“What?” I finally say. “What are you saying?”
“I’m an immortal,” he says, and I burst out laughing. The sound is maniacal, lacking any humor, leading me to believe that this whole thing might be nothing more than the most vivid of delusions, or dreams, or... something. His face falls at my laughter.
“And I’m the tooth fairy,” I gasp. He takes a step toward me and my laughter dies immediately. “No,” I command, “don’t come any closer. Don’t you ever come near me again.”
Pain shoots through his eyes, but I refuse to give in to his agony. He turns away, and with a violent wrench he pulls the cap from the bed post. I look around frantically for a weapon, but he simply turns back and pushes his fingers inside the hollow wood. When they come out, a key is clasped between his first two fingers.
“Niahm, please, I—”
“The key,” I interrupt wildly. “Give it here.”
His face drops, and he tosses me the key. Unprepared for him to actually give it to me, it hits the wall and falls to the floor. Keeping my eyes on him, I stoop, feeling around until my fingers touch it. As I stand and fumble to get it into the keyhole with my shaking hands, he puts his own hand into his pocket and I freeze, panic causing me to drop it once again. I know his pockets are empty, I checked them all myself, but that doesn’t stop the alarm that he’s somehow hidden something there that I didn’t find, something that will hurt me.
He pulls his hand out, and I see the truck key in his hand. I don’t even recall placing it back in his pocket. He tosses that to me, and better prepared, I catch it.
“You can go,” he says. “I’m not going to hurt you. I would never hurt you. You know that.”
I thought I knew that, but now I know differently. I don’t tell him that, though, stooping and quickly snatching up the room key once again. I turn my eyes away from him long enough to fit the key into the lock. With a turn, the bolt snaps open and I’m able to open the door.
Dusk’s fading light seems bright as I back out of the room, keeping my eyes on him as he watches me with sorrow lining his body. I pull the door shut, wondering if I’m locking him in. Distractedly, I decide I’ll let Shane know. I run to the truck, stumbling in my haste. The door opens easily and I climb in, slamming my hand down on the automatic lock button. I jam the key into the ignition, missing the first time because of the violent shaking of my hand, and the engine turns over. I heave out a sigh. I suppose I thought he might have done something to the truck to keep it from starting. In my haste, I pull the shifter beyond reverse into neutral, and have to push it back. I stomp on the gas pedal, not waiting for the truck to come to a complete stop before pulling the shifter into drive and peeling out in the loose gravel that litters the parking lot. I glance in the rear view mirror. Nothing moves at the motel as I pull away, dread filling my heart as I watch it fade in the distance.
Chapter 38
Sam
I’d forgotten how much it hurts to get shot. If I’d remembered, I would have chosen a different method to get my point across. I would have chosen something quicker to recover from, having seen the abject terror and profound grief that Niahm suffered while I recovered when she held my hand. I could have spared her some of that.
I couldn’t have spared her the rage she now felt.
I wad the bloody shirt up, pulling a clean one from the top of the closet where we keep an emergency stash of clothing. Odd that in her tearing the room apart, Niahm had missed this. I walk into the bathroom and catch sight of myself in the mirror. Blood stains my chest and belly, splattered across my jaw, dark and flaking.
“Bloody eejit,” I curse myself, rinsing the white towel that’s also stained with blood until it’s mostly clean then use it to clean myself up as best I can. I pull the clean shirt on and stare at my pale face. Self-recrimination stares back at me, and well deserved at that. I’m still weak, will be for a day or two while my body replenishes the blood it lost. I walk back into the room, and pull the secondary key from the cap of the footboard, letting myself out of the room.
It’s not likely I’ll make it back to town in my weakened state. I drop to the bench that rests near the doorway, dropping my head into my hands. We’ll have to go now, leave Goshen before Niahm starts spreading the rumor, before the Sentinels get wind of it themselves. We’ll have to erase every sign of having been there, to protect Niahm and the rest of the town. Jean will have to go also. She can’t be discovered here, living with Niahm.
