Page 18 of Cursed Lifeline (Eternal Love)
Seventeen
Esme
Song: Requiem for a dream | Scott Benson Band
Over the last year, I’ve come to understand that my father’s cult of reason stands as a means to bring down the Catholic church and Christianity as a whole.
They worship their reason, thus rejecting all forms of deity.
Truth. Liberty. That’s what they seek. To obtain their radicalism, anything that stands in their way and restricts their thinking is to be done away with.
Starting with the church.
Standing in the middle of the Cathedral of Notre Dame, staring at a large cross atop an altar labeled liberty, I realize just how much I’ll never be free. From my father. The council.
If it’s truth that the cult of reason seeks, they should look at the rules they’re enacting, the old ways they're suppressing, and realize that the truth is - we’re all never really free.
To have complete freedom, you’d have to relinquish all control.
The cult of reason only stands to enact a new way of thinking.
A new form of control to replace the old hierarchy.
It’ll never last.
Understanding so, I begin to grasp the fact that maybe that’s what draws me to Felix.
I don’t worry if my feelings for him will last or stand the test of time. I know they will.
There’s freedom in loving him.
With him, I never worry about being in control, because he is , and I trust him.
It should bother me. My lack of self-respect when it comes to him considering what he is and my calling to be a slayer. But when I’m with him, it’s the only time in my life I’ve ever felt safe. Secure. Protected. Growing up in my father’s household, I never felt that way. Felix is the only thing that has ever made me feel grounded and anchored to an indisputable fact that, unlike Hamlet and Ophelia, we’re not crazy to fall in love.
Then again, maybe my father was right, and all I’ll ever be good for is a living sacrifice, starting with my attraction to Felix.
When I think about it that way, my life is one sick game.
A game where all sides seem to be playing me as their pawn. A game where no matter how hard I try, the cards aren’t stacked in my favor. Right now, as I stare at the altar in front of me, I fear no amount of bluffing or any sort of magical spell will save me from a fate I’ve always been destined to meet.
Whether it’s at the hands of my father or Felix’s coven.
The horrific screams of peasants draw my attention away from the cross. Glancing over my left shoulder and out the stained-glass window of the church, protests rage throughout the streets of Paris. Anyone who stands against my father and his reason is taken harshly into custody and restrained against their will. Some are immediately put to death on the city’s crowded streets for all to see and made an example of.
Through the mayhem, women dressed in white traipse through the crowds, chanting nonsense and luring others to join them in their indecent charade. Some are scandalously dressed, and I watch numbly as they lure men into the shadows, hike up their skirts, and allow them liberties for a price the fools are all too eager to pay.
“No daughter of mine will ever be so lewd,” my father’s voice rings through the cathedral as he steps out from behind the altar.
Disgusted, I ask, “Or what, father? You’ll have me manhandled and taught a lesson?”
My father takes the steps down from the altar toward me quickly.
“If it’s really my destiny to die at the hands of you or the coven, at least with Felix, I would have enjoyed it. Even at the end, when he inevitably took his last fatal bite.”
Reaching where I stand, my father slaps my face so quickly I barely have time to brace for the impact. The sting of his assault and harsh next words will haunt me forever, even in death.
“At least as a sacrifice,” he spits out, pulling my hair and forcing me to look him in the eyes, “You’ll be fulfilling your duty.”
“What duty is that?” I bite back. “Duty to you? Or to France? Because I’ll be honest, both aren’t worth dying for.”
My father slowly raises his fist again, taunting me with the threat of pain from his uncaring hand. This time, I’m ready for it. My eyes close, and I wince away in fear, but the disgrace he threatens to inflict never comes.
Opening my eyes, my father’s gaze focuses on something over my shoulder. Slowly, he releases his grip and takes an angry step back. When his eyes find mine a moment later, he whispers harshly, “Tell me then, daughter, are you suggesting he is worth dying for?”
Spinning around, the shadows of twilight play with my eyes but eventually, lock on five hooded figures as they emerge from the back of the church. The one in the middle raises his gaze. His violet eyes find mine instantly. A mischievous smile plays at his tempting lips. Hope rushes through my veins as Felix slowly lifts his hood. The others follow suit and do the same as they gently glide towards us.
“How’d you get in?” my father yells, “You weren’t invited.”
