No Such Thing As Immortality Read online

  I was pacing like a caged … monster, when I started picking up James’ thoughts. Why was there nothing in them on Rowan Locke? I attempted to calm my erratically pounding heart. He was coming straight to me. As he approached the window, I stepped aside to let him enter.

  James didn’t speak, choosing instead to snap his sunglasses off and silently observe me. His head remained only full of concern for me, and I was too scared to ask what I wanted to know. Needed to know.

  ‘She’s going to be fine,’ he finally relayed.

  I held my head in my hands and calmed myself for a moment, before looking squarely into his eyes. He deliberately thought through everything that had happened at the hospital, and all the conversations he had had both with the doctors, and overheard. After quickly digesting them, I acknowledged I was done with a slight nod, before silently communicating, ‘But she remains unconscious!’

  She hadn’t even woken up yet. How badly had I hurt her head? What if she never woke up?

  ‘There’s no evidence of permanent damage, Nate. Knowing you’d want her to have the best treatment possible, I flew her straight down to a London hospital and persuaded the country’s foremost neurologist to fly back from a conference in Belgium to take her case over. All the nurses were charmed by my presence, too, so she couldn’t be in better, more attentive hands. She’s just not quite ready to wake up. But she will get better. She will not die from her injuries.’

  I reached out and hugged him, an out-of-character action that no doubt worried him. But he hugged me back, and we held each other in silence, until I felt strong enough to move away.

  The friendship between James and me had crossed both existences. James had once been my closest of mortal friends. Perhaps my only true mortal friend. It was a friendship inevitably forged by our mothers, for we were chalk and cheese. Yet our mothers’ closeness, which saw James as a regular fixture at Ridings throughout our early childhoods, had forged something that would now likely continue into near eternity. Our relationship was volatile – our schooldays being particularly interesting. And it was even more so now with our exaggerated personality traits ensuring the accentuation of our differences. But that also applied to the depth of our relationship and to our understanding of the other.

  ‘Thank you, James.’

  ‘I’m not going to say it was a pleasure … Bloody Hell! I couldn’t risk being spotted flying back in broad daylight and didn’t have my car, so opted for the “high-speed” train rather than the horror of the car Morley came up with at short notice. You exist and learn. It’s been a really shit day, Nate. Oh – did I forget the hour after hour in a human hospital!’

  Generally, we were all pretty much comfortable around humans. Indeed much of the staff at Ridings were human: Mrs Dawes, the present housekeeper, and her handful of privacy-respecting cleaners, and then there were the tens of ground staff.

  Unquestionably, James was the most practised of us all though. He was regularly out partying the night away with mortals and immortals alike. He had always been that way. During our long ago stint at humanity, he had had to drag me kicking and screaming to balls …

  Come to think of it – it was he who had dragged me out last night!

  James shifted his feet awkwardly. ‘You know, I’ve really worked up an appetite. I reckon we’d both benefit from some black pudding.’

  He was evidently changing the subject. And in my current reflective state, it worked. I found myself thinking of how black pudding had once been my salvation. Or at least our simplified version of it: neat and straight from the pig. We dispensed with the other ingredients such as oats and seasoning traditionally added to pigs’ blood to create that particular human recipe.

  I had been terrified and painfully vulnerable then, too. Flung from my panicked horse on that dark coach road, I had been unconscious in a sodden ditch whilst Elizabeth and James were attacked. Then, I had found myself in a living nightmare, too. But black pudding, the result of my desperately human quest to find a non-human alternative to Elizabeth and James’ new dietary requirements, had saved me … saved us.

  What could possibly be my salvation now? Two centuries on, no longer meant to be struggling with human weaknesses …

  Yet, I found myself again desperate, vulnerable, unprotected.

  ‘I still can’t believe you, the Earl of Ridings, smuggled those walking, snorting pigs up the back staircase in the dead of night so we’d have black pudding on tap. But Nate – giving them a guest room? When Mrs Reynolds opened that door …’

  I stopped hearing him. I dropped to my knees in agony. Confusion, anger, hurt, hatred and God knows what else were consuming me – and they weren’t mine. Oh, God – they were so much worse than mine. She was back. How could she be back? She wasn’t anywhere near me!

