Eternal Kiss of Darkness

Chapter 27

Mencheres waited in the bedroom he’d left Kira sleeping in hours before. Even though the hidden house inside the mountain was extremely spacious, it only had one shower, the water pumped from an interior well deeper back inside the dwelling. The shower was on the lower level, and the sounds were fainter, but he had heard Kira finish ten minutes ago, yet she was still not back.

After another ten minutes Kira appeared, re-dressed in the same sweater and pants she had on before, her hair still damp. She gave him a long, measuring look before she sat on the bed and then uttered one word.

“Why?”

He didn’t bother to pretend ignorance about what she was asking. “For much the same reasons my sire had, I imagine. My line didn’t need me anymore with my co-ruler to tend to it, Radje began spoiling for another fight, and I was tired. Furthermore, my visions of the future vanished except to show darkness approaching, so I knew my end was near. I decided to meet that end sooner rather than later, before Radje could conjure up charges against me that would ensnare my co-ruler as well.”

Kira kept staring at him. “You forgot to mention that you were twisted up with guilt over your wife’s death.”

He smiled faintly. “I actually didn’t realize that until recently, but yes. That also is true.”

She lowered her gaze. “I ruined your plans, didn’t I? I crashed the warehouse, then you saved both of us instead of letting the ghouls finish their job. After that week we were together and you let me go . . . were you planning to let someone kill you again?”

Below them, Mencheres heard Vlad grind out a curse, but he ignored that and kept his attention on Kira. “Yes. I still intended to, once another opportunity presented itself.”

A tremor went through her, but she kept her head lowered, looking at the part of the blanket she crumpled and uncrumpled in her hand. On the floor below them, something smashed into a wall. Neither one of them reacted to that.

“And now?” she asked, her voice so soft he could barely hear her.

He wanted to go to her. To press her to him and promise they would never be parted, but that would be a lie. Instead, he’d give Kira the same unguarded honesty she’d shown him throughout their time together.

“No, I don’t want to die now, but death comes for me regardless. I told you before that I wasn’t long for this earth, Kira. It is not by choice, but my fate remains the same.”

Her head snapped up at that, her eyes sparkling with pink unshed tears. “Bullshit. I don’t believe you’re fated to die any more than anyone else is.”

He was used to his visions being questioned. Few believed in them until they’d seen them come to pass, and even then, some still doubted.

“My visions are never wrong.” How often he’d wished they were.

“You ever heard of a self-fulfilling prophecy?” she asked, jumping from the bed to stand before him. “It’s when people believe something so deeply that they do things to make it happen. Maybe you saw this darkness in your future because some part of you had already decided to throw in the towel, but your consciousness hadn’t acknowledged that decision yet. So when you looked, you saw death in your future because, subconsciously, you’d already decided to kill yourself.”

He shook his head. “I looked again after I wanted to live. Nothing had changed. The darkness was still there, even closer this time.”

“But that doesn’t mean it’s inevitable. Okay, you changed your mind about killing yourself, but because you saw death when you looked before, you’re expecting to see it again. And then you do, so you don’t even bother to fight to live, making death that much easier to sneak up on you when Radje pulls something. It’s just more of the same self-fulfilling prophecy you need to snap out of, damn it!”

Mencheres almost smiled. No one else had ever told him to snap out of his visions before. “I wish it were that simple.”

“It is.” She seized his arms. “You trust your visions implicitly, but when did you lose the ability to see past the darkness you’re talking about? There’s something else that might be going on. Survivor’s guilt. You’re all messed up over what happened with your wife. You blame yourself for every death she caused plus your part in her demise, so you might not see a future for yourself because you don’t believe you deserve one.”

“My visions cannot be altered due to emotional distress,” he answered.

“Says who?” Kira replied sharply. “Just because it’s never happened before doesn’t make it impossible. After Pete died, I went to some group-therapy sessions to help deal with what happened. One guy whose family died in a car crash after the other car ran a stop sign all of a sudden couldn’t see the color red anymore. Just couldn’t see it! And yet you’ve blamed yourself for probably dozens of murders your wife committed, plus her death, yet you don’t think that could freeze or alter your visions? The mind is an extremely powerful thing, and when it’s paralyzed by grief or guilt, it can mess up just about anything.”

“Kira . . .” Mencheres did not know what to say. He’d expected some form of denial from her over his fate. Sadness also, but this flat defiance that what he’d seen was not going to happen was somewhat startling.

“You’ve been through hell,” she went on in that same intractable tone. “I’m sure I don’t even know half of it, but I do know it would have broken most people. It almost broke you, too, because you were going to kill yourself, but I’m telling you that you are not doomed to die soon. I’d feel it if you were, just like I did with Pete, Tina, my mom, and even myself that night with Radje. Yet all of my instincts are telling me that you and I are long term, which means you’ll be around. No matter what darkness you’re seeing now.”

She’d almost rendered him speechless again. Kira was barely thirty years old. How could she think her instincts were more accurate than over four thousand years of his visions?

“I’ve never been wrong before,” he said. “Never.”

“Then this will be your first time,” she replied, touching his face. “Or you’ll realize you misinterpreted what you saw. I’m right, Mencheres. I know it with my whole soul. Just like I know you love me, even if you’re having trouble saying it.”

For several moments, he could only stare at her, caught in her light green gaze as if he were a human ensnared by the mesmerizing glow of a vampire. Something freed inside him, a pressure released that he didn’t know had been building, and the relief he felt was only matched by the certainty flowing through him that she was right—about part of what she said.

