Chapter Nine
I stared at the
woman, stunned beyond anything in my experience. She was shorter
than me, barely over five feet, with dishwater blond hair, shrewd
black eyes, and a sharp, angular chin that was raised as she looked
down her nose at me. This was me? The past me? But how could that
possibly be? I shook my head, so confused I just wanted to walk out
and leave it all behind me.
“Eleanor,” Alec
repeated, finally pulling himself together as the woman—I couldn’t
think of her as me, since she was nothing like me—walked over to
him, and without a glance at anyone wrapped her arms around him and
damned near sucked his face off.
“Yes, my darling,
it’s me. I’m back.”
“But . . .” My
fingernails dug into the flesh of my palms as I struggled to keep
from yanking her off Alec. “But I . . . er . . . Alec’s Beloved is
dead. She was run over by an oxcart several hundred years
ago.”
“How do you know
that?” Kristoff asked, giving me a long once-over.
“I . . . uh . . . I
had a vision of the event.”
“Ah.” He didn’t look
convinced, but let the matter drop as Eleanor came up for breath. I
noticed Alec didn’t seem to be fighting her very much, although his
expression was anything but overjoyed to see his longlost Beloved.
Or, rather, the original version of her.
Jesus wept, what had
I gotten myself into? I should be happy she was back. Now I could
wash my hands of him and be through with vampires
forever.
My inner devil
delighted in the feelings of intense unhappiness that thought
triggered.
“I was dead,” Eleanor
said, kissing Alec’s chin before turning to face me. I ground off a
good layer of enamel trying to keep from yelling at her for doing
so. “But they had me brought back.”
“We know a
necromancer,” Pia said, her gaze flicking between Alec, Eleanor,
and me. “We thought if we brought her back, the council would be
forced to get you out of the Akasha, Alec. We didn’t know that you
. . . that Cora . . . oh, man, what a mess.”
“One that I’m sure we
can figure out,” Kristoff said, gesturing toward a couple of
couches. “Please sit, Cora.”
“Where are my
manners? Yes, please, sit down, all of you. We have so much to talk
about.” Pia shook off her stunned expression and smiled as she
moved over with me to one of two couches.
“It’s a lovely room,”
I said, standing awkwardly by the door, miserable but refusing to
acknowledge that when Eleanor, with one hand on Alec, tugged him
down next to her on a love seat. “And a lovely house.”
“It is pretty, isn’t
it? It’s built on a twelfth-century tower that was later part of a
monastery. There’s a cloister and everything. But I can show you
around the house later—there are so many questions that Kristoff
and I have. Like how did you meet the Ilargi who stole Ulfur? And
how did you get out of the Akasha, Alec?”
Alec had been
watching me with an avidity that evidently didn’t make Eleanor
happy at all, for she put a proprietary hand on his thigh and gave
me a cool look as he answered. “I have Cora to thank for
that.”
“Do you indeed?”
Eleanor said softly.
“Are you a . . . what
do they call them . . . ? ” Pia turned to Kristoff.
“Guardian,” he said,
eyeing me. “She does not appear to be one.”
“I’m not. I’m a
secretary. I got zapped into the Akasha myself, and when I was
de-zapped, I arranged for Alec to be brought out, as
well.”
“Why?” Eleanor
asked.
I swallowed back the
urge to shout at her that I was his Beloved, not her, and I had
saved him because he needed me, chastising myself for such
stupidity. I had an out in the form of Eleanor—I would be an idiot
not to take that.
And leave Alec, never
to see him again.
My heart shattered as
everyone looked at me, curiosity almost palpable.
“It seemed like the
thing to do,” I said lamely, avoiding Alec’s gaze, but all too
aware of the swift lance of pain that shot through him at my
words.
Both Pia and Kristoff
looked at me as if I had turned into a giant dancing panda
bear.
“I think Kristoff’s
right, and you’re going to have to tell us what happened from the
beginning,” Pia said, gesturing toward a pale blue brocade
couch.
As I passed Kristoff,
he froze, an odd look on his face as I could have sworn he sniffed
the air.
“Cora, why don’t
you—what?”
Pia turned a shocked
expression first on her Dark One, then on me.
“What what?” I asked, wondering if I had somehow
offended them.
