WHEN ANGELS FALL

Cynthia Hatch

-- Alexander Pope

Descent

I have dishonored much in honor's name,
Cast caution into chaos like a stone,
Shed cool of conscience for hot sheets of shame,
Profaned the law, called justice mine alone.

Adoring life, I have conspired with death,
Embraced the darkness for the love of light,
Conceded to the Beast my hands, my breath,
And made of wrongs a monument to right.

For innocence have I endured the flames,
Defied my heart's desire for mercy's sake,
And borne the torments of a thousand blames
More lightly than forbidden passion's ache.

Now ringed with fire the circle presses in;
Riddled with longing I cannot rise above
Nor breach the battlements aroused by sin.
No way but down, to madness, out of love.

 

PROLOGUE

So much blood.

It threatened to engulf him. Everything in the world out there, bleeding. All of it connected, those who had died and others yet to come, waiting for him to release it -- the endless vein that knotted them all together, a gleaming string of black pearls at whose heart lay the nugget of evil.

It winked at him by moonlight, mocking him, knowing, even as he resisted the knowledge, denied it, that he would be powerless to turn away. There was something in him that could see what lay at the black core, beyond the smiling faces and the clever poses, and seeing it, he could not walk away. He had to strike, had to claw at the malevolence, trying to root it out, destroy it. But the chain curled on through the crowds of humanity who lived above. In the end there was only the blood. He knew now, he could never follow its tangled thread to a close. He could no longer even remember where it had begun.

And it was choking him.

Blood on his victims' faces -- for he still thought of them as victims even though he had seen their murderous acts, watched them cut down the innocents with no hint of the conscience that tormented his own vengeful fury. Blood on their clothes from the gaping wounds, torn with reckless, primal precision in the flesh. Pooled like oil slicks on the black rain-sheen of the alleys, splattered in livid graffiti on the filthy walls, covering his own clawed hands, his cloak, until he did not know what was theirs, what was his own.

And the blood of the innocents, all those guiltless ones who had drawn the predators and, in doing so, drawn him. Their blood, too, washed over him, until it seemed the entire world existed only through a thin, red veil, too ephemeral to push aside, too pulsing with wasted life to rend.

And it was smothering him.

But it was not only what he could see and, smell -- God, the pungent, cloying odor that repelled him, even as it pulled him forward, as if only spilling more of it could drown out awareness of what had gone before. It assaulted his ears as well: faint drumming, ritual, atavistic -- dark bale fires on a cold, blasted shore, the dawn of time. His own heart beat with it. His mind was blackened with it.

Reasons for the carnage, justice, vaporized like smoke when the blood was in his hands, and then there was only the frenzy for more, the orgiastic release of stifled passions.

Did she know that? So often now it was she who stopped it, she who called him back from the seductive pit, deeper than time, where there was no moral responsibility, no self at all, back into a world of right and wrong and paralyzing guilt, of self-loathing. It was her world, and he loved it with his whole soul.

And it was killing him.

The strength that was his at the kill -- and he was strong then, invincible faded in the light of that normal world. He felt himself weakening under its sharp glare -- the glare of truth, the light of reason, even the love-soft radiance of her smile.

What he was, this thing he tried to be -- rational, compassionate... human -- seemed to him a wraith now in the grinding rays, a trick of the light. Desperately, he tried to give it form again, and substance, but the blood waited, beckoning, whispering that from the moment he looked on evil and hated it, he had become the slave of its sly design.

To kill with such righteousness in his heart, with all the laws of God and man telling him it was just, and then to find before him another devil, no less wicked than the last, and to turn his back and walk away? What would be the justice then? One killed, another spared. It made a mockery of his rationalizations. Nothing but to destroy this one too, and the next in an endless litany of blood, the black pearls torn from their ghastly rope, and the necklace still gleaming, pulling him farther and farther into the throngs of victims and villains, farther into the coal-dark pitfall of his soul.

For the blood was within him now as well, the dark side feeding on it, growing stronger, the other fragile part to which he'd pledged his protection, floundering under the tide. Like two opposing plates beneath a fragile crust, so seemed his divided soul and always had, and he had watched over the delicate friction that was a fact of his existence, knowing what a cataclysm could result should too much pressure be brought to bear. The loneliness of his vigil was absolute. No one knew the truth of it, least of all Father, who thought he understood.

It touched him, that sweet assumption on the part of the man who'd nurtured him and loved him fiercely, a learned man, a man of deep sensitivity to humankind beyond his wealth of knowledge; but he did not understand this, no more than he himself had understood it until recently. No more than the thing writhing in pain and mad triumph on the library table had understood.

All of them, even the one who courted evil, who was in love with it, did not know what he knew from decades of monitoring its stronghold within him.

The darkness was pure. It was so simple and incorruptible that a child could grasp it. Children did. He had seen that a hundred times in thoughtless childish acts of cruelty. A small girl pronouncing him ugly, a little boy, squashing the fireflies in the park to watch their bright phosphorescence smeared across the grass, studying it with a child's wonder and no concept of the tiny creatures' lives wantonly destroyed.

Children spoke the truth; they acted on the gratifying impulse, just as he did every time the raking claws mined first blood, and his brain ceased to churn with the human rationale that had told him it was just, and the lust roared in his ears, and only something stronger than himself could stop the ravaging that followed.

The evil did not asked to be analyzed, to be understood. There was nothing complex or manipulatable in it. It was the lowest common denominator, what had existed long before sentient creatures had pulled themselves from the mire and groped toward the sun. The darkness could not be truly hidden or changed or disguised as something other than it was. There was no sophistication to it, no adaptation that could be imposed on it by a wise mind or a clever sensibility. It could not grow, because there was nothing that could nurture what was, in itself, nothingness. The great darkness. The absence of light.

