Stay (2 page)

“Orona…
I wish you would let me love you.”

“Never,
” I whispered and watched his eyes spark with brewing tempests. The skies blackened with his mood and crackled as the waves crashed harder against the nearby rocks. Yet even in the force of the oncoming gale I clenched my fists and stood firm.

It was for this reaso
n he first fell in love with me.

For two thousand years I had walked this earth, cursed with the compulsion to afflict and then restore true love. I became the angel of judgment, the precursor to their heartache and pain, the grace of another woman’s lips on his collar, the scent of her perfume on his skin… I had arranged all these to test and to tempt. For it was easy to love while untried and pure. Forgiveness for some people came at too high a price and trust was not easily won.

Once, a simple look was enough. I could look at them and
 
know
 in my heart that they would last, that they would spend the rest of their lives together. Yet that was a time when men protected their women, not because they were property, but because they loved. 

Not like this new world where women
were too strong to let men care for them. Not this cruel world where women died alone and unloved because they no longer trust. When they forgot how to trust, men neglected to remember their strength. And I had watched this old world abandon its first love, even itself in a search for everything meaningless. 

They forgot that
true love was worth fighting for above all things. 

I had watched empires rise and fall, disease and famine sweep over the earth. Love remained the same
, only now it was much rarer. Now they tried to paint it with different colors, sex and lust, obsession. But all these were only illusions for the truth.

Pictures of barely clothed women flashed across on skyscraper walls. Songs played from an endless sea of boxes and speakers across the city. On my rare off days I could almost stand to listen and learn how much the world had changed.
 

I heard them now as I walked through the city streets in my cloak. After a thousand years my clothes had fallen out of fashion. And I had grown so used to my tunic and sandals I had no care to keep up with men’s fickle taste. If I were truly honest, I had not altered my appearance in two thousand years for one shameful reason. I wanted
 
him
 to look down on me and remember.

A lesser reason might be the fact I was no longer human. Cursed immortality would do that to anyone like me. I no longer felt cold or heat, no
r the silky feel of the dress 
he
 had given me brushing against my bare skin. And when I wore my cloak I was only a blur at the edge of your vision, gooseflesh on your skin. People walked through me and blamed it on their imagination.

You see, another side effect of man’s downfall was they had also forgotten to trust that still small voice in their heads. The one that assured them there was no scientific explanation for unexplained phenomen
a. My very existence defied all their explanations.

The city was beautiful and wicked, but it was a false beauty compared to the things I had seen. When he cursed me I could feel
 
everything
, from contentment to sorrow, but never love. He had given me the ability to see it in others and destroy it when it was false or save it if true. Yet the only thing that managed to stir me these days was the memory of my death. Only my memories kept me going. Vengefully I often wished he still knew my every thought and suffered the recall of our every moment together.

Thinking of Seid made my cloak slip enough to expose an outline of my features. I never would have noticed my mistake if the dark
-skinned boy coming my way hadn’t pointed and began to shout curses to his friends. Other people were turning and beginning to take notice, the old couple clutching onto each other to ward away the winter chill, the little girl picking their pocket for loose change, black-market vendors dealing on the side. 

Breathing in deeply, an ancient but unnecessary habit now, I drew the fabric tighter and focused on my mission. For several minutes I ran faster than their eyes could follow, beating myself on the inside for my
carelessness.

“Y
ou must never be seen by anyone.”
His words echoed in my memories, settled deep in my bones and made me shiver. I couldn’t think about Seid now, not when I needed to focus.

My new mission was close. When I turned the colors in my eyes just right I could see his aura through the chaos of buildings and people. And the closer I drifted the faster I was, until I was no longer walking but floating, flying through every obstacle in my path.

Looking up at the buildings, I noticed the flashing lights had been mercifully left behind. Once his building was in sight my pulse began to sputter, to race and soar. I could feel the budding newness of his affection for her in my chest and savored it. This was the closest I came to feeling what they felt these days.

My vision cleared once I stood outside the window before them. All sound ceased to exist, save their words and breath
s. The café was dimly lit, a very old nightclub from the looks of it. Wordless music crooned up from below, horns and the strokes of piano keys. Feet shuffled in rhythm to the soft beat of a drum.

That was when I heard their voices for the first time.

“You look so perfect tonight, Lissa,” he practically growled in her ear.

She giggled and
answered in a sultry tone, “Good enough to eat, sugar?”

Chuckling low
, he kissed her on the lips. “That’s right, baby.”

I frowned as
the brick wall kept blocking my vision and realized too late I wasn’t peering through a window. I would have to go inside to better see. Walking through walls used to scare me senseless until I got the hang of it. Now I brushed the feeling aside as I squeezed past the gritty matter. The front room was built to disguise the underground world beneath it. It was worn down like the rest of this city and no one would ever believe the cultural haven it sheltered.

For a brief moment I recalled brilliant jewels and brassy music, short dresses lined with tassels
of an era gone by and women’s laughter over the chink of forbidden liquid.

The present incarnation
pulled me back to the present. I had passed through the secret door, walked down a short flight of stairs and now watched from inside the smoky club. Here women still dressed to please and men of a higher class sought their nightly trophies. On stage the jazz band played and at the center of the dance floor my newest assignment drank their fill of each other.