“I do love you,” he said hoarsely, the words not an adequate representation of what he felt for Kira. She was everything that had been missing from his life, everything that made him want to stay in this harsh, unforgiving world that was somehow beautiful once more because of her.

She smiled, amazing him with the joy such a small gesture could generate inside him. “You see? I told you I was right.”

“That does not mean—”

“Shush,” she replied, putting her finger to his lips. He couldn’t help but feel amusement slither through him. No one had shushed him in thousands of years, yet Kira did it without the slightest hesitation.

“I don’t want you looking into the future again,” she went on. “Not yet. You’re a superpowerful vampire, but you’re not a god. Until you work through the things that led you to feel like you’d rather be dead, all of them, you can’t trust what you think you’re seeing.”

He still didn’t think Kira was right about self-fulfilling prophecies, survivor’s guilt, or misinterpretation when it came to his vision of impending death, but he was willing to heed her counsel. After all, his visions did come to an abrupt halt only after Patra’s death. He might be far stronger than Kira on a power level, but emotionally, she stood on firmer ground. The events in the past few years had proven too much for him. He’d sought his own death—something he swore he’d never do after the pain of discovering Tenoch’s suicide, yet he’d almost followed in his sire’s footsteps. Only the beautiful, incredible woman in front of him prevented that when her path crossed with his that morning.

Fate. Was it possible his might not be only darkness after all?

“Tell me again what your mentor’s credo was?” he asked, though he remembered her answer from before.

“Save one life,” Kira said softly.

Mencheres drew her into his arms. “You did,” he whispered before his mouth claimed hers. “You saved mine.”

K ira slid a lazy hand along his back, her touch rousing him despite the past several passionate hours.

“This is such an interesting tattoo. What is it?”

“A shenu, ” he replied, rolling over on his side to face her. “The modern word is a cartouche.”

She still traced the tattoo even though she wouldn’t be able to see it anymore. “What does it say?”

“It is my birth name, Menkaure, in ancient Egyptian writing.”

Her face clouded. “That’s what Radje calls you.”

He stroked her from her bare leg up to her lower back, and her expression eased once more.

“Were you named after that Pharaoh?” she asked.

His hand stilled. “What do you know of that Pharaoh?”

“When I was looking for you after you mesmerized my boss, I Googled ‘Mencheres,’ thinking it might lead me to you on the off chance that you had a Facebook page or something.” Kira paused to chuckle. “You didn’t, of course. All that came up under your name were links and articles about a Pharaoh way back when who was also called Mencheres, but he went by Menkaure most of the time.” She gave him a curious glance. “Were you a descendant of his? Is that why you took one of his names?”

He uncurled himself from the bed, standing before her. It was time she learned all about him, even the oldest parts of his past.

“Menkaure had many names depending on the translation. Mycerinus, Mykerinus, and Mencheres, among others. I received this tattoo on the first day of my appointed reign when I was twenty-two years old, just six months before I became a vampire. I am not one of that Pharaoh’s descendents you read about. I am that Pharaoh. I merely used the name Mencheres after I left Egypt.”

Kira’s mouth opened and closed, as if she had suddenly forgotten how to speak. He waited. After everything else she’d been through, he did not fear this revelation would prove too much for her.

“But that Pharaoh was from way, way, way back in ancient times. He has a pyramid in the Giza Plateau. That can’t be you! You said you were older than dirt, but—”

“I was born in 2553 B.C., ” he replied, watching her expression flit from denial to confusion to amazement. “I told you Radje and I came from a line of rulers who appointed a set frame for their heirs to reign over their human subjects. That was the line of Pharaohs from the first dynasty through the thirteenth. Radje and I were in the Fourth Dynasty. Radje is short for Radjedef, as you know, but Radjedef was more commonly known as Djedefre in Egyptian history. He was the half brother of Khafre, my father. My father and Radjedef were the sons of Khufu, the Pharaoh who built the Great Pyramid in Egypt.”

Kira still did not look like she’d adequately absorbed this information. “Radje is your uncle? And you and your family made the pyramids? The pyramids? ”

He shrugged. “They were designed for the retired Pharaohs to live in comfort among their people, presumed dead while a new Pharaoh reigned. But they were too costly. Our later heirs made the Valley of the Kings as a more efficient solution. All the underground passages and connecting tunnels—”

“You realize this is a little much to take in,” she interrupted, shaking her head.

Mencheres raised a brow. “A month ago, you did not believe in vampires. Now you are one yourself, plus lover to another, and you’re in the hidden mountain home of fiction’s most famous vampire. I have every confidence that you will handle this latest revelation with minimal difficulty.”

She still shook her head, but the disbelief left her expression. “Older than dirt,” she muttered. “Who knew you were under exaggerating?”

He went to the foot of the bed, slowly crawling back on while sliding his body over Kira’s from her feet up to her chest. When their faces were level, he stopped, letting his aura as well as his skin caress hers.

“Do I feel too ancient to you now?” he murmured. “Too different from the person you loved before you knew this?”

Her eyes were already glowing green, and her full lips parted. “No, you don’t feel too ancient.” Her voice was husky. “Or too different. You feel like mine. Whoever you were, whoever you are . . . you’re mine.”

Mencheres smiled, his fangs stretching to their full length. “So you have spoken, so it shall be decreed. For all eternity.”