Union: Chapter 5

This chapter Rated PG-13 for violence

The wild, cruel beast is not behind the bars of the cage. He is in front of it.
-Axel Munthe

There she stood, silhouetted against the city lights visible from her lone window, wrapped in the dark, as her arms wrapped around her abdomen, waiting for him, waiting for release from the cage.  She was beautiful, full, alive, impossible, and very pregnant.

It stopped Vincent mid-stride.

Shocked still with Caroline’s words reliving in him - “...you will save her and what she’s been keeping safe...” - the Cave, what Catherine had wanted to tell him - “...there are so many gifts...”   - the past came into focus with terrible clarity.

From across the room, Catherine hesitated for a breath, just that, and then ran to him with more grace than should have been possible.  In a moment she was in his arms, her scent surrounding him.

This must be a dream.

Please let this not be a dream.

“Vincent,” she said with wonder, looking up to him, and then with conviction, her hands already pulling on his, “we can’t stay here....” Her words reverberated, sending him to action.  She was right.  Already he could hear the guards on the stairs.

Vincent had heeded the warnings, the impressions he had sensed as he ascended Above.  Maybe Caroline had been able to help him after all, or perhaps it was Catherine through their renewed connection, but whatever the cause - stealth, his instinct urged.  A frontal attack had not worked before.  The Beast inside him wanted release, to feel blood in his hands, but it waited.  The Beast hunted, silently drawn to his mate, and to something else, something that lived on the edge of his perception, more…. It perplexed him, this new depth to their Bond, but he had pushed aside all extraneous thought in his haste to find her.  Now he understood.

When he had reached the tower, directly in midtown, Vincent watched, waited, assessing the defenses.  It was clear whoever held Catherine possessed wealth and power, and with it, safeguards and weapons.
It wouldn’t be enough.

Vincent had lured the first guard out of the building and beyond the security camera’s range with stones thrown against a door.  The armed man died, easily, cleanly, without a sound.  Vincent avoided the camera’s gaze, and then cut the electrical lines inside, disabling all cameras and trip sensors.  He killed two more guards as cleanly as the first, on his way to her room so far above.  It took time, too much time.

With Catherine’s hand now clasped in his, they crept into the empty hallway and quickly away from the cell.  Vincent could hear the guards in the closer, northern stair, but they were still many floors away.   Catherine heard them too, and rushed with Vincent towards the further one.  They passed the ascending elevators.  The guards were converging on the floor.  They must have realized it was an escape.  The couple entered the stairwell quietly.  Vincent could hear guards below them here as well. Damn, we need more time, he cursed to himself.

There was no way down.  Catherine took charge and drew him upward.  Maybe they could hide, or double back, or even get to another building, anything.  There were precious few floors above them.  They tried each door; all were locked.  Desperation and strength broke open the last floor’s door, and they entered the hallway.

The wood-paneled hall and frosted glass windows recalled the passing shadows of Catherine’s former life.  Thick carpets easily masked their movements.  To their right, a lavishly carved table stood sentinel in the hallway, on it an expensive tray with the remnants of a dinner: stained cloth napkin and an ornate steak knife lain across a bloody plate. Catherine picked up the knife almost without thinking.

She heard Vincent’s deep growl, closer to a vibration than a sound, before she saw a large metal door open.  It was him, the man.  Something, maybe it was his suit or his imperious air, told her this was the twisted psychopath who had her tortured for information, who imprisoned her for half a year, who wanted her baby. She had never seen him.  He was smaller than she had imagined.

Vincent’s warning grew louder as they both pressed the man back into the darkened room he had come from, his office.  An imposing modern desk dominated the middle of the room.  It looked onto blank monitors.  Only the red glow of the back-up lights and the grey of the coming dawn illuminated the space.  He, the man, must have been coming to take her away again.  The idea of it killed her fear, and her anger propelled her forward, ahead of a snarling Vincent.

The man never took his eyes from Vincent.

“So, you’ve come to me...finally.” The man literally licked his lips with nervous anticipation. Catherine was now sure this was her captor.  His voice had taunted her, tortured her.

“I have seen your face a thousand times. I’ve watched you.  I’ve watched you kill…” - his slow statements and low voice were everything she dreaded when he spoke to her - “…but the tapes did not do you justice.  I never dreamed.... She never told me you were so magnificent.”

