Immortal Beloved

It was sort of light outside when I finally pried my eyes open for more than a few seconds. I blearily scanned the room and saw a window. The light coming in was pale and pink-tinged, which meant dusk or dawn. One or the other. Or perhaps the neighborhood was on fire. Always a possibility.

  I knew it would be bad, trying to sit up, so I took it slowly, moving one small part of me at a time. Last was my head, which I raised cautiously a few inches off the mattress. The washed-out yellow roses of the bare mattress slowly clarified and resolved. Mattress, no sheet. Window with light. Dark painted brick walls, like a factory or something.

  I turned my head slowly to see another sleeping body, a guy with spiky green hair, a thick silver chain around his neck, a writhing dragon tattoo covering most of his back. Um, Jeff? Jason? Jack? Something with a J, I was almost certain.

  I achieved a semi-upright state several minutes later, then immediately hurled my guts up as my body attempted to rid itself of the toxins I’d ingested the night before.

  I didn’t make it to the toilet. Sorry, Jeff.

  Feeling hollow and shaky and wishing immortality wasn’t so incredibly literal, I saw I was still wearing all my clothes, which meant either the J-man or I, or both, had been too wasted to further our… acquaintance last night. Just as well. Reflexively I felt for my scarf and found it still knotted tight around my throat. I relaxed a bit, then remembered Incy standing over me, asking me about the mark on the back of my neck. I couldn’t believe that had happened on the same night as the cabbie. I swallowed, grimacing, and decided to think about that later.

  My leather jacket and one of my beautiful green lizard-skin ankle boots were inexplicably missing, so I took the boot I could find and crept out, not that an earthquake would have woken Jay up then. I was pretty sure he was still alive—his chest seemed to be going up and down. I vaguely remembered having two drinks to each one of his.

  I stepped over a couple more sleeping bodies on my way out. This was a big, bare warehouselike building, probably on the outskirts of town. My shoulder and butt felt bruised, and all of my muscles were sore as I limped down the industrial brick steps. Outside it was really cold, the wind whipping bits of trash up the deserted street.

  At least it wasn’t raining, I thought, and then it all flowed back into my brain, against my will: the night before, everything we’d done, the rain, the knife fight, falling on the sidewalk, Incy breaking that cabbie’s spine, me almost losing my scarf in that club, in front of everyone. My stomach roiled again and I stopped for a moment, sucking in a cold breath as I ran through the details, dismay creeping over me anew. Where had Innocencio learned that magick? As far as I knew, he hadn’t made a point of knowing any, and in the last century of our hanging out, I’d never seen him do much, certainly not anything that big, that dark. No friends in our immediate circle had honed their skills with magick. I leaned against the graffitied cinder-block wall of the warehouse while I pushed my bare foot into my one boot.

  The cold air filled my nose and made it start running, and suddenly the morning was horribly bright, horribly clear. Incy had done something awful last night with powerful magick, out of the blue. And I had done something just as awful, though not with magick. I’d watched Incy break that guy’s spine, and then I had just… walked away. I’d walked away and gone dancing in a club. What was wrong with me? How could I have done that? Had someone found the cabbie during the night? Someone had, surely. Even though that neighborhood was mostly deserted. Even though it had been very late. And raining. Still, someone must have happened on him, taken him to the hospital. Right?

  And on top of that, Incy had actually seen the mark on the back of my neck. And might well remember it. How ironic. I’d been obsessive about keeping my neck covered at all times for the last 449 years, and all at once, one night, that effort had been shot. Would Incy know the significance of what he’d seen? How could he? No one did. No one who was still alive. So why did I feel so afraid?

  And all of these horrible, fevered thoughts bring us back to the beginning:

  Last night my whole world came tumbling down. Now I’m running scared.

  CHAPTER 2

  After some of the events I’ve witnessed, the Incy/cabbie/magick/neck night should seem like a party. I’ve raced away in the night, clinging to a horse’s mane, with nothing but the clothes on my back, while a city behind me burned to the ground. I’ve seen bodies covered with the oozing sores of the bubonic plague, piled high in city streets like logs because there weren’t enough people alive to bury them. I was in Paris on July 14, 1789. You never forget the sight of a human head on a pike.

