The Descent: Book Three of the Taker Trilogy

  Impossible. It was impossible that he would lose her now and for all of eternity, like this. He would not let that happen. He could call her spirit back—he was sure of it—but to where? Her spirit would return to her body, and where was her body? Adair didn’t want her to regain consciousness lost on the tide or caught beneath a rock on the ocean floor. His chest heaved with despair, a great weight plummeting through him—but no, he wouldn’t give up. He would move heaven and earth and ocean to find her. In his grief and agony, he reached out to the horizon, saying, “Bring her to me. Bring her to me now.”

  Suddenly, the clear spring sky turned black and clouds appeared from nowhere, thick and roiling, going from dove gray to steel to near black in minutes. The wind blew fiercely, whipping the sea into violent peaks that danced and churned like boiling water.

  By then, the sisters had followed him, running out of the house and down to the water, speechless at the sight of nature turned ferocious. Waves began to pound the island on all sides, rising high as skyscrapers and then thundering down like buckets of water poured on them—offerings brought at his command. Water gushed over the edge of the cliffs and back into the sea below. The waves crashed and retreated again and again, scraping away the moss, then the pine trees, the goats, then the sisters, the latter howling and shrieking with fear. The waves threw Adair inland, onto a high peak, where he clung to a jagged boulder and watched as the sea pummeled the island.

  Eventually, he saw her, a small form washed up on shore. He clambered down from the peak and scooped her up, while the wind died and waves subsided nearly as quickly as they had spun up. He cradled Lanore in his lap; how cold she was, and waterlogged, wet as a seal, her hair plastered to her head, her clothing torn by her journey on the waves, caught on who knew what in the middle of the sea. Bubbles formed at her nose and the corners of her mouth—at least she was breathing. And through this ordeal, she was still unconscious. She had drowned ten times over but she would never know it.

  Adair carried her into the fortress and laid her on the floor of the great room. He quickly built a fire, and then stripped off her wet clothing. He wrapped her in a blanket and stretched her out in front of the fire, spreading her hair over the pillow that cradled her head. Then he sat back on his heels, in a puddle of seawater that had run off his own clothing and hair. He didn’t have time to think about what he had done, he only wanted to cry with relief that he had not lost Lanore, not lost her body to the unknown and left her soul in limbo. She had trusted him and he had almost let her down. He vowed that he would not let it happen again.

  FIFTEEN

  The door rose up in front of me. Salvation. With the three demons galloping down the narrow passage after me, fast on my heels, I barreled through the door praying, Please let there be a bolt on the other side. Please let there be a way to keep them out.

  As soon as I slipped through, however, I plunged into an entirely different world. What had been a rough, rustic wooden door on one side was smooth laminated wood on the other. There was a brushed metal lever for a handle, very modern. There was no bolt but there was no sign of the demons, either: no noise on the far side of the door, no jiggling of the doorknob, nothing. I immediately knew by the astringent smell that I was in a hospital.

  It was Luke’s hospital room. Every detail was as I remembered it, down to the sour stench of vomit and the odor of weak cleaning fluid hanging in the air, and the white blanket on Luke’s bed, its surface pilling from many washings. Why had I been brought back to this most painful moment? Hadn’t it been wretched enough the first time, watching helplessly as he declined? What more could I learn from his suffering—if, indeed, I’d been driven into this room to learn something. If I hadn’t been sent here only for a dose of punishment.

  I’d never cheated on Luke, but I had been in a continual state of indecision the entire time we’d lived together, unsure if I had done the right thing by returning to him after I’d been completely erased from his memory. While I’d been plagued by nightmares of Jonathan’s unrest in the hereafter, it was only now that I’d seen Adair again—and seen him so changed—that I could admit, even to myself, that it was him I daydreamed of, who I longed for, who I ached for, physically. That was how I’d betrayed Luke—in my desire for Adair. It wasn’t so uncommon, was it? Living with one man while your mind is on another? Being unable to stop thinking of this other man who, for one reason or another, was not the one sitting beside you. Thinking of the way his eyes lit up when he saw you, of his wicked smile and what it was like when he held you, how you responded to the touch of his hands. In solitary moments, you remembered the little intimacies, the feel of his skin against yours, the way he liked to be touched, the velvet nap of his member, the way he tasted. You thought of him even though you could never be with him. His absence nagged like an itch you could never scratch.

