But it doesn’t matter. Ash passed Alexander’s test. That’s the only thing that’s important. Even a half-life is a million times better than none.
TIMOTHY
Most people—maybe even all people, save for Timothy—wouldn’t notice anything remarkable about Alexander’s mood on his arrival back at the townhouse with Ash and Jay in tow. But Timothy, despite the chasm of lost years which yawns wide between them, knows Alexander best, and he can tell that Alexander is deeply unsettled.
Ash and Jay are talking about some band that only one of them likes, debating the merits versus the weaknesses of the various members’ playing. Timothy can’t actually tell which of them is for the band and which is against, but both seem adamant that they’re right. It’s not an especially wordy debate, because Jay is naturally economical with words and Ash, whether she used to be or not, is now an extremely quiet girl.
Alexander comes over to where Timothy is reading on the sofa and sits beside him, leaning in for closeness and comfort. The teenagers head for Blake’s room; what few possessions Jay keeps at the townhouse are all stored in there.
“Leave the door open,” Alexander orders as they disappear from view, and if Timothy had held any doubt that Alexander is concerned about something, that doubt would be dissolved by the tense undercurrent in Alexander’s voice.
“She’s alive,” Timothy notes, keeping his words soft enough that only Alexander will be able to hear. He settles himself back against the arm of the luxuriously comfortable sofa and tucks Alexander against him. He’s glad that they’re both slightly shorter than average height by modern standards, and so can draw their legs up onto the cushions and still be comfortable. Alexander permits himself to be manhandled, not even offering his standard complaint at being treated like a blanket.
“I’m frightened of her,” Alexander replies just as quietly; it’s an admission that only Timothy would ever possibly hear from him. “She was obviously not made into this with the intention that we would let her survive. When she let herself go, and struck to kill… no vampire who is otherwise capable of speech and reason has ever caused…” he pauses, searching for the word. Timothy strokes his hair gently. He’s almost never given opportunities to be the one who offers support and strength, a fact which frustrates every oldest-sibling instinct he has.
Sometimes he wonders why his forgotten-self chose a partner as self-contained as Alexander. But then, perhaps Alexander wasn’t always this way.
“Carnage,” Alexander says, finally deciding on the correct term. “She didn’t just kill; she reveled in the bloodshed and the wreckage of it. It was a frenzy. If she had not be capable of stopping herself—and by God, the very fact that she is makes me twice as afraid of her—I don’t know that I could have brought her down by myself.”
Timothy shivers, thinking again of the earlier boy-victim he’d met, clumsy and weak enough to be put down quickly. What if the boy had been made as strong as Ashley? What would have happened? Who is making these creatures?
“Can she remember anything yet?” he asks Alexander, still petting his hair.
Alexander shakes his head under Timothy’s palm. “Nothing. But I have the beginnings of a theory as to why she’s lucid.”
“Hm?”
“She was a habitual drug user before she died, and Bette and Jay seem to think that this is the closest comparison to her new condition: ‘if she can think while on opiates, then she can think despite a loosened grip on her faculties’, as it were. I spoke to Ashley briefly about other aspects of her short life, however, and I think that the reason may have closer ties to other forms of self-destruction she’s flirted with.
“She has gone through several bouts of anorexia nervosa since a young age, and I think that intended annihilation of herself may have inadvertently become her salvation: her psyche is quite adept at defining itself through controlling impulses which would otherwise register as natural and permissible. Being hungry to the point of madness was already her baseline concept of sanity, and so she can manage this new ravening with her awareness intact.”
“Blessed are the broken, in other words,” Timothy offers with a smile. Alexander chuckles.
“Quite.” He takes Timothy’s hand, the one not occupied with hair-petting, and twines their fingers together. “She frightens me, Tim. A monster that monstrous, held in check by a willpower strong enough to contain it, all inside an unhappy and uncertain teenage girl. She’s a wildcard and I don’t even know what game it is we’re playing, or who we’re up against.”
“It will be all right,” Timothy says, and in that at least he has faith. “We’ve come through worse. Blake always finds a way to make the advantage his.”
“Not with Cora.” Alexander squeezes Timothy’s hand, curling their bodies closer on the sofa. “She and Blake are too much alike each other. They always expect the tricks the other tries to play. It’s only pure and terrible luck that meant Ashley could keep herself in check rather than attacking Bette and Blake.”
“Well, at least luck’s on our side, then?” Timothy offers, voice as bright as he can make it. Alexander snorts at the attempt.
“Your optimism is nauseating.”
“Someone’s got to hope for the best around here,” Timothy retorts, and holds Alexander in his arms.
