Jeanne Stein - Chosen

I’m sorry.

He stops, but only because I’m blocking his way. I can see he’s fighting the urge to push me aside. I hold up a hand in apology. I really am sorry. I had no right to say that.

His shoulders remain rigid.

Please. I want to hear more. I want to understand what the connection is between you and this man. It’s more than a familial bond. You let Julian whip you like an animal and you were willing to bear the scars of that whipping forever. I need to understand.

Lance takes a tiny step backward. I can’t tell you why it happened. I won’t. I can only tell you that by allowing you to help me, I may not have forever. Not after this.

After what? For Christ’s sake, Lance, tell me. If you don’t, I swear I’ll go after him. I’ll make him tell me. I’ll kill him if he doesn’t.

Lance lets a smile tip the corner of his mouth. You plan to kill him anyway, don’t you?

Then you lose nothing by telling me, do you?

Jesus, Anna. The sternness has returned to his face. You may be powerful, but do you really think you can best a five-hundred-year-old vampire? You said it yourself; he’s more than vampire, he possesses magic.

I can tell by the set of his jaw that this argument will get us nowhere. At least tell me how he turned you. You know my story.

His expression says he recognizes a diversionary tactic when he hears one. His thoughts confirm the look, but to my surprise, he turns around and takes a seat on the edge of the bed.

Better sit down, too, he says. This may take a while.

Then he adds, “Suppose we could ask Adele to bring us coffee first? I smell it brewing.”

I nod and he reaches for the phone, makes the request and hangs up. “She’ll be right up.”

“Then I’d better get dressed.”

I’m glad for the chance to gather my thoughts. Instead, as I pull on shorts and a T-shirt, I find gathering my thoughts is the last thing I want to do. Thinking means examining what happened in that bedroom and I can’t face it. So instead, I listen. To Adele’s knock as it announces her arrival, listen to Lance and her chat about last night—he gives her a highly fictionalized version of our evening—and listen to the clank of a coffee service being set up. I wait until I hear the snick of the door closing behind her before reappearing.

Lance is pouring coffee into two mugs. He’s pulled the bedclothes up over the pillows to hide the blood. He looks up when he sees me. “Adele says good morning.”

I take the mug from his outstretched hand, avoiding his eyes. Sip.

Kona blend. Good stuff.

We return to our perches on the side of the bed. I don’t look at Lance or push him to begin. I know he will when he’s ready.

And he does.

He drains his cup, slouches back against the headboard.

“I was born in South Africa in 1925. On my family’s estate. You know the business they were in. From the time I was old enough to understand what diamond mining was all about, I hated it. Progress has been made in the last century, sure. But slave labor is still slave labor even if those slaves are now given nicer places to live and better food to eat.”

Lance twists the cup in his hand. “My brothers and sister never seemed to mind. Their lives revolved around the next shopping trip to the continent, the next glamorous soiree. They paid more attention to their pampered pets than the people who broke their backs to provide that lifestyle. I couldn’t wait to get away.”

He sets the cup down on the nightstand. “I shouldn’t have been so anxious. I ran away from home when I was seventeen. Went to Cape Town. It was December 1942. A British ship en route to South Africa, the HMS Ceramic , was torpedoed by a German submarine west of the Azores. Took the ship three hours to sink and the Germans let it. Saved one man for interrogation, but let the other six hundred fifty-six die. Most aboard were South Africans returning home.”

His eyes take on a faraway look. “Like most South Africans, I was outraged. And like most idealistic seventeen-year-olds struggling with private demons I couldn’t fight, I wasted no time in joining the battle against demons I could. I enlisted in the South African Third Infantry Division. If I couldn’t fight my parent’s system, I could sure as hell fight the Germans.”

I touch his arm. “What did your parents do when they found out?”

A bitter smile twists the corners of his mouth. “Nothing. My father decided the discipline would be good for me. Even took credit for my enlisting. Ironic. Since I was the only one in the family who exercised any kind of discipline at all. But it didn’t matter. Not really. For the first time in my life, I wasn’t Broderick DeFontaine. I was Aircraftman Rick DeFontaine, and I had work to do that would benefit all people, not just the self-indulgent rich.”

He picks up his cup and crosses the room to the coffeepot. “The Third Division never took part in any battles while I served. We mostly organized and trained the South African home defense services.”

He raises the pot in my direction. I nod and hold out my cup to him. He fills it, returns the pot to the warmer and rejoins me on the bed. “I don’t know how much you know about Germany’s war plans. Early on, Hitler devised what he called the ‘Madagascar Plan.’ All of Europe’s Jews were to be forcibly deported to Madagascar.” He shakes his head. “Maybe if it had been allowed to happen, lives would have been saved. But Madagascar was a strategic island and British troops invaded it in mid-1942. The Battle of Madagascar took place before I joined, but following the end of the campaign, I was assigned to a reconnaissance squadron. We flew missions over the countryside, looking for Japanese who had plans of their own for the island. During one of those missions, the engine on our plane failed. We crashed in an isolated area. The pilot died. I didn’t.”

The tone of his voice suggests he might be thinking the pilot had been the lucky one. His thoughts are black with despair.

I’m glad you didn’t die, Lance. My life would be empty if you’d died. You have to know that.

He smiles at me, sadly, then looks away. “I was found by a peasant family. I didn’t speak Malagasy and they didn’t speak English. They tended to me the best they could, but I’d suffered a compound leg fracture in the crash and a couple of nasty cuts, one of which nearly took my right ear. Infection set in pretty quickly. I’ll never know why they did what they did next. Maybe they were afraid of what would happen if I was found with them. Maybe they thought they would be blamed for my death. But once it became clear that I wasn’t getting better, they took me to an area known as Tsingy. It’s a park now, but in 1942 it was nothing more than an isolated forest of limestone, mangrove swamps and lakes. They left me there. With water and a few scraps of food.”

Lance is rubbing at his left leg, at a ghostly ache from a long-healed wound. I put my hand on top of his to stop it. “What happened then?”

He shuts his eyes. “I was crazy with fever and delirium. I half crawled, half stumbled for days until I could go no farther. Finally, I just lay down on the ground and waited to die. I had no idea how far I’d gone or how long I’d been alone. The last thing I remembered was staring at a night sky. It was a sliver of a moon and a sky awash with stars. Suddenly, one of those stars became a fireball that moved across the sky. It flew in a rainbow arc with a glittering tail from east to west. A shooting star. Then it stopped. Seemed to hover right over me. I reached out my hand to touch it and a shadow passed between us. A shadow that became a figure, then a face. A shadow that became a man.”