CHAPTER 23 Breakup
When Alex returned from seeing Catalin, she discovered that Jaklin was still there, but crying. "He's gone," she said. "Missy! Mikhail is gone!"
Alex realized that she meant more than just Mikhail, but also what the three of them had together. Their sacred romance had disintegrated. The purpose that had gathered them into one had abandoned them.
Jaklin reached for Alex, and they clung to each other. For Alex, the hurt was growing ever deeper. She'd lost not only her grandmother but now her cross as well, the one thing that had made her condition, this feverish vampirism, tolerable. She was unraveling internally.
"I was so afraid here in the house alone," Jaklin said. "With the three of us, I had such courage. I've always been a coward. But with the three of us together, when we loved and trusted each other, even when I was alone, I had courage. I feel like a child again."
"Yes," said Alex. "You were extraordinary. You must learn to have that now for yourself alone."
"I can't, Missy. Our love had transformed me."
Alex and Jaklin sat before the fire. Alex ran her fingers through Jaklin's thick hair, and then went to get the brush her grandmother had used on her own. She undid the hairpins and let it fall below Jaklin's shoulders, and Alex brushed down in long flowing strokes, feeling the rich softness of the deep chocolate strands. Alex pulled it back over Jaklin's ears and noticed the clear, creamy complexion, the pale translucence that glowed in firelight, the light within the darkness. Jaklin was goth without trying to be. No wonder I was so captivated by this girl's presence that first night in the pub, Alex thought. Jaklin's eyes were crystal clear, the dark brown almost black against the white ceramic-like surface with just a pucker of fluid at the eyelid, the long dark natural lashes.
Jaklin smiled, noticing Alex's attention. "Why do you look at me?" she asked.
"Because you are such a beauty," she answered.
"Let me brush your hair," Jaklin said. "It's like golden silk in my hands, and I crave the feel of it."
Alex touched Jaklin's breast through her blouse and lingered there.
"Don't," said Jaklin. "Get me turned on, and it'll take hours for me to come down. I want to just sit here before the fire and enjoy this quiet time together. My passion goes so deep, it can be a burden."
Alex kept her hands to herself, and let Jaklin brush her hair, felt the firm tug of it pull her head backward.
"You're not real," said Jaklin. "Your hair is too golden and reflects too much light. You're like a walking dream, and when I look at you, I love you so much it hurts."
"Since Velinar bit me, I've grown into myself. Jaklin, I realize now that I've been lost all my life. I know that I'm a vampire, but now I am not the little lost child I've always been. For the first time, I feel as though I'm actually one with the world. I've lost Mikhail. Hopefully, I'll never lose you."
"I'll never quit loving you, regardless."
"I have to learn more about what's going on with the vampires of Sinaia. But I also need to learn more about myself. I have a strange attraction toward their dark world. I feel something wonderful there, and yet I also sense great evil." Alex wouldn't tell Jaklin that she'd talked again with Alu Kard. She was afraid that she might betray her attraction to him. She knew it was dangerous, but she had to find the boundaries of this new life she'd stepped into.
Alex also realized that she'd lost her moral bearing. She felt little, perhaps no, guilt over killing the rapist and attacking the other man. She felt no remorse over feeding off people or her sexual relationship with Jaklin and Mikhail. She wanted to bite Jaklin right then. It seemed the ultimate way to experience her. To literally consume her. Yet she did have some moral weathervane because she did restrain herself.
Jaklin read her silence. "Do you wish to bite me?" asked Jaklin. "You can, you know, if you want."
Alex felt a surge of passion light up her whole body. "No," she said. "I'll love you, but I'll not violate you."
"Do you not desire me?"
Alex smiled. "More than I can say. But love must have its limits. With you, I'd be a cannibal."
Jaklin smiled and seemed more pleased than Alex had ever seen her. "Then you know how I feel about you," she said.
"We do consume each other, don't we? You are an ever-replenishing source of the nectar of life. Love."
"It seems that I could literally live off my love for you."
"But a day may well come when I have to bite you to inoculate you against vampirism."
"Or perhaps, I'll ask you to turn me, so that I'll be with you for all eternity."
"That is a really interesting question. Can I turn someone? And if I can, what kind of vampire would they become?"
"I believe a time may come," said Jaklin, "when both of us will want that question answered. Right now, I'm caught between you and Mikhail."
That night, the two slept together without Mikhail. They held each other and cried. Alex felt a deepening, hard-hurting grief that went beyond even that over her grandmother's death. She tried to sleep but shuffled around and kicked most of the night. The strange dark shapes returned to terrorize her dreams, and she had no cross for protection. Jaklin woke every time Alex moved, and grabbed her again.
