Grief For Heart: The Vincent Du Maurier Series, Book 4 Read online

  Peter’s words occupied her mind, as Finn’s kiss filled her heart.

  * * *

  Evelina stretched her arms to the horizon, standing on the precipice that marked the beginning of their island. The sea in front of her was vast, and empty, except for the pod of whales not far off shore, roiling about in the foam they alone stirred up. The night sky was a color she’d never seen before. She’d seen shades of every color in the Empress’s den, and from the Hematopes with whom she lived, hues with no names, fabricated tints yet to be catalogued, but the sky above her now was unimaginable. She contemplated its turquoise tinge, then thought it looked more like a blood sky. A sky to raise the dead, she thought, she hoped.

  “Can it be?” She whispered to the wind. “Are you here?”

  It had been several sunrises since Finn was found, but still no sign of Vincent. Peter had been patient with her, as had Veor and her daughter, who didn’t believe as she did. They couldn’t know what she knew. The things she’d shared with him, their minds and memories soldered together long ago, incomprehensible in many ways, for many long years. But now she felt newly awakened, she could see more truth than she’d ever seen before. She’d gone back to the ship, witnessed the conversation that took place between her beloved and Peter. It was clear then, its meaning no longer escaping her.

  She replayed it in her mind, as she stood on the shore watching the whales blow sea to the sky.

  “Can you tell me how I know this,” Vincent had said to Peter.

  In her mind he was standing, poised to tear out a throat should one need tearing out. His talons would’ve been flexed, the anger in his voice marking his wrath.

  “Ah,” Peter had said. “I cannot.”

  “Let me show you again.”

  Peter hemmed and said, “I’ve seen enough to know whether I understand it or not.”

  “I see.”

  “In my religion, reincarnation is reserved for the godhead alone. Only Christ has returned. Resurrection is ours, not rebirth.”

  “Christian skeptic.” Vincent tossed the insult, his words coated with bitumen.

  “Perhaps so.” Peter’s voice was as even as ever. “But it is not about what I believe, it’s your belief that hangs in the balance.”

  “This woman, can she be true, can she be living somewhere now.”

  “I don’t see how Evelina can live two lives at once, but I am not the god that stands before me.”

  Vincent tossed his hand, the air punished for his wrath, breaking up the sound of silence. “Aargh, this causes my head pain.”

  “Do you suppose there will come a time when you will have to choose between them?”

  “What can you mean?” The crunch of Vincent’s nails, digging into his own hardened skull, could be heard echoing throughout the cabin. He spoke truthfully, intently. This idea rattled him.

  “I mean,” Peter said, “will it be necessary to go to that time again, to that woman, to that life, to be with her in the beginning?”

  “Evelina is the beginning.”

  Peter screwed up his face. “How can you believe that?”

  Vincent’s jaw tightened. “Dare to question me, priest.”

  Peter dropped his eyes to the deck. “Of course not.”

  The two stewed in their silence, until Peter made the point that set the wheels in motion.

  “Hear me,” he said. “If it comes down to one choice, either one or the other, you must choose her.”

  Vincent stepped forward. “Who?”

  Peter gave him a knowing look.

  “If I do not, Evelina suffers for it,” Vincent said, matter-of-factly.

  “Yes.”

  “She will never come about if I don’t find her at the beginning.”

  “The chicken and the egg conundrum.”

  Vincent flew to Peter and knocked his forehead up against his. “This is no joke,” he said through gritted teeth. “See her now.”

  No more was said between them but Vincent showed Peter her face, an aspect he’d since shared with Evelina, a face she would never meet in person.

  She thought about the woman who’d used her to come back. Was she her, or she Evelina? It was a conundrum. Evelina felt every bit herself from the beginning. She’d had a childhood, a mother, a sister, even a daughter before she became Vincent’s soul. But what of this woman. The one who was Vincent’s wife before he was Vincent Du Maurier. Could she stand to know the truth? Was her vampire with that woman, somewhere else, some other time?

