by Tim O'Rourke
During this time, I was not visited in my cell by Trent or any of the others. It was like they had all abandoned me. Alone in the dark, I would fight the urge to scream over and over and over again that I was innocent. But I knew there was little point, because they knew I was innocent, too. And as I mulled over the events of what had taken place, it broke my heart to know that it had been Trent who had set me up. How much of a part the others played in those events I didn’t know. But what I did know for sure was it was Trent who had been in the woods the day I went back to meet with Sidney Watson. I thought that I’d heard somebody following me in the woods but I’d dismissed it. Now I knew it had been Trent who had been there all along. How could I be so sure? Because he’d suggested that perhaps it was Sidney who was the father of my child as I’d been secretly meeting with the reporter. But I’d never told Trent or anyone else about my secret meetings with Sidney. So how else did Trent know, unless he’d been in the woods that day? Perhaps Trent had come back to Shade just a few hours earlier than the others? Maybe he’d been sent on ahead to check for vampires and it was during that time as he scouted the woods surrounding Shade that he’d overheard my conversation with Sidney. But why would he want to set me up? Why would he want me to take the blame for the murder of Veronica Cabal? Perhaps while spying on me in the woods and eavesdropping on my conversation with Sidney, Trent had noticed that I was pregnant? And if what Rea had said was true, and they were lovers again, then perhaps the sole reason for his betrayal of me and his denial that the baby was his, was because he had decided that he wanted to be with Rea more than he wanted to be with me.
As I lay in the dark, feeling the baby growing ever bigger inside of me, all of my suspicions seemed to fall into place. If it had been Trent who had shot Veronica, he would have had enough time to have taken her corpse from the station and run ahead of me back to Shade with it, planting the evidence in my room. Trent was strong enough and fast enough to carry the body. My return back to Shade that night had been slow-going as I’d felt tired, scared, and out of breath. My biggest mistake had been confessing my secrets to Calix. Because it was my confession – once Trent and the others found out about it – that played straight into their hands. It just went to pile more evidence on top of me. And the fact that I’d taken one of Calix’s guns only incriminated me further. Why had I been so stupid? Why had I trusted Calix? Why had I tried to help any of them?
The first of the contractions was crippling. At first I believed that while I’d been sleeping, someone had snuck up on me and stabbed me in the stomach with a red-hot poker. I cried out in pain as another contraction came. I suddenly felt too paralysed to move, the pain was intolerable and I struggled to breathe.
“Help me!” I wheezed. “Help me, the baby is coming!”
I heard a rattle of keys in the cell door. I glanced up from the mattress to see the nurse, if that’s what she was, rushing into the room. Then for the first time in days and possibly weeks, she spoke to me.
“Take deep breaths, Julia,” she said, drawing my knees up, then easing them apart. She hitched up the long black dress I wore and knelt between my legs at the end of the makeshift bed. As waves of crippling pain tore through me again and again, I threw my head back and cried out. I’d never felt such agony. I searched inside myself for those wispy tendrils of magic, hoping that in some way they could ease the pain I now felt. But what little of the magic I had left in me I could feel flowing into the baby that I was pushing out of me.
Through my tears of pain, I looked up and something caught my eye. I could see the end of a smouldering cigar winking on and off in the shadows in the corner of the cell. I knew Rea was there and she was watching me – she was watching me give birth to my baby.
“Keep pushing, Julia,” the nurse urged. “Just one more push.”
Grinding my teeth, screwing my eyes shut tight and gripping the mattress with my fists, I pushed down as hard as I could. Then, over the sound of my screams, I heard the cry of a baby.
“It’s a girl,” I heard the nurse say.
Even though I felt utterly exhausted, I held my arms out to take my baby from the nurse. “Give her to me,” I gasped. “Let me hold her.”
But instead of giving me my baby, the nurse turned away. Rea stepped from the shadows, a smouldering cigar jutting from the corner of her lips. Slowly, she took my daughter from the nurse.