  James was on his knees by my side. He held my face in his hands and spoke in a calm voice that belied the look in his eyes, ‘It’ll be easier this time. It will screw with you but you can do this. Here or your study?’

  He read my answer, and then I was on the chaise on the ground floor of my tower.

  It was a long time before I was able to take in my surroundings again.

  ‘Why?’ I asked shakily, seven hours, thirty-nine minutes and twenty-two hellish seconds later.

  There was a pause whilst James seemed to consider how to answer, or even whether to answer. Sighing, he finally spoke. ‘I called the hospital. Rowan Locke regained consciousness. It appears you – for the moment at least – experience her conscious feelings and emotions. Whilst we thought that part of your torture was at an end, it was simply her unconscious or sleeping. She’s obviously sleeping again now. And it clearly has nothing to do with whether or not you are in her presence.’ He added quietly, ‘I should have let you kill her.’

  I was completely and utterly numb and didn’t feel able to move my frozen limbs. Her conscious feelings? So throughout Rowan Locke’s waking hours, I would be in hell? My own emotions were bad enough … but hers? I wasn’t strong enough for this.

  James let me be for several minutes before coming to sit at my side. ‘We are going to sort out a way to best deal with this.’

  I shakily moved to my favourite red leather chair by the blazing fire; I felt in need of warmth. Clumsily, I knocked from the reading table my latest acquisition for the library: a first edition of Miguel de Cervantes’ Don Quixote. Eighteen are known to exist; this was number nineteen. I had been sat reading it before James’ hare-brained driving scheme had destroyed my existence.

  When my limbs, at least, felt warmed, I asked again, ‘Why?’ James looked confused. ‘Not why it happened again, but why it happened at all. Why me? Why not you? Why this particular form of such targeted torture? And why this girl?’

  I saw her in my mind’s eye again … bewitching. I remembered the warmth that had channelled through my whole body as I sat cradling her, and how bereft and cold to the core I had felt when James took her from my arms. And then there were her eyes …

  ‘You forget another “why”, Nate. With everything she’s doing to you, why are you thinking of her in the way that you are?’

  I was taken aback. I was concerned for her well-being … It was only right, after I had nearly killed her. I recovered myself in an instant. Leaping from my seat, I roared thunderously and fixed James with a furious glare; he didn’t so much as flinch. I provided my response at a decibel level only our kind could achieve. ‘That is ridiculous! Completely … utterly RIDICULOUS! Any excuse! You and your one-track bloody mind! Pathetic James! Pathetic!’ I spun around to face the fire, leaning with both hands on the mantle, and attempted to calm myself down.

  He chuckled and muttered, at the opposite end of the decibel spectrum to that which I had used, ‘I do believe I hit a nerve.’

  I was instantaneously before him – and this time I had the satisfaction of seeing him cringe.

  ‘Okay, enough,’ he conceded, raising his hands to indicate surrender. ‘I was just checking your senses wer
en’t buggered up – your hearing seems well up to par.’

  I found myself letting out an exasperated growl, and stalked to the window. He was infuriating when he was like this. Night had fallen again. It hadn’t even been twenty-four hours since I had been introduced to my own personal hell … and Rowan Locke.

  Several minutes passed before I asked, ‘Do you have any answers to my whys, James?’

  ‘If we knew why, we wouldn’t have let it happen.’

  ‘Does she know what she is doing to me?’ I murmured. My instinct was saying no … but I wasn’t on best form.

  James took a moment to respond. ‘I honestly don’t think she does. But whether conscious or unconscious, the fact remains: this girl is torturing you.’

  ‘Talk!’ I growled. ‘Advise me of the best way of dealing with this – because I have not the remotest idea. You, no doubt, have had more opportunity for considering things over the last few hours than I.’

