Immortal

“She said she’ll leave you alone. Okay?”

“Is that the truth?”

“Of course,” I say. “But, you know, I can’t speak for Iza.”

It isn’t ringing. It’s buzzing.

“Iza?” Bob repeats. “Who the hell is Iza?”

“Just a friend. She’s been hanging around.”

“Sure. Whatever,” Bob says. “You’re all insane.”

He starts backpedaling toward the copter pad in double-time, jerking Clara along with him and trying to keep us in front.

“Iza,” I call out, “the eyes please.”

Things happen very quickly after that.

Hearing the low hum of a pixie in flight, Clara suddenly drops to her knees at more or less the same time Iza impacts Bob’s left eye. As you can imagine, Bob finds this incredibly painful.

“Aaaaagh!” he declares meaningfully.

He fires his gun. I don’t think blowing Clara’s head off is actually his intention. It’s more like a reflex. And fortunately Clara’s head is no longer in line with the barrel when the gun goes off. Singes her hair a bit, but that’s all.

While he’s clapping his hand over the wounded eye, Clara makes it completely to the ground and out of my way, which is very good thinking on her part.

I raise my gun, take a shot, and miss entirely. In my defense, I would like to point out that I’m firing with the wrong hand, while lying on my side on a piece of glass, and with a dislocated shoulder, trying to hit a guy that is backlit by a small inferno that also happens to be my doing.

Bob, one eye and all, realizes I’m shooting at him and raises his own gun, so I fire again. This time I hit him in the left shoulder. He rocks sideways with the impact, and now he’s staring down at the bullet wound, which I don’t think is fatal.

But he looks too shocked to take advantage of my poor aim. He says, “But, I’m…”

“Immortal?” I ask. My words sound all mushy. “But not invincible.”

I take careful aim this time, which is easy enough to do, as Bob’s just standing there with a stupid look on his face. My vision’s getting fuzzy. Feels a little like being drunk. But I can shoot okay when I’m drunk.

I manage to put one between his eyes. This does nothing to alter his expression, but it does seem to have a remarkable effect on the rest of his body. He collapses.

That finished, I drop my own gun and sag back onto my dislocated shoulder, which just about kicks me over my pain threshold. I’m thinking death right about now wouldn’t be so bad. It’d certainly hurt less. And then I black out.

*  *  *

When I wake up again, I’m alone in the back of one of the Humvees, my legs extended along the back seat and my head cushioned by a rolled-up shirt. Checking the rest of me, I find my arm to be in a sling and my side bandaged. I wonder how long I’ve been out.

“Adam,” a voice says. This is the sound that woke me up. I heard somebody calling my name.

I look around. “Clara?”

“No, not Clara.”

It’s Eve. She’s standing just outside the truck. The top is down, making her easy enough to spot. I don’t know how I missed seeing her immediately. Just to be sure, I blink a bunch of times. Still there.

“Oh,” I say. “H’lo.” I’m fairly groggy and there is a decent chance I’m speaking to a hallucination. I go with it anyway. Sometimes hallucinations have interesting things to say.

“I handled this badly,” Eve admits. “I forget sometimes how dangerous the world is for… for other people. For you.”

“You’re not like me, are you?” I say. “I always thought you were, but you’re something else.”

“I am older. That’s all.”

“So, that whole vanishing thing you did earlier… you’re saying I’m going to figure that out eventually?”

Eve smiles. “You will perhaps need to survive a third again as long first. But, yes.” She glances over her shoulder. Is someone coming?

“You and I, we are owed a long conversation”

“I’m not going anywhere,” I say. Especially true if nobody shows up to get behind the wheel of the Humvee.

“No,” she agrees. “But now is not that time.”

“You’re the most annoying hallucination I’ve ever had, you know that?”

She grins.

“Why is now not the time?”

“Because I’m not certain I am ready to forgive you yet, Urrr.”

What?

“I don’t… I have no idea what you’re talking about.”

“I know that. One day you will remember. And then you can find me, and we will talk.”

“Something I did to you?”

Eve smiles again. She has a fantastic smile. “When you remember, then you will understand.”

She turns to go.

“Wait!” I say. She hesitates. “Okay, say I figure out what the hell you’re talking about. This is the first time I’ve spoken to you after ten millennia of trying. I don’t think I can wait that long again.”

She stares at me gravely. “This world we share is getting much too small. If you want to find me again, it will not be that difficult. Provided I want you to. And you are wrong. This isn’t the first time we’ve spoken.”

I hear the sound of footsteps in sand, up near the head of the car.

“Be well,” Eve says. Then she turns and walks out of view.

“Wait!” I call out uselessly.

“What is it, Adam?” It’s Clara talking, from the driver’s side door. “Is something wrong?”

“Eve. Stop her.”

“What?” She looks around. “There isn’t anybody else here.”

“You don’t… no, no of course there isn’t.”

“Must have been a nasty hit you took to the head,” she says.

“Yeah,” I agree. “That must be it.”

Epilogue

With a full tank of gas, a map, compass, and a bag of mushrooms for Iza, we drive out of the compound. Our destination is the nearest town, which according to the map, is a good three hours away.

We remain largely silent for the first hour of the trip, all except for Iza, who’s a louder eater than you might expect.

It turns out the reason Iza had been absent for most of the night’s proceedings, was that I had not been quite as clear in my instructions as I’d thought. What I had told her to do after unlocking the doors was to fly off and locate the nearest idle car, then find Clara and bring her to it, and finally to find me and Eve and lead us to Clara. Thus, as soon as I was done I’d head in the proper direction, rather than stumble about a very large area with a killer vampire and possibly a very angry armed security force to worry about. The problem was that Iza didn’t know what a car was, or where to locate one.

You’d think a pixie that lived in Boston at one time would be fully aware of the concept of an automobile.