The next morning, they awoke to a bleak, dreary day. They were in the kitchen making separate breakfasts, their movements at cross purposes, bumping into each other, when Mikhail called on Jaklin's cellphone. She left the room to talk to him. Alex looked out the kitchen window at the garden, greener and more perfectly managed than she'd ever seen it throughout the years her grandmother cultivated it. This is Mikhail's influence, she thought. He's done the same with me. And now I've lost him.
When Jaklin returned, Alex spoke first. "You should go, Jaklin. He needs you, and you need him. I'm a lost soul."
"I can't leave you."
"We both need to get a grip. I don't even know who I am anymore. I could use a little time alone. Where is he?"
Jaklin's lips moved but no words came out. "Say the word and I'll stay. I love you more than anything or anyone."
"I'm a vampire!" Alex shouted. "You can't trust me. Go to him!" she ordered.
As the door slammed behind Jaklin, Alex fell to her knees, great sobs of grief overcoming her. When her moaning over what she'd just done subsided, Alex closed off the rest of the windows and cracks through which sunlight filtered. It had given her a headache. She sat on the sofa staring at the wall, her mind blank.
That afternoon she called her family, one at a time. After talking to each, she sat staring at the wall before calling the next. First, she called her mother, just to hear her voice. She was distant, still peeved over the will. Alex called her father, told him about her friends dumping her. He didn't know what to say. She called Gavril, but he was too busy to talk, so she called Sonya and talked to her girls. "Are you coming to see us?" they asked. "No, not now," she replied.
When her sister got back on the phone, Sonya said, "You sound so forlorn, Alex. Is something wrong?"
"I've lost my friends."
"You'll find others," she encouraged.
"But they were the first true friends I've ever had."
She hung up the phone and fell asleep with Nălucă in her arms. She dreamt of a great argument between amorphous shapes that flitted about her — quarreling, frightening voices. The dark shapes returned but seemed unconcerned with her and were rushing along a road toward something. Just before she woke, she had a dream of a winged creature leaving the City of God and descending through the firmament. She jolted awake.
She sat on the sofa blinking and felt as though someone from the City of God was actually coming. She thought how silly this sounded while watching the last spark of sun dip behind the mountains and twilight envelop Sinaia. Alex forced herself off the sofa and fed Nălucă. She stepped out of doors barefooted, still dreamy and blurry eyed. She walked to the hearth where she'd burned her clothes and shoes the night she became a vampire. Seemed an eternity ago. She ran her hands throug
h what remained of the ashes and felt as though the remnants of her previous life in Bucharest were sifting through her fingers.
She walked to the gazebo. Perhaps Catalin would come talk to her. He didn't. She'd had such great plans to rebuild it. Now, she didn't know. The Church had turned against her. Mikhail had left her, and she'd driven off Jaklin. She didn't have the strength to even think about rebuilding it.
Alex walked to her grandmother's grave. It was amongst the trees just a few steps from the gazebo, alongside Alex's grandfather's. Alex remembered him, a small man with an easy smile and quiet manner. He had been a mathematician but rarely had work. She used to sit in his lap and he'd read to her, his voice intoning the great poetry of the ages. Alex thought of how her grandmother had encouraged her friendship with Jaklin and Mikhail. It seemed that her urging had come to naught.
She walked through the garden, felt the cold soft earth on the bottoms of her feet. She sat amongst the tomatoes, the ball-sized green fruit knocking against her skull, not caring that the moist earth soiled her bottom, and looked out at the mountains in the direction of the vampire cavern. She felt a pull toward it, and worried that she could easily fall under the influence of Alu Kard. Perhaps she already had more than she knew.
She'd be better off if she no longer existed. It seemed that if she didn't, so much would be put right. Her mother would inherit her grandmother's home and money. Perhaps Jaklin and Mikhail would get married. Vampires can die. I can die, she thought. She wondered what would happen to her soul. Did she have a soul anymore? Was she untethered?
Alex felt a quickening in her abdomen, just a butterfly flutter, the first wrestling of the baby. She ran a hand across the small bulge. It's a little girl, she thought, and for the first time, she started considering names. Should she be named for royalty? Should she give the little girl several names? And perhaps one of them a reference to the rapist? But Catalin has said that he was not the father.
I must deliver the child before I do anything about myself, she thought. This tiny little being must have a chance in the world. Until then, I have to do what I can to make it a better place. Father Zosimos had probably already told Stefan that she was a vampire. Perhaps if she went to him and offered her services, she could join forces with him. Alex didn't see vampires as necessarily evil. She couldn't allow him to kill vampires indiscriminately. And what about Alu? If it came down to killing him, could she do it? Would she? The problem, of course, was that while she'd be helping Stefan, she'd have to sneak off to get a little blood for herself from time to time.
Alex couldn't quit thinking these dark thoughts. She sat in the garden's failing light, evening's darkness creeping in from the forest and invading the tomato and pepper plants. She relished it, the darkness. It matched her heart's mood.