When the tempo began to drag into a slower tune, she tilted her head back to expose her neck. Her long brown locks
trailed to her red-clad hips. He tightened his hold on her waist as he kissed her neck. And I could feel the thrill in her heart temporarily mask a quiet sorrow.

Yet there was nothing from the man.

I frowned and turned my eyes to the rest of the establishment. Where was the budding newness of his affection I so strongly felt outside?

“Excuse me?” A deep, rough voice came from behind me, over my shoulder and I froze.

He cannot see me.

Convinced that he was speaking to another patron
, I nearly walked on. Perhaps I was not close enough to them to feel the man’s love for this girl?

“Come back to my place
,” the man whispered into the woman’s ear. Her emerald eyes sparkled as she batted her lashes and pulled back her full lips in a saucy grin.

I shook my head. Sex was never the
key to a man’s unwavering devotion. Yet she was considering it, hoping it would give him reason enough to keep her around longer,
this
time. I paused and shut my eyes as a flurry of images and sensations flashed past my closed lids. It took some time, depending on the difficulty of my mission, to grow accustomed to their emotions. Rather than simple feeling, human emotions often carried scattered memories and impressions. I pushed the usual discomfort aside.

I took another step and gasped when a hard hand clasped my shoulder and spun me firmly round.

Impossible…

No one
had touched me in two thousand years.

Yet his hand remained planted on my shoulder and I followed the shape of his muscled arm to the chest attached to it. His black shirt was a tight fit and in the dim blue and red lights s
eemed to flash several colors. He bent down so his eyes met my line of sight.

My
mouth dropped the moment I breathed in his scent.

He smel
led like the skies before a rain and the sea air as it wafted into the harbor…

My vision blackened and suddenly broke through in brilliant flashes of light around his face. I could feel the colors growing, shifting and glowing in my eyes, beneath my skin.
I clenched my fists as I fought for control, convinced I had lost it for the first time. Had I wanted him so badly in my memories that they came to life?

He clutched my waist to keep
me from falling down the short flight of stairs. A frown creased his brow as he said, “Whoa there, lady, take it easy. I didn’t mean to scare you. It’s just my job to check everyone before they come in. You got any ID?”

I
shook my head slowly and watched as those eyes,
his
eyes, shifted from the dance floor and back to me a few times. Holding up a couple of fingers, he nodded to someone over my shoulder and returned his attention to me. Something flickered in those dark blue orbs akin to recognition. Clenching his firm jaw he sighed and then nodded to himself.

“Look
, lady,” he began, “I’m really sorry but you can’t stay here without any ID. Any chance you can find your way back up?”

I was trembling. Just hearing his voice again set every forgotten nerve in my body on edge. My flesh was on fire beneath my cloak w
here his fingers touched. Still, I had forgotten my voice for too long and could not remember how to speak.

My cloak
.

How could he see me when I had refastened my cloak once again? It was such a thin, flimsy thing, like a second skin I wore so often I forgot. But no human had ever seen me beneath it before.

It has to be him.

His frown deepened, voice dropping to a softer unused tone. “You’re shaking all over… You okay?”

No one else has the power to see.

My mouth opened but no sound came out.
I was forbidden to speak to the humans. And even though he had Seid’s face, the curse commanded my attention. Oddly enough, I could feel what he felt.

He feels nothing toward me.

He did not recognize me.

His eyes flickered up as two pairs of feet approached us from behind. Immediately his arm curled me closer to his chest and his eyes darkened.

Lissa and her date were speaking in hushed tones, but I heard them clear as the true light.

“—so hard you
won’t know what hit you, babe,” the man was saying.

Lissa giggled and playfully swatted him with her clutch. “Derek!”

They paused on our level at the head of the stair. Another girl brought their jackets to them. As Derek helped Lissa into her fur jacket her gaze locked on to the man holding me.

That was when I felt it with such horrifying clarity. The aura I had followed across a country, across a city, was burning brightly between them. Invisible to them, the golden strands were weak now, but the link between unmistakable.
It was linking this man, the man who wore
his face,
to her, Lissa.

The man holding me tensed and clutched
me tighter to him again, his words stuck on the roof of his mouth.

Instead the other girl who handed out and hung cloaks offered, “Good job
tonight. See you tomorrow, Lissa,” as Derek and Lissa walked through the secret door.

And to my horror I watched the threads stretch and fade that linked them
to me.

Chapter 2

Ties that Bind

His chest heaved and brushed
against my arm, eliciting prickles of feeling up my spine. My heart was being carved out of my chest all over again and I had not even begun to test them yet. Rather I felt I was the one being tested.

What sort of cruel punishment is this?

I wanted to cry out to the gathering storm clouds the humans were oblivious to. Winds were shifting from the north, clouds gathering into a thick blanket filled with promise. A blizzard was coming, the first to strike this city in some time. But things were changing constantly out there in the world of men. When they forgot how to love they lost the will to care for their fragile earth. Now things were shifting again, a sign of my hopelessness, a sign of the growing darkness. And in my heart of hearts I knew I was failing in my task.