Made to Love (15 page)

But his seriousness was
catching, and by the time we hit the small cluster of trees at the
apex of a small hill, I was feeling just as grim.

“
Look,” Octavius said,
sweeping a hand in front of him.

There was a small cemetery
on my parents’ property that I had never known about.  It
looked like a family plot—all the head stones shared the same last
name.  Marjorie Feehan.  Tom Feehan.  There were
about two dozen head stones in all, mostly belonging to men. 
The little cemetery was fenced in, with a small sign that had grown
unreadable with the rigors of time and the weather.

And half of the graves were
dug up, caved in, or empty.

“
What’s this?” I asked,
frowning.

“
You wondered where they
got the organic parts for Byron,” Octavius said.  “Here’s your
answer.”

My stomach churned. 
“He’s made of dead bodies?”

“
Looks like.”

I opened the gate, and it
creaked softly.  I went into the cemetery, peering into the
closest open grave.

There was nothing. 
Not even a coffin.

“
How can you be sure?” I
asked.  “Maybe they were just moved to a different
cemetery…”

Octavius dropped the shovel
and went to the other side of the graveyard.  “Look
here.”

I stood at his side and
looked into the grave he indicated.  There was a body in
there.  A fresh body.

It was missing its legs
from the thighs down.  Byron had just recently gotten new
knees and calves.

I covered my mouth, feeling
the bile rise in my throat.  “What…?”  The grave marker
said that it was John Feehan, and that he had died in the eighteen
fifties.  “How is that possible?”

 “
There are two
options I can think of.  Either someone has been moving fresh
bodies into this graveyard from somewhere else, or they were doing
experiments back then and preserving their dead for just this
use.”  Octavius cast a glance at me.  “You still like
him?”

I thought of our brief
kiss, and it actually didn’t bother me that much.  Whatever
Byron was made of, he was young—like, a few weeks young. 
Octavius was old.  Probably a few hundred years or
something.  It wasn’t much weirder to kiss a
corpse.

“
He didn’t choose to be
made like this,” I said.  “That was his Father.”

“
It’s evil business to
disturb graves,” Octavius said.  “Should we really free
Byron?  What if he’s dangerous?”

“
He would never purposely
hurt me,” I said firmly.

“
Purposely,” Octavius
scoffed.

I wandered to another
grave, looking in.  I recognized the name on the
tombstone.  I had seen it on one of the schematics.  “I
think this is where they were going to get his eye
from.”

“
We can’t interfere with
this kind of thing,” he said, recoiling.

I jumped into the grave,
thumbing back the corpse’s eyelid.  Sure enough, the eyes were
intact.

“
Help me get this out,” I
said.

“
What are you
doing
?” Octavius asked.  He looked like he was going to
be sick.

I straightened, reaching a
hand up to him.  “Don’t you love me?”

His face softened. 
“Yes.”

“
Don’t you want me to be
happy?”

“
Of course I do,
Calliope.”

“
I want to finish working
on Byron.   That would make me happy.”

Octavius shuddered, but
jumped into the grave.  “Okay,” he said, “but let’s do this as
fast as possible before I pass out.”

I had inherited a love of
getting down and dirty from my dad and performed numerous
dissections with his help, including experimenting on cadavers, so
it didn’t bother me to work with the body myself.

We decided the entire body
was too much to drag into the house, and a cursory check of the
other organs – including the below-the-belt parts Byron needed –
showed the rest of the body wasn’t in nearly as good
condition.  Only the eye would work.

So I detached the head from
the rest of the body while Octavius threw up in the bushes, and
Byron greeted me with a smile when I dropped the head onto the
table in the lab.  Its jaw dropped open, gaping at the lab
blindly.

Byron touched the head, and
when he saw the intact eye, he grew excited.  “You found
it!”

I grinned.  “Ready for
surgery?”

Chapter
Thirty-Eight

I'd prepped as if I were
performing an operation on a living person: scrubbing my arms and
hands in a huge basin in the back of the lab.  I didn't think
it was all necessary, considering I was working on dead tissue, but
I had no idea if the manner in which Byron was animated made him
susceptible to infection.  And I wasn't particularly keen on
finding out, one way or the other.

Octavius scrubbed up as
well.

“
I could use your help,” I
told him, “but if you're not willing, I need you out of the
room.”

Octavius grunted. 
“I'm willing.  But don't you think your dad will notice if you
give Byron a new eye?”

“
And he wouldn't notice
the motor?” I smacked his arm.  “You worry too
much.”

“
You
don't worry
enough,” he said, but there was a ghost of a smile on his
lips.

So that's how we ended up
with clamps holding Byron's eye open, Octavius holding a light over
Byron's face, and me wielding a needle and thread.

Life sure was
weird.

It went quickly, and with
very little in the way of fluids getting in the way; Octavius was
pretty good about noticing and suctioning.  Within a couple of
hours, Byron was looking around the lab with his new eye.  I
grinned at Octavius.

“
There's very little honor
in grave desecration,” Octavius said, but he looked slightly
pleased nonetheless.

I snuggled up to him. 
“And there's honor in seducing a woman with your siren
powers?”

He looked surprised. 
“Of course.”

Byron came up to us. 
It was a measure of how happy he was that he could see that he
didn't even notice how Octavius and I were touching. 
“Peripheral vision!” he crowed.  “And three-dimensions! 
I never knew how beautiful it could be!”

“
I'm glad it's working
out,” I said.  “If only my parents were gone for a couple more
days, we could finish this up quick.”

“
There's still
some...logistical problems,” Octavius pointed out quickly. 
“It's likely you wouldn't be able to finish even if you had more
time.”

“
Logistical
problems?”

The pleasant expression
faded from Octavius's face, and he appeared fierce.  “You
cannot start his engine, Calliope.”

