Bitter Fruits Read online

  “He wanted to talk to Henry?”

  “Yeah, but-”

  “It’s starting,” he says. I think he might jump up and start training me to fight evil and darkness, like they do in all those movie montages, but instead, he sits there shaking his head, his hair falling over his eyes. “There is no going back now, Nora.”

  “Alec, I know that. However, we need to find Henry so you need to trust me with more than vague explanations and random creepy comments like, ‘it’s starting.’ What’s starting and how can we stop it? Also, how did Caleb find me this afternoon? You can’t go out in the day, right?”

  “He’s able to go out in daylight. I am not.”

  “Why? I thought all vampires-”

  “Again, we are not exactly vampires. There are three of us. No more. My brother and I, as well as the one who began this.”

  “Fine, but how is it fair that you’re the one who dies and you have to stay out of the sun? Why are you being punished?”

  He shakes his head. “We were both punished. I have to die because it was my idea to come back in the first place. My brother is allowed to go out in the daylight, so that he can see clearly the world he has lost. I am relegated to the night, because, well, I’m merely a ghost to haunt my brother. A shadow, if you will. I wasn’t supposed to exist after the first time and, because I was proud or stupid, our curse is endless.”

  I stand up and move to the entrance, expecting Alec to follow. He doesn’t and I turn around, standing in the doorway. “Are you coming? My roommate and professor need us - and I get the feeling you’re going to need all night to tell me this story.”

  7.

  “So, as they say, how about you start at the beginning?” I ask after we have been walking for a while and civilization gives way to the woods. Alec seems convinced that finding Caleb is the first step to tracking down Henry and, having nothing else to go on, I agree.

  “In my case, that word has more weight than you understand,” he tells me.

  “How old are you?”

  “I don’t know. Time loses its meaning after so long. My parents were the first to walk this earth,” he offers.

  I put my hand in his and try to get warm. The chill in the air and the heaviness of the conversation aren’t helping. “Like Native Americans?”

  Alec stops. “Like native humans. They were the first, the pair that brought you into this world.”

  “What do you mean? You’re not saying...” I don’t finish my thought, because, well, my thought is ludicrous and insane. Alec, however, says it for me.

  “You know them as Adam and-”

  I laugh. It is a hysterical laugh, the laugh of someone who belongs in an institution. This is not happening, I tell myself, but the hysteria becomes a part of me. The sounds of my fading sanity echo through the trees and I sit on the cold, hard earth, picking up the dead leaves and blowing them into piles around me. “Eve? Your parents are Adam and Eve?” Even speaking the words leads to more laughter, because who says things like that? When did my life become this - a reality in which this is a reasonable question? It’s not even that I’m surprised; I feel like I knew this, but hearing it? That’s a different matter altogether.

  “They were. When I was like you.”

  “Mortal?” I look up to him and he nods, sinking to his knees and lifting my leaf piles to open the circle of them that I've created. I don’t know why I am making the circle; I know it’s not a ward from anything, but just as I can’t sleep without at least part of a blanket covering me, it holds a false security. The circle now extended, enclosing us both, Alec reaches for me and holds me against him. The secure feeling includes his embrace, because he is comfort for me. Together, inside my magical circle, nothing else is real and nothing else matters.

  “I hate how you look at me when I tell you these things. I want to go back to the party, when you thought I was just like you,” he says in my ear. I want the same thing, but I don’t want to break his heart admitting it. I know that we would still be here, that this is inevitable, but I do wish it were easier. I’ve accepted a great deal since meeting Alec, and as much as I believe that some force brought us together, I wouldn’t mind sometimes if he were just a guy.

  I breathe in and try not to freak out about what he’s saying. In his arms, it’s hard to believe that we are talking of curses and families that extend back to the Book of Genesis. He just feels like home. In the end, reality may be strange, but it is reality. I cannot fault Alec for telling me; I’m the one who asked. Besides, he gave me the choice to leave; he gave me the choice several times both before and after we first made love. I chose this, I remind myself. I wonder about the things we do for love, but I know I wouldn’t change a thing.

