cobwebbed corner of the highest shelf of the pantry, she uncovered a single box, and shaking it to dislodge the light coating of dust, she discerned that it was some off-brand sugary cereal not too far past its expiration date. Milk was too much to hope for, though, the only liquid chilling in the refrigerator being alarmingly and nauseatingly red. She contemplated running water over her cereal, then decided that the blood would have been more appetizing, and grabbed a spoon and bowl before eating it dry.
The contrast between a waking and a sleeping Ash was immediately apparent when he lurched groggily into the room after a few minutes, most likely woken by the noise she was making. Dressed in hastily thrown on ripped jeans and a clinging faded black shirt discolored nearly to gray by countless washes, with his hair impeccably tousled from lying on it, he looked…devastating. Her heart was tripping unsteadily beneath her ribs, and it was a herculean task simply to manage an intelligible good morning. He mumbled something derogatory about the actual quality of the morning and collapsed into the chair next to her, all considerations about retaining space between them banished from his mind.
So yesterday had been a rare case; he wasn't really a morning person. That made her feel infinitely better. When he was grumpy and lethargic, she didn't feel obligated to hold a conversation with him, and when he wasn't charming her senseless with breakfast conversation, it was easier to remember to dislike him. But that didn't prevent her from casting frequent sideways stares at him, observing him gradually blinking into awareness. Around the sixth time, he caught her eye and held it, the last signs of sleepiness vanished.
"I want you to come to Vegas with me."
"What?" The demand was so unexpected that it took a long moment to register, but when its meaning dawned on her, her answer was immediate, "Ash, no."
"It would only be for a couple of days," he persisted. "I was supposed to be back two days ago, and I can't stay here any longer. I thought you might like to come with me."
More adamantly, "No."
Hurt glimmered in the back of his eyes, quickly concealed as his eyelids dropped to cover the dazzlingly violet irises, then opened again deliberately. "Oh."
"It's not that it's a completely awful idea," she stumbled over herself to explain, to erase the responsibility she felt for that fleeting grimace. He had to know that it wasn't him that she was rejecting--at least she was fairly certain it wasn't. "There's just too much here--my aunt, my job…"
Something flickered underneath the surface, a flash of victory as a sleek predator latched onto a weakness in its quarry. "Did you even call your aunt yesterday?" His voice was terribly silky and calculating.
"Well…no."
"What about work? Did you call in sick?"
"I--no. I forgot."
"Were you planning on going home today, then?"
"Maybe. I don't know. I hadn't thought about it yet." She was feeling increasingly cornered by his direct confrontation, and she longed to be able to lash out at him.
"I don't understand. If you weren't going to leave, what's the difference from spending the day here with me or in Las Vegas with me?"
"Oh, I'm not sure. Four, five hundred miles, perhaps?" Sarcasm lent her voice a dangerous edge as she found an angle to attack him from.
"Beyond the obvious, Marianne," he insisted, urgency compelling him to lean towards her, producing in her an even more heightened feeling of entrapment. "What's the real issue here? What are you afraid of?"
"The real issue? The real issue is that I've known you for a grand total of three days--no, two and a half if I'm being generous. I can't take a road trip with you. I shouldn't have even let you buy me dinner, much less bring me back to your house."
"I know what your common sense is telling you, but that's not what I'm concerned with. What I want to know is, why are you still here in spite of it?"
"Because it's only been three days. Not a lot of time, all things considered, to deal with some exceptionally radical new concepts. Weird dreams. Being an Old Soul. The fact that I'm in--" she faltered, checking herself again on the verge of admitting the impossible, "--soulmates with a vampire. I'm trying to understand, Ash. God knows, all I want is to understand."
"I can help with that. The understanding part." They had both swiveled in their chairs to face each other in the midst of their debate, and now she had no alternative but to look at him or at the floor. She chose the latter. The purpose behind his words was agonizingly apparent to her, and that knowledge was accompanied by a swell of fear. And longing. And more fear.
"Tell me what you want, Mare. That's all you have to do," he pressed her gently.
Her pulse was thunderously loud in her ears, and she could hardly hear herself whisper over the roaring. "I want to go home."
