Promises - Part 7

The continuation of my NaNoWriMo 2005 novel, Promises.

         His eyes opened slowly.
         Isolde...
         She had been there, but all he could see now was the hard concrete floor he was lying on. He pushed against it, trying to lift himself if only a little—if only to know that he could. The muscles in his arms tensed, strained as he pressed his palms against the cool firmness of the ground. Slowly, painfully, his weary body started to rise. He drew his knees beneath him; first one, then the other. Arms shaking, he continued to press against the concrete until he was able to sit back on his heals. Liam let out a deep sigh as the blood rushed to his head, causing the throbbing to return. He wanted to bring his hand to his face to ease the pain there, but his arms were still shaking from the exertion and refused to move again. And so he could only sit there. Breathing. Thinking.
         Isolde...
         What did they want with her?
         Bastards...
         Liam closed his eyes and tried to focus on something other than the pain. Isolde. He could see her when he closed his eyes. She looked so sad in this memory, and he saw himself moving to cheer her up as he often did. He watched the scene with interest, but the throbbing in his head was too loud and he couldn’t hear what was being said. He concentrated harder, desperate to hear her voice again. Slowly the volume around the two of them began to rise.

         “You are getting older, Liam,” he heard her say.
         “I am not so old yet, my love,” he replied, laughing. Oh, it was this memory.
         Isolde shook her head. “It is not funny. It has only been ten years, and I can see you aging before my eyes.”
         Seeing now that this was serious, he stopped laughing and took his lover’s hands in his own. So cold. They were always so cold. “We have many long years ahead of us, Isolde. Why are you letting this worry you now?”
         “Many long years?” She pulled her hands away. “Sixty years at best. And we have seen how fast these last ten have gone. Sixty years is the blink of an eye, Liam. I have no desire to watch you die!”
         Oh, my dear Isolde. He stepped toward her, pulling her into a comforting embrace. He took a deep breath as he prepared to voice something he had been thinking about for a few years. Liam leaned his head against hers and kissed her soft hair. “There is a way.”
         She took his meaning almost immediately. “No,” she said, but she did not push him away.
         He continued to hold her close. “But, Isolde—”
         “No.” It was more forceful this time. He could feel her tensing within his arms. “You have seen what happens to me. You know what this is like. I will not condmen you to that.”
         “I would choose it, Isolde,” he said, speaking slowly, deliberately. “I would follow you to Hell, if only I can be with you forever.”
         “Liam…” She pushed away from him, just enough to look up at him. Her eyes were so saddened, and he felt as though his heart would break. He wanted nothing more in that moment than to chase that sadness away and bring a smile to her lips. “You do not realize what you ask of me. I promised when I met you that I would never do to you what was done to me. I will not damn you to this Hell, nor any other. Please, Liam, do not ask me again.”
         He nodded, pulling her close again. What could he do to ease her pain? He wanted to be with her forever; he knew that much, but was there nothing he could do?
         “Is there no other way, my love?”
         Isolde slipped from his arms and moved away from him, but he caught something on her face before she turned—there was something. He stepped toward her and when he spoke the apprehension was thick in his throat. “My love, if there is a way, please say so. I will do whatever I must.” He heard a sigh come from her. It was a long time before she spoke again, and when she did, she did not turn to face him.
         “There would be no turning back.” She sounded so pained; he would have thrown himself into the sea if she asked him to.
         “Tell me.”

         He remembered it all. So many centuries ago, and yet he remembered that night as if it had only just happened. They stepped back into the small cottage that they shared, and Isolde pulled a clay cup down from one of the shelves. Without a word, she pulled the dagger that Liam carried on his belt and drew the blade swiftly across her wrist. The act startled him, even though she had already explained, and he took a step back. She hardly seemed to notice as she let her blood flow into the cup. She wrapped a cloth neatly around the wound and held the cup out for Liam.
         “You will need this to sustain you,” she intructed firmly. “Drinking this now will keep you at this age forever. If you do not continue to drink blood from me every day or so, your body will rapidly age to what it should be.”
         He nodded. “So there will come a time when I will die without it.” It wasn’t a question, and Isolde only watched him carefully for a moment.
         “We will have to do this on three consecutive nights for it to take effect.” She paused, and he could see the question she would ask hanging in the air between them, unspoken. “Liam…”
         But before she could say anything more, he took the cup from her hand and drank it greedily. The fluid was still warm as it passed over his lips, and he closed his eyes against the thought of what he was drinking. The metalic taste hung in his mouth for a long time afterwards.
         On the third night the question was there again, in her eyes, as she held the cup and peered into it at the darkness it held. Again he took the cup from her before she could ask and drank the contents. But this time the cup clattered to the floor as a wave of dizziness overtook him. His hand gripped the edge of the table and he looked at his belovéd with questioning eyes.
         “Isolde…?” His vision grew clouded, and he felt the world spin and fall away from him. Strong arms, far stronger than they looked, caught him and lowered him gently to the floor. When he opened his eyes again, he was staring up at the face of an angel, and he was more overcome with love and passion for her than he had ever been in the ten years since they had met. He must have been smiling when he opened his eyes, because the look of worry that was on her face vanished in an instant and she was smiling, too.
         “It is all right now,” she said, and he could swear that her voice was like wind playing gently through chimes. He could have lain there for hours and listened to her speak, but his attention was drawn elsewhere as her hand moved to caress his cheek. The sensation was remarkable. It was as though he were feeling it for the first time. He closed his eyes and turned slightly to kiss her hand. Oh, how sweet it tasted on his lips, and he anxiously breathed in her scent. The feeling of her hand against his face, the sight of her looking down at him… His senses were overflowing. Before he was able to conjure another thought, his hand slid behind her head and pulled her down to him. His lips pressed against hers hungrily, and it was like honey on his tongue.
         He inhaled deeply as their bodies began to move together. The sight of her looking down at him with her dark hair cascading around him; the sound of her quickening breath in his ear; the feeling of her body rubbing against his own… He was sensing it all as though for the first time.

