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AS SHE DROVE to Rainer’s house after work, Zan tried to hold onto her rage. She would need it. When she’d finally managed to get in touch with him, the sound of his voice almost made her drop the phone.
I need to control my stupid heart. My stupid body.
Her rage was losing to her sadness. She remembered other drives to Rainer’s. She remembered the night they first had sex, how tender he’d been. How she’d been swept away. She would never feel that way again.
He ruined me.
Rainer answered the door. She met his eyes, drawn to the vibrant shades of blue that played like sunlight over an untouched sea. She longed to dive in.
It’s just aesthetic. Ignore it.
“I see you fixed your doors,” she said as he showed her in.
“Pellus fixed them.”
“Is Pellus, um, like you?”
“Yes.”
Oh god. Don’t think about it, O’Gara.
“Stop sending me flowers, Rainer. They won’t change anything, and I can’t receive things like that at the office.”
“I’m sorry. I didn’t know.” He looked so mournful Zan had the sick urge to soothe him. She wanted to bring her rage back. She thought about the murder. How Rainer’s offer to consult for the FBI made him privy to confidential information.
“I’ve been thinking about how I met you,” she said. “About why you may have wanted to meet me.” She hesitated. She didn’t want to ask the question. “Did you have something to do with the murder of Emanuel Morales?”
Rainer blanched. Zan’s heart tumbled out of her chest.
“I didn’t harm Emanuel Morales.” He shook his head, almost violently. “I had no idea anyone was in danger, but I cannot say it had nothing to do with me.”
“What—” Zan paused to get her voice under control. “What did it have to do with you?”
“Pellus and I, uh—” Rainer frowned, then exhaled. “When we learned of this crime, we thought it must have something to do with the demons.”
“Those things killed Emanuel Morales?”
“No,” he said, “but they are connected to the sacrifices.”
“Sacrifices? Fucking human sacrifices? To demons?” Zan no longer bothered to keep her voice down. “Who’s doing this? Other aliens?”
“No! Humans. Humans in league with the demons.”
“In league with the demons? How does that happen?”
“You know all this. The daggers led you to that artisan in France. Archibaud. He told you about the men who bought them.”
“What? What?” Zan’s eyes darted around. Her face crumpled and her shoulders sagged.
He used me.
She squared her shoulders and glared at him. “Yeah. Archibaud. And I told you all about him, didn’t I? Like a stupid fucking jerk.” Her voice fell low with fury. “Do not go near him or those men, do you hear me? If you interfere with this investigation, I will arrest you.”
“I’m not going to get anywhere near them now.”
“That was your plan all along wasn’t it?” Her voice cracked. She clenched her fists, forcing her voice to reveal only anger. “You couldn’t find Archibaud yourself, so you fed me a lead and sat back while I found him for you.”
I hope he can’t see how he’s destroyed me.
“It was all a setup, wasn’t it? You and me,” she said. “You wormed your way into our investigation because you wanted information. It was all a setup. You used me.”
“Yes, at first,” Rainer answered, his lips trembling. “But I fell in love with you. You know I did. Pellus advised against it, but I couldn’t stop thinking about you. I fell in love with you. I have never loved like this.” He tried to take her hands but she whipped them away.
“Don’t fucking touch me.” Zan’s hurt crystallized in her veins.
Why did I think I could ever have someone?
“You used me. You used me just like every other man who’s ever touched me.”
“That’s not true! You know it! You know I love you. You can feel it.”
“Yeah. You’re a hell of an actor, Rainer.”
“I was never acting! I’m not acting now!” Again, he reached for her hands.
“I said, ‘Don’t fucking touch me!’” Zan shouted. She rested a hand on her gun in its holster. She knew she could never hurt him, but the firearm was comforting.
“Now, I’m going to get the stuff I left here and you’re going to stay the fuck away from me while I do it.”
Rainer lost his composure, his impossible eyes even brighter through his tears.
Do not cry, O’Gara. Do not.