  I couldn’t believe I was in such a desperate state of mind to, yet again, be relying on James. It was such role reversal, and it didn’t come easily.

  James raised his eyebrows at my thought before plunging straight in at the deep end. ‘The most obvious solution is to kill her.’

  He saw the look on my face, and held up his hand so I would let him finish. ‘You need to tell me why not. It seems to be the only sure-fire way of stopping this. It wouldn’t need to be you. Any one of us would do this to end your torment – even Elizabeth. So if it’s the irrepressible guilt of doing it yourself, let one of us. You need to seriously think about it, Nate. How can you possibly continue like this?’

  So that is how they had spent their recent hours: working out how to kill her. And I had thought it was only I who had become a monster.

  ‘That’s not fair,’ James snarled. ‘None of us want to do it – but we don’t feel we have a choice. And you should take a moment to reflect on what Elizabeth’s offering here. It should show you just how worried she is about you. This would affect her more than anyone.’

  ‘Get out of my head!’ I snarled back. I knew what they were proposing to do was for me, and I didn’t need James to remind me of the significance of Elizabeth’s offer. I had bloody well been there when she had made her first and only human kill. And it had been my fault. I was supposed to have been looking after her, but had failed to spot the glaringly obvious. The black pudding solution had come too late to save Elizabeth’s conscience. Yet no matter their motivation, it didn’t make what they were suggesting any more acceptable. Yes, I needed the torture to end … but it felt bad enough that I had nearly killed Rowan Locke by accident, and she was lying in a hospital bed, broken because of me.

  James cleared his throat and put his finger up as if seeking permission to speak. I raised my right eyebrow.

  ‘The broken foot was nothing to do with you – the temper on that girl! That was her fault!’ He obviously hadn’t got out of my head.

  ‘James! She only kicked the car because I failed to get out of the damned thing. The answer is NO!’

  ‘You really aren’t thinking logically or remotely sensibly at the moment. We all consider it to be the best course of action. It has to be in your best interests.’

  ‘No, it is not!’ I squeezed my eyes shut as an image of her eyes – lifeless – flashed before me. Merely the thought of her death caused an excruciating assault of guilt and grief. I knew James had seen it, so added warningly, ‘Do not read anything into that! After my performance last night, I simply want her safe and well. I would challenge you, in my position, to want anything else.’

  ‘And you think to be tortured by her during her every waking moment is an option? In your bloody position, I’d take her out myself! This is all connected to her, Nate. All of it. With her out of the picture, you’ll get your power back, and will never need to feel anything you don’t want to, ever again!’

  ‘I do not know what I think!’ I cried. I seemed incapable of making any cool, calculated decision when the waters were so muddied by sentiment. I tried to come up with something that sounded sensible – when sensible was the last description that could be currently applied to me. ‘That course of action is premature. If we find her to be doing this to me on purpose, although God knows how and for what reason, then we can revisit the option. But no, not now. And I want a promise that none of you will act against my wishes.’

  James sighed and shook his head. ‘I told them, you know. I knew you wouldn’t bloody well go for it. But would they listen? So … we move to Plan B.’

  The relief flooded through me. An alternative!

  ‘Because you refuse to be sensible, and we don’t yet know why the hell this has happened, so can’t remedy it, we need to look at avoidance … Let’s go!’ James was off the chaise and at the door in a flash.

  I was even more confused, and his head gave me no clues. ‘James?’

  Shaking his head dramatically and clearly annoyed, he groaned. ‘The things I do for you! We are going to the other side of the world, to see just how far away you have to be to escape that vicious streak of hers!’

  I was pretty lost for words, but had to admit it was a good idea … a very good idea. I was at his side in less than a blink of an eye.

  He gave me a broad smile, which I was beginning to feel like matching. ‘Freddie’s got the jet on standby, my new games console is on board – so let’s get to the airfield. I’m driving, though!’

