Chapter 56: Chapter 56

He had filled his suitcase in thirty seconds. It didn’t take me more than ten minutes to do mine. No sooner had I finished than he took me by the hand and led me outside the castle. Mortain was still asleep as we walked past the ruined outbuildings and reached a clearing at the back of the castle. In the centre sat a helicopter already in motion, its black fuselage further emphasising the brilliant splendour of the machine. Normally, I would certainly have reacted to the idea of running away without telling anyone and especially in a helicopter, but I followed Carmichael without batting an eyelid and let him settle me inside and stick huge headphones on my ears. I watched his every move as he lifted us off. A weird feeling churned my stomach as I ascended in the craft, but the emptiness no longer frightened me. My eyes never left Carmichael, his face hardening with concentration. For a time that I could hardly define, we advanced in the heavens without exchanging a word, and the magnificent spectacle offered by the landscape tore a tiny smile from me. In the distance, the mountains were rising, shrouded in the morning mist, the greenery around seemed strangely vivid in the west, but my attention was still on the master of the castes. The sun irradiated his tanned skin. Dressed in a simple black jacket over a white t-shirt and jeans, his look was no less captivating. He glanced in my direction, an amused smile on the edge of his lips, and cast his eyes away. There was a certain grace in his gestures and I was still watching him when we landed on top of a hill far from everything.

Feet on the ground, Carmichael took my hand and, leaving the suitcases in the helicopter, he led me down the hillside through the woods. The grass was still damp, but it was mild at the end of summer. It took us a few minutes to see the chalet at the end of the trail. Nestled among the trees and facing a gigantic meadow, the chalet looked more like a large cabin. On one level, it sat enthroned in front of a breathtaking horizon. Fir trees as far as the eye could see and the distant highland mountains stretched before my eyes dazzled by so much beauty. A large terrace had been set up in order to admire the view at leisure. Carmichael tightened his hand and pulled me inside the chalet, a large room with an equipped kitchen open to a living room and in the middle a magnificent central fireplace. Carmichael let go of my hand and I gasped when I realised what he was doing. A few seconds later, he was near a cupboard with the suitcases behind him. He must have gone to retrieve them from the chopper at the speed of light. I watched him not really understanding why I needed to stare at him like that. I went out and sat down on the bench on the terrace. Looking away, I reflected on my lethargic emotions because, since my return, the impression of no longer feeling, of simply no longer being, grew stronger every minute.

Two more days passed without Carmichael prompting me to have a conversation. I remained seated on my bench or went for a long walk in the woods. He didn’t accompany me and left me alone little by little to regain my senses and perhaps reason. I caressed the wood, the leaves, dipped my fingers in the water of the surrounding streams. No road led to the chalet and I understood better why we had arrived there by air. It was to wonder how the building had been built. The first night, I started cooking and thought back to when I cooked Sam’s meals. There was no nostalgia, just a sense of deja vu. I continued on the second day. Carmichael allowed himself to be pampered with good humour and managed the situation perfectly. Not very talkative, I didn’t fail to observe him throw glances at his cell phone from time to time to get news of the castle and caste affairs.

“Any interesting news?” I say after a long day of silence.

“Nothing more interesting than your presence here,” he replied.

“I must, however, seem boring to you… thank you.”

“Thanks?!”

“For bringing me here, I needed a change of scenery, I think.”

“Above all, you need to understand who you are now,” he affirmed, putting his hands on the table, “but that won’t happen right away.”

“How long did it take you?”

“Months, years, what do I know…”

“I’m not going to age at all, then?”

“Nope. I only attained the appearance of a man of twenty-five after two centuries, then I died, and since then, I believe that I haven’t changed.”

“You mean you’ve stayed the same since your first death?” I asked, startled.

“Yes, Prisca, my father and Blake too. Of the immortals I know or knew, only Egeria showed signs of old age.”

“You surprise me!”

He smiles. I had long since realised that Carmichael had never thought of Egeria as his great aunt.

“Throughout her life, she never died. But if you think about it, killing yourself just to prove that you’re going to come back isn’t a trivial gesture.”

