Novel Bits- Robert confronts the past...now with dreams!

Ah, the first public posting of my novel. It was between this or a one-act. Neither is really much better than the other.

I have been working on this novel off and on for about a year now. Can't tell you much about it, that would be a bad idea. I can tell you this: It has vampires and werewolves in a steampunk environment. Airships, pirates, guns, adventure in the air, this book will have it all and then some! Also, romance. Duh.

This little bit is a dream sequence plus a tiny insight into Robert. Robert is around 500 years old and for the last 300 years has been living as an airship pirate trying, stupidly, to out run his former maker. As a warning, there are spoilers present in this bit, so, if you actually want to wait another five years for the novel to be done, edited, and published, then I suggest you don't spoil it for yourself now.

On with the show!

Robert looked down at the trio. Grace and Liza were in their own little world, chatting away as they always did. Christophe was by the river bank, a hand to his lips, no doubt contemplating some plan he had hatched over lunch. Looking at the scene unfold was like watching a moment out of time that he had long ago forgotten. Without being able to stop himself, a smile tugged at the corners of Robert's lips and for the first time in a long time he found himself truly happy. It had been centuries since he had visited the more pleasant bits of his memory. As his smile grew he turned around, trying to remember what happened next and to hopefully find a memory he particularly loved.

Except as he turned he wasn't greeted with the smiling faces of loving friends. There was no beautiful river lit with moonlight from above. There were no friends to laugh with, no one to call out to him. No one to come to his rescue. Instead what hit him instantly was a set of cold fingers wrapping themselves around his neck in a vice-like grip, lifting him high in the air and shattering the illusion around him.

A snarling face appeared before him and Robert shut his eyes against it. He refused to see it but the owner of the hand had other plans; the fingers tightened and suffocated Robert, forcing him to open his eyes and confront his attacker. First all he saw were the long, blood drenched canines, and as his eyes traveled higher and higher he saw a face that he has always tried to out-run. It was the face of Christophe, his most beloved mentor, contorted in the horrors of anger and his eyes flashed full of jealousy. It was a look Robert had only seen once and had tried to shake off of him for year and years, yet he never had been able to get rid of it completely.

When the realization struck him that this was the man that had once meant the world to him, Robert instantly tried to break his grasp. He didn't want to be there. He didn't want to see this face. Instead, as he tugged and tugged at the hand, Christophe's cold fingers closed in tighter and tighter until they threatened to completely shut down his throat. Grasping for air, Robert fell lifeless in his hand and gave up the struggle.

Slowly Christophe pulled Robert to him, making his voice low and dangerous as he whispered, “She will die.”

Before Robert even had a second to contemplate his meaning, Christophe had tossed him to the floor with a flick of his wrist. For all his usual fight, Robert crumbled on the ground and gasped like a fish out of water for a bit of air. Slowly, as the air filled his aching lungs, Robert lifted himself up onto his hands and turned his head around, growling deep in his throat, but there was no one behind him. Christophe had vanished just as quickly as he had appeared.

He let his nerves uncoil. He let his face relax and began to take in his surroundings. No longer was he sitting near the river. His friends had all vanished. Below him was a well polished wood floor; it seemed familiar and yet strange at the same time. And then he spotted something that he was sure hadn't been there a moment before.

It started innocently enough. One small drop of red against the brown of the wooden floor. One drop led to two. Then two led to a whole pool. As he gazed at the pool a familiar smell hit his nose and instantly he recognized what it was. Blood. He stared, transfixed as more blood fell and pooled with the rest.

Afraid of what he would find, tugging at his memory for clues as to what would surly follow the pool of blood, Robert turned his gaze upward and recoiled away from the sight. Hanging from the balcony above him, her neck tied to the railing by a reddened piece of rope, was what he assumed was Liza. He tried to tear his eyes away from the sight, tried to repress the memory, but seeing her hanging there as if it were all happening again was enough to keep him firmly rooted in the present. He stared at her for a long moment, drinking in the sight again and again, until she started to morph before his eyes.

Her hair, her beautiful long black hair that fell like a sheet to her back, slowly turned brown and curled itself shorter and shorter. The beautiful gentle curves of her body slowly filled themselves out and her long dancer like limbs shortened themselves before his eyes. And lastly, the most beautiful of her features, her pale and creamy skin that was unmarked and pristine, turned tan and rugged looking as if it had seen many days in the sun. The beautiful and fair Liza, a girl that had always been likened to a china doll, had turned into the tan and rough daughter of a farmer.

