Authors: Clare Willis
“This is good,” Jacob said. He was dressed all in black: jeans, T-shirt, leather jacket, and knit cap. All of that dark fabric made his pale face all the more striking. His eyes flicked horizontally as he watched the cars, as if he was reading a book. “Your first task will be simple. Run across the bridge to the bike lane on the other side.”
Sunni put her hands on her hips and stared at him. “You have got to be kidding me.”
A car horn blared very close to them, making her jump.
“The cars move slowly on this bridge,” Jacob said. “Good for practice.”
“Practicing what? Being made into hamburger?”
Jacob took a step closer and put a hand on her arm. “Have you read stories of humans having incredible rushes of strength in times of great stress, like lifting a car to free a trapped child?”
“Yeah. I thought they were baloney. ”
“No, it’s not baloney. And your power operates under the same principle. You’ve never experienced it because you’ve never been in a life or death situation, so it’s never been activated. But it’s there, waiting, more power than you ever imagined.”
Sunni stared at the whizzing cars. Drivers talked on cell phones, picked their noses, played with radios, or held the wheel carefully. Whatever dangers they might be anticipating, a person jumping in front of their car probably wasn’t one of them.
“What will the drivers do? I’ll cause a pile-up. People will get killed.”
He shook his head. “If you do it right they won’t even see you.”
“And if I do it wrong?”
He pressed his lips tightly together.
“Jacob?”
“Don’t do it wrong.”
Sunni stood at the edge of the curb and grasped the metal chain that barred the traffic lanes. Pedestrians passed in couples and groups, laughing and talking, taking pictures of the city, jogging or race-walking. The few who were alone walked hunched in their coats, seeming lonely and bereft. No one looked at Jacob and Sunni.
“Climb over the chain,” Jacob said.
“I’m afraid.”
He nodded. “That’s as it should be.”
She put one trembling leg over the chain and then the other, and stood clinging to it, teetering on the small curb. This must be how people feel before they jump off this bridge, Sunni thought. Scared shitless.
That was her last thought before Jacob pushed her into the traffic. She turned her head left to stare into the headlights racing toward her like a volley of bullets. Terror struck her body like a bolt of lightning, electrifying every part of her.
Sunni felt a surge. It was as if she’d stamped on the gas pedal of a race car and felt the kick of acceleration like a wave rolling through her gut. Her eyes burned, and for a millisecond she went blind. But when her sight came back the sea of lights had separated. Each pair of headlights was isolated, its speed and relative distance from her as easy to calculate as on any city street. She paused, teetering on the white line in front of the first lane.
Now! She dashed to the next white line, feeling a rush of air on her back as a car passed within inches of her. She turned her attention to the next lane.
Now! She jumped into the road, but this car was coming faster than the first. She had to turn right and run with the car a little distance before she was far enough in front of it to head left again. As she turned she stared the driver straight in the face. He was a pudgy man, about fifty years old, with grimy eyeglasses and a day’s growth of beard. He looked straight at her, but his face registered nothing. In less than an eye blink he was past her and she was on the next line. One more lane of traffic to go.
Now!
When she reached the bicycle lane Jacob was waiting to greet her. She hadn’t thought him capable of smiling the way he was now. He picked her up and twirled her around in a circle until she was dizzy. Finally he set her down and cradled her face in his hands.
“I did it!” she cried.
He nodded as he wiped the tears from her eyes.
When Richard invited Isabel to the Lalique, Tiffany, and Faberge exhibit at the Legion of Honor Museum she told him that she didn’t generally attend exhibits like that; they were too crowded and difficult to maneuver with her crutches.
“Oh, you won’t have to worry about that,” Richard said.
“Why, you’re going to cure me of MS?”
Isabel was joking, of course, but what she didn’t know was that it was entirely within his power to cure her of MS, and any other human infirmity that might be inconveniencing her. But her simple little mind wouldn’t have comprehended that answer, however, so he simply told her to trust him. When they arrived at the museum the guards were just locking the front door, but the curator of the exhibit brought them in the freight elevator to the basement exhibition space. After a bit of fawning over Richard, he left them alone to wander the rooms at their leisure. Isabel had been hopping from case to case like a jackrabbit, oohing and ahhing over the gilded and bejeweled eggs made for Russian royalty and the Art Deco jewelry designed for the nouveau riche of the Industrial Revolution.
