Ascension (28 page)

I lock the apartment up, sad that I won't be staying there with the cats.

"Tell me how I’ll know what to do."

"You will just know. Someone will contact you and you’ll know.”

"Is that all you can tell me or all you will tell me?"

Michel places his hand behind my back and ushers me into the vehicle, then sits beside me, one arm around me on the back of the seat.

"Eve, I tell you what I think you need to know, and nothing more. It's strategically important that you not know some things. All you have to know is that there is a plan in place. You'll know what to do when the time comes."

I nod and watch as Michel's guards return from their posts at the front and back doors of my apartment. One stands outside our vehicle with his hand on a weapon at his hip like the Secret Service.

We drive farther south towards the docks. The vehicle slows and I look out the front window to see a traffic jam ahead, the flashing lights of a fire truck in the middle of the street.

"Looks like a fire of some sort," I say.

Michel doesn't look up. He takes my face in his hands.

"Eve, I love you." He kisses me, his emotions washing over me, bringing tears to my eyes. "Don't forget that." He reaches into a pocket and takes out a tiny glass ampoule and breaks the tip off it. Inside is a clear liquid. "Drink this."

I take it from him and examine it. "What is it?"

"It's to make you forget." He pulls me closer.

"Forget what?"

"That this happened – this plan and whatever you know about it. I can't let Soren know you're part of a plan to kill him or he'll kill you."

"If you think that's necessary. I could block him out."

"Not good enough – he may use something on you to force you to reveal information. I can't take the chance. Just drink it. Now."

The urgency in his voice makes me comply and I nod and take in a deep breath, swallowing it down, the bitter taste making me squint.

"Oh God," I say and grimace. "That's terrible, whatever it is."

 
"You're so brave." He buries his face in my hair, his mouth on my neck. "Whatever happens," he says, his lips at my ear. "Remember that I love you." He pulls his small crucifix over his head. "This is for you," he says and slips it over my head. I examine the crucifix.

"It's beautiful." I look up at him. "It's Marguerite's."

He nods. "It's very old." He holds my face in his hands. "Eve, when you look at the cross, you'll remember that the vampire who gave it to you loved you."

"I'll remember," I say. I smile at him and he makes a sound deep in his throat and kisses my cheeks, his tongue touching each dimple, one after the other.

"I love you," he says.

"You said that already," I say and smile. "Three times."

Then an explosion rocks the car.

"What happened?" I crane my head to look, but Michel takes hold of my face and makes me look in his eyes.

"Tell me you love me."

I smile. "Of course I do."

"Say it."

I kiss him. "I love you, Michel."

He kisses me back, deeply. Then he brushes my hair off my cheek.

"That should start to make you feel a bit dizzy."

As if on cue, I do start to feel a bit strange. The world spins for a second. The last thing I see is Michel's face, his clear blue eyes filled with tears as he lays me down on the seat.

"I'm so sorry…" he says, "…but I can't let you go to him."

Another explosion down the street rocks the car again with its shockwave, this time more intense. Michel wraps his arms around me, covering me with his body. Over his shoulder I see a huge black cloud of smoke and fire coming towards us.

And then, darkness.

CHAPTER 26

“The first magic of love is our ignorance that it can ever end.”

 
Disraeli

Ipswich
Medical Clinic, Two Months Later

I blink when the lights flick
back
on
, my head throbbing as if someone hit it with a rubber mallet. I'm sitting in an examination room, dressed in a paper robe, paper slippers on my feet.

"Do the bright lights still bother you?"

I nod.

"You need to wear sunglasses whenever the sun's shining. The headaches will go away soon. The explosion caused quite a concussion."

"Will my memories ever come back?"

The doctor shakes his head.

"Some will never come back. The brain swelling caused some permanent damage. Others will return. Give yourself time. You're lucky to be alive."

The doctor leads me back to his office in a corner of the clinic. He has a television on, tuned to one of the local news channels.

As he writes in my file, I watch the news. It's been two months since the bombing in downtown
Boston
and the investigation's still ongoing. I just get so upset by it all, I can't watch. It's just too depressing.

"The case is still open," he says, glancing up at the television from his files.

I nod, feeling a catch in my throat.
My
case.

"Well, Eve, I've written you another prescription. You're getting your supply of tonic all right?"

"Yes," I say, remembering the thick black syrup I drink every day to help build up my blood.

"Good," he says. "Don't miss a dose or you'll feel really sick. If you have any problems, any new symptoms, just give my office a call."

“Thank you."