Felix’s roguish grin grows.“Cardinals enlist our help from time to time when their Pope proves more rotten than the devil.”
The group eerily continues to float towards us as Felix’s hypnotic gaze holds violently on the threat behind me and his jaw sets with a vicious tick.
“This is a church!” My father shouts. “Don’t you have any respect?”
Felix tilts his head to the side and studies my father. Paralyzed and entranced, I don’t think to defend myself until it’s too late.
“I. Will. Not. Be. Stopped,” my father yells, quickly reaching out and grabbing a handful of my hair. I scream out in pain and try to yank free, but stop abruptly when my father raises a blade and holds it harshly against my neck. Releasing my hair, he anchors me to him as Felix’s eyes flare with rage.
In a flash, Dimitri mists behind our back. I catch my father’s terrified reflection in the stained glass across the room, though Dimitri’s figure doesn’t show up at all. My father appears restrained by his shoulders. He yells out. First, in fear. Then, in pain. The knife at my neck drops to the floor, but he doesn’t release me. With wide eyes, I stare at the glass as tiny lines of red start to trickle down my father’s neck.
Struggling to break free of my father’s relentless hold, Felix calmly states, “When faced with deciding between wrong and right, most anybody might drive themselves mad if they’re not quick enough to choose.” His violent eyes hold viciously on my father. “Have you chosen wisely, Lord Martin?”
“Go to hell,” my father seethes.
Felix glides closer and pulls a sword from his hip. “You first,” he growls.
With lightning precision, he slashes through my father’s wrist, anchored at my waist. He screams out in pain as he releases his hold and I stumble forward into Felix’s arms.
As my father is pulled back for Dimitri to be finished off, I glance thankfully up into Felix’s eyes.
He steals my next breath when he whispers, “Where love is great, the littlest doubts are fear; Where little fears grow great, great love grows there."
As the words leave his lips the world around us implodes. Over Felix’s shoulder, I watch in terror as countless members of my father’s cult rush into the church. They yell for help, for backup, as the coven surrounding Felix and I defend themselves before encircling us in the center of the house of God and offering a hedge of protection for a brief heavenly moment.
Gently guiding my gaze back to his eyes, Felix whispers, “Forty thousand brothers could not, with their quantity of love, make up my sum, remember ?”
My heart beats wildly, and my breath catches as Felix quickly draws us into an illusion similar to the one he created the first night we met.
The church around us erupts into a sparkle of incandescent metallic gold. Purple and white wisteria fall and hang like a dream from the ceiling. Rosemary vines run through the center, filling the room with a calming, tranquil fragrance, a stark difference from the madness surrounding us that Felix is protectively shielding me from.
Roses climb the walls and frame the stained-glass windows. They snake around them with ease as their smell threatens to deepen Felix’s charm. Sparkling light dances like magic, cocooning us in a safe spell. The room appears empty, except for the two of us. Music fills the air. Its matrimonial tune pulls at the strings of my hopeful heart as Felix tugs me closer, and his lips hover dangerously close to mine.
“You once asked me,” Felix says, “If Hamlet loved Ophelia, why did he push her away?”
“Yes?” I breathe out desperately as his mouth tenderly brushes against mine.
“Why do you think, mon cheri?”
Speechless, I war with the answer. Felix’s brow furrows. His concentration borders on lethal. A rattling noise echoes on the edge of the illusion, threatening to break the spell, but Felix fights against it.
“To save himself from her?” I whisper, searching his eyes as the flowers fall from the ceiling. Petals shower down upon us like snow and engulf into flames the second they reach the floor.
Felix smiles sadly and shakes his head no. The jovial music begins to fade. The roses wither as they shrink back from the stained glass as Felix fights to keep us here. Secure. Safe in a heaven he created just for the two of us.
“Why, Felix?” I beg, fighting back tears as the screams and yells of my father’s men and Felix’s coven ring louder, threatening to shatter a dream I never want to wake up from.
“Please,” I plead, as fear gets the better of me, and I worry this might be the last time I’m ever fortunate enough to ask him and let him explain why we both feel the way we do.
Finally, he says, “To save her.” The ground beneath our feet starts to shake. “From herself. From him,” he grits out, as his arms quiver and he clutches me to his chest and tries to hold out on the illusion breaking as long as he can.