Richard, who had seen it all before and owned quite a bit of it himself, plastered a smile on his face and followed a step behind Isabel, quietly telling her little anecdotes about certain pieces: which queen had owned what egg, which tycoon made a gift to a penniless actress of a fourteen carat emerald welded into the mouth of a turquoise and aquamarine dragon. He wished it were Sunni whose hot breath was steaming up the glass case holding a particularly delicate Lalique hair comb in the shape of a butterfly, but then again, Sunni probably wouldn’t be breathing with that much enthusiasm. Sunni was difficult to impress, which made her all the more intriguing. He was not going to be able to reach her through the usual channels. She was impossible to glamour, and Jacob was probably even now hardening her heart against him with his lies and insinuations.
No matter. He had found an even better, more insidious method for luring Sunni to his side. And the added benefit was the fortune that the father of this gentle, bovine woman had placed at her disposal. He would leave San Francisco with Sunni as his partner and the LaForge millions in his bank account. After that the Council could kick and scream all it wanted because it would have no power over Richard Lazarus anymore. In fact, perhaps he’d form his own Council, padded with the offspring that he and Sunni would produce. He smiled at this idea.
Isabel, thinking that the smile was for her, beamed back at him. “Thank you, Richard, this was a wonderful idea.”
Richard put his hand on her waist and led her to a bench in the center of the room. Gold, silver, and jewels glittered all around them. It was like being in the room with Rumpelstiltskin after he’d woven all the straw into gold.
“I have something for you,” Richard said. He pulled a velvet case about the size of a pack of playing cards out of his pocket and presented it to Isabel with a flourish.
“Ooh, you shouldn’t have.” Her cheeks flushed bright rose. A rich, salty scent filled the air as her blood pressure began to rise, and Richard felt a slight twinge as his fangs dropped. He tested them with the tip of his tongue.
She snapped the case open and gasped with genuine awe. Richard was pleased. As innocent as Isabel was, he imagined she had a safe deposit box somewhere filled with baubles that would strike the average girl dumb. But this was no average jewel. It was a Lalique brooch, a platinum leopard studded with yellow diamonds, manufactured in Paris in 1911. Owned by the wife of John Jacob Astor, the brooch had survived the sinking of the
Titanic.
(The same, unfortunately, could not be said for John Jacob.) It was scheduled to be in the exhibit until an unnamed collector bought it for an undisclosed sum and it disappeared from public view.
“I couldn’t accept this. It’s too much,” Isabel pushed the case back into his hand.
“Nonsense. I want you to have it. It is a unique jewel, for a unique woman.”
Isabel blushed harder.
“May I?” Richard removed the brooch from the case. His hand hovered near Isabel’s bosom. She nodded. He delicately pinched and lifted a swatch of her low-cut sweater. Her lips parted, her breath became labored as he drew close. He pinned the brooch onto her sweater, brushing her skin lightly, accidentally, with his fingers. Her eyes were soft and gleaming, wide as a doe’s as she gazed at him. He didn’t even need to glamour this one.
He bent to kiss her neck, allowing his fangs to graze the soft skin just under her chin. She shivered and sighed. Her body surged forward. It required no effort on his part. She practically impaled herself in her eagerness to be close to him. Her blood pumped, gently at first, then more strongly as her heart rate increased. She swooned, and he caught her body with his arm, pressing her tight against his chest.
Ah, he loved the thrill of doing it in public places! At any moment a guard, the curator, any human idiot might stumble upon them. Oh, at first they might think it was a mere tryst, nothing to worry about, until they saw the blood trickling down Isabel’s neck, circling her breast and cascading into her cleavage. He allowed himself to imagine a scene of carnage, of himself set free, killing dozens of guards, police, museum patrons, anyone who got in the way, crushing their bones as he sucked them dry as corn husks. It would be mayhem. It would be beautiful.
He lifted his head and his fangs retracted. Isabel lay in his arms, her eyes half closed, lost in a blizzard of sensation. There was no blood on her neck or chest. He had been as neat as a Victorian schoolmistress. The time for mayhem had not yet come, and if Richard had learned anything over these long years, it was patience.
