Immortal Mine (28 page)

I’m stunned when I see my own truck coming
back up the road. I look up at the sky. I don’t
think
Niahm
has had time to get all the way back to town, drop the truck to
Shane, and for Shane to come all the way back again. The truck
stops at the edge of the parking lot, and with astonishment I watch
as Niahm opens the door and slides from the truck. I move to stand,
then think better of it and relax back.

“What is
wrong
with you?” she yells,
guilt filling me at the raspy, strained tone of her voice.

She bends down and picks up a rock, and
hurls it at me. I duck to the side as it hits the wall of the motel
behind me. I stare at her, shocked as her expression looks. Then,
resolutely, she shrugs her shoulders a small amount, chin jutting
up, glaring at me, daring me to say anything.

I try to create as unthreatening a pose as
possible as she walks slowly toward me, caution in every line of
her body. When she’s a dozen feet from me, she stops. She simply
stares at me, confusion warring with disbelief in her
expression.

“How is it possible?” she finally asks.

“I don’t know,” is my honest answer.

She shakes her head, as if answering an
internal question.

“Tell me you’re not lying,” she says. “Tell
me you’re telling me the honest to God truth.”

“I swear it,” I say. “I wouldn’t lie about
something so...”

“Unbelievable,” she provides angrily when I
don’t finish.

“Right,” I say, grimacing. “Niahm, trust me,
I know how hard this is. Imagine how I felt when I first realized I
was... not dead. I mean the first time, when I realized I couldn’t
die.”

She takes two steps closer after scooping up
a rather sizable rock, still watching me cautiously.

“Does Shane know?”

I sigh as I contemplate how much to tell
her.

“Yes,” I finally answer simply.

“Then he’s not your uncle?” she asks.

“He
is
my uncle,” I say. Before she
can question it, I say, “He’s my great-uncle.”

“But how can...” I watch as understanding
dawns. “You mean he’s ... like you?”

“Yes.”

She looks around, as if to find an answer in
the cracked and lifting asphalt. She takes a few steps closer once
again. I wonder if she’s even aware of her movement.

“How did you... I mean, when...” She takes a
deep breath, blows it out, and begins again. “How... how old are
you?”

I lean forward, resting my arms on my
thighs, and notice that while she flinches a little at the
movement, she doesn’t take a step back.

“I was born in 1544.”

Her mouth drops open and she quickly slams
it closed, her teeth clacking together. She takes a few more deep
breaths before speaking.

“1544?” she squeaks.

“Yes. In Ireland.”

Her eyes snap to mine at that. She takes a
few more steps, until she’s within a few feet of me. I can see that
she’s trying to be calm about this, but forceful panic resides just
below the surface.

“Maybe you should sit down,” I say. “I’ll
move.” I stand, only wobbling a little. Her eyes fill with concern
that she quickly covers and she waves me back down, sitting on the
opposite end of the bench, as if unable to stand any longer.

“This is so…” She glances up at me, as if
searching for some kind of indication of my true age. “So, you’re
like an old man?”

I nearly laugh, but bite it back. Somehow I
don’t think she’ll appreciate any humor in this.

“I suppose so,” I say, “Trapped in this
body.”

“How old
are
you?” she asks
curiously.

“I’m four hundred and—”

“No,” she interrupts, closing her eyes
against the number as if to erase it, one hand up to halt my words.
She opens them again, leveling her gaze at me, her eyes striking me
once again. “I mean, how old were you when you... became how you
are.”

“I was nineteen, almost twenty when I died
the first time.”

“The first time?” Her voice squeaks on the
question again.

“I guess that’s not the right way to say
it,” I explain. “To become immortal, we have to ‘die’ the first
time. Then, after we wake, we can suffer a sort of mortal death, I
guess you’d call it, but we can’t ever really die.”

“Ever?”

I think about the Sentinels, about the
method they have for killing us. I decide this isn’t the time to
tell Niahm about that.

“Trust me, I’ve tried.” It’s cryptic, but
since it’s not an
exact
lie, I can speak it to her.

She thinks about this, then looks at me
oddly.

“You said ‘we’. There are more of you, more
than you and Shane?” When I nod, she asks, “How many more?”

“I don’t know exactly. We don’t have a
census taker.” I don’t tell her that there are records, kept by the
Sentinels, and that last any of the immortals knew, the count was
up to around four thousand. And who knew how many have managed to
stay hidden, are unaccounted for? Or who were new.

“Oh, yeah, that makes sense, I guess,” Niahm
says, sounding like it doesn’t make sense at all to her. She
glances down at my chest. “Does it hurt?”

“Not anymore,” I say. When she continues to
stare, I slowly pull the front of my shirt up, not wanting to
startle her. She watches, as if unable to look away. Where the
wound was is now a circular bruise, yellow in color. Her eyes come
to mine, stunned. I let the shirt fall back down. “I lost a lot of
blood, so I’ll be weak for a couple of days. But that’ll
regenerate, also.”

Her eyes flash a moment’s sympathy, quickly
gone, then she shakes her head.

“It’s a lot to take in, I know,” I tell
her.

She huffs out a sarcastic laugh. After a few
minutes silence, while she studies her shoes, she turns to me
again.

“Couldn’t you have just told me rather than
force me to go through that?” Her gravelly voice rings with
accusation and hurt, and I cringe at the memory of what I’d seen as
she’d held my hand while I came to.

“Would you have believed me?” I ask. She
stares at me, not backing down from the question.

“No, I suppose not,” she grunts.

“I’m so sorry, Niahm. It probably wasn’t the
best way to tell you. I would not
ever
want to purposely
cause you to suffer. I just didn’t know how else to do it.”