  Some would say I should never have returned to Luke if this was how I felt about Adair, that it was wrong of me to go back to him if I had any doubts. But complete fidelity of the heart in a relationship is something that has always eluded me. I have often wondered how these people manage to live such straightforward lives, to keep their emotions so simple and tidy. Do they weed out life’s complications as ruthlessly as they would weed a garden? Sometimes a weed turns into a beautiful flower or a helpful herb but you’ll never know if you pull it too soon. Do they ever allow themselves regret for the things they’ve thrown away? I would ask these self-assured people which of us has the luxury of an iron-clad guarantee? Who can be 100 percent sure of one’s choices in life? How do you know that your beloved will always remain the same, or that you’ll never change your mind? Growth and change are two of the great gifts we get from time. It would be shortsighted to spurn them.

  Besides, I did love Luke—I did. But he wasn’t the only one I wanted, and wanting isn’t the same as loving. Just as I knew I loved Luke, I wasn’t sure whether I loved Adair. I couldn’t rule out that my attraction to him wasn’t an advanced case of lust, though that’s not to say it was inconsequential. Only a fool would underestimate the power of lust. Kingdoms have been won and lost, men and beasts have battled to the death over it.

  Now, if I had been the same girl I’d been at the start of my adventures—the same girl who had loved Jonathan so blindly—I know what choice I would’ve made. I would’ve tossed aside a good man like Luke to take my chances with Adair. And I would’ve been miserable before long, held hostage by Adair’s precipitous temper and erratic behavior, which in my inexperience I would’ve accepted without so much as a whimper. I hadn’t yet learned that it was okay to make demands of the people we love, that we didn’t have to accept others exactly as they came to us. No one is perfect, after all.

  As soon as I quieted these voices chasing each other in my head, I crept toward Luke, lying in bed. I felt queasy and anxious. God help me, I didn’t want to be back in that room. I was glad to have comforted Luke when he was dying, but I didn’t want to relive the experience, not so soon after it had happened. I should’ve been happy for this chance to see Luke again, but I wasn’t.

  An oxygen line ran under his nose. His wrists were so bony that his identification bracelets hung from them like paper manacles. His bed was set at a forty-five degree slant to help with nausea, but it made his head hang forward at a frightening angle, as though his neck had been snapped. On second thought, he didn’t look as terrible as he could’ve; whatever power had brought Luke and me together at this moment, it had been kind enough to make Luke look healthy, not as wasted by illness and exhaustion as he’d been the last time I saw him. He even had his hair, those unruly sandy brown curls. I was thinking how much I’d like to smooth his hair back from his face—just for the excuse of touching him—when his eyes suddenly opened.

  “Lanny,” he said, recognition in his gaze. So he could see me, too, as Sophia had. “Is that you?”

  “Of course it’s me.” I smiled and reached for his cheek, brushing it gently. It felt solid enough.


  “Am I dreaming? Your voice . . . it sounds like you’re right next to me.”

  “That’s because I am here, Luke. This isn’t a dream. You can trust your eyes.”

  We hugged. I couldn’t bring myself to kiss him, however, and we hung in an awkward embrace. We still had tenderness, but the passion between us was gone . . . unsurprising at the end of a long and intense illness. Worn out by exhaustion and fear, we naturally became numb to physical passion. After seeing Luke ravaged by drugs and madness, I could no more bring myself to feel attraction than he could have mustered the energy to respond.

  Lying in his hospital bed now, he didn’t look all that relieved to see me; he seemed preoccupied and not entirely himself. “Where am I? What are we doing back in the hospital?” he asked, alarmed, looking at the tangle of tubes and wires hanging from his arms. “And what are you doing here?” His face drained. “You haven’t died, have you, Lanny? How is that possible?”