I groan at the mess I’ve created by my stupidity. I should have told her, given her some kind of forewarning at least about what I was going to do. I laugh cynically at the thought. That would have simply sent her running sooner.
Niahm.
Her name comes unbidden into my mind, a shaft of pain like lightening striking my heart with it. How will I go on without her? Even now, the pull to get up and go to her is so strong I can barely resist.
Time, which has very little meaning to me anymore, passes slowly. The shadows haven’t grown all that much when I hear a vehicle coming toward the motel. Warily, I sit up. It’s rare for any cars to come this way, since the road isn’t used anymore, and has fallen into extreme disrepair. Nonetheless, I need to get back to town quickly, try to stop some of the damage if possible, which means I need to flag this car down.
I’m stunned when I see my own truck coming back up the road. I look up at the sky. I don’t think Niahm has had time to get all the way back to town, drop the truck to Shane, and for Shane to come all the way back again. The truck stops at the edge of the parking lot, and with astonishment I watch as Niahm opens the door and slides from the truck. I move to stand, then think better of it and relax back.
“What is wrong with you?” she yells, guilt filling me at the raspy, strained tone of her voice.
She bends down and picks up a rock, and hurls it at me. I duck to the side as it hits the wall of the motel behind me. I stare at her, shocked as her expression looks. Then, resolutely, she shrugs her shoulders a small amount, chin jutting up, glaring at me, daring me to say anything.
I try to create as unthreatening a pose as possible as she walks slowly toward me, caution in every line of her body. When she’s a dozen feet from me, she stops. She simply stares at me, confusion warring with disbelief in her expression.
“How is it possible?” she finally asks.
“I don’t know,” is my honest answer.
She shakes her head, as if answering an internal question.
“Tell me you’re not lying,” she says. “Tell me you’re telling me the honest to God truth.”
“I swear it,” I say. “I wouldn’t lie about something so...”
“Unbelievable,” she provides angrily when I don’t finish.
“Right,” I say, grimacing. “Niahm, trust me, I know how hard this is. Imagine how I felt when I first realized I was... not dead. I mean the first time, when I realized I couldn’t die.”
She takes two steps closer after scooping up a rather sizable rock, still watching me cautiously.
“Does Shane know?”
I sigh as I contemplate how much to tell her.
“Yes,” I finally answer simply.
“Then he’s not your uncle?” she asks.
“He is my uncle,” I say. Before she can question it, I say, “He’s my great-uncle.”
“But how can...” I watch as understanding dawns. “You mean he’s ... like you?”
“Yes.”
She looks around, as if to find an answer in the cracked and lifting asphalt. She takes a few steps closer once again. I wonder if she’s even aware of her movement.
“How did you... I mean, when...” She takes a deep breath, blows it out, and begins again. “How... how old are you?”
I lean forward, resting my arms on my thighs, and notice that while she flinches a little at the movement, she doesn’t take a step back.
“I was born in 1544.”
Her mouth drops open and she quickly slams it closed, her
teeth clacking together. She takes a few more deep breaths before speaking.
“1544?” she squeaks.
“Yes. In Ireland.”
Her eyes snap to mine at that. She takes a few more steps, until she’s within a few feet of me. I can see that she’s trying to be calm about this, but forceful panic resides just below the surface.
“Maybe you should sit down,” I say. “I’ll move.” I stand, only wobbling a little. Her eyes fill with concern that she quickly covers and she waves me back down, sitting on the opposite end of the bench, as if unable to stand any longer.
“This is so…” She glances up at me, as if searching for some kind of indication of my true age. “So, you’re like an old man?”
I nearly laugh, but bite it back. Somehow I don’t think she’ll appreciate any humor in this.
“I suppose so,” I say, “Trapped in this body.”
“How old are you?” she asks curiously.