“Please,” Rainer said. “Do not throw our love away.”
Zan grabbed a canvas bag from the kitchen and headed to the bedroom. She stuffed clothes into the bag. Rainer stood in the doorway.
“I told you to stay away from me,” she said.
“I’m preparing myself to be deprived of the sight of you.”
“Stop it.” She went into the bathroom, shut the door, sat on the toilet and cried in big, gulping sobs.
I’m surprised I made it this far.
When she came out of the bathroom she was still crying. She couldn’t stop.
“I’m sorry, Zan,” Rainer said as she pushed past him with the bag. “I shouldn’t have lied to you. I know that, but there were reasons for it.” He followed her downstairs. “Not excuses, reasons!”
He tried to grab her and almost succeeded, but she turned away and went to the window, mumbling at him to stop. The sky had clouded over.
If I let him hold me, I will never leave him. I have to leave him.
“You must let me explain why it was difficult for me to tell you,” Rainer said, joining her at the window. “I obscured my identity for so long it became an ingrained habit. Our laws require secrecy in the Earthly Realm and Pellus had a duty to discourage me from revealing my nature to you. Even so, I was going to tell you everything, you know that. I had it all planned for after the equinox. I should have told you sooner, but I’m a coward.”
Rainer broke off and shoved the fleshy bottoms of his hands into his eyes. He stood like that for a few seconds.
“Please forgive me,” he continued. “So much has happened that you know nothing about. I just needed a little time to love you, to be happy with you.”
Zan looked out the window. Tears leaked from her eyes. She angrily brushed them away.
“I don’t see why I should believe that you planned to tell me.”
“It’s true. I’m finished with lies.”
“Right.” Zan leaned her forehead against the cool glass. It was soothing.
What did he say? Habit. Secrecy was a habit.
“You said you obscured your identity for so long. What did you mean? How long have you been here?”
“Almost 1,300 years.”
It can’t be.
A whimper escaped her. She grabbed her bag and shot out the door toward her car. Rainer overtook her. He stood in front of her.
“Get out of my way,” she said. He tried to grab her hand, which she snatched away.
“Don’t leave,” Rainer said. “Don’t you want to ask me anything? Aren’t you curious?”
“I have a million questions, Rainer, but you keep trying to touch me. You can’t do that. You’re not allowed. Not anymore.”
“I won’t touch you. I won’t try to touch you. Talk to me. Don’t leave it like this.”
Maybe I should know more. Maybe it will help me.
She couldn’t manage to speak.
“Let’s go sit by the river,” Rainer suggested. “What harm will it do?”
Zan put her bag in the car. Her feet felt leaden. She and Rainer went to the chairs on the riverbank, as they had done so many times before to enjoy the light. Now, the sun was hidden in clouds as it set and the river looked black. Zan kept her eyes on the water. She felt she would dissolve if she thought too much about her questions.
“Do you live forever?” she asked. He took a minute to answer.
“In theory, the Covalent live forever. We do not grow old and die. In reality, we always die in one way or another. Often, we tire of life and return to the Creative Force that made us. We call it meeting the Stream. Our energy survives, but we become undifferentiated. Our consciousness as individuals is erased. Or so we think.”
Zan sat there blinking. Rainer looked at the trees, absently rubbing his forearm.
“Our immortality is not how you think of it,” he continued. “We are more like beings outside of time. Like you, we use our shifting environment to measure time, but it does not affect us in the same way. Our growth to maturity is not part of a cycle, it’s a journey to Balance, the point at which we can sense the elemental forces of Creation and Destruction dwelling in equal parts within us.
“All the change you see in your realm is created by the interplay of these forces, but the Covalent stand between them, the bond that holds them. We sit at the still center of everything that exists. Time does not claim us.”
With her hands in her lap, Zan closed her eyes. She couldn’t digest this. She wondered if it mattered. She was afraid to ask her next question because part of her thought it meant she’d gone crazy.