Slightly angered, I push back against him. “Ophelia didn’t need saving, and neither do I.”
With a sad shake of his head, he pulls me closer and says, “That’s where you’re wrong. Ophelia had no control over her mind, her body, her relationships.”
“And you think I don’t as well,” I glare at him as the stained glass windows burst, their shards violently punch through the air, then suddenly stop.
Suspended, dangling in space, a daunting purgatory, time pauses. The air becomes electric as I question Felix and stare deeply into his violet,tear-filled eyes. The confidence in his gaze when he promised me he’d find a way for us to be together wavers. He’s resorting back to the way he felt the first night we met. But I’ll be damned if either of us stays away from each other now.
Leaning forward, he softly, gently steals a kiss and says, “God has given us one face, and we make for ourselves another.”
I know what he’s hinting at, and my heart breaks.
While we’ve been wrapped up in our love, we’ve denied ourselves the truth of who and what we truly are.
The room slowly starts to spin. The shards of glass delicately, sluggishly, begin to move in a circle. Felix pulls back and regards me with a sad frown as a heartbreaking tear gently crests down his pale cheek.
“I haven’t been completely forthcoming with you. The way we feel for each other, it’s a curse, Esme. Passed down from my mother and my father.”
I shake my head no.
“You said you chose me,” I cry, “That you’d always choose me.” He starts to speak, but I cut him off and shout. “Don’t tell me the only reason is because of some damned curse.”
The shards of glass start to spin faster. The heat of the fire surrounding us, sparked to life from the petals that fell like snow, burn closer. My feet, my ankles, and my calves threaten to go up in flames as I stand my ground and demand, “Answer me!”
“I should’ve told you before. Before I promised you…” his voice shakes with emotion as his forehead falls against mine. “By birth, I’ll never be able to love you honorably. That’s my curse. I know I made you a promise to try, but since you were taken, I realized how fragile life is. I won’t make the same mistake they did.” His eyes lift and fill with anger. “I won’t sacrifice you to save myself. That was Hamlet’s mistake, though he saw it too late. He thought his actions wouldn’t affect Ophelia and that his choices wouldn’t destroy her. Only him. He was selfish. I won’t be like my father. I won’t be like yours, either. I won’t use you for gain. That’s how much I love you. That’s how much I choose you . Forty thousand, remember? Not with their quantity of love could make up my sum , Esme. Never, ever, forget that.”
As the words fall from his lips, a spring of rosemary falls from the ceiling to the ground between us. I take a small step back and pick it up. Taking Felix’s hand in mine, I gently place it in his palm.
If he intends to see things this way, all I can hope is that one day, his view will change, and we’ll eventually be together.
“There’s rosemary,” I quote Ophelia as I stare into his eyes. My voice cracks as I bite my bottom lip and struggle to keep my tears at bay. “That’s for remembrance.” His hand clenches mine tightly, wrapping the rosemary and my palm in a protective embrace. “Pray you, love, remember.”
Felix’s eyes brim with tears.
The glass from the stained glass thunders to the ground, and the illusion shatters completely. I look up just as one of my father’s men gets past Dimitri and charges for me. Sword drawn, ready to strike a fatal blow, Felix pushes me out of the way just in time, and I fall to the ground. The sword pierces through Felix’s upper right arm. He lets out a crazed howl. Frantically crawling backward, I startle when hands grip under my shoulders and start to pull me to my feet.
Turning, a pair of lovely violet eyes meet mine. The woman helps me up with a smile.
“Verena,” Felix yells over his shoulder as he pulls his sword and quickly stabs my father’s man through his heart. “Get her to the Palace of Versailles.”
I glance to the ground at Felix’s feet, where the man he just killed is now lying, and see my father’s lifeless body just a few feet away on the altar he was intent on sacrificing me on. His face is white, his body is drained of all blood. I glance to my left, to my right, and see more of the coven have infiltrated the church. They’re feasting on the dead and killing more of my father’s men with quick fatal bites as they try to fight back.
Fear gets the better of me until Felix shouts, “Alfred will meet you there. Hurry. Get her to safety.”
My attention draws back to Felix. A loud clang of metal and the deathly slash of swords steal my next breath. I watch in awe as he effortlessly holds two of my father’s men back without breaking a sweat. Even though he says he can’t love me honorably, that doesn’t stop him from protecting me honorably.
