Bitter Fruits (19 page)

“Thanks, Scarlet. As always.” However, everything about this conversation is so
normal
. In the time since the party, I’ve been living an alternate life, isolated from reality. Now, outside of the whole immortal side of things, this is just the start of a relationship. An extremely complicated relationship perhaps, but a relationship nonetheless.

“Why, though?” I ask. “Why was that an option?”

Alec looks up and now his eyes meet mine. They are full of hope, for the first time since I met him. “I told you before we faced Lilith that there had been too much hate. My brother and I…
Caleb
and I… Our relationship has been based on jealousy and anger; we blamed one another for everything. If I was happy, he was not; if he was happy, I felt rejected. You… Neither of us could begrudge the other your love. You are pure and you didn’t break the curse by stopping the cycle; you broke it by reminding us of what it meant to share, to sacrifice.”

“You called him Caleb,” I say.

“That’s the name he uses now. It’s time we get to know one another. Like you said. As people above and beyond our history.”

Scarlet sighs loudly. “This is lovely.
A family reunion. Let’s just slap this shit up on Lifetime and call it a day. Oh… Wait… Isn’t there a creature more evil than any other still roaming campus? Maybe
we should save the brotherly love for after we deal with that.”

Caleb looks up. “I agree. We still have to find Lilith. Besides, this is getting way too emotional.” He doesn’t mean it, which
is proven when he looks at Alec and smiles at him. It is the first true smile they’ve shared in my presence and I feel giddy. It’s short-lived, however, because Henry, as always, has to bring us back to the severity of the truth.

“Lilith was a mother. We already covered that. It was definitely Adam’s daughter, too. However…”

“Don’t tell me I’m the reincarnation of Lilith’s daughter,” I say.

Even Henry laughs at this. “Nora, this isn’t a movie.
How on earth… Also, you realize that would mean Alec and Caleb would also be your brothers?”

“Ew.”

“Right. So anyway, no, there is no big link to Lilith having a daughter with Adam. The fact is only important because it explains much of what she is and why she demanded total obedience.”

“The daughter she conceived after we were turned,” Alec says, “was not the first.”

“But when?” I ask. “She left Eden before they were made mortal and she was a monster before-”

Caleb continues the story. “Our father… He was comfortable with both women; he enjoyed
life with two women. When Lilith left, he didn’t forget her. Once they were cast out, once he understood what he was missing-”

“So he continued to sleep with her after Eve ate the fruit?
After she had you?”

“Around the same time,” Henry says. “
The daughter would have been approximately the same age as Cain.”

“What happened to her?”

“Lilith threatened to tell Eve, to hold Adam responsible. He was already in trouble-”

“Because of the Tree of Life?”
I ask.

“Yes. So when she revealed their daughter to him, when she demanded that he
acknowledge her…”

“Please don’t say it. He wouldn’t.”

Caleb nods. “He swore to do as she asked and, one night after she’d fallen asleep, he took the girl and drowned her. Lilith declared herself free of him; she sought out influences that were … unsavory. We still don’t know what the influences were for sure, but she became what she is now.”

“And when you killed Abel, she saw her chance,” I say.

“Yes. We were the tools she could use to get her revenge. She hated us from the start, although we never knew. We represented everything he had stolen from her.”

“The sins of the fathers.
You were punished for his actions.”

Henry smiles.
“Nora is my best student. She-”

“Not the time, Henry,” Scarlet says. “Go ahead, Alec.”

“She tricked him, convinced him she still loved him, that she’d forgiven him. She seduced him and, when she got pregnant again…”

“She murdered her own child.” It becomes clear to me and, although I don’t understand it personally, I understand it in the context of the story.
Lilith’s rage, her refusal to be obedient, the rejection, and how it felt to be outcast. Years of hate turned her into what she is now; she wanted to punish Adam and she did, but she also punished his sons. She taught them the same violence.

“Adam was ruined and she thought she had won.”

“But at what price?” Scarlet asks.

“Which is why I could stop it,” I say. “I changed the course for them.”

Caleb takes my hand. “You saved us. Not just our lives, but also our souls. It’s why you are the only one who can touch me. You are love, Nora.”

I sit with his hand in mine, but no one says anything else. Knowing the story is not the end, though. Lilith is still out there; maybe it’
s not as urgent, but it’s not something we can ignore forever. Alec closes the laptop and looks at Henry. My professor looks at me and suddenly, I feel small again. His face is haunted; he stands and goes to Scarlet, but he continues to watch me. Finally, Alec rises.

“There is one more
thing,” he says. “I suppose I will be the one to tell you.”