His fist came down, patience exhausted, and the whole table rattled with the impact. "Don't you get it yet? You are home. You and me. Can't I make you understand that?" But the last part wasn't so much a request as a warning. His hand was already gravitating toward her, intent on the curve of her face.
And she recognized what was happening immediately in a bizarre, slow motion sort of unreality. He couldn't be allowed to touch her, or else it would be a repeat performance of what had transpired that first day on the street, only with possibly more monstrous consequences. She would lose herself in him, lose the awareness of her own will, her own resolution. It was ridiculous to be arguing with herself, after all. Even a smug, self-important, blond half of herself.
Terror battled the anticipation quivering her backbone. An excruciatingly sweet tension was multiplying in her muscles, drawing them tight in expectation, and she felt with steadfast sureness that she had to find an outlet for it, like drawing off lightning with a lightning rod. The violence of the emotions clashing in her sparked with the violence in her soul.
She'd never hit anyone, not since second grade when Jacob Duffe had pushed her off the slide, and even then she'd been the one punished for it. But it didn't require much experience to land one open-handed blow across Ash's unsuspecting face.
And it was enough. Apparently, the soulmate connection had become combustible after three days of denial, and the escalating prospect of Ash's hand had amplified the pressure to a point where it found release in the briefest of contact. There was no sensation of falling this time, only a dizzying vertigo as she found herself in a bewildering place of dazzling colors, shifting like a prism caught in the sun, intertwined inseparably with soaring shadows. She'd believed she'd seen him exposed that evening in the kitchen, but that was a pale reflection of the raw, overpowering sense of Ash Redfern that pervaded this place.
His mind, she realized with an unsteady giddiness. She was in his mind, a crucial detail that was accompanied by a whole multitude of extra emotions--awe, terror, reverence, disbelief, and a strange overriding curiosity. The last got the better of her, and she reached out for him, not with any physical part of herself, but with something she assumed must be the soul portion of soulmate. She probed those murky places cautiously, disturbing the surface like fingers skimming over lake water, and the memories that had shaped them drifted effortlessly free, showing her shattered images of darkness, blood, fear, pain…and guilt. Everything was wrapped up in overwhelming guilt.
It was overpowering, forcing her into retreat to recompose herself, and when she did she became of aware of Ash for the first time, hovering in the edges of her perception. He had obviously been there the entire time, bombarded with her unguarded feelings, reliving those visions with her, and now he was waiting. His resignation flowed over her in intense waves, and she knew he was waiting for her final judgment on him, braced for rejection and silently ravaged by his own shame. A memory of her own shivered loose in recognition, a line of a poem she had read once--"Love bade me welcome, yet my soul drew back, guilty of dust and sin."°
"But quick-ey'd Love, observing me grow slack from my first entrance in, drew nearer to me, sweetly questioning if I lacked anything," something alarmingly similar to Ash's corporeal voice completed the stanza dutifully. Yeah, you read me that one time. I guess it's…apt.
Hearing Ash with her mind was an experience worlds apart from hearing him with her ears. There was a bitterness that came with it that was far beyond anything he could have conveyed to her any other way, a piece of himself attached to every word. Telepathy, she put a name to it.
Something like telepathy, yes, but…not quite. Bemusement. Hesitation. A loss for words.
Way to be ambiguous, she answered automatically, never wondering if he heard her like she did him. When his reaction came back to her, she recognized the lightening of his mood, and was relieved that the time for her to pass judgment had elapsed. There had been nothing she could have said that he hadn't most likely told himself a hundredfold, anyway. But the recollection of what she had witnessed in his mind stuck with her, rasping against some vaguely familiar nerve.
She turned her metaphorical back on the shadowy stains, going exploring in the vibrant kaleidoscope of his memories. She found herself everywhere--at least that part of her that was distantly Mary-Lynnette--lit by sun and starlight, laughing, arguing, irritated, grumpy, content. Even when she wasn't actually with him, she remained in each thought, a moral presence, a guiding star. His memories had all the depth and passion her own few lacked, everything saturated with his moods and his thoughts, anger, confusion, mischief, playfulness, remorse, gratitude, and love--real, all-consuming, poetic love. She was living her life through his eyes, and the experience was earth shattering. Her last inane hope that there had been some mistake, that she hadn't actually been Mary-Lynnette, disappeared. She took stock of everything he had told her, and she believed it wholeheartedly. In his exasperating way, he was absolutely right; she understood now.