  But we weren’t at war now. We were living an ordinary life, or as ordinary a life as an immortal can have. I mean, there’s always a bit of a surreal quality. If you live long enough, through enough wars and invasions and attacks by northern raiders, you end up defending yourself, sometimes to an extreme point. If someone’s coming at you with a sword, and you have a dagger tucked in the back of your skirt, well…

  But that was different. It didn’t matter that your attacker probably wouldn’t kill you—how often does someone actually cut your head clean off?—it still felt like a life-or-death situation, and you reacted as if it were. But last night had been… just a regular night. No war, no berserkers, no life or death. Just a pissed-off cabbie.

  Where had Incy gotten that spell? Yes, we’re immortal, we have magick running through our veins, but one has to learn on purpose how to use it. Over the years, I’d known some people who were all about studying magick, learning spells, learning whatever they needed to learn to wield it. But I’d figured out a long time ago that I didn’t want to. I’d seen the death and destruction that magick could cause, I’d seen what people were willing to do to pursue it, and I didn’t want to have anything to do with it. I wanted to pretend it didn’t exist. And I’d found some like-minded aefrelyffen (an old word for immortals), and we hung out.

  Okay, maybe I’d use magick to get a cab when it’s raining and there’s none to be found. To make the person in front of me not want that last pain au chocolat. That kind of thing. But to snap someone’s spine, for fun?

  I’d seen Incy use people, break girls’ and boys’ hearts, steal, be callous—and it was just part of his charm. He was reckless and selfish and a user—but not to me. To me he was sweet and generous and funny and fun, willing to go anywhere, do anything. He was the one who would call me to go to Morocco at a moment’s notice. The one I’d call to get me out of a jam. If some guy wouldn’t take no for an answer, Incy was there, smiling his wolfish smile. If some woman made a snide remark, Incy’s wit would skewer her in front of everyone. He helped me pick out what to wear, brought me fabulous stuff from wherever he went, never criticized me, never made me feel bad.

  And I’d done the same for him—once breaking a bottle over a woman’s head after she went after Incy with a long metal nail file. I’d paid off doormen, lied to bobbies and gendarmes, and pretended to be his wife or his sister or his enraged lover, whatever the situation demanded. We would howl about it afterward, falling together, laughing until tears came out of our eyes. The fact that we’d never been lovers, never had that awkwardness between us, only made it more perfect.

  He was my best friend—the best friend I’d ever had. We’d been tight for almost a century, so it was amazing that he’d managed to shock me last night. And amazing that our other friends hadn’t been shocked. And amazing that I’d managed to reach a new low, even for me. The low of indif ference. The low of cowardice. And, to top it all off, Incy had seen my neck. Better and better.

  When I got back to my London flat, I took a shower, sitting on the marble floor and letting the hot water rain down on my head for a long time, trying to wash the alcohol and the warehouse off my skin. I couldn’t even name what I was feeling. Fear? Shame? It was as if I’d woken up into a different life from the one I’d woken up into yesterday, and I was a different person. And this life and I were both suddenly much darker and grosser and mo
re dangerous than I’d realized.

  I soaped up all over, practically feeling the alcohol oozing out of my pores. I washed my hair, automatically avoiding my… it’s not a tattoo. Immortals get tattoos, of course, and they last a long time, maybe about ninety years or so. Other scars heal, fade, and disappear much more quickly and completely than on regular people. A couple of years later, you can’t tell where you were injured or burned.

  Except for me. The mark on the back of my neck was a burn, and I’d had it since I was ten years old. It had never faded, never changed, and the skin was slightly indented, patterned. It was round, about two inches across. It had been caused by a red-hot amulet pressed against my skin 449 years ago. Sure, despite my paranoia, the occasional person had seen it, now and again, over the last four and a half centuries. But as far as I knew, no one now living had ever seen it. Except for Incy, last night.