Felix spins around to look at me one last time just as the man behind him raises his sword, victoriously smiles, and brings down the weapon intent on killing the man I love. I scream out as Verena begs me to follow her to freedom. In a flash, Felix positions himself behind the attacker and runs him through with his sword.
“If you wish to see him again, in this life and your next, I suggest we go, petite,” Verena pleads.
My next?
I don’t have time to ponder the meaning of those two suspicious words as Alfred’s name for me gets my attention. The sounds of warfare rage on behind us as I swing her way and she gives me a curt nod. One that means business. One that tells me I’m safe with her. That I can trust her. I give her a reassuring one back as she flings open the doors to Notre Dame, and we hurry out into the dark Paris streets.
Rushing down the steps of the cathedral quickly, I glance over my shoulder, and hold my breath, sending up a prayer that Felix makes it out alive. I know it may be silly to pray for those who are already damned, but where would any of us be if we didn’t have faith in the impossible? If we didn’t love the broken? Or pray for the fallen?
I start to trip and catch myself just before I fall and tumble down the last few steps. Dizzy and trying to catch my breath, I reach the bottom of the stairs and look up just as I collide with Verena’s back. I try to step around her, but her right arm darts out, and she blocks me. Confused, I glance up. My stare locks on the black eyes of one of their kind. A vampire I have never met before.
“Viktor,” Verena breathes out in shock. “Felix has it handled.”
Viktor cocks his head to the side and studies me with ill intent. A shiver rushes up my spine. I start to take a step back. A shocked gasp escapes my lips as I step right into the arms of one of the militia. I try to shrug him off, but he gives me a wicked smile, tightens his grip, and forces me a step toward Viktor.
Verena yells for them to stop, warns against their actions, and screams for Felix. She shouts something about a blessing and a curse. But before she can say anything more, she’s suddenly silenced by a hard wack to her head with a sharp rock.
My focus sharpens on Viktor. I want to scream. To yell for help. To tell him he won’t get away with whatever violent end he’s planning. But I’m stopped by a force I’ve never experienced before. Never been trained against before. A woman steps up to Viktor’s side and I immediately sense the control is coming from her.Raven black hair and emerald eyes, she stands in a jet black floor-length dress and grins wickedly.
Viktor beckons me closer with a wave of his hand, and to my misfortunate, my body moves on its own accord and submits. I whimper and struggle against the force, but it’s no use. All too soon, I find myself toe-to-toe with the man with black eyes and try my best to swallow back my fear.
“Mouthwatering,” Viktor whispers sinisterly.
“Exquisite,” he smiles enviously.
Leaning in and brushing my hair off my shoulder, he breathes me in, and I immediately feel sick. My eyes search out the woman with raven hair, but she’s gone. I try to bite back, try to tell him to stop, but my words won’t come, and all I manage is a sad whimper as he trails his hand across my shoulder, spins me around quickly, and pulls my head harshly to the right side.
“Delicious,” he groans as he sinks his teeth into my neck just as the doors to the church fly open and Felix emerges from the cathedral.
His loud roar echoes through my ears, stops my heart, and steals my breath as he takes in the fated sight. His words from moments ago haunt me as I’m quickly pulled towards death.
The way we feel for each other is a curse, passed down from my mother and my father.
My eyes start to flutter close. My head grows dizzy. My body feels numb. Drained. Empty. The back of my neck starts to burn. Felix rushes towards me just as the rest of the coven aiding him inside the church rush out of Notre Dame and follow him down the cathedral steps.
But Viktor’s militia holds him back. Felix fights with the force of forty thousand men, but somehow, they keep him from reaching me. From rescuing me. From saving me. He yells, shouts, threatens, and screams for them to stop. His desperate pleas haunt the night as the heart-shaped spot at the back of my hairline burns hotter.
Maybe Felix was right. Maybe Ophelia’s curse is also my own. I had no control over my mind or my body. Not when it came to him.
Was that the way it was for his mother?
His father?
Ophelia’s last words echo through my mind as my knees give out, my body drains completely, the back of my neck ignites, and darkness consumes me.
And will he not come again?
... No, no, he is dead;
Go to thy deathbed;
He never will come again.
... He is gone, he is gone,
And we cast away moan.
God 'a'mercy on his soul!