And he had to know that, that her views on him, on herself, had shifted drastically. There had to be some way to convey that wordless revolution. And there was.
All right, we'll go to Las Vegas.
Really? Satisfaction. A blaze of triumph.
"Yes. Just don't get too used to getting your way," she cautioned half-seriously, surprised to find that her mouth still worked. She blinked, returning without warning to her own body. They were both kneeling on the floor, her toppled chair a few feet away hinting at how they had gotten there. His arms were around her, pulling her close to his chest, the last defense keeping her upright in her unbalanced position. She was at just the perfect height that her eyes were level with his lips, and it was inconceivable that she should wrench her gaze away. She was feeling rash and intoxicated, enchanted by their arches and hollows, and it would be amazingly easy to kiss him. She'd only have to tilt her head back a tiny bit, and maybe a little to the side, and their lips would touch, and…then what? Inexperience put the last beyond her imagination. But she had the feeling that the rest would take care of itself. Ash would take care of it.
At the exact moment she made up her mind, Ash thoroughly ruined all of her plans by frowning and snatching his arms away, depriving her of support, and sending her toppling to the floor. Sending a reproachful glare down at her, he kneaded carefully at the fading red imprint of her hand on his cheek.
"Ow. That hurt."
The piercing ache spreading from the top of her skull down her back was a magnificent reminder of every reason she found him infuriating and insufferable. Conceited, self-absorbed, dense, chauvinistic…a sympathetic voice chanted through the list of his faults as she drew back her knee in preparation. The kick landed her heel solidly in the middle of his kneecap, and despite vampire reflexes, the astonishment of the blow threw him off balance. He tottered uncertainly for a few perilous seconds before tumbling to sprawl full-length on floor beside her. She watched his face darken with approaching storm clouds, a sure sign that he was losing a battle with his temper. And then abruptly his expression cleared.
The first chuckle was uncertain, almost forced out of his chest, but the next was easier, unrestrained, and it sprung up naturally from there as he curled around himself in a seizure of laughter. Once she overcame her initial astonishment at his unforeseen behavior, it seemed only right to follow his example, laughing uncontrollably at the ridiculous scene the two of them made, collapsed on the kitchen floor.
Though she wasn't quite certain she understood what was so funny.
°°°
Cruising along the nearly deserted highway at speeds far exceeding anything Marianne found comfortable, they allowed the wind whistling through the open windows of the Porsche to do the talking for them. They'd barely spoken to each other over the past few hours, excepting a small crisis over the fact that Marianne had no clothes to pack for the trip. Ash had wanted to assure her that there were plenty of her clothes left at Theirry's from her last visit there, but he had the feeling that it would have only been more distressing for her, and he'd had to settle for guaranteeing her that he would take care of all the details. Her unwilling dependence on him had nettled her and successfully terminated the conversation. So, in the interim, they'd had plenty of time to recover those walls that had been torn away from them that morning, and plenty of opportunity to take in the scenery on their trip. Not that there was much to see. A major portion of southern California was now ghost towns, burned out shells riddled with inexplicable craters and wind-scoured debris.
He'd been catching glimpses of Marianne fidgeting out of the corner of his eye for the past half hour, and he expected it was only a matter of time before she hazarded some manner of communication.
At last, turning decisively from the window, she asked, "Who did all of this?"
Concealing an inward wince, Ash wished fervently that she had chosen some other subject, but any discussion between them was too valuable to refuse her an answer. "A cousin of mine. Delos." Stirring restlessly in his seat, his hands clenched unconsciously around the wheel as he debated silently over adding an addendum, something that would undoubtedly require delving into some none too pleasant memories. Better that she knew beforehand, he decided at last. "Which reminds me, I should probably warn you just in case we run into him around, Delos…um, ah--Well, you see, the source of the Wild Powers' strength was their blood. When it was a running, they had access to the blue fire, which had the ability to do some pretty amazing things: explode boulders, stop trains, put out fires, disintegrate houses, stuff like that. Let's just say Delos got into a pretty bad situation and leave it that, okay? Usually he only needed a trickle, but he got desperate, and he…took off the whole arm, all the way to the elbow. So, I guess what I'm saying is, try not to stare. He doesn't like to be reminded of what happened, what he unleashed here."
