Blood of Eden
CHAPTER NINETEEN
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How utterly strange my nightmare had been a couple of nights ago. I’d had a seizure after changing physically into something not entirely human, and back again. Not only that, but the evil guy wasn’t so cold-hearted after all, and not only that, but he felt enormous grief over something, and he tried to not feel it, to not remember whatever he was remembering. He had kissed me different than before, which was cold-heartedly and mockingly, except for before that, where he was still creating the illusion of being “Octavius,” who doesn’t really exist. To top it off, he was sort of afraid of me when I changed over to whatever I became when I threatened him. He couldn’t control my mind…
How utterly strange my nightmare had been a couple of nights ago. I remember waking up, blood everywhere. My nose had even still been bleeding. The last two nights after that dream had come and gone, I’ve not dreamed of him. But every waking moment I have had, I’ve been wondering what the word was, I mean who, since it was obviously a person…Jocylin.
I now recall seeing a small vision during the seizure in my dream. I’ve never had a vision in one of my dreams before, so it’s not only strange, but surprising that I even remember it. It was of the dark-skinned beautiful vampiric woman. She was sad and crying, though only barely so. Her eyes were normal and she wore gypsy clothing, though rather revealing attire. She saw her son and whispered something. She knew he’d just slit the throat of a human her daughter loved, Leviath. I saw his face filled with shock and pain as he started to bleed heavily and unstoppably. He started to die. But that wasn’t the point. The point was, he was human.
I lie staring at the ceiling now. Yet another night. I’ve had two, very much appreciated nights of peace. I’m wondering if I’ll get a third.
Chains. Cold; shivering. Crying. I’m not seeing it, I’m just thinking about it. Hard stone wall against his back, cold, damp stone beneath his feet. Sometimes sleeping. No food. No water. No blood. Nothing except hunger ripping and clawing at his stomach. Fever. Ragged breathing. Worry eating him alive more than anything, but not over himself, not fear for himself; fear for me.
He wakes, feeling my presence. But someone else is in the prison as well. He doesn’t notice them, or else he doesn’t care.
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I want to kneel beside him and set him free. He’s been here for a very long time. He’s dying slowly, being tortured by those who come and go and by the demons residing in him, telling him I no longer love him, telling him I’ve moved on because I have changed. He has refused to believe it but is now growing weaker and more lost, less knowing; he doesn’t know anymore. Part of him is starting to believe them, that I’ve forsaken him, and an even weaker part is still trying to cling on to the hope—hope that I’ll find him again, that I’m ok and that perhaps I still care about him.
Upon his left eyes is a large, bloody cut and a heavy, dark bruise from someone hitting or kicking him.
Right now his head is bowed low and he wakes upon my lingering presence and lifts his head weakly and slowly as if to look up at me. Only, I’m not really there, and he’s looking into the darkness, weary and near-broken in heart and spirt. It’s almost as if he’s looking at me, and a tear trickles down his cheek. “Marie…” he whispers hoarsely, whishing, hoping I am real, that I can hear him, that I still love him, that I still care. “Please…”
I feel my own heart breaking at what has become of him, what has happened. “Octavius—“ I start to say, but then I realize this is another lie, simply another joke on me that perhaps I’ll believe it.
Before I can get angry, the voice of the other presence snickers. “She doesn’t love you, fool. She’s Leviath’s, not yours. Give it up already.”
What sort of joke is this?
Then I realize I’d turned from thinking to seeing. But as usual, no matter what I see, I know it’s not true. I wish he’d stop doing this to me. At least I’m awake and able to control what I see most of the time, and I’m able to break away from visions a little easier than dreams.
I close my eyes and Leviath comes again, kneeling at my bedside. “It’s time to go,” he says distantly. He is not the same to me anymore, not after what I saw in my last episode. For the first time, I am completely willing. I have many questions to ask, some things I want explained. In example? About Jocylin.
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He takes me to the Avari, the Crypts, again tonight, using the arc way. I’ve grown a bit more used to the arc way, but it still scares me. It’s not really living shadows, it’s just got this weird characteristic like possessed black fire. I thought it was alive the first time I ever saw it.
My parents have begun to annoy me. They keep asking questions and listen too much, too openly—in fact, so keenly that it’s obviously a forced act. They don’t really believe anything I say. Actually, no one seems to believe, not even Diana. But she’s still stuck on the stupid thought that I’m a ‘psychic’ because of the ten deaths that I knew of, my two best and only friends included, Ashley and Janice Blanderson.
