His long, graceful fingers were soaked in her blood. She knew that she should be in agony from what he was doing to her, but all she felt was a seething hatred that occluded all physical sensations. He was bleeding as well—crimson drops flowed down his cheeks like tears. She'd hurt him pretty badly before he'd finally overpowered her and forced her to the ground, ripping her shirt open. Now she lay on the soft, fragrant earth, too weak to do anything but curse when he put his hands on her.
He looked up at her from time to time and a lock of black hair fell into his endlessly dark eyes as they gleamed in the sunlight. She thought then how strange it was for a boy with such features to be in sunlight at all; he was a breathing shadow.
Finally he sat up and wiped her blood off his hands. He covered her with his own shirt and held it closed. It was then that she realized that she'd been shivering. "I've never done anything like this before," he said. "Does it hurt badly?"
She looked down at the crude stitches he’d made in the wound on the side of her stomach and then she looked up at the boy who had just saved her life. When she stared in his eyes, she saw a flicker there that mirrored something that she had always seen in herself.
Ravaged.
Her hatred of him ebbed slightly, in spite of herself. "I...told you to let me die," was all she could think to say.
Lara opened her eyes and gasped. She was sitting up straight on her bed, wearing her blue silk nightgown. Her bedroom was bathed in darkness.
Slowly she looked around and discovered that her neck ached. She felt dazed, as if she were merely observing herself through a thick pane of glass. She lifted her hand languidly and stared at it as if it belonged to a stranger. The long, thin fingers were not familiar to her and the creases in the skin seemed to be etching deeper and deeper before her very eyes. Peculiar thing, really, this stranger's hand that was supposed to be her own.
"Lara," she heard a voice whisper and was immediately shocked out of her reverie. She bolted off of her bed and stood in the middle of her room, feeling utterly exposed.
Then, as if he coalesced from the darkness itself, someone appeared. The soft moonlight shone on the figure of a beautiful young man, one perhaps a few years older than her, dressed all in black. Lara recognized him as the image she had seen in the mirrors in her old home and in the bathroom mirror here. His facial features were delicate and he seemed luminescent as he smiled faintly at Lara from the corner of the room. His lips were a shade of pale pink that reminded her of the softness of a rose petal. She would have liked to gaze at his lips longer, but she quickly became mesmerized by his dark eyes.
Fathomless, those eyes, she thought.
Fall into those eyes, fall into his eyes. Fall into him...
"Lara," the man said again, and she realized that she had once again fallen into a trance. How was it that he had this kind of power over her? His voice was as nearly intoxicating as his eyes. When he spoke her name, Lara felt shivers flow down her spine. "God, you are exactly as I remember you. I have been waiting for this moment for so long and I still don’t know what to expect. Will you scream or will you faint? Will you become hysterical and run or will you try to attack me? There is fate, but there is also free will. So how should I begin?”
The man’s smile broadened. He had been leaning casually against the wall, but suddenly he disappeared. He melted into the darkness. Lara gasped. "I'm going mad," she said aloud. "Completely mad."
A moment later the man reappeared close to Lara, mere inches away. She backed against the wall and he followed her. "Do you remember the car crash, Lara?" he asked, cocking his head to one side. His black hair seemed almost silver in the moonlight. "Of course you do. You remember every fraction of every second. It is one of those moments that are branded into your mind so that every time you close your eyes, you see it. This is also one of those moments. So what would you have me say, Lara?"
"This isn't real," she whispered calmly, as if she were speaking to herself. "Say what you want to say." She lifted her eyes and stared at the man coldly. "Prove to me that I'm crazy. Speak again."
He was so close now; his eyes were all that Lara could see. He raised his hand slowly and examined it in the same manner Lara had done with her own hand before. Then he looked back at Lara and for a scant second he seemed to be going through some sort of struggle. She thought she heard him whisper something unintelligible, and then the man hit her with the back of his hand across her face. Lara was knocked to the floor on her side, too shocked to cry out in pain.
"Did that feel like a hallucination, Lara?" the man asked harshly from above her. "I am real, angel. Would you like me to prove it again?"
Humiliated, Lara forced away tears that were forming and focused on the metallic taste of blood in her mouth. That, at least, was something tangible to hold on to in the midst of this insanity. Finally she looked up at the man and they scowled at each other. She hated him then with a depth that amazed her. She’d never thought that she could feel a single emotion this acutely, but it was somehow familiar.