"Oh, gosh--" There weren't any words to express her horror and empathy. "Ash, that's awful."
His breath escaped in a humorless laugh. "Yeah. I guess we all lost something, even when we were on the winning side."
She twisted in her seatbelt to face him entirely. It was impossible to see his eyes behind his dark sunglasses and both his hands were locked on the steering wheel. Sometimes, just when she was sure she knew everything she possibly could about him, he said something so astounding that she almost believed there might be some intelligence behind those good looks. She licked her lips nervously, wrestling with a comment on the tip of her tongue. She already knew the answer, but she wanted to hear from him because…because she needed reassurance. Because he rarely spoke about himself. She knew about what happened to her, about Delos, and a dozen more she had never met, but she was desperate to know what had happened to him.
"Wh-What did you lose?"
You. The reply was instantaneous, exactly the declaration that she would want to hear, but he couldn't bring himself to vocalize it because all at once it wasn't that simple. He had never allowed himself to dwell on these particular memories, and now that he was compelled to, he was realizing just how extensive the damage was. He'd lost her, and his some of his composure, his self-confidence, his sanity, and sleep. He'd lost a whole lot of sleep.
But that's what happens when you kill the woman you love. Oh, he knew he hadn't literally killed her, but sometimes he wondered if he hadn't of taken so much, if hadn't taken any at all, could she had survived three more days? No, almost certainly not, but that didn't take away the possibilities, the what ifs, that dogged him in his sleeping hours.
The expectant silence swallowed up his private thoughts, reminding him that a response was anticipated. He forced his shoulders to loosen in a nonchalant shrug, his voice to be cool and even. "Not as much as some."
When she remained quiet, eyes turning inward on her own thoughts, he berated himself for saying the wrong thing, for driving her away. As the next few miles passed, he was certain he had already destroyed all the hopes he had for this excursion. But eventually, she questioned him unperturbedly about their destination, nothing about her betraying any wrongdoing on his part, and he enthusiastically answered all her inquiries about Las Vegas, managing to keep the dialogue between them open for the remainder of the drive.
Las Vegas was one of the few cities in the world that had grown since the War. As the unofficial capitol of all Circle Daybreak, it attracted all sorts of people, from sightseers to politicians, transforming it into a supernatural equivalent of Washington, D.C. And the businesses in Vegas, the strip and all of its attractions, had only grown and flourished with the patronage its new position afforded it.
It wasn't until they were well within the city limits that the energy hit him, stealing away the air in his lungs and cutting him short in mid-sentence. Marianne opened her mouth to demand what was wrong, but the pressure crashed into her too, trailing slimy fingers down her vertebrae and forcing her stomach into her throat. It suspended them in immobility until the very moment she was sure she was going to spontaneously combust, before finally it recognized Ash's psychic imprint, and eased away to let them pass with an audible popping.
Ash wheezed, readjusting his slick hands on the wheel. "Witches," he muttered, with the addition of several colorful adjectives. "Thierry hires the six most powerful witches in the world to put up wards, and you'd think they'd have the decency to at least make the experience tolerable."
But underneath his resentment was the knowledge that the wards were necessary. Being one of the most influential people in the world, and certainly the most influential vampire, the public leader of Circle Daybreak was under constant threat, and by extension, Hannah was as well. There were countless disgruntled Night People and fanatical humans who would love to be able to brag that they were the one to kill the first made vampire…or the one thing he loved most in the world.
Braking mere inches from the spiked, iron-cast gate that marked Thierry's property, Ash thrummed his fingers impatiently on the shift stick, watching the figure that emerged from the guardhouse glide leisurely through the night toward the car. A flashlight flipped on, directed in his eyes. Ash hissed, cowering backwards, and Marianne observed his eyes, now devoid of sunglasses, as the pupils narrowed to infinitesimal slits.
"Mister Ash," the sandy-haired witch greeted him heartily. "You're late getting back."
Ash shaded his eyes with one hand, peering blindly in the direction of voice. "Abforth? Is that you?"
"Yessir."