I watched in fear and revulsion as Rea cradled the baby to her chest as if it was her own.
“Give her to me!” I cried out. “She’s mine.”
Ignoring my pleas of anguish, Rea turned her back on me and headed toward the cell door.
A feverish sweat broke out across my brow and I felt weak and faint. Mustering up the last of my energy, I called out once more and said, “Wait.” In the cell doorway, Rea turned and looked back at me. Fearing that I would never see my daughter again, I added, “Please let me do one thing before you go.”
“And what is that?” Rea asked, nursing my daughter against her chest.
“Let me choose her name,” I said.
Rea eyed me through the smoke that curled up from the end of the cigar. “And what would you like to call her?”
“Mila,” I whispered, before losing consciousness.
Chapter Ten
I had no idea how long I’d been unconscious for. But the first word across my lips, as I slowly came awake, was my daughter’s name.
“Mila,” I whimpered, the back of my throat feeling like I’d been gargling on broken glass. “Please give Mila back to me.”
On opening my eyes I could see that I was still lying on the mattress in the corner of the cell. Two fresh candles were burning from holders that had been placed on the floor. Someone had washed me and dressed me in a long, black dress. I felt a tremor in the pit of my stomach, and through my waking delirium I feared that perhaps I had yet to give birth and the baby was still inside of me. But as I lay still and grew accustomed once more to my surroundings, I knew that it was the faint tendrils of magic slowly stirring inside of me once more that I could feel. They were still not strong or powerful, but now that the baby had been born, it was only myself who soaked them up and fed off them. I dared to hope that perhaps those wisps of magic would soon grow strong enough so that I could use them once more to assist my escape from the crypt and rescue my daughter from Rea’s clutches.
I tried to sit up, but found it difficult to do so. I felt like I’d been repeatedly kicked in the stomach. I felt bruised and sore.
“Take it easy,” someone said.
I looked up to see Calix step out of the shadows and come toward me where I lay on the mattress. I was surprised to see him. How long had he been there watching me?
I found the strength to snap at him and said, “Go away.” But even as the words crossed my lips, I could see that Calix looked distraught and upset.
“I know I’m probably the last person you want to see, Julia,” Calix said, “and I don’t blame you for that. But please, you have to listen to me.”
“Why did you have to tell the others about Pariac and Theo? That was my secret. I trusted you.”
“I was angry and hurting…” Calix started.
“You’re hurting!” I hissed. “They’ve taken my baby from me. I thought we were friends, Calix.”
“So did I,” he shot back at me. “You promised that you would take me with you to meet with the vampires – we had a deal. And you stole one of my guns.”
“Is that what this is all about?” I gasped. “You snaked on me because I took one of your precious guns?”
Sounding exasperated, he said, “It has nothing to do with the gun.”
“So what does it have to do with?”
“I love you, Julia, I still love you,” he said. “But you fell in love with Trent…”
“So you did all of this because you are jealous?” I asked in disbelief. “Do you think any of this is going to make me love you?”
“You’re never going to love me, Ju
lia,” Calix said. “Girls like you don’t fall in love with blokes like me, they never do. I’m just a smart mouth, the jerk, the fall guy. But I haven’t come here to talk about us or how I might feel about you…”
“What then?”
“Something’s happened,” Calix said.
Detecting an urgency in his voice, I said, “What’s happened? Where is my baby, Mila?”
Hunkering down beside me on the floor, Calix said, “The vampires came to Shade – they came looking for their leader, Veronica Cabal. They can’t get in because of your magic but they intend on starving us out. Supplies in the village would only have lasted for so long, and now that Trent has returned with others, the supplies won’t last very long at all. So Rea and Trent have negotiated a truce with the vampires.”
I eyed him. “What kind of truce?”
Calix took a deep breath before saying, “Seeing as everyone believes that it was you who killed Veronica Cabal and it was you that started the war between the Beautiful Immortals in the first place, the vampires have agreed that if Trent and Rea sacrifice you – burn you at the stake – they will leave us in peace in Shade.”