“Are you divine?” she finally asked.
“No. The Covalent are not divine,” Rainer said with quiet insistence. He leaned towards her. “We do not know any more than humans why there is something instead of nothing. We are afflicted by the same fear, pettiness, and greed. We need love to save us.”
“You can’t look at me like that if you want me to talk to you,” Zan said. She squeezed her eyes shut again, as hard as she could. She squeezed until it hurt, until she felt able to talk without sliding off into sobs.
“Will those things come after me again?” she asked.
“The demons can only come here at the change of seasons. Pellus and I always know where they are going to appear. Now that I know their intentions, I will stop them. They will never escape my sight.”
“The change of seasons?”
“You were attacked at the autumnal equinox. The demons cannot come here again until the winter solstice. The change of seasons is the only time there is a rift between dimensions they can use, a kind of doorway.”
“A rift between dimensions?” How—” Zan held up her hand. “No, I don’t want to know. I can’t handle any of this.” She hid her face in her hands until she felt less overwhelmed. “Won’t the demons leave me alone, now that I’m not with you?”
Rainer stared at her with fearful eyes. It was a long time before he answered.
“I’m sorry, Zan, but I don’t think so. They know I love you. My love will not change.”
“Over time it has to change,” she said. “It has to change!”
“It will not, but I will protect you.”
“I will protect myself!” Zan bellowed.
Oh, this is just fucking perfect.
“Okay, okay,” she said when she’d regained her composure. “What I’m getting from this is that I need to hide at the winter solstice.”
“That would be wise.”
“And you’ll kill them? As soon as they appear?”
“Yes. They are no match for me.”
“So I saw. How can you move that fast?”
“I am a Covalent warrior. We gather energy from our surroundings that our bodies turn into speed and strength. Our purpose is to defend the Covalent Realm from its enemies.”
“The Covalent Realm. Is that what you call your, um, ah, dimension?”
This is absurd.
“Yes, a beautiful world. The Covalent live with the vibrant power of Creation glimmering over their heads. Our city is a perfection of symmetry. I would love to take you there.”
“Stop it.”
God help me, part of me wants to go.
“Are there others like you here?” Zan’s voice fell to a whisper. “I mean, besides Pellus?”
“No, not anymore. Human society grew too crowded and complex. With some exceptions, our laws forbid the Covalent from traveling here. Pellus does not stay here. He returns to the Realm when he has no duty to which he must attend. He has a mate and duties at home.”
“You haven’t been among your own kind for 1,300 years?” Zan couldn’t tamp down her fierce desire to protect him. She scolded her ridiculous heart.
“Save for brief interludes, no,” he answered.
“How does Pellus go back and forth? It can’t be only at the change of seasons. Please don’t tell me you have a spaceship.”
Rainer’s mouth twitched in a sad smile. “Pellus is a type of Covalent known as a traveler,” he said. “They can see the structure of matter and energy at the subatomic level. Reality, both here and in the Covalent Realm, is a substance, a fabric, as you might say. Pellus can see its threads. While he does not understand everything he sees, he can detect tears in this fabric.
“I told you that a certain kind of rift opens at the solstices and equinoxes, but there is another kind, the kinetic rifts. These rifts are continuously opening and closing, like the valves of a beating human heart. Pellus can see them. He can navigate between and among them. He brings me back and forth.”
Christ, I wish he’d said they have a spaceship.
“Back and forth?” Zan stared at the ground for a minute. She was beginning to feel nauseous. “All those business trips you take, they’re not really business trips, are they?”
“Some of them are. But mostly, I journey to the Covalent Realm to fight.”
“To fight?”
“Yes. My purpose. I return for tours of duty, to battle demons and traitors to the Realm.”
“You’re a soldier.”
“Yes.”
“Then why are you here? Why not stay in your own world?”
“The Covalent Council banished me. At first, I wasn’t allowed to take up my duty. Left without purpose or family, I grew despondent. Thanks to Pellus and his allies, the Council relented some 500 years ago, but I go home only to fight or discuss warfare. Then I must return here.”