The man backed further into the room as Catherine and Vincent pushed in.

“She would never tell me anything about you,” he accused her, as if they should be known to one another, as if she would tell this man their secrets...as if the Beast, the protector, wouldn’t destroy this man at his first opportunity.

“You are truly a wonder,” he said with astonishment and then, with an air of achievement, “My son will also be magnificent.”

Catherine answered with a voice that lived low and graveled with lack of use, “The child is his son, his and mine…never yours.”

The man finally, almost distastefully, glanced at her, and then at the knife.  He unconsciously began to twirl a gold ring on his finger. “You are a conduit,” he dismissed her, his scorn clear, “the means to bring my son life, but soon he will be free of you, and you will no longer be necessary.”  Looking to the knife in her hand, he kept at her, “Are you truly ready to use that, Ms. Chandler...in cold blood? Are you ready to kill…to feel life running into your hands?”

Catherine hesitated for a moment, no more.

“No, you can’t, can you?” The man smirked at her, at her perceived weakness. “Of course you can’t.  You are afraid of your power.  You work for ‘Justice’...and it is slow.”

She lowered the knife just a fraction. “We are leaving here, now...” she uttered, stony and threatening.

The man shook his head, dismissing her again with such certainty. “You can’t kill me.  That’s why I own this city, your boss, judges, police.  I own the drugs, the dealers, the clinics,” he boasted triumphant, “I own buildings and every business in them.  There isn’t a transaction in this city I don’t have some stake in.  I own all this because I am strong enough to use the weapons that are placed within my grasp.  That has always been the failing of the weak, afraid to use the weapons they have.”

He didn’t fear them.  By the look in his eyes he felt nothing but his own superiority. “The child was placed in my grasp.” He nodded with his truth.

“Sir? Sir, are you there?” a worried voice abruptly called from an intercom on the desk. “The woman is gone.”  The man turned from Catherine, turned from them.  His hand reached for a button to call his people.
Vincent didn’t react, so swift the deed done.  Catherine made no outward sign of her intentions.  Only Vincent could have been aware of the quake which shook her soul.  Why didn’t he stop her, he would ask himself a hundred times over in the days to come, and the only answer...I see thee better -- in the Dark

With horrible certainty her bare feet moved, silent on the carpet.  She strode behind the man.  Huntress-like, she grasped his black hair between her slender fingers, pulling it back, stretching him.  She tilted the man’s head back - her sacrifice.  Without hesitation, she brought her weapon up.  Vincent saw it held above her for an instant, the red of the emergency lights reflected on its blade, and then she thrust the knife down, piercing her tormentor’s throat, again, and again, twisting and ripping.  His Catherine, who had held a dying child in her loving arms, who had laughed with him, who had shared music and the night with him, who had loved him back into life, was now more like him than ever.  This wasn’t a gun almost by accident going off, saving others.  This was gore and blood and savagery, all the things his better self prayed to keep from her.  Now she was truly a killer, a goddess of life and death, Sekhmet unleashed, and the predator that lived within the forest of his heart howled in recognition of her.

For what must have been just a handful of seconds but seemed like an eternity of immobility, Vincent watched Catherine murder, watched as her captor’s blood splattered her hands, spilled down her arms, staining her, but, finally, in his death throes, the man was able to turn in her grasp and push her back.  She stumbled into Vincent’s arms, the blade finally falling to the floor.

Hideous gurgling was all the sound the dying man made, his voice destroyed, his blood drowning his rapid breath.  She must have hit everything vital, artery and vein, the man’s throat a gushing black-red ruin.  His hands reached to try to stop it, but Vincent knew nothing would stop his death. The man turned to them before he collapsed with a soft thud on the rich carpet, his legs twitching in a Death’s dance.

“It wasn’t fear,” she said, a whispered breath to the dying man on the floor. “I wasn’t afraid of you.”  She stopped for a moment, trying to understand herself, and then she did.

“It was mercy.”

Blood pooled around the almost-corpse as the carpet drank his life away.

*I see thee better -- in the Dark -- by Emily Dickinson

Union: Chapter 6

"There's rosemary, that's for remembrance; pray you love, remember..." -Ophelia, Hamlet, Act IV scene 7, Shakespeare

Catherine stopped halfway through the service tunnel.