There are hundreds of things that run through my mind.
Lilith is after me. She has a backup army. Teresa isn’t really dead. Alec is leaving. Caleb is leaving. Neither of them wants me bound to them. They decided to adopt a dog. Honestly, I can think of every possible answer but the one that he gives me.

“When you touched Caleb, at the church.
The spell that Lilith cast was powerful and you know you’re marked now, too.”

“Am I going to die?” I ask. I had come to terms with death, with losing them, but somehow the small victory last night made me feel confident. I know it’s
as they always say - we won the battle but not the war. Still, I woke today with a future; maybe I was a fool.

Alec smiles at me. “No. That’s just it. You are never going to die.”

“You mean-”

Caleb looks at me. “You’re like us now. When Henry said you were bound to us for eternity…”

“He meant eternity.” It’s a massive realization. Forever. We talk of forever all the time, especially when we fall in love. However, a mortal forever is a flicker in the long road that is time. The notion doesn’t frighten me, but it’s going to take some getting used to for certain.

“We don’t understand it exactly,” Henry says. “You were written into the curse, but no one ever expected you to exist.”

“But I just ate,” I point out. “Like, normal food. No blood, no babies.”

“Nora, whatever you are, it’s something new. What you did with the revenants…” Henry pauses and looks at Alec and Caleb.

Alec continues. “There is nothing on record, no myth that explains you. You were a loophole, a clause that no one imagined would be discovered.”

“All we know is that you are
an anomaly, something never seen. We don’t even know what you are capable of,” Henry says.

“That could be cool,” I say, although I am just trying to take it in.

“It also means that everything you thought you would do in your life…” Alec says.

“I’m sorry,” Caleb adds.

“Don’t be. You should
see
the pile of books I have by my bed at my parents’ house. I’m going to need eternity.” I’m not sure I can say that it isn’t intimidating, that it doesn’t lead to more questions; however, I can say that I feel blessed rather than punished. I couldn’t choose better company for the rest of time.

Epilogue

Several weeks later, as we are preparing for exams yet again, things are as close to normal as they can be.
Scarlet has discovered that she is pregnant and Henry has embraced the idea of becoming a father. His excitement is driving Scarlet mental, of course. It’s all he talks about and he insists on checking in on her every hour. They bicker, but I’ve never seen her happier. I always thought it was weird when I heard people talk about the pregnancy glow, but I get it now. Scarlet is even more stunning than ever. She’s due over the summer, which means she will still graduate on time. Henry continues to insist that they get married, although Scarlet is refusing for now. She says she wants to look hot on her wedding day; it’s things like this that give my own days a sense of stability.

I move out of the dorm and Alec takes Caleb’s spare room. Loving them both has its challenges, but we’re content.
I’m actually thankful for Lilith and the fact that I was made immortal, because they’re both insatiable and pleasing two men regularly takes a lot out of a person. Of course, I can’t pretend that I don’t desire the same things. I alternate nights between them; sometimes, we just sleep. With each, I feel like everything is as it should be; it might look unbelievable to an outsider, but I can’t pretend it doesn’t make more sense than anything else ever has. I still don’t believe in fate, but I would say that the three of us together is the closest thing to destiny.

Henry is trying to work through endless eons of myth to determine my role in all of this.
We still don’t know what I am capable of doing, but I feel stronger, faster, and more aware than I did when I was just Nora. Still, it is new and I am waiting for the revelation of something greater. I don’t know what it is, but as with everything I have discovered from Caleb and Alec, nothing is as straightforward as it appears. Scarlet teases me about staying young forever, about how I am living every woman’s dream; sometimes, I think it’s true and I feel fortunate. However, looming is the notion that there will be a price to pay for whatever powers I have earned. I expect that as we find the answers, we will also learn how heavy the cost may be.

Alec and Caleb
get along as well as any brothers now. There is a lot of fighting over stupid things - razors, money, doing laundry - but most of our evenings are spent in quiet and peaceful conversation. I got them both phones, which they forget to use most of the time anyway. We navigate the strange landscape together and are trying to make sense of it all. It’s odd that
they’ve been together for eternity and yet are just getting to know each other. It’s also amazing that I don’t feel left out; their histories are so complicated, however, that the focus has become starting a new history.

We haven’t found Lilith yet. She has shown no sign of looking for us, but we know it isn’t over. Every so often, I think I
’m being followed on my way home from classes, or I feel someone watching me. However, there is nothing but endless time stretching out ahead of us and I don’t feel the urgency of finding her anymore. She will appear and we will handle it; for now, though, we wait. And we love - because that is what will save us when the time comes.

THE END