He took a deep breath and got up from where he’d been sitting since morning. He went into his closet to get some fresh clothes and change out of the ones he was wearing. The closet was a relatively large one with long rows of cloth hangers and shelf. A stranger without knowing better would think him a fashion freak. From his enormous collection of shoes of different styles, to his very luxurious tuxedos, to even gym gears and comfortable slacks. He had everything that was considered wearable.
Rick looked back fondly on that time, when a few new pairs of slacks had meant so much to him. He remembered the first time he went to the stitchery to acquire a few clothings with the first payment he got from Arcus. It had been plain trousers and tunics and a very special robe which he still had till date. In those days, all healers wore burlap cloaks lined with animal skins, furs, or wool. His Burlap had been dyed dark blue, and inside the hood was lined with soft lambskin. The lining of the cloak itself was warm and light, offering protection from the wind and cold. Mr. Bastet told him it had been enchanted by a witch to keep one comfortable in any weather. His cloak still hung hidden amongst his overcoats and trenches in his vast closet. The magic stitched into its very fabric often called to him. He’d run his fingers over the rough burlap and soft lambskin, marveling at how it too had been untouched by the years. It was a sweet kind of sorrow to remember how she’d smiled the first time she’d seen him in it, and how she’d gaze at him with hooded eyes when she wanted him to remove it. There had never been another woman for him. Not in nearly a thousand years had his heart even stirred, until now.
He marvelled at how one woman he barely knew could make him feel uneasy in so many ways. Her fearlessness was raw and strange and a very strange persona to find in this present generation. Although he had his assumptions that his feelings had everything to do with the enchanted pendant she was wearing and it’s talisman. He needed to get his hands on it, to study it. Perhaps that was what he’d felt when he first saw her, not a pull to her, but to that long lost treasure. It was his and he knew it with a firm certainty. As ugly as things were currently, Rick couldn’t help but scoff at the irony of everything.
So… i performed a ritual to bring a woman back to life who happens to be wearing a pendant that I had once given to the woman I loved. A pendant meant to make her my filactory and find us together, forever?
Everything seemed so confusing to him. The pendant had disappeared with sil so long ago, but the magic of which it was born tethered it to him forever. He knew he couldn’t truly be feeling something for the young woman that laid on his bed.
“She is a wisp of smoke in the fires of eternity, not a slow burning ember as I”.
Child or not, he felt joy for the first time since he’d lost Sil, and it felt strangely like infidelity. How dare he even dream of another woman, even entertain the inkling of the possibility of companionship. His soulmate, his dear, perfect girl had disappeared without a trace. He was to blame, he and his his misguided, naive decisions to work magic he did not understand. It had seemed so innocent, so perfect. He had greatly underestimated its power, how its tendrils would infect the very core of his being. He had lost everything. Even his Immortal soul, safely contained outside his body, had become foreign to him. He knew he was no longer capable of love, even for Sil. A soulless man feels only guilt, lack, and unease. He had no right to hope, that by some kind miracle, the magic of the universes had brought him a new love. Even if it had, she’d be dead in roughly seventy years. He couldn’t make another abomination like him, and no one deserved to be coveted by a tainted, unnatural beast such as him.
***
Clair awoke with the weight of a buffalo on her head, and snakes swirling in her gut. The pain was so severe she groaned out ever so loudly. She waited for a while for the insistent throbbing to subside. When it lessened, she tried to open her eyes. It took longer than necessary for her to complete the simple task and just as soon as she opened it, she closed it back with another loud whimper. The light streaming into the room from the open window was so bright, it hurt her eyes. When she attempted to open them again, she did so in a painstakingly slow motion. This time, it didn’t hurt as much as it did earlier. Her eyes adjusted to her surrounding. She was in a massive room, that was exotically furnished. The furnitures were made from solid pink ivory Wood and the Great Craftsmanship was obvious. The bed she was lying on was at one corner of the room. It was a four poster queen size bed with white satin sheets. Its frame was made of the same material as the other furnitures in the room. Clair softly ran her hands over the sheets, she has never felt anything so smooth and soft to the touch. But that was by the way.
Where the hell am I ? She asked herself looking around the vast room once again. She made her way clumsily to the edge of the bed and sat down with as much grace as she could muster.
” Urgh, what’s going on?” she moaned. The world spun and she reached out to steady herself although she was sitting.
In her uncoordinated motion, she hit a teapot that was on top of the beside table and it toppled over and shattered on the ground.