I’ve seen glimpses of Ivory and Dracula in my dreams with Leviath. I just almost see them clearly in the distance, but they simply disappear. Sometimes Ivory’s seen me, mostly not. Same for Dracula, and he casts looks of hatred our way.
Our steps echo throughout the long dark hallway. We are far below ground and there are simply iron torch braces holding the flaming scepters at eye-level down this passage. It’s slightly chilly and there’s a stillness in the air that is slightly disturbing. Not even the flames flicker too much.
Leviath no longer hides his vampire form. He hasn’t for a long time. Only the wings remain hidden, which is because it’s highly practical. Why would he need them when he’s only walking?
I have no idea as to where we’re headed, and I don’t think he does either, because we’re walking very slowly, sort of just taking in the surreal pulse of dark energy projected about us in a way that’s not quite comprehendible. I stop, wondering if I should ask him or not. I’ve been feeling him struggle to hold control over me. He’s either grown weaker, or I’ve grown stronger—or both. When I stop, I know it’s because I’ve overridden his power. But because I’m not running or screaming, I sense his surprise, and curiosity. He knows I have questions.
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“What do you want to ask me?” he says, having stopped when I did and looked over at me curiously with a frown slightly wrought into his visage.
“About Jocylin,” I reply slowly and carefully, not looking at him at first. I hear no reply and look up at him. Pain has graced itself by crawling into his expression and digging deeply into his soul and eyes. I feel it as he tries to stop the pain and try to not let himself choke up and begin to cry. His eyes seem so far away as he stares sadly at the aged, rough gray granite. His jaws are set tight and his breathing is uneven, like he really is near the point of tears.
Leviath’s voice is slightly atremble when he speaks at last, never looking at me. Even his voice is detached a little. “It was a long time ago. It has no relevance to today’s time.”
“Who was Jocylin?” I ask gently so as to try to not anger him.
He looks at me and is deeply hesitant to answer. At last he nods his head lightly, “I suppose it will by your right to ask if you are to be mine. Answering now may be my best choice. I won’t have to dwell on it until then and dread it for all that time.”
I am reminded of his intentions and am again sickened by it.
He continues after several moments of silence, in which he tries to gather his bearings and be able to say it. “Jocylin was the only woman I ever really loved. I was human then, and she loved me, the daughter of the Great Seer, Oreima, loved the very human son of Dantes Jeremiah, son of Dantes Jeremiah the First, the first of the Livier. It was because of my mother that I was human, and my father never knew because he didn’t think it would happen. It was a miracle that he’d fathered a son anyways…”
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Leviath sees my slight confusion and explains, “The Livier are not a very fertile people. It is a rare honor to have children, and the children usually do not survive. There are another people, which the Livier were born from, called Rojans. They have no problems. Humans have no problems. We are not that fortunate, however.”
“Oh.” I can say nothing else. I simply nod my head, now understanding exactly why he’d said what he’d said to me when I was in a coma when he came to me. He’d seemed to have a look of it being a possibility, and if it happened, then an honor. “Continue,” I say finally. But I see he was practically reading my thoughts. I sense he remembers, too, and he sees I am thinking of it and realizing it.
“All born before me, most of which soon died of birth, had all been Levier. I was presumed the same. Actually, I was a little more like you, sort of caught in between…I was seventeen when Jocylin’s brother tried to kill me. He also believed me completely Levier, and he hated me…” Leviath looks away from me as he holds his left arm just above the crook in his elbow with his right hand, and he stares down at the floor, trying to choke back tears. He doesn’t speak for several minutes, but when he does, he’s extremely emotional, “He dragged her away from me and made her leave me to die. It was the last thing I remembered, was hearing her cries and her screams, and seeing her fighting him to try to stay with me. My father…my father came, and before I bled dry, he gave me the curse of the Levier.”
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At the last words, I see his memory, or no, he was unconscious. So it would have to be a mental image. I see a dying Leviath upon hard ground, blood all around him, a large dark red pool of blood, his neck bleeding from a deep knife wound. There is a group of vampires about him, all wise and old in mind, some of which I recognize from dreams Leviath’s been giving me. A scary vampire is kneeling, his hand cut and bleeding, putting his hand over the knife wound Leviath has across his throat. The guy looks scared for his son, terrified that he might die. The vision fades as Leviath continues.
