Part 26 (2/2)
”Don't you remember anything? You vomited blood everywhere. I had to throw them away. There's your jacket. I was able to save that.”
Kurt sank down onto the futon, and picked up his wallet. ”Brovik warned me about you, but I didn't believe him.” He noticed something was missing. He picked up his jacket and rifled through the pockets, panicking. ”Where is it? What did you do with it?”
I picked the picture up off the table and handed it to him. ”This? It's your family, isn't it?”
Kurt stared at the old photograph, the present melted away and he looked back to a time and place he didn't want to go. He sighed heavily. ”I was out when they came for us... I'd just turned fifteen. I had some flowers in my hand I'd picked for Luka, my little sister, weeds really, no one bothered to plant anything that spring. I missed them by minutes. One final goodbye I was spared... or robbed of. The SS were still outside of the building, loading people into trucks. I ran.
It started to rain. I'd hidden in a storm drain. The SS found me, crouching like a drowned rat, covered in filth. The officer recognized me from my concerts, and said I was to be taken to his quarters for special treatment special treatment. You know what that usually meant? It would have been better than what he did to me. They took me to Dauchau, and took everything away, my clothes, my hair and gave me this.” He held out his arm. ”I had a wallet on me- this picture and my ident.i.ty card were all that were in it. They took that too, then led me to him. He said if I cooperated, I'd be shown preferential treatment. I'd work for him as a servant instead of slaving in a factory. He handed the photograph to me, smiling. His smile was... obscene. Not even Brovik knows what I did to stay alive. Bargains with the devil Mia, it was just the beginning for me.”
”You were just a boy. You wanted to live. That's not a crime.”
”Perhaps not, but all I've done since then is.”
He laid his head on my breast. I caressed the fine, burnished hair as his tears flowed. I hated myself for revealing the face of this demon. What did I have to offer him but the deceit and trickery I'd learned from Ethan? He'd given up a tattered remnant of his soul that he'd guarded vigilantly for over forty years and what did I have to ease it? His heart beat against me, the rus.h.i.+ng blood through his body called to me again. I could give him the intimacy only two Immortyls can share. What others took against my will, I'd give to him freely.
”Take my essence, Kurt.”
He pulled away, stammering, ”Mia, this one thing Brovik forbids. He says it will bind me to you.”
”It's too late. I've already had yours. He owns your body Kurt, he can't own your soul.”
”Do we have any to speak of?” He hesitated, eyes br.i.m.m.i.n.g with vestigial moisture as he took my hand between his fingers, tracing the network of veins. Touching the palm to his lips, weighing the consequences of this action, a look of resolve came over him. His mouth opened and clamped down on my wrist. I shuddered as the points entered then retracted and his lips wrapped around the wound. We collapsed on the mattress as he pressed his own wrist against my lips. My tongue licked the slight bulge of the artery before taking him. His skin was sweet and salty. As it broke, a warm wet fountain bubbled up over my tongue.
Rhythm throbbed throughout him, penetrating every fiber. A soaring voice, an angel, s.e.xless, ageless, sang as the blazing white light inside of him spilled over into me, sending shadows and phantom shapes to the edges of the landscape. The light and song grew brighter, cutting through the confusion, far too bright for poor battered Psyche. The G.o.d came forward in all his glory, face too bright to look upon, arms and wings outspread to gather her to him.
I cried out, pulling away from Kurt. ”I'm sorry! I can't!”
He blinked. That same terrifying light blazed in the depths of his eyes as a look of utter astonishment came over him, a glissando of wonder escaping from his lips. He clasped me to him, his tears wetting my skin. ”Don't spoil this.”
I called myself every foul thing I could think of. My heart was dead and buried somewhere among the wreckage bearing Ethan's name, all that remained was to feed off of Kurt's, and it was seductive, to suck up pieces of his soul he proffered like rubies dripping from his hands.”
Mia paused, a single tear gliding down her cheek. Joe was deeply disturbed by what she'd told him about Kurt. In his work he'd run across human monsters that preyed on kids s.e.xually, the worst kind of ghouls. It destroyed lesser individuals, but Kurt had turned into cold, hard stuff and survived, ultimately finding a unique outlet for his revenge.