  This could be the answer. I even had a property in Australia, which doubled as a highly profitable enterprise; its fifteen-thousand acre vineyard churning out some of the best-selling Australian wines in the human world. Not the ideal choice though … I grimaced, recalling the viciousness of the sun and its impact on our sensitive eyes and our pale skin – and the difficulty of blending in with the tanned locals. But then there was the taste of kangaroo blood. I hadn’t had that for half a century or so.

  But there was one thing I needed to do first.

  ‘NO!’ James roared. He was obviously still not out of my head. His face was instantly six inches from mine.

  ‘James – you need to bear with me. I have to see her, to reassure myself she is getting better. I feel an inordinate degree of guilt and remorse for hurting her – and for the way I acted.’ I shuddered at the recollection. ‘I need to apologise … and getting some answers would be good, too.’

  ‘But you know she’s okay!’ James spat out. ‘Look what she did to you when she woke up. Believe me, now is not the time to be honourable! As for answers – leave it to us to find them. You simply need to get as far away from her as possible, as quickly as possible.’

  I shook my head. ‘I need to see her, James.’

  And therein lay the problem. Yes, I wanted to apologise. Yes, I wanted answers. But no matter how much I attempted to deny it, I felt drawn to this woman. The most sensible reaction was to flee. But I didn’t yet feel able to do so.

  And there was something else plaguing my mind. I didn’t want Rowan Locke to think badly of me. I couldn’t fathom the reasons … I had never before been bothered by what people thought of me. But I found myself bothered now. I had experienced hatred in her feelings today and I worried it was felt towards me. I didn’t want her to hate me. I knew I wasn’t acting in my best interests, or hers.

  But I needed to see Rowan Locke.

  Chapter Three

  The Hospital

  James was livid and remained that way throughout the car journey to the hospital. ‘You’re a bloody masochist. Why are you doing this to yourself? You’re out of your fucking mind! So what if you didn’t behave like a gentleman – you were out of your mind then, too! What choice did you have? She’s damned lucky you didn’t kill her. That should be enough! That’s far better than any apology you could ever hope to give.’

  He didn’t speak to me again for most of the hour-and-three-quarter journey – which was made at, what I considered to be, a reckless speed. He let his acute frustration channel through the accelerator pe
dal of the car. And tonight, in my post-traumatic form, I was a nervous passenger. No matter how hard I tried, I couldn’t reassure myself we were still infallible. If the impossible had happened to me, then technically, it could happen to us all.

  My panicked exclamations left James in no doubt as to my concerns: ‘James … LOOK OUT! That car! … Dear God … THAT car! I beg of you – put the lights on so they can see us coming!’ And even, ‘There is a cat between those cars … JAMES! … Jesus! A rat is poking its head out of that drain … if the cat sees the rat …?’

  James’ response to each panicked observance was to turn his attention from the road, and to stare at me in absolute disgust; as a result, I only uttered the warnings of most concern. But I could concur with what he was thinking: I had no idea what was becoming of me.

  As James drew into the hospital car park, my sentiments were mixed. I couldn’t put into words the relief at our having completed the journey without incident. But now we had arrived, I was … petrified.

  ‘It’s the middle of the night,’ James coolly stated, parking and turning the engine off. ‘And she’s clearly in the land of nod because you aren’t acting all freaky on me … Well – not as freaky. If this had to happen, it should have at least been planned better!’

  ‘You think I have a plan?’ I mumbled.

  ‘Well, this wasn’t my idea! And do you know what? I’ve had more than enough of human hospitals. And I didn’t get to feed.’

  I ignored him. I was struggling. Petrified didn’t begin to go there and it was a horrid sensation. Yet, at the same time, I was acutely aware of how physically close to Rowan Locke I was. I knew that despite all the corridors I would end up going through, she was less than one-hundred-and-fifty yards away. And I, totally illogically, wanted to be closer.

  It was several long moments later that I, alone, made my way to Rowan Locke’s bedside. James was giving me space, whilst being on hand in the event of anything else ‘fucking freaky’ happening. He was not instilling me with confidence.