To Have and to Hold - 18. Chapter 18

To Fall and To Fly

The dream is so vivid and yet I still know it is a dream. I am standing with my back against a tree with my arms outspread. Merticus is there and he is taking his invasion of my body one stage further. He is smiling, his hand thrust deep within my chest, the fingers closed around my heart. The snake creatures have their fangs embedded in my wrists, they are sucking but it is not blood that is draining from me, it is my soul. It is agony more profound than I have ever experienced before.

I can feel everything so vividly; the roughness of the bark against my naked back, the sucking of the snakes, the fingers of Merticus’ hand closed around my heart, even the warmth of the sun on my face. It is strange, the sun being there. It is shining full in my face, Merticus is taking it right in the back and it is not burning him. I can barely remain conscious. If it weren’t for the three of them holding me and the tree supporting me I would not be able to stand.

My heartbeat is loud inside my head, every thump a pain like lightening striking my chest. It echoes and deafens me. The sucking demons send fire through my veins exploding when it meets the lightening and burning me, turning me to ash inside. I don’t know if I am breathing. I suppose I must be because I am alive but I can’t feel it, I can’t feel any movement in my body at all.

I can’t look into his smiling face and so I let my eyes slide over his shoulder to stare out over the valley below. We are on a rocky outcrop way up on top of a cliff. Far, far below are the tops of trees, a lush green forest. I wonder if this is the same forest where Beth lived. It is an idle thought, of course not, what would I be doing in Peru? Not that it occurs to me to wonder what I would be doing on the top of a cliff with a dead man’s hand in my chest.

Merticus withdraws his hand causing pain so intense it is almost a physical entity. I have no idea how I remain conscious as the pain overwhelms me, possesses me. He steps away. I fall forwards onto my knees, there is blood pouring from my chest and the snakes are still feeding, still draining me. I am right on the edge of the cliff. If they let me go I will fall.

‘Let me go.’ My voice is so weak I can’t even hear it myself. It slips from my lips on a sigh and floats out over the misty air falling to the treetops below. I want to follow it, I want to fall, I want this to be over.

“Marc..” My name echoes bouncing off the rocks and I tear my eyes from the treetops.

“Kai.” I can’t barely speak, barely find the energy. It is just another whisper, snatched by the wind. My blood is pooling around my knees and I am empty. My life is leaving me, flowing like the blood, leaking from my chest and wrists. I feel myself slipping and I know it is all over. My only regret is that I will never see his face, never hear his voice, never hold him in my arms again. “Kai...” This time it is a scream and as it is torn from my lips the snakes release me and I fall.

As I close my eyes, I feel consciousness fade and I know that I will never open them again. And then I feel his arms around my waist. I am falling but he is falling with me. “No... no Kai... not you too....” I am falling to my death and taking him with me. That can’t be, I can’t let it be.

I struggle. Even though I know it is impossible I try to slow our descent, thrusting out my arms, trying to stop the fall but it is hopeless. I manage to turn so that Kai is no longer clinging to my back but I have him in my arms, I can look into his eyes in our last precious moments together, the last moments of life.

And as I look into his eyes, as I feel that my heart will burst with love and the pain of separation, as I am filled with joy from the love that shines from him, there is an excruciating pain across my back. I almost pass out but I manage to hold on to consciousness and realise that there is a shadow over us, a dark shadow blotting out the sun. I look up, puzzled by the spreading canopy of feathers and, at the same time realise that we are no longer falling.

Flexing my muscles I spread the wings and with a twitch of the feathers we are floating upwards lighter than the air through which we pass. The look in Kai’s eyes has changed; he is staring in awe and fear. I stare into his eyes and see and image imprinted there, the image of a man, wings as white as snow spreading from his shoulders, surrounded by a halo of light from the sun behind. That man is me.

“Kai... you must find your own wings.”

His eyes are wide and confused. His lips part to speak but I smile and shake my head and then I let him go and he plummets downwards.

“Nooooo.”

“Hush, hush Marc, it’s alright; it’s alright you were dreaming. You were dreaming that’s all.”

“I ....” I struggle to wake, to open my eyes. It is difficult to shake off the dream, the feeling of unreality. Very gradually awareness returns and I open my eyes to find that I am lying in his arms, staring up into his face and his eyes are dark with concern. My heart is still pounding loud in my head and my wrists are throbbing painfully. I lift my hand and the bandages are sodden, the vile fluid has soaked the sheets and bedclothes.

“Fuck, what’s happened to your arms?”

“It... it’s the wounds from those snake things. They... they haven’t healed and they keep... this is the worst it’s been.”

