A Secret In Your Throat

Chapter 4

I felt as though he had punched me in the stomach. All the grief and the guilt, and the love I felt for Mikey, the man I considered a brother... was for this? Gerard had taken him, let me think he was dead. I grieved for Mikey, even up until that moment. I carried them all - Gee, Mikey, Lisbeth and Ray - like a flame in my heart.
I said through my teeth, "You took him. You let me think he was dead. This whole time I... I wished I could die because I failed you but I couldn't. Not yet. I had another promise to keep." I stood up and backed away from him, angrily.
This was not my Gerard. Gerard would never have done something so cruel to me. This creature was amused. Calculating.
His hands were reached out toward me, "No, Rae that's not... I took him, yes and I didn't tell you. But I wanted you both to see that this life, this afterlife is not what we thought it was, if you make what you want out of it. If you make it count."
I laughed at this, "Make it count? Herding humans through feeding camps like cattle? You think I don't know what your kind is doing?"
"No!" He pleaded, "I'm not! We aren't. Mikey and I, and... and the others... we hunt bad people, Rae. We go to sanctuary cities and find the murderers, the rapists. We free those human camps when we can. We kill highway gangs. We kill and drink from the worst humans in this world, so sanctuaries can stay sanctuaries. What does it matter if you're safe from me, if a man stalks you in an alley with a knife?"
I wasn't ready to forgive him. Tears of anger welled in my eyes.
"You need to go, Gerard, before I call the guard. I hear the UV bullets are as good as a stake."
His mouth was slightly open. "I did this for you. I snuck into Seattle. I came for you. I want us to live forever, Rae. Together."
"I still have a promise to keep." I said between my teeth, "And right now I'm angry enough to do it. Get out, Gerard. Don't come back."
He looked as though I'd slapped him. He stood, and went to the window. Before climbing through it he said softly, "I am so very sorry that I hurt you. I didn't think of the promises you made... the bond you had with us both. It seems so trite to me now. Unimportant. But I forget that it's not so, with you. I forget what it's like to be human, and to cling to those things. I know, lonely as you've been in your life, that you were forever changed by our survival and our defeats. But I love you, Rae. That burns hot in my heart, and I... will never forget it. Think about it. Try to forgive an overeager lover." His eyes met mine, my will starting to crumble, and he dropped out of sight.
***
Lisbeth screamed, and we all woke with a start. Gerard's arms were at my waist, as we slept chastely face to face in an abandoned motel room near Topeka, Kansas.
Two weeks had passed since Gerard had wrought that promise from me, and the transition from outsider to his partner had been easy and silent. No one had alluded to it. It was as though they expected it.
It was twilight, and someone was beating on the door. We all scrambled for our stakes, backing into a semicircle around the door.
The terrifying shrieks of the undead filled our ears.
As soon as the door had been broken open, and the three vampires started to spill inside, I was ready. My stake was the first to find its mark - I had a talent for throwing them end over end and piercing flesh, and even if I missed their heart, the pain slowed them enough for someone to finish them.
These three were mindless, nothing like the smarter, more sophisticated vampires who we took to be the coven leaders. These were easy to slay.
But wherever the mindless were, the leaders would be eventually.
We threw our bags into the van and tore out across the plains, Lis and I in the back, the first aid kit in my lap.
"Their damn nails are like glass." I mumbled, trying to clean the three deep gashes on her arm while Mikey drove us across the dirt roads like a bat out of hell. "Maybe we should go west, find a place in the mountains in Colorado. Rest for awhile."
"The heat is getting old." Mikey agreed.
Lisbeth gritted her teeth as I cleaned the wounds thoroughly. "This shouldn't need stitches, but I'll bandage it and give you some of the amoxicillin to keep any infection away." As I worked, placing the dry bandage on her arm, wrapping and cutting the tape, Gerard watched me.
I glanced up at him, "What?"
He shrugged, "Nothing better to watch."
I half smiled as I packed my kit back up, and Gerard climbed into the back with us. Lis gave me a grin and a pat on the head in thanks, climbed into Gerard's abandoned passenger seat, then shut off the interior light of the van just as Mikey found I-70, and we turned west.
I sat on the floor beside Gerard, under his arm, my hand on the knee of his torn jeans. He cradled my head and tenderly kissed my hair, while we watched Kansas disappear behind us.