It could only be tapped and with such ease that the dumbest creatures had its power at their disposal. Those who were helpless in any other sense had only to give in to it and theirs was the power to do unspeakable things, to strike out in any way they chose, without thought or remorse.

But it waited as surely for others to embrace, others who numbered among their resources knowledge and artifice and subtlety. All these things must be weighed in the human conscience. The more numerous the tools available, the more complex the choices, but always the easiest way lay in the primal nature, and the world stood appalled, when great men scorned the intricate pathways open to them for mass destruction and murder, when they chose the easiest path of all with no more concern for the other truths they had learned, than could be found in the childish plundering of summer fireflies.

It was the path of least resistance, that slide toward darkness, slippery and cool and unencumbered with rules or conscience. Conscience lay in that other realm, a place of enormous complexity and frightening vulnerability, the tender citadel, open always to doubt and the assault of new ideas, fresh philosophies, the staggering blows of human emotion.

This was the realm that must constantly be nurtured, protected. This was the part that was capable of growing, expanding to greater limits of understanding, and with every new-won inch of territory, there was the necessity to strengthen your guard, to watch over it with ever increasing vigilance, so that none of its shining spoils should fall to the darkness.

It was that part -- the human part -- that Father had courted so assiduously. He had given his son all the beautiful things within his power to build upon, and he had given him the weapons to defend them. Poetry and music and a wealth of ideas; knowledge, theoretical and absolute; the example of his own compassion and commitment and love. He had armed him with the ability to think for himself and to feel with the sensitivity of one who sees beauty in everything and value in the meekest life. He had instilled in him courage and the willingness to stand alone, as well as the capacity to give to those around him and to feel their joy as his own.

For so long it had been enough.

Only once had he felt the tremors as the two kingdoms of his divided soul had come perilously close to one another. Their movement against each other, however brief, had been almost catastrophic. And what had bridged the slender gulf between?

Even now the memory brought a sheen of sweat, a thin trickle of guilty sickness to his stomach. It was desire, the longing to expand upon his human soul, to introduce to that gentle land the experience of a loving touch, of passion. How he had yearned to bring the warm, entrancing reality of Lisa into the shelter of his arms, to feel her softness pressed against his pounding heart, to let her sense the love he could not articulate in the gentle touch of his fingers, to smell her hair, perhaps to press his lips against her fragrant skin, as lovers had done since time immemorial.

And it had seemed to him good, an impulse born of the most tender feeling, the most honored of human gestures. For a moment he refused to believe he could be wrong. For a moment she remained in his arms, and the ecstasy of it seemed suffused with light. Even when she pulled away, it had seemed briefly she who was mistaken; he was right in this.

And then there had come her voice, the expression in her eyes that had never shown him anything but sprightly affection, now stunning him with their fear, their loathing... and the blood. The connection had been made, the darkness tapped, and when Father intervened his first impulse was to strike him, to rake at that troubled face and draw more blood, simple goal of a simple philosophy.

But the grief that had followed had been painfully human, more terrible than any price the darkness ever exacted, the darkness that knew no right or wrong. Somehow he grasped that he had ventured too far to the borders of his humanity, sought to build upon its precarious edge too vulnerable an experience, one that by its very nature had invited the forces of darkness to enter, and come they did, overwhelming all that had been constructed before in that gentle part of him, raging through him with fever and exhausting nightmares that seemed never to end.

He wondered now, if he had let them come, if he had purposely welcomed their mindless ravings that released him from conscience, from self-recrimination, so much easier to bear than the human despair. The easy way out.

He had little sense of how long it had gone on, how long he had dwelled in that twilight kingdom -- a brutish, clawing thing. His first conscious memory was of Father, face taut with pallid torment -- no, mustn't look at that -- reading on and on and on, painstakingly reconstructing the shining monuments, the sanctuaries of rational thought and inspired wisdom on the beleaguered wasteland of his soul.

Long years had passed since that lesson, but he had held it in his heart, and if he dared to dream sometimes in the midnight of his chamber, in the familiar glowing haven that had been his since childhood, if he dared to dream of a woman's gentle touch, of soft murmurings meant for his ears alone, of one who would rest against his heart, it was in much the way that he dreamed of walking the streets of Athens or Rome, of poling a rough-hewn raft along the edges of the Amazon, of flying.

Or so it had been for a long time. And then suddenly without thought, without any conscious design, the most cherished, most forbidden, of his dreams had come true. Suddenly, there was Catherine, and it had seemed the most natural thing in the world to fold her to him, to feel her light caress on his cheek, to bury his face in the fragrant silk of her hair.

The most natural and the most miraculous thing in the world. The way she would fly into his arms with no reservation, hold to his hand with undisguised fervor, even letting her fingers entwine with his, as if to feel more completely the touch of skin on skin. And once -- just once -- she had turned and coming slowly toward him like a phantom in a dream, had pressed her lips to his. Not a kiss of passion. No, not that, he had been quick to define it so even as he remained, utterly unable to move when she was gone.

From the beginning, from the first sweet guileless embrace, he had known that the only way to hold these moments, the most vibrant in his existence, was to keep them for themselves. They must prevail tender and complete, untethered to any ties of passion. Only then could they remain pure and shining with love, only then could he hope that they would be repeated endlessly, endlessly, until the day when at last her warm nature demanded more and she turned from him for the last time to seek fulfillment among her own kind.

