“Does it hurt him?” Lydia asked.
“Physically, no,” Warren explained. “Not at all. However, the River Lethe takes sorrow and pain from the dead. To expose the living to the waters brings the opposite effect. The memories that come back first and clearest are always the most painful. Trauma is relived. Loss occurs all over again. We cannot examine his memories until the psychological turmoil settles, lest Lord Stefan be subject to his pain.”
Lydia smiled broadly. “How dreadful,” she mused. Without warning, she snatched the flask from Warren’s hand and overturned it into the funnel.
“Not so much!” Warren blurted out, reaching for the flask only to have his hands slapped away by the demon. None of the vampires moved to stop her. Once more, Alex did what he could to spit out the potion, but the fingers that clamped down immediately on his nose blocked any ability to breathe. He couldn’t cough out the liquid without any air in his lungs.
Lydia withdrew the funnel and empty flask from his mouth, handing both back to Warren. “There you go,” she said sweetly.
Alex coughed, gasped, and then fell silent. Tears that had fallen from his eyes in the midst of choking continued to flow. Soon, his body shook as he openly wept. There was no holding back his tears. He hardly seemed aware of his surroundings anymore.
On the floor, Lorelei shook with pain. Lifetimes of desire were mixed up in Alex’s memories, almost all of it dominated by a sense of loss or desperation or betrayal.
Alex thrashed on the table. Lydia chuckled, slipping off to let him strain against his bonds. His cries became tumultuous, body-wracking sobs.
Lydia cast a glance toward Baal. “Teenagers,” she snickered. “So much drama.” She looked to Warren. “How long will this go on?”
“I am unsure,” Warren told her. “It will all depend on how much his mind must sort through. This seems a bit much for one so young, but there may be trauma in his personal history we did not expect.”
“Hmpf,” Lydia shrugged. She turned to Blackthorne. “I suppose, then, that while we wait I might fulfill my obligations to your Lady.”
Blackthorne eyed the wailing prisoner. “That would be good of you, yes.”
“Master?” Lydia asked. “Will you accompany us?”
“My time grows short,” he noted. “I will accompany you, but…you. You. Deal with her chains,” he said, gesturing to Spade and Jack and then to Lorelei. “She comes with me.”
“Talon,” Blackthorne blinked. “Mitchell. Would you be so kind as to remain here?”
“Sure,” the cowboy shrugged. Talon only nodded. They cast wary glances at the robed sorcerer, who stepped back an extra pace.
As Lorelei’s chains were unfastened from the floor, her handlers favored her with another kick to the stomach and another blow across the shoulders. She hardly felt them, though. Instead, she felt her young lover’s desires.
He helped her rise above her former self. She longed to surround him with luxuries and affection, and to enjoy him for the rest of his days. She had worked tirelessly to simply teach him to set aside his distant worries and learn to have a good time.
As she was pulled away from Alex, Lorelei still felt his desires. It was all flavored with a tempest of desperation, denial, fear and regret. She felt betrayal, loss and loneliness.
As Lorelei was dragged from Alex’s side, she felt his strongest desire.
More than anything else, the only man she ever loved wanted to die.
Chapter 17:
He remembered walking to Opilio’s house, feeling cheated, feeling bitter, just knowing that this would destroy any chance at building a decent life again. He’d been right, too. The abrupt end to his memories bore that out. It was the same feeling he’d had when the slavers clubbed him over the head. After this second blackout, though, nothing else followed.
He remembered sitting in the recruiter’s office in Detroit, giving his name, rank and serial number and requesting to go back into that stinking bush, trying all the while not to weep. The recruiter didn’t even ask why. His tears didn’t flow then, but they flowed now.
He remembered Marie in the rearview mirror of the truck as he returned to the front, back to where 2nd Armored would go right back into the thick of it with the Germans. She waved, then hung her head and turned away. They exchanged letters right to the end, but that was the last he ever saw of her.
He remembered all the awful, thoughtless, stupid things he said to Siobhan. He hadn’t meant any of it, hadn’t meant to say anything but “I’m hurt” and “this is hard for me” and “I love you.” The hurtful things came out of his mouth and crushed her feelings like so many slaps in her beautiful, wounded face. He remembered desperately wanting to take them all back, and he remembered the moment when he found out that it was too late.
He remembered building Halla’s funeral pyre and lighting it, the morning after he had spent all night cradling her bloodied body in his arms.
He remembered dying alone and afraid in a dirty street in a Holy Land that seemed less and less holy every day since he left home.
He remembered all that, and so much more: finding his wife slain by Shaka’s warriors for failing to show proper grief for Nandi’s passing. Finding his wife bent over his dinner table by the very priest who had officiated the wedding, and her snarling demand that he leave her alone despite the flowers in his hand and the horror in his eyes. All that, and so much more.
It was too much to bear all alone.
* * *
“I’m here. I’m gonna help you. You’re not alone.”
“Molly,” Mr. Woods asked, “what are you doing?”
“Helping him,” Molly said. She knelt beside the pale, mostly-naked man on the short couch. He was hardly conscious. Molly pulled from one of her many pockets a blue periwinkle leaf, crushed it in her hand and rubbed it on his neck where the two puncture wounds were still somewhat bloody. She murmured words of healing and comfort.
“No, I mean why would you do that?” Woods pressed.
Molly looked over her shoulder in something of a glare. Standing over her were Onyx, Mr. Woods, and a pair of heavyset vampires in dresses that were the height of fashion back in the antebellum South. She ignored Woods. “He needs water,” she said to Onyx, who promptly stepped away to a table of refreshments nearby.
“Oh,” said one of the vampires in a sweet voice, “do you plan on revivin’ him? That’s ever so kind of you. He’s just delicious. Ah’d hate to think that ah got the last bit of him all mahself. He should be shared around more.”
“Shared?” Molly blinked. “He’s wiped out. Even once I’m done with him, he’s not up for more of this. He needs to go home.”
“Home?” The vampire chuckled with her twin. “Why, aren’t you just the sweetest thing?”
Onyx returned with a glass of water for the delirious young man. Mr. Woods laid a hand on Molly’s shoulder. “Molly,” he urged, “we need to go. You’ve done what you can here.”
“I can get him to a car.”
“You can’t,” Woods said firmly.
“Not unless you’re willin’ to pay Lord Blackthorne for him,” the other of the undead ladies put in. “All these refreshments are his property, after all.”
Molly’s eyes flared. Onyx grabbed her arm and helped Mr. Woods pull her away.
“You’ve been warned already,” Mr. Woods reminded her quietly. “Live and let live.”
“Like they’re letting these drones live?” Molly hissed.
“Would you be so tolerant of a guest in your home disrupting your lifestyle?” Woods asked. “This has gone on for centuries. You’re not going to change anything.”
“This goes beyond lifestyle,” Molly argued. She kept her voice down. “Do you think all these people here walking around as hors d’ourves are knowing volunteers?”