I take the prescription and go back to the dressing room and change back into my clothes. I step outside into the late afternoon sun and squint, slipping on my sunglasses. The fall has been unusually wet, with fewer days of sun than normal – right up until I needed it. With my extreme sensitivity to light, I hope the cloud cover will soon return.

My foster dad and mom are having a few friends over, trying to introduce me back into polite society, but I've got an excuse to avoid them. I'm setting up a camera down on the beach to take time-lapse photographs of the rise of the Milky Way and so after introductions, I escape. I can't stand the way they look at me as if I'm some kind of mental patient just because I have amnesia from the bombing.

I go to the beach below the cottage, carting my load of equipment. There's a
shirtless
man in the surf, a hand shading his eyes, looking out to the glittering ocean. I almost don't go down to the water because I don't want to intrude, but I brought my equipment and want to set up so I can do the shoot. This section of beach is the best because it's sheltered, with cliffs and dunes breaking the wind. I take a narrow passageway through the rocks that litter the coastline, descending on a path that's been worn down from years of use.

I walk along the beach, looking for a good spot to set up my tripod, keeping as far from him as possible. I stop near a flat rock where I put down my camera case and equipment. I stand gazing out across
Ipswich
Bay
and then take out the tripod, struggling to get it set up in the sand. When I'm busy fighting the bolt to lock the tripod into place, the man I saw in the surf comes to my side, his pale skin glistening wet in the last rays of sun.

The first thing I notice, other than he's completely gorgeous with black hair and incredible blue eyes, is that he's so pale. Unnaturally pale, and I think he must be ill. Maybe terminal.

"Hello," he says. "Can I help you with that? You look like you're having trouble." He has this soft French accent that sounds more continental than Cajun.

I smile, and step back from the tripod, my cheeks burning.

"I didn't realize my mechanical ineptitude was so obvious. I think the bolt was screwed on a bit too tight and now I can't unlock it."

"I've seen you here before," he says as he bends down to examine the tripod. "You come to this beach a lot. I'm Michel," he says and then holds out a hand. He pronounces it Mee-
shell
like a proper Frenchman. "I'm staying just up the coast a bit."

I look at his hand, surprised at the formality. People don't usually shake hands but maybe it's some French thing.

"Eve," I manage and he holds my hand in both of his for a bit too long. I try to pull my hand away, and finally, he releases it.

When he turns back to the tripod, I noticed strange marks stretching from one shoulder to the other, browny red like a tattoo but raised like a scar, the marks resemble wings and I can't imagine what caused them. I think maybe it's some kind of kelp that attached to his skin while he was swimming and touch the marks, but they don't brush off.

He glances at me, squinting as if to gauge my response.

"It won't come off," he says. "It's part of me."

"I'm sorry," I say, embarrassed. Then I realize they must be scars – maybe burn marks – and sympathy fills me. He works away at the tripod and manages to get it set up.

"Thanks," I say. "You're a godsend."

"I wouldn't say that." He smiles and then picks up a flat stone from the sand and throws it out, skipping it across the surface of the water. "What are you taking pictures of?"

"I'm going to do some time-lapse photography. I saw this really great time lapse video that shows the Milky Way in Atacama
Chile
and I thought I'd give it a try," I say, "but given my lack of technical expertise, I think I'm probably a bit too ambitious."

"I saw that video on YouTube," he says. "Amazing. What we only can see using technology. It's there, but our light and time perception prevents us from seeing it."

I smile at him, glad to have found someone else who's interested in such things. I attach the camera and timer.

"I read up on it and the timer is set to take a twenty-second exposure with a 2 second pause between images."

"Are you an amateur astronomer?" he says, and I feel his eyes on me, watching me instead of the camera. When I glance up at him, I can't help but blush. God, his eyes are so blue. My heart does a little flip-flop because he's just so beautiful but for some reason, I feel incredibly sad when I look at him.

"No," I say. "I just saw the Hubble Ultra Deep Field Image one day in an old National Geographic at my doctor's office and I couldn't get it out of my mind. I started looking at YouTube videos of stars and saw the Atacama video. I'm recovering from an injury and have some time to kill. I thought I'd give it a try."

"You don't look injured."

"It was my brain," I say. "I was in a coma for a while and now I have memory loss."

"Permanent?"

"The memory loss is, but the brain swelling is down now so everything pretty much works."

"That's good."

That's the most I've said to anyone outside of my neurologist and my foster parents since I woke up in the ICU after the bombing.

He goes to his clothes, which are folded on the sand. Once he'
s
dressed, and I have everything set up, I start the timer and we watch as it takes a few exposures.

