Part 1 (1/2)

Immortal Beloved.

Darkness Falls.

Cate Tiernan.

With love to my advance readers, Nina and Piera-thanks for your help.

CHAPTER 1.

I want you.” Reyn's voice, low and insistent, seemed to come at me from all angles. And no wonder, because he was looming over me obnoxiously as I filled a big gla.s.s jar with basmati rice from the twenty-five-pound sack we keep in the pantry.

Look at me: ”we.” I'm all about the ”we-ness,” as if I belonged here at River's Edge, rehab central for wayward immortals. Sort of a twelve-step program. Which in my case had more like a hundred and eleventy steps. I'd been a Riverite only two months and had no idea how long it would take to undo 450-plus years of bad behavior. At least several more weeks, for sure. Probably more like seven or eight years. Or longer. Ugh.

I s.h.i.+fted closer to the big wooden kitchen worktable and hoped I wouldn't spill rice everywhere, because G.o.d knows that would be a pain in the a.s.s to clean up.

”You want me, too.” I could practically hear his fists clenching and unclenching.

”No, I don't. Go away.” Welcome to the freak-show circus of Nastasya's romantic exploits. It isn't for the faint of heart. Or the faint of stomach. Is that a phrase?

Nastasya: C'est moi. One of your friendly neighborhood immortals. Except for the friendly part. If I'm being honest. A couple months ago, I'd realized I'd good-timed myself into a wretched place of depraved indifference, and I'd sought help from River, an immortal I'd met back in 1929. Now I was here in rural Ma.s.sachusetts, learning how to be one with nature, magick, peace, love, harmony, etc. Or at least trying not to feel like throwing myself headfirst into a wood chipper.

There were other immortals here: four teachers and currently eight students. Such as me. And Reyn, Viking wonderboy. For example.

Reyn: the thorn in my side, nightmare of my past, destroyer of my family, constant irritant of my now, and oh yeah, the hottest, hottest, most beautiful, stunning guy I had seen in 450 years. The one whose image haunted my brain as I s.h.i.+vered in my cold, narrow bed. The one whose fevered kisses I had relived over and over as I lay exhausted and unable to sleep.

What fevered kisses, you ask? Well, about ten days ago we'd had a mutual sudden brain attack and given in to the inexplicable, overwhelming chemistry that had been building between us since my arrival. This had been closely followed by the soul-destroying realizations that his family had killed everyone in my family, and my family had basically killed a lot of his family. That was our shared heritage. And we were on fire for each other. Fun, eh? I mean, when I hear about couples struggling because they're different religions or one's a vegan or something, I think they just need to get some perspective.

Anyway, since our make-out session/horrible realizations, Reyn had continued to pursue me with winter raider persistence and ruthlessness. And yet night after night, he-who has kicked down hundreds of doors, battered his way through hundreds of doors, set fire to hundreds of doors-had not brought himself to knock on mine.

Not that I wanted him to, or would know what to do if he did.

Are you dizzy from being flung into my world like this? I feel the same way every morning when I open my eyes to find I'm still me, still here.

Outside, the late December sunlight, as thin and gray as dishwater, had faded rapidly to a darkness seen nowadays only in rural areas. Which I was in.

”Why are you avoiding this?” In general, Reyn kept his emotions under very tight control. But I knew what he could be like-for the first hundred years of my existence, Reyn and his clan had terrorized my homeland of Iceland, as well as Russia and northern Scandinavia, earning himself the t.i.tle Butcher of Winter. I hadn't known it was him back then, of course. Just that the raiders were bloodthirsty savages responsible for looting, pillaging, raping, and burning dozens of villages to the ground.

Now the b.u.t.thead of Winter slept two rooms away from me! He did farm ch.o.r.es and set the table for dinner and a bunch of other homey things! It was positively creepy. And of course meltingly attractive. But I still found it impossible to believe that his current ”civilized” status couldn't just be ripped away like wet tissue paper, revealing the marauder I knew was still inside.

I filled up the gla.s.s jar, carefully tipped the bag back onto the worktable, and screwed the lid on the jar. A handful of snarky, sarcastic retorts hovered on my lips, and just two months ago, I would have been flinging them at him the way James Bond's car spews nails. But I was trying to grow. To change. As nauseatingly cliched as that was and as wretchedly painful and difficult as it was proving to be-still, I was here. And as long as I was here, I had to keep trying.

What a revolting notion.

”I prefer to avoid things,” I said truthfully while I tried to come up with something stronger.

”You can't avoid this. You can't avoid me.”