Robert wasn't sure who she was at first. He couldn't place the body or the colorings of her skin. It was almost as if she were a totally foreign person to him. Then slowly the corpse raised its head and a pair of cold, dead, green eyes looked down at him and pierced him to his core. He knew this girl and as he pulled away from her, he tripped over himself and was forced to watch the abomination attempt to move.
“No. Why?” He breathed.

In a breathless, rattling voice it responded, raising its arms towards him. “Save me, Robert.”

Shutting his eyes, he tried to block it out. “No.”

Skeletal arms wrapped themselves around him and bound him to her. The smell of death and decay hit his senses. He struggled against the arms but they held him fast and as he turned to face his captor he startled himself awake. Covered in a cold sweat he breathed heavily and peered around him in the dark, trying to gain his bearings. Vic was next to him, her curly hair spread across the pillow like a halo and her arms wrapped around him protectively.

He needed out.

Slowly and tenderly Robert uncoiled the arm that was wrapped around his neck and placed it on the pillow next to Vic. The girl murmured something in her sleep. Whatever it was that she had thought and said aloud in that moment put a smile on her face as she turned over. It was something that upon hearing it made Robert frown and turn away from the bed with his sleeping visitor and cross the room to the large window that looked out over the bay.

He stared out those windows and tried to forget the terrors that had visited them. He tried to forget the cruel face of his mentor. He tried to forget the body of his dead lover. More than anything he tried to forget the girl who had asked him, in that breathless and horrible manner, to rescue him from something.

In order to keep these thoughts from revisiting him he forced himself to think of the particulars. To him there was no doubt in his mind that this was indeed a prophetic dream. Only those dreams were this vivid. Yet everything about it was wrong. For the first time he had encountered a dream that was filled with people he knew. It held scenes from his memory that had been dug up to send a strong message to him, something that had never happened before. There were no riddles to really unravel, no poems or vague images to haunt his brain for weeks; instead all he had were terrible memories and something new to stuff further and further into the back of his mind. The whole ordeal sent shiver after shiver down his spine.

From her curled up sleeping positing on the bed, Vic muttered something once again and Robert instinctively turned his ear to catch what she was saying. She was so innocent, awake and asleep. More than anything Robert wanted to curl back up against her in the bed and fall back asleep, forgetting about the dream until morning. He wanted her to make him forget; forget not just the dream, but his whole past and all the things that lurked there. When they were together he forgot those things, old memories got replaced with new and brighter ones, and he could truly be at peace with himself which was something he had long ago forgotten existed. When he was with her, wrapped up with her, watching her smile or kissing her tender, soft, beautiful lips he didn't want, didn't need, to run anywhere.

Even with all these fond thoughts running through his head, he stayed put. Slowly he broke his attentions from her and went back to the window, closing his eyes as he rested his head against the cool glass. Slowly from the depth of his mind, the image of the familiar corpse appeared before him and he didn't struggle to tune it out. It was time, finally, to attempt to face those things that he had been trying to out-run.

He knew beyond a doubt that this was a warning. Christophe had always been his enemy since the day that Liza had been taken from him. He was the entire reason that Robert had been touring around this planet in a run down airship. And he knew that for centuries Christophe had been chasing as much as he could. The only thing that Robert had always hoped for was that he was one step ahead of him. And he always had been until they finally had caught each other up the other day.

Now that they had met, now that they both saw what they were up against, Robert knew there was nothing stopping Christophe from finding him again. He had caught a whiff of Vic when she had intercepted his thoughts earlier that day. Christophe now knew what he knew. That Vic was dear to him, that she had wormed her way into his heart, and that he would do anything to protect her. Now Christophe had the unfair advantage.

Robert pushed himself away from the window and paced around the room as quietly as he could. When Christophe had found out about Liza, there had been no stopping his rage; the scene he had remembered from the river had not ended well. Everyday there was another fight, another depressed talking to, and Christophe had always tried to exert his power over Robert. Yet one day Robert had grown tired of the arguments, of the tears and power plays, and on that day he had been led to Liza's final resting place.

There as no doubt in his mind that Christophe would attempt to do something like that again. Knowing what he did, Robert was sure of it; he probably had a wounded ego that Robert hadn't come rushing back to him, that he had now, twice, chosen women over the man who made him what he was now. And in knowing this fact, Robert knew that there was only once choice left to him.

At all costs, no matter what it meant, he had to keep Vic safe from Christophe.