Page 57 of Eternal Obsession

A knot in my stomach caught me and I reeled at the thought of reuniting. I was full of guilt. My anxiety welled. After chasing shadows for so long all that was left was numbness. And now, here within these walls, I was unraveling.

The music got louder.

He had not changed. I lingered at the doorway watching him, taking in the image of my brother as he gracefully struck the keys. A sob caught in my throat. Alex must have assumed me dead.

He may very well have wished it.

I scanned the great hall and cringed at the layer of dust on everything. The room was in a state of disarray. This reflected his spirit. Alex peered up at me but continued to play.

I deserved it. Tears rolled onto my cheeks.

Alex thought me to be an apparition, his wishful thinking gone mad.

My heart ached with the weight of what I had done to him, to myself, to our family. I had failed to protect us all. But standing here now, watching him so shattered, was more than I could bear. This pain . . . it was worse than the curse that ran through our blood.

I drew toward him. “Have the visions of me ever spoken to you?”

“Not until now.” Alex ceased playing.

“How will you ever forgive me?”

In his eyes, I saw it, the slow recognition, the quiet grief, as he realized he was seeing his brother again after lifetimes of being apart.

He considered me, then leapt up and ran to me.

I enfolded him in my arms.

“I sent you messages,” I said, “telepathic signals to tell you where I was.”

“I am not too good with that,” he whispered. “It’s easier up close.”

Were these his first words in years? Shaking, I studied him. Anguish tortured my breaths.

Alex’s legs gave way. I caught him.

With my arm around him we walked to the anteroom, though the layers of dust were so thick. We only stayed a few minutes and eventually sat down on the main foyer steps.

I was home.

It was difficult to look at Alex.

Please do not hate me.

“I don’t,” Alex said. Wide-eyed he stared at me with that familiar fresh-faced innocence. He kept prodding me until I grabbed his pointed finger and with an affectionate smile shook it.

“Tell me then,” he said. “He still has her?”

Finding the strength to talk, I relayed to Alex my attempts to track down Orpheus who had evaded me at every turn, cruelly teasing me, allowing me to get close enough to sense Catherine’s presence but not see her. Time and time again I was left standing where she had once stood. The only clue that she had ever been there at all was her faint perfume. I had gone out of my mind obsessing over them.

This had been his plan all along, to make us suffer, slowly, over decades, just as Daumia had suffered because of us. In losing his great love, he decided our happiness would become his to destroy, our pain his inheritance. With shame I faced up to the fact I had abandoned Alex. He seemed not to care, overjoyed to have me back.

He gave me another prod.

With a heavy heart I explained Orpheus had kept Catherine prisoner for several years until her hair, which had been shaven short while a nun, was allowed to grow long. He had waited patiently for her girlish figure to become fully matured. Finally, when Orpheus had found both her features and characteristics most pleasing, he had done the unthinkable. He had transformed her into a vampire.

All this I had detected but had never seen. I had not given up, relentlessly following them around the world.

Eventually Orpheus’s scent had grown cold.