CHAPTER TWENTY-FIVE
AT THE VINEYARD, only one car was present in any of the employee parking spaces. In the upstairs office spaces, I couldn’t find anyone available. I heard someone roaming around one of the back offices on the lower level, and walked over to investigate.
While looking over a tablet, Van startled when he glimpsed at me. “Regan? You scared me.” He pulled his knit cap on his head to hide his baldness, but didn’t cover it fast enough.
I examined his features, trying to find a resemblance between him and me. We had to have had different fathers—if I even believed any of the crazy madness. “How long have you been battling cancer?”
“I thought the first thing out of your mouth would be questions about Calind’s whereabouts.”
“Would you tell me if I asked?”
He averted his eyes, mimicking his “brother” by giving me silence as an answer.
“Okay.” I exhaled and inhaled to abate my annoyance. “So, what’s going on with you?”
“Besides dying? Nothing.”
“Then, what’s up with your wife Cyan, and Calind?”
“They were an item before. I was her consolation prize after he married you.”
My blood ignited. “He never told me.”
“Ah, good ole Calind. Still the same illusive man I’ve always known.”
Illusive and possibly cheating on me.
“I know that look. I know what you’re thinking, and Calind is madly in love with you. You don’t understand how monumental that truly is.”
Van’s words stole the air from my lungs, forcing me to sputter. I wasn’t sure what to say for a good few minutes.
Originally, I thought I wanted to uncover what was real; the truth was, I only wanted to unearth Calind. Instead, I received a tangled ball of yarn leading straight to hell. Knowing he loved me was everything I hoped to know.
I settled myself into the chair at the front of the desk. “He isn’t the kind of guy who can ever say the L-word, huh?”
“He’s not much for expressing his feelings at all. Believe me when I tell you he feels it, and it complicates many things for him.” Van’s discomfort was palpable, and changed his demeanor. “Forget what I said. None of it’s my business.”
“It is your business,” I countered. “Van? Tell me I’m not losing my mind. Tell me I’ll wake up with a smile, thinking it was all a fantastic dream.”
“I’ll do you one better and tell you what I know. I owe it to you.”
“Owe me? Why?”
He rubbed the back of his neck and bowed his head. “Calind and I use the term brothers, but we aren’t. Claudette saved him and made him feel like she was his mentor, the mother of his new identity, in a way.”
“Who are his real parents? He claimed he was born to no one, whatever that means.”
“Damned if I know. I don’t think they are anywhere anyone could find them.”
“And your disease?”
“Cancer, as you guessed. It wasn’t developed by the usual means. I was Claudette’s test subject before she conceived of a project that gave her what she wanted. Then, I became useless.”
I stalled for a minute, wondering if he knew I was his half-sister and the project that might’ve succeeded. “Why haven’t you gone to Calind about your sickness? He could’ve helped you, like he helped me.”
“All those vials do is remove your symptoms. What’s the point? It won’t help me when I know death is coming. There’s no cure for it, and I’m ready to go.” He pushed his chair out and headed for the doorway.
I followed his path to an attic storing enough wine reserves to supply several lifetimes.
“At one time, Claudette’s blood filled these when she was on a mission to make a platoon of human Vorarei she could control. That was back when Claudette and Calind ran this place together.”
I choked. “That’s stupid impossible.”
“Well, Calind is ancient. Maybe as much a millennia old, if I believe what Claudette told me. When Claudette died, she was just as old, maybe older.”
I cursed, slipping back in my seat. Tell me I’m fucking dreaming. Calind’s accent? The damned accent that crept up when I triggered his irritation? I wasn’t a linguist, but the phonetics and pronunciation were unlike a native Arabic speaker from Egypt. I knew at least five languages and was loosely familiar with a few more. Was Calind the start of this whole thing? Was he the original alien Vorarei?
“Suppose that’s another piece of information Calind kept from you,” Van surmised. “I thought you knew everything. Wow, I’m sorry. I guess you wish you never came here today.”