It was at once the most difficult and the simplest task he had ever assigned himself -- that massive wall built to hold back passion, the command to his brain to focus only on the moment and not wish it into realms that must not be entered. Difficult, because it meant denial of feelings so powerful that fighting against them was harder than any feat of physical strength he knew. Simple, because to fail at it would doom them both. He would lose her; he would lose himself. Everything gone and worse than gone. Everything that had come before sullied, shattered.

And so he had built upon the terrain of his humanity, these splendid moments of love exchanged in touch, in words, in the mysterious silent language that linked his heart to hers.

They were the crystal towers that rose above all he knew and cared for, beacons of light, refracting all the colors of a forbidden world, warming the best part of who he was. But there was so much more. So much she had given him beyond herself -- secrets of the life above, glimpses into people and places that became as his own experiences. Through her, through Catherine, he had come to know things that could never be found in books or even in the long fascinating stories told by the people who found their way below. As he grew to know these things and to understand in ways he'd never dreamed of, it had come to him that he knew himself better as well.

In her eyes, he saw all that he was, demon and angel, and he saw the courage to accept them both. Where did it come from, this vast well of bravery, in one so gentle, so quick to laugh and to cry? She dazzled him utterly with her capacity for meeting life on every level, and gradually he'd come to believe that he could do that as well. There were moments when he accepted the facts of his dual nature more lightly than he ever had before.

Yes, there had been moments. But they were gone now.

For the truth that had come to him in these last weeks when it seemed that death waited around every door, when the blood on his hands seemed never to be washed away, was that the cataclysm was inevitable, that he had marched himself irrevocably toward it and that it was not the darkness that was to blame for tipping the balance at all. The evil was innocent.

He saw it clearly now, now that his hands would shake with no provocation, now that his mind seemed to slip in and out of a delirium throbbing with blood, that it was the goodness he had tried so desperately to maintain, the pretensions to humanity, that were about to rip him apart, as he had butchered so many others.

Father had been wrong. All those years striving to inculcate his son with the strongest of beliefs, the most resilient of facts, sensitizing him to delicate nuances of beauty in everything that could be seen or heard or touched. All these things to reinforce his most human sensibilities, to shore them up. What did he think -- that he could pave over the waiting darkness with his pieces of enlightenment? Force down his blackest instincts until they could no longer burst to the surface, primordial pools forgotten under a genteel civilization?

No, that was wrong. Wrong to blame Father for an illusion that he himself had ascribed to with equal fervor. It was self-deception of the worst sort, blaming Father who had argued from the first moments that his obsession with a woman above could only bring tragedy. Whatever relenting he had done on that score had more to do with his own affection for Catherine, his gratitude for all she'd done. It had more to do with the obstinacy that told him it was useless to try and dissuade his son from his chosen course. More to do with those things than true belief that he had been wrong in his first assessment -- that only pain could come from such a liaison as this.

And so much he had hidden from Father, knowing how passionately he would have reacted. Father didn't know half the things he had done in his sojourns above, and he didn't know what burned in him just below the surface, what had been growing more insistent in the passing weeks until his efforts to rationalize it had threatened to exhaust him.

So safe, it had seemed. Two years of chaste embraces, and if they had grown more passionate with the deepening of their love, their need for each other, what harm had come of it? None.

So the hunger for her warmth in his arms, the silk of her skin beneath his palm, had grown greater, more urgent. The longing, when she was gone, to place his hand just there on the shining sweep of hair and pull her surely to his breast, had become almost an ache. What did it matter? The stars had not fallen from the sky because of it. The earth had not opened up to swallow him for the transgression. And when he had wanted -- almost lost in a sea of wanting -- to crush her to him, it had been her sweet voice urging him. Tighter, she had said.

Because she did want these things. He could not hide it from himself, strumming as it did along the fine-tuned instrument that was their bond. Why should he try to deceive himself when in it lay his greatest justification? He was not merely indulging some longing of his own. He was answering the highest call in his lexicon of virtues, giving Catherine what she so desperately yearned for.

Or almost.

There his rationalizations fell apart. It had become harder and harder to separate her desires from his own, one mind, one heart. The newer feelings shuddering through him like quicksilver, so that he could not study them, could not judge them in the old way, might be his alone.

Or they might be hers. Too quickly they passed through him, like torrid ghosts, almost as if they knew that lingering would make them subject to his judgment. They left behind only a warm weakness that seemed to melt his very bones and make a furnace of his heart.

Telling himself that it made no difference which of them had sent those phantoms forth was useless. It made a difference. For all their harmony, all their perfect empathic union, he alone bore the burden of that blackness. He alone knew how insidiously it could react to some errant feeling arcing from the haven of his purest thoughts. To him fell the duty of keeping some perspective. Yet experience told him nothing of what these feelings might mean. He did not know the extent of danger they could provoke. He didn't know, but he could guess.

In the end, it had come down again to blood.

How strange. How perfectly ironic, because what had happened had been as far from his experience with that obsessive symbol as it could be. He hadn't even made the connection until much later, later when he had brooded on it hour after hour, scintillated and afraid, by turns pacing with frenetic energy and lapsing into a dream state. But the blood was only the catalyst, and far more powerful messages had been let loose with its shedding than had ever called to him at the kill.

Catherine's balcony, and he had been watching her, reluctant to interrupt her valiant little battle with a rosebush. This was Catherine, unobserved, and he found the sight almost unbearably endearing, as she went about the mundane task with the same determination, if a touch less confidence, than he had seen her apply against far more intimidating opponents. He hadn't meant to spy. It was unforgivably rude. He had simply found himself entranced, and only the prick of her pain had broken the spell.