“I’m four hundred and—”
“No,” she interrupts, closing her eyes against the number as if to erase it, one hand up to halt my words. She opens them again, leveling her gaze at me, her eyes striking me once again. “I mean, how old were you when you... became how you are.”
“I was nineteen, almost twenty when I died the first time.”
“The first time?” Her voice squeaks on the question again.
“I guess that’s not the right way to say it,” I explain. “To become immortal, we have to ‘die’ the first time. Then, after we wake, we can suffer a sort of mortal death, I guess you’d call it, but we can’t ever really die.”
“Ever?”
I think about the Sentinels, about the method they have for killing us. I decide this isn’t the time to tell Niahm about that.
“Trust me, I’ve tried.” It’s cryptic, but since it’s not an exact lie, I can speak it to her.
She thinks about this, then looks at me oddly.
“You said ‘we’. There are more of you, more than you and Shane?” When I nod, she asks, “How many more?”
“I don’t know exactly. We don’t have a census taker.” I don’t tell her that there are records, kept by the Sentinels, and that last any of the immortals knew, the count was up to around four thousand. And who knew how many have managed to stay hidden, are unaccounted for? Or who were new.
“Oh, yeah, that makes sense, I guess,” Niahm says, sounding like it doesn’t make sense at all to her. She glances down at my chest. “Does it hurt?”
“Not anymore,” I say. When she continues to stare, I slowly pull the front of my shirt up, not wanting to startle her. She watches, as if unable to look away. Where the wound was is now a circular bruise, yellow in color. Her eyes come to mine, stunned. I let the shirt fall back down. “I lost a lot of blood, so I’ll be weak for a couple of days. But that’ll regenerate, also.”
Her eyes flash a moment’s sympathy, quickly gone, then she shakes her head.
“It’s a lot to take in, I know,” I tell her.
She huffs out a sarcastic laugh. After a few minutes silence, while she studies her shoes, she turns to me again.
“Couldn’t you have just told me rather than force me to go through that?” Her gravelly voice rings with accusation and hurt, and I cringe at the memory of what I’d seen as she’d held my hand while I came to.
“Would you have believed me?” I ask. She stares at me, not backing down from the question.
“No, I suppose not,” she grunts.
“I’m so sorry, Niahm. It probably wasn’t the best way to tell you. I would not ever want to purposely cause you to suffer. I just didn’t know how else to do it.”
She nods stiffly then looks off toward the mostly dark horizon. I stand and walk in front of her to lean into the room and turn the outside light on. To her credit, she doesn’t shrink away from me in disgust as I thought she would. I walk inside and pull a bottle of water from the small fridge.
When I return to the bench, I hand her the water, which she eyes before finally taking. I sit down a little closer to her, testing. She doesn’t acknowledge the move. She twists the top off and gulps the water, and once again I’m filled with recrimination for what she’s suffering. When she speaks again, her voice sounds a little better.
“How many others have you told... you know, before. Before me, I mean.”
I don’t have to hold her hand to know exactly what she’s asking. The flush in her cheeks is the first hint; that I know her so well gives me the rest. I turn toward her, so that she can see me fully, so that she will know I tell her the truth.
“None, Niahm, I’ve never told anyone else. You’re the first.”
She watches me, weighing my words, deciding on the truth of them.
“Why me?” Her voice is small.
“I should think that would be very obvious, Niahm,” I say. When she continues to watch me, not apprehending my meaning, I clarify. “You’re the only one who’s meant enough for me to tell. It isn’t something I do lightly.”
I watch as she processes my words, watch the change in her eyes as she understands. She scoots a little closer to me, cautious and hesitant, and finally leans into me. Gratefully, I put my arm around her shoulders, holding her tightly.
“I don’t know what to do about this, how to feel,” she says. “My mind is numb.”
“I know.”
“I’m really angry with you. That was a jerk thing to do. And then to find out you’re...” She takes a breath. “I’m going to need some time.” She sits up to see what I think of her words.
