Birds of Paradise

  Today, he was wearing a smart and incredibly expensive-looking cable-knit black sweater, rolled up to the elbows. The veins of his forearms protruded through his skin, like they did right after he’d worked out.

  His dark gray pants were closer to chinos than slacks, still tailored expertly, still matching his black leather shoes impeccably. Lukyan’s version of leisurewear, perhaps. But I doubted it. Lukyan did nothing for leisure.

  But the length of time for him to speak was beginning to bother me, since I hadn’t seen him for days. We weren’t people for passionate reunions, but still.

  “I got you something,” he said, eyes leaving mine only for a second to survey my black yoga pants and matching tank. I adopted his color scheme and was easing myself into exposing more skin, not being scared of my scars, starting to wear them instead of letting them wear me.

  I tried to smirk. I was getting a little better at that too. “A present?”

  He did not smirk. Or smile. I doubted he was physically able. But that didn’t bother me, that I didn’t make him happy. Lukyan didn’t want to be happy in his life. Neither did I.

  “We can call it that,” he replied.

  I tilted my head. “You got me a puppy?” I asked with a saccharine-sweet tone.

  He tilted his own head in a rare demonstration of confusion. “A puppy?” he repeated. “No. I wasn’t aware you liked animals, that you wanted a pet.”

  Despite my lack of ability to, I somehow smiled. It had a lot to do with the slight panic in his tone that he hadn’t gotten me what I wanted. “No, I don’t want a pet,” I said, stepping forward. “That was my lame and failing attempt at a joke.”

  He watched me approach. I could almost see the logical gears turning in his head, examining my words and the sentiment behind them as he examined everything in life.

  “Aha,” he said as I got to him, the word coming out like he’d just discovered his keys after searching for them for hours. “Humor,” he said, snatching my hips to stop me from approaching any farther. “I like it.”

  I frowned at the distance between us, but Lukyan’s fingers stroked up and down the skin between my pants and the edge of my top, not letting go.

  “This is not a puppy. This is… something else,” he hedged. His tone was still strong, confident, but his eyes betrayed something else. Something I couldn’t put my finger on but that filled me with dread.

  Something beyond the simple and so very human trait of disappointment that my… whatever he was didn’t snatch me into his arms and kiss me silly after a long—or seemingly long, at least—absence.

  But then again, that was the textbook, cliché, romance novel fantasy. Lukyan was no fantasy. In fact, he was closer to a nightmare. But he was mine. My reality. And I wanted to live a nightmare with him rather than dream of a fantasy alone.

  “What is it?” I asked.

  His fingers tightened at my hips. “It’s easier if you come with me.” Then he let me go and turned on his heel.

  I followed him, because that’s what I did. I’d follow him to hell if we weren’t already there.

  When we reached our destination, it turned out that there was some places worse than hell. And once there, you’ll face things worse than the Devil.

  Lukyan

  He was nervous.

  He didn’t like that.

  At all.

  Lukyan didn’t get nervous. Nerves were for uncertain people who made risky decisions. He didn’t make decisions unless he was completely certain of the outcome, of his victory. That’s how he got to where he was.

  He wasn’t nervous of the fact that he’d kidnapped and planned on killing one of the most powerful players in the underbelly of society. No, that didn’t bother him at all. Retribution might be looked for, with some kind of dramatic theatrics, but then vultures would gather over the power vacuum he’d created and battle to the death in order to get to the top.

  That was the thing with those in the underbelly. No one was pretending to be human, and therefore life was just another currency. Death was the payoff.

  No, he wasn’t worried about the consequences of his actions in regard to that. He was worried about Elizabeth’s reaction to his decision. Because now that he had her heart to think about, every decision he made was a risky one. There was never certainty of victory when Elizabeth was concerned.

  “What is this, Lukyan?” she whispered after a silence as long as a lifetime. Her eyes were glued to the middle of the room, her jaw quivering only slightly. The rest of her was frozen.

  He fought to keep his face impassive. Waited a beat until he knew he could match his voice to his expressions. “This is your husband.” He glanced to the man’s hands, missing three fingers from each. “Well, most of him, at least.”

  She focused on the burned nubs. Lukyan had cauterized them because he didn’t want the fuck to do something as cowardly and easy as bleed out from superficial wounds.

  Elizabeth inspected those wounds for a long time, even by Lukyan’s standards. She showed nothing on her face. That should’ve made him proud. He was training her for a world where expressions and the emotions they communicated could be the difference between life and death.

  But he wasn’t.

  She was turning into him, and he didn’t like to see absence of humanity on her face. He’d thought that was what he’d hated most about her, when he found it was actually what he loved the most.

  “I thought you said you weren’t into torture,” she said conversationally. Her eyes had moved to focus on Lukyan. She was yet to make her gaze meet the widened and panicked look of her husband’s. He couldn’t talk, of course. He was gagged.

  And Lukyan had cut his tongue off.

  Words could be powerful. Sharper than any weapon. He wasn’t taking any chances of them puncturing Elizabeth’s skin.

  “I’m not,” he said by answer.

  She jerked her head to the spot occupied by her husband. “Christopher might disagree with you on that score.”