BETTE
Rose is watching The Princess Bride, which is completely dorky and lame and which she only does when she needs a hardcore dose of cheer-up. Bette’s got a couple of movies like that, too, that are 100% certain to make her feel better when she’s in the worst of her worst moods, when everything sucks as bad as it can. Bette’s have tended to change from year to year, as her tastes have shifted and become, as a general rule, grosser and more esoteric. Rose’s list of favourite movies has changed over time, but never her failsafe cheer-me-ups. Those, Bette knows, remain consistently The Princess Bride and Dawn of the Dead.
“You ruin everything,” Rose says dully as Bette climbs down from the window, onto Rose’s work bench with its litter of pens and pencils and brushes and markers, and then to the floor. “I broke up with Jamie.”
Rose is dressed in an ancient black t-shirt and a pair of black sweats with the elastic gone and a length of black cord holding them at her waist. There are still traces of her Peter Pan makeup faintly visible on her cheeks. On the TV screen, the Dread Pirate Roberts and Buttercup are fighting at the top of a hill. Soon it’ll be the Fire Swamp scene. That’s Rose’s favourite section of the movie, and she’s always made Bette stop talking during it. Sometimes, if Bette kept talking, Rose’d punch Bette on the arm, but never too hard. That’s another little piece of the universe that Bette’s stitched out of.
She doesn’t smile, because she doesn’t want Rose to think she’s gloating about the Jamie thing. But hearing that old, familiar dialogue in the background makes this feel fitting, somehow. Makes Bette know she’s making the right choice. She doesn’t speak, waiting for Rose to go on.
“He’s a nice guy,” says Rose. “Normal. He likes me. I like him. Today I told him I’m not really looking for anything serious right now.” She huffs a breath out, an exhausted sarcastic little sound. “As if my whole fucking life isn’t serious like a brain tumor.”
There’s a tell-tale split in her lip and a darkening, bluish shadow on one cheekbone: she’s been in another fight since they last spoke. Rose never used to seek out scuffles with the jocks, back when Bette was still at school, but now it seems to be a pretty regular thing.
Rose meets Bette’s eyes. “You fuck up everything. He’s a nice guy, and I can’t even—”
“I didn’t ask for this,” Bette says, like that’s any sort of excuse. She doesn’t say it as a challenge, though. She doesn’t want to start an argument. She says it quietly. “I’m sorry.”
That makes Rose give her a sharp look of surprise; Bette knows that she doesn’t sound like her ordinary self. She clenches her hands to loose fists at her sides and tries not to feel nervous.
No,
not nervous. Afraid.
“I’m not going to bite you tonight,” says Bette.
“Already full from killing people?” Rose bites back bitterly. And Bette doesn’t want to lie, but she doesn’t want to tell the truth either, so she doesn’t know how to answer. Maybe that’s how relationships die, in the end. Not because there’s nothing left to say, but because there’s nothing that can be said that doesn’t hurt.
“I’m not going to bite you,” she repeats, because that’s all there is to say. “I’m… look. I’m a patchwork, you know? I’m made of all these different old things but I’m a new thing. I’m a new creature. But there are bits of me, huge bits, that are pieces of a girl you knew. And for tonight I’m gonna try to be her, as completely as I’m able, instead of being the patchwork creature that’s only partly her. Just… just for tonight, I’m Bette, okay?”
And she’s terrified that Rose isn’t going to get it, and is going to interrupt her by saying ‘you’re always Bette’ or something, and Bette doesn’t know if she’s strong enough to walk away without a real goodbye, so if Rose doesn’t understand then Bette will probably crumble and say ‘fuck it’ and keep on visiting Rose and biting her and all that stuff until it all ends badly, like they both know it has to.
But Rose doesn’t say anything. She just turns the movie off, and stares at Bette.
Then, finally, in a tiny voice, Rose asks Bette a question. “Just for tonight?”
Bette has to close her eyes for a second, relief that Rose gets it making her feel weak. But of course Rose gets it. Rose is smart and amazing and wonderful, and Bette loves her so much. Would have loved her forever.
“Yeah,” Bette says, and maybe she would have said more, but Rose has stood up and come over to where Bette’s standing, and now Rose is kissing her, warm and damp and frantic, mouth pressed hard against Bette’s own, and the two of them pretend they’re both alive.
~
Bette doesn’t fall asleep when Rose does. Bette lies there, on the same pull-out where once upon a time she argued about movies and smoked illicit cigarettes and watched paintings being formed and created a thousand ghostly, happy memories, invisible after-images that seem to move through the air all around her now, laughing and mocking and talking to ghost-Roses in their captured moments.
