Page 104 of Fallen Thorns
“We’re coming. We’ll be with you as soon as we can.” Mars left me, already heading for their bag and shoes.
“We can’t just…”
“Yes, we can,” they called from the hallway. “We can and we will. Leave a note, your mother will understand. You’ve got commitments. You’ll see her soon. You’re very sorry.”
“Mars. You can’t Manipulate me.”
“I know, but I mean it regardless. Marianne needs us. She needsyou.”
She needs me.
“Okay.”I need to go. Please.
“I’ll sort the train; you go and pack…” they trailed off then looked down to their trouser pocket where their phone just buzzed.
“Shit,” they said, eyes on the screen then locking onto mine, face horror-stricken.
“What? What is it?”
“Casper. He… Ben didn’t come home last night. He’s not answering his phone. No one knows where he went. Arlo… Ben is missing.”
It would have been too much of a coincidence for it all to be connected but I knew — all of me knew — that this was undeniably linked. Just as it all had been from the start. It was as if I was somehow seeing the world through her lens, Lucy’s lens. She’d known where we were the whole time. And what would I do to tease out the murderer of my sibling? I’d strike when they least expected it. Strike right in the heart.
Ben is missing.
ChapterTwenty-Four
Michael
We have watched a million lives pass by; observed a billion pasts, and an infinity of futures. We have seen things one could only dream of. We have been here since the dawn and will live on through the night.
If everything had gone my way, they would already be beside me; ready to conquer everything. Watching as worlds turn and life cycles on and on. The Sun, The Moon, and The Star.
It took time, you see. Joining a world anew is no easy feat, even for forces like us. I found him — Michael — trailing the dusty streets of Amsterdam as a hopeless young artist. Lost but driven. For years, I followed him and watched him grow; I analysed his every move. He was the one; I’d known the whole time.
As he was the first, he had nothing to consent to. It was a choice made for him, but I found he was too lonesome to fight back, so we melded easily as one, as easily as fire melts ice.
The wings were perhaps his last conscious decision, yet a necessary addition, after all, we were more than human. Adapted.
One of his final creations in life had been that of the archangel — his namesake. He always believed that one day he could be grand and above humanity, perhaps even using himself as a muse for the piece — an ego of the gods, some might have said, but all I saw was pride. Pride and ambition, buried deep inside his sorrow.
I was always the decision maker; we three preferred it that way, and thus, a mere two years later at a drug induced mania of a summer festival, I found my Moon. He was not to know of my realisation, not for many years to come, but once again, we knew he was the one. We would make this world perfect, the three of us, just like we always dreamed. Once again, we were one step closer.
I left him be, analysing his mood and his steps as he traipsed the globe. You see, having a body this time meant I had to act as such. I had to approach him and entice him. He too was broken and helpless, but where Michael had had no say in his fate, I allowed this man a chance. Where Michael was merely human, this man was something else. A vampire, the humans called them. Creatures who fed off the blood of others and survived poisoned, eternal lives. So surprisingly similar to our kind, only not quite. He had lived a long life, and he was so very tired. The solitude corpse of a once regal man. So, I granted him the life he wanted. It was remarkably easy to drain the innocent and have them switch places — to revive him like a new creation. And once it was done, I sent him on his way. He craved a human life, to find love and to grow old as everyone he knew once had. After spending so long in the shadows, he so desperately begged to see the light.
When he was first taken from me, I mourned for some time, believing I was foolish to have set him free. I did not entice him enough. I held the essence of my Moon in my claws. Yet it was not long before I learned he would come back.
When we finally met again, he was not the same. Greater, perhaps; corporeal and grand. But limited. A thing of greatness confined to the body of a helpless soul. Fickle, he feared his ageing: the thinning of his hair and the click of his knees.
He was happy for a while; from a distance, I had watched him as he believed he was living. He indulged himself in the petty desires of human men, ones he had never fully enjoyed undead. He thrived, but all I saw was the shell of what once was, while The Moon grew restless. Eventually, he felt it too. The longing for more. He watched as his mortal hands departed from his static youth, his joints stiffened, and his breath shortened. A healthy rate for a human. Nothing inhibiting, not yet. Though he saw the inevitable, for even his human self had lived too long as another that he had forgotten about his true humanity, he did not care for it. So, he came crawling back to me, returning to his loyal companion in life and beyond, begging for his deathless soul back. I was not to waste my time finding the now aged vampire we had created. He needed The Moon.
“Why have you chosen me, might I ask? I’m no one special, and you should know that having followed me around for the better part of two decades,” he asked me on the evening he ran away from his new life.
If only I had a simple answer, but alas, I did not. I cannot explain what is meant to be. My Moon needed a host.
“Once we find a place for The Star, it will all make sense,” I would repeat as my only reply. “Then we will be at full strength to tackle this dreary, mortal world.”
I slashed his throat then and there, watching his final essence of humanity stain the dirt beneath us and gazed in admiration as he breathed in for the first time again. The Moon had risen.