“I was in some sort of hibernation for about a century, and my father had to give his life to save mine when I started to turn for the worse. He gave me all of the strength in his soul, all the things he’d taken from conquered enemies from before being banished to this world. He was tricked and then left here with all of our kind who went through…My mother committed suicide when she discovered he was dead. I was told the day after they died when I woke. And then…” He begins to cry and then stops and bitterly wipes away the still slowly falling salty tears. “And then Jordai came to me…he told me what had become of my Love, my poor Jocylin…she was dead, and he still lived, so I took the knife he handed to me, and I killed him for what he did, as he asked me to.” Despite the sadness, when Leviath looks up at me again, I see a cruel, evil in his eyes as he smiles wickedly. I become very unsettled. “I didn’t kill him quickly, either.” There is anger in his voice, vicious, calm anger. “I let him suffer most unendurably for several hours. That was the first man I ever killed. But he wasn’t worth being a victim of my thirst, though it would’ve done much more than harm to him to please me more. He wouldn’t have died so easily.”
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I begin to start to walk again, feeling him slip authority over my mind again as he turns to walk as well. He tells me, “I don’t believe I could ever love any woman as I did Jocylin. It pains me to remember her. She was forced to marry another she didn’t love. She only lived to be thirty-five, I was told.”
“I am sorry for your loss,” I tell him sincerely.
He didn’t expect that. He stops and turns to me, slightly shaking his head. “Don’t lie,” he says. “I know well enough you have no reason to be sincere. You hate me and don’t trust me. Besides, I am not so kind to you.”
I frown, returning the bitterness display. “So you call me a liar? I was begin honest. Hell, no, I don’t have a reason to be nice to you when all you do is lie to me, deceive me, hurt me, and give me false visions and shit! But I felt honesty tonight and I do respect honesty…You know what? Forget it. Forget I said anything. Ok? I’m not like you or your ass-hole pals that like to trick and hurt and torture people and lie to each other about sincerity because you hardly really know the meaning of the word! Ok? But I do have one thing to ask of you.” I see the bewilderment upon his face for my snapping at him because he hurt me by snapping at me when I was being stupid enough to even say or feel anything. He doesn’t know what to say. “Be nice or leave me alone. I’m not just talking about going away, either. I’m talking about all the crap I see. I don’t want to see anything anymore.” My head is beginning to hurt. Confusion clouds his eyes. “I don’t want to see fake Octavius calling to me from some dark dungeon, aloe and cold and giving up hope,” I’m beginning to cry. But for some reason, he seems to want to continue the act of confusion. “I don’t want to feel what other people around me feel because of my psych. I don’t want to see the stupid war or the arc way or Oreima, or Aidenn or Matthias. I’m sick of it! And now, every night there’s these dreams, or if not these, then some other place with people fighting with fire. It’s stupid!”
“What—what are you talking about!” he cries hysterically, not really giving me the honesty I want. I know he’s up to the trick again. I hate this!
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“You know what I’m talking about. Don’t lie! Isn’t that what you just told me? Don’t lie!!” I am sobbing now, my head ache getting much worse as I yell.
My throat seems to close and my vision begins to blur, and I swear I see him smile and hear him laugh. I fall to my knees, trying to breathe, wheezing harshly, my voice being included with my breathing in, but choking off as I exhale. My speech is slurred as I try to speak, only being able to say a word or two when I breathe in. “I don’t…want…tosee…anymore…” I say as I grow weaker and as he manages to catch my wrist before I hit the floor. He somehow pulls just in time that my face doesn’t slam into the cold stone walkway.
I feel and see his realization when he lays me gently on the hard floor, leaning over me, when my vision clears for a brief moment. A slight half-smile and looks of bewilderment and shock mix. His eyes are wide enough to gleam with gleeful laughter or amusement, or amazement or awe, maybe a bit of each.
A sharp pain surges through me like I’ve just been impaled, except that it starts in the pit of my stomach and in my head and then immediately goes throughout my body like liquid, electric fire. I fall into shock and can’t see him anymore or feel his hands gently holding my rest and holding my head up. I cry out form the pain, and I swear he is laughing.
“Marie,” a voice taunts.
Nothing for a moment. Simply black, peaceful darkness. No sight. No smell. No sounds. No senses.
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Then the visions begin to attack, and I start to have my worst, deadliest seizure ever. My mind is flooded without so many images that it might be destroyed, an aneurysm or something happening. My heartbeat is perhaps six or seven times faster than it should be.
The next book in this trilogy is The Lies Unfold. I'll have it typed in about a year, somewhere in 2008, since I have so little time for it currently.
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