Clair quickly used her hand to cover the gasp that had escaped from her. In record time, she heard heavy footsteps outside the room. The footsteps seemed to be getting closer towards her direction by the minute. She quickly looked around the room for something she could use to defend herself if the situation called for it. She found a small flower vase on a table and quickly grabbed it.
This would do.
She tiptoed zigzaggedly and quietly to the back of the door and held the vase up, pose and ready to attack. She was so tensed, she felt her vision blur a bit and sweat bead her on forehead but the adrenaline flowing through her gave her all the strength she needed.
In a few seconds the door flung open and a huge man dressed in all black stepped in. She didn’t see his face, she didn’t need to. While the man was still looking around the room as if he was looking for somebody, she didn’t need to be a rocket scientist to know that he was looking for her, she decided to take advantage of his obliviousness and attack.
Because she had the height disadvantage, she raised her hand higher on tiptoes and made for the base of his head. As if on cue, he turned abruptly and she was caught in a headlight.
Frozen in that awkward stance as she was, she found her eyes looked on the most beautiful blue eyes she had ever seen.
Aelfric.
“What?” She said to herself. Where did that come from? She brought down her hands and shook her head as if that simple act would right her thoughts. Clair’s vision was clearing now. She saw a young man, maybe 25, standing in front of her with eyes blue like crystal waters. It was Rick Silver. She recognized him from Forbes magazine, but she hadn’t realized just how young he was.
“Mr. Silver? What are you doing here? No,” she raised her hands to stop him from answering. “Let me rephrase that, what am I doing here?. The last thing I remembered was… umm… yes. The private hanger. I remembered there was an ambush. What happened?”
“There was as breach of security, one that my security team did not discover until it was too later. We were attacked by a couple of snipers at the airport. I’m sorry I should have warned you about this kind of event.” Rick explained to her
“You knew this would happen?” Clair could not believe her ears. She deoooed on the bed and sat up.
“No, no. Not exactly.”
“Not exactly?” Now Clair was getting furious. What the fuck!
“Over the past few weeks, there has been a couple of attempted assassination attacks on my person.”
“Holy shit. Fuck! someone’s trying to kill you? Do you know who it might be?”
“I’m not really certain but I have an idea of who it might be and trust me, it’s not just one person. They’re a full gang.”
“Thank you for making me feel so much better Mr Silver.” She said in mock sarcasm.
“I’m sorry Clair. These things has been occuring more frequently than before but I didn’t think it would happen on the day of your arrival.”
“Oh my! That’s not a valid reason Mr Silver and you didn’t think to tell me things before I arrived that airport.”
“First off, this isn’t exactly the kind of thing anyone would tell a reporter coming to interview them but that’s why I took the precautions of sending you a security escort in the case of such event. Infact, I did not think there would have been such occurrence because I personally ordered my head of security to do a security scan of the hanger. The team and some airport patrols scanned the area and they did not find anything incriminating or suspicious. Probably the snipers arrived after their inspection. That is the only explanation I could come up with.”
“Or maybe you have a rat on your team Mr. Silver.” Clair suggested.
“No, it’s definitely not that. Trust me I would know.”
Clair cocked a brow but decided to let her insinuation slide. “Ok. So I get what happened but you’ve not really explained what happened to me? How come I have no recollection of what happened. Don’t get me wrong, I remember the shooting and the security escort guy that was with me, what’s his name?
“Jude.”
“Yes Jude. How’s he doing? I remembered him falling from the impact of a shot that hit him. Is he ok?”
“He is recovering quite well. He would not be resuming duties any time soon.”
“I don’t expect that he would because that will be very unwise. Ok, so Jude was shot and I wanted to run to the car and hide behind it since the plane was farther away. But that is it, that’s where my memories stopped about the events. I don’t remember anything else after that.”
“You passed out on the tarmac” came his smooth soothing voice again.
“I passed out?” Clair scoffed.” Like me? Clair Fisher, the tough ass bitch passed out on an airport’s tarmac because a shooting occured. Nah, I find that very difficult to believe.”
“Believe it or not. It’s just the truth, I know you might have a hard time believing that as tough as you think you are, you would swoon in such a situation but it is in rare cases like this that we discover the most surprising things about ourselves. My assumption is that the shooter was aiming for me and probably thought I was the one with you, hence why they aimed in your direction. The shot missed you luckily but the shock sent you down.” Rick explained.
