Chapter 22 - Ditches Of Misery Part 2
Nikola and Helen ate and drank in the hotel's fancy dining hall, just like it was old times. Helen told him all about London and the Sanctuary, all that he had missed during the last 4 years.
Nikola remained remarkably quiet during the whole dinner, listening intently, cradling his glass of wine as she spoke.
It was unsettling to Helen. She had never seen Nikola so attentive, yet distant. He seemed so disconnected with everything, especially her. She wondered if it was because he was uncomfortable in this rich lifestyle after spending so much time need deep in the trenches of New York, or if it was her.
His eyes seemed tired. Never fully making contact with hers, like he didn't want her to see how fully grey they had become.
"Nikola?" she questioned him over her dessert.
"Yes," he responded softly, like he had all evening.
"What's wrong?" she looked at him but his eyes remained fixed to his wine glass.
"How do you mean?" he said.
"Well, we've been here for nearly an hour, I haven't stopped talking, but you have barely said a word, we both know that's not like you," she reached her hand over to his.
"It's nothing Helen, I've enjoyed hearing your stories, I just have known of my own...none that you already don't know," he finally looked up at her.
"Please, you must have one story," she pressed, taking his hand with a soft squeeze.
"What's there to tell, Helen? I came, I tried, and I failed, not much else to it," he sighed.
"Nikola, come home, please," she took his hand in a tighter grip. "I want you to come home, back with all of us, thats where you belong, not here, not in those ditches. I can see they've already sucked the life out of you and you have only been here for 3 or so years."
"I can't go back, Helen," he drowned the rest of his wine.
"Why not?" she pleaded.
"Bcause going back is an admission of defeat and I can't do that, I won't crawl back to James, John, and Nigel with my tail tucked between my legs. I don't need their pity, and I certainly don't need their judgement."
"Will you let your pride go for once? You are not a failure, and they will not treat you like one. I do not see a failure in you, Nikola. You were cheated by Edison, that is a failure on his part, not yours," Helen argued.
"You have more faith in me than I do, Helen," he said sadly.
"Yes I do, so come back to London with me, please," her big blue eyes begged him.
"This was a mistake," Nikola sighed and stood up, straightening his clothes and walking out of the ballroom with his head held low.
Helen stood up and followed after him.
"Why are you so adamant to stay away from me?" she got into the elevator with him.
"Really Helen?" he sighed as she shoved him to the far wall of the elevator. "Third floor please."
"Where are you going?"Helen huffed at him.
"I'm going back to grab my clothes, and then i'm going to leave," he glared at her.
"I won't let you," she glard back.
"Helen, I am stronger than you, and you know that if I have to I can toss you across the room, so don't be stupid," he growled at her. The Bellhop kept looking forward trying to stay as far out of the couples business as the elevator would allow.
"You don't have a key," she challenged.
"I don't need one!" he spat at her and she growled angrily.
"You are such a child, Nikola!"
"Oh, I'm the child! I don't need your charity Helen, you throw me into your clean suits, your fresh perfumes and your fancy dinners and you think you own me! I am not going home with you Helen!"
The elevator stopped and the Bellhop quickly opened the door and he pushed past her, quickly pacing down the hallway.
Helen quickened her pace to get to the door before he did.
"I won't let you do this, Nikola! You're going to destroy yourself!" she stood in front of the door.
"Helen, get out of my way," he clenched his hands to prevent them from becoming claws.
"I know you think I don't care, but I do, I hate seeing you like this, I hate that I drove you away, you're here because I abandoned you when all you tried to do was protect me, I was angry at you. All I want is to make things right between us, Nikola. You think it's pity, but it's remorse, I am responsible for this, not you! You are not a failure, Nikola! I am!" Helen blinked away the hint of sadness in her eyes.
"Don't say that, Helen? I didn't leave because of you, I left because...because of other things, but certainly not you...You had every right to hate me," he calmed down slightly.
"Then come home, Nikola, there is nothing wrong if you come home," she grasped him arm.
He eyed the chain on her neck and lifted out from underneath the fabric of the dress. Admiring it sadly.
"You don't think I notice it but I do," he said sternly.
Helen felt shame creep inside her chest, all her argument gone mute.
"How long?" he asked.
"Almost two years now," she said quietly.
"I wish you and John every happiness," muttered Nikola bitterly. He pushed past her and used his claws to pick the door open.