  “I told you I wanted all of you. It wasn’t just physical,” I say. “I love you. If that means I have to face the fact that nothing I believed is true, so be it. You can’t choose love.”

  He kisses my forehead and smiles, the pain etched into his features. “No. You can’t. Nora, please, no matter what happens, remember that I know that as well as you. If, when this reaches its inevitable conclusion, you can’t look at me the same, I will remember that you believed everything you said tonight.”

  “Stop,” I tell him. “At the end, it will be you and me.” I tilt my head to the side and meet him in a kiss, passion wiping away the sadness. His hands are quick on my jeans and I want to stop him, want to focus on finding Henry, but there is something necessary in his touch that I crave. He has my pants off in seconds and moves for my shirt. I help him because I need something true, something physical to drown out my thoughts. All of this heavy mythology disappears as his hands move to his own zipper and then, in my pretend circle of protection, he enters me on the freezing autumn ground. Naked and complete, I give in to him, the stories and the legends of no consequence as he kisses my breasts. I laugh as he moves inside of me, remembering our first night together, happy that we finally have our moment.

  “You’re laughing,” he says, between kisses and thrusts. I feel so comfortable with Alec, as if we have known one another forever, as if I, like him, belong to a legacy. He looks so pleased as he rides me and I let the laughter close off the pain for a moment.

  “Remember the night we met? You said you wanted me to be more than a fuck in the dirt. My, how times change,” I tease. The heartbreak in his eyes stops my laughter and I bring him closer. “Alec, I’m teasing. You are everything to me.”

  My body arches to show him how much he means to me and I watch his pain turn to pleasure as I tighten myself around him. He is hard and swollen and I am full of him, my ass lifted by his hands and my body pushed against his waist. At some point, I need to address what he’s told me, but that point is not now. Now, we are together and our pasts, as complex as they may be, are forgotten; even the future fades. Warmth spreads throughout my body, from my shoulders to my toes, and I bite down hard on my lip. Blood starts to spill from the spot where my teeth dig in, but it is lost in his kiss. I cry out his name against his lips and he clutches at my head, my hair looped around his fingers. Alec’s certitude about death is lost as I dig my nails into his back and we come together on the dirt. I have never been in love before, but I can’t believe how stupid it makes a person. I am clinging to a man who claims to be the son of Adam and Eve, and nothing about that bothers me. He rocks me through my orgasm and he then fills me with his own.

  After we are finished and dressed again, we lie in the circle while he caresses my hair and tells me his story. It’s one I know well, from history, mythology, reading, and Henry’s lectures. He was the younger son; it’s funny that even at the beginning of man, the oldest child felt slighted by a younger sibling. Caleb -or Cain, as he was known then- hated that his brother received all the attention and praise of his parents; they fought endlessly. None of it sounds much different from the stories I hear of siblings today, although as an only child, I don’t know what it must be like to share one’s parents’ affections. I empathize w
ith Caleb, though, because my parents were settled when my mother became pregnant and I wasn’t planned; now that I am an adult, I’m mainly on my own. The little attention I do get is highly valued and I cannot imagine if I needed to divide that with another person. Nevertheless, I keep my feelings to myself because Alec does not share my empathy for his brother.

  “His jealousy was bearable,” Alec says. “It was his control that was not.”

  “How do you mean?” I ask, running my hand along his spine. For someone as old as time, he feels human. It’s hard to believe he is not just telling me another story when we are this close.

  “As we grew up, my brother had to be right. About everything. My nature, of course, was to rebel and I liked to tease him. It was...”

  “Normal?” I suggest.

  “I don’t know. Maybe? Can I claim normalcy when we were the first?”

  “You’re asking the wrong person,” I reply. “I don’t know what the rules are, but I think that most siblings are the same.”

