SWNOVELS Chapter Chapter Sixty-Seven
I hadn’t realized how far I would run from New York City. Nor had I realized how undeveloped the continent was after so much time living in the heart of the ultra-modern Empire State. At first, I looked for another modern city, wanting the same trappings of comfort I’d come to cherish. But none of them suited me, not even Chicago, which seemed a fainter carbon copy.
In time, whispers of San Francisco, the “jewel of the Pacific,” motivated me to trek further west. More than a hundred miles of the journey took place on horse-drawn carriages, as the train rails hadn’t yet connected between East and West. But when I finally arrived and stared at the vast ocean that consumed each fiery sunset, I felt I’d gone far enough.
Within months there, I realized I had misunderstood myself yet again. Without the tasks of the journey to occupy my focus, I fell into a consuming depression. My emptiness and guilt became a dispair unlike any I’d know. Surrounded by so many people, by so much noise, being without another mind to console me became intolerable.
One day, my wolf led me to the rolling countryside north of the harbor, and there I found a place as silent as any I’d ever known. It was like the quiet French countryside of my youth, filled with small private vineyards. I wanted nothing more than to find solitude there for my consuming misery.
I purchased a hundred virgin acres, an expanse of land that proved to be the first tonic for my soul. I laughed, walking over the open expanse after a century of living in the relatively claustrophobic world of Manhattan. After the fall of a hundred sunsets, I was a proper farmer again.
I thought of Maximilien and Gabrielle almost every day in those first years. I sobbed like a fool when the first roots flowered, feeling my parents’ approval overtake me with each petal. From an estate sale, I purchased a second-hand cello, the closest instrument to my cherished viol available in this vacant part of the world. And I’d play it for hours alone in the fields, for only the grapes and my parent’s spirits to hear me. And when I achieved the first successful vintage after many poor seasons and tasted that precise and indefinable flavor that seized my senses with bliss, I wept for hours that they could not taste it with me.
In time, I had humans working for me again. Most were migrant laborers, which I cherish as much when they arrived as when they departed to leave me in peace. But a few people settled down with me now and then as my quiet enterprise grew. They never stayed long enough to make it necessary to change my name, now Max Roussade. And a series of agents handled the sale of produce and vintages over the years, each excited to meet the young vintner’s son who’d taken over the family business.
The most startling moment of my time as a farmer was not the plague of Phylloxera that destroyed most of the fields in the 1880s, nor the advent of Prohibition decades later that paralyzed what fields I’d recovered. It was the night I realized I could hear the minds of humans.
At the age of one-hundred-forty-seven, the gift I’d been so envious of in Duccio during my youth awakened to join my other senses. Overnight, voices surrounded me, and I soon realized I couldn’t stand it. Information I never wanted to know flooded my mind at every turn like a curse. In response, my mental muscles for blocking out all other minds became my de facto position, slacking only as I fell asleep each night. On more than a few occasions, I apologized to Heaven for not appreciating Duccio’s patience, remembering how my insolent music kept our human staff awake during those early nights in Venice.
With this gift for hearing human minds, my ability to hear lycan amplified much further. As the region grew, I sensed them even as far as San Francisco, over thirty miles to the south. I never opened my mind to any for more than a few seconds. I no longer felt the slightest concern, as they all felt far younger than me, but I was resolute I didn’t want them to seek me out.
There was only one time when I sensed an elder. They made their presence known, the hum of their mind filling the region. I expected it was Duccio, and I closed my mind like a vise for weeks, hoping he would move on. And when I opened to receive confirmation, the hum was gone. All that remained were the anxious conversations by those young lycan who spoke of the elder who tried to contact them. Each of them avoided the signs of that unmistakable strength with fear.
You should be afraid, I mused.
The whispers became echoes. The elder had gone south to Los Angeles, four hundred miles away in Southern California. Good, I thought. Keep going until you reach the southern continent and find someone else’s life to ruin.
As I said those words to myself, something changed.
I realized my perspective was absurd. Duccio hadn’t ruined my life, far from it. He’d killed people I loved but saved me from certain death half a dozen times. He’d made all of this possible for me. If anything, he’d ruined his own life, but even that viewpoint was childish. I struggled to get the mathematics right, but Duccio was by now over three and a half centuries old. He’d feasted on lifetimes few now could dream of.
I no longer felt the loss of my lycan siblings or the suffering that had once consumed me. Perhaps it’s difficult for a mortal to comprehend the strength of time. Didn’t Gabrielle say that to me once? Their loss befell me half a century earlier, and the pain had withered away decades past.
So why did I care at all if he found me? What would he do, kill me? Had he not shown in startling detail he wanted nothing more than to lie beside me, to share this long eternity with me? I realized he could not even rape me again. I wasn’t a child, nor was I powerless. But more to point, he could not steal something I was only too glad to give him, even a selfish act of sexual violence. Was I still capable of being harmed by such betrayal at this point? Might I laugh as he tried to flex such pathetic domination over me? By all means, Duccio, do your worst if it will quiet your anger.