“You’re . . . you’re
a Beloved? Alec’s Beloved? But Eleanor
. . . Kristoff, are you sure?”
It was my turn to
freeze. “Uh . . .”
“Cora can’t be my
Beloved,” Alec said, rising from the love seat, much to Eleanor’s
dissatisfaction. His face was a mask, absolutely devoid of
emotions, but I could feel them all twisting around inside him. “I
don’t say that we don’t have a blood bond, but . . .” His voice
trailed off as he glanced toward Eleanor.
“What sort of a blood
bond? ” she asked, her eyes narrow with suspicion.
Alec ignored her as
Pia spoke hesitantly.
“But . . . but
Kristoff said . . . he said she smelled . . .” Pia blinked at
me.
“I smell?” My voice
came out close to a shriek, because honestly, if being told you
stink by people whom you were going to ask for help isn’t a moment
to shriek over, I don’t know what is. “I don’t know what . . . I
mean, I took a shower.... Did I step in something? . . . Jesus
wept, Alec! Why didn’t you tell me I stink?”
“Kristoff is wrong,”
Eleanor said, her voice as hard as granite. “I am Alec’s Beloved.
He said I was, the first day he saw me. He was courting me, had
asked my father for my hand, and I was going to agree to it, except
that stupid woman with her stupid oxen came down that hill and ran
me over.”
Sympathy welled up
inside me. I knew just how bitter she felt about those oxen and
that woman. I was just as annoyed when they had run me over....
What was I thinking?
I put my hands to my
head, hoping to shake some sense into it.
“No, no, you don’t
smell at all, Corazon,” Pia said soothingly, reaching out to pat my
arm. I backed away, worried that I might have some sort of hideous
Akashabased body odor that had escaped my notice. Why the hell didn’t you tell me I stink? I could just
die!
You don’t stink. You smell wonderful, like sun-warmed
wildflowers.
Your nose is clearly out of whack because the others
certainly think I smell. I realized that I was talking to
Alec, something I hadn’t done since we’d come into the house, and
immediately was swamped with emotion. Can you
. . . er . . . can you talk with her, too?
It took him several
seconds to answer. Yes.
“I don’t think I am
wrong,” Kristoff said slowly, his eyes filled with speculation as
he looked at me. I was too busy battling a sense of nausea that
followed Alec’s admittance. That he could talk to Eleanor confirmed
she was truly his Beloved, and made my path clear. I had to leave.
He no longer needed me, and if I stayed, I’d just end up confusing
myself with the desire I had for him.
“Explain it to Cora,”
Pia growled at Kristoff, pinching the back of his
hand.
He shot Alec a look.
“He can explain.”
“Cora, before you run
off to bathe yourself in perfume, please sit down,” Pia said,
shooting both men annoyed looks.
“I’d like to know
just why he thinks that woman is my Alec’s Beloved,” Eleanor said
with an injured sniff. “When it’s clear I was, and
am.”
“Yes, but you don’t
smell. At least I don’t think she does. Does she, Kristoff?” Pia
asked.
Kristoff lifted his
chin and sniffed. “Not really, no.”
“Your nose is wrong,”
Eleanor told him.
“I don’t understand
this smell thing,” I said, wrapping my arms around myself. “But I’m
sorry if I’ve offended anyone.”
“You haven’t offended
anyone, Cora.” Alec moved over toward me, but stopped when Eleanor
grabbed his arm and held him back. His face twisted in anguish for
a second, his eyes burning into mine.
Stop it, I told him. Stop
looking guilty. You found your Beloved. You should be
happy.
My Beloved is dead, he answered, shaking off
Eleanor’s hand to move over next to the couch.
That was true enough.
And she’s been brought
back.
As a lich.
So?
His gaze wavered.
Something is not right here, Cora, the least
of which is the pain I feel in you.
I gently pushed him
out of my mind, uneasy that he could read my emotions so
effortlessly.
Pia sighed. “Since
Alec never bothered to explain this to you—honestly, men!—I will.
There’s this weird thing about Beloveds. I know I freaked out when
I heard about it, but Kristoff assures me it’s no big deal, and it
can vary, so don’t think you’re walking around smelling like a big
ole manure factory to all Dark Ones.”