She stared into s.p.a.ce. ”This demon gnaws and gnaws at him. He delivered himself into my hands, gave me his deepest, most painful secret and he's suffered for it every hour, since that night.”
SEVENTEEN.
”Kurt stayed a month before Brovik summoned him home. I ached for him when he left. The cramped apartment felt empty. The piano stood silent, gathering dust. I reverted to my old habits, wandering the city night after night, evading the odd Immortyl.
Kurt would drop in unexpectedly, clutching a single red rose like a mortal boy to give to the girl of his fancy. I'd take the long stemmed flowers and reflect on the ma.s.ses Ethan had showered me with. How very like Kurt to make the elegant gesture. How very like Ethan to make the ostentatious.
Years pa.s.sed. Manhattan changed yet again. Established old shops and restaurants gave way to franchises. The pin stripes of the eighties faded into to the flannel s.h.i.+rts and torn jeans of yet another generation. Somebody figured out that in the year 2000 a lot of computers might not know what year it is, probably some clerk making fifteen grand a year. Computers would crash and planes would drop from the sky. A sheep was cloned and newspapers proclaimed a breakthrough in the field of genetics. It was the post era, post modern, post feminist, and post gay. Here a post, there a post everywhere a post, post. Ethan was right. Time was a spectacle.
Aside from Kurt, my callers were few. I remained far out of the loop as progress on Brovik's work went. Kurt wasn't at liberty to tell specifics and I didn't bother to press him because I'd come to think the whole thing impossible.
Ethan had disappeared, Kurt told me. Brovik hadn't heard anything of him for years. I hoped he walked the streets of h.e.l.l.
Then, one early summer night in the last year of the tumultuous century of my birth, Kurt arrived with his customary floral offering. ”Got a surprise for you... ”
I hadn't seen Philip in over a decade. He extracted himself from my impulsive embrace and gave me a long look. ”You have roses in your cheeks again. The boy is good for you.”
Kurt came up behind me, wrapping his arms around my waist. ”Philip's been working too hard. We must show him a good time.”
”Dreadful, isn't it? Imagine me, respectably toiling away at meetings and all sorts of nonsense. I don't suppose you two would know a decent nightclub?” He eyed Kurt and me catching up on lost kisses. ”No. I doubt you two get out much.”
”We come up for air occasionally, ”I said.
Kurt kissed my neck. ”Let's take him out on the town.”
”Shall we then? I have a car outside.”
Kurt shook his head. ”Let's walk. It's a beautiful night.”
We went to a club in Tribeca but my libidinous pal, Philip hardly noticed the young and lovely mortals swarming the dance floor. He didn't dance, which he loved, even though asked several times. You couldn't really call it dancing, it was just kind of a ritualized groping, but Kurt and I joined the milling ma.s.s of bodies while Philip sat at the table, nursing a gla.s.s of wine. At Philip's age you could tolerate a little more.
He was very quiet and watchful of Kurt and me when we joined him again. I waved away the thick pall of smoke hanging around us with the drink card on the table. ”What's wrong with you tonight? This brooding isn't like you. Jesus, you're acting like Ethan.”
Turned out to be the wrong thing to say, Kurt winced as if someone had just staked his heart.
Philip cleared his throat. ”Little one, there is something I must tell you.”
”Can't it wait until later?” Kurt complained. ”Must you spoil my evening with her?”
”What?”
Kurt frowned. ”Tell her, I can't.”
”Ethan is back in Virginia. Actually, I just left him. He's coming to New York to see you.”
This bit of news got me in the gut like Ethan's foot. I turned to Kurt. ”I'm not going back to him.”
He took me into his arms to rea.s.sure me. ”You don't have to. He has no rights over you anymore.”
Philip watched us keenly. ”None, indeed.”
”Then that's that. No problem,” I said.
Kurt flashed a dazzling smile. ”There, you see, Philip.”
”Yes, I see clearly.”
I had to turn away from Philip's probing gaze. He didn't look convinced. d.a.m.n him, he understood how much this news knocked me off-kilter. I kissed Kurt's mouth to rea.s.sure myself, deciding he was definitely still my favorite flavor. Kurt for his part was unusually attentive, caressing my hair and whispering erotic temptations into my ear. I couldn't think of going on without Kurt, but I hardly knew how I'd react when Ethan showed up.
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