The Curse: Touch of Eternity (The Curse series) (19 page)

Payton swallowed. Even after all these years, it was hard to report the death of his youngest brother. He cleared his throat and squeezed Sam’s hand. “If Kyle hadn’t died!”

“Kyle?”

“Yes, the youngest of the alliance. He wasn’t supposed to be there at all that night, but he rode after the others, secretly following them. Cathal had spotted him in the distance and immediately sent someone back to take Kyle home. But it was already too late. Kyle had been attacked—stabbed from behind with a short dagger. He had drowned in his own blood.

“That cowardly and perfidious attack changed everything. Now everyone wanted to take revenge. No one stopped to consider the consequences. Within a few minutes, they had charged the enemy’s castle. It was the middle of the night, and most of the inhabitants were asleep.”

“What happened then?” Sam asked.

The terrible pictures raced around in Payton’s head. He couldn’t stop the images, but he couldn’t tell Sam what he saw. Couldn’t explain his guilt or what he had done.

“Payton… what happened?”

“It doesn’t matter. The only thing that is important is that fate was determined by that moment. A curse was laid on Cathal and the warriors with him that night. A curse that took everything away from them.”

“A curse? Did the men believe in things like that?”

“It has nothing to do with believing. You don’t have to believe something or want to acknowledge it if you have to live with it every day.”

“Well, what kind of curse was it?”

“The worst. Each and every one of them was cursed to live a life without any feeling—without love, without warmth, without pain. Only emptiness. And they would suffer that for all eternity, because they were never going to die.”

Delaware

R
yan was sitting in his dad’s police car. The window was down, but there wasn’t much of a breeze in the sticky summer heat.

“Dad, do we really need to deal with this now? I have a whole year to figure this out.”

“If you’re going to want to attend the police academy—”

“Yeah, I know. I need to take some community college classes first. But I’m not a hundred percent sure whether I even want to be a cop.”

“I think you need to give it serious consideration. It’s a family tradition—starting with your grandfather—and I always thought you’d make a great cop. You’ve been talking about it ever since you were a kid.”

“Yeah, but every little boy wants to be a policeman or a fireman. That doesn’t mean it actually happens when he grows up.”

Ryan stuffed his earphones in to indicate that the conversation was over. He bobbed his head to the music.

His father shook his head.

“Hey, Dad, stop the car. I’ll get out here.”

Ryan pointed to two of his friends on the sidewalk. He snagged his backpack out of the backseat.

“Fine, but we’ll talk more tonight. You need to have a plan.”

“Yeah, OK. Bye!” Ryan slammed the door and ran after his friends.

“Hey, Justin. Wait!”

They thumped each other on the back, and Kim asked herself how the coolest guys in the school could behave so idiotically without being laughed out of town. Then again, she wasn’t exactly calling them out.

“Greetings, Ms. Journalist,” Ryan said when he finally acknowledged that she was there.

“Hi, Ryan,” Kim said.

“Say, have you heard from Sam? Does she miss me?”

“I don’t think so. I think she’s been a little distracted.”

“What do you mean? She’s not seeing some guy in a skirt, is she?”

Ryan seemed a little shaken by the idea. Perhaps to boost his self-esteem, he whistled at two fifteen-year-old girls on the other side of the road.

Kim snuggled up to Justin, smiling to herself. “Well, from what she said, she seems to really like what she’s found under the skirt.”

“What? Is she crazy?”

“Ryan, Ryan… Have you forgotten Ashley already? Why should you be the only one to have fun this summer?”

They arrived at the lake. Kim spread out her towel and Justin lay down next to her. Ryan rolled up his jeans and sat down in the sand. Kim took off her T-shirt, and Justin zealously rubbed sunscreen onto her back. The black bikini really looked good on her, Ryan had to admit. He wondered why it had taken him so long to notice Kim and Sam. They were both pretty cute. Oh well, better late than never, he thought.

“The thing with Ashley is over, by the way,” Ryan said. “That was so last year.”

“Last year? The first week Ashley was here, you were glued together,” Kim retorted. She was, after all, the editor for the school paper; she noticed everything.

“I thought that would help me forget about Sam, but trust me, it just made everything worse. Please, Kim… Sam really means a lot to me. Can’t you try to put in a good word?”

“All right, you idiot. But if you screw up again, even I won’t be able to help you anymore.”

Kim turned onto her stomach and dug a magazine out of her bag. Justin trickled some sand onto her back until she jabbed him in his side.

“Stop it!”

“And what if I kiss every single speck of sand off your skin later?”

That was too much romance for Ryan. He jumped up and pretended to gag.

“God, you two are disgusting! I’m off, see you later.”

Scotland

W
ow!”

Slowly, my fingers brushed over Payton’s fully healed wound as we sat next to the trail. His skin was even. Only a milky-white line betrayed where the piece of glass had dug into his wrist. At the most, it now looked like an old, faded scar.

Everything was starting to come together in my mind. I looked into Payton’s eyes. I saw love, hope, and something dark. I stroked the delicate scar again and hesitantly asked, “And what would happen, for example, if one of these cursed men got hurt?”

I was afraid of the answer, and I started to shake, but Payton’s strong hand calmed me.

“Well, the wound would heal within a very short time.”

Payton held my hands tight.

“So,” I asked, “you can’t feel anything?”

