Breath of the Immortal
A story of Lies, Lust, Manipulation, and Deceit
Chapter 9
Didier felt her presence as the evening shadow crept over France. He did not look up from his stare into the firelight to meet her gaze, but rather continued to lean on the mantle even after she had stormed in and crossed the great hall. He knew she had gone to see Lel, to see for herself that she had truly lost her battle. He also knew she would try anything she could to seek revenge, so all he need do was cut her off each time.
“Didier, you must help me,” Syeira begged, kneeling before him.
“Help you? Why would I want to help you? You are nothing but poison to the soul!” he replied, laughing out loud and looking down at her whimpering eyes.
“I need you to finish off Lel,” she pleaded.
“What?!” he exclaimed, finally pulling her up to her feet.
“I need you to break my spell and finish him!”
“Why were you trying to protect him then if you just wanted me to finish him?” he questioned, knowing full well the answer.
“Just finish him!” she shouted, turning away, almost in tears. “Tiana will not live through the night! I want him out of the way so defeating the clan will be easier!”
“So that is your game, moncherrie?” Didier mused. “Defeat an innocent girl by killing her off and expecting me to ‘finish the job’?”
“I don’t care how you do it, just make sure he’s dead by morning! I want that clan virtually defenseless!” she ignored him.
“What do you have against that clan?” Didier prodded for more information.
“I hate it!” she exploded, looking at him now, defeat in her eyes.
“Why do you hate it?” he continued, taking a step closer to her.
“I hate her!” she said, becoming lost in his eyes.
“Why do you hate her?” One more step closer put him at a distance from her that under normal circumstances would have rendered anyone powerless.
“Because she has something I will never get back!” she continued, this time through a whimper in her voice.
“And what is that something?” Didier leaned in and kissed her softly, making her heart skip a beat.
“Innocence,” she breathed, her eyes closed.
Didier kissed her again. “And you think that by ending her life and Lel’s you would get back this so-called innocence?” His kisses were too sweet and soft for her to handle and she virtually melted into his arms.
“If I had her innocent eyes, I could win you over,” was all she could muster to say.
“So then you would use me to win me?” he asked her, continuing to kiss her lips, traveling down further to her chin and neck, not allowing his creature to take over this time.
“You can’t have her the way you want her,” she replied, gasping a bit through his kisses.
“How do you know?” he questioned, kissing her lips again and again.
“Tiana is but a child who has no conception of the power you hold over women!”
“And what be this power? Surely I can use it on her,” Didier smiled, leaning back to see how well his kisses had weakened her temper.
Syeira opened her eyes and realized she was trapped yet again. Tears streamed down her cheeks but Didier brushed them away with his fingers. She pulled back and stiffened, mustering up the courage to speak. “You are nothing but a creature of habit, Didier! You can never love anything but the sea and that is the true reason you are cursed for eternity! What makes you think that her innocence will give you back your wretched life, untouched by spells or magick? What makes you think that if she had a cure for your ‘sickness’ you wouldn’t use her to get it and leave her behind to go back to your first love?!”
* * * * *
Lel could barely get himself off the ground to get back to his hut, but somehow he managed. His body hurt terribly and all he wanted to do was sleep because his body was too weak to do anything else. He had thought that when Syeira had found him, the least she could do was grant him a dying man’s wish, but apparently her own prerogative was more important. He had wanted her to at cure Tiana, but that was not part of her ‘plan’, and he knew it. It had been foolish to ask him that.
As he lay solemnly in his bed, one arm draped over his eyes, he remembered the first time Syeira had spoken to him about her plan. He had been watching Tiana during one of the evening meals and Syeira had come up from behind him, startling him. She had rested her chin on his shoulder and began whispering in his ear.
“Pretty soon you will have what she has,” she said to him.
“And what could I possibly want that she has?” he looked over his shoulder at her amorously. “I already have everything right here.”
I was such a fool! he thought to himself as he attempted to sit up in bed. Tiana was what he had wanted and he had allowed Syeira to play on his weakness. She was the one who wanted Tiana’s position of power, not him, and now that her plan was truly unfolding, it would be her blood on his hands! He remembered Syeira explaining to him once that she wanted to feel that way again, and he never understood what she meant, until now.
“You don’t know what it’s like to have everything you love taken from you. You have always had this clan, always been their ‘savior’. She has always been under your watchful eye because of a promise you had to keep, but for what purpose really? So she could feel protected and safe! But who watches you? Who protects you? Maybe it is time to change that!”
