Something Beautiful. Marilyn Tracy

      But that was patently impossible.

      “Honey…” Jillian called after her, only to let her words trail off. Could Elise be right, and Allie did know or sense something about Steven that she herself refused to see? Or was there something else going on here, something related to Dave’s death, perhaps a general distrust of everyone?

      Jillian wanted to call her daughter back, but didn’t. She didn’t because she knew that merely summoning Allie back to the entry hall wasn’t what she truly needed from her little girl. What she wanted in her heart of hearts was Allie back…period. The way she used to be, filled with giggles and sunshine, light, airy steps dancing through life, the way she’d been for a moment when coming into the house, the way she’d been a year ago.

      She turned and met Elise’s concerned gaze. She was certain her own was equally troubled.

      Elise raised her hands as if in surrender and said, “I’m out of here. But I don’t feel good about it. There’s more going on around here than doesn’t meet the eye. And I gotta tell you, I don’t like it. Any of it.” She looked over Jillian’s shoulder, out to the darkening courtyard.

      Jillian turned to follow her friend’s scrutiny. Steven had apparently paused in the act of loading the piled leaves into a large black plastic bag. His profile was to the house, but something about his stilled hands, his tensed body, conveyed the impression he’d heard every word spoken by those inside. His face seemed even grimmer than usual, and his jaw like chiseled granite, his lips pulled into a tight grimace that could have been either pain or anger.

      Jillian couldn’t help it; she turned her eyes to that spot in the archway, a place some four feet above the ground, an empty pocket of air, a space where no one stood, but where something had spoken.

      CHAPTER TWO

      In the glow of the small mock-kerosene lantern on the adobe guesthouse wall, Steven rocked in the old-fashioned chair, his shoulders pressed against the carved oak. His head was bent slightly forward, a furrow on his brow, as he read the book in his lap.

      “…that good comes out of evil; that the impartiality of the Nature Providence is best; that we are made strong by what we overcome; that man is good because he is as free to do evil as to do good…”

      Steven read the passage again and sighed. Then, aloud, he recited the final line of John Burroughs’s treatise Accepting the Universe, “…that man is good because he is as free to do evil as to do good.”

      His words echoed in the small guesthouse, seemed to sweep into the flames of the small fire and crackle and burn there.

      Steven sighed and leaned his head against the chair’s high back. His thoughts were even darker than usual, and by nature he was inclined to somber reflection. After several long moments, he turned his gaze to the nightstand beside him and stared at the steel blade of the long-knife he’d set there earlier.

      The weapon was a relic of the fifth century, a gift from someone he’d long ago forgotten. He’d had the knife for so many years, it had become a part of his wardrobe, his life. The blade’s polished steel captured the colors of the blaze and held them trapped there.

      Like Beleale. Like himself. Both of them trapped in a world not their own. Each wanting, needing, the other gone. Brothers on one plane, enemies on another.

      Steven stared at the blade as if it would transform, become something other than an instrument of bloodshed.

      Once, just once let it be useless.

      But it wasn’t useless. It was as sharp as ever, and as deadly.

      Steven ran a finger along the knife’s thick shaft, the deceptively paper-thin, razor-sharp blade, and the curvature of the handle. Intricate carvings had once adorned the handle, but he’d worn them away over the long, long years.

      It was only a knife. Just a simple tool.

      He slipped his fingers into the grooves created by his countless years of handling it, and lifted the heavy weapon into the air, turning it, letting it catch the fire’s reflection. The blade caught the reds and golds of the blaze, and more, it caught his eyes, as well, shadowed, green, and hard.

      Unable to bear seeing his own reflection, he rose and lowered the knife to his thigh, resenting the flow of memories of the innumerable occasions he’d used this blade before. Too many times he’d used it, and afterward, mortals had fallen victim to its bite.

      And for the first time in this ten-thousand-year hell, Steven resented knowing the intimacy of the knife, hated the certainty that within the hour he would use it yet again.

      He thought of that perfect moment he might offer Jillian Stewart. The day of her marriage? The birth of her daughter, Allie? That summer afternoon she, Dave and Allie had lost their way in the forest and huddled together like nesting cups, a day when her husband had clung to her and told her all the things a husband should? She might choose any of them. She’d called them all perfect days, perfect moments.

      And he wondered, if he had that choice, what moment he would choose. What day, what instance, what timeless, perfect moment, would epitomize his entire existence?

      There were none. No perfect moments. No perfect days, afternoons, nights. Only that almost endless stream of war, of living only to fight, of winning only to fight again.

      Even to himself, he felt he was little more than an instrument, a machine in human guise, who was forever doomed to search for meaning in immortality, to live vicariously from the perfect moments he reflected back to the dying mortals who allowed him to vanquish one more of the fallen.

      But he couldn’t even achieve that vicarious joy. He’d long ago realized that only mortals could measure joy by perfect moments. Only a mortal could feel that infinite pleasure of recognizing the brevity of life, of knowing that a single moment, one singular day, one hour, even one second, could put paid to an entire lifetime of pain.

      He’d decided that only a mortal being could fully appreciate the notion of perfection of a moment, because, from the moment of birth, mortals were faced with dying. Carpe diem…. But seizing the day only had relevance when one was tortured by thoughts of the succession of days ending.

      Steven’s hand trembled slightly as he turned the knife’s blade over and again, allowing it to catch his own reflection. He’d held this absolute evidence of his betrayal of humankind a hundred times—a thousand times—before. But it had never troubled him as it did now.

      Did his betrayal bother him tonight because this was the final battle, the last one? One of them would win and the other lose for all time. Was he, after all these centuries, learning fear at last? Or was he merely afraid he would never understand the depths that could mean to a mortal?

      If only he were simply a man. Just a man. A mortal. If only he could know what a single perfect moment might truly mean.

      If only Jillian weren’t the one.

      Steven slowly crossed the small room to the heavy wooden door. The long-knife felt like a lead weight in his hand.

      Jillian didn’t deserve the gift of the perfect moment, he thought. Not because she wasn’t deserving, but because it wasn’t fair. She might carry the portals in her, but that was purely a random chance, a once-in-a-hundred-years occurrence. Like the others, the ones before her, she didn’t deserve dying. Like them, she had so much good to offer, such a tremendously strong life force in her. But also like them, her creation of the portals, her death because of them, was her ultimate destiny.

      What moment would she choose?

      Steven started to open the door and hesitated. For some reason, he didn’t want to do this tonight. He wanted to wait, delay the inevitable.

      In so many of the others, those who had carried the portals, he’d perceived an arrogance, an awareness of their destiny, a brightness honed to the same sharp edge as his blade. Their gift moments had captured times of triumph, achievement.