Helen watched him walk into the dimly lit room and remove the dinner jacket as he returned to the piles of dirty rags he called clothes.
"Is that it, Nikola? You won't come back because of me and John?" she closed th door behind her. A blinding anger filling her. "Of all the arrogant, egotistical, moronic reasons!"
"John doesn't want me there, just as much as I don't want him there!" barked Nikola.
"That is ridiculous!"
"Really, Helen, I don't understand what you see in that boor, he has the kindness of a piranha!" Nikola ripped of the cravat and tossed it carelessly on the floor.
"You bastard!" growled Helen.
"He sees you as a prize, Helen, a beautiful accessory that no one else has, that is the extent of his affection!"shouted Nikola.
"And what? You know what love is? Who have you ever loved?" she spat.
He didn't answer, just removed the cufflinks from the shirtsleeves.
"And now the great inventor is at loss for words," Helen glared at him. "Leave then, go back to that mud covered hole you call life and stay there!"
"I will!" he barked.
"Fine!" she looked away from him, determined not to let him see how much this was killing her.
He removed the suspenders roughly and hastily moved to the buttons.
Helen sat down on the small settee and bit her lip. She was not going to give him the satisfaction of letting him see her cry, she couldn't.
"What a bloody mess?" the words escaped her lips in a soft whisper and she heard Nikola sigh behind her.
"Helen," he said softly.
"Don't," she whimpered, trying to keep herself strong.
"Helen," he tried again.
"I said don't, just finish what you came to do and leave!" she spat, her resolve slowly weakening beneath the glow of the fire.
He had on his own shirt now, but he still wore the trousers she had given him. He slowly walked over to her and kneeled before her.
"Helen," he said one more time and like a broken dam the tears came flooding.
"It's such a mess, Nikola," she whimpered. "It's such a ruddy awful mess. We used to be so close, what's happened to us?"
"Life," he answered simply.
"But why? Why did we let it get this way?" she bit her lip as she cried.
Nikola pulled out a handkercheif from his pocket and handed it to her. She dabbed her eyes.
"Things happen," Nikola sighed.
"Why can't we just go back?" she looked at him, her blue eyes all big and sad.
"We can't," Nikola looked at her, his hand rested on her knee. "I'm afraid we're both in too deep to climb out of these holes."
Helen sniffled.
"Do you hate me because I've fallen in love with John, do you resent this engagement, please, tell me the truth," she rested her hand on top of his.
"I could never hate you, Helen," he sighed.
"But you hate that I'm marrying John, I know you do, you've always resented my friendship with John, you thought you were hiding it but I know you too secretly size each other up all the time, it's like a competition," she looked at him seriously.
"He's gaining a lifelong partner and you are losing a good friend, you feel betrayed and abandoned," she continued.
"Is that all you think you mean to me, Helen? You were more than just a close friend, a close friend is someone you mourn over when they die, you...are a lot more than that," he kept his hand on her knee.
"Was I the prize for this competition?" she asked.
"Helen, why would you ask that?" he huffed.
"This all started when you learned that John was courting me!" she felt the anger return with a flood of emotion.
"No, this all started when I was transformed into this freak of nature! It's all I have now! If I go back there I'm just another one of those monsters in a cage waiting to be studied on by the great Helen Magnus and her lackeys! I am cursed with these fangs Helen! These fangs and claws and black eyes that terrify you, and I know it does! You tremble at the thought of them, I can smell your anxiety, hear the rush of blood pump through your rapidly beating heart! Do you know how it feels to have the person you trust more than anything be afraid of you! It's like seeing somebody you know and telling them they have only a few hours to live, or...watching someone you love marry the wrong man..."
He turned away from her.
"Nikola...I."
"Look at me, Helen!" he turned around, completely transformed. "I am the thing of nightmares!"
Helen jumped slightly at his pale face, long pointy teeth and sharp claws. But wasn't afraid of them. She knew he would never hurt her. She pulled of her long white gloves dropping them on the table in front of them and reached her bare hands to cup his cold, pale face.
She didn't say anything, but leaned over and kissed him, lightly. She felt him morph back into a human under her lips. His human hands grasped her shoulders gently. Helen's hands slithered from his face into his hair, twisting it in her fingers.