Oh, yes, 500 years ago. Just like yesterday.
“Why did they banish you? Are you a criminal?”
Please, say no. Please.
“No, I’m not a criminal. I suppose you could say my father is the criminal.”
“But you just said you had no family,” Zan said with a scowl.
“I do not consider my father family.”
“You told me your father died when you were little! Did you lie about your mother’s death, too? That sad story that I found so touching?” Color rose to Zan’s face as she anticipated his answer.
“I did not feign sadness!” Rainer rose from his chair and paced a few steps. He gazed out at the river. “I know I told you many lies, but not about that. I had no reason. My mother died when I was the equivalent of seventeen or eighteen years old, shortly before I was exiled.”
Zan rubbed her neck muscles. They were beginning to ache, but it wasn’t nearly as bad as the ache in her chest. The ache in her brain. “How did she die?” she asked in a gentle voice.
“My father killed her. I tried to save her but I failed.”
“This is the story.” Zan brought her hand to her mouth, her eyes wide. “When I told you how I lost Patrick, my best friend in the army. This is the story you weren’t ready to tell me.”
“Yes.”
“Why did he kill her? What happened?”
Rainer fisted his hands and pressed them against his forehead before he turned back to Zan. She had seen the emotion that marked his face before, in the haunted eyes of the children of war.
“My father was driven from the Realm when I was small. My mother must have never stopped wanting to go to him. She raised me, protected me, but he was her mate. She loved him. When I was old enough to take care of myself she went to him, but he was no longer the warrior she knew. Once she was in his presence, he consumed her. She became his creature.” Rainer’s voice broke. He stopped to compose himself. When he continued, Zan could barely stand to listen to his quiet pain.
“He used her as bait to lure me to him,” he said. “She sent me a message. She said he was hurting her, begged me to save her. No one would help me. I should have been suspicious of the message but she was my mother. What could I do? I went to her.
“I realized later that I reached her only because that’s what he wanted. I’m only alive now because he tried to gain power over me, as he had done to my mother. He sought to make me his creature as well. He waited for the power the Destructive Realm—his realm—to infect my mind. It never happened. I killed one of his minions and escaped. I knew my mother—” Rainer squeezed his forearm so hard that his knuckles whitened. “She was already lost, so I fled. My father’s realm is confusing, but eventually, I stumbled upon its edge. I could sense the energy of the Covalent Realm. I followed it home.
“Not long after, my father’s slaves found their way into my realm, into my city. They spread my mother’s mutilated corpse across my chambers.”
Tears beaded on the lashes of his closed eyes. Zan opened her mouth to speak. She couldn’t manage to say anything at first. When she did, her voice was a wisp.
“Rainer, honey. I’m so sorry.”
He sat on the ground at her feet, but when he tried to take her hand she recoiled.
“I, I’m sorry. I’m sorry I called you that. I can’t, I can’t.” She shuddered. “I’m scared. I feel like I’m having a nervous breakdown. I’m sorry. You can’t touch me.”
Stiffly, he turned back to the river.
“Why did he kill her?” she asked in a timid voice. “She loved him.”
Rainer snapped his head around.
“Zan, please do not fear me. I would never hurt you, please.” Strangled sounds escaped him. When he’d quieted, Zan asked again, her voice trembling.
“Why did he kill her?”
The look in Rainer’s eyes was more than Zan could bear. She stared down at her shoes. It took him a few minutes to answer.
“He was no longer capable of love. Perhaps he murdered her because he had loved her so ferociously. I don’t know. I couldn’t save her. I left her to die.”
By now, his voice was drained of emotion.
“That’s why you understood. When I told you about Patrick,” Zan mumbled, more to herself than to Rainer.
My god, what you’ve been through.
She closed her eyes for a few seconds, trying to order her thoughts.
“They banished you after that? They sent you to an alien world all alone when you were still a kid? Don’t they have any compassion?”
