The body lay limp and did not blend well with the daisies.
Cain saw it out of the corner of his eye, a red and malformed lump in the
flora, twisted and crumpled and at odd angles. His gait slowed to almost a
halt, but suddenly he was running, fast, until he was there, next to it,
crouching. The sweet, gentle scent of the flowers wafted around with the
metallic, sour scent of dead things.
The thing was wearing a gown. It wore jewelry on its neck
and wrists, golden bands that looked like braided thread. What had once been
smooth and pale skin was now mottled with purple and sickly yellow splotches,
and there were raccoon-like rings of burst vessels around the eyes. The whole
being was swollen and its eyes jutted out from its sockets as though looking
for an escape from the cracked-open skull they belonged to. Blood had matted
the hair, and now it was all red, everything was red, and brownish as the
cooling breeze licked at it.
Cain rocked back on his heels and resisted the urge to reach
forward and press his hand into the shiny, shiny flesh. He thought it would
probably give and ooze something unfortunate, and so he rocked back and rocked
forward and rocked back and, finally, gathered all his wayward thoughts into
his lungs and breathed it all out. Something settled very nicely.
He felt ill suddenly, crouching beside this dead and
decaying body. It had once been a woman, one who had felt love and sadness and
hatred and ecstasy. Cain searched around in himself for some semblance of
empathy, some beautiful feeling light that he could impart and so float around
on happiness for the rest of the day like a perfect angel, but found none. All
he felt was blood in his veins, the throb of his heartbeat and the persistent
emptiness that made its home in his stomach. Nausea hit him like a train.
“Cain?” a voice said. He opened his eyes, not quite
remembering when he’d shut them. “Cain!” the voice said again, closer now. A
hand touched his shoulder lightly. Every thought in his head poured out onto
the ground and there was nothing, absolutely nothing, in his head except the
warm light that was filling him like a balloon.
“Anna,” he said, stumbling to his feet and turning to the
young woman. She looked back at him with wide, concerned blue eyes.
“Ah, Cain, what is…” She looked past him and at the lump.
Quickly, he stepped in front of her line of vision and reached a hand out to
stroke her cheek tenderly. She stared right back into his eyes as he leaned
very close to her, letting their noses brush. “Cain,” she said, softly, and
with only a hint of trepidation. His chest felt void of any matter, his heart
pounded a little too fast, and his whole body was light as air. He worried for
a moment that he might float away from the earth.
“Anna,” he replied, barely saying it, letting it become
something softer than a whisper. Confusion lit up her eyes and he cupped her
face in both hands before letting one arm slide down to wrap around her waist.
Anna stood very still while Cain pressed his cheek against
hers, his fingers still caressing her face. She closed her eyes slowly and let
him hold her. “Cain,” she said after a short while, “let’s go somewhere else.
You shouldn’t be out here.”
Cain listened as her voice wound with concern and caring and
slipped over him like water. “No,” he replied, murmuring into her hair, “it’s
okay. We’re okay right here.” He felt something, standing there in the field
with the decomposing woman and the very much alive one in his arms. Maybe it
was guilt; he was having something she no longer could experience, and he was
having it so fully. Maybe he was crazy; that was always, always possible, after all. But it was definitely—perhaps to a very
small extent or an enormous one, he couldn’t tell—pride.
That woman, that thing
that used to be a thing just like him, was merely an extension of his father,
of everything else that wanted him miserable. He could imagine, quite easily,
Alexis’ eyes in the cracked skull, wide and in permanent shock, staring up at
him from the festering body they were attached to. He felt immense joy, and
something like a perverse pleasure, at the thought that the people who hated
him had to watch him be happy. They couldn’t look away. They were dead. They
were static and useless and decaying in a field while he held very close
someone very important to him, and reveled in the glow that provided him. No,
it was definitely pride.
Cain pulled back slightly and brushed his lips over her jaw.
“Anna,” he said, feeling her body shift in his arms. “You look beautiful
today.” He kissed her lightly on the corner of her mouth, wanting to lick
there, to kiss harder, but waiting for her to accept him, to bring him in and
engulf him without her even knowing it.
“T-thank you,” Anna mumbled, snaking her arms under his and
wrapping them around his torso. Cain smiled against her cheek and kissed her
again. Sometimes she was shocked by his intensity and he enjoyed that very
much.
He glanced down at her body where her front pressed against
his almost entirely. “So beautiful,” he whispered, mainly to himself, letting
his eyes slide shut; he hadn’t realized how tired he was. “You’re always
beautiful, Anna,” he said against her ear, slid his mouth along her jaw and
hovered over her lips, waiting. She sighed and began running her fingers up and
down his spine gently. Everything tingled.