What he had done then, bending his lips to the tiny wound, had been as natural as breathing. To regret every hurt she ever had to suffer, to move to soothe that, was a reflex that felt almost inborn. It was only as he held the beloved hand and knew the taste of her in his mouth that his senses jolted. His feelings. . . hers. No, his, surely, and he'd looked up to see the truth in her eyes.

It was impossible to hang on that look, so direct, unblinking, so utterly devoid of subterfuge, and not be blown from the balcony by the whirlwind swirling through him. But, oh, such an effort it had taken to look away, and when he did, incredibly, she had pulled him back, back into the depths of her eyes, back into the unmistakable evidence of what was in her heart.

And then when he had told himself that these were only feelings, that he could still save himself, save her, as long as they remained mere passing fancies never to be acknowledged, when he had felt the paralyzing pain of knowing she had acted upon them -- with another, when he had gathered all the rational, unselfish forces of his mind to pronounce the rightness of it all, she had come to him, and she had offered those feelings again, and she had put them into words.

Such words. And he had begun to let himself dream still further. He had sought to add them, the words and those bits of forbidden dreams, to the fragile structure that he thought of as his true self, the citadel of sanity and goodness in his soul. Was it then it had begun to waver like a house of cards?

What they didn't know -- what none of them knew -- was that it was this bastion of humanity which endangered him, and consequently, them all. So complex, so intricately constructed, truths and facts, teetering precariously on half-dreamed dreams, on unprovable suppositions about himself, perhaps on lies.

He had dared to build upon it with increasing recklessness of late, out of a hunger whose origins he could not even identify. He had sought to people his soul with images of impossible loveliness, a landscape of morals and ethics that pushed farther the boundaries until it closed the gap between thought and feeling, consciousness and instinct.

And it had come up against the other, the waiting darkness, impenetrable in its purity, its mindless simplicity. They ground together now, threatening the balance he had fought so hard to maintain, and which of those warring halves would fall?

Oh, he knew.

It was happening already. And none of them could see it for what it was. All of them cursed the darkness, refusing to see that it was his tenacious hold on the light that had brought this to pass, his pretensions to humanity, to dreams. Didn't they know how easy it would have been to slip uncaring into the darkness?

He could have been one thing then, perfect in its design. It was only what he saw in the light that caused him to grasp always for things just beyond his reach. It was that consciousness that would tear him apart. No perfect beast, blameless in its blind adherence to instinct. No man worthy of the name. Only a thing divided again itself that must perish and -- God help him -- perhaps destroy those he loved in the process.

Father believed too vehemently in the value of goodness, in its power. It had served him well, helping him to create a world based on its principles out of nothing, out of darkness. But he was a man, and to him there was a choice -- good or evil. Had he himself ever had a choice? Sometimes, perhaps, when the lines between them were clear. But how to see the difference when one thing bled into another as they had of late?

He loved her. He would die to protect her, and so he must also kill to protect her. She didn't ask it of him, not in any way that she recognized, and he prayed that she never would. The more deeply he loved her, the more readily he deferred to the killer in him.

In some way he could not begin to define, the feelings, the forbidden desires that drew him ever closer to her found their expression in that killing. This was the passion he knew. This was instinct acted upon, and if the aftermath was shame and self-hatred, then what would it be if he turned his passion in the direction forbidden to him?

Worse, far worse, and rather than risk one moment of pain in her eyes, he would savage through every human abomination that corrupted her world. He would leave the city above littered with gutted corpses. His blood sacrifice to her.

But how long could he keep it up? If only his man's mind would quiet, leave him to what must be done in peace. The primal other would do it all, efficiently, remorselessly, but what would be left to him then of Catherine?

Still, even now, she could look at him and say she saw only the man that she loved. If Father's flaw was too great a faith in goodness, hers was too great a capacity for love. Should that be a flaw? Not in the best of all possible worlds, not even in the contradictory world he had lately inhabited, but where was that world? Increasingly, he couldn't find the boundaries, blurred -- all of it -- smeared with the scarlet that seemed to be spreading everywhere he turned.

And that thing -- that madman, raving at him, triumphant even in the moment that had seen him ripped asunder with chilling purpose. The good father, the bad. What did it matter? Which labored under the greater delusions? Taunting him with his call to embrace the darkness, to claim his destiny. He was the biggest fool of all. Did he truly think the things he was saying would be revelations? That he hadn't thought the same horrific thoughts himself, a thousand times over? All that one had brought on himself was his own destiny. Not his, not... Vincent's. There... for a moment even his name had eluded him. All of it slipping away, sliding on the death-slicked surface of reality.

A lunatic, seeking to create evil in his own image, playing upon the seductive power of the darkness. He didn't see it either. He didn't grasp that what had brought his longed for son to this juncture was his humanness, what might have felled him totally at that moment was an appeal to those gentle sensibilities that were retreating farther and farther from his reach, that already he mourned with debilitating grief. The reminder of what he had done and known and loved, as a man, those things so dear to him, if he had spoken softly of those.… That might have broken his heart.

Alone. He was alone as never before, utterly cut off from all of them. He felt it when they came upon the carnage in the study, when they looked at him, loving him still, and said it was over.

Couldn't they see that he had drifted far away from them, that their words were no more than the sweet, senseless calling of birds, lost on the wind that pushed him faster and faster out to sea? Alone he watched the waters churn and multiply, the things he cared for receding into the distance. No man was an island. But he was no man. No man.