  “I don’t give a fuck if he agrees with me or not,” he said sharply, unable to get a handle on his irritation, his desperation for something more than the cold reaction he was so sure he’d craved from her.

  “This is my present, I’m assuming?” she asked, instead of addressing his tone.

  He nodded once.

  “Right,” she said.

  Then she turned on her heel and walked calmly from the room.

  Lukyan’s eyes followed her. As did her husband’s.

  Lukyan didn’t like that gaze. He hated the fact Christopher had his eyes on her. That he had his marks on her. That no matter how many limbs Lukyan cut off, he couldn’t take that away.

  But then again, of course he didn’t want to take that away. Because that would take Elizabeth away. She could only be his if she was scarred, damaged, broken.

  Of course he couldn’t put her back together. He didn’t want to.

  So why did his hands jerk with the urge to try?

  Elizabeth

  He didn’t find me immediately.

  Didn’t chase me.

  Which I considered a good thing, since I wasn’t likely to be responsible for my actions if he’d done so. It took a lot for me to turn my back and walk away like I did. Walk away and not unleash the violence a large part of me so urged to. Not against the man responsible for shattering me, for stripping apart the pieces integral to be a human. No, against the man who shared my bed. The man who might love me despite being only half human. The one who might only love me because I was half a human.

  He found me in the dead room.

  It was the only place I could go to escape. Not once before had the outside world seemed so tempting. Even with its possibilities of crushing me, it was almost preferable to the alternative.

  Dealing with what sat in the middle of the basement.

  What Lukyan had forced into this house.

  I came here to be amongst the peace that only the dead could give in order to grasp some semblance
of sense.

  I watched him enter, and he stayed on the other side of the room. I didn’t move. Or speak. Neither did he.

  We stared at each other. More accurately, I glared at him and he gazed at me with unflappable features. For once, I wasn’t the one waiting for the other to form the words.

  Nor was I the one plagued with unease.

  “Elizabeth,” he said.

  I waited, because he likely expected me to interrupt. Maybe to explode. I expected that too, but my mouth stayed glued shut.

  He let out a rough exhale that one could almost call a sigh. “You need to speak to me.”

  I rose my brow, folding my arms. “Do I, Lukyan?” I asked blandly. “And why do I need to do that?”

  He didn’t reply. I didn’t know if it was because, for once, he was at a loss for words, or if he wrongly considered my question to be rhetorical.

  Lukyan was never wrong.

  So I surmised he didn’t know what to say.

  “What was your carefully organized out and logical plan for this?” I asked, not moving, not blinking. “I’m sure you didn’t leave or come back without an expectation for the events that would follow. You don’t take a breath without knowing the precise number of seconds your exhale will last for.”

  Lukyan’s jaw ticked.

  “So you expected what?” I demanded. “Me to thank you? Me to suddenly be cured of everything to see the man who took everything from me missing a couple of fingers and suddenly at my mercy?” I hissed. Then I laughed. “If only it was that easy. If only my brain was as uncomplicated and logical as yours was. If only my scars and my ugliness were responsive to wills and commands and the sight of death. Then it would all be so much easier, wouldn’t it? Less complicated,” I spat at him. “So, Lukyan, what do you want me to do? What happens next?”

  He observed me, his eyes no longer blank; they sparkled with something resembling unease. Maybe even guilt. But demons weren’t capable of guilt. And I was under no illusion that Lukyan was anything but a demon. I couldn’t love anything else.

  It didn’t mean he wouldn’t eventually ruin me. Even if it was just by making me a little more like him. Even if it was out of a desire to help me survive his brutal and ugly world.

  “What happens next is death. You know that,” he said.

  “You want me to watch you kill him?”

  He shook his head. “I want you to do it yourself.”

  I froze, gaping at him. “That’s what you think is going to happen here? That by turning me into a murderer I’m going to… what? Become stronger?”

  “Yes,” he said simply. “Death is the one inevitable, certain thing in human life. Love. Happiness. Power. None of these things are guaranteed. Death is the one thing that has control over life. That defines it. I’m not going to let it define you.”

  “Not letting death define me?” I repeated. “And killing is how I’m going to achieve that? I’m not doing that, Lukyan. Turning me into a monster isn’t going to change anything. I’ll still be the same broken thing. But I’ll just have a soul that’s a little bit darker.”

  Lukyan stepped forward. “You’re either going to be a slave to your suffering or a servant of your revenge. Two choices. That’s all we’ve got. That hasn’t changed.”

  I blinked at him. “Everything’s changed.”

  He took another step forward, and even in the midst of my fury, my hatred for him, I couldn’t step back from the man I loved. Because you didn’t truly love someone until you hated them too.

  “You’re going to stop suffering like the victim and start fighting like the monster,” he murmured. His hand brushed my jaw. “I’m not trying to turn you into a monster, zvezda moya. Not trying to damn your soul.” He paused. “Because it’s already damned. You know that. There’s no going back. So you need to go forward.”

  “And killing is the only way forward?”

  He regarded me. “For people like us, you know it is.”

  “I don’t know anything,” I argued.