  “No,” I rushed to assure him.

  “Thank God.” That calmed him a bit, though he was still on edge, his gaze darting around the hospital room. “I don’t understand, though, why I’m back here. . . . Why are you back here? What’s going on?”

  “I think maybe you and I have been brought together in order to talk,” I said slowly, trying to make sense of our circumstances. “Was there something you wanted to say to me? Something you didn’t tell me when we were together? Maybe it will come to you if you relax,” I said, taking his hand. “How are you?”

  He gave me a sideways look. “You mean how am I since I died? How do you think I’ve been? Dying wasn’t at all how I expected it to be. Not that I was looking for a scene from the Bible, pearly gates and Saint Peter, any of that nonsense. But it was a little underwhelming. I had to figure everything out for myself when I got here—I don’t know, I guess I expected it to be better organized. . . . It’s not like the first day on a new job, there’s no woman with a clipboard from human resources welcoming you on board, no printed checklist to help you get settled in. No one tells you what to do or where to go. It just happens, whether you want it to or not.”

  “What do you mean, ‘it just happens’?” I asked, not quite following him. “What just happens?”

  “The next part. The hereafter. Eternity.” Oddly, he was still wearing eyeglasses, and he pushed them up the bridge of his nose as I’d seen him do a thousand times in life. He shook his shaggy head. “Whatever comes next, it’s already happening. I’m losing a bit of myself every day. My memories are fading. I don’t know how else to describe it. It’s like I’m breaking up and parts of me are drifting away or falling off.”

  He sounded so sad and desperate that, even though the prospect was terrifying, I tried to remain upbeat and cheer him up. “Well, that doesn’t seem so bad. Maybe it’s all part of becoming a new person, clearing out the old, making room for the new.”

  Luke looked at me as though I’d gone crazy. “What do you mean, it doesn’t sound bad? It’s the worst thing that could happen. I’m breaking apart. I’m ceasing to be. I suppose it means the very last bits of my consciousness are finally coming apart and all that was left of me—residual energy—is returning to wherever we come from.”

  He was a doctor, a man of science, so I tried to appeal to his analytical side. “If your energy is returning to the cosmos, maybe that means your consciousness is going there, too. Maybe you’re about to experience the wonders of space.”

  The prospect seemed to depress him further. “I don’t think so. I think it’s all just coming undone, like a tape being demagnetized. As time goes on, I remember less and less. I feel less and less. Sure, it all sounds interesting in the abstract, but now that it’s here, I’m frightened, Lanny,” he said. I’d never heard him sound as scared, not even when he confronted Adair four years earlier. “This isn’t what I expected. All those times I’d wondered what it would really be like, to be dead . . . especially after having patients die on you, being right there with them when it happened. I wasn’t prepared for this. It’s really going to be over. This is what it means to die. I’ve come to the end. I can’t believe it. It’s really going to be over.”

  He was right: this was frightening, much more frightening than the many deathbed vigils over which I’d presided. I was scared for him, and what’s more, I could do nothing about it. I couldn’t stop what was happening to him, I couldn’t save him. As I contemplated all this, holding back tears, he snapped his head up as though he was seeing me for the first time since we’d materialized in the hospital room.

  “You never did tell me . . . if you’re not dead, what are you doing here?” he asked. I suppose he was suspicious, and why shouldn’t he be? I was alive in the land of the dead.

  I squirmed, suddenly realizing that he might be thinking that I’d come for him, that my presence here was all about him. That maybe I’d had second thoughts about his delirious request—you could ask Adair to make me immortal. I answered him truthfully. “I asked Adair to send me. I came to look for Jonathan,” I confessed, trying to look as contrite as possible.

  An exasperated sigh escaped from Luke and he folded his arms, awkwardly for all the wires and needles. “I should’ve known. I should’ve guessed that. It’s always been that way with you, always Jonathan or Adair. Never Luke. Never any room for me.”