"Keep your fingers crossed," I say.

He smiles at me, tilting his head to the side.

"You don't have faith?"

"Oh, no," I say. "Atheist. No faith in anything. Just trust in science. And good instructions."

“How long will it continue to take pictures?"

"A few hours."

"Would you like to go for a walk along the beach?"

I take in a breath. I don't know him from a hole in the ground but he seems nice enough and for some reason, I feel no threat from him. We walk along the beach in silence and I examine him from the corner of my eye – he's about a foot taller than me, his body well-muscled but not overly. His straight black hair is longish, beneath his chin and long down his neck. His blue eyes seem to shine with intelligence.

"So what are you doing in the little hamlet of
Ipswich
,
Massachusetts
?" I say, awkward with the silence.

"I have a cottage along the coast just about a mile from here. Come to get away from it all."

"What do you do for a living, if you don't mind me asking?"

"Private consulting, research, investigations."

"Sounds cryptic."

He laughs.

"Yes, very. Pointedly so."

"All right," I say, smiling. "I won't ask."

We round the point and I find an injured Gannet, its feathers still dark, a late season fledgling probably flown from the nesting colony in the cliffs in the distance. We kneel in the sand and I pick it up, concern for the young bird flooding through me, making my throat close. Still alive but clearly in pain, its wing hangs at an odd angle. It flops around, breathing heavily, gasping for breath. I hold it in my hands, but it falls limp and still. I can feel the moment it dies and blink away the tears that fill my vision, embarrassed to show emotion in front of a complete stranger.

He tilts my chin up and examines my face. "
Not a single sparrow can fall to the ground without your Father knowing it."
 

I frown for I recognize the biblical reference. He lays his hand on my neck, his skin still cool and wrinkled from swimming, and I feel as if he's inside my mind probing my thoughts, the sensation so clear it feels like a violation. I pull away and avert my eyes for he shouldn't be touching me.

"Here," he says and takes the dead bird from me. "Let me."

He holds the small body in his hands, peers at it closely, then strokes its chest. Before my eyes, it moves and then starts to breathe once more. He rights it and pulls out its wing, straightening it with his hand. The wing folds up into perfect alignment. Then, he throws the young fledgling up into the air and off it flies.

I watch, my mouth gaping open. I turn to him.

"How did you do that?" I whisper, my voice barely registering.

"How do you think I did it?" he says, watching the bird fly off.

"Well, you're either magic or an angel," I say, "and since I don't believe in either, I must have been mistaken about it being dead."

He frowns. "Sad to be so cynical for one so young."

"I don't want to be cynical, but I have my reasons."

He stands and walks along the shore once again, picking up shells, holding them up, turning them over so that they glitter and gleam in the last rays of sunshine.

He holds a shell out. It's a dog whelk.

"
Nucella lapillus
." He turns it over in his hand. "Look at the shape. Interesting isn't it? It's what's called a Logarithmic Spiral. Mathematics is coded in nature. Like a message to us."

"I don't believe in messages from God. And you didn't answer me."

"Adrenaline got its heart beating
again
."

"But how did you do it?"

He shrugs. "We all have our secrets."

He sits on the sand a few feet from the surf. I sit beside him.

"I was just wrong about it being dead," I say, not willing to concede any point about magic.

"You lost your faith when your mother died," he says. "It's a very common thing, but death and loss and pain don't mean there is no God."

"Are you a priest or something? How did you know about my mother?"

"I know a lot," he says. "And yes, I was a priest. A long time ago."

"What do you know?" I say, a panicky feeling growing inside of me. Is he someone from my past – the past I can't remember?

"Everything." He gets up and walks back towards the tripod. "And now, I have to go. I've probably already said too much, which is completely unlike me normally, but you've always had that effect on me."

"What do you mean?" I say but he doesn't stop. "Tell me how you know me."

He doesn't reply and I just stand by the tripod and watch him walk away, listening as the timer hums and clicks, recording the heavens as they whirl around us, invisible, inaccessible without these artificial eyes.

I wonder what the heck he is and how he knows everything about me.
 

I don't see him for a week and my little quiet life goes on as it has for the past month. I get up and eat on the patio, then walk the beach. I spend the afternoon playing music at Grant’s music store or reading.
My foster parents have no piano at the cottage and so I come to Grant's music store and play on an old baby grand in the back. Mr. Grant lets me, pleased to hear someone play with a modicum of talent.
At dusk, I walk the beach again, and at night I gaze at stars. I sleep with the salt air in my nose.