“Mother Mary,” I
gasped, staggering to the couch, drawn against my will toward Alec.
If I was going to stink, he could just be inflicted with it. “I
smell like manure ? ”
You do not stink. Just the scent of you makes me
hard.
Damn the man! How did
he get into my head so easily?
“No, of course you
don’t,” Pia said soothingly. “Beloveds, to Dark Ones who are not
theirs, have this . . . odor. Supposedly it alerts them that they
are taken or some such thing, and that their blood is basically
poison to anyone but the designated Dark One. So I suppose I can
see that there should some marker to indicate that someone
shouldn’t be munched on, although really, I think they could have
come up with a better method than smelling.”
Does Pia smell bad to you? I couldn’t help but
ask.
Not bad so much as . . . mildly
unpleasant.
I looked at Kristoff
in horror. He laughed, and wrapped an arm around Pia. “Pia is
making too much of nothing. Beloveds in the process of Joining
smell a little different, that’s all. Once Joined, it’s a bit
stronger, but even then I’ve never found it repellent. We are used
to it, I assure you. What I’m curious about is how you came about
to be.”
“My mother and father
fell in love,” I said somewhat indignantly.
“Boy, you’re really
Mr. Put Your Foot in Your Mouth today, aren’t you? ” Pia asked him,
her hand doing a little possessive leg touch. “I think he means how
you can be Alec’s Beloved when Eleanor was killed several hundred
years ago.”
“And brought back,
just to save him,” Eleanor added, glaring at me. “I do not like
this woman, Alec. I don’t know who she is, or why you all seem to
feel she’s as good as me, but she’s not. I am your Beloved. I am
the one you begged to Join with you all those centuries ago. And it
is I who will redeem you now.”
My gut tightened as
my inner voice nagged me to spill the truth, urging me to explain
my connection to Alec, but that way would only cause more pain, for
both of us. He would just feel even more guilty than he did
already, and I didn’t want to spend my life with a
vampire.
Liar, my inner self snarled.
I rubbed my head, my
emotions as confused as my brain.
“You were, at one
time, my Beloved, as Kristoff knows,” Alec admitted slowly, the
pain from inside him spilling out onto me. “But be that as it may,
there is a bond between Cora and me that we cannot deny. I do not
believe such a bond exists between us anymore,
Eleanor.”
She’s your Beloved, Alec. Stop fighting
it.
Do you dislike me so much that you are so happy to be rid
of me? he asked.
Tell him! my little devil demanded. He’s hurting because he thinks you don’t want
him.
I tried to argue that
I didn’t want him, but even I didn’t believe that
anymore.
It just figured that
the one man in the world I wanted was the one I should never have.
Way to go, life.
“How does Kristoff
know?” I asked the room in general, trying to drown out my
conscience. “How did you know about Eleanor?”
“It was his wife who
killed my Beloved,” Alec answered, his eyes a pale jade. “His first
wife.”
My eyes widened as I
stared at Kristoff. “Your wife was the one with the oxcart? The one
who cut off my head? ”
The second the words
left my mouth, I cursed myself. My devil cheered.
“Your head?”
Slowly, I turned to
look at Alec.
Your head? he asked again.
Um . . .
“What do you mean,
your head?” Pia asked, leaning into
Kristoff when he sat next to her.
“Yes!” Eleanor said,
leaping to her feet, her face red with anger. “What exactly do you
mean, your head? It was my head that was cut off, not yours! You’re trying
to steal him, aren’t you?”
Cora?
“You’re trying to
steal Alec from me!”
Alec’s pain lashed
him so hard, I crumpled into a little ball, hugging my knees,
unable to look at him.
“You bitch! She’s
using you, Alec, nothing more. She had some sort of a vision about
the day I was killed—she said so herself—and now she’s trying to
use that to confuse you. I’m your Beloved, not her. I don’t care
what Kristoff says—it’s me who has the bond with you.”
“Corazon? ” The word
was spoken softly, with a world of warmth behind it. Alec knelt
next to me, his hand lightly touching my head as I rubbed my cheek
against my knees, torn with the need to tell him the truth, and the
knowledge of what such an action would mean to us both. And to
Eleanor. Could I do that to an innocent woman?