***
We followed signs to an abandoned ski lodge buried deep in the mountains, quite a ways outside of Denver. After dragging the bodies from the cabin to bury them in shallow graves, and building up the fire, we found the place cozy. It was a sharp contrast to the desert heat.
Living in places where bodies had lain, decomposing, was becoming disturbingly normal. Mundane.
I felt safer here than I had anywhere else. We were remote, and nobody would think that four humans would hole up here, in this forsaken place.
It was cheerful. We were able to spend our nights sleeping peacefully now, and our days awake. I sat with Gerard reading for long afternoons. We talked, sometimes for hours, about the books we read in the vast library at the lodge. We had some semblance of privacy in a cabin with four rooms. We were able to shower whenever we wanted. The gas heat meant the showers and rooms were always warm, even if the power went out for awhile. It was nothing at all to take the van down the hill to the lodge and steal the food there - much of which we had put into the big commercial freezer to make it last.
We played games. We rested. We sharpened stakes and trained ourselves - whatever that was worth - to use them more skillfully.
I had not spent a night with Gerard in his room. Our relationship had been loving, soft, but chaste. There was so much I needed to say, before I could be intimate with him, but he seemed in no hurry - despite the fact that we could be discovered any day. Every night I felt like something was stuck in my throat, and he would smile and kiss me good night, as though he knew I just couldn't.
One night, a month after we arrived at the cabin, I grasped his hand as he turned to go to his room. My heart was hammering with fear, but I knew if I didn't tell him everything now, I'd never be able to.
"Can we talk?"
He blinked a few times. We had just been drinking tea in front of the fire alone and talking for hours.
"In... your room. I don't want anyone else... to walk in."
He almost dragged me to his room in his excitement, closing the door behind us and pulling me tightly against him, kissing me with so much enthusiasm that I almost forgot that I really had things to talk about.
I pulled away a little, his scorching breath still in my mouth. I felt him everywhere. There was nothing that was not Gerard. His hands at my waist, in my hair, consuming me with love.
"Gee," I said, "Not yet. I have things... there's things you need to know."
"I know that I love you, Rae." he breathed, and I felt my heart jump into my throat, "I know that I love this brave girl in my arms. This beautiful, strong, brilliant woman."
I dropped my arms, my stomach suddenly feeling like stone.
He drew away, looking suddenly unsure. "I thought... that you... loved me, too." he confessed, my silence spurring him to babble, "Rae if you don't, or if you need more time I will wait. Even if we die tomorrow, god you have to know I wouldn't regret waiting."
I put my fingers against his lips. "No," I said quietly, "That's not it. I... I love you so much, Gee. I do. That's why I... I need to tell you."
He frowned, but pulled me to the bed. He kicked off his boots, but sat down fully clothed. I sat beside him, facing him, holding his hands.
"I'm... I'm not a woman, Gee. Rae is not the name I was born with. I don't identify that way. I never felt really like a woman. My whole life I just felt... really neither."
He blinked a few times, then said softly, as though he had understood all along, "You're sort of fluid, aren't you?"
I nodded, my hands shaking a little in his. He clasped them tightly, reassuringly. He looked at me, at my small, androgynous body and my clothes. He ran his fingers through my very short hair, then smiled and cupped my face, "I don't care about that. Your gender doesn't matter to me. I love YOU. Your gender at birth, your biological sex, it doesn't matter to me. I'm so sorry for all the times... god I've been misgendering you for months. I wish you hadn't been afraid. You didn't need to be."
I looked down at my knees, "Look, I... I hadn't seen my parents in two years before they died. They were not... very understanding. Not very kind. They didn't really disown me, but they said things like 'this is a phase', 'there's only two genders', said they'd pray for me to heal, refused to stop calling me by my dead name. They called me confused. I cannot live a lie, just because people I love are uncomfortable and unwilling to learn. There's no reason to be uncomfortable. I'm still me."
He took my face in both of his hands, and I was surprised to see tears sparkling in the eyes I loved. He was beaming at me, a smile so beautiful I thought my heart would break.
"You are so brave. I'm so, so touched that you shared this with me. That you trusted me. You can always trust in me, Rae."
And I believed him. With all my heart, I believed in him. Moments later I was kissing him, climbing into his lap, and that feeling of him everywhere, wrapped around me was so intense, that I gave in. I gave him everything.