Sunni stood on a tiny platform high up on one of the towers, accessible by a ladder made of struts welded into the metal. The struts were placed impossibly far apart to discourage anyone who wasn’t a safely tethered bridge worker, but Jacob had scampered up as nonchalantly as a monkey swinging through the forest canopy. Sunni, once she was able to suspend her disbelief, followed almost as nimbly.
The wind at this elevation was a howling monster, desiccating her eyeballs and flapping her cheeks like laundry on a clothesline. Three hours ago it would have been unbearable, but Jacob had taught her to focus her senses, to tune out distracting sensations, such as pain, in favor of hearing and vision. The silvery backs of a school of dolphins looked like half moons cutting the water as they leaped into the air.
“Jacob, what would happen if I jumped off thebridge?” She spoke in a normal voice, knowing that despite the screaming wind he would hear her.
Looking down into the gleaming black water, one arm firmly clenched around her waist, he shrugged. “Nothing, probably.”
“Let’s do it!”
He shook his head vigorously. “Oh, no, not me.”
She stared at him, surprised at his refusal. So far, Jacob had stayed at her side, performing every task that he had asked of her. At first he’d been much faster, but she had been pleased to find herself catching up to him. A couple of times he had been forced to save her, once when she misjudged a car’s speed and once when she lost her footing on the wave-dampened underside of the bridge, but now she felt like nothing could stop her.
“What do you mean, not you?”
“I can’t swim.”
She laughed, one brief hard yelp. Then she looked at him to see if he was laughing, too. He wasn’t.
“Go ahead,” he said. “I’ll meet you on the beach.”
He leaned over, and for a moment the screaming wind was halted as he pressed his lips against her cheek: ice against ice. Then he was gone. When she looked down he was already on the walkway. She stared straight ahead and stepped into space as if she was walking out her front door.
Instantly she was hurtling downward. The sensation was like being shot from a gun through concrete. Her skin felt as if it was being flayed off her body, leaving every nerve ending screaming.
Whoever said that jumping off the Golden Gate Bridge was a quick and easy way to die never tried it.
The obsidian ocean rushed up to greet her. She felt no power, no strength, only a desperate, helpless panic. Her body curled into itself as she twisted and tumbled through the air like a ball in a bingo cage.
The change came not a moment too soon. The power began as a tiny flame in her core, but when she concentrated it caught fire and raged throughout her body. She straightened her arms and legs, the wind harmless as a breeze, and turned so that she was in a diving position. She cut the surface of the bay as neatly as an Olympic diver dropping into a swimming pool.
The power stayed with her as she swam, rendering the cold and five-foot swells hardly noticeable. Instead she noted the crystalline shine of moonlight on the water, and the way the lights of the city winked like flickering fireflies. She noticed a rhythmic pattern to what looked like flashes of light on the water’s surface, but after watching for several seconds she realized that it was the pod of dolphins, swimming about a hundred yards away. She swam closer to them, close enough to feel the surge in the water as their powerful bodies raced forward in unison. She was swimming next to a mother and a calf. As she looked into their round, shiny black eyes, the upward curve on the dolphin snout had never seemed more like a smile.
The little one leaped out of the water. His tail flipped up as he met the air, an exuberant gesture that seemed to say, “You try it, too!”
So Sunni did. She lifted her chest and arms as if she was going to do the butterfly stroke, and her body was airborne, the curve of her back matching the position of her little dolphin friend. She kicked her feet just before she sliced back into the water. The mother dolphin chirped her approval. For a moment Sunni contemplated giving up the human world and just staying with these peaceful, intelligent beings, but she knew her strength wouldn’t last forever. She could already feel a burning pain in her arms and legs that said her swimming time was almost over. Reluctantly, she turned toward land.
She could see Jacob standing on the beach. With her telescoping eyesight she could even see the anxious look on his face as he scanned the bay. She was standing in neck-high water before he noticed her. Her heart leapt to see his anxiety change to happiness, but then she realized that this change of expression meant that he hadn’t been entirely sure that she would survive. Come to think of it, she hadn’t been so sure herself when she was hurtling toward the water at a hundred miles an hour.