They were still far from the core chambers and had not yet encountered any of the sentries.  They were alone; in a city of eight million people, they were utterly alone.  Their Bond drew cold round Vincent’s heart.

“Catherine?” His hand still held hers.  He looked back, her fear feeding his.  “You’re frightened?”

She had kept pace with him until now, remarkably, given her state outward and inward.  Her need to leave the building where she had been held seemed enough to carry her down countless flights of stairs, enough to get her here, but no farther.

They had escaped with relative ease.  The guards, who came too late to save their master, had run at the sight of the blood-soaked woman and a monster standing over the body of a dead man.  It had surprised Vincent then, not to have to fight them, but isn’t that the way of tyrants? In life, they rule with fear.  In death, their spell is broken; their followers scatter like ash on the wind.

The couple had descended carefully down the stairs.  The building seemed deserted, but they were still vigilant, emerging into the alley where Vincent had gained entry to the tower.  Catherine scarcely glanced at the body near the doorway.  Her eyes remained locked forward, her bare feet stepped over the broken-necked guard.  That had frightened Vincent, almost more than her killing.  This was not her.  What had they done to her?

For a moment they had hesitated in the alley, on the edge of morning. The dawn was here.   The city, especially this close to midtown, was coming to busy life, but Vincent realized, maybe for the first time, he had no fear of the sunlight.  He simply did not care.   If he had to walk with her down the middle of Broadway at noon he would do it.  Catherine was with him and she was safe, and the tiny consciousness that he felt just beneath hers was safe as well. Damn anyone who would dare get in their way!

He had led her down into a maintenance tunnel that was somewhat sheltered from the morning traffic.  They descended into the earth and made their way over pipes and into the subway access tunnels.  It would take miles to get home.  Down the curving and bending byways they roamed, having to take a longer route than he would have liked.  There weren’t easy paths around Sixth Avenue with its many Metro lines.  It wasn’t safe to put her on the subway with her so fragile, not to mention covered in blood, so they walked.
Vincent probed their Bond as they traveled further from her prison, but she held close to herself.  He didn’t wish to question her.  Not yet.  He wanted her home before she had to confront any memories.  So they simply made their quiet way back to the main Tunnels, until her fear rose, a sudden storm, catching him off guard.

She was a tiny creature caught in a net, her breathing labored; her eyes darted, waiting for the hunter to come. “I’m frightened, Vincent....”

“Of what, Catherine?  You’re safe....” He choked on the words.  “You are safe,” for now.

“No, I just….” She looked into his eyes, “I can’t….”  She shook her head. “I’ve forgotten...I...It’s my fault....”  Catherine let go of his hands and walked a little away.  She looked back where they had come, and then walked past him.  She was searching, but for what?

She turned again and opened her hands to him, her stained hands, beseeching him for an answer. “...I got lost, and now I don’t know how….”  Vincent realized this was why she could walk over a dead body and feel nothing.  Her soul was lost.

She looked around the tunnel, panic clipping her movements to a tremble.  She grasped her head.  “How can I see them, Vincent?” She asked, her voice rising to a panic. “I am nothing anymore...It’s been so long….”
She looked to him, her eyes wide, begging him. “Please tell me who I am…” she whispered.

I wish to, Catherine..., but how far she was from the woman he had known.  A lifetime ago… and only a few yesterdays, a knife attack had brought her into his life.  She had healed, strengthened herself, and after, she was everything, beautiful, stately, and infinitely caring.  She was suits and sweaters, silk dresses, perfection, and at her core she was strong, loving.  She was Catherine.  Now he beheld the woman he loved.  She had no makeup, her hair longer and more unkempt than he had ever known it, her body curved and heavy with his child.  She stood in the half light of the access tunnel clad in a bloodied gown that spoke of lonely days, hatred, and helplessness.  No, she was not who she had been, and he was to blame.

 ...in thy orisons, all my sins remember’d. *

She truly was lost in the months they were separated.  She had once saved him from a cage where he had lain imprisoned.  He had been confined a few days only, and it had nearly killed him.  She had been captive over half a year, and she had kept herself and the child within her alive, but at what cost? His weighted heart sank watching her suffering, but his sadness and shame were not what she needed.