"Wonderful," he said flatly. "Now would you turn off that Goddess-accursed light? I can't see a damn thing."
The witch only grinned broadly as he disobeyed, moving the flashlight's beam across the seat to examine the second shape in the car. His eyes widened. Notwithstanding Ash's reputation, he wasn't in the habit of bringing mysterious women back to the mansion, and Abforth had been in Thierry's service long enough to recognize the particular pair of blue eyes occupying the passenger side.
"Welcome, miss," he barely managed in a breathy voice. He spun around to make a frantic motion at his partner in the guardhouse. Inside, the werewolf urgently jabbed at the buzzer to the house, alerting the Lord and Lady. Returning his attention to the two in the car, he smoothed his smile back into place. "We're honored to have you here."
He flickered the switch on the flashlight, shutting it off, and took a step backwards away from the car. As the gates swung inward, he made a brief, imperious gesture ushering them inside. "You're free to go," he announced in his most authoritative manner.
Ash rolled his eyes, but managed an almost sincere-sounding thank you, before pressing on the accelerator a bit too hard. He parked at the head of the drive and proceeded to extract his lanky body from the low, compact car, stretching out aches and pains. Marianne followed his example, then ground to a halt as she caught her first true glimpse of the Descouerdres mansion.
It was a truly impressive sight. Necessity and the years had transformed the original house into something much closer to a medieval fortress, complete with ramparts, battle scars, and windows narrowed expertly to slits to allow a spell caster to see out without his target being able to focus on him. Black roses were skillfully woven into landscaping and were the secret heart of every design, laced cunningly into the architecture. Ash knew that on the interior the influence of Thierry and Hannah made it much more personable and home-like, but from the outside, the dark, towering structure was an intimidating aura.
"'Abandon all hope, ye who enter here,°°'" Marianne murmured, overawed.
Ash chuckled. "Theirry's not nearly that bad." He wrapped an arm around her waist, shepherding her forward and producing a sensation totally at odds with the foreboding she was feeling. "He's only eighteen, after all."
°The lines are from George Herbert's poem Love (III).
°°Marianne's quote is the words Dante sees engraved on the Gate of Hell in The Inferno.
First of all, kudos to everyone who found the last chapter and reviewed despite the problems was having at the time! Thank you so much for your reviews and your patience!
tanya: I was so glad to get your review! I have to admit the part with Mark and the girls made me sad too when I wrote it, but I didn't see any other way it could be. But I promise the story will take an upswing in mood very soon.
Aglaia di Willow: LoL! I wouldn't mind waking up in his bed, either, but there's no accounting for Marianne's taste. Hopefully, you get a little more insight into why this particular habit bothers her in this chapter. And I'm so relieved to know that you caught the humor in the last chapter. I always worry when I write no else will find it as funny as I do.
Charlotte: Again, a big thank you for being persistent about reviewing! That fact that you came back to do it makes my gratitude that much more. And I'm relieved that you approve of my decision about Mark and Jade. I wasn't sure if it would make sense to anyone other than me.
WildFire070: I didn't realize I had a bandwagon! But the fact that your review is out of the norm for you, makes it that much more significant to me. Thank you, thank you, thank you, and hopefully, if I do my job right, you won't have any criticism in the future, either. (But don't be hesistant about giving it if I fail!)
laura: It's good to know that you enjoyed the chapter despite the fact that it was sad. As to Ash, I'm definitely going to work through his issues, and soon enough he won't need to keep his distance. So sorry about keeping you waiting with the update.
incarnated-soul: I'm going to answer your question about Marianne's memory with one of my own: does she need to remember everything? Now that I'm done being ambiguous, I'll try to explain the title briefly. At the end of DoD, ML describes Ash as a knight errant, going out into the world. In this case, ML is the 'errant' one (hence the 'Lady') coming back to Ash as Marianne from her adventures in the herafter. And I hope the quality of the story doesn't suffer from the lack of dialogue. I try really hard to make up in other ways what I lack in that skill.
follow-ur-dreams: Glad you like the fluff! I love writing that above all else. And I really do like your suggestion. I was so close to incorporating a quote/dream from DoD in every chapter, but I feel that Marianne has to understand herself and Ash before she can remember ML and Ash. But she'll start remembering soon, I promise.