Give it up and become the dark reflection of himself that at times now he could actually see, evil made manifest. Be that, and if it doesn't serve their purposes, they will kill you. An end to it. But still he couldn't let go. Sometimes in these last days, he'd thought his heart would burst from the effort to reach out and catch some remnant of the man he had been. Sometimes he even succeeded.

At least he thought he had. Harder to tell now, harder to differentiate the fever images from what really took place. Had he tried to fasten his clothing, only to find this simple task beyond the skill of hands whose only purpose was to kill, to destroy?

Yes, he had meant to do that, meant to make himself presentable -- for her, for Catherine. No... that wasn't right. He remembered sending her away when he still had the power to do so. He remembered her tearful entreaty to be held once more, and he had been capable of doing that, capable of feeling the tremendous weight of tragedy as she'd wept in his arms. He was hurting her. The one thing he had sworn never to do. He was killing her. He was killing himself.

But there had been music. Surprising, horrible music descending from, above, and hadn't she been there then, or some image of her, distorted beyond his understanding like the shrieking notes tearing through his brain? So many images, and he could no longer say which were true. Destroying his chamber -- no, Catherine's. Catherine had no chamber. Catherine had no place in his world. As he had no place in it. Not here, not above. Nowhere.

He thought he had felt her cool fingers on his face that was burning, as his brain was burning.

He thought he had pulled her to him, opened her trembling lips with his sigh, ravishing her mouth with his own.

He thought he had flown.

He thought he had pulled the gate from its moorings -- the gateway to heaven, had it been? -- and forced it through the man who held out his hand slicing him into sections that rose again, father and father and father, advancing on him swinging a golden locket like a censer.

He thought he had scrabbled at the wall of the dead, deep in the catacombs, until it had opened and welcomed him inside, and the wall had become one again, and in the darkness Catherine had pressed up against him and held him safe.

He thought he had come upon a great cathedral made of glass, and had smashed it to the earth, all the holy relics, spilling and twinkling like stars.

He thought he told Catherine that he loved her.

He thought an outsider had come to the tunnels, a spy from above, and that he had not killed him.

He thought he had said goodbye to those he loved, saying what was truly in his heart.

He thought he had wandered through the rooms of Catherine's apartment, quietly, reverently and that he had turned to find her there. She was dressed in white and as he knelt at her feet, begging forgiveness -- for the killings? For loving her? For not holding tight enough to the dream? -- the rosebush had grown huge behind her, its branches laden with blooms whose petals rained around him -- blood and bone.

He thought he had angered Samantha, frightened her, worried her, as he did all the rest -- all the ones who dared to love him.

He thought he had glimpsed himself in a mirror and lashed out at the gaunt image in fury, but the mirror could not be broken, and it was he himself who shattered in a thousand pieces, blew out over the park and fell to earth in lethal, glittering shards.

And then for a moment he would see himself, almost clearly, drenched in sweat, his heart pounding with alarming velocity, reeling like a drunken man through passages that should have been familiar but were not. What was true? None of it? All of it? His mind couldn't be trusted now, warped and crazed, the images it threw back were like painted devils plucking at the fine thread of awareness that for mere seconds would be his.

No, the images weren't real. And he knew that. He knew that, because it couldn't be so that he had not killed an intruder. The killing was the one truth, inescapable, the simplest thing when all complexity had flown. And so the brief illusion that he had sent for Catherine must be a lie as well. He shuddered with relief. That she should see this, that she should put herself in the path of a thing that had no certain choices but to slaughter…

They would not kill him -- none of them, no matter what he did. The pain of that made him want to weep. They couldn't do it. All of them spoke solemnly of the darkness in every soul, as if they understood his torment, but in them the blackness, the capacity to act without thought to right or wrong, was truly unreachable, buried beneath such good and human traits that they could not call upon it even if they tried. He wanted to weep for them, for the beauty of what they were, but there wasn't time.

The walls were folding around him, undulating, as if they were made of fire or the swells of a fathomless ocean. He must go through them, go through the flames, through the murky depths if necessary to take himself far from the innocents. Would they follow? No, no one had ever been able to follow him. He was too swift, too silent, too different from what they were. They could not move as he moved, or see the things he saw.

But how long had he stopped here, leaning against a hard buttress of stone, folded in on himself? Hours? Seconds? He blinked, not knowing if it was sweat or tears or blood that dimmed his vision, and ran a trembling hand across his eyes. Where did they come from -- all the noises? Voices, great hollow gongs, and shrieking. How could they pursue him here, so deep in the earth? Or were they only present in his head? Holding his ears did not silence them, and his spasming fingers told him that his hair was matted, snarled. The brief coherent thought shamed him, his outward image defiled as he was defiled. No semblance of grace or pride, no illusions of refinement.

Even his body had betrayed him -- here at the end -- the sure, quick reflexes gone. For long moments he sought the power that would will his legs to move again, and when they did, it was with a leaden sluggishness that seemed to belong to some other creature, an enormous, doomed thing too dull-witted to maneuver its own body from the brink of extinction.

He lumbered forward and felt the sweat break out anew on his forehead. His lips were cracked, burning, as if all the moisture had left his body, wept into the dust in futile tears. Only the gaping mouth of the next junction drew him, down and endlessly down, into the measureless darkness below.

Head lowered, he watched his boots shuffling through the dust, stumbling from time to time on nothingness, but he dared not look at the walls, that solid, impervious stone that had stood for centuries and cradled him since as long as he could remember, for they were no more to be relied upon than he was, shimmering as they were, rocking with a motion that only exacerbated the turmoil in his head.