This self-epiphany left me staggered by my blindness to its simplicity, and I’d never felt more free.
When I awoke the next day, I decided to travel south to find him. I’d tell him it was unnecessary if Duccio were searching for me. I would share whatever he wanted of me if it would satisfy him.
Hold me in your arms again if you wish. Or don’t. I am who I want to be, regardless.
I spent more than a week in Los Angeles but didn’t find him. Even considering the city’s vast footprint, Duccio was not there. I checked out of my suite at the Huntington Hotel and headed back to the station to begin the trek north to home.
Arriving at the ticket window, I noticed a train would leave south in only ten minutes. I had no reason to believe I’d find him there. San Diego was another California port town I knew of only by name, and I couldn’t imagine Duccio would care to be in such a place. Despite my doubt, I gave in to my impulse and purchased a ticket.
Not more than halfway through my journey south, I sensed him. That terrible power invaded my senses from over fifty miles, and the anticipation filled my limbs with each minute that passed.
As the train finally arrived in town, I sensed precisely where I’d find him. A small bluff overlooking the harbor passed as the carriage headed south to the final station downtown.
I told a taxi driver to take me to the finest hotel. I was in a tower suite at the U.S. Grant Hotel on Broadway within half an hour. I took one last look in the vanity mirror to fix my necktie and comb my hair into place. I was as ready to see him as I’d ever been.
Arriving in the main lobby, the elevator doors opened to a sight I didn’t understand. Duccio walked north through the lobby toward the rear driveway. He’d shaven his mustache and wore a modern business suit, just as I did, but it was him. And yet, I sensed little from him. That indefinable hum felt a few miles away from where we stood.
Duccio, I called to him just as he exited the hotel doors.
He stopped at the threshold and turned. His eyes search the lobby with confusion before they fell upon me.
I smiled at him and sighed at how beautiful he was. His heavy jaw was fully shaven, and his black hair was slicked back with a silky pomade like all the young men now sported.
Duccio turned away and proceeded a few paces to sit in an open-roofed automobile, bringing the roaring motor up as if clearing its throat.
Signore, I called to him, perplexed by his actions.
With only a glance in my direction, he drove down the driveway and onto the street to head north.
I was unsure of what to do. I couldn’t fathom why he would drive away as he did. Without thinking, I asked the parking attendant to hail a taxi.
“I don’t know for certain,” I told the driver when he asked my destination. “It’s somewhere north of here. Just drive until we find it.”
When the driver turned his head with annoyance, I handed him a ten-dollar bill. Stunned by the absurd amount, he nodded and drove forward.
“What are we looking for?”
“I don’t know yet, but I’ll find it,” I answered.
Our exchange too confused me to understand why I could sense Duccio at a distance but hardly sensed him standing ten feet away. It was as if Duccio’s mind was not inside his body, which make no sense to me.
The driver rolled us up Third Avenue for a few miles until I sensed we needed to turn West. After only three more deep sighs, he brought us to a suburban neighborhood marked by a sign that read Inspiration Point.
“I expect these are your sort of people up here,” the driver said, nodding to the handful of large homes built in the sleepy, well-to-do family corner.
Along a stretch of road called Sunset Boulevard, I knew without question I’d found him. Near the crest of the road stood a large mansion. Duccio’s motorcar stood in the house’s half-circle driveway, gleaming like a cut sapphire in the late afternoon sunlight.
“Here,” I told the driver, and he pulled up to the curb on the opposite side of the street.
I opened my mind to announce myself. I resolved to let him hear me and know I meant to speak with him.
“Do you need me to wait for you?” the driver asked.
“I’ll be fine here. You may—
From the mansion’s front door emerged an elegant woman. She wore a lovely emerald green “flapper” dress with open patent leather pumps. A bob of silky raven hair crowned her head and fell to the top of her slender neck.
I didn’t recognize her, but she stared across the road at me with such intensity that I stopped short of answering the driver.
And then I felt it.
The sound poured from her mind, a rich melody I couldn’t place, vibrating through my spine and jaw. It felt familiar, but I knew I hadn’t heard this before.
The young woman placed her hand over her mouth as if in shock. With a start, she ambled across the front lawn, almost stumbling when she arrived on the pavement. The clack of her shoes on the asphalt sounded through the quiet road as she ran toward me.
When I caught the fine features of her face, I thought I’d seen a ghost. But as she fell shamelessly against my stunned frame, pushing me back against the taxi, I felt the warmth of her flesh and the wetness of her tears on my face. She covered my cheek with frantic kisses and sobbed like a wounded child into the crook of my neck.
“Mon fils,” Gabrielle cried, trembling in my arms.