She nods stiffly then looks off toward the
mostly dark horizon. I stand and walk in front of her to lean into
the room and turn the outside light on. To her credit, she doesn’t
shrink away from me in disgust as I thought she would. I walk
inside and pull a bottle of water from the small fridge.

When I return to the bench, I hand her the
water, which she eyes before finally taking. I sit down a little
closer to her, testing. She doesn’t acknowledge the move. She
twists the top off and gulps the water, and once again I’m filled
with recrimination for what she’s suffering. When she speaks again,
her voice sounds a little better.

“How many others have you told... you know,
before. Before me, I mean.”

I don’t have to hold her hand to know
exactly what she’s asking. The flush in her cheeks is the first
hint; that I know her so well gives me the rest. I turn toward her,
so that she can see me fully, so that she will know I tell her the
truth.

“None, Niahm, I’ve never told anyone else.
You’re the first.”

She watches me, weighing my words, deciding
on the truth of them.

“Why me?” Her voice is small.

“I should think that would be very obvious,
Niahm,” I say. When she continues to watch me, not apprehending my
meaning, I clarify. “You’re the only one who’s meant enough for me
to tell. It isn’t something I do lightly.”

I watch as she processes my words, watch the
change in her eyes as she understands. She scoots a little closer
to me, cautious and hesitant, and finally leans into me.
Gratefully, I put my arm around her shoulders, holding her
tightly.

“I don’t know what to do about this, how to
feel,” she says. “My mind is numb.”

“I know.”

“I’m really angry with you. That was a jerk
thing to do. And then to find out you’re...” She takes a breath.
“I’m going to need some time.” She sits up to see what I think of
her words.

“I can give you as much time as you need,” I
say. “But I don’t know that I can stay away.”

Niahm sighs and leans against me again,
exhaustion in every line of her body.

“I don’t know that I want you to,” she
says.

Sam stops the truck in front of my house. I
gaze at it, wondering how it can look the same when everything is
suddenly so different. Sam waits silently. I look at him,
admittedly frightened at the knowledge of what he is. My world is
suddenly tilted, everything I thought I knew to be true I’m now
questioning. I don’t know what’s real anymore.

“I guess I’ll see you tomorrow?” I ask,
unsure. Sam usually comes by on Sundays... actually Sam comes by
every day.

He lifts his brows a little. “Well, yeah, if
that’s okay.”

I realize he’s surprised that I want to see
him. I don’t know how I feel about what I now know, and I don’t
know that I’ll ever be able to reconcile it in my head, but I’m not
quite ready to give him up, either.

“Okay, then, um...” I glance at him. Usually
I would kiss him goodnight. He leans the tiniest bit toward me and
I panic, grasping the door handle and pushing the door open
quickly. “Bye, Sam. See you tomorrow.” I slam the door closed and
hurry into the house.

Jean looks up from the couch where she’d
been sitting, reading. I try to calm my nerves at the sight of her.
I can’t face her right now. I’m grateful for the large jacket Sam
had given me, which falls to my knees and covers the evidence of my
night.

“Niahm? Is everything okay?” she asks, her
brows puckered with worry.

I shoot her a smile, then realizing a smile
will just seem odd to her, I quickly drop it.

“Yeah, of course. Why wouldn’t it be?”

I jog up the stairs, and as I turn toward my
room I glance back to see her watching me, a puzzled look on her
face.

I quickly change out of my blood spattered
clothes, stuffing them in the bottom of my hamper, still completely
freaked by the whole thing. After a hot shower, scrubbing my entire
body until I’m red and raw, I flop on my bed, my mind whirling. I
have about ten-thousand questions for Sam—but I’m as afraid of
asking them as I am of
not
asking them. I try to imagine
what it would be like, to know that you can never die, that no
matter what you do you’ll survive... what kinds of things you might
do.

To live over four hundred years. Alone.

I sit up. What if he hasn’t been alone? It
would make sense, right, that a guy who’s been on the earth for so
many years would have been with someone at one point or another.
Jealousy suffuses me, both for those he’s been with in the past—and
those he’ll be with again in the future.

A knock on my door startles me, and for a
brief second I imagine Sam will be on the other side of the door as
I open it. Of course, it’s just Jean, still with that same
concerned look on her face.

“Can I come in?” she asks. As if I can stop
her.

I turn away and sit on my bed. She pulls the
chair from in front of my desk and turns it toward me, sitting
down. I force myself not to groan aloud.
Now
she wants to
talk? When I want nothing more than to be alone with my thoughts?
My anger? I glance at her as I realize how angry I
am
at
him. My look seems to encourage her.

“You seem upset,” she begins.

“Nah, I’m good,” I say, trying to look like
that’s the truth, pretending my voice isn’t gruff.

“Listen, Niahm, I know that you aren’t
particularly thrilled having me here—” I can’t stop the little
noise that comes from my throat at that, but she ignores it. “But
it seems that we are all that one another has.” I open my mouth to
protest, and she holds up a hand to halt my words. “We seem to be
one another’s last living relatives.”

As she says the words, I think of Sam. Does
he
have any living relatives? Besides Shane, that is. Does
he have descendants? I look at Jean, my mother’s mother, and
suddenly I want to tell her everything. I want to tell her what I
now know, and cry in her arms, and have her tell me everything is
going to be okay.

But of course, I can’t do that.

She scoots the chair closer, hesitant, and I
feel some shame that she has to feel this way around me. If my mom
were still alive, she’d be angry at me for being such a brat toward
the person that she explicitly asked to take care of me.

“Do you want to sit?” I ask, patting the bed
next to me. She looks surprised, but then quickly moves and sits
down.