He tried desperately to shut it all out and to concentrate on his heart, looking inside it for a whisper of her, of their connection. Not to call her to him -- no, never that, never again -- only to glimpse once more the beauty that had been, the impossible dreams that in his vanity he had dared to cherish, as if believing in them could make him something other than he was.

Still thinking of her?

His head snapped up.

There in the shadows. The thing that had stalked him, leapt at him, threatened her with such malevolent intent that he could not let himself imagine what it sought to do. Surely, a hallucination, some manifestation of his darkest self, visible now as the weaving walls were visible, while all the brilliant lovely images he had known were hidden from him. What though the radiance that was once so bright…

Should he be surprised that this apparition could exist? Was he capable of so human a response? The energy was returning to his limbs. Anger. Fear. Those were powerful forces, restoring to him some semblance of rationality. A fragment of his own psyche merely. No surprise that it should show itself here before him when he knew himself to be shattered beyond repair. But the sarcasm dripping from the vision's voice, the mocking smile -- not his, not his.

Ah, but what are you thinking? The thing moved before him with languorous ease, staying several yards ahead, moving as he had once been capable of moving. What is it she could give you that could save you now?

"Go... away." The words were no more than a harsh whisper, torn from his aching throat, but the thing heard them. Amusement flared in its haggard face.

And if I did? You pretend you would be alone, but you and I both know you would simply cease to be. I'm all you have left.

Not true. It wasn't true, but why speak to phantoms? He would close his mind to it, make it vanish. He shut his eyes, but when he opened them it was hovering still, eyeing him with sly derision from the portal just ahead. "You are nothing," he rasped, pushing past it, but when he looked up, there it was again, leaning on an outcropping of dull stone only yards away.

I could have made us something -- something warm and vital and... human. Isn't that your little fantasy? I could have taken what you stubbornly refuse and shown you what it is to be a man. You might have known the heat, but you prefer the ice. Look, how you're shaking with it.

No... no, he'd been burning with this fever forever. Lank strands of hair were plastered to his cheek with the damp proof of it. Only fever could produce such nightmare visions as this, only fever could generate the senseless ravings tormenting him now. Suddenly, he knew he was shivering, that his teeth were all but chattering in his rigid jaw. His fingers had stiffened as though the joints were frozen. He wrapped his cloak protectively tighter, trying to hold out an icy wind that failed to stir one speck of dust. But he wouldn't let it see -- as if it could see.

A low, mirthless chuckle. You see. All of your life is a denial. You try to deny me. You pretend that there is no pleasure in the kill. You play at being human, but when the time comes to prove it, you turn away. You deny yourself into nothingness.

Where were the noises that had almost driven him mad? Better their hellish clamoring than this poisonous monologue, the sheer contempt in it weakened his knees, but the heat was rising again -- with the rage. His lip curled, and he bared his teeth with the low feral growl that took no will to summons. Thawed fingers curled at his sides. He took a step forward, but the vision didn't flinch. It merely mirrored his expression with its haunted eyes and a menacing sneer.

Is that supposed to frighten me, drive me away? Look closely. What do you see?

He saw and staggered back a step. The lethal canines, so like his own, but around the stark white strength of them was a stain of scarlet. It almost seemed to be dripping still. "No," he whispered. "No, I have... never... I have never... done that."

Why not? What did you think they were for? You know well enough what the claws are for. Does it make you feel more refined, ripping their flesh with your fingers, feeling the warmth of their guts in your hands, or is it that you fear developing a taste for blood? Half a killer. Half a man.

He lunged then, while the horror of the last words still hissed in the air. For a moment he felt his old quickness, driven by fury, by panic, but his arms closed on empty air. Whirling, he stared behind him, but nothing disturbed the dim passage, save the river of his own footprints in the powdery dirt. There was no sound at all, except for the faint echo of those insidious slurs that he imagined still lingered, turning the air thick with venom. He could not stay here, and so he moved off again, pushing forward and downward and found the dark one waiting, perched high on a ledge above his head, like a vulture waiting to scavenge whatever was left of him.

You never answered my question. What is it you want from her? The love of a goddess perched high upon a pedestal of your own lofty ideals? Forever out of reach. Too pure. Too far above you. No need to relinquish your precious denial. No need to risk becoming something, after all. Have you ever asked her if she likes it up there? Have you ever asked Catherine --

This time the swiping blow almost swept the monster from its perch. For an instant, he thought he'd made contact, thought he'd felt the give of cloth and taut muscle beneath his claws, but the thing had sprung to its feet with lightening speed, moving carelessly along the ledge before him. "Don't ever... don't dare to speak her name."

Pathetic.

The creature spat the word, towering above him, and now he had to follow it, had to silence it once and for all before the darkness descended completely, before the madness claimed him totally and he could no longer act.

It is pathetic, you know. What's in a name? Yet you would kill me for speaking it.

"I will kill you."

Kill for a word, but leave it to me to see her for what she is, to take what she offers. Words, ideas -- those are your only passions. You love the ideas of beauty, justice, goodness. You love the idea of her. You make a sanctuary of ideas and hide there. What do you know of blood, of life, of death? You, who speak of nature and refuse to follow its laws. Dead already, and you don't even know.

No, not dead. In death there would not be this mortal pain twisting at his heart so that every breath cut its way out of his body, razor-sharp, not the discourse of the foul specter gliding panther-like along the ledge, its words searing into his brain until he thought he could smell an acrid burning.

He must pursue it, must lay his hands on it and destroy what could be destroyed -- the mocking light in the hollow eyes, the bloody mouth spewing lies and blasphemy.