“So I’m going to stay indefinitely with my current body? I look like I’m barely eighteen!”

“That’s perfect!” laughed Carmichael. “Look on the bright side, you’re going to keep your magnificent lower back until the dusk of time.”

If we looked at things his way, then yes, it could have been worse. I also could not have come back! Only, knowing that I was going to live forever made me feel like a big chasm was in front of me and it scared the hell out of me.

“What have you done since your own death?” I asked, eager to know more.

“I saw the world, met many of our kind and took advantage of the situation to excess.”

“Are you talking about women?”

“Among others,” he said, biting his lip.

His presence was beginning to show its effects. His gift of attraction, although restrained, enveloped me in its warmth. Facing his laughing eyes, I didn’t look away. He got up to put some things away and passed me again, but this time at normal speed. I hold him by the hand. I didn’t want him to leave me now. Surprised by this show of affection, he looked at me strangely. The exchange lasted a long silence while my hand warmed in his. The fire spread through my arms and then my shoulders until it reached my spine. I closed my eyes to welcome this delight that had been foreign to me for ages and felt Carmichael’s breath draw closer. There, facing him, I approached and felt his muscles vibrate under my fingers. I took off his jacket and he took off his T-shirt, his skin quivering under my fingers before they joined his imposing chest. In the immensity of his muscles, I wanted to discover each patch of skin under my fingers, then went back gradually to the face and touched his lips. The heat grew more intense as Carmichael began to let his power of attraction show. I felt it in my flesh and life reignited in me. He took off my vest and ran the backs of his hands over my arms. His breathing was more jerky when he approached my lips again.

“Did these women make you happy?”

“Previously, I thought so.”

“Before we met?”

“Indeed.”

“However, I remember that the last time that we found ourselves in this situation, you had retreated!”

“Another Eve, another era.”

He let out a smirk that made a dimple on the corner of his lips. I lost myself in his eyes again. His left hand rose and came to caress my neck.

“I would have thought that you might let go of your power,” I say again.

“Are you talking about our common gift?”

He bit his lip smiling. I burst out laughing. He had the nerve to challenge me.

“If you do, I do.”

“You first.” he retorted.

Failing agreement, we ended up lying on the couch and then falling asleep in each other’s arms. The following days passed in this finely maintained atmosphere. We weren’t kissing. I touched him, he touched me, but neither of us gave in. Sometimes I looked at him in the night and realised how sublime this man was. On the bench, facing the horizon, we stayed for hours side by side. I refused to think, to reflect, only the presence of Carmichael mattered to me now, I saw myself relive through him. When evening came, he decided it was his turn to prepare the meal and served us outside on the terrace. Unpretentious, his meal and the context were all I needed.

“What changed?” I asked, cutting off any other possible conversation.

“You have changed,” replied Carmichael.

“You too, you don’t look at me like before.”

“You have indeed changed a lot in my eyes,” he said.

“In what way?”

“You will live forever. It changes everything.”

“Because you know now that I’m like you.”

“Because I know that unless I’m very reckless, I won’t lose you.”

We finished dinner with those words. He got up and cleared the table, leaving me alone facing the mountainous expanses of Cairngorms; I lost myself in contemplation. Carmichael came to join me and lay down on a deckchair beside me. The silence made the tension even more present after the words spoken at dinner. I pondered the meaning of his words and thought back to the night in the chapel where he had pushed me away. At the time, I had become super pissed because he had used his powers to test their effectiveness and then rejected me. It hadn’t occurred to me that he hadn’t gone any further because he knew there would be no future between us. I thought he wanted to piss me off and make fun of me. What had he wanted to tell me tonight? That now I was cured of death, he could envision a future with me?

Lying on his deckchair, he took off his t-shirt to welcome the last rays of sun on his skin. I got up and went back to the chalet to take a shower. My thoughts clashed. Since our arrival here, my relationship with Carmichael had revealed itself in a new light. I refused to think back to before, only the future aroused my curiosity. Beneath the warmth of the water, Carmichael captured all my thoughts. I blushed and got out of the shower.

