The man I love.
– And the man she loved at last lost the upper hand. Cain spun him around on the ground in front of him, and a hard fist in William’s hair yanked back his head, exposing his throat. “You should have moved the hell out of the way,” Cain growled in red eyes and rage. And then his fangs formed fully in his mouth, and Helena’s heart stopped beating.
Cain sank his fangs into William’s throat, piercing his jugular with violent disregard to the Time King’s comfort. William gritted his own teeth and refused to make a sound. But she could tell it hurt. She could see that Cain was draining him mercilessly.
For just a split second, she had doubts. She wondered if the First Vampire might actually kill him. She wondered whether William was strong enough to take the attack. Maybe he was still too human? Maybe he hadn’t returned fully to the ultra-powerful immortal he’d been before?
Maybe I should –
But William’s eyes flew open and locked onto her, hard and determined. They were glowing like green searchlights, all magic and resolve. His willpower infused her from a distance, and just like that, she was reassured. He was far from dying.
She needed to see her end of the plan through.
William had known that there was no way for him to exchange blood with her before Cain could get to her. Cain was not only a Nomad, but a vampire now. He was fast, and only Fate knew exactly what he was capable of in his solid form. So William hatched a plan, one he’d shared with her by secretly taking her hand and reminding her that hearts pumped blood.
Blood was what he’d told her she needed from him. She needed his blood in her veins.
If Cain went after Helena first, it wouldn’t work. He would either get to her and kill her or get to her and hurt her. Either way, he and William would probably wind up in fisticuffs, and after sinking his fangs into Helena, he might sink them into William. But in that order, it did no good. Helena’s blood would coat Cain’s teeth and inadvertently mix with William’s blood when the vampire bit him. But William didn’t need her blood.
However, if Cain bit William first, then William’s blood would be transferred to Helena upon the second bite.
The plan needed two things to work. William had to bait Cain and then let him sink his fangs into his throat. And Helena had to let him bite her too.
That sounded simple. But the fact was, it was terrifying. What was more, Helena had been created in the alternate dimension with all kinds of wards and safeguards against Cain, the mark on her arm not the least of them. He couldn’t hurt her, and she couldn’t hurt him.
To let him win, she had to drop her defenses entirely. It was very difficult to do in the face of real, hard fear. But William had obviously managed it. The mark on his arm was no longer glowing. It was no longer protecting him from Cain. And Helena knew it was because he’d willingly shut it off.
So Helena had to do the same thing.
As Cain drained the Time King and the glow began to fade from William’s eyes, Helena rushed forward, not really needing to act in order to convey exceedingly real concern. “Please!” she pleaded desperately. “Cain, please stop!”
Cain’s eyes snapped open, and he looked up at her through the tops of them. They were red as the coals beneath Maelstrom’s branding iron. He watched her for a moment, a limp William wrapped securely in his strong arms, and Helena felt the yawning of a real ache inside. “Please,” she repeated softly. So softly. It was a whisper, a fitting sound to accompany her distress.
She took another step forward on shaking legs. “Cain, please don’t.” She shook her head and silently begged the vampire to grant her this boon. “Please don’t kill him.”
Cain considered her a second more before the red suddenly flashed away from his eyes, returning them to their previous vivid blue. He kept them on her as he pulled his fangs from William’s throat and straightened, allowing the King to fall to the ground.
Helena forced herself not to look at William. She forced herself to keep her eyes on Cain as the man stood and rose to his full impressive height. He turned his full attention on her, slowly closing the distance between them.
“Because you asked so nicely,” he said, “I’ll allow him to live. Now come here.” He stopped a few feet away and held his hand out to her.
His voice was deep, almost grating, and thick with anger, need and a grave impatience.
She hesitated. Of course, he would expect her to hesitate, so this wasn’t a bad thing. But it wasn’t even voluntary. The truth was, she was scared out of her wits. His presence was just that potent. He was a strong and beautiful Nomad, he was the First Vampire, and he was Death. To make matters just a smidgeon more frightening, his lips were covered in the blood of his greatest enemy. She was losing her mind just staring up at him.
Cain lifted his chin and blinked. As if he suddenly realized how menacing he must appear to her, he took a deep breath. “I could never hurt you, Helena.” He shook his head. “Never.”
Some of the impatience had slipped from his tone to be replaced with something akin to kindness, if that were possible. “It won’t hurt. I give you my word.”
Helena licked her dry lips, and her eyes unwittingly slipped to William. He was still on his side, and his face was turned away from her.
“But if you don’t come to me right now, I will finish him off.”
Helena’s head snapped back up, and she met Cain’s gaze once more.
“And him, I will hurt.”
He was serious. Boy was he ever serious.
Helena closed her eyes and forced her legs to move. This is it. As she walked toward him, she reached up and pulled her mass of long black hair away from one side of her neck, tucking it over the opposite shoulder.
“That’s better,” said Cain softly. Oddly enough, he didn’t sound nearly as smug as she would have expected. Instead, he sounded well and truly relieved.