“Do you really believe the vampires would agree to a truce so easily?” I scoffed at him. “And what about the humans – will they live in peace, too, or continue to live like cattle?”
“Trent and Rea don’t care about the humans – no one does – it was only you who cared about them,” Calix said, looking somewhat ashamed.
“My death won’t bring you the peace that you’re looking for,” I tried to warn him.
“The vampires know about your daughter, Mila, and they have said that if Trent and Rea hand over the baby to them, we would never dare attack the vampires again,” Calix explained.
Horrified by what I was hearing, I said, “Why would they believe such a thing?”
“Because the vampires know that your daughter is half werewolf,” Calix said. “They know that we would never attack the vampires again for fear of killing one of our own. And if we ever did make moves in the future against the vampires, they would kill Mila.”
Fearing that my daughter was going to be used as some kind of sick peace offering between the Beautiful Immortals, I reached for Calix. I took hold of him and pleaded. “Please, Calix, you can’t go through with this.”
“The matter is out of my hands,” Calix said. “The deal has already been done.”
“Then you must stop it, you must help me escape,” I beseeched him, my eyes hot with tears.
“I can’t, it is too late,” Calix said, tears now warming his eyes too as he looked at me.
I knew by the sadness that I could see in his eyes that indeed it was too late; my daughter was going to be given over to the vampires and I was going to die. But I still had hope. I still hoped that one day my daughter might discover the truth about her mother, what the Beautiful Immortals had done and how they had betrayed me.
Pulling Calix closer still, I buried my head against his chest and whispered, “Hold me.”
Calix folded his arms tight about me, and as he did I pressed the side my face flat against his hard, cold chest. Screwing my eyes shut, I concentrated on those wavering tendrils of magic that were once more ebbing and flowing deep inside of me. And although they were still weak, I summoned the last of the magic through my heart, down my arms and into my hands. I ran my fingers up and down Calix’s back, over his arms and chest as in my mind I recalled everything that had happened to me. And as I remembered the painful truth, the last of my magic leaked from my fingertips, leaving my story like a tattoo across Calix’s chest and back.
Sensing that something wasn’t quite right, Calix pulled away from me, leaping to his feet. He pulled off his coat and stared down at his chest and arms as words and sentences in a foreign tongue began to writhe and dance over his body.
“What have you done to me?” Calix said, watching the strange words form on him in lines of black shifting ink.
From the mattress on the floor, I looked at Calix and said, “You know that I never killed Veronica Cabal – you know I was set up. And despite what the werewolves and vampires think of me, I know that one day my daughter will figure out the truth...”
Grimacing, Calix cut in and said, “Is this some kind of spell that you’ve written on me – marked me with?”
No it wasn’t a spell. It was the answers to the questions that I knew my daughter would one day have about me. But I didn’t tell Calix that.
The cell door suddenly opened. I looked up to see Trent and Rea.
“It’s time,” Trent said.
Hearing this, Calix suddenly shot forward and took me once more into his arms. Pressing his face next to mine, he whispered in my ear and said, “I can’t help you escape, Julia, but I can save you.”
He then handed me over to Trent and Rea who had come for me.
Chapter Eleven
They secured my hands behind my back with chains. Trent said nothing to me. I said nothing to him. What did I have to say to a man like him? Was he hoping I might beg him for my freedom? Was he hoping I might confess to a crime that I didn’t commit to ease his own guilty conscience? Did he think that I might tell Rea that I’d made up the whole thing about him coming to my room and mixing with me? Did Trent really think I might deny that he was the father of my daughter, Mila? I wasn’t going to do any of those things. I might have made a lot of mistakes in my life but I wasn’t going to admit to a crime I hadn’t committed, and worse, deny what happened between us, because I would not only be betraying myself, but my daughter, too. And even though I wouldn’t be around to see my daughter grow up or for her to know me, I could only pray that one day she would come across Calix and read the story – my story – that I’d left behind on him.
