There Is No Me Beyond You

~3~

Stoker avoided me carefully until Sunday evening, a very long six days not only for me but even for Lia, whom I tormented with questions about what was on her annoying fiancé's mind, on every occasion I got. But, she didn't seem to know anything, or had been instructed not to say a word.

Then he suddenly turned up at my doorstep, knowing well that I was home alone with Aurora.

Lucas was out somewhere with Mark, and Lia took her mum to see a premiere of a play in Hammersmith's theatre, to which I had been given tickets by William. But I was so stressed out about what Stoker had to tell me by Sunday, that I simply couldn't go.

"Finally." I said in lieu of a greeting as I opened the door for him.

"Nice to see you too, Samara." He smiled infuriatingly.

I sighed, summoning patience, closed the door behind him and followed him into the kitchen.

"Your daughter?" He asked, walking towards the sliding glass door leading to the garden.

"Sleeping upstairs. We can talk." I said as he exited the room and sat on one of the lawn chairs placed on the stone patio outside.

I snatched a bottle of wine, glasses and the baby monitor off the dining table and walked quickly after him. I was sure that whatever he meant to tell me would sound better after a glass of wine.

Seeing the bottle in my hands Stoker raised a questioning eyebrow at me, but did not complain when I filled his glass and set it in front of him on the small wooden table separating our two chairs.

For a while we just sat there, sipping our wine and listening to the crickets, whose loud chirping gradually replaced that of the birds' as the sun began to set. But when I was halfway through my glass, I couldn't stand his silence any longer.

"Tell me, I beg you."

He sighed, then nodded, as his eyes met mine. "I haven't told  you this before, because I wasn't sure, and also because I did not want to alarm you, especially while you were pregnant. But the more I'm thinking about this... and since Lia told me that you were considering postponing your journey back..."

"What is it? Just tell me, please!" I called, taking another sip of my wine and shivering. It was the beginning of September and the long, warm, summer evenings were gone. There was a hint of autumn present in the air already.

"Do you remember how we talked about your husband's world during Christmas, about your nurse... Back then I thought that the... curse... was all maintained, kept somehow by your old Katerina. But what if... instead... it's cast on someone? On the one who killed you all those centuries back, for instance?" He mused, observing me cautiously.

"It was your brother-in-law, right?" Stoker prompted me when I said nothing.

"Yes, but it was an accident, I'm sure..." I said, recalling what Radu had told me, all that pain I could see in his eyes when he, a slave of his addiction to human blood, realised that he hurt me again...

"That doesn't matter. The problem is, that your husband knows it had been him, doesn't he?"

I nodded. "He does since..." I brought my fingers to the thin scar on my neck, running parallel to my half moon birthmark, instead of finishing my sentence. "The Council sent him to prison, there was supposed to be a hearing when..." when everything went horribly wrong and they sent you back here.

"That isn't good." Stoker mumbled thoughtfully, his eyes strolling towards the hole in the garden's back wall. Whisper was watching us from there, the fox's bright orange pelt well visible despite the thickening shadows cast by the small garden shed and the only tree standing nearby. "Because if my theory is correct, then all this curse is set on him as a punishment, and will cease existing the moment he dies."