Carmichael walked into the chalet and froze when he saw me standing there naked and dripping with water beside the bathroom door. I held his gaze and let go. My released pheromones diffused through every pore of my skin. I was ready to give myself to this man, and he understood my intentions perfectly because a wide carnivorous smile appeared on his lips. He stood staring at me for a moment, shirtless, his muscles contracting on his chest, then he let go and the heat that emanated from him felt like a slap in the face. It radiated my muscles. My breath stopped, the hairs on my arms stood on end, a wisp of heat went up my spine, and then the lava reached my lower abdomen, my cheeks, my brains, my chest… I tried to take a slower breath. This time, Carmichael was looking at me eagerly. He was smiling. He wanted me to come to him first, he was satisfied. I smiled back, biting my lip. A second later, he was against me. My heart skipped a beat as his chest slammed into me. My mouth went to kiss his throat. The contact with his skin electrified my lips and made me dizzy. I looked up at him. His hands rested against my hips and moved up to my chest. My fingers wandered over his back before slowly coming to his stomach and the buttons of his jeans. I challenged each of them and pulled down his pants. I still hadn’t taken my eyes off him. He was breathing quickly, a bead of sweat collecting on his forehead. He was still smiling as he reached his hands under my ass and slammed me against the wall in a whirlwind of speed. Legs straddling his waist, I gasped. His emerald gaze and warm breath caressed my face. Each part of his body glued to mine made me feel both painful and euphoric, skyrocketing towards the brain. My cheeks were charring, my chest was burning, and my lungs were desperately gasping for air. Carmichael stopped smiling and welcomed the heat within him. He took a deep breath and his lips finally met mine. He kissed me with rage, envy and a desire that I had underestimated. With one hand he held me, with the other he grabbed my hair and pressed me closer to his fevered mouth. He stepped back after a few minutes when I had lost consciousness of everything. My sweaty skin was crying out for his touch and it was a pain to peel my lips from his. Carmichael locked eyes with mine and my heightened senses caused tremors in my legs as my lover continued his efforts, the jade in his eyes seeming to suffer from impatience. His dreadlocks tied back, I grabbed strands of them and gripped them as my lower stomach sought him out more. He had to raise his head and my mouth went to find his throat again. My blood was only cleansed when he carried me and positioned me across the divan. He resumed his ascent over my body, the air disappeared from my lungs, my heart raced, and my body was consumed.

We had continued all night to finally fall asleep, exhausted, in the early morning. I had smiled until exhaustion. The next day, the sun flooded our still naked bodies with its warm rays and woke me up through the red veil of my eyelids. Carmichael stirred too and put an arm on my thigh. I looked down at his smooth, tanned face and ran my fingers down his throat.

“Did you have a good night, Master Hand?”

He smiled, his eyes still sleepy. I burst out laughing.

“I won’t tell you about my night, because I would risk making you blush.”

“Nothing the Master Hand says will upset me,” I say before marking a new silence. “I already know everything, My Lord…”

I slowly let those words trail in his ear. His hand moved up my thigh, then with a sure and quick gesture, he grabbed my neck. Gently, he took a lock of hair in his fingers and pulled my ear to his mouth.

“Last night, I made love so deeply, so intensely that my member still remembers it.”

I let out a breath. He had managed to make me blush, and smile too. I got up intending to take a shower but he held me back. He barely gave me time to brush my teeth and put on a nightgown! Barefoot and flanked by white linen trousers, he appeared to me in the midday sun like a wonder of the world.

“Come!”

I complied, so he put an arm under my knees, the other under my neck. He picked me up and I kept my eyes open. At this speed, the trees were mingling, the wind was whipping my skin, and I was literally floating in his arms. My smile at that moment surprised me because it meant that I felt good. Carmichael dropped me off in the shade of a large oak tree in the middle of the woods. A waterfall came to join the river in a surge of water that splashed my nightie already stuck to my skin. Carmichael’s pants were getting the same treatment as he looked up at the waterfall.

“Follow me.”