“No,” she told him, smiling her usual smile, emanating
light. “You’re the beautiful one, Cain…”
He was used to this. Just as she was used to his fawning,
his obsessive loving, his coddling, he was used to her words striking him as new
and unique every time he heard them, even if he had heard them before. She said
things and he was dumped in an ice bath, suddenly, a bizarre visceral reaction.
But he wasn’t ever cold. No, in fact, he was hot, melting, feeling that
unsteady sway between warm unconsciousness and an ever-warming life. He knew he
was gripping her maybe a little too hard.
He tried to say her name, but it got lost somewhere on the
way out, and, really, it didn’t matter after all because his next immediate
thought was to kiss her. And he did. Anna only barely flinched as he pressed
his mouth very urgently to hers, tilting his head and being generally forward.
Anna kissed him back slowly and he tried to slow, too, as
his heart rate rose steadily and everything seemed hot. He felt rather than
heard her murmur his name against his lips, and everything was gone,
completely. All the cares he had in the world slipped from him and there was
nothing now, he felt empty and he felt filled to the brim with bubbling delight
and he had a compulsion to bring her so close to him, so far into him, that
they would never part. A dim thought rose in the back of his mind that he
should stop because this was insane, he was insane, and she was probably upset
by this because, god, there was a body right
there and he, her supposed lord, was being a rather desperate animal, and
wouldn’t it have been more gentlemanly to ask her first?
Cain groped around with his conscience and then it didn’t
matter because her tongue was in his mouth and he was filled with heat. He was
blank. He was nothing at all but hers. “Anna,” he whispered against her. “Oh,
god, Anna.” There was something in his throat now and he choked on it, felt
distraught suddenly, but she was there, right there under his hands and it was
so perfect and he wanted to lay her down on the soft grass—because all that
standing must have been difficult—and make love to her. He didn’t even feel
dirty for wanting that.
There were tears now, hot and wet on his cheeks. He knew
they were his because she wouldn’t cry for him like that; she was too kind. “I
need you,” he gasped. “I want you. I love you. I need you, really I do.” The
words were spoken half into her mouth, but he couldn’t bear to pull away and
she was holding him so tightly as well. One of her hands wound itself in his
hair, and he could feel himself shake. “I love you, I love you, I love you,” he
was telling her but after a while he was babbling something incomprehensible
against her lips and he was crying much harder than he had first thought.
She made a small noise of sadness and pulled away only
momentarily to wipe tears from his face with her thumbs. Like a magnet, his
mouth found hers again, and it was just wild desperation and want, and
everything was so wet, wetness everywhere, from his tears to his tongue, hot
and roving her mouth. Anna closed her eyes and held him very gently as
everything calmed down and trailed off, and soon he was breathing heavily and
staring into her eyes with his very warm, glittering gold-green ones.
He laughed suddenly and wiped at his eyes with a sleeve. “I
apologize; that got out of hand.” He saw that her expression had morphed into
an exact image of what worry must look like. “Anna,” he sighed, reaching
forward and pinching a thick curl of her dark hair in his fingers. “I’m sorry
that I worried you,” he said gently around a smile. “Please, let’s go elsewhere
now. Maybe inside. It’s getting late…” Something fluttered in his body and he
felt a groan rise in his throat. “God, Anna,” he barely said, sinking to his
knees in the grass before her, head in his hands. When she knelt by him, he
leaned into her arms and felt her press his cheek against her collarbone. “It’s
so difficult,” he said, closing his eyes slowly. “It’s so much. I just want to
sleep.”
She took a deep breath and considered something for a short
minute. “Cain,” she said. “You know I’m not going to leave you. I’m going to
stay. I—ˮ
“They all say that.” The bitterness in the words was
apparent. She looked down to see his beautiful, cat-like eyes heavy-lidded and
looking toward the house. Gradually, they lifted to her and Cain could feel her
swallow.
“Maybe,” she mumbled, reaching a hand up lightly to glide
her index finger lightly over his bottom lip. Cain seemed to melt and ease into
her, and then he leaned forward and took her finger into his mouth. She gasped
and lost balance, falling backward onto her heels and eventually toppling
unceremoniously to the side. Anna reddened and made to sit back up, but Cain
crawled over her and stared down into her wide eyes. “Cain,” she squeaked
almost inaudibly. He smiled sweetly, eyes glimmering in the shade of his body.
