Five
August 1994
Saben rose from a feeling of profound, unassailable peace to the cruel sensation of cold metal squeezing her wrist. Her eyes opened a slim crack, unwelcome daylight invading her senses and her arid tongue sprung to life, lolling like a lazy beast in her dry mouth.
She opened her eyes, blinking slowly to clear her vision thought the delicate skin of her eyelids ached deeply with the effort.
When she was able to focus her vision she found her wrist handcuffed to a pole that propped up a thick slab of marble.
She felt dizzy, light and coldness rattling her body until she acclimatised to her imprisonment.
It was a nice apartment, an expensive collection of ultra modern furniture, leathers, glass, granite and marble. Not kitschy ornaments to brighten the place just the almost sociopathic clinical taste of an absent owner. She had never been in an apartment this nice before.
The windows had been tinted so the full force of the sun could not fully invade the interior. She must have been high up because no leafy tree tops penetrated the view through the expansive windows.
Her nostrils clogged with dried snot and itched. She could not muster the strength to raise her free hand to her face though she felt as if her brain were leaking from her right ear.
"She's awake." A woman's silky voice emanated from beyond her vision.
Saben tried to speak but only managed a raspy kind of gurgle.
"She must be hungry or thirsty or maybe just plain stupid." The woman continued.
"Celsia." The familiar voice admonished.
"She's resistant, Abberline."
"I know."
Saben turned toward both the woman Celsia and Abberline a little distance away, the woman was reclining on one of the couches staring at her with a sly smile whilst Abberline stood at a greater distance staring down at her.
They gleamed like perfect statuettes of modern gods, a couple plucked from a sophisticated high fashion magazine.
"Clean her up before you eat her. She stinks." Celsia said.
Saben recoiled, insulted by Celsia's calmly stated words and then slowly the panic set in at the thought of being eaten. Cannibals sprung to mind, devil worshipping Illuminati, absorbing immortality, power, strength through human sacrifice. Human flesh sizzling in frying pans and incomplete corpses collapsed in bright white bathtubs stained in brilliant red blood.
In all her imaging she failed to notice Celsia move and now found her suddenly pacing in front of her, immaculate black suit and pencil skirt not ruffling an inch, tall black heels not even making a sound on the marble floors.
Saben was scared, the proximity of the strange cold woman made her heart thud through her chest and make her tongue swell. She could have screamed but her throat was too tight to form any real sound.
Celsia's fingertips hovered beneath her chin to raise her face for inspection.
"Simply awful." She murmured.
"Enough." Abberline appeared beside her in a blink and gripped Celsia's hand tightly. "Get out."
Celsia whipped up like a snake, glaring at Abberline and his pale fingers about her wrist. There seemed to be a silent exchange and eventually obeyed. She cast Saben a last long look before closing the door softly behind her.
Abberline stared at the closed door for a long time before he turned to look at Saben. "Remember me, sweetheart?"
She shook her head, no. She refused to look at him too closely but her insides were twisting in knots and she was indescribably afraid.
"Then how did you know my name?"
"I don't." She managed to say before exploding into a fit of coughs and hacks and bile and spit clung to her chin and dribbled onto her dusty shirt.
Abberline fetched a glass of water, placing the cool glass to her lips and tipping it down her throat. She took hold of the glass and guzzled the water, Abberline pulled back his hand to avoid touching her.
"You said it back there in the alley." He continued in a cool voice.
"I did?" Her voice was still hoarse.
He took a handful of her t-shirt in his hand, twisting the fabric in his fist and pulling her up to face him fully. "Don't play dumb with me, girl."
His breath was warm on her face and he smelt clean, different from what she was used to. Different from the staleness of cigarettes and beer. She went passive in his grasp, sagging until he released her and she fell back to the floor, her bones creaking stiff and exhausted.
"It's interesting." He said with his back to her.
"Let me go." She whispered.
He glanced at her from behind his shoulder. "Why would I do that?" Something about the angle of his face, the tone, it brought back vivid memories, and things she hadn't thought about in a long time.