“Damn. It looks bad. Shall I go and get some clean bandages.”

I can’t answer, can’t even nod my head. Something is happening inside me, I can feel it, something is changing, fading, flowing from me. I know that outside it is day, I can feel the warmth of the sun all around us. I am filled with fire and ice, fire in my veins and ice in my heart, filling my head with steam. My thoughts are sluggish and misty. I know that I should do something but I don’t know what it is and I have no energy to do it if I did.

And so I let my arm fall and my body relax against him. My eyes are closing and I have to use what little energy I have to keep them open, focussed on him. He looks so serious, so sad.

“Marc?”

He can sense it too. I see it in his eyes. He knows that I am dying. Not sometime, not soon, not in a day or an hour, but right now. I am dying right here and right now.

“No. No Marc, I won’t .... I can’t. I won’t let you go.”

My eyes are darkening, I can barely see him. “Open the curtains. I want to feel the sun.”

“I don’t want to leave you.”

“Please.”

He slides from under me, lowering me onto the bed. It is such exquisite agony, a pain that shocks back some consciousness. I am more aware but I am so weak I can’t even turn my head to watch him. Then the room fills with light and warmth. He opens the window and the smells of summer flood my senses. I feel the bed dip as he climbs back on and his face appears over mine. I can see him more clearly now, see the tears on his cheeks.

Something is tugging at my mind, something I should remember, something I should do. His eyes are anxious, shadowed. I don’t want him to feel sad. I don’t want him to look at me like that I want... I want...

I am beginning to drift, to slide, to lose focus. Kai is speaking but although I hear the flow of his words I can’t distinguish them sufficiently to know what he is saying. I don’t care. I don’t care about anything. There is no energy left for care, for thought, for breath, for .,. for.... I feel my eyes sliding closed and there is nothing I can do to stop them, I don’t want to.

Kai is calling me, desperately calling but I can’t answer. I am a little sad that I will never see his eyes again, never feel his lips on mine but not even that matters. And then... and then... something happens. First a thought surfaces through the mist in my brain, a memory. Turquoise eyes boring into me. Remember... remember.... A cliff... the edge of a cliff. I have been there before. I have seen it before.

“Kai.” The memory bursts in my head and golden light flows through my mind and body. I open my eyes and it flows from me, I can see it reflected on his face, in his eyes. He is shocked by it, his glorious black eyes wide and stunned, dazed but the suddenness of it.

I reach up and pull his face towards me. I still feel weak but there is strength enough for what must be done.

“Marc I... “

“Ssh, just love me.”

“What... what do you mean?”

“Take me to the cliff. You have to take me to the cliff.”

Even to myself my voice sounds distant and weak and it does not make sense.

“I don’t understand. You want me to take you somewhere? What cliff?”

It takes an enormous effort of will but I manage to focus my scattered consciousness enough to raise my other hand and take his face between my fingers and stare into his eyes. He is afraid, so very afraid and I am sad that I have made him so. I am not afraid but strangely calm.

“Kai.... it is what Shade said. I must complete the transformation. It must be me. I should have done it before, the first day but I wasn’t ready, I was too afraid. I pulled back from the edge of the cliff. Take me there, take me there now.”

“Marc, I’m so sorry but I don’t understand what you mean, what you are trying to say. I can’t take you anywhere. You are too weak. I can’t..... I am afraid, my darling. I’m losing you and I don’t know what to do. I am so scared. Please tell me what to do. What do you want me to do?”

“The energy... energy needed for... for the transformation... you must... must raise it in me. You must... you must...”

My concentration is scattering and it is wasting too much effort to pull it back. I will barely have enough as it is. I can’t waste more breath explaining to him and so I take his hand and show him. His eyes widen and he shakes his head, snatching his hand away.

“Marc... I... I can’t. You are asking me to make love to you? You want me to... to... when you are... like this? I can’t. Please... please don’t ask me to do that.”

“Then I will die and all will be lost.”

“What are you talking about?”

“Can’t say, only do.”

I can’t keep focussed on his face, my eyes are wandering, looking backwards to another time. Every time I blink it is hard to open them again and I feel disconnected. I know that I am close to the end. If he does not act now it will be too late. The pain in my wrists is increasing and spreading along my arm. I know that when it reaches my heart I will die and then there will be nothing that anyone can do to bring me back.

“Kai.... trust me.” He is crying, I can feel it, taste the salt of his tears on my lips. His heart is breaking but mine is too tired, too lost to care. “Don’t let go.” I pull his face down to mine and kiss him. At first it is just the briefest brushing of our lips, just enough to feel his breath, to taste the salt, to feel the connection of our souls.