“Anna, this is okay, right?” he asked in a sugared voice. He
used his available hand to brush the hair out of her face and stroke his
fingers down her temple, her cheek, her throat, over her collarbone. He had the
sudden, rather familiar urge to get under her clothes, against her skin where
it was warm and soft and where it didn’t matter one bit that he had killed
people and was surrounded by death, and where he could just be. His breath
shuddered out of him. “I want to make love to you,” he whispered reverently,
and he felt her whole body tense up under him. The thought that she might
reject him or be somehow repulsed flew through him in shockwaves, and he felt
it so keenly his arms began to tremble. A small segment of his brain knew it
was an awfully unfounded fear because Anna was too caring, too gentle to push
him away outright—he had a distinct memory of stumbling into the foyer in the
middle of the night, spattered in someone else’s blood and numb with shock, and
feeling the most profound sense of helplessness and gratitude when she quickly
and quietly relieved him of his ruined clothing and held him in her arms until
he unwound and became a whole human again. A flock of crows was pulsing in his
skull, wings beating the air and black feathers flying; the fear took flight and
stared at him with many pairs of shiny black eyes and he could imagine claws,
sharp and hooked and angry, ripping into his back.
Absolutely not. “Anna,” he said again and then thought about
how many times he must have uttered her name today alone. She was looking up at
him with thoughtful eyes, her breathing even and calm. He laughed suddenly and
caressed her cheek with the backs of his knuckles. “I complicate your life, don’t
I? With all of my petty whims and changing emotions. I’m sorry, but you make me
so happy. I’m not good with happy,” he chuckled. “I’m not used to being so…
God, I’m not used to being much of anything, am I?” He dropped his head and
nuzzled his nose against her cheek. Something hot and sweet flooded through
him, filling his head with saccharine thoughts. “I love you,” he rasped softly
against her skin. “I love you, and I want to make love to you.”
Anna smiled up at him, her eyes growing bright and shiny. “We
haven’t even had dinner yet,” she whispered, brushing a hand through his dark
hair. “And—” She stayed very still as Cain pressed his body even tighter
against her, the buttons on his black satin vest pressing into her stomach.
Anna blushed and watched as Cain’s eyes glittered gold and green above her,
dark and glimmering with excitement. “And,” she tried again, her voice wavering
as his expression glowed with the most heartbreaking adoration. “And, we should
probably move to a different spot,” Anna finally managed, sucking in a breath
quickly before he pressed a soft kiss to her mouth.
Cain’s control almost fractured at her words, and the reason
was twofold: she sighed under his touch and was so soft and delicate he couldn’t
believe he ever imagined he didn’t deserve this kind of wonderment and perfection
lying beneath him, and there was a dead body right there. The recollection seemed to twist in midair for a
moment before slamming into him with the destructive force of his father’s
hatred. He stilled against her mouth and closed his eyes tightly enough to
elicit bursts behind his eyelids.
Urgency cracked through him like a whip. “Right,” he
muttered, pulling back and rolling off of her to stumble to his feet. Anna looked
shocked for a moment, and Cain knelt down on one knee and helped her sit
upright gently. He kept a hand on the small of her back and used the other to
tilt her face up toward him. “You’re right,” he breathed, eyes glittering
almost yellow, smile lighting up his face. “We should go someplace else. It was
wrong of me to keep you here, in such unpleasant surroundings. Forgive me.” He took
her hand and kissed the back of it. She stared at him with wide eyes and only
nodded. Cain kissed her hand again and smiled against the skin. “I’ll get the
servants to clean this up,” he said, helping her to her feet and pulling her
against his chest. “This kind of thing happens all the time, but I hate when
you have to see it.” Pain and sorrow flashed across his face for a moment and
Anna winced.
“I-it’s okay, Cain,” she said, brushing his dark bangs back
from his face. His eyes fluttered shut and she used this moment to experience
all of her disorientation at his sudden change of emotion. He opened his eyes
and saw her confusion.
He quickly cupped her cheek and pulled her into a kiss. “Let’s
go inside,” he said against her mouth. “Dinner’s probably ready and I don’t
want to make you stand out here any longer than I already have.”
“Ah, yeah, that sounds good,” Anna began to say, but Cain claimed
her mouth again and when he pulled away she just blinked at him. “Let’s go
inside,” she said, sighing at the glowing young man. Cain let embarrassment
color his cheeks but he didn’t even notice, and she shook her head and jumped
when he licked at her ear.
“Yes, let’s.”