“No, not for me. They do not trust me because of my father, because of what he did.”
“Because he killed your mother?” she asked. “That doesn’t make any sense.” A small boat motored by on the river. Rainer sat on the ground at Zan’s feet. He absently picked at the grass until the high-pitched whine of the engine had faded.
“No. It had nothing to do with my mother. My father was a powerful warrior, a high commander of the Council Forces,” he said. “As his power grew, so did his lust for more, and his pride. At this time, the demons were the Covalent’s only enemies. My father did not consider them worthy adversaries. Nor did many of the other warriors. They were dissatisfied, suffering from a terrible malaise. Many met the Stream or lost themselves in haze and dire essence, powerful narcotics in my world.
“My father wanted to give the warriors back their sense of purpose, of challenge. He thought the Covalent should venture into the cosmos to build new worlds. He wanted to subjugate the Earthly Realm, as well as any other realms we might find. The Council did not agree. He chafed at taking its orders and rebelled. Many warriors were loyal to him. They followed him. There was a war.”
Rainer spoke with a solemn voice as he gazed at the river. “The war within the Covalent Realm ended when I was young, but the conflict merely shifted beyond it to the Turning, a kind of buffer zone just outside our Realm. My father’s poisoned warriors still battle us, and now he controls the demons as well. He sends hordes into the Turning in a perpetual bid to gain the city gates. The Council Forces have been holding them at bay since I was a child. Before my father took control, the demons were not much more than mindless beasts. Now, with his mind directing them, they are fierce adversaries.” He tilted his head and frowned, a mannerism so boyish and vulnerable that Zan could barely refrain from touching him.
“As I grew, it became clear my father would not leave me be,” he said. “The Council members claimed they banished me because they feared incursions by my father aimed at my death. They feared collateral damage in the city and said the purpose of my exile was to keep everyone safe, including me. In truth, I don’t think they trust me. Not then. Not now.”
Although she was perfectly still, Zan’s breaths came fast and shallow. “So, those things,” she said. “The, uh, demons. Your father sends them here to kill you?”
“Yes. Or capture me. He wishes to make me his slave.”
“What kind of monster would do that to his own son?”
I want to hold him. What the hell is wrong with me?
“He wasn’t always so,” Rainer said in a wistful voice. “I remember him, before the war. He was beautiful and strong, with such power that he shined with an internal light. All who met him wanted to follow him. I wanted to be just like him, but after he was driven from the Covalent Realm he devolved into something hideous. He wants to crush me now because he loved me once.” Rainer looked at the sky, his voice bitter and thick in his throat.
“After the Council expelled him he became the Lord of Destruction, lord of the demons’ realm, but his strength goes beyond demons. He has bent the elemental force of Destruction to his will, the force of hatred, death, and disorder. His power lies in all that destroys and deceives. All that dies and decays. An inevitable force.”
This story. It reminds me of something. Another story.
“What, oh god, oh god, what,” Zan stammered. “What is your father’s name?”
Rainer mumbled, his eyes lowered.
“What?” Zan yelled. Rainer froze for a second, then looked her full in the eyes.
“Lucifer. My father’s name is Lucifer.”
“Your father’s the fucking devil?” Zan screamed, jumping out of her chair. Rainer cringed as if to ward off a heavy blow. He rose in turn.
“He has made an appearance in your mythology, yes.”
“An appearance in our mythology!” Zan erupted in a frenzied laugh. “An appearance in our mythology! Jesus Christ. Jesus Christ! Raised Catholic and we were all afraid of the devil. Now, I have reason to be. The devil is out to get me!”
“Please, Zan. The devil is only a myth.”
Zan stopped cackling to glare at him.
“Fuck you!” she shouted. She ran towards her car but turned back when she had gone a few feet. “You stay away from me, do you hear me? You leave me alone.”
For the second time in a week, Zan fled from Rainer. Her car created a cloud of dust as she sped from the driveway.