Suddenly the man sat down next to Lara on the floor. Even while she glared at him, he reached out and gently touched the cheek he’d hit. His hand was cold, but palpable. Lara saw that his eyes were glistening as if he were about to cry. If she concentrated her gaze on him, Lara could see that his body was translucent.
"You're always so beautiful, Lara," he whispered. "I know that I hurt you, but no more than you hurt me. I love you, Lara, and I hate you. I curse you. Either way, I can't exist without you. And I won't."
The man was staring into Lara's eyes as he spoke softly and she could feel her anger dissolving into awe. He seemed to spark something deep inside her that had died in the car crash along with her mother and father.
"How do you know me?” she asked in a whisper. Her voice didn’t seem to be under her control. “I don’t understand.”
“There will be time for that, angel. ‘…Time yet for a hundred indecisions, and for a hundred visions and revisions…’”
Lara thought she recognized his words from a poem she’d once read, but couldn’t quite place it then. She tried to regroup. “I saw you before, in my parents’ house and in the bathroom mirror here.”
“Yes.”
“You were watching me here in this room last night, but you wouldn’t show yourself.”
“I wanted to, but I didn’t think that you were ready.”
Something told her that he was lying. She shook her head. “You just wanted to mess with my head.”
The man gave her a wicked smile that chilled her to the core. “You still know me too well, Lara.”
“I don’t know you at all!” she cried in a whisper.
His cool fingers were still grazing her cheek, making her feel strangely weak. “But you do. I’m still inside you, still part of your soul.”
“I’ve had enough of this,” Lara snapped in disgust. She tried to stand up, to go back to her bed, but the man clasped her hand and pulled her down again.
“No,” he gasped. “Don’t go.”
“Why not?”
His voice changed, became a seductive purr. “Because you don’t want to. You’re curious, angel. You want to know what I am, why I’m here. You can’t help but wonder.”
“You’re not giving me any answers.”
“Just tell me what you want,” he whispered.
The man already knew what she wanted—he’d already said it—but he wanted to hear Lara say the words. “I want to know what you are,” she said.
Something in the man’s face softened. “I'm a ghost, Lara, a spirit. A shadow of the being I once was."
"But I can feel you."
"I know.”
“Do you have a name?”
His eyes widened slightly. “Kabran.”
“Why are you haunting me?”
The ghost—Kabran—only smiled. But when she looked into his eyes, she could feel that he was in pain. It was an anguish she recognized and she realized that they were kindred in their agony. She remembered how she’d crouched on this very floor the night before, more alone than she had ever been in her life. He knows, he understands, he's the only one, Lara thought irrationally.
She felt a panic seize her. "Look, I don't give a damn what you are. Please, just leave me alone."
"I can't, Lara," he replied, his sweet voice breaking with emotion. Despair was like electricity surrounding him, holding Lara's eyes to his. It seemed she could feel energy flowing from his cool fingers as surely as she could feel the whisper of air around them. "I need you..."
"What are you talking about?" she asked in exasperation. "What do you want from me?"
Kabran’s hand moved from Lara's cheek and tipped her chin up to him. When his cold lips touched hers, she shuddered and felt as if she were falling. Her thoughts disappeared along with the world around them. She knew that there was something…something crucial that she was forgetting, but in that moment, she didn’t care. She didn’t want to think or remember or be. She only wanted this blissful void.
Then he pulled away slightly and his lips brushed Lara's lips as he spoke. "I love you, Lara. I love you always, I love you madly." He leaned up and kissed Lara's closed eyes.
"No..." she whispered.
Loss was a physical ache when Lara felt him backing away and she was shocked when she finally opened her eyes. He was radically different: his face had a stone cold expression; all of the emotion she had seen in him was gone. He was completely closed off. "And now, Lara," he said harshly, "it begins."
He pulled back his clenched fist once more.
There was no pain this time; she was already cast under another sort of spell. When she fell to the ground, it was like peacefully falling asleep.
Slowly Lara became aware of her body. She was lying on her side on the cool, hardwood floor, just where she had fallen when the ghost had hit her. A warm breeze flowed through the open window over her head. She tasted blood in her mouth. The world was red: bright light shining on her closed eyelids.
Lara opened her eyes and glanced at the clock. It was late, around 1:00 PM. She must have been unconscious for hours—unconscious or still under that damn ghost's spell. God, how strange to be thinking about him like this, as if he were real. But there was no denying that he was. The ache in her head and the stinging tenderness of her cheek was evidence enough. She sat up quickly and a wave of dizziness washed over her so that it was a moment before she could stand.
