The Devil Dances (34 page)

I went to help her with her last bit of luggage, but she jerked away from me and gave me a hostile look. She dropped her luggage in the backseat. Then, to my surprise, slid in beside it. She slammed the door in a petulant way, and waited patiently for me to get in and start the Jeep.

I thought about saying something, but I found I wasn’t in the mood to argue. Some leaves had fallen from the elms and maples high above us, gathering against the windshield. An early fall just getting started, I thought, as I swiped them away. There might even be frost tonight. It wouldn’t surprise me. I got in and started the engine and put the Jeep into drive.

“What happened to the wedding ring quilt?” I finally asked ten minutes later as we headed away from Zion, away from the Swartzcopf colony and all its horrors.

Since the incident with Cernunnos, we had barely spoken. A few words here and there, everything polite, but nothing of consequence. Last night, I’d slept alone in our room, while Vivian slept in Mary’s room. If things weren’t so tense between us, I might have made a tasteless sex joke about the two of them together, but it I knew it wouldn’t have helped break the ice. Besides, I wasn’t in a very joking mood.

“I left it with Mary. I didn’t want it anymore.” Vivian’s words were clipped and businesslike, chosen for maximum impact.

I drove in silence. About an hour in, I found I was sore from my various injuries and the cramped space. I was tired from lack of sleep and feeling irritable, restless. Ascension had done nothing to change such things. I kept thinking about the last few days, and if I could have done things differently. Even so, I had to ask myself, would I have? Probably not.

More than anything, I was annoyed by the grim silence in the backseat. I was surprised I could feel so human, so miserable, despite everything. Despite being what I was. What I had become.

At last, I said, “That was supposed to be for our almost-wedding.”

Vivian was watching the landscape flicker by but she turned her head to face me in the rearview mirror. I saw her pale face, her long, flaming red hair, her shocking, blue-green eyes, so much like my dad’s. “How dare you?” she said.

I stiffened in my seat but didn’t answer.

“How fucking dare you, Nick? You knew. You knew who my father was. You knew it was
him
. You knew I had wondered all my life, and you had the answer, but still you didn’t tell me.”

“Maybe I wanted to protect you,” I answered, more angrily than I’d meant to. My voice faintly vibrated with my anger. “For what it’s worth, he isn’t much of a father. You aren’t missing out on anything, believe me. He left me alone for years. He left me in foster care. He left me to fend for myself on the streets. He only came to me when I was useful to him.
That’s
who our dear father is.”

“That isn’t the reason you kept it from me, and you know it,” she hissed with narrowed eyes. “At least be honest with yourself, Nick, even if you won’t be honest with anyone else. You didn’t tell me because you knew I’d find our situation uncomfortable and you’ve enjoyed fucking me too much. You never wanted it to end.”

I lit a cigarette and realized I was walking on a proverbial minefield. As we started moving out of the deep country and back into the more developed areas, I snorted out smoke and said, “Fine. You want the truth? I’ll tell you the truth, then. I love you, Vivian. I love you like I’ve never loved anyone in my life. I
burn
for you. That’s why I didn’t tell you.”

She didn’t answer. She didn’t say anything at all.

“Fuck it. You said once that you can barely control yourself around me. Well, it’s the same for me.”

She muttered something into her lap. It took me a moment to figure out what she’d said.

Of course you burn. You’re the goddamn Devil.

“Is that the reason? Are you afraid of me? Because nothing’s really changed, Viv. I’m still Nick Englebrecht… whatever else I might be. Ascension hasn’t changed me in the least.”

It took her a moment to respond. “Nick, I couldn’t care less if you were an angel, a demon, a devil, or a man,” she said. I could hear the tears in her voice. “That’s not the point I’m trying to make here.”

The tears hurt me. They made me angry. I swallowed against the lump in my throat. “What
is
your point?”

“You
lied
to me. You lied to keep me with you. You lied because you want to fuck me, the same as my teacher. He wanted to own me, to possess me…”

“You’re comparing me to a pedophile?” I shouted.

“I don’t care if you are a Man of Sin. I don’t care if you’re the fucking Anti-Christ. But if you can’t be honest with me, then we have no future together.”

We fell silent after that spat, and spent the rest of the drive in our own heads, thinking our own virulent thoughts. Vivian had a point, I suppose. Trying to make daemons be truthful was a little bit like teaching pigs to sing. It just annoyed all the parties involved. I smoked my pack down to nothing and concentrated on feeling angry. If I felt angry, maybe I wouldn’t feel so guilty. So helpless. So much like a bastard.

I thought about what my father had said.
Even Vivian will abandon you in time, when she finds out what you’re
really
made of.

A few hours later, we finally reached Blackwater and I pulled around to the lot behind Vivian’s apartment building and shut down the engine. I got out of the Jeep and opened the back door, offering her my hand, but Vivian slid out the opposite way, carrying her knapsack over one shoulder. She came around the Jeep so we could face each other in the parking lot like two modern-day gunslingers with an unsettled grievance.

Vivian eyed me steadily, fearlessly, even if I was the Devil. “You saved me from Cernunnos, Nick, and for that, I’m grateful. I owe you one. But the truth of the matter is, I don’t want to see you again, not in the romantic sense.”

I stared long and hard at her, trying hard to hide how her words crippled me. Years of street-living helped. I’d learned a long time ago how to mask my weaknesses. “So this is it, then.”

Vivian lifted her chin. A warm breeze blew a long crimson tendril across her freckled nose. “I don’t want you coming around. I don’t want you teaching me magick. In fact, I think it might be best if one of us considers leaving this town.”

“I take it this means no almost-wedding. No almost-house.”

Her mouth quirked up on one side but her eyes remained cold and dead. “Maybe I’ll be able to forgive you one day, Nick, just not right now. Maybe not ever. You should know I can carry a grudge a long, long time.”

“You don’t want to make an enemy of me, Viv,” I warned her.

She blinked and her eyes flashed all white for a moment—that scary white that stemmed from her power as the Devil’s only begotten daughter. I could tell she was unafraid of me, one of the few in this town who were. “Can I ask you something, Nick?”

I kicked at some gravel. “Ask.”

“If Cernunnos hadn’t said anything, if I had never learned it from him, when would you have told me about our father? After our almost-wedding or after our real wedding?”

I stood there in the long, dark coat I’d recently bought to replace the one I’d ruined, and said nothing. It was the only one in the store that fit me. It was pitch black, and fell almost to my heels, with deep pockets and a buttoned Inverness. It made me feel very cowboy-ish as I stood there in the parking lot, facing down my girlfriend and now greatest and most powerful enemy. But I knew I wasn’t a cowboy. Cowboys were heroes, and I was far from that.

“Nick?”

I knew she would see through any lie, so I didn’t say anything at all. Big, silent cowboy type. Yeah, that’s me.

“That’s what I thought,” she said, and turned to head toward the back door of the apartment.

I watched her walk away from me. “Vivian,” I said, and she stopped in mid-step, though she didn’t turn around. All I saw was her long, red hair sparking in the daylight. “I love you. I never lied about that. No matter what I’ve done, or how I’ve screwed up, I never meant to hurt you. I love you too much for that. I want you to know that.”

“Nick,” she answered, “you told me once that you’re just a regular guy, but you’re not.”

“How’s that, Viv?”

She sighed just before she walked away from me. “Because you’re the Prince of Lies.”

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