         But now, kneeling on the hard, cold concrete, Liam would have given anything to see here, hear her, feel her again. A sound from beyond his cell jarred him from his reverie. Heavy footsteps pounding down the hall.
         Could it be? Isolde? Was that gunfire?
         The steel door flew open, slamming hard against the inner wall. Men armed with huge rifles stormed into his small room, filling it and surrounding him quickly.
         “Don’t move!” one of them shouted through his helmet. Liam didn’t bother telling them that he wasn’t sure he could. The barrel of a rifle was pointed at his face, far too close, and Liam exerted the effort to lift his head and look up along the weapon to the man holding it. He couldn’t see his face behind the SWAT-style helmet and face shield. If Liam didn’t know any better, he’d think he was dangerous. He kept looking at the soldier, though. Looking where the eyes should be. Who were these men? They couldn’t be with the Sacred Order.
         Liam took a breath, and the throbbing in his head returned as he opened his mouth to speak. “Who are you?”
         He didn’t see the man moving up beside him with a syringe in his gloved hand. He felt only the savage jab of the needle in the side of his neck, and the warm, numbing sensation spreading quickly through his body. Suddenly no longer able to hold himself upright, Liam collapsed into a heap. His awareness faded almost as quickly, but he didn’t mind. He found his way back to his memories of Isolde and would have remained there happily forever.


         Isolde sat in the darkened apartment, turning the vial over in her fingers. She was trying to think, to carefully weigh all of the consequences for undertaking what they had asked. But she kept thinking back to the church and Liam kneeling before the altar. He look so weak, barely able to lift his head. Her eyes drifted to the box on the table with the bags of Liam's blood. That's why they had drained him—so he couldn't resist and couldn't fight back.
         She ignored the beast that was turning over in the pit of her stomach. Now was not the time. Not yet. Now she needed to be rational. Draining him like they did might shorten the amount of time he could go without her blood. She couldn't delay. If she was to do this, it would have to be soon.
         She held the glass in her hand up to the light. The gas trapped within, when released into the ventalation system of a building, would wipe out every human inside its walls. “I can’t use this against the Order,” she mumbled, her crystaline eyes still fixed on the vial. “They’re holding Liam inside...”
         “And he’s still human.” That voice. He’d been so blissfully silent she nearly forgot he was there. She grown to dispise that voice. What’s more, he was placing unwanted emphasis on her thoughts. Her attention shifted to Tristan where he was sitting on her sofe, as he had been for the last hour.
         “I don’t have a choice, do I?” Her stomach churned at the thought of committing murder for these men of God. They needed her to do their dirty work, so they took the only thing that meant anything to her. She wouldn’t just let him die.
         “So you’re going to kill all those innocent people?” There he went again, playing the devil’s advocate. Bastard.
         “Since when do you care about anybody?” she spat at him. His amused grin only served to infuriate her still farther. “And anyway, I’m not sure I’d call these people ‘innocent.’”
         Tristan only shrugged, leaving that passive smirk on his face that she hated so much. “They seem to only want to help mankind,” he said, and his voice dripped with false sincerity.
         “Bullshit.” Her temper was wearing thin, and her grip on the chair was growing steadily tighter. “I have to do it, Tristan.” She looked over at him and met his gaze. “You wouldn’t understand.” Although she meant what she said, Isolde almost immediately regretted how bitter it sounded.
         A muscle twitched somewhere behind his left eye. He stood, brushing out his coat and refastening the buttons. “No,” he said with the same calm and overly pleasant tone. “I can’t imagine that I would.” He made an obligatory glance out the window before turning toward the door. “Well, I suppose I should be going before it gets too light out.” Isolde didn’t move to stop him. “Oh, I nearly forgot...” He turned back to Isolde with a flourish. This broad gesture clipped the edge of the box on the table, giving her barely a moment to react before it crashed to the ground.
         The bags erupted on impact, and Isolde watched Liam’s life shatter like so many shards of crystal; too impossibly small to gather and mend. It shattered in front of her eyes, staining the floor of the small apartment they shared as the flecks, too small to be shards now, scattered. She felt it—the guilt—slicing through her as the reality of what had happened struck her with its full force. His life depended on her. It had for many years, but the weight of it all hit her, and she shut her eyes against the realization. There was a burning deep within her, angry at being cut so deeply, but she fought it back. No, losing control wouldn’t help him. She clenched her jaw and her hands balled into fists so tightly her nails drew blood from the soft flesh of her palms.
         She didn’t feel it though. She felt only the burning and she fought with all her will to keep it back, locked in its chains. When her muscles finally relaxed, Isolde opened her eyes to find Liam’s blood on the floor and her own beneath her fingernails.
         “I’m so terribly sorry,” Tristan said, looking down at the mess he had made. “No use crying over spilt... You know how it goes.” With a gesture that would have been a tip of his hat if he was wearing one, he moved quickly toward the door. “And Isolde, I would try and keep that temper of yours under control. You never know when it could get you in trouble.”
         He close the door firmly behind him, leaving her alone again. Mechanically, she retrieved a dish cloth from the kitchen and crouched next to the spreading pool of blood. She tried to wipe it up, but there was so much of it, the rag became soaked through almost immediately, hardly accomplishing anything. Hopeless, Isolde knelt on the floor and tears began to flow down her cheeks as she cried over the life of her love.

To be continued