  It was unlike Luke to be so candid. Staring oblivion in the face probably had something to do with it; no reason to pretend anymore. Still, I was hurt and not above rebuking him. “How can you say that? I was good to you, Luke. Especially at the end. I promised I would take care of you and I did.” We’d had a bargain. Four years ago, Luke had helped me escape from the police after I’d released Jonathan from his immortal bond, and in exchange I promised that he would never be alone. I would be his companion for life. I didn’t realize until later that I must’ve made this offer to Luke because being alone was what I feared most. He’d taken me up on my offer, nonetheless. Maybe we’re all afraid to be alone.

  Here I was making good on my end of the bargain, but in a way I could never have imagined.

  He seemed somewhat mollified. He looked up at me, over the rims of his eyeglasses. “I’ll give you that. But—we can be honest with each other now, can’t we, Lanny? Now that the end is near? Because I do have something I want to tell you.” He paused and looked at me tentatively before proceeding cautiously: “If you want to know how I really feel about us . . . I feel like we never should have gotten involved. I always felt as though you never really loved me.”

  A sharp pain cut into my heart like a knife. “Luke, you must know I love you. I wouldn’t be here now if I didn’t. I know I have no right to say this to you, but it hurts me to hear you say these things. To say ‘it was always Jonathan or Adair, and never any room for me.’ I loved you, Luke, of course I did. If I didn’t love you, I could’ve just walked away. It would’ve been a damn sight easier.”

  He was quiet, thinking. The monitors beeped in the background. “I suppose,” he said.

  “We were happy together,” I insisted.

  “But you never loved me the way you loved those two. You can admit it to me now. I won’t hold it against you, but I’d rather die knowing the truth. Jonathan and Adair—they were always on your mind. I could tell.”

  My cheeks flamed. I couldn’t deny it.

  “I don’t hold it against you, really,” he continued. “I mean, I saw Jonathan with my own eyes. He was a god. One in a billion. Even in death I could see why no woman was able to resist him.”

  My stomach twisted, remembering the purpose of my visit to the underworld. “Luke, Jonathan’s in trouble. That’s why I’ve come here,” I blurted out. “He is being held by a queen, the queen of the underworld. Have you heard of her?”

  He shook his head. “It sounds like something from an old myth, doesn’t it? Hades and Persephone and all that. Sorry, I can’t help you, Lanny. Like I said, nothing’s been explained to me. The queen of England could be here for all I know. I’m not lik
e Jonathan or you or Adair. I’m just an ordinary guy, a speck of dust in the cosmos, and I’m going to die an ordinary death.” He had the same expression I’d seen many times, a quizzical look he’d worn during the odd quiet moment. “I have a question for you, Lanny, and I want you to tell me the truth. Did you ever love me, or was I just a convenience that night when you were brought into the hospital? What was I to you? Just a gullible man who could help you escape from the police . . .”

  I threw up my hands in exasperation. “Luke, I just told you five minutes ago that I love you. Wasn’t I with you for the past four years?”

  “You stayed out of obligation, because of your promise, not love.”

  “Isn’t obligation a part of love?” I felt my blood rising. “I made a commitment to you, and I honored it because I love you.” I squeezed his hand.

  He made a sour face. “Do you know what it was like knowing that you didn’t love me the way you loved the other two? That you loved them more,” he said, unable to say their names at that moment.

  “Does love have to be a contest? I’ve had a long life and it’s always been that way for me: you lose one love and, if you are lucky, you find another.” I tugged him closer to me, though he tried to resist. “Listen to me: I was alone for a long time, Luke. For many years, before we met, I had no one in my life. I didn’t want to go through it again, you know: growing close to someone, tangling my life up in someone else’s, only to lose them. I just couldn’t do it—but then I met you. I couldn’t remember when I’d known such a good man. I knew I was lucky. Don’t tell me that I squandered the last years of your life. It would make me very sad to think that you had been unhappy.”