That innocent woman is you! my inner self yelled.
She is a past version of
yourself!
“Do you remember that
I told you I’d seen a vision of the time when I . . . when your
Beloved was killed?” I asked, unable to bear Alec’s pain any
longer.
“Of Kristoff’s first
wife killing my Beloved? Yes.”
I lifted my head to
look at him, needing his warmth, needing his strength. His eyes
searched my face, and I could feel him gently prodding my mind. I
kept him out of my head, unwilling to say what needed to be said,
but having enough pride to do it the honorable way, rather than
just letting him pick the facts out of my brain.
“Well, it wasn’t
really a vision. It was a . . .” I swallowed, casting a nervous
glance at the others. “It was more of a past-life
regression.”
“A past-life
regression,” he repeated, looking confused.
“Yes. I was the woman
whose head was lopped off by the crazy lady with the oxcart. Oh,
sorry, Kristoff. I didn’t mean she was nutso crazy, just a little .
. . well . . .”
“No!” Eleanor
shrieked, leaping to her feet. “She lies!”
“Oh, my god, you
really are Alec’s Beloved,” Pia said, obviously astonished. “You’re
. . . what? Reborn? How can that be? And how could we have raised
Eleanor if you’re here now? Kristoff ?”
“I don’t know,” he
said, his gaze first on me, then on Alec. “But I’m happy for Alec
nonetheless. One way or another, it would appear he has a Beloved
again.”
My gaze shifted back
to Alec, as well. His expression was impossible to read, his eyes
burning with a light . . . but what sort of a light?
“This is ridiculous,
nothing but a tissue of lies,” Eleanor said, marching over to
clutch Alec. “And I resent the fact that any of you could be so
foolish as to believe any of it. I was his Beloved, not her. You
summoned me back from death. She is nothing to us,
nothing!”
“I’m sorry,” I told
Alec, ignoring Eleanor’s ranting.
“For what?” he
asked.
I made a wordless
gesture of confusion. “For . . . for making things more
complicated.”
“‘Complicated’ is an
understatement. I just don’t understand how you can both be here if
you’re really . . . what, the same person?” Pia asked.
“We can’t. That is
proof that she is the false one,” Eleanor said, trying to force
Alec to look at her. “Feed from me, my darling. Then you will know
the truth.”
To my dismay, Alec
turned his attention on her, looking very much like he was going to
accept her offer and feed. He gazed into her face, his eyes
glittering jade. “You have no soul,” he said finally.
She jerked back out
of his grip, her own eyes blazing with fury as she jabbed a finger
toward Kristoff and Pia. “That is not my fault! It is because they
had me brought back as a lich!”
“Liches have souls,”
Kristoff said slowly as we all looked at Eleanor. “They get them
back when they are raised by a necromancer.”
“Then the necromancer
who you hired to raise me did it incorrectly,” Eleanor
snapped.
Alec looked at me
with speculation. “Kris, what do you know about
reincarnation?”
“Not a lot,” he said
with a shrug, then raised his eyebrows. “I’ve heard that only a
certain type of mortal can be reincarnated, that the mortal being
dies, is judged on their purity of heart, and accordingly granted
life again based on that purity. Oh, you mean—”
“Yes,” Alec said, his
sudden smile so brilliant, it made me clutch the couch to keep from
flinging myself on him. “I think Cora is one of those beings. She
was born as Eleanor, was killed, and reincarnated into her current
form, soul and all.”
I stared at him,
caught in the green snare of his gaze, wanting to believe the joy
he felt was due to the fact that there might be a future for us
rather than I was merely a form of salvation.
“That would explain
why Eleanor doesn’t have a soul?” Pia asked.
“No, it wouldn’t. It
doesn’t,” Eleanor insisted. “If she and I are the same person—and
really, the idea is ludicrous ; just look at her! She’s completely
unlike me. If we were the same person, we couldn’t exist together
in the same time and place.”
“But you don’t, not
really,” Kristoff said gently. “You’re a lich. Your existence is
beyond the mortal world. Cora is mortal. You aren’t.”
I dragged my gaze off
Alec to look at Eleanor, wondering if I had really ever been her.
What a pain in the ass I
was.