“
Oh, that.”  I
smirked.  “If you're so opposed to the idea, why don't you do
it?”

“
Do...it?”

Byron frowned.  “I
don't understand.”

“
Does it have to be a
woman who fuels?” I asked.  “Or just a warm body?  What
kind of energy does it need?”

“
Oh,” Byron said. 
“It would have to be a woman, of course.  It needs to be a
natural act to fuel an unnatural form.”

“
There's nothing natural
about corpse f--”

“
Back off,” I told
Octavius firmly, sitting in a chair.  “There's no need for
that.”

Byron frowned at me. 
“You need fuel.  I've been selfish.”

I waved a hand.  “I
just need to eat and sleep.  Not a big deal.  I'll order
a veggie pizza or something.”

“
Pizza?”

I frowned.  “You've
never had pizza?  You're missing out.”

Octavius kissed my
cheek.  “I'll get your pizza.  Go take a
shower.”

“
Good idea,” I said. 
“See you in a bit?”

He nodded, then took my
face in his hands and laid his mouth upon mine.  My body sang
a descant, but I wanted more.  I ran my hands over his chest,
but he pulled them off.

“
Not here,” he whispered,
looking toward Byron.  “It'd be cruel.”

He was right.  I have
to say, I was pleased he was taking Byron's feelings into
consideration, even if it was probably because we couldn't sate our
frustrations.

I pulled away, and he
streaked out the door.

Cool hands wrapped around
my stomach.  I jumped, then looked up to see Byron
overhead.  “What are you doing?”

“
If he gets to touch you,
I should as well,” he said mildly.  “I need to understand your
dimensions.”

It was the most romantic
thing I'd heard in my life.  I turned around and pulled his
head down to mine; I had to.  He kissed back with a spirit
that surprised me, and I pressed against him without
fear.

He broke the kiss.  “I
feel like I was made to love you,” he said.

It was funny; I felt
similarly.  But I couldn't tell him, not with Octavius running
to do my bidding.  So I did the next best thing and showed
him.

We were kissing vigorously
on his table when Octavius walked in with the pizza.

Oops.

Chapter
Thirty-Nine

Octavius stared between the
Byron and I, his eyes flicking back and forth.  Slowly, so
slowly, a cloud of fury darkened his face.  Lightning flashed
deep in his dark eyes.

“
What… is… this?” he
hissed.  The shadow of his wings rose behind him, arching
above his head, shiny and dark and somehow sharper than they had
looked before.  “I leave the room for pizza, and you…
you…”

“
Octavius,” I said,
wiggling out from underneath Byron.  “I can
explain.”

“
Explain what?  That
you want to make love to a
corpse
?”

He flung the pizza box
against the wall and it went everywhere with a delicious meaty
scent.

“
No!”

Byron looked hurt. 
“Really?”

“
Yes.  I mean, no,
but—ugh.”  I rounded on Octavius, but he was already
moving.

He tackled Byron, hauling
back to punch him in the face with all his strength.  “How
dare you take advantage of her!” he yelled as he struck him again
and again.  “Knowing who—what—she is!”

“
What?” I asked, and then
I shook myself, knowing I wouldn’t get answers until they stopped
fighting.  I grabbed Octavius’s shoulders and yanked him off
of Byron.  He glared at me, chest rising and falling with hard
breath.  “What do you
mean
what I am?  That’s the
second time I’ve heard something like that today, and it’s starting
to really make me angry.”

“
You.”  Octavius
shoved a finger in my face.  “You have no right to ask
questions when you were just trying to cheat on me.  How dare
you?  As if it’s not bad enough that he’s assembled out of
dead bodies.”

“
I wasn’t trying to cheat
on you,” I said, hanging onto his arm as tears pricked my
eyes.  “I don’t know what came over me.  I’m just so—so
confused, and so lost.  My life in the last two weeks has
become so weird.  I don’t like it!”

I dropped onto his chest,
sobbing, and for a moment it looked like Octavius wouldn’t comfort
me.  Then his arms enveloped me, and he rubbed my hair gently,
making soothing sounds.

“
I know,” he murmured, “I
know.”  I could see Byron looking stricken out of the corner
of my eye.  “I don’t blame you.  It’s
him
. 
He’s been playing dumb all along to get you on his side.  He
knows that whoever mates you first…”

I jerked back. 
“What?”  Octavius’s mouth snapped shut.  “What were you
going to say?”

“
He was going to say that
whoever mates you first will be your king,” Byron said, and now he
looked kind of smug—and also not as innocent as he did
before.

“
In order to have a king,
I’d have to be a queen,” I said, giving a half-hearted
laugh.

“
Don’t tell her, you
fool,” Octavius spat.  “She doesn’t need to know about her
destiny.”

I stepped out of the circle
of his arms.  “Okay.  Yeah.  I do.”

Byron touched my
shoulder.  “You are the one destined to bring about the
Joining.  You will one day be very powerful, and whoever mates
you—”

Octavius slugged him. 
Byron crumpled.

“
Wait a minute, wait a
minute,” I said.  “Joining?  Powers?  Mating? 
If you’re accusing Byron of taking advantage of me to be my king,
then what are
you
doing?  You admitted to using your
siren powers to seduce me!  You’re no better than he
is!”

“
No, Calliope, my love,”
Octavius said, stepping toward me with his arms out, but I evaded
him.

I tore at my hair, staring
up at the ceiling.  “Why? 
Why did I ever have to
leave Georgia
?”

Pushing his arms away, I
ran up the stairs, up the secret passage, and into my
bedroom.  I dragged my armoire in front of the door, and then
picked up the heaviest box I could find and hauled it up the
stairs, jamming it in front of the secret passage so it couldn’t
open, either.