He set off in the direction of the rocky wall to the left of the waterfall and climbed in less time than it takes to say. He stopped halfway and stood on what appeared to be a flat spot. I hadn’t used my powers in a while and yet it was only natural that I was hovering over to where Carmichael was. Once I arrived on the small flat surface, I discovered that he had disappeared. I walked towards the waterfall along the wet rock and crossed the wall of water while holding my breath. A cavity was dug deep within the falls, its rock walls providing shelter behind the crashing wall of water. The air was cool and a shiver ran down my spine as I walked through the darkness of this strange refuge. I stretched out my hand towards discontinuous streams of water. Behind me, Carmichael approached slowly. His fingers passed over my shoulders and went to reach my suffocating chest. His warm breath caressed my neck. He made me kneel down and put his hand on the back of my neck. He tilted my head, my hair fell forward. My hands rested on the damp, soft ground thanks to a fine moss formed on the rock. My scarlet cheeks burned my face. My breath was scarce, his fingers brushed my mouth. He squeezed a shoulder, kissed my back, and rode me like his life depended on it.

The days passed and looked alike… or not! Carmichael always had an unexplored place he wanted me to discover, and we made love tirelessly from morning to night and night to morning. Time had stopped in the mountains. I executed Carmichael’s deepest desires and thereby discovered a casualness that surprised me. Could death have transformed me? Sometimes I thought so.

There, under a century-old tree and glued to Carmichael’s chest, my thoughts turned to a hypothetical return to normal life. It was the first time I had thought of it since our arrival.

“What will happen once in Mortain?”

“I have my idea,” said Carmichael, his eternal grin on his lips.

“And what is it? I add, impatient. “You never really said where you intended me in all this.”

“I named you second in command, in case you forgot!”

His skin smelled of orange blossom. I inhaled the exquisite scent and got up astride his waist to make sure he didn’t slip away.

“So you have said! I’m only good at recruiting a few castes, and little else!”

“You forgot the general! He remembers you and will remember it forever.”

“I scared the hell out of him, that’s all!”

“And in your opinion, the so-called caste queen, Althea, do you think she remembers any other than you among all those present in the Pomona room?”

“Well, I really want her to forget me!”

“Nevertheless, she immediately sensed the ascendancy you had over the rest of the castes. You scared her.”

“Nonsense!” I retorted automatically.

“So explain to me why all our people bowed down to you when you returned?”

“I can’t explain it.”

His smile said a lot about his intentions. He wanted to convince me of my supposed superiority, but I wasn’t ready to listen to him. He changed the subject by running his hands over my ass. Despite appearances, I felt that what he had to tell me was close to his heart.

“When we get back,” he said, “will you resume your life as before?”

“I don’t see how that’s possible. I’m not like I used to be.”

“You could live with me…”

That last sentence left me speechless. I had no idea that Carmichael saw our future so precisely, and my confused reaction seemed to hurt him.

“It’s not an obligation,” he said, a little bitter.

“I don’t feel obligated!”

He hadn’t found his usual relaxation and I could clearly feel what it cost him to invite me to live with him. I didn’t imagine him having already tried this approach towards another woman and, somehow, I felt flattered by this intention. Deep down, I hadn’t prepared an answer; also, my reaction or rather my absence of reaction had struck him. At the same time, was I ready enough to think about this proposal? And if indeed I continued to live in Mortain, which was certain given that I refused to leave this place as I felt at home there, would I manage to live without Carmichael after what had just happened between us?

Head nestled against the crook of his shoulder, I began to weigh the pros and cons and decided to put my thoughts in order.

Ultimately, Carmichael was the only one like me. It wasn’t because I had recently died that I appreciated his presence more, it was because, quite simply, I felt free with this man. This link that united us was the most unique, the most original, the most palpable (at least for us) of the links that I had ever known. I wanted him body and soul whereas, earlier, his whole being repelled me. Had I definitely gone mad when I died?

Did I really have to think about all this now?!

Carmichael looked at me with incomprehension.

“There’s no way that I’ll live in the old chapel!” I blurted.