He would fight for her, fight anyone, even his own guilt.

He took her red hands into his own.  How many times had she done this for him? She had accepted the monstrous in him, the Beast, always; loved him, always.  “I promise, Catherine, you will remember.  You are strong.  We will be together, and I will help you.  Everyone will help you.  Our love will be your guide from the dark places.”

He looked down at his lethal hands holding her blood-stained ones, choosing words that had anchored him time and again when he felt himself drifting into the dark. “These are my hands, Catherine….”

He could feel a small but calming peace take root as she remembered her words echoed from his lips.  She was his, all she was, even now, especially now, and he took possession.  Vincent understood, and he remembered.  It was enough for her to keep going, for the time being.

After a moment, he took off his cloak and wrapped it around her.  It would conceal the blood until they were safely home.

*Shakespeare - Hamlet, Act III, scene 1

Union: Chapter 7

“Everything flows, nothing stands still.”
-Heraclitus from Plato’s Cratylus

“Dear God, Peter, we are in a fine one,” Father fell, more than sat down, in his desk chair, and rubbed the bridge of his nose.  A tension headache was coming on.

“Well, this certainly wasn’t what I was expecting to do today.” Peter dropped his bag on the old wooden desk in Father’s chamber. “But, Catherine seems healthy and the baby is good, so...I’ll take these blood samples, and let you know what I find.”

When Catherine and Vincent appeared in the Tunnels, the pipes rang out with their homecoming.  It sounded so joyous, like an answered prayer to Father, and to all those that crowded around the couple as they made their way home.  The first message, near Central Park, the second on from the West side, then a third, all proclaiming Vincent had found Catherine and was bringing her home, but there was a...hesitancy...about the messages.   It wasn’t until later that Father realized why he took his physician’s bag with him.  Many seemed to sense the wrongness, the fear. When his old legs finally intercepted them near the Whispering Gallery, he immediately knew something was wrong, but couldn’t, for that moment, recognize it.  Father took stock of them, Vincent, grave and anxious, held Catherine up around her shoulders.  She looked ill, a barefooted refugee wrapped in Vincent’s cloak, her eyes glazed, and she…shuffled, for lack of a better word.  However it wasn’t until little Eric ran up to her that what should have been obvious, but couldn’t be believed, became plain.

“Catherine, I’ve missed you so much!” Eric cried with a child’s eager love, and tried to hug her, but her body, before hidden by Vincent’s cloak, was revealed by the boy’s actions to be very large with child.   Eric simply couldn’t get his arms around her, and he pulled back.  There was a gasp from someone in the crowd, and Catherine began to shake, and then, fail, her eyes rolling, her body faltering.  Vincent swept up her suddenly limp body without a word, and moved towards the hospital chamber.  It didn’t escape anyone’s notice when his cloak fell away she was covered with blood.  Eric started to cry, but Father saw that Brooke was there to comfort him.

Peter was summoned, and after their initial exam, the two doctors left, to allow Mary and Vincent time to help Catherine clean herself and rest.  The men waited, sipping cold and bitter tea.  The pipes were almost silent now.  The Tunnels entire held its breath, waiting for word on how Vincent and Catherine fared...and about the child.  What was he going to tell them?  What on Earth was going on?

“She’s resting now,” Mary said.  She entered the room, wrapping her shawl a little closer around her body.  “Vincent is sitting with her. She’s...clean, and clothed.  Vincent insists the blood wasn’t hers, but that’s all he told me.”

“He told us the child is his,” Father contradicted her.  “And, now...,” Father picked up his glasses twirling them in his fingers,”...what?”  He nearly threw the glasses down in frustration, and grabbed his throbbing head.

Why did he have to always be the one to chart the course?  Why did he have the responsibility?  The years were weighing, and if he made the wrong decision…he had so, before…

Father sighed, he had taken it on, all of it, thirty some years ago, when he first held his extraordinary son in his arms.  Every decision from that point was colored with his Vincent’s well-being in mind.

He pinched his nose. The headache was getting worse.

“Well...,” Father said, decisions made, speaking to Mary, “just tell everyone that they are all right, but nothing else until I talk to Vincent.  I believe he and I need to have a conversation, one that now seems long overdue.”