Alec laughed in my
head. I wouldn’t say that, but I admit that I
had only just met you when you were killed.
“Even admitting that
was possible—and I don’t admit that for one minute. But let’s say
it is. Then all that means is that she’s a knockoff of me, and I’m
the original Beloved, and she has my soul.” Eleanor’s eyes narrowed
on me. “And she can just give it back!”
“Oh, that is not
going to happen,” I told her, amused despite the unpleasant
situation. “Finders keepers, and all that.”
“Faugh!” she yelled
at me, and spent the next five minutes arguing that Alec owed his
allegiance to her.
“It seems to me that
you’re just going to have to decide,” Kristoff told Alec when
Eleanor wound down long enough for someone else to get in a word.
“Cora or Eleanor. Which Beloved do you want?”
Instantly, my eyes
went to Alec’s, my heart beating with sudden urgency.
“That is the
question, isn’t it?” he said softly, smiling at Eleanor. She beamed
back at him until he lifted her hand and kissed it. “I can’t tell
you how grateful I am that you agreed to the plan to save me. You
will have my eternal appreciation for such a noble
act.”
“No,” Eleanor
snarled, jerking her hand from his and backing away, her face black
with rage. “You can’t mean that! You can’t pick her over me. I was
brought back to save you!”
“I know you were, and
I regret greatly—”
“Nooo!” she wailed,
and bolted from the room.
An uncomfortable,
highly charged silence fell upon us all as the sound of her
footsteps racing up a flight of stairs, followed by the slamming of
a door, drifted down to us.
“Oh, Alec,” Pia said,
her shoulders slumping. “I’m so sorry. We thought we were helping
you—”
“And I appreciate
that you would do so,” Alec interrupted before turning to me. I
struggled to keep my face placid, and not express any of the
pleasure that I couldn’t deny when he obviously chose me over
Eleanor.
He said nothing for a
minute, simply looking at me.
“You knew that you
were my Beloved, but you didn’t tell me,” he finally said, his
voice as carefully neutral as his expression.
Where were his
expressions of undying devotion? Where was his declaration that he
had picked me? Where was his arrogant statement that I was his
Beloved, and he would fill my nights with endless passion, and my
days with expressions of utmost gratitude?
Rather than any of
that, I got a sense of carefully masked anger.
“Yes.” I lifted my
chin a little. “I knew. I don’t like vampires. I never
have.”
“And yet you fed
me.”
“I didn’t realize who
you were then,” I pointed out.
“You don’t like
vampires, but you fed me.”
Kristoff and Pia sat
opposite, their gazes shifting from Alec to me and back again, just
as if they were watching a tennis match.
“I explained to you
about that. I thought you could help Diamond and me get out of the
Akasha.”
“You fed me multiple
times.”
“Well, you were
hungry!” I said, slapping my hands on my legs, wanting desperately
to know what he was thinking and feeling, needing the reassurance
that he wanted me. “What was I supposed to do, let you
starve?”
“You didn’t leave me
behind. You were worried about my wounds.”
“Are you going to
catalog every single one of my actions with regards to you? Because
if you are, you should include me slapping you for trying to kiss
me.”
His eyes narrowed.
“You gave yourself to me. Repeatedly.”
I glanced at the
others. “OK, really, I’m sure they don’t need to hear about
that.”
Pia
giggled.
“You’re my
Beloved.”
“Well . . . yeah, I
guess I am. I wasn’t quite sure about whether a reincarnated
Beloved can be the same as the original one, but I guess that’s
been proven.”
“You’re my Beloved,”
he repeated, and without another word walked out of the
room.
“Well, hell,” I said,
now thoroughly miserable. “He hates me!”
“I don’t think . . .”
Pia looked at Kristoff. “I don’t think that’s possible, is it? Can
you hate your own Beloved ? ”
“No.” Kristoff got
up, waving Pia back when she rose, as well. “He’s just a bit
stunned is all, what with Eleanor, and now . . . this. I’ll go talk
to him.”
Alec? I asked, wanting desperately for him to
reassure me.
No, he said, and closed me out of his
mind.
No what? No, he
didn’t want to talk to me? No, he didn’t hate me? No, he never
wanted to see me again? If that was the case, why had he more or
less dumped Eleanor ?