When she knew she was right in front of him, Helena stopped and opened her eyes. She was staring at Cain’s chest. The son of a bitch was exactly the same height as William. The two of them were giants.
His finger came up, and he gently curled it beneath her chin to raise her face to him. The fact that he could touch her at all must have signaled to Cain exactly what he was looking for, because he smiled at her. She could swear there was actual happiness in that smile. Despite the fact that it was covered in William’s blood.
“You’ve dropped the wards,” he said, confirming her suspicions. “You’ve accepted your place at my side.”
Helena said nothing. But no words were needed anyway.
Cain’s hand moved from her chin to cup the side of her face, drawing her closer. Helena closed her eyes again as his arms encircled her and she was wrapped in an unforeseen tenderness. It almost hurt, this tenderness. It was somehow worse than being treated roughly by the man who had come so close to destroying the one she loved. But it was also just confusing enough that it made sense. It made sense because this was how he always held her.
In her dawning confusion and mounting surrender, Helena Bonaventure Dawn once more remembered.
She remembered all of the instances throughout time in which Cain had ever managed to get this close to her. And this right here was what she’d felt from him every single time: Desperation. Infinite care. Unending hope. Tenderness.
There was something more to the entity that was Julian Cain, Victor Hush, Charles Montgomery… and Death. There was a loneliness and an emptiness so vast it was rivaled by only one other man in all the cosmos.
Cain and Solan had a lot in common.
In the newly forming universe of two colliding dimensions, in the field of shining classic cars, and in the cage of Cain’s hard but tender embrace, Helena felt the First Vampire’s teeth pierce the taut skin over her vein and sink deep. She inhaled sharply, but there was no pain. As he’d promised, the sensation was anything but painful. It was hard and strong and all-pervading, but not because of him. It was because the moment the ancient blo
od coating those teeth made it into her artery and mixed with hers, two more dimensions collided.
And when they did, everything changed.
Chapter Forty-eight
Hello, Helena.
We meet at last, Helena thought.
Time smiled. She didn’t know how she knew this, but she did. She felt it pull her close with welcoming arms.
I’ve been waiting for you.
I know, she said, a little guiltily. Sorry it took so long.
Time chuckled softly. It was not long at all.
Helena thought of the line from David Bowie’s song. It’s only forever. Not long at all. She realized that to Time, it wouldn’t be.
She felt the once and final change come over her completely. With it came power. As she realized what she had to do with that power, she turned away from Time and whispered one final thing in parting. Thank you.
Time wrapped around her in warmth and let her go.
Helena moved through the moments, passed through the spaces between the seconds, and returned to where she was, standing in a field of cars with Cain’s teeth embedded in her throat. He’d loosened his hold on her slightly, lost in the sensations of what he was doing. She knew he was unaware, that his defenses were down. She moved easily into his mind and found him there, a lone man in a dark room, head bent, eyes closed.
She stood behind him in that room and softly spoke his name. “Cain.”
He raised his head and slowly turned to face her. His eyes were no longer glowing. They were just blue. Here, he was so very human. Here, he seemed so very lost.
“Why are you here, Helena?” he asked, his brow furrowing.
“I’ve come to help you,” she told him.
He stared at her, still confused. “You shouldn’t be here.” He shook his head.
“Neither should you.”
She held out her hand, palm-up. In the center rested a small glowing light. It hovered like a grain of sun, emanating brightness and warmth.
“What is it?” he asked softly.
“It’s your chance.” She looked from the light to Cain, and he did the same, meeting her gaze again. “You’ve never had a choice, Cain. Just like me.” As she spoke, she continued to feel him out in that field, pulling the blood from her body and swallowing it down. But he’d slowed his pace. He was lost in this moment, just as he was lost in life. “But Time heals all wounds,” she told him with a gentle smile. “It healed mine. Now it will heal yours too… if you want.”
Cain looked at her a long moment, glanced down at the floating light, then shook his head, his broad shoulders falling. “I don’t know what you mean.” He ran a hand through his thick blond hair. “What do you want from me, Helena? What is it going to take to end this?”
He sounded desperate at last, and he turned his back on her, not wanting her to see him in this state. He was a man at the end of his rope, at the bottom of his barrel, and he was teetering over a cliff because he knew that if this didn’t work, he would be lost forever.
Helena closed her hand, saving the light for later. Then she rushed forward, grabbed his arm, and moved around him, pulling him into a fierce, tight hug.
It was admittedly the most unexpected thing in the world for her. And apparently it was for him too, because his initial reaction was to go still in her arms, looking down at her with stiff surprise and what she could imagine were wide blue eyes.
A beat of bewilderment passed before Cain slowly wrapped his arms around her much smaller form and turned his head to rest it against hers. It felt like the most natural thing in the world just then. The two halves of Fate’s creation joined together at last, not in lust or in anger, but in compassion.
Which was just another word for love.
In the outside world, Cain stilled against her throat, no longer taking her blood. He just waited there, eyes closed, as his mind and her mind met in that sacred darkness.
“I’m so sorry Cain,” she told him as he held her and she held him back. She smiled against his chest. “Everyone always bitches that life isn’t fair, but I’m pretty sure Death has it worse.”