  “Fair enough. So then, we were normal. There was no animosity, outside of that.”

  “I still don’t understand how this all led to what you are today.”

  “Neither do I,” he confesses. “I don’t know how or why he murdered me. We had had a fight, but it was the same sort of fight we had every day. He demanded that I do something, I teased him and refused, and after he left in a huff, I got to work. Something changed, though, and he returned this time. All I know is that I was awoken days later in a place I had never seen before.”

  “Awoken? By whom?”

  “A woman. She was beautiful. She raised me and made love to me all night; I didn’t know then what she was, nor did I know what I was. It was only in the morning, when the sun rose and she hid me in a cave lest we burn to ash, that I knew something had changed.”

  Jealousy rages through me, but I tell myself it is unreasonable. It was ages ago, and were it not for this woman, Alec would not be here today. Neither of us is a virgin; why, then, does it bother me to hear it? Did I really think he saved himself for eternity, until I came along? It’s foolish, and I choke down the envy with reluctance. The past matters only in how it shapes the future. I kiss him along his chest and neck, seeing the marks for the first time hidden under wisps of his hair. My fingertips touch them but they burn me; he gasps and pushes me away.

  “It is a curse, Nora. I know you and your friends partake in this fascination with vampires and werewolves and all that is unholy, but my brother and I are a scourge. We are hunting our mother in order to stop the evil, to free our souls finally from the darkness.”

  “There are werewolves?” I ask, my excitement hard to contain.

  “No.”

  “But you said...”

  “I was making a point,” he says. “Which, since you seem to have missed it, is that my brother and I are not worth your admiration, but your hate. We chose to pervert the will of Heaven.”

  “Did Caleb ask her to turn you?”

  “No, it was the other way around.”

  “Why?” I ask.

  “It doesn’t matter. I was naïve and thought that it would change something. All that matters now, however, is that I was the first and it falls on me to find her and stop her this time.”

  “What if you can’t? What happens then?”

  He looks at the ground, his shoulders revealing that he has lost hope of succeeding. “The cycle goes on. My brother turns on me, kills me, and then, several days or years later, we start anew. A new life elsewhere, hunting for our mother. It has happened every fifty years and we are closing on the end of this cycle.”

  I take his hand in mine. “Alec, if you die, I will be with you when you wake. We would still have fifty years, although I’ll grow old. We can hunt her together and we will succeed - if not this time, then the next.”

  He grips my hand tight. “You must understand, Nora. When I die, I must shed all that comes from this life. That means all of my mortal connections die with me. My brother will see that you do not follow.”

  “What if he doesn’t? What if he refuses to kill me?”

  “He won’t. He knows how to do what must be done. There is more, but I think now we must go.” He stands and brushes himself off. “I’ve told you a great deal, but there is the pressing matter of finding your Henry.”

  I rise as well, although I’m not satisfied with his explanation. There must be a way to change Caleb’s mind, to prevent him from killing me. If so, I only need to live without Alec for a short period of time and then, we can dedicate our lives to hunting this creature and getting him what he needs. It strikes me that there must be other ways - letting the cycle remain incomplete, fighting back, something. I imagine there are reasons that they follow this concept so blindly, but it is yet another question to be answered. There is so much more that I must know, but first there is a debt to pay, to both Henry and Scarlet. I follow Alec further into the woods, and deeper into the darkness.

  8.

  We discover that Caleb does not have Henry, although he is amused as hell that we thought so. I’m not sure what’s funny about being a villain, but his mockery and condescension are blatant when we confront him. In the small cabin he must call home, he looks disinterested in our plight but he still kicks a chair over to where I stand and invites me to sit.

  “I have better things to involve myself with than capturing men in tweed coats with whom I would discuss what? Campbell’s crossing of the threshold?” He winks at me, although I’m not sure what he’s trying to prove - that he knows his mythology or that he thinks the potential kidnapping of my friend is humorous.

