Chapter 11 Mausoleum of dead lovers
Malach
You can't leave, but you won't stay.
You're in the in-between place now, Eva. That liminal space where truth and lies blur together, where the moon is a god, and the monster is a king.
I gave you the book. I gave you the truth, wrapped in the language of the people who stole it from you. I know you're reading it. I can feel you turning the pages, a faint hum in the back of my mind like a prayer.
But you're fighting it. Of course, you're fighting it. You've been fighting me since the beginning of time.
I stand in the doorway of the cell, watching you sleep. You're curled on your side, the book clutched to your chest like a shield. The clean black shirt has ridden up, exposing a sliver of pale skin and the delicate curve of your hip.
My torc is on the floor beside the cot. You took it off. A small act of rebellion.
It won't last.
My wolf is restless, pacing behind my eyes. He wants to be in there with you, to claim what is ours. He wants to lick the wounds I gave you and then make new ones. He's impatient.
I can't blame him, but this time I will approach differently. If the last times taught me anything, it's that I can't just take, no matter how much I want to.
This time you’ll crawl to me, Eva. You’ll beg for it, and I’ll let you. Because I never had to kick down your door, baby. You walked right into my cage all on your own.
I walk away from the cell, leaving the door open. Freedom is the best cage.
Upstairs, the whole pack did their business with an urgency that told me they knew I was preoccupied. They cleaned, they polished the bar, they restocked the moonshine jars. They avoided my gaze.
Jed met me by the fire pit, a steaming mug of coffee in his hand. "She's still here," he said. It wasn't a question.
"She's not going anywhere," I answered, taking the mug and draining half of it in one gulp.
He watched me, his expression unreadable. "The pack is restless, Malach. The full Moon run is tradition, and you just... delayed it." He chose his next words carefully. "They need to run. We need to run. All of us."
"I'll take them out tomorrow night," I said, my tone leaving no room for argument. "One night won't kill them."
Jed nodded slowly, but there was a worry in his eyes that I didn't like. He'd been with me for over a century, longer than most. He'd seen what happened when I got… focused.
He'd seen the last one, Eva from '78, her face a mask of defiance as she shot a silver bullet into my heart in a hotel room in East Berlin. He’d dragged my corpse back to The Hollow, which was a nightclub back then, and waited for me to wake up. He knew this was different. He could feel it.
"Just… be careful," he said, the words a strange intimacy between men who spoke in violence and silence.
"She is different," I said, and the words came out rougher than I intended. "This is the last one, Jed. The end of the line."
He just nodded, because what could he say to that? He turned and walked away, leaving me alone with the fire and the moon. I spent the rest of the night in my study, a room I never let anyone enter. It was a library, but it wasn't for reading. It was a mausoleum.
Against one wall was a series of glass display cases. Inside were… memories.
A lock of silver-blonde hair, tied with a black ribbon, from Alexandria, 48 BC. She was a scribe then, with fingers stained with papyrus ink and eyes that saw through every lie I told. She poisoned my wine. I woke up three days later, the taste of bitter almonds still in my throat.
A silver crucifix, tarnished and bent, from London, 1666. She was a physician's daughter, all righteous fury and quiet strength, who saw the beast in me and tried to burn it out. She set my house on fire while I slept.
A silk glove, yellowed with age, from Paris, 1925. A jazz singer with a laugh like shattered glass and a mind like a razor. She slit my throat with a broken bottle in a smoky underground club. I bled out in an alley while she disappeared into the night.
And then, the most recent. A Polaroid, faded and creased. Berlin, 1978. Her hair cut short, a defiant smirk on her face, wearing my leather jacket. She took the picture herself, right before she raised the pistol.
I ran my fingers over the glass, tracing the curve of her smile in the photo. So defiant. So sure. So dead.
In every lifetime, she found me. In every lifetime, she loved me. I could feel it in the way she looked at me, in the way her body responded to my touch, even as she fought to deny it.
And in every lifetime, she killed me. A soul-deep instinct to sever the bond before it could complete, a ghost of the Goddess’s final command: MINE.
Each time I woke up, she was dead. Reborn somewhere else, a blank slate, waiting for me to find her again. Each death was a fresh wound, a new scar on my soul. I was tired of scars.
This one, Eva… she was more stubborn than all the others combined. The fire in her was brighter, the defiance sharper. The fear was there, too, the ancient terror of the moon and the wolf, but it was buried under so much grit and sarcasm.
I wanted to bury myself in it.
I left the mausoleum of my dead lovers and went back downstairs.