“I was told to come here. Told you would tell me what I needed to know.” I thumbed a bottle of red dated 1979. “Guess he was right.”
“I’d ask who told you to come here, but I think I know. Emile? I’m not on his side.”
“Why?”
“Because he’s blind to what he’s doing. The person he thinks of as his friend is controlling him, and he doesn’t even know it.” Van examined the bottle I was touching. “In the mood to close down and open that bottle. I’d welcome the company, if you want to share it.”
Over the bottle of a ’79 pinot noir and a shot of whiskey—it was that type of day—I perched on a chef’s stool. Van diced and fried vegetables in the closed vineyard restaurant’s kitchen.
“Does knowing you are closer to death make you feel bitter about life?”
“Life makes you bitter about life.” Van poured a good helping of wine into the frying pan. “Why haven’t you asked the questions I know you want to ask me to Calind?”
“If you know him, you know he’s tighter than a virgin with information. Until an hour ago, I thought he was twenty-five. Maybe I still do.” I shifted in my position. “What about Executive Suites?”
“A factory of human Vorarei, and more.”
The “and more” and the way he stated it made me very uneasy. “Can you tell me what they are? How this came to fucking be a reality. Is it a reality?”
“I’ll tell you how most of the humans are turned. They’re infected by the virus of a human Vorarei. If the transformation went well, it’s a slow, painful process while the body preps itself for the final transition, the transition after death.
“There’s no blood exchanged unless the donor wants to take control of the subject after transformation. It takes the body months to remake itself—to finish the transformation. The human Vorarei, once remade, isn’t a carcass that doesn’t breathe and feeds on blood. It’s a genetically-altered being, modeled after the alien Vorarei, without all the benefits of the pure one. They can enter the average human’s mind, have abnormal strength, and the power of suggestion. But, the alien Vorarei and what it can do?” He whistled low.
“You know who the original being is?”
“I do, and I won’t tell you.”
“You’re cruel.” I folded my arms across my chest, pointing a glare at him. “Is Executive Suites just a guise to turn people and steal money from the deceased?”
He shook his head. “In a way. Don’t get me wrong, less than a quarter of the people who sign up for the so-called ‘experience’ get turned. It’s like you said—part of its function is to make a profit.”
“Why did Calind choose me? What does he want with me?”
“That’s a guarded secret. Ask him for the answer.”
“Come on, Van. You have to know something.”
“I don’t know a lot about your situation,” he admitted. “But I know one thing: Calind has never taken a wife in all the years he’s been on Earth. The fact that he’s married you, and the way he acts with you? He’s a different man. He wouldn’t let anything happen to you, if he could prevent it.”
I scanned the counter, thinking how screwed up it was that despite the lies, I felt the same. I bobbed my head. “Were the experiments forced on you?”
“No. I believed Claudette’s lies when she said they would strengthen me.”
“And Calind? How did he and Claudette become close?”
“He claims that he owes Claudette for changing his life, making him see things differently. She and Calind built Executive Suites together. While I know he wasn’t too keen on turning people, who would later turn others, he wanted to give people their dying wishes. I guess he wanted to pay it forward. But, when Calind stepped down, Executive Suites’ agenda changed. People were being turned when they didn’t want to be.”
“It wasn’t a coincidence, meeting Michelle in the restaurant, was it?”
He shook his head.
“Why did Calind pick me?” I questioned him again, hoping for an answer.
“Ask Calind.”
“Sure. Because he’ll be so forthcoming with the answer?” I asked, my sarcasm sharp. “He told me he’s working for Claudette. Shit. Van, would you believe me if I told you Claudette’s dead?”
“Yes,” he said, his eyes brightening. “No one has seen her in over three years. A handful of employees are still doing her bidding, thinking they are working for her when no one ever sees her. They’re blindly following every order. I won’t complain about her disappearance. There’s been a slight turnaround in agendas since she’s been gone.”
“You mean since she died.”
He shrugged. “A distinction without a difference, in this case.”