The golden light is still shining from me and when Kai is brought within its radiance it enters him and I feel him stiffen for a moment as it lights an answering flame within him. His light is so much brighter than mine and it sweeps away his doubts, his uncertainties. When he raises his head his eyes are blank, golden discs in a sea of liquid gold.

My hands fall away from his face. I have no more strength to hold them there. My eyes half close as he tracks kisses down from my lips over my jaw to my neck. The world around me fades and all that exists are the two of us, enclosed in the heart of the golden light that both enfolds us and emanates from us.

My body stiffens when he bites my neck, not deeply, not to feed but enough to make the muscles in my abdomen contract. He bites deeper as he runs his hands over my body and I feel my heart beat faster. I lie still and allow my body to do what it wants as my mind breaks free and wanders.

I know now that Kai will take me where I need to go. He will not stop, he cannot. He is committed, bound to this as much as I am and I don’t need to worry any more, just relax, just let it happen.

I close my eyes as sensation ripples through me. I can no longer feel his hands on me, differentiate from whence the sensations emanate. I am rising, bourne upwards on the currents of energy. Not even time has any meaning now. I am not even sure that I inhabit a living body any more. I am not aware of breathing, of a heart beating, only of the growing flood of sensation building towards an explosion.

“Marc? Marc, please are you alright?”

“Don’t ..... stop.”

There is a darkness gathering on the edges of my awareness, not a bad darkness but a soft, comfortable darkness that I know I could wrap around me and just fall back into and keep falling and falling forever. I know that the darkness holds the arms of oblivion and I know that it is approaching with increasing speed but I can’t bring myself to care.

There is a fire building deep within and I can feel the flames licking my belly. It is pounding to the rhythm of a heart I am no longer aware of. There are flashes of red light flickering behind my closed eyes and a sense of movement.

I hear Kai moan, feel his body open to me, feel mine respond and begin to tighten. I am soaring, my sprit completely freed from its confines of flesh whilst I am still aware of the body. Kai is straining, caught in the intensity of the moment, the sensations, the emotions, the knowledge that this will be our last time. I suppose I should feel something too but I don’t. I am aware that my body is reacting but it is far away, it doesn’t matter.

Suddenly there is a sense of moving very, very fast. I am plummeting through darkness and there is a red glow very close. I struggle for balance as my feet strike the ground and here I am, on the edge of the cliff. There is no lush green valley here, only a chasm, and at the bottom a pit of flames.

I look over my shoulder and behind me the darkness is very close. I can see that it is a living darkness, filled with movement. There are shadows, creatures with many limbs and eyes that shine. More than anything there are arms, arms reaching, reaching for me.

There is no time to think and so I don’t, I jump. There is no sensation of falling, only darkness shot through with red, enfolding me, caressing me, possessing me. Suddenly I am aware of my physical body, it is reaching climax and as the intense sensations sweep through me, pulsing and throbbing in the darkness around me there is a twisting sensation and suddenly there is no separation. I am here and only here, and Kai is in my arms, staring at me with startled eyes as we plummet towards the flames far below.

“Marc, what’s happening?”

“Ssh. It’s alright. It’s alright.” And it was because suddenly, as the contractions of orgasm recede a new sensation takes their place, this time across my back, a feeling of tearing and opening, intensely painful but welcome at the same time and suddenly they are there, great white wings, unfurling over us, like a canopy of feathers. And then we are soaring, riding the air currents, swooping and diving.

We are both vocalising, crying out with fear and joy, whooping and screaming. It is incredible, as intense as anything I have ever experienced. And then we are still, hovering and I know what comes next and I am afraid. I look into Kai’s eyes, trusting and open. They are filled with wonder and fear.

“It is time, my love.”

“Time for what?”

“For you to complete your transformation too. You must find your own wings.”

“No Marc. I don’t... I can’t... this isn’t for me. I can’t be like you, like this. I....” Before he can say any more I let go and he falls. His scream tears at my heart as it disappears into the void, into the flames. It is just like my dream. So far all I dreamed has come to be. I trusted and it happened. But I never saw how the dream ended. I never knew what became of him, whether he was able to find his wings or perished in the fires below.

Anxiously I hover, watching and waiting until..... until.... there is a speck of black on black in the darkness. Something is hurtling up out of the void getting bigger and bigger filling my vision making my shout with joy.

His wings are not like mine. Mine are white, pure as snow but his are dark, almost black with tinges of red on the tips of the feathers where they have skimmed the flames. He is grinning, his head thrown back, his glorious hair fanning out behind him. Together we soar, together we leave the chasm, rise high above the cliff, above the darkness and leave it behind.