  “Brother,” is all Alec says, although I am more forthcoming.

  “Henry could be dead! He could be injured, and you want to make jokes? You think it’s hilarious when we suffer? Why? Because you have no compassion or empathy?” I scream at Caleb until Alec leads me to sit.

  “So tell me how I can help,” Caleb says. “How can I use this empathy you speak of to solve all the ills that have potentially befallen your friend?”

  “You were the last to see him,” I argue.

  “That may be true, but I did not kill your professor, nor did I take him somewhere to reveal to him any evil plan you seem to imagine I’m concocting. I went to him for information; his information was useless, but killing him wasn’t necessary. It would only have called further attention to my brother and me, which, despite my best efforts, he seems to have forgotten it is critical we avoid.”

  Alec stands behind me, his hands resting on my shoulders. His fingers dig into my flesh and I know that he is angry, but he does not speak. I stare at Caleb, his dark hair, as always, falling into his eyes. I try (and mostly fail) not to let his grin bother me. Who would possibly find this situation amusing if he had a soul? Even if Caleb had nothing to do with Henry’s disappearance, it’s not funny.

  “Caleb, someone knows where he is and you were the last to speak to him. Maybe something you said-” I know I’m pleading and it goes against my nature, but I decide it’s best to play into the way he sees me. Let him think he is the hero if it gets him to help us out; his anger at his brother and his selfish jealousy started a war that has now reached into my mundane life. Perhaps giving him the chance to shine will make him a willing ally.

  “Sweetheart, we spoke of a myth he has been researching and then he asked me some personal questions, which I, of course, evaded. It’s a good thing that Alec wasn’t there, as Henry would likely now have every detail of our lives at his disposal. I don’t doubt he would be open to sharing them all with his torturers.”

  I lean forward and speak slowly. Any human being would sense my agitation and feel sympathy - or at least something. Caleb, however, is cold and unfeeling. “Please, Caleb, for the love of all that may or may not matter to you, help me. Help us. If you think he’s being tortured, it is even more critical that we find him.” Tears try to fight free from my eyes but I will not allow them. Caleb may already have his as
sumptions and I may be willing to let him be the savior, but he isn’t going to call me weak again.

  He leans back and takes in the sight of Alec and me. His eyes travel across my face and continue down. He smiles when they pause at my chest and I feel sick that I get tingly at the visual caress. What’s wrong with me? There’s something about him that calls to my body even while his brother’s hands hold me in place. Shaking myself to release the tingles, I focus and steady my breathing. Alec is twitching and something is brewing in the room; there isn’t much time left for these two. Rage is tangible and I do my best to bring us back to the task at hand. Their battle will come, but not now. I only wish that I’d met Alec sooner, that I had more time to gather the tools to help him fight what stalks him. The tools, apparently, to help him destroy his brother.

  “Fine,” Caleb says. “Fine. It goes against all sense and reason, but I’ll help you.”

  I jerk myself free from Alec and run to Caleb, embracing him. “Thank you,” I say, my genuine surprise at his willingness overcoming all that is right. His hands move under my hair and I feel one tighten around my neck. Our lips are only a breath apart and I forget Alec in the instant, my head moving to Caleb’s, my lips parting to taste him on me again. He pulls me closer in the embrace, but avoids my kiss. Instead, he whispers in my ear, quiet enough that his brother cannot hear him. “Don’t deny what you feel; I feel it, too. It’s foolish to pretend there is nothing between us.”

  Alec is watching us and I back away slowly, trying to remain unaffected by both Caleb’s touch and his comment. There is nothing to be gained by revealing it and everything to be lost. Caleb’s eyes don’t leave mine as I back away, but neither of us makes any move to show that the moment even existed outside of our minds. When I reach Alec’s side, he wraps his arms around me, possessive suddenly, and I see the questions Caleb’s stare burns into me. I don’t have any answers, merely the same questions.