“Wow, so I passed out.” Clair said more to herself than to Rick, nodding her head.
“Apparently”. He seemed amused. ” Look, don’t worry, we’re now on the island, Arcus Island. No one can follow us there. You can rest up, and if you’re still up to it, we’ll talk about the article”.
“I’m fine”, she said, sitting up. She swayed a little but quickly regained her balance and straightened her necklace.” Rick’s gaze dipped as she placed the Silver oval between her clavicle, typical.
He changed the subject. “Well, since you’re up now, I’ll have my men bring up your luggage and handbag to the main house if you’re comfortable with that.”
“Whatever works”. Her head was pounding. “Won’t the cops want to talk to me”?
“They’ll call once they finish at the airport. I’ll take care of it.”
“How?” She assumed he had friends in high places.
“Attempted murder is, unfortunately, just a Tuesday morning for me. I’ve got the process streamlined. I know who’s behind it, problem is proving it. Doesn’t matter anyways”, he said smiling for the first time. ” After the next launch, killing me won’t be much use to them anymore”.
“So this is about the new product? Someone doesn’t want it on the market…”
“Someones, I’d guess, working together. Greed is a powerful motivator, perhaps the most powerful.”
“What keeps you motivated?” She dared him to pretend he wasn’t in it for the money too.
“Oh greed! that’s how I know. I’m greedy for change though, it’s different. Money is just a byproduct of breakthrough. A thousand years ago, people were lucky to live to forty five. Now, getting into your nineties isn’t rare. I believe a full life is a right everyone should enjoy. Living to ninety or a hundred, people should die of old age, not cancer and Alzheimers, and not in so much pain they can’t appreciate the experience.”
“So you want to live for how long exactly? Forever?” Clair asked, curious.
“No” he said quickly, ” No one should have to do that…” He suddenly looked very moody, like the topic saddened him. The reaction did not go unnoticed by Clair. He continued anyway,. ” But children shouldn’t die before their parents, and those parents should live to see their children marry, to watch the most exciting parts of their lives unfold. It’s important to the human experience. People are always going to die. They fall off mountains and crash their cars, but disease is something we can stop. I’m sure of it.”
Clair was somewhat startled and fascinated to find this compassionate, thoughtful, perhaps even wise man behind the child-like eyes of her young companion. People called Rick Silver a fancy boy born with a silver spoon in mouth. Others said he was in the wrong profession and should have probably been a model or a TV star. But Clair has had a few people saying that the man was a complete genius and from what Clair could reduce from few minutes of talking to him, he clearly was, but maybe he was more than that. Maybe, unlike her usual subjects, he was truly human, not what she’d expected when he’d first approached her about the article.
All the while he was talking, Clair locked her eyes onto his. It calmed her just to stare at his eyes and it does things to her inside that she could not explain. She quickly realized she was still holding the vase. So she stood up and walked back to the bedside table to drop it back where she found it. The digital clock on the table caught her eyes.
“Is this time and date correct?” She asked Rick, pointing to the clock.
“Yes, why?”
“It says today is Wednesday.”
“Yes. It is.”
“What do you mean by ‘yes, it is’. The day I made it to the airport was Saturday, and I was unconscious for what, four days? Is that what you’re trying to tell me?”
Clair was starting to suspect that something fishy was going on. She couldn’t say exactly what it was but she knew there was no way she could have been out for four days just because she fainted.
“You know for someone who just woke up from a long sleep, you do ask a lot of questions?”
“Well, I deserve to know because any doctor would give an explanation of whatever happened to me and since technically you took care of me you are my doctor. So you should do that.”
“Hmm… You hit your head hard on the tarmac when you fell and you were completely knocked out flat. You fractured your skull and has been comatose for all these days. But don’t fret, I have given you the necessary treatment and there would not be any effect or scars from the events. For a few days you might have just headache and slight fatigue. There’s also a probability that you’ll faint again due to the light headedness you may experience. But all that will be gone in a few days. I have….”
The explanation he gave made sense, he was after all a doctor. Clair thought
For the first time since she woke up, Clair raised her hands and slightly touched her head. She felt the bandage on her head. She brought down her now unstable hand and took in a shaky breath. Rick was still speaking but his voice was now in the background. She was finding it difficult to breathe and her vision was beginning to blacken. The world tipped and the last thing she heard was Mr Rick Silver shouting her name.