“Does Calind have suspicions about Claudette’s death?” What was I saying? Calind likely knew she was dead. He might’ve been the one who took over the companies he shared with Claudette and lied about it for an unknown fucking reason. He could’ve been the one directing the employees for Executive Suites.
“Calind’s cleaning house. Third generation progenies are out of control and murdering without prejudice. Calind’s out there making it right, and killing the ones who don’t know how to behave—the ones who are…feral.”
The timeline of the murders I knew about fit with our travels and the strange deaths. Calind was out there performing his duties as a Vorarei slayer, and used me once in Singapore.
If I was ready to admit it to myself, my cynicism was dying a painful and slow death. I wanted to believe Calind loved me, but for that to be true, I also had to believe that the crazy things happening around me, and to me, were real.
“And what about me? Do you know what I am, Van?”
“I don’t know much more than what I told you, Regan. I’m sorry.”
“I thought I was straddling a thin line between reality and fiction.” As I stared into space, my eyes glazed over. “Maybe I don’t know what’s real. It’s all so impossible, right? But I know what I see and feel.”
Van halted as his face turned gray. With his eyes scattered, he lurched at the garbage bin and vomited. “I shouldn’t have drunk the wine,” he conceded, collecting himself after he expelled what little was in his stomach.
“Or came to work.” I slipped off the stool and grabbed his wine glass. After dumping the contents in the sink, I filled it with water from the tap. Heat stemmed from his body, circling him in a feverish aura. “Forget dinner, it’s time to take you home.” I placed my hand on his back to comfort him.
“I’m fine.” He moved away quickly. “I have accounts to review. Can’t trust employees to do everything.” He headed back toward his office, but collapsed halfway there.
“They are more reliable than you are right now.” I approached him, swinging his arm around my neck and helped him to rise. “You can hardly stand. Come with me. That’s an order, Van.”
THE MORE I drove, the sicker Van became. The trip to my home was a shorter distance than taking him to his house. I decided it was better to take him to my place.
Once we entered the house, I shuffled him into the guest bed. I went to work playing nurse and removed most of his clothing before breaking out the medical kit. His temperature was through the roof. I gave him a fever reducer and tried to cool him with alcohol wipes.
An hour passed where I sat at the foot of the bed, watching Van while he slept.
He opened his eyes and stared at me.
“Feeling better?” I brushed my palm over his clammy forehead.
He nodded and sat upright. “Need to take a shower and get this cold sweat off me. After, I’ll call an Uber and go home.” He disappeared into the en-suite.
I followed after him when one too many minutes passed. Grayish skin covered his tall, emaciated frame. His veins were a deep purplish-red. Puncture wounds were visible in his arms and neck. His body was devoid of hair.
“You don’t have to die this way,” I told him pleadingly.
He turned off the shower, slipped into Calind’s black, terrycloth robe, and placed his knit cap over his bald head. “We’ve been over this.” He hurried past me, traveling into the bedroom. He sat on the edge of my bed and took a cigarette from my case on the nightstand.
I lit it for him with the lighter from the back pocket of my jeans.
“I want to die with my peace of mind.” He inhaled and exhaled a cloud of smoke. “If I live on this Earth one more day, it’ll disappear. I know what you could never understand. Someday, you will.”
“Every morning, I’m glad I woke up to live through one more day. Every night, I wish to wake up to face another. It’s a constant cycle.”
“Because you have things to live for now,” he said. “Even though you don’t feel the pain like I do, I know you’ve thought about ending your life on your terms instead of dealing with the unknown.”
I realized what Van was hinting at, and it soured my mood. I’d stumbled upon a living member of my family who didn’t hate me or want to take advantage of me, and now he’d die way too soon. “When were you going to do it? Kill yourself?”
“You make it sound so harsh.” His chest heaved with a shaky breath. “If I hadn’t seen you tonight—tonight.”
I knew better than to think I could’ve stopped him. “If you’re going to do it, no matter how much someone asks you to stay, I think you should do it here, with me.”