  Finally I got out, all prune-y. I wrapped myself up in a thick robe I’d taken from some hotel, avoiding looking at myself in the mirror. Feeling like a ghost, a wraith, I wandered into the living room and saw the London Times on the floor in front of my door, where I’d kicked it. I carried it into the kitchenette, where all I found were an ancient packet of McVitie’s and a bottle of vodka in the freezer. So I sat on my sofa and ate the stale crackers, skimming the Times. It was buried way in the back, before the obits but after, like, Girl Guide meeting announcements. It said, Trevor Hollis, 48, an independent taxicab driver, was attacked last night by one of his fares and suffered a broken spine. He is in the ICU of St. James’s Hospital, undergoing tests. Doctors have said he will likely be paralyzed from the shoulders down. He has been unable to name or describe his attacker. His wife and children have been at his side.

  Paralyzed below the shoulders. If I had called an ambulance, gotten him help sooner, would it have made a difference? How long had he lain on the sidewalk, rigid with pain, unable to scream?

  Why hadn’t I called 999? What was wrong with me? He could have died. Maybe he would have preferred to. He wouldn’t be driving a cab any longer. He had a wife and children. What kind of a husband could he be now? What kind of a father? My eyes got blurry, and the stale crackers turned to dust in my throat.

  I had been part of that. I hadn’t helped. I’d probably made it worse.

  What had I become? What had Incy turned into?

  The phone rang and I ignored it. My buzzer sounded three times, and I let the doorman handle it. I’d lost my mobile a couple of days ago and hadn’t gotten around to replacing it, so I didn’t have to worry about that. Finally, at about eight, I got up and went to my bedroom and pulled out my biggest suitcase, the one that could hold a dead pony. (Before you go there, I’ll clarify that it never has.)

  Quickly, with a sense of abrupt urgency, I grabbed armfuls of clothes and whatever and shoved them in, and when it was full, I zipped it up, found a jacket, and headed out. Gopala, the doorman, got me a cab.

  “Mr. Bawz and Mr. Innosaunce were looking for you, Miss Nastalya,” he told me. I’d always been amused at how he butchered all of our names. Of course, he was doing a damn sight better here than what I could do if you plunked me down in the middle of Bangalore and expected me to hold a job.

  “I’ll be back soon,” I told Gopala as the cabdriver hefted my suitcase into the boot.

  “Ah, are you off to see your parents, Miss Nastalya?”

  As usual, I’d invented mythical parents for myself, to explain why a teenager would be living on her own with an unlimited income.

  “Oh, no—they’re still in…” I thought quickly—“Tasmania. I’m just going to Paris, do some shopping.” Maybe I was having a nervous breakdown. I felt afraid, anxious, ashamed, and cautious, as if every cabdriver in London now carried my picture on his sun visor, with a big red WANTED stamped across my face. I felt as if Innocencio would spring out at me from behind a big planter, and didn’t know what I’d do if he did. I remembered his expression as he looked down at me from the end of the couch. He’d looked… intrigued. Calculating? Even if he had no idea of the significance of my scar, I hated the fact that he knew about it. I felt like I’d never be able to bear to see him again, and he was my best friend. My best friend who’d crippled someone last night, whom I was now—afraid of? This was my life. This was the situation I had created for myself.

  I scrambled into the backseat of the cab, giving Gopala a big tip. “Just off to Paris. Back soon!”

  Gopala smiled and nodded, touching the bill of his doorman’s cap.

  “So, you want St. Pancras?” the cabbie asked, marking his log. “Catch the train through the Chunnel?”

  “No,” I said as I sank down into the backseat. “Take me to Heathrow.”

  • • •

  The next morning I was in Boston, in America, renting a car at some dinky little company that would rent to someone under twenty-five.

  “Here you are, Ms. Douglas,” said the clerk, handing over a set of keys. “And how do you say your first name?”

  “Phillipa,” I answered. Like every immortal, I have a bunch of different passports and IDs and driver’s licenses. Someone always has a friend who knows someone who can get what we need. For years I’d used this one little man in Frankfurt. He’d been a genius, had forged a thousand different identity papers during World War II. My passports list different names, ages (in my case, a range between eighteen and twenty-one), places of origin. It had been so much easier before governments started tracking people. I mean, birth certificates? Social Security numbers? What a freaking headache. “Phil-ip-pah.”