He was so close that I could sense the heat of his body through his flannel s.h.i.+rt. I knew beneath that s.h.i.+rt lay hard, smooth, tan skin, skin that I had touched and kissed. I felt an almost irresistible longing to press my face against his chest, to let my fingers trace the eternal burn scar I knew was there. The burn that matched the one I had on the back of my neck. The one I'd kept hidden for more than four centuries.

”I could if you left me alone,” I pointed out irritably.

He was quiet for a moment, and I felt his golden eyes raking my face. ”I'm not going to leave you alone.” Promise? Threat? You decide!

I was saved from having to come up with a more worthy defense by the sound of voices coming toward the kitchen from the dining room.

This house, River's Edge, had once been a Quaker meetinghouse. The downstairs had a couple offices, a small workroom, a front parlor, a large, plain dining room, and this, a somewhat inadequate kitchen that had last been updated in the 1930s. Before this, my most recent living situation had been an expensive, much-in-demand flat in London with amazing views of Big Ben and the Thames. I'd had a doorman, maid service, and a catering kitchen right downstairs. But my life here was... better.

Like I said, everyone here is immortal, and a fun bunch we are, too. Actually, not really. Considering we were all here because our lives were grievously flawed in many unique ways. There is in fact a River, of River's Edge. She's the oldest person I've ever met-born in 718, in Genoa, Italy, back when it still had a king of its own. Even among immortals, we were like, Whoa. She owns this place, rehabs immortals who are wrestling with their darker inclinations, and is pretty much the only person in the world that I even halfway trust.

I myself am 459 years old, though I have the looks (and apparently the maturity) of a seventeen-year-old. Reyn is 470. He looks like a very hot twenty.

The swinging door pushed open and Anne, Brynne, and River came in, talking and laughing, their cheeks pink from the cold air outside. They were carrying bags of groceries, which they set down on various counters. We produced most of our own food, actually, but River still bought the occasional items from the one grocery store in town, Pitson's.

”And I said, is that a mustache?” Anne said, and the others almost collapsed with laughter. ”And if she could have killed me, she would.” River leaned against the kitchen counter and wiped tears out of her eyes.

Reyn muttered something and left through the outside kitchen door, going out into the black, freezing night without a jacket. Not that I cared. At all.

”Oh G.o.ddess, I haven't laughed like that in...” River trailed off, as if trying to remember. I'm guessing she was thinking since before Nell (another student here, who tried to kill me, BTW) went schizo and had to be loaded up with magickal tranquilizers and carted away. Just a guess.

”Is he okay?” Brynne asked, gesturing at the door. She'd been here a couple of years, I think, and of all the students was the one I was closest to. Close being a relative term. ”Did we interrupt something?” Her brown eyes widened with sudden interest and speculation. The night she had cracked, Nell had shrieked that she had seen Reyn and me kissing. I'd hoped people would chalk it up to the hysterical ravings of a nutcase, but there had been too many meaningful glances since then to really lie to myself effectively.

”No,” I said, scowling. I took the burlap sack of rice back into the pantry, then put the gla.s.s jar on the shelf.

”Well,” said Anne, apparently deciding to let the Reyn thing go, ”the big news is that my sister is coming to visit!” Anne was one of our teachers and looked around twenty, with a dark, sleek pageboy and round blue eyes, but I knew she was 304. Despite being 150 years younger than I was, she seemed light-years ahead in knowledge, wisdom, magick-okay, everything.

”You have a sister?” For some reason I was still surprised when I met immortals who had siblings. I mean, of course many did. But in general I felt that most immortals were more solitary creatures-like, after seventy, eighty years, anyone would get sick of their family, no matter how nice. Three hundred years was a long time to keep doing everyone's birthday parties, you know?

”Several. And two brothers,” said Anne. ”But Amy is nearest to me in age. I haven't seen her in almost three years.”

Immortal sisters who were close. I hadn't run into too many of those. I was starting to feel like I had spent the last four centuries living with a kind of tunnel vision, a varied but narrow existence, choosing not to see, not to know so many things.

Finally, Anne and Brynne went out to set the long table for dinner. River unpacked the groceries, handing me a few things to put in the fridge.

”Everything okay?” River asked.

”In that sentence, does okay mean tortured, confused, sleepless, and worried?” I asked. ”If so, then yes, I'm dandy.”

River smiled. She's had a thousand years to develop the patience to deal with the likes of me.

”Am I the worst person you've ever had here?” I don't know what made me ask that question. Just-one can make a lot of bad decisions in 450 years. A lot.

River looked surprised. ”Worst in what way?” Then she shook her head. ”Never mind. No matter how you define 'worst,' you aren't it. By a long shot.”