“You won’t try to change my mind?”
I sympathized with what he wanted. He was right, I’d faced the unbearable and unending pain many times before I met Calind, and one time afterward. There were many instances where I wondered what it would’ve felt like to silence the pain for good.
The thoughts scared me, and might’ve been part of the reason I signed up with Executive Suites. It wasn’t sex stacked on top of sex; it was about wanting to live out loud for whatever little time I had left.
The month after I met Calind, when I was alone and worse off than I ever had been, thoughts of the end flooded my head. Every time I woke up, my sadness was worse. I hated being that way: the seizures, the headaches, the endless pain. I knew what I had to look forward to alone, and couldn’t face it.
Now, things were different because of Calind. Despite the secrets and lies, he anchored me to the world. No man had protected me the way Calind did. No one made me encounter an incredible array of emotions the way he did.
I kept a bottle of pain meds hidden away from Calind in the closet of our bedroom. I had set it aside for when the sickness made me too weak to get out of bed, and the injections stopped working. They were my false strength if I needed it. “I have pain meds. Will they do?”
“They will.”
I traveled to my bedroom and retrieved the only two bottles I had from my bag stashed in a pair of boots in the back of the walk-in closet.
“Why do you need these?” Van questioned as he stood in the doorframe.
“Does it matter?”
“Are you taking the injections?”
“I am and they are helping, but I won’t take them anymore. It makes me feel…I can’t explain the way it makes me feel.”
He took both of my hands in his as a sudden seriousness swept over his face. “Before I die, you need to listen: Calind thinks he can protect you and will do everything he can to make sure you’re safe, but the people coming after you will never stop. Calind will drive you right into the arms of someone who will control you and use you. Regan…you don’t want that person anywhere near you.” He held up a bottle. “This might be your only way out.”
“You know, then?” I asked, my voice breezy. “You know I’m supposed to be the project?”
“I know what I need to know. You don’t want to be a Vorarei. Immortality isn’t what it’s cracked up to be. The way they are? They can’t help it. And Calind? He has a good side, but there’s another side to him, too.”
“I’ve seen it before,” I told him.
“Don’t think you have.”
“You say that because…”
“If you had, you would admit it with terror.” He dropped the hand holding the bottle to his side and stared at the rug underneath our feet for a while in silence. “Calind will never forgive you for helping me die. He might show you the side you haven’t seen yet. Leave when I go. Swear you’ll leave all of this and go where neither Calind nor Emile can find you, and take the rest of these pills.”
I squeezed his hand and gave him a sad smile. “Rest, okay?”
We crawled into bed together and he rested his head on my shoulder. “Thank you for the night. Regardless of how short, it meant something. I’m glad I’m not alone in this.”
“Only because you told no one,” I reminded him. “Calind knew you were sick. Why didn’t you confirm what he knew?”
“He would try to save me.” Van inhaled a wavering breath, closing his eyes. “How will you explain my death to him?”
“I’ll say whatever I have to.” I wrapped my arm around his neck and clasped his head. “Van…rest.”
“I know not to argue with a stubborn woman.”
I nodded, feeling as tired as Van. I thought I was dreaming, too tired to open my eyes. When I was in between dreamland and a waking state, I could’ve sworn Van said, “I’ll see you on the other side soon, sis.”
THE RARE AND early morning downpour at dawn woke me. I opened my eyes to view an empty bedside. One of the pill bottles on the nightstand was missing, leaving only one full bottle left. From underneath the closed door, a cloudy light emanated from the bathroom.
I adjusted my sore and tired body to sit on the edge of the bed. I stared at the door, somehow knowing and feeling that I had lost the only person I could count as a real sibling.
My steps remained at a slow and steady pace, slapping against the wood floor. I took my time before I moved a single limb to open the bathroom door.
Van was inside the empty tub, the robe laid on the side of the bathtub.
I sat on the edge of the antique copper tub, entranced by Van’s facial expression—a peaceful calm.
I choked back the sobs and called 9-1-1.