“I can give you as much time as you need,” I say. “But I don’t know that I can stay away.”
Niahm sighs and leans against me again, exhaustion in every line of her body.
“I don’t know that I want you to,” she says.
Chapter 39
Niahm
Sam stops the truck in front of my house. I gaze at it, wondering how it can look the same when everything is suddenly so different. Sam waits silently. I look at him, admittedly frightened at the knowledge of what he is. My world is suddenly tilted, everything I thought I knew to be true I’m now questioning. I don’t know what’s real anymore.
“I guess I’ll see you tomorrow?” I ask, unsure. Sam usually comes by on Sundays... actually Sam comes by every day.
He lifts his brows a little. “Well, yeah, if that’s okay.”
I realize he’s surprised that I want to see him. I don’t know how I feel about what I now know, and I don’t know that I’ll ever be able to reconcile it in my head, but I’m not quite ready to give him up, either.
“Okay, then, um...” I glance at him. Usually I would kiss him goodnight. He leans the tiniest bit toward me and I panic, grasping the door handle and pushing the door open quickly. “Bye, Sam. See you tomorrow.” I slam the door closed and hurry into the house.
Jean looks up from the couch where she’d been sitting, reading. I try to calm my nerves at the sight of her. I can’t face her right now. I’m grateful for the large jacket Sam had given me, which falls to my knees and covers the evidence of my night.
“Niahm? Is everything okay?” she asks, her brows puckered with worry.
I shoot her a smile, then realizing a smile will just seem odd to her, I quickly drop it.
“Yeah, of course. Why wouldn’t it be?”
I jog up the stairs, and as I turn toward my room I glance back to see her watching me, a puzzled look on her face.
I quickly change out of my blood spattered clothes, stuffing them in the bottom of my hamper, still completely freaked by the whole thing. After a hot shower, scrubbing my entire body until I’m red and raw, I flop on my bed, my mind whirling. I have about ten-thousand questions for Sam—but I’m as afraid of asking them as I am of not asking them. I try to imagine what it would be like, to know that you can never die, that no matter what you do you’ll survive... what kinds of things you might do.
To live over four hundred years. Alone.
I sit up. What if he hasn’t been alone? It would make sense, right, that a guy who’s been on the earth for so many years would have been with someone at one point or another. Jealousy suffuses me, both for those he’s been with in the past—and those he’ll be with again in the future.
A knock on my door startles me, and for a brief second I imagine Sam will be on the other side of the door as I open it. Of course, it’s just Jean, still with that same concerned look on her face.
“Can I come in?” she asks. As if I can stop her.
I turn away and sit on my bed. She pulls the chair from in front of my desk and turns it toward me, sitting down. I force myself not to groan aloud. Now she wants to talk? When I want nothing more than to be alone with my thoughts? My anger? I glance at her as I realize how angry I am at him. My look seems to encourage her.
“You seem upset,” she begins.
“Nah, I’m good,” I say, trying to look like that’s the truth, pretending my voice isn’t gruff.
“Listen, Niahm, I know that you aren’t particularly thrilled having me here—” I can’t stop the little noise that comes from my throat at that, but she ignores it. “But it seems that we are all that one another has.” I open my mouth to protest, and she holds up a hand to halt my words. “We seem to be one another’s last living relatives.”
As she says the words, I think of Sam. Does he have any living relatives? Besides Shane, that is. Does he have descendants? I look at Jean, my mother’s mother, and suddenly I want to tell her everything. I want to tell her what I now know, and cry in her arms, and have her tell me everything is going to be okay.
But of course, I can’t do that.
She scoots the chair closer, hesitant, and I feel some shame that she has to feel this way around me. If my mom were still alive, she’d be angry at me for being such a brat toward the person that she explicitly asked to take care of me.
“Do you want to sit?” I ask, patting the bed next to me. She looks surprised, but then quickly moves and sits down.