“I could just cry,” I
said, pleating the material of my pants in an effort to keep from
doing exactly that.
“Don’t, it’ll just
make your eyes puffy,” Pia said, moving over to sit next to me.
“Alec’s a man, and you know how they are—some of them don’t cope
well with emotional things, and you have to admit, going from no
Beloved to two in the space of a day could make the calmest vampire
go a little bit nuts. I’m just a bit curious, though. You said you
don’t like vampires?”
“No, I don’t. I saw
Alec kill that woman who beheaded me. It was . . . he just bit her
and drained her dry. It was horrible. And then my sister married
one, and although she seems to be really happy with Avery, it seems
so wrong, somehow. He drinks her blood!”
“Just as Kristoff
drinks mine, and Alec feeds from you. Do you think that’s
wrong?”
“No,” I admitted,
pleating and repleating the material of my jeans on my leg. “It’s
very enjoyable, actually.”
She smiled a slow
smile that let me know that I wasn’t the only one who found the act
of feeding erotic.
“It’s just that—I
never wanted to be with Alec. I wanted him out of the Akasha,
because that was only fair—he saved my butt in there from a wrath
demon, and Diamond was having a good time, so when the de Marco guy
said pick one, I picked him.”
“Of course you did,”
Pia agreed. “I would have done the same. Not that I understand how
you came to know the Ilargi, but we’ll get to that, I’m
sure.”
“But I didn’t want a
permanent relationship with Alec. He’s . . . a
vampire!”
“You know, I think
you’re going to have to move past that point,” she said
gently.
I sighed and slumped
against the back of the couch. “I know. And to be honest, I think I
have. I was going to tell him about the past-life thing, I really
was. I just was waiting for the right moment, and then . . . then .
. .”
“Then we went and
screwed it all up by having Eleanor brought back. Nothing like
having your hand forced,” she said, nodding. “I’m sure that, given
a little time to get over the shock of today, he’ll be right back
in your hair, driving you crazy.”
“Now probably
wouldn’t be the best time to say that I’m not sure I want him in my
hair,” I muttered, wishing I could rewind my life a few
days.
That would mean I
never met Alec again. My heart grew sad at that thought. Oh, dear
heavens, was I already past hope? Had I started giving in to all
that charm and magnetism and smoldering sexuality that had every
woman within a five-mile radius ready to rip off her clothing and
throw herself at him?
I looked at the woman
next to me with a hard expression.
She blinked at it.
“What?”
“You let Alec seduce
you!”
To my surprise, she
laughed. “I was wondering if you were going to come back to that. I
did, yes. Well, not really. It’s a little complicated. We didn’t
actually have sex, you know. That is to say, he didn’t . . . we
didn’t . . . it was more just some mutual groping. I mean, we were
naked, but that was really all we did. And he didn’t even stay the
whole night with me.”
I stared at her,
trying to sort through all of that.
“I didn’t make it any
better, did I?” she asked, still laughing.
“No.” The word
dropped like a lead weight.
“Honestly, I think he
was just lonely. The fact that he couldn’t have real sex should
have warned me that he wasn’t the man for me, but I didn’t see it
at that time. It wasn’t until Kristoff and I got together, and I
thought he was still in love with . . . well, our rocky start is
neither here nor there.”
“You had a rocky
start?” I asked, momentarily distracted from the painful thought of
her touching a naked Alec.
“Yeah, just about as
rocky as they can get. I’ll tell you about it when you have an hour
or two sometime. But first, you have to tell me about Alphonse de
Marco, which means we need the boys. I think Alec has had enough
time to get over himself. Let me run and check on Eleanor to make
sure she’s all right—then we’ll go remind Alec how lucky he is to
have you.”
She rose and left
through one of the arched doorways. My own feelings aside, I
wondered if Alec truly wanted me for his Beloved, or whether he had
just picked me out of gratitude for saving his life and springing
him from the Akasha.
And what would happen
to Eleanor? Would guilt over her eventually taint his feelings for
me? Was he even now blaming me for putting him in a position where
he had to hurt one of us?
“You really know how
to screw up your life,” I told myself as I got slowly to my feet,
and tottered off to find Pia.