Father got up unsteadily, his entire body aching with tension, and made his slow, labored way back to the hospital chamber.  He pulled back the curtain.  Vincent sat silent, elbows on his knees, hands together as if in prayer next to the bed that Catherine laid upon.  Clad now in Tunnel clothes, she was turned towards the man who had searched so long, her sleeping hand protectively curled around her belly.  Vincent looked weary, but he wouldn’t sleep, Father knew. Not if there was a chance she would need him.

“Vincent,” Father called to him.

Vincent awoke from his thoughts, “Father...”

“You should rest now,” a familiar refrain.  They were both tired of it.

“You’ve come to ask me questions.  I have been waiting,” Vincent closed his eyes, as if bracing for the onslaught.

Am I that person? Father asked himself.  Do I persecute him so? Even if I believe it is for his good? He stood next to his son.

“Vincent, I am not here to...please son...I just need information.  So I can help you...so I can help Catherine.” Father took his son’s hand.  It weighed heavy within his grasp.  Vincent wouldn’t look at him. His eyes were open now, but he looked only into the past.

“I didn’t know, Father,” Vincent told him, anticipating the first question. “She was going to tell me of the child, the night she disappeared.  I am sure of it now, but until this very morning, I could never dream...” Vincent’s voice faded into silence.

Father glanced over at the sleeping Catherine.  “She seems nearly ready to, uh,” he glanced down, nervously, “…to give birth.  Do you know how far along...?”

Vincent breathed out, a small derisive laugh, “Yes, I know exactly, ‘how far’...it was the Cave, when I was lost to myself.  That is when...our child…was conceived. It was...the only time...”

“Dear God, that was, what, seven months ago...,” seven and a half, perhaps?  No more. Yet she measured full term, the baby low, ready for birth.  “Are you certain it's yours?” Was the next question about to leave his lips, but his son’s resolute and stony eyes brooked no argument on that score.  Vincent’s child would be born soon.

“Tell me son.”

“She saved my life, that night, when I was no longer...,” Vincent began, “somehow she brought me back, and now...? What have I brought her?  That criminal kept her because of me.  Because he saw me!  He wanted our child for his own.  He would have discarded her after.”  Tears began to fall from him.  “She was there so long...  She has scars Father. Cuts that cannot be seen, but they are there. She killed him, to save us,” fury and despair naked in his voice, “she killed him, as I would have.  Her anger, her guilt seem...fathomless.  I fear how...,” he voice barely a whisper above tears, “...what have I done?”

“No, son,” Father stopped him, “you are just a man, the man who loves her.”  So many times he had counseled lovers, fathers in the same position, although he never quite believed he would be doing the same for his own son. “She chose you.  Mary, Peter, and I, the whole community will try to help in any way we can.  I cannot say that this wasn’t something I feared, for you..for both of you, but I promise, wounds can heal.  You brought her to us once to heal, and she will do so again.”

“No, Father!”  Dread and anger resurrecting his voice. “You know what I fear!” He stood and pulled him away from Catherine’s sleeping form.  He would not allow her to hear his distress if he could help it, Father knew.

Father followed the terrified man, and once they were far enough away that Vincent could be certain his words could not disturb her, he continued.  “You of all people should at least speak
truth to me! You have instilled...intimated...enough in the past.”  A flare of wrath, “Paracelsus’ words..,” but then, despair.

“Paracelsus lied to you, Vincent! We have no idea how you were born.”

“And if his words were true?” He opened his hands to his father, and then curled them in fists. “Those words burn in my memory.  ‘...ripped your way...,’” he couldn’t finish.  “Could I have condemned her to...”

“Vincent, John was a liar!  Anna died because of him, not because of you, and your mother...” he could say no more on that, so he continued on, “If Catherine has been able to carry your child this far, we must have faith that a child was meant to happen.  We must have faith.  She is strong...”

“I told her that, that she’s strong, but...,” his breath was shaking with tears. “This last year, it is too much for anyone...even her.  It is overwhelming.  She is drowning, Father.” He sagged under the weight of it, and sobbed.  “She is so lost...”

Father moved to embrace his son.  “You were lost to us too, once...and she brought you home.”


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