The Relic (Cradle of Darkness 2)

Tearing at her hair, my soul screamed, “Stay away from me!”

This would not do. Nor would my budding temper serve. Unfortunately, a note of the demonic snarled through my voice. “We had an agreement.”

Hackles up, she spun. “For a walk and a dinner. I walked, and I ate whatever that foul thing was.”

“An oyster, breaded, and coated in mayonnaise. Worst in the city, according to the Yelp.”

Her little filaments of rationality were snapping. I could hear it her thoughts were so loud. Not only that, she was actually angry. Not scared or horrified. Pissed off, as the youth liked to say.

So angry she dared point a finger and yell. “You are absolutely insane!”

Pot meet kettle.

Yes, I rolled my eyes, somewhat giddy that we were having our first lover’s quarrel.

“Did you just—”

Smoothing my navy dinner jacket, I adjusted the cuff, inspecting the tailoring. “Yes, I did. I rolled my eyes at you, because you are acting like the baby you imagine flying around and snatching up tourists. My feelings are getting hurt. I do have those, you know. Just as I have infinite patience and will follow you, humming a jaunty tune, no matter how far you walk. And, yes, I know you walked from California to New York City. I know everything about you, Pearl, in this life and your last. Why not try to get to know me? Have I been so terrible?”

Guilt… there it was. The weakness of all good souls. And my soul was pristine. Pristine with high color and a trembling lip. Regretting yelling at Satan himself, how cute.

Tucking her hair behind an ear, she muttered, “What am I to do with you?”

“Tolerate me.” Smile back in place, I strode closer and offered my arm. “Eventually, I’ll grow on you. You didn’t love me at first when I took you for wife in your last life either.”

“Why not?”

A valid question I would never fully answer. “It was a different time, and you didn’t want to be Queen. Unlike this incarnation, you had lived a life of pleasure. Like this life, you had been denied fulfilment. Back then, I swore to you you’d find it in our children, just as our mother had—”

Aghast, she tripped on an uneven bit of pavement. “Did you say our mother?”

I’d have the sidewalks repaved to be even in this part of the city. No stubbed toes for my bride. “As I said, it was a different time. Earlier than even the Egyptian pharaohs western culture so obsesses over. So ancient that everything about our people was absorbed into new people. Into budding cultures, kingdoms, religions. But I digress….”

And she’d had enough. “I’ve never had a gentleman caller, but from couples I’d observed at the Super Club, umm...” Toying with her fingertips as she mustered the courage to explain whatever this was, Pearl took a deep breath. “These would not be considered appropriate topics for courtship. Especially unchaperoned courtship.”

Canting my head to the side, I puckered my lips, considering. Then I stole a peek—a little one. The fantasy sweet Pearl had daydreamed was of a man who wanted to talk to her, to introduce her to his parents, who didn’t care that she was half-starved, disgusting, and poor. Where she could pretend she was human and wouldn’t have to watch him slowly age and die.

How sad to have lived a life never knowing she had a whole family waiting for her. A family who would never age. Who would love her.

Uncharacteristically pensive, I murmured, “I see that I was right.”

It would be that first baby that would make her love me. A beautiful, perfect cherub that would nurse at her breast and drink of my flock.

But this I could not say, because it would just stir the pot. Pearl was already half-mad, and it would be centuries before that damage might mend.

Fuck you very much, Darius.

Oh, was I going to have another long talk with my son. The nightmares I would inflict on his mind. And I knew exactly what his next torment would be. Poetic justice.

I would make him relive every single night Pearl suffered in the crypt as if he were she. The perfect sentence. One I could carry out over and over and over until the sun ate this planet and my people repopulated a new one.

Tapping her foot in a feminine gesture passed down through the ages, I came back to the present to see Pearl’s arms crossed under her breasts. Her lovely lips turned down.

“I was right.” I amended, “In saying I’d follow where you walked. But I was wrong on other counts. Screw the Yelp. I should have asked you where you’d like to be treated on our first date.”

That threw her for quite a loop. Shoulders relaxing, my darling one lowered her arms. “I don’t even know what street we’re on, what year it is, or what I would have liked.”