She used me! he realized, still too weak to lift himself out of bed. Syeira had gotten him angry and bitter towards Tiana, that it completely shadowed his true feelings for her! Although his head hurt terribly, he managed to get himself up and over to the doorway of his hut just in time to see a shadow pass by his line of vision. He tried to focus his eyes but they were too blurry to see clearly. Squinting, he did everything he could, but only saw opaqueness in front of him, and no sensible figure of any kind.
“Hello?” he called into the blur. Nothingness reverberated back to him. He shrugged his shoulders and stumbled back into the hut, clutching the bedside for better balance. Someone watched him struggling from the darkest corner of his hut, but neither made himself known nor made any movement to come to his aid.
* * * * *
Didier visited Tiana’s bedside after he had quietly left Lel’s hut, clinging to the shadows of the twilight hour for protection. Her body stirred slightly, acknowledging a presence in the room, but she was too weak to either open her eyes or move her body. He thought he knew how to save her and to get back at Syeira, but it also meant he would lose in the end. For two hundred years he had walked the shadows of the streets, his face and body hidden from the light of day, feeding on the warm blood of mortal men to survive. He had lost his one true love to his carelessness and now he would never feel what it was like to be truly mortal again.
Slowly and meticulously, he cut deep into his wrist, a trickle of blood beginning to flow down his arm. Gently, he touched his wrist to her lips, letting the liquid flow into her mouth. She stirred again, this time like an infant, suckling on the blood from his veins. The more blood she drank, the stronger she became, until she was able to hold fast onto his arm. The harder she drank from him, the weaker he became, but he did not care. If he had to end it this way, so be it, at least it would end.
“Didier, you think sacrificing your life will save hers?” he heard her voice from behind him laugh aloud.
He wretched his wrist free from Tiana and turned around, blood still dripping from the wound he had made. Without another word, Syeira pushed him aside and looked at Tiana, who was almost fully awake. She placed her hands above Tiana’s heart and closed her eyes, reciting some words under her breath. Between her fingers, she rolled a crystal ball and then laid it on top of Tiana’s chest.
“Syeira, what are you—?”
“Shhh! You’ll make me lose my concentration and then I’ll never be able to undo what you’ve done!”
“What I’ve done?!”
Syeira said a few more unrecognizable words and the crystal began to glow white. Didier watched in horror as Tiana’s breath came in shorter and shorter gasps, as the crystal began absorbing her life away. Syeira’s eyes widened with elated joy as the last breath was extinguished from Tiana’s lungs. She spun around gleefully and was faced with not only Didier’s creature glaring her down, but Lel’s astonished gaze behind him.
“I could rip you apart for what you just did!” Didier gritted his teeth.
Lel ignored their spat and ran to Tiana, holding her limp body in his arms, proving once again that innocence had captured his heart. Her body was rapidly turning cold to the touch as he buried his head in her shoulder. Syeira just laughed as to how these two heartless pirates could have grown so soft over all these years. They used to be so cold, ruthless, hard and cross, yet now they both showed remorse for something neither of them could ever hold dear!
“Get away from her!” Didier shouted, ready to attack Lel.
“Or what? You’ll attempt to end my life again?” Lel spat, laying Tiana’s body back down onto the bed.
Before Didier had the chance to retaliate, Rogar came into the hut to check on Tiana, not expecting to find so many others there as well. “What’s going on in here? Who are you?” he asked Didier. Syeira quickly dispatched the intruder by slitting his throat with a dagger from her hip pouch. As he gurgled to his death, his body slumped to the ground, breathing his last breath in silence.
“Sigh. One less gypsy to worry about!” She turned back around to face Lel and suddenly her body went stiff. She looked down at her feet and tried to move them but she found she couldn’t. The crystal in her hand began to glow white and her body began to burn, turning to dust and ashes from her feet upwards.
“Help me!” she pleaded, but Lel and Didier only stood and watched, motionless.
As her body crumpled to the floor, her breath could be seen in the air, flowing directly into the crystal in her hand. Didier attempted to step forward to reach her but the light from the crystal was too powerful, even for him to withstand. Lel lunged over the bed, in a failed attempt to free her hand of the gem and possibly save her, as the breath from her lips was swallowed by the glowing orb and her body disintegrated before their very eyes.
“Syeira!” Lel screamed. Didier only looked away. When he finally did turn around, the crystal floated across the room and hung over Tiana’s lifeless body, still laying peacefully on the bed. The vapor within the orb was expelled, entering Tiana’s body through her slightly pursed lips, filling her lungs with breath again.