She was small again, cringing, biting her tongue, tasting dull copper blood and she was not to speak unless spoken to or else suffer a stinging hot slap the threat of more violence. The stench of urine and shivering child flesh. Hands beneath the bed sheets.
"Saben Frost." He said her name as if considering the weight of it.
Her eyes were open wide whilst her thoughts raced. She was dragged into an alleyway, a grotesque girl looming over her with too many teeth, alien eyes. She had been kidnapped, the man was a serial killer, a cult leader, a cannibal. He was going to eat her.
Realisation came in a terrible rush. "Oh my, God," she whispered.
He turned to face her slowly.
She remembered his face. She remembered his eyes, electric blue danger.
Without knowing why she found herself reaching out, reaching toward his passive hand, fingertips brushed his skin and the world exploded behind her eyes. A rush of information bombarded her all at once.
Abberline was not his real name, he had chosen it in 1929, just had he had chosen many names before it. His real name was rarely used, it was a powerful name in the right circles and only few knew it. She knew it. Cebren.
His true age pressed upon the inside of her skull, something fierce and incomprehensible. He was far older than he looked though he appeared no more than twenty-five, when he chose to stop ageing.
He was born a drinker of human blood, squalling from the womb to suck on a bitten finger, greedy mouth chewing on his mother's breast. He was a killer, the woman Celsia was like him too.
He worked for the Council, bound to them by blood, oaths and other things. He hated humankind, it was the edict of his people that had become a law unto a nation. Other obscure things flashed before her, blood on battlefields and alters of forgotten nations and offerings to forgotten gods.
The overwhelming sense of him, the cold electric blue cruelty of his soul disguising his tender underbelly. There were things that seeped into those soft parts, weakened spots that felt beautiful to her invisible touch.
She saw the memory of her face in his mind, first as a child and she gleamed in his memories, pretty in her defiance, the phantom scent of wild magic and sunshine in her hair, that also radiating from her skin. It was only a small part of why he loved her.
The radiance and mysteries that veiled her as a child were only amplified now. The defiance still shone in her eyes, the wilful set of her mouth, more exotic now with her nimbus of pink hair and tattooed skin.
He didn't see her stiff and greasy from days of being in the dirt, days without a wash, black paint and over sized clothes. He didn't recoil from her like Celsia had.
She came out of the madness shuddering, gagging, straining against her bondage, her wrists was rubbed red raw and the skin was delicate enough to break and bleed. He's seen inside me too, she thought with terror.
Abberline was collapsed on the other side of the room, he was glowering at her but his skin had become the true pallor of a dead thing. He looked at her as if hated her, as if she were something grotesque. She knew he hated magic and she knew he thought she had ensorcelled him.
"Let me go?" She asked softly.
He couldn't speak. He looked mortified. Violated. He picked himself up, trying to smooth the wrinkles from his suit before walking away. Just the sight of his back turned on her made a sudden and terrible emptiness open in the pit of her stomach.
"Wait." She said in a soft a child-like voice.
He turned to look at her whilst she stared at him, forgetting everything she wanted to say.
He was suddenly in front of her, one moment he was on the other side of the room and the next so close to her face she could taste him. "Why does it hurt when I touch you?" She could think of anything else to ask or say.
She had many questions, she knew many things. She couldn't comprehend how nor why. How did she know his mother had been a singer?
He looked at her in silent distress, it showed in his electric-kissed eyes. His lips were pursed and stubborn, it was a look that meant he could kill.
He was so warm, no, not cold at all, not even a little, her eyelids began to droop becoming dizzy from the air they shared, the energy that sizzled between them. She made a small noise before he darted forward and pressed his lips to hers.
There was no explosion just the intense shimmering of a chord that led from her into him and back again.
*
Saben woke with a start, coughing and hacking and dry gagging her mind swamped with a sick feeling. When the fit subsided she looked sluggishly about her, she was in the all too familiar apartment one hand cuffed to the pole holding up the marble surface. She was completely alone. The place was dark. Empty. It's just a nightmare.