How filthy it looked in clothes so like his own, but tattered, carelessly besmirched, like something newly risen from the grave. Debauchery hung about the hunched shoulders like a mantle, and yet it had an energy he no longer possessed, flitting recklessly along the stone outcropping, leaping suddenly for no good reason but to show him that it could.

His own movements remained erratic. Sometimes it took a supreme act of will just to take the next step, and then -- when the vision taunted him again – he would feel for an instant the old power, the old swiftness, and nearly -- only nearly -- catch up with his tormenter.

Why let it lure him like this? Why not turn and go away from it, but, of course, that was useless. The thing with his face that was not his face, could materialize wherever it chose. Here, in his chamber, even in that hallowed place he'd felt no right to enter -- Catherine's home. But he had been there, surely.

Bright flickers of memory assaulted him. The rooms in sunlight or the unfamiliar glare of electric lights, the sun setting, illuminating the city with a fiery glow as if the earth itself was a pulsing star. How... how after all this time, could he have entered there? For what purpose? After so long a denial…

Her bed -- do you remember that?

The demon fixed him with a lascivious look, all but drooling as it crouched with simian ease in a shadowed niche to his left. "It was you. I … I must have followed you -- you had no right!"

Of course not. All the rights belong to you, don't they? That's the price they pay for loving you -- their own choices taken away, sacrificed to yours, because you know what's best. No one is quite so good, so wise, so pure. No one is quite so bad. They treat you like a god, because you demand it. You believe it. A god, answering to no one, merciful when it suits you, vengeful when you choose. Above it all, below it -- what difference does it make in the end. You're still alone.

"I won't... listen to this. It's all lies, all meaningless sounds. You do not exist."

That's right. Deny. Deny. Deny. But you still see me, don't you? You still hear me, though you'd like so much to stop. Does she exist -- Catherine? Is she real to you or only a fantasy, a product of that oh-so-exacting mind of yours?

"She is the... most real thing I have ever known," he answered with weary conviction. Useless to try and shut it out, useless to flee.

It occurred to him that he was the one leading the fiend to where it must be taken despite the fact that it insisted on preceding him.

Yes, below. Below to a stygian place he knew where there was only a single entrance, the only other exit the yawning grave of the abyss. There he would corner it, and there he would destroy it with his last ounce of waning strength.

Real to you. Real to you.

The words rang out, repeated over and over, all the way through the winding passage of ruddy stone that ended in crude steps, chiseled long ago by unknown hands. They continued to ring in his ears, now chanted like the singsong taunt of a child, now uttered in a growl as deep as his own, subtle, insinuating. He stooped below a sagging lintel to enter a long tube. The soft walls here were wet, moldering; a hint of decay hung in the stagnant air.

He was once more very cold and no longer surprised when his nemesis appeared, moving with remembered grace, like a wounded cat, in the beckoning shadows.

Real to you. What does that mean -- to you? What does it mean to her? That she is flesh and blood, that she feels, that she yearns, that she longs to touch and be touched with a woman's longing? She is warm, that one. Not like you. She embraces life. She is capable of passion --

"Don't!" All the power left to him rose with the flame of confusion, concentrated in the single syllable. Brow lowered he stared into the face of the other who showed a momentary uncertainty. The eyes with their crafty glint, their fathomless hunger, slid briefly away as though it feared being trapped under his dangerous scrutiny. "Don't pretend to know her, to judge her. You know nothing of her feelings.

Oh, but you're wrong. I know everything. So do you, though you choose to ignore what you will. Poor Catherine. Poor, poor --

This time his anger was so swift that he had closed the distance between himself and that mocking face, raking his claws across one hollow cheek before it could retreat -- but retreat it did, glaring at him with eyes that seemed to glow with unnatural heat from the shadows.

You delight in thwarting me. You always have, but don't imagine you can destroy me. I am all of what I am. You are only half of what you could be. Your strength that so impresses frail humans, that terrorizes your victims close to death, it's nothing compared to mine. I could finish you off before you took another step.

"Then why don't you?" It was not an invitation. He was not even certain whether he believed it.

There was no understanding here, no capacity for thought. Only the icy chill, as if his veins were empty, even his neck cold beneath the blanket of tangled hair. And then again the fever, melting his bones, his sinews, pumping like a great engine through every pore, making his mind a hell dancing with demons. He reached to wipe the sweat from his face, baffled when his hand came away smeared with blood. Nothing made sense here. Nothing.

It's always been so hard to make you listen to me, but you're listening now. I'm not ready for it to end. You don't wish me to speak of her -- her feelings. I won't. No, no -- let's talk about you.

Vincent didn't respond. Why give an illusion credence by acknowledging it? He shut his eyes to the sight of it, the gaunt cheek still bleeding where he had caught the flesh. What flesh? Madness, madness and more madness.

He wrenched at the cloak that was suddenly stifling. Indifferently, he watched it settle in the dirt, this piece of cloth he once had worn so proudly, so easily as if it were part of him. It lay there like a shadow, unaccountably shredded, and he saw it for what it was -- a means to hide, a subterfuge that allowed him to move through places where he had no right to be, pretending to be something else, denying the truth.

Standing there, trying to hold to one place wasn't working. He was weaving with the motion of the walls, the floor, the arching roof that threatened to dip to earth. Another pain-wracked breath and he was able to turn, to stumble forward.

You know, you really are in ruins. Amazing that there's still movement there at all. What would they say if they could see you now -- their glorious prince, golden and invincible, so willing to take their troubles as your own. Useless to them -- and disgusting. There's no way out, you know. Why do you keep fighting the inevitable?