  She crumbled where she stood, her legs giving way beneath the weight of her sorrow. She’d learned to temper her wrath but this was too big to control. The hate she felt at the knowledge of being a vessel for someone else, for his real love, had her stone stomach twisting with ire.

  She crawled on all fours to the edge of the sea cliff, looking down at the raging shoal. The rocks below her were nothing. She could smash those boulders to pieces and break up the sphere above her. She would pull down the sky and shove it into the horizon, blotting out the strange colors forever. She would suck up the sea and everything in it and make her belly ache with the whole of the world’s water. She could turn the earth’s axis about the sun and spin time backward, making him stand with her on that very shore, then and forever.

  She launched her body over the cliff, tumbling with unmeasured ecstasy, defying the physics of man. She hit the rocks first, then the sea, her broken body coiling up into a ball. The crush of her bones was nothing, healing in an instant. Like the scars from the sun, they had but a moment to thrive. She sank to the bottom, into the pitch, down deep and long. Her ears popped, all sound disintegrating. All she knew was her own wilting heartbeat. The throbbing of her soul, ticking the seconds as they passed. For him, she thought. I keep living for him. His vessel, his savior, his den of immortal doom.

  She writhed in the cold, the water forming ice about her. Then came the heat, like a comet stretched across the sky, her anger peaked, boiling the sea about her. She saw their bodies then. Their lumbering vastness, their gigantic torsos floating above her. They made her rage in their peacefulness. Prehistoric creatures, she thought, like me.

  She smiled inwardly, wanting nothing more than to tear off the jaw of a whale. She’d seen it done once, as Veor sailed their ship to the Second Colony of the Resurrected. Out in the middle of the sea, standing up on deck, watching the waves roll around her, she’d witnessed the finest ravaging imaginable. A skilled attack only she could admire. Two humpback whales, a mother and child, headed north to feed, Evelina’s ship following their course for a time. The mother took the lead over her kin, unaware of their pursuers, fins cutting through the water’s surf like the sharks they’d often emulate. The baby whale made a sound, a tear in the fabric of silence, wailing for his mother. Soon the pod of orcas were too close to escape, pulling up alongside the stranded one. They circled her, pushing her mother further away. She plunged down to come up inside the circle, but they moved too quick, ripping at the infant’s flesh, all seven at once. The orcas left with barely a nibble each, their hunt more filling than the whale flesh. The miniature carcass sank, as the mother blew out a moan that reverberated in an ocean on the other side of the world. The humpback waited until the last of her kin was sunk before she continued north to find another mate.

  Evelina hadn’t put much thought to it. Why did the Orcas go after the baby? Seven of them could’ve surely taken on the mother, too. But also why did they take a mere nibble, then let the flesh rot on the seafloor? Their hunger was not for sustenance, as much as wrath, she decided.

  “If anyone can tear off the jaw of a whale, it is you, my soul.” Vincent had said that, pulling up alongside her as she watched the whale’s violation. She recalled it so vividly, his nails drawn up her spine to titillate and comfort, the trace of which remained.

  Buoyed up by her wrath, Evelina floated beneath the behemoths above her, deciding which to punish. There was a smallest and a biggest, but she settled for the one in the middle, his t
ail fluttering in the sea as if beckoning to her.

  She extended her body then, uncoiling her spine, releasing her arms and legs, stretching herself out wide before tightening into a rocket, to send her body up and through the gigantic fish.

  The sea shook and roiled with her coming, the whales unaware of the tiny predator in their midst. Like a parasite burying itself into the pelt of a calf, Evelina would drill her way through the whale’s coat, and tear off its jaw.

  I dare not say she wasn’t successful, for she was, her story as riveting each time she told it. The blue whale opened its mouth as she came for it, making her attack all the more fluid. She sliced her talons along the whale’s underside, dragging her points across the rind more than once. Soon the flesh gave way, and the whale pulled up with an enormous force. She was dragged up with it, and tossed in the air, sailing through like a gull before landing a mile off shore. She laughed, knowing her tear had done it. The whale’s carcass sank immediately, making a whirlpool where he floated, sending his companions off in another direction. She didn’t bother diving down into the sea to witness the new ecosystem she’d added, the carcass sent to the floor, a new home for all kinds of sea life.