She didn't know what had come over her, her brain was screaming to break away and throw Nikola out, but her body betrayed her by inching closer. She didn't deny that she had wanted Nikola, and those feelings still lingered, but John was the man she had chosen, he was the one she had shared her love with and given her heart to, and she couldn't betray that trust for a night of passion in the arms of the man she wanted first. But his lips were so hungry for hers, his hands so gentle.
If she let him he would go as far as he could with her and never bring her back.
In the end it was Nikola who pulled back, his breathing heavy and his pupils slightly dilated from the lust he had swarming in him.
"Helen," he gasped.
"Don't speak," she said and grabbed him by the collar and roughly pulled him back to her, there lips crushing into each other.
With his vampiric strength he pulled her off the settee and into his strong arms. Her hands crawled from his collar down to the buttons of his raggy shirt, pulling them open. The suspenders from his trousers hung from his hips and she used them to tug him over to the bed and lean him against the large oak post.
With him pinned, she had full reign to assault his chest with her teasing fingers and she kissed him with a renewed fervor.
The shirt dropped from his shoulders down to the floor his undershirt came soon after, leaving his torso generously exposed.
He grasped Helen's waist and turned her so her back was pressed up against his chest. He removed the pins from her hair and the blonde curls cascaded down. With his hand, he swept them away to expose the back of her neck which he kissed gently as his hands worked down the laces of her bodice, pulling the fabric down her shoulders, leaving them exposed. He moved his mouth and human teeth from her neck to her shoulder.
Helen pressed even closer to him. Her heeled boots moving up his legs and her head leaning back on to his shoulder as he left her exposed in her undergarments.
With John it was slow and careful, he guided her through the whole process, genteel and soft. With Nikola it was an all out fire, a burning sensation of heat and skin and that need just to hold on to each other as all their emotions erupted, neither of them were inexperienced. Nikola was not a stranger to women, he wasn't a hound dog either, not like Nigel who enjoyed the company of the fairer sex, always had a girl on his arm. Nikola, however, never spent his company in the whorehouses of London, his dislike for dirt probably playing into that.
He had told her long ago that women who used themselves like that weren't worth his time, he would much spend an afternoon in the comany of an intelligent woman than one who could strip down to her knickers at the drop of a hat. She admired this quality in him. It saddened her that she knew a lot of people who did not share the same idea, John even confessed that he had paid a few visits to the whorehouses when he was a younger man, but he had ceased going a long time ago.
For a moment Helen felt like one of those ladies of the night. An engagement ring around her neck and another man's hand sliding down her thigh.
But this was not some dark, lecherous meeting in the dark alleys of London. Nikola didn't hand her a handful of bills for her two get on her knees for him and dance in sin.
He, by all means, was loving her without words. There was just as much at stake for him as there was for her.
With her dress pooling down at her feet she spun and captured Nikola in another kiss. It was not a whore's kiss, whores don't kiss, kissing is an intimate act between lovers. Was Nikola to be her lover, something she would hide away in a box for when her husband-to-be was not at home?
He twisted around, taking her with him. She was in nothing but her knickers, stockings and heels. She had only ever been this naked around John, and her maids.
She fell onto the bed, a slight giggle escaping her as she bounced slightly, her legs dangled off the edge.
Nikola crawled on top of her and captured her lips again. Her arms reached around his neck.
He pulled back and removed her boots, the buttons the bane of his existence at this conjuncture, Helen just closed her eyes and felt the emotions and sensations flow through her.
Nikola finally got the heels off and crawled back up to her, his legs settling between her thighs as he trailed kisses from her lips, to her jaw, jump to her shoulder, along her clavicle , then to her throat. She gasped in the sensation. Once that spot had been a place of complete dread, she still had the sense memory from when he had tried to bite her, but in this moment in only increased her growing desire.
Nikola kissed her neck hungrily, his hand sliding down her shoulder and across her chest as he ran his tongue along the skin above her corotted artery. But then, he stopped. He tasted a distinct metallic flavour and he pulled back, his hand sliding from her chest, follwing his eyeline to a small jewled ring lying in the valley between her breasts.
Helen followed his gaze to the ring as well, and reality suddenly came crashing down on top of them.
She saw the look drop in his eyes. From passion to utter heartbreak in an instant, Helen moved to grasp the jewelry in a desperate attempt to hide her shame. To rewind the last few minutes so she wouldn't have to see that look in Nikola's eyes.
But it was too late.
He looked at her with those eyes, the sad grey, unloved eyes that cut straight into her heart.