  “What a pretty name,” the clerk said, giving me a cheerleader smile.

  “Uh-huh. Is the car out this way?”

  As soon as I was out of Boston, I pulled over and unfolded my map of Massachusetts. The rental-car people could have plotted the course to West Lowing for me, but then they might remember doing it, if anyone asked them later. And right now I just wanted to disappear. I felt like—like the devil was after me. Like I was being swallowed up in a disaster or something and just had to get… far away.

  I’d had seven hours to think about things on the flight from London to Boston. Seven hours isn’t long enough to fully contemplate four hundred years of mounting darkness and stupidity, but it’s plenty of time to remember enough bad things to make you feel like a slug beneath a rock. Worse than a slug. Like slime mold.

  I found West Lowing. It was smack dab in the middle of Massachusetts, near Lowing Lake and right on Lowing River. I’m guessing someone named Lowing was a big shot a couple hundred years ago and felt a need to splash his name all over the place.

  It would take only about two hours to drive there. In Ireland, two hours of driving could take you three-quarters of the way across the country, horizontally. You could drive straight through Luxembourg in about five minutes. America is a big, big place. Big enough to get lost in? I hoped so.

  So, the whole immortal thing. You must have questions. I don’t have all the answers. I don’t know how many of us there are. I’ve met hundreds over the years, and simple math says our numbers must be increasing all the time, right? New ones are born, old ones only very rarely check out. You’ve probably run into quite a few yourself, without realizing it. Basically, immortals are humans who just don’t die when we’re supposed to.

  Most of us believe that there have simply always been immortals, just as people who believe in vampires think there have always been vampires. (In fact, if you look into old vampire myths, you’ll see some overlap with the “living forever” theme.) I don’t know how we began, or where, or why, but I’ve met immortals of most races and ethnicities. It does take two immortals to make new little immortals, so when an immortal hooks up with a regular person, their offspring won’t be immortal—but in a lot of cases, those are the people who live weirdly long lives, like over a hundred years. There was that woman in France—and there’s a town in Georgia (the country, not the state), where an odd proportion of people live to be over a hundred y
ears old. They attribute it to their healthy living and yogurt-heavy diet. Ha! It just means there was an immortal there who really got around.

  We do age, but in a different pattern than humans. Most of the time, until you’re about sixteen, it’s a year = a year. After that, it’s usually about a year = a hundred human years. I’ve seen immortals who have aged a lot faster or slower, but I have no idea why. The oldest person I’ve ever met was about eight hundred. He’d been awful, so full of himself, mean and evil. What’s odd is meeting an immortal who’s still only about forty or fifty—it hasn’t really sunk in for them, the reality, and they feel like adults but still look like teenagers. It leaves them in a weird limbo, and they kind of don’t know what to do with themselves.

  For myself, I was born in 1551, a nice symmetrical number. Almost 460 years later, I still get carded in bars. Before you think Oh, awesome! let me tell you what a pain in the ass that is. I’m an adult. I’ve been a grown-up forever. But I’m locked in an eternal twilight of adolescence, and I just can’t move past how I look. But then, many teens seem to feel immortal, as though nothing can touch them. The concept of danger or death is completely foreign, without weight or reality. So maybe I am still a teenager. Okay, I know: Cry me a river.

  We don’t get cancer or diabetes or things like that. We do get colds and flu and the plague, but we recover. For your info, smallpox scars take about fifteen years to fade. We can get burned, have limbs cut off, have horrible wounds—but they heal, as I explained earlier. It takes time, but they all heal. Limbs grow back, a process both disgusting and fascinating. It takes several years. Despite our name, we can be killed. But it takes some doing, so don’t knock yourself out trying.

  What do we do with all of our time? Lots of the same stuff regular people do. We live on the same planet, we have the same resources available to us. Some of us are wastrel partiers. (Not naming any names—okay, me.) Some immortals use their time more wisely: to study, learn, hone artistic talents or crafts, travel. Some people neither party nor improve themselves. They live in a perpetual state of dissatisfaction, not liking anything, always finding something to complain about, hating other immortals, hating humans. I’ve met people like that, and I’ve always wanted to put them on an ice floe and push them off into the ocean.