My fear of this second answer was even greater: I loved him, and he couldn’t feel anything? Although I had promised to believe whatever he told me, I hoped that couldn’t be true.

“Sam, do you understand what I’ve been telling you? Do you understand that I am one of the cursed?”

“Yes,” I said softly. No wonder he’d been such a mystery to me. “But I can’t quite wrap my head around how that can be—or what it means for me. You’re telling me that you’re actually immortal?”

“I haven’t aged a day in two hundred seventy years.”

“Isn’t that a good thing? Doesn’t everyone want to stay young and live forever?”

Payton grabbed my upper arms.

“You know absolutely nothing! How can you even think that?” He was so mad he was almost shaking me.

“Have you been listening to me at all?” he growled. “What kind of life do you think it is, to live without feeling? When you wake up and know exactly what your day is going to be like. Colorless, cold, no pain, no joy. What it can be like to live far longer than all your family and friends, to stand at their graves and not even be able to shed a single tear of sorrow. Not even be able to mourn when your parents die, or your nieces and nephews. What it’s like to have to hide, because you don’t change, because you’ll always be nineteen.”

He let his arms drop.

“I’m sorry. I wasn’t thinking.” I felt bad about what I’d said, and I felt terrible that he was suffering so much. “Please, Payton, sit down with me and explain everything to me. I want to understand. I want to understand you.”

He was obviously tortured by this curse.

“Can you imagine what it is like to be dead? That’s what it is like for me. But yet, I’m alive. I taste nothing. The best food is the same as a handful of dirt for me. None of the world’s alcohol can make me drunk, and not even the most beautiful song can reach my innermost. I would rather be
dead than live like this—you can take my word on that. Imagine the most beautiful sunset you have ever seen, the fantastic colors, the warm glow on your skin. The feelings that spread inside you in such a moment. Happiness, contentedness, or admiration. That’s what my life was like. But once I was cursed, that all changed. I can see the colors, but I feel nothing.”

“But that doesn’t make sense. I’ve seen you fighting with your feelings. Now, for example. You’re suffering, you’re tormenting yourself, and you’re relieved to have told me your secret. That’s feeling!”

Payton knelt down in front of me, took my hands, and said, “Yes, that’s exactly it. You are changing everything… I can’t tell you how much you’re turning my life upside down. Since I first saw you, I can’t be without you. And ever since I met you, I am starting to be able to feel again.”

“Why? And why me?”

“I don’t know.”

“What do you feel?”

“Pain!” He laughed.

“Pain? That’s awful!”

“No… I mean… yes. It is awful, but I am so glad to feel anything at all. You’re like a drug to me. I need to have more and more of you.”

“Is that good or bad?”

“When I am really close to you, like now, it feels terrible, as if I were burning. At first, the pain took my breath away, but now I’m getting used to it and can cope with it quite well. When it gets too much, I move away from you, and then it gets better again. Sometimes, it’s as if I were caught
between two concrete blocks that are pressing on my lungs, just strongly enough not to squeeze me to death.”

“You call that coping?” Instinctively, I stepped back a few feet, but he pulled me back toward him.

“I have everything more or less under control now. Trust me.”

I nodded. How insane! And the craziest thing about it was that I hadn’t the slightest doubt that Payton was telling me the truth. Scotland did seem magical, and if I were ever to meet a cursed person, Scotland seemed like a logical place. Plus, I had seen his miraculous healing process with my own eyes.

“Payton, I need to ask you something.”

“Yes, what?”

I knew I was about to make a fool of myself, but I really wanted to know. “Two hundred years is a long time. How many women did you have?”

Payton looked at me, somewhat dazed. Then he fell back into the grass and laughed. He pulled me down and brushed a lock of hair off my forehead.

“Silly girl! I’ve been telling you how lonely and empty my life has been up until now. I tell you that I burn when I’m near you, and you ask me something like that… What would I want with a woman? I couldn’t feel anything before!”

I blushed. “I mean… it’s none of my business anyway.”

“If I could, I would shut you up by kissing you, just to make you stop asking such stupid questions!”

I wondered if I’d heard him right. Had he said kiss? Did that mean he would never be able to kiss me?

“What would it feel like for you if we were to kiss?” I asked. “Just in theory?”

Payton grinned cheekily.

“Well, theoretically, I would probably die doing so, because a mere touch of yours feels like a burning-hot poker drilling into my skin. But I will only know for sure when I have tried it.”

“No, no, no,” I said. “That’s out of the question. I am not going to do that to you!” I slid farther away from him.

“Sam, please understand. I am hungering for more. I want more. I just have to know what it’s like to be even closer to you. I would rather die than not know. I can’t breathe when you touch me, but I don’t want to breathe anymore if you can’t touch me. I don’t know what we can do, but I can’t let you go. I actually hope that the pain will last the next thousand years. Then I will at least know that I am still a human. Sam, please, stay with me today. Don’t go away. I want to feel you!”

“Oh, Payton!”

I wanted to throw myself into his arms, to kiss him and stroke him, but I was so scared. Then he took my hand and placed it on his heart. It was pounding against my fingers, and he stiffened, but he held my hand there. He put his own hand shakily around my waist and pulled me even closer.

“Dear God, please give me strength,” he prayed. Our lips touched. He briefly twitched back. Then he didn’t resist.