  “Life for life,” she yelled to the turquoise heavens above her. “See? I take and return to life.”

  With her anger quelled, she swam to shore unburdened. The wrath dished out to the whale would’ve belonged to another had she not spent it. For that, she was grateful. There’d be no cutting of throats in the colony. Not that night, anyhow.

  * * *

  Netta would’ve preferred I stay in bed, my body heating for days with me chilled to the bone, but I was up in my studio in the tower. My nosebleeds had returned that morning, along with the rash, but the meeting I’d planned was too important to cancel, so I held a rag to my nose and my head back, hoping the smell of my blood wouldn’t drive Evelina to frenzy.

  She looked at me as she paced.

  “The boy should be here soon,” I said. “Saba is bringing him.”

  “The two have gotten cozy.”

  “Is that what Peter tells you?”

  “I have eyes, my boy.”

  I couldn’t argue with her gift of perception. She’d tell me she could read my face, but she could read every face in the colony, including Gen H. She kept regular tabs on conversations, too, less concerned with how her eavesdropping was perceived than I.

  “He’s taken with her,” she said.

  “I can’t imagine why.” I pulled the rag from my nose and smiled, but my matriarch was unmoved by my humor.

  “I don’t want you getting in my way,” she said. “Listen, and if you must speak, do so wisely.”

  She schooled me because she was having a hard time with it, too. Finn had barely said anything about his people, his land, and his attacker.

  “You’re thinking of him,” she said. “Don’t.”

  “I can’t help it—”

  “Learn to.”

  “If he’s returned, will he be—him?”

  She shrugged.

  “I asked him once, you know?”

  “I know.”

  “He couldn’t say if he’d be friend or foe—”

  “I know.”

  “Does Peter think—”

  She waved a hand at me, frustrated. “Peter’s gone.”

  I gave her a half-smile.

  “Are you surprised?” She asked.

  “Saba and he have always been—”

  “He’s torn in two over this.”

  “They are—”

  “Nothing now.” She continued to pace, speeding up at talk of Peter.

  “Are you worried for him?”

  “Of course, but that changes nothing.”

  “Will he be okay?”

  She looked at me, flinching as I swallowed. Her desire was easily read on her face. “The boy comes,” she said, turning away.

  “How will Peter feed?”

  “He’s lived longer than I—he’ll be fine.”

  “You’re not convinced.”

  “Dare to challenge me, boy.” She scolded me with narrowed eyes.

  I dropped mine to the floor, and let the anger pass.

  “I’m just hopeful,” I said.

  “For what?”

  “The two will find their way together again.”

  “Put that out of your head. She doesn’t belong to him.”

  “But if his sister …”

  A flash of anger crossed her face, speaking to my misstep. But she softened at the sight of the blood trickling down to my lip, my rag going up to block it.

  “So you’ve met Diomedea?”

  She came toward me, her look as angelic as could be, her lips red and full, her eyes glassy green. “What did you think of her?”

  I looked up at my matriarch and thought Diomedea’s beauty ordinary compared to hers.

  “Thank you,” she whispered. “But she is a goddess.”

  “As are you, mormor.” No truer words were said in my studio at the top of the tower, the one Gerenios had raised in the Second Colony of the Resurrected for Béa’s homecoming, receiving a band of settlers in her place.

  She bent forward and looked into my eyes, touching her finger to my chin. “I do love you,” she said.

  You’d think my heart would’ve soared at her confession, instead the sting of doubt pricked me. She loved me as I was, not what I’d become.

  “It’s you,” she said, “who’ve raised his sister from the dead. Saba is yours more than Netta’s.”

  “What makes you say that?”