"You won't leave him for me, will you?" he said softly.
"No," Helen said, her eyes squeezing shut as shame and regret filled her in the places that only moments before were filled with love and desire for the very man she had just destroyed.
"I see," he said sadly and stood up and dressed. His face downcast. He neither wanted to look at her, or have her look at him.
"Nikola," she said.
"Please, Helen, I am not a child, you do not have to explain anything to me," he said calmly, but she could hear the anger and disappointment creeping at the edges. "It was a mistake, it never happened, you can go back to your fiance with a clear conscious."
Helen sat up and grabbed her robe off a nearby chair.
"Nikola, it's not," she tried to say.
"Helen, please don't make this any harder than it is," he finished changing into his old raggy clothes.
Helen sighed.
"Please don't go," she said.
"I have to, it's clear that John will never let you go and you will never let go of him, leave me to my misery and my ditches, there is nothing for me where you are going," he looked at her with honesty. "I pray for your happiness."
"You don't believe in God," she looked at him sadly.
"Doesn't mean I don't believe in prayer," he sighed.
"Nikola, I'm sorry," she walked towards him and took his hand. "I didn't mean for this."
Nikola smiled weakly at her and leaned down to kiss her forehead, like he did back in Oxford. It was binding in that moment. She had lost him forever.
"Go home to your fiance, Helen," he whispered against her skin.
With that he turned and started to leave.
"What if I need you?" she blurted out.
"I'll always be here, Helen, if you need me you just have to come and find me...but you won't need me," and then he was gone.
When Helen finished wiping away her tears, several hours later, she packed her ags, booked her boat ticket, and headed down to the lobby, stopping at the phone booths.
As the Bellhops put her luggage into her car, she dialed a certain number.
"Hello, is this George Westinghouse? My name is Helen Magnus, I believe you knew my father..."
~~~~January 1888~~~~
Walls of mud.
Again Nikola found himself working through the mud filled, wind torn, rain ridden ditches of New York City.
Lucky for him he was a Vampire or his situation would be completely desperate. He hadn't eaten food in weeks, he never slept, he would finish his work during the day then come home to his prison and work on his inventions. He had to keep working.
A carriage stopped out front of the ditch and a hefty man stepped out. He was well-dressed, well-fed, and obviously well-to-do.
"Excuse me, I'm looking for a man known as Nikola Tesla," said the man.
"He's over there," answered the worker.
"Thank you," he walked over to Nikola and peered down at the man, he was deep in thought. "Nikola Tesla."
"Yes," said Nikola, stopping and looking up at the man. "What can I do for you?"
"I hear you have quite a gift for electrical engineering," said the man.
"Depends on who you heard it from," said Nikola.
"You worked for Thomas Edison, did you not?"
"If you call being cheated and reduced to minimum wage slavery, yes, I worked for him, what does that have to do with you?"
"I'm a business man, the growing business is power distribution, electricty is the growing power," said the man.
"So, talk to Thomas Edison, since he is the pioneer in electric engineering," disdain dripped off of Nikola's words.
"Thomas Edison's DC generator is horribly inefficient, I would lose a lot of money on it...but you Mr. Tesla, you're work on alternating current...now that shows promise."
"What do you want?" Nikoal sighed, done playing games.
"I want to buy your patents for a substantial amount a piece, if you want I can write you the check for them right here and now, I also want to hire you as a consultant, get you out of this ditch and doing what you were meant to be doing, get you a lab of your own, a proper suit, anything you need for that beautiful mind of yours to start working, and I'm willing to start immediately," the man certainly was a businessman.
"Who are you?" asked Nikola.
"Westinghouse...George Westinghouse."
"And how do you know about me?" Nikola looked at him suspiciously.
"I've known about you for quite some time, and know I've finally found you," smiled George.
Nikola watched him carefully.
"Will you really give me a check now?" asked Nikola.
Without a word George pulled out a checkbook and pen and scribbled a number on it then handed it to Nikola.
"And that is just for your induction motor," said George.
Nikola eyes bulged as he read the number.
"I guess I'm all yours," said Nikola, dropping his spade.
With quick haste, Nikola climbed out of the hole he had dug himself in.
A week later the newspaper announced Westinghouse Electric & Manufacturing Co. hiring the brilliant young Nikola Tesla.
Helen read the newspaper over her morning tea.
At least now he wouldn't be in those ditches anymore, and that's all she could pray for.