  “You know me,” he challenged, surprising me with the opinion he was something that could be known.

  “I know you least of all,” I said, my voice little more than a whisper.

  “You know yourself least of all if you think you can’t do this,” he countered. Then he laid his lips on mine for half a second. And then he was gone. Leaving me to contemplate death amongst the beautiful corpses that no longer offered peace.

  “It’s not as simple as he hurt me so I kill him. That’s not how life works,” I said, my first words after hours of silence in the dead room.

  Lukyan was standing in the sitting room, gazing out at the infamous french doors. They didn’t bother me as much as they used to. Their view. Their taunts. Maybe I was imagining it, but they seemed to bother me less and less each day. Same with the foyer. In the days I was with Lukyan. When I wandered past them wearing his bruises, wearing the ghost of his touch, his brand.

  The man I realized I loved more than I hated didn’t turn immediately at my voice, just continued to stare out the window. I wondered, not for the first time, what he was thinking. If he was wondering whether the world would always be outside my grasp, that if I was a prisoner here forever, then so was he. I wondered if that meant forever was a prison I’d likely stay in alone.

  Probably.

  Acid burned at my throat with the thought I’d been too stupid or too cowardly to grasp onto.

  My sickness, my brokenness meant I wasn’t just going to lose the feeling of the brisk summer breeze, the crunch of autumn leaves against my shoes, the biting beauty of winter’s chill, watch new life bloom in spring.

  There was all of that, which I hadn’t really considered a loss because I didn’t care about the life and death of the outside world when I was decaying inside. Now it was changing. Lukyan was changing that.

  He turned, examining me and my face. “That’s exactly how life works, Elizabeth,” he said, not betraying any knowledge he might’ve gleaned from my face. “He didn’t just hurt you. He did something worse than that. Hurt implies some sort of healing. You haven’t healed. You won’t ever heal. He killed you as a person. Now you’re like me. I chose this life. You didn’t. So you’re not his wife, the woman he hurt. You’re Elizabeth. You’re you. The woman he killed. Now it’s time to return the favor.”

  I chewed at my lip. “You’re telling me that I have two choices here, like I’ve always had. But I don’t think it counts when you’ve made decisions that have forced me to only have two choices.” I stared at him. “One, really, since I have to consider the fact that if I don’t spill blood, if I don’t become a murderer, I stop being yours. That’s the ultimatum here, right? You need me to be a monster too, so you’ve got company?” I vocalized the fear that pulsated through my body.

  He didn’t answer for the longest time. “Solitude is not a sentence for me. Until recently, it was as close to paradise as someone like me is afforded.” He stepped forward. “Until recently,” he repeated. “You’re right, what you said about me collecting dead things because they couldn’t hurt me. So I could possess them at the same time as I control them. And I was happy to control the dead. The living were nothing to me. I didn’t want to tarnish myself with humanity’s shortcoming.”

  “Shortcoming?” I asked, expecting him to—no, wanting him to cross the space between us despite my anger.

  “Love,” he said, settling in his spot five feet from me.

  If it was a challenge, it was not one I was going to lose. So I stayed planted in my spot.

  “’Hell sent us the evilest disease, and we humans called it ‘love,’” he said, eyes running over me in much the same fashion as he observed his birds. “An author called Conny Cernik wrote that. A poet, actually. I despise poetry in all forms. Find it a waste of time, focusing on weak emotions and giving them power. Romanticizing them.” He took one step. “But this line, it stuck with me. Because that’s what love is. A disease. It kills more people than any other epidemi
c or war humanity has seen. Takes over lives, personalities, making them nothing but a mashed version of what they were. Overall, it makes them weak.”

  He stepped forward again.

  “I abhor weakness over all else. It’s been my goal in my existence to make sure I eradicate all my weakness. Exterior and interior.”

  Another step forward.

  “I’ve been successful, until now.”

  I could taste the menace in his words, the danger to his stride, but I didn’t move.

  “I don’t believe that what we have between us is going to be good for us,” he said. “Going to make us better people.”

  He was almost at me now, and the sense of relief at his closeness was physical.

  “But I’ve never been interested in being a better person, so that doesn’t bother me. What bothers me is how weak I am because of you.” He circled his hands lightly around my neck. “Your fragility is my own. Any time you break, it cracks me too, Elizabeth. Anyone who has hurt you, is hurting you, and will hurt you is my enemy.” His hand flexed as he leaned forward to brush his lips against mine. “That includes me. Because I know this love, me, I hurt you. You’ve told me about the darkness in your life, and I’m not going to be the light in it. I’ll drag you further down into the pit. I’m not telling you this to warn you off me, to scare you away. Because I know you won’t leave. I won’t let you leave. I’m just making sure that we’re clear on this, solnyshko.”

  I circled his thick wrist with my fragile fingers. “We’re clear, Lukyan,” I said. “I’ve never been under the impression that you’ll save me. That you’ll light up my life. I’m not looking to escape darkness, as long as it’s your darkness. I was already damned, and I’ll face damnation with you. Our love may be an evil disease, but I’d rather let it kill me slowly than endure solitude for however long I’ve got left on this earth.”