Touching her fingers to her face, Lara winced. It was sorer than she’d first thought. Closing her eyes, she walked forward until her hands touched the dresser. She was afraid to see herself in the mirror, but she finally forced herself to look.
She gasped at the dark purple bruise that covered her left cheek, making it difficult to keep that eye open. It looked ghastly, and yet she found herself fascinated by it. Lara pressed her fingers against the wound again, testing it. The pain was bad enough to make her clench her teeth, but she kept touching it, walking her fingers over the entire area.
There was a knock at the door and Lara whipped around, but it opened before she could reply. "Good morning, Sunshi- " Marc began.
She quickly hid her face with her hand. "Wait!" she shouted. "Don't come in!"
"God, I'm sorry," Marc said as he stepped back and shut the door. "Paige sent me to wake you up," he told her from the hallway.
Lara was panicked; she didn't know how she could hide the bruise. She didn't own any makeup. Her friends back in Virginia were always trying to make her over, but she hated the feeling of being covered in all that glop.
“It’s okay,” she called back. “I’m just getting dressed.”
Marc said something in response, but Lara could spare him no attention. She paced back and forth, quietly cursing. "Damn you, Kabran," she hissed. "Damn it, damn it, damn it! I've got to think of something."
"Lara, are you okay?" she heard Marc ask.
"Huh? Oh, yeah," she called back, trying to cover the nervous edge in her voice. Think! her mind screamed. You've got to get rid of him and get to the bathroom. Maybe there will be something in there...
"Um, Marc, could you ask Paige if she’s seen my purple tank top?" she asked anxiously.
"Yeah, sure," he replied after a hesitation. He sounded unsure about going, as if he knew she was making an excuse for him to leave. But it didn't matter; he was going. Lara listened to his footsteps until they were descending the stairs.
She opened the door quietly and walked to the bathroom. Just before she reached the door, she felt a hand on her shoulder.
"Lara," she heard a silky voice whisper in her ear. Her stomach dropped. "How did you sleep, angel?”
She turned around to face the ghost. It was unnerving to see him in this much light. His form was more translucent than it had been last night, but she could still see him clearly. He was real, but he was unnaturally beautiful.
“I wasn’t asleep,” she spat. “I was unconscious, thanks to your handiwork.”
Kabran admired her bruise and smiled. He reached up to touch her wounded cheek and backed Lara up against the bathroom door. “The color suits you. Don’t you like it?”
“No,” she replied through clenched teeth. “You hit me, you bastard.”
“You wanted me to.”
“Screw you! I don’t have time for this. I have to cover this up before someone sees it.”
"In that case, you might want to try looking under the sink in your aunt's bathroom. But angel, I don't think that will work; her skin is much darker than yours. She and your mother may look alike, but your mother had such a pale complexion, just as you do. Don't you remember how dark the blood seemed on her white skin?"
Lara’s vision went red with rage. She remembered how his hand had felt firm on her shoulder a moment ago and she only hoped that his body was just as solid. Charging forward, she shoved him as hard as she could.
He laughed as he stumbled back and then disappeared when he should have hit the wall. "
“Bastard!" she whispered again.
She heard a creek and turned to see Marc standing at the top of the stairs at the end of the hallway. His eyes were wide and he was breathing too hard as he stared at her for a long beat.
“What the hell was that?” he gasped.
Lara wrinkled her brow at him and shook her head. She didn’t trust her voice just then.
Marc came towards her. “Didn’t you see—” He broke off as he gently pushed her hair back from her face. "What happened to you?”
The rage was still coursing through her veins, hot and volatile. She wanted to hurt him, shove him as she had done to Kabran. In that moment, Lara wanted to kill him. "Don't touch me," she said heatedly. Don't, don't, don't... Her nails were cutting into her palms.
But he did touch her. He touched her face, her swollen cheek, and as angry as Lara was, she didn't stop him. Marc looked into her eyes. "Hey, Lara," he said softly. "It's okay. I won't hurt you." Warmth seemed to flow from his hand, from his eyes.
"I'm sorry," she whispered. "I think I'm going crazy."
Marc took her in his arms and held her hard. She thought again of what she had imagined when he had shaken her hand when they first met, of being held so tightly in those strong arms that for once she would be able to...breathe, Lara. Breathe.
Part 3
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