Trent and Rea led me from the crypt. Calix followed some way behind. The cold night air hit me like a slap to the face as we left the crypt and stepped out into the graveyard. Almost at once, I heard the familiar scrape scrape sound of Morten working close by. I wondered whether the fresh grave he was digging was for me. With the thick, heavy chains rattling around my wrists, Trent and Rea steered me amongst the broken gravestones and toward a wooded area at the furthest reaches of the graveyard. The night sky was cloudless and there was a full moon which lit our way through the woods and into a clearing. At its centre there was a long wooden stake, which had been driven into the ground. Pieces of wood and old car tyres had been stacked at the base. The night air was thick with the smell of gasoline. As I was led into the clearing, I saw Rush standing with a group of strangers I’d not seen before. I guessed that the strangers who had gathered in the clearing were those other werewolves that Trent and Rea had returned with from their homelands. Amongst them I saw the gaunt-looking man who wore the bloodstained apron. The pretty nurse was standing at his side. In her arms she cradled Mila, who was wrapped in a white shawl. My heart leapt! My first instinct was to go to her, but I was quickly yanked away by Rea who had hold of my arms.
“Please let me see my daughter, just one last time,” I begged Rea. “Please let me hold her, just once.”
Both Rea and Trent ignored my pleas. At the stake we stopped. They turned me around to face the wolves who were gathered in the clearing to witness my execution. Rush came forward, a set of weighty chains hanging from his fists. Together, Rea, Trent, and Rush bound the chains around me, securing me to the wooden stake. And even though I knew that my death was inevitable, to say that I wasn’t scared would be a lie. I was terrified. I was terrified of the pain I would feel once the fire started. I was terrified for what kind of future my daughter might have. I didn’t want Mila to be raised by vampires and werewolves. Mila should be raised by me, her mother.
As they worked, Trent, Rea, and Rush were careful not to make eye contact with me. Were they ashamed of what they were doing? I doubted that very much.
Once I was secure against the stake, the three of them stepped away.
“All I wanted to do was help you,” I s
aid. “All I ever wanted was to find a truce. That’s all I came into this world to do.”
Rea turned to face me. She took a cigar from her breast pocket and rolled it between her finger and thumb. “And in a strange way, you’ve achieved your mission, Julia Miller,” Rea said. “Because your death will result in the peace that you came in search of. At last, the Beautiful Immortals will have a truce.”
Taking a match from her pocket, Rea lit the cigar. Once the end of it was glowing bright red, she tossed the match into the pile of wood at my feet. There was a whooshing sound as the gasoline that had been poured over the wood and tyres ignited.
Saying nothing more, the three of them turned away and joined the other werewolves in the clearing. The wood began to burn and smoke and as the flames grew higher beneath my feet, the smoke became choking and burnt my eyes.
Through my tears and the growing flames, I could see that Morten had now joined the group – but there was someone else too. I could see that the vampire, Sidney Watson, stood amongst them. Had he been a part of my demise all along? Had he played a bigger part in framing me for the murder of Veronica Cabal than I had once given him credit for? Had it been he who had killer her? As the flames began to snap and hiss at my heels, I watched the nurse hand Mila over to Sidney Watson. And however much I promised myself that I wouldn’t beg and plead for my life, the pain that I now felt in my feet and shins as I began to burn was too much for me to bear.
“Please don’t do this,” I cried out. “I haven’t done anything wrong. I only came to help you. I only came to find peace.”
And as I began to twist and pull against the chains that secured me, desperate to set myself free, I watched through the rising smoke and flames as the werewolves began to change shape. They dropped onto all fours. They shook their heads and writhed from side to side as they lost their human form and took on the appearance of giant wolves. Each of them threw back their colossal heads and howled up at the moon as it showered its light down into the clearing and upon them.