  “Like your mother and granddaughters, you’re born from Gen H. But Saba is a descendant of historic man, your seed. Only a god may be reborn through man.”

  I suppose her belief stemmed from Peter’s god, who’d come down to earth to live as a man, only to be crucified by those same men, so that he could return to being a god. Many of the old stories had gods coming to earth to live as men, but they always returned to their place of deity. I had to wonder what brought Diomedea back a second time.

  “I don’t understand,” I said.

  “You will.” She smiled. “There is deity in you, too, my yiós.”

  My thoughts fell on Vincent’s mother, and she saw it in my eyes.

  “Thetis is done with her son,” she said.

  She stepped back, the smell of my blood getting to her. She couldn’t hide her glazed eyes. I pulled the rag away, and tucked it in my trousers.

  “Does Peter believe Vincent attacked Finn?”

  “Peter and I disagree on many things, but not this.”

  “Where’s he gone?”

  “His time alone is his. He’ll return when he’s flushed her from his soul.”

  “But what of their love? It’s beyond her mortality—”

  “He’s got a destiny, as does she.”

  “My daughter isn’t wrapped up in his?”

  “Saba’s a part of all of ours—”

  “All of ours what?” Saba said, standing in the doorway with Finn at her side.

  “Nothing, my girl. Come forward.” Evelina pulled her in with her mind, quickly making Saba forget what she heard. She couldn’t know if my precocious daughter had taken after her father, and listened at the door.

  “Finn will be a while,” I said.

  “Can’t I stay?”

  “No,” Evelina said.

  My daughter didn’t dare challenge her foremother. She turned on her heel and left, skipping down the stairs with a thud each step, making sure to let us know how she felt about being excluded. Evelina rolled her eyes, then crossed her hands in front of her.

  “Sit,” she said to Finn. She’d already mastered his tongue, speaking to him with ease.

  I couldn’t understand most of their conversation at the time.

  “You’re settling in,” she said. “Do you miss your home?”

  “I can’t say,” he said. “I don’t recall it.”

  “Why is that?”

  “
I bumped my head.”

  “When you were taken?”

  “I don’t remember.”

  Evelina smiled, and floated toward him. He leaned into the charm she seemed bent on doling out. “Do you recall his face?”

  “Whose face?”

  “His—the one who took you.”

  He shook his head.

  “But you think you’ll remember him eventually?”

  “I do. He speaks to me.”

  A flash of excitement lit up her eyes. “What does he say?”

  Finn swallowed and she moved in. She ogled him, her lips moist. I could see her dance, and I grew jealous. She wanted to taste him, to know if her counterpart had drawn blood from his veins.

  “He says, he’s coming.”

  “For you?” Her mouth curved into a smile, as she reached out to plant a hand on his shoulder.

  “For you.”

  Her body stiffened, as the hand on his shoulder tightened. “For me?” Her voice was a low rumble.

  “Evelina,” he said. “That’s the one he’s coming for.”

  Finn had remained deadpan until he leaned in and eyed her more closely. He brought a hand up to her mouth, touching her lips with the tip of his finger. He too was smitten with her fangs. She didn’t move, unwilling to break the trance.

  “Just like his,” he muttered.

  “It won’t hurt.”

  “I know.”

  The two held their gazes steady. He on her mouth, she on his eyes.

  “May I?” She asked, cocking her head to the side as she moved in.

  He dropped his ear to his shoulder to expose his neck, closing his eyes as he drew in a breath.

  My stomach turned at the sight of them caught in an intimate embrace, an exchange reserved for me and her alone. I’d never been a jealous man, I’d never had reason to be, but Finn threatened everything I held dear.

  Her bite was quick, her taste nothing but a nip. When she was finished, he collapsed into her arms, and she brought him to my cot.

  “What have you done?” I got up from the stool, my body feeling as woozy as his.

  “A sample, nothing more.” Her voice was so wee, I thought it was coming from the other side of the wall. She, too, looked to be retreating, going further away from me as I reached for her.