California

2000

--

The raindrops had been collecting outside on the window sill, a fine
spray dusting the open window of the bathroom. He had unconsciously
been counting them until their rhythm had sped up to make their number
a blur. But that was the English weather for you. One minute, the sun
was casting down its brilliance into the bath, and the next, the sky
was awash with England's sweet, silky tears.

Oh, but the nights were the loveliest. The sky would glow in the
summertime, a surreal orange-rouge hue. No black in sight, yet it was
so dark. Someone had shaded the sky with a darkened pulpy powder, made
it more beautiful than the imagination could, or should, have.

The room was familiar, though it did not belong to Lewis. It was simply
the same hotel he had always stayed in while in London. They knew him
quite intimately from so many years of patronage, and it almost felt
like a third or fourth home to him. How many homes had he had in his
life? There was New York of course, and then Essex, and then London
with Ares' family, and then California, where Valentine would spend his
earliest years with just dad and mum. They had been raising their son
in recluse, so afraid of anyone ever hurting the baby. They had been
meticulously paranoid and protective.

He had been dipping into the old classics again that he had read as a
child.

He must have filled that monster's body full of silver, until the
weapon was empty. 7? 8 bullets? The man was dead, his very face riddled
with punctures and blood, as was his chest.

He stood there, shivering, and watching the whole world rise up in
smoke and flames. Crisis narrowly averted, sanity barely held onto.
Snatching his infant son up out of the crib, he returned Valentine to
Ares' arms after kissing his son repeatedly to reaffirm that he was
indeed in fine, healthy condition. But he was too shaken, and he didn't
trust his own arms to hold his son. He was so precious, too precious
even for a father's hands when this distraught. And then there was the
beast sitting out there on the rug, his unclean blood staining their
home. He didn't want to tell Ares, and he didn't like the idea of the
cadaver sitting out there. Thoughts crossed his mind, and he saw the
body rise up and attack him again with those steel-cold claws, those
razor teeth.

He curled the rug around the body and hefted it over his shoulder,
immediately leaving without a note or a sound. He wasn't sure if he
could bury it and be done with the ordeal. Supernatural or not, he
didn't want this thing coming back to life. His imagination was running
absolutely wild.

He decided to take the head and cover it with 4 feet of dirt, about a
10 minute drive from his home. The body, he burned. California had all
kinds of places where they destroyed produce, to make the market remain
healthy and in tact. He stopped at the first place that he saw
unpopulated, and then left the body there in the field, striking a
match at one of the pits, the familiar blankness coming over him that
he had felt every day of his life as a youth.

He had disposed of too many bodies to find this truly horrible.

The only horrible thing was knowing that the man's blood was in his
trunk. But even that could be cured.

When Ares woke up, she found a very shaken husband. But he hadn't
admitted to her that Valentine had been in danger. What was the point?
And besides, it was his fault. His fault that anyone had found them, or
wanted to threaten their blissful existence.

He went outside for a secretive cigarette, but found his hands shaking
so badly that he couldn't even light the damned thing. He simply sank
against the wall until his knees were crowded up against his stomach,
and then let the world fall apart beneath the ebb and flow of the tide.
The limitless expanses of his fears were working overttime, and rather
than betray his emotions, he made a quick excuse to leave the house,
and spent most of the night checking for signs of old enemies, but
found none.

Ares would ask, days later, what became of the rug, of the car. He had
told her that the rug had been destroyed by wine, and that the car had
been acting up, so he sold it. It wasn't hard to hide those lies. What
was hard, was dealing with the fact that he hadn't told her the whole
truth about that night. But how could he?

It was the same month that they moved back to England. And the rain...
oh, the rain... how it could wipe away these memories superficially.
Like pennies sitting at the bottom of a fountain; distant, untouchable,
forgotten dreams and nightmares. Lewis would leave that night at the
bottom of the fountain. Never once reaching in to rehash the
past.

--