Frowning, Leif closed the door and walked over to the table beside the bed and set down a silver tray filled with recognizable items such as cheese and crackers, strawberries, dinner rolls, pulled pork and chocolate chip cookies.
“He isn’t fond of me,” Leif murmured as he handed me a large round porcelain plate.
“No,he isn’t. But then who can blame him? You took away his eternity. He is now stuck here, forever.” The anger lacing in my words caused him to flinch.
“I didn’t take his soul Pagan, my father did. I had no idea he was going to. Ghede answers to no one within our realm. He makes decisions that please him and he overindulges in anything pleasurable and corrupts enjoyable pursuits, making things that should be good and satisfying into depraved behaviors. Nothing I can say will stop him. I was a child when he asked me to choose a soul. I had no idea what the implications were. I chose you. I didn’t know then what that meant. You can hate me but try to understand I am not my father.”
He may not be his father but he didn’t have the courage to stand up to his father. He was weak but hadn’t I always known that? Even back when I thought he was a human Leif had been weak. He never really accepted the weight of his actions. He always made you feel as if his apology were something precious and special that you would be stupid not to accept. The charisma he’d carried had won him many advances. Who was he exactly? If his father was Ghede then who was Leif?
“Who is your mother?”
Leif paused from fixing his plate. The strawberry in his fingers plopped onto his plate then he sighed wearily before raising his eyes to peer through his long blond eyelashes at me. “My mother is Erzulie, she is the reason my skin is pale and my hair is blond. She’s the Voodoo Goddess of many things. Love being one... vengeance being another. She takes many lovers and enjoys the same things my father does. I see her on occasion but for the most part I live with my father. She has never had any desire for a child but then I’m not her only one. She has several, many of whom walk the earth. She is not above taking human men to her um... bed.”
His mother was a deranged voodoo sex goddess. Great.
I stuffed some pulled pork into a dinner roll and chewed while I let this information sink in. I’d never really questioned his skin color until tonight. When I’d seen that his father was dark brown in coloring it had surprised me. But then I was a little shocked by the wild orgy going on and that kind of took precedence. After taking a long swig of the canned coke Leif had brought me I studied him a moment.
“You don’t talk like your father either. He has a bit of a cajun accent.”
Leif shrugged, “I’ve spent the majority of my life following you. I adopted your accent so I would fit in with your life. I didn’t want to appear to you as an outsider.”
“So all those dreams I’ve had are real? Those things really happened. Are there more memories I’ve forgotten?”
Leif stared intently at the food on his plate. Then managed a small shrug, “Maybe a few more.”
He was lying. He couldn’t even look at me. “A few more? That’s all?”
Setting his plate on the table Leif stood up and began to pace at the end of the bed. I watched as I ate the cheese and crackers on my plate. I had a feeling I wasn’t going to like this answer and I decided I’d better eat now before I lost my appetite again.
“I’ve been with you many times in your life. When you were lonely or sad, I was there. When you were in danger, I was there. It was what I did. Father said you were mine and I should protect you. So I did. I’m sorry that you don’t remember. It wasn’t something I did on purpose. It’s just that I am soulless and your soul can’t remember me for long when I’m not near you.”
“Why did you want me to remember those times? The ones you’d picked out for me to dream about?”
Leif stopped pacing and placed his hands on the railing at the foot of the bed. His intense blue eyes bore into me. “Because those were the times I fell a little more in love with you.”
No. Nonononono. I did not want him to love me. I wanted him to let me go. “You don’t love me, Lief. If you loved me you’d never have been able to hold me against my will.”
Leif growled in frustration and threw his hands up, “I’ve told you I can’t control my father. He saved your life. He owns you Pagan.”
“No one owns me.”
Leif shook his head, “I don’t want to argue with you. Not tonight. Let’s just eat. Okay?” he walked back around and picked up his plate.
I finished eating my food until my stomach was finally satisfied and then drank every last drop of my coke. I wasn’t sure how long it would be before I got a chance to eat again. Because there was no possible way I’d go back to that dining room. They could starve me for all I cared.
“Are you full?” Leif asked standing up and stacking our plates on the tray.
“Yes,” that was the only reply he was going to get from me.
He turned to leave then stopped. His shoulders heaved with a heavy sigh and he looked back at me.
“What can I do to prove to you that I do love you? Anything except letting you go; because I can’t. I’ll do whatever else you ask of me. I want you to accept this. Us. Just tell me.”
I stared back at him and I knew what I could do to make my eternity more bearable. “Release Wyatt to a transporter. Don’t keep him here.”
“If I can convince my father to release Wyatt to a transporter then you will believe I love you and you’ll let this work between us?”
I felt the lump rise up in my throat at the promise I was about to make. I’d be throwing away the small hope that Dank could save me from this. But Wyatt’s soul was at stake because of me. “Yes, if you hand Wyatt’s soul over to a transporter and I get to see this happen. Once I know it has happened and that his soul is where it belongs then I will stay with you. I’ll do whatever I can to make you happy. To make... us... happy.”