"Just... leave me." The words were now as agonizing as the shallow breaths torn with great effort from his blazing lungs. Why, indeed? He didn't know.

You don't mean that. I'm your last friend. The last face you'll see. Don't you find that fitting? And we were going to talk about you -- about your feelings. It all begins with her; begins and ends with her. Isn't that right?

What an effort it was just to shake his head, and how effortlessly the tunnel around him pitched and rolled. "I love them all... that is why I must... finish this. I must take... myself... away from them... far away." Yes, that was it. He'd almost forgotten, stumbling blindly on this spiraling course.

They must not find him. They must not be tempted to come too close. The thought terrified him, propelling him to the next junction with erratic speed. He must use whatever strength was left to him to that end; whatever fleeting moments of clarity passed through the chaos in his mind must be bent on that single goal -- to take himself where they could not follow. He must not waste his rapidly depleting strength on a nightmare vision.

But your love for her is different, isn't it? You would hold her forever, until the scent of her drove you insane. You would pretend to be stone when she pushes up against you, all warmth and softness, and sighs against your throat. Pretend to be blind when she gazes at you and her eyes offer everything. Deny her pleading, deny your own desire to take it all.

Mustn't listen to this. Mustn't spend one precious atom of energy on responding, not when the heat was scorching him, body and soul. He would die here, perish in a conflagration, where they still might find him, still find what was left. He heard the ripping of the thick vest before he saw its remnants in his hands; his shirt too, torn from his body as if the clothing were on fire, and he must fling it from himself or die.

A man's clothing. What did it have to do with him? His chest heaved with exhaustion, the fur here, too, matted with perspiration, his muscles gleamed as though made of glass. And the wind. When had he entered this passage that sucked the gale with great force from its hiding place? A hot wind that threatened to melt his flesh, to shatter the brittle translucency he had become. He whirled with it, and the sound rushed in his ears, but still the voice, so brutally like his own played across the wasteland of his soul.

What do you care if your body disintegrates? One thing less to hide like a guilty secret. You reject its power at the kill. You allow it no human indulgence. You won't even listen to it as you're listening to me. Why not transcend it all and become pure spirit? Wouldn't everything be easier then?

He slammed his hands over his ears. Before him the final hole gaped, black as the pit from pole to pole, but it seemed to retreat as he lurched toward it, the wild ravings still in pursuit.

Why not wish her dead as well? What a pedestal that would be! No temptation, but then you feel no temptation, do you? Because if you did, she would be as good as dead. That's what you think. That's what you really believe, isn't it? In your precious denial, it wouldn't occur to you that she could bring you life. Far be it from you to dream beyond her face, so lovely to look at, her hands so pleasing to touch, as if that is all she is. Could you bear to think just for a moment about what lies beyond those silky little gowns she wears? Would you allow her to be a woman complete -- dream on the impossible warmth of her breasts beneath your hand, your mouth, of how she would open to you willingly with --

The roar drowned out the sound of the wind, the manic laugh that rose, as all the power he had ever known surged through him again, and he threw himself with preternatural force at the macabre shadow. His shoulder met granite with a shooting pain that he ignored, grasping at something he could no longer see, no longer even hear. Frantically, he searched the passage for some sign of it. There was nothing. A sob, half rage, half grief echoed in the wake of the roar still dying in the wind. Where had it gone? It could not dare to speak of such things and live.

There was only the waiting sepulcher, and he plunged through the doorway. Darker here but the way was narrow, low so that he had to stoop. No place for the other to hide. He churned downward, now and then feeling the scrape of rock on his arm, his shoulder, as his balance abandoned him.

It would be waiting for him in that lightless place that was his destination, thinking itself clever for getting there before him, but there would be no escape. No longer did it have the advantage of surprise, no longer could its haggard looks, a ghastly parody of his own, stun him into inertia.

For he knew intuitively that his own appearance had become as funereal as his counterpart's, his remaining powers no less bent on destruction. He would tear it apart with his hands -- with his mouth if need be. He would rend it to pieces, as many pieces as had once made up his own fragile life.

His eyes adjusting immediately to the darkness, he saw that it wasn't there. Where then? And the answer was too simple, too horrible to be born. He ripped at his torso as if it was still clothed, as if he would tear the last concealing thing from what he was, but there was no pain, not pain of the flesh. He was beyond that now.

The only pain seared deep in his soul, a suffering so intense that it tore from him roar after roar, each slashing through his consciousness until he was victim and predator both at once, flailing at the obdurate stone, liming the walls with his own blood as he sought to dig into them -- with lethal, gore-caked claws, with his knuckles.

In the strength of the fury, he succeeded in dislodging a massive hunk of stone that showered sharp chunks upon his shoulders and head, but he felt them as no more than pebbles, no more than rain. There was only this mad mission that was no mission. No salvation but annihilation. No memories plagued him, no contemptuous voices, no thoughts at all. Only a heart beating furiously to animate the limbs with horrific force, only the bellowing thunder of the beast.

And if another sound, more human but no less terrible, was introduced in those moments, it was lost to his ears. Through a snarl of tangled hair there flared one last vision -- too beautiful to be borne -- a mirage of lost dreams like a candle in the blackness.

He swung toward it, and the light went out, vanished, and the blackness folded in behind unseeing eyes and the great pumping of his heart stopped utterly still.

Even the ruthless hands made no move to catch him, as he toppled head-long to the blood-stained floor.

Let me confess that we two must be twain,
Although our undivided loves are one:
So shall those blots that do with me remain,
Without thy help, by me be borne alone.

-- William Shakespeare