The most amazing thing happened then. He laughed. It was soft and honest and it was unlike any laugh she had ever heard from his lips. It was breathtakingly beautiful.
“Tell me about it,” he chuckled.
Helena slowly pulled away from the hug, and he let her go. His touch was so gentle, so in opposition to the chaos he had caused over the span of his many incarnations.
But no. Those were different now, weren’t they? They had changed. As the worlds had finished combining and he’d fully become who he now was, his past had been altered. The flu epidemic of 1918 was no longer his doing. It had been nature all along, nothing more. The earthquakes. The floods. The plagues. They were all nature.
Nature was the cruelest entity in the multiverse, not death. Nature was the insistence of life but in the brutality of entropy. It forced the living to struggle, to fight and to kill. Nothing could survive without the death of something else. It was a fundamental evil. And Helena realized then that the things people most often blamed Time for – the pain of aging, the loss of childhood, the passing away of loved ones – were not Time’s doing. They were all nature’s doing.
Time merely marked the progress of Nature’s unstoppable rampage.
Nature. With a capital N. Because it was that much of a bitch.
And now Cain had a new past, and a clean slate. She smiled wryly at the thought. He’d done wrong, yes. But it was a different wrong. And he deserved a different chance to make it right.
Once more, she lifted her hand, and the light of his new chance glowed in the center of her palm. “Take it, Cain. Take it and make your own way, not Fate’s. It won’t be easy. It can’t be.” She shrugged. “I guess because it never is.”
He smiled. And she smiled back.
“But at least this time it will be yours,” she finished.
Cain withdrew his fangs from her throat. She felt him out there, leaving her. His arms released her. He stepped back – even as he remained where he was here in the safe darkness of their joined minds.
He gazed down at the shining opportunity in her hand for a long, long time. But really it was only seconds. And it was long enough. He wasn’t stupid. He knew this was his chance just as she’d had hers.
“Thank you,” he said softly.
Helena nodded. “Good luck, Cain,” she said as she lifted her hand, and he began to reach out. She grinned. “You’re going to need it.” The life he was being offered was far from perfect. She knew it was filled with pain, with loss, with turbulence that would make for a bumpy ride. But she also knew it was filled with hope. And if he played his cards right… it might even come with a happy ending.
Cain’s eyes met hers and flashed bright, glowing blue. He smiled a broad, fanged smile, frightening but beautiful in the darkness of his new life. “I always wanted the chance to need luck,” he told her.
Then he reached out and placed his hand on top of hers. The light between them rose into his palm, infused his hand and then his wrist and arm, and eventually encompassed him entirely. He closed his eyes. This was it.
“Catch you in fifty years Cain,” she said in parting as his body began to dissolve before her eyes. Within seconds it was no more than the faintest outline of where he’d once stood. But that too disappeared, and when it did, Helena closed her eyes.
And opened them to find herself standing in a field of cars. William stood before her, smiling down at her. He was the most starkly handsome, most devastatingly beautiful thing she had ever seen.
The wind tousled his dark hair, and the moonlight reflected in the verdant sheen of his eyes. “You did good, little one.”
She blinked and touched her neck. The wound was gone. So was William’s.
Cain’s past had been changed. He’d never been in that field to attack them in the first place. Helena glanced at her car. It was whole. She looked at the tree Cain had slammed into.
It was no longer uprooted, but tall and strong and very much alive.
Helena had changed Cain’s past. She’d altered it using powers Time had given her as a welcoming gift, a housewarming present, so to speak. The temporary flux of unnatural and unheard-of ability to alter history had been her crown, her throne, and her mantle. Even William had never been given that power. It was too rare. It was too precious.
Time had saved it just for her.
And now it was gone. That ability was no longer there; she could sense the massive magnificence of it all used up. But she’d used it right when she’d had it. That was what mattered.
Helena took a slow, deep breath, and half-way through she released a laugh of deep, hard-earned relief. She couldn’t help it. She felt the strength go out of her, and she found herself bending over at the waist to grasp her knees. But she was still laughing. “Not so little,” she countered through her smile.
“No,” William agreed softly. “Definitely not.”
Helena closed her eyes, enjoying the sound of his voice as it washed over her.
Who would have known? Who would have guessed that the answer to it all was as uncomplicated as Cain needing a hug? As the man who’d been cursed as Death needing nothing more than to be shown a modicum of tenderness, of empathy and compassion? It was something he had never been shown, not in the entirety of his existence. Not until her.
Not until now.
The Time King had ruled throughout all of history. But it took the Queen to finally, and fairly, rewrite it.
Chapter Forty-nine
Abel had been made a Nomad, a Traveler, weeks ago, and this was something beyond most people’s imagining. A Nomad was so vast and powerful, it was likened to a god in some respects, especially by those who had to go up against them.
As one of their kind, he was of the few who recognized the change coming over the world in that moment. There were little things all around. Different flowers. Different trees. Different colors of paint. He saw an owl on a lamp post. It was watching him. It was black.