He burst into a laugh that was unknown to me until then. The crystal clear sound that emanated from his throat touched me deeply as I saw the relief in his eyes.

“I was talking more about my apartments.”

I watched him for a moment in silence. His dreadlocks released, they extended around his head and some ended in a cascade on his chest. I grabbed one with my fingertips, brought it to my mouth, and then, bringing my lips to his face, I kissed him. My eyes fixed on his, I reared up to welcome him.

That same evening, when Carmichael had prepared a magnificent Nicoise salad and as the day was ending, my host decided to turn on his cell phone. He hadn’t done it for days, I could attest to that, and for a Master Hand, that was no act of responsibility. But Carmichael saw me as his priority and decided to put this status aside for Salomon’s benefit. It was he who left the message that turned my idyllic highland adventure upside down.

“Mohamed Belhak, Elvis’ best friend, the one who came to the ball, he swore he spoke with Gregory in his city.”

Carmichael had blurted out those words after slamming his phone down on the hall console. A silence followed this movement of anger during which I didn’t know what to think or express.

“So what?” I found myself saying.

“So what?! Terrified, Johnny and Elvis took the road to London last night.”

“I doubt that Gregory is in London, Mohamed must have been wrong.”

“If I remember correctly, Mohamed has already seen Gregory when he wanted to kidnap you, right? So why would he be wrong?”

Indeed, it was precisely thanks to the intervention of Elvis and Mohamed that I got out of that mess. Suddenly, as if I had just realized what Carmichael was telling me, Gregory’s face imprinted itself in my brain. The muscles in my arms tensed, my tears clouded my eyes and my fists clenched. I was already shaking my head when Carmichael decided to grab my arms.

“We’re going to kill him, you and me.”

His emerald green eyes could have turned into a torch as I felt he was drunk with anger.

“You know, then?”

Why had I said such a thing? Why start this conversation with him now?! Furious at myself for having continued on the Gregory subject, I knew that I had to talk about it, and let the venom flow out.

“I know,” replied Carmichael.

“He did it on your father’s orders.”

“I know that too.”

Everything was said. Half an hour later, we took off. We had to stop to refuel, but a few hours later we were already above Brixton. He wasn’t allowed to fly at night and so close to houses, but Carmichael didn’t care and even went so far as to land on the roof of one of the buildings. Once the engine was off, he showed me for the first time his telekinetic powers by jumping from the top of the building and breaking his fall as I did seconds later. Carmichael distilled all the powers to varying degrees, but I had noticed before that he only revealed them when the situation called for it. I found that honourable and very clever. After this jump of an angel, it seemed odd to me to land in front of the tower of Elvis and Johnny as if we had just parked on the corner. Returning to Brixton reminded me of the year of my caste awakening and Olivia… Fortunately, my sad thoughts dissipated when I discovered Elvis, Mohamed, Seb Bassot, Johnny and a few others squatting on the porch of the building.

“Damn, Eve, where were you?!” exclaimed Johnny.

“Let’s say I was in refuge mode if you know what I mean.”

I glared at the boys I didn’t know and Johnny swallowed his tongue.

“The refuge mode suits you well, Burberry!” said Elvis, happy to see me and perfectly aware of my resurrection. “Good evening Carmichael, this is Seb, Bakary and Faycal.”

Carmichael nodded to them. Some banged a fist on their chest in response. Elvis’ tone clearly called on the others to respect the Master Hand and they all got the message, even if each of them was wondering who this tall, dreadlocked black man could be. Not a local guy, that was for sure. They cast a questioning glance at Elvis, which he swept away. He now knew all about the castes. Finding out about it had upset a lot of his certainties, but he knew perfectly well that it was better to have them on his side. After a quick silence, Carmichael then turned to Mohamed Belhak.

“It seems that you saw someone we’re looking for?”

Mohamed was surprised by Carmichael's deep and unique voice. Seeing that he was reluctant to give the info and knowing of Carmichael’s limited patience, I approached him and urged him to speak. After all, I had known him since high school and Johnny had once hinted to me that at one time Mohamed had his sights set on me.

“He said he would come back when you were here.”