She lived a life, here. It wasn’t a very long life, and that’s not fair, and nothing will ever make it fair.
She wishes she’d had more time.
There’s a saying that Bette’s mom has always said way too often, one of those platitudes that doesn’t really mean anything and just sounds irritating as fuck when it gets trotted out as a response to complaining or frustration. “It’s always darkest before the dawn.” Bette’s always hated it, because how does anyone know when things have hit their darkest? If she took that advice she might be sitting there when things are shitty and she might go “it’s okay, it’s always darkest before the dawn, things will go back to being mostly excellent soon” and then things might get a million times shittier because things can always, always get darker, there isn’t any such thing as darkest.
So even though Bette feels as bad as she’s ever felt, right at this moment, she’s not stupid enough to think that this is the darkest she’s going to feel. She’s got centuries ahead of her to rack up all sorts of new lows.
But, darkest or not, dawn’s coming soon. The sunrise tickles at the edge of Bette’s instincts, like a scratchy tag left in the collar of a sweater and itching at the skin. She wishes so, so much that she could have more time. It doesn’t seem fair.
But that’s not how life works. Fair doesn’t come into it.
Bette shakes Rose awake carefully. Rose wakes up awkwardly, nearly smacking Bette in the eye with the heel of her hand, swearing and struggling to kick the covers off herself as she comes back to consciousness. Bette starts to giggle and then can’t stop, even though she’s crying.
“Yeah, yeah,” Rose grumbles, glaring, at then she wakes up properly and her expression turns afraid, because if Bette has woken her that means the night must be over.
This is Bette’s last chance, to change her mind and bite Rose, or to say goodbye and leave her forever. Bette thinks of Gretchen, who left instead of turning Rose and Bette both. She thinks about what happened anyway, and then forces herself not to: Bette has to believe she is leaving Rose to a long and happy life. She can’t think about the everyday perils that mortality entails, or the ever-present risk that the other vampires of the city will pose once Bette has left Rose.
No—despite what happened to Bette, and all the other dangers out there—Rose will live a long life.
One of them has to.
“I love you,” Bette says in a rush, because there’s never been a Bette, alive or dead, that’s been good at keeping her mouth shut. “I’ve loved you since before I can remember. Even the youngest me that I can remember being was somebody who loved you. It always seemed like such a foregone conclusion that I never even really bothered thinking about it. Same way I’m sure you don’t think about how you know Tommy’s always going to be your twin, right? You were always going to be my Rose. Always. No matter what I daydreamed about the future, you were always there. When I thought someday we’d have husbands and babies and houses side-by-side, the husband part of the daydream was just some shadowy absent blur, but I knew everything about how you’d look and the stupid activities you’d make up for the babies with like, macaroni and paper plates and tinfoil and paint and shit, and I knew… I just knew. I knew you.
“And then I got older and maybe stopped being such an idiot and I stopped thinking there’d be husbands. It’s funny, or maybe it’s crazy but it seems kind of funny, and funny’s better than tragic at least: I never thought of us as teenage sweethearts, you know? I thought we’d be like twenty-five or thirty and we’d run into each other at some gallery opening or something, though why the fuck we’re at a gallery opening in my daydream I don’t fucking know, because we both know that even when you’re a super-rich best-selling artist who gets movie stars and shit coming to her gallery openings you’re still not gonna go to them yourself, because you hate being the centre of attention. A more honest daydream would be if I imagined us running into each other in some take-out place where I’m eating a late snack after seeing a band and you’re hiding out from the gallery opening you’re meant to be going to across the street.
“And in my day-dream we’ve kept in touch over the years, but only by email because there was college and there were lovers and jobs and all that life stuff in the way between us, so it’s been a while since we caught up face-to-face, but when we do it’s love at first fucking sight, we see each other and we just know, and I’ve got a couple of kids in this day-dream, because it gets twisted up with this other one I’ve had since forever where I end up married to some random punk dude, don’t even ask.
“My kids totally love you and you totally love them and we sit on our back porch at night after they’ve gone to bed smoking and talking about everything and drinking red wine, for some reason, because I had this stupid idea that future-me would for some reason like red wine even though I could never really get into the taste of it, and like you’re ever gonna stop being a spirits girl, it’s crazy but that’s just how the day-dream always was, it was a bottle of red wine and us under the stars after the kids were in bed, and maybe one summer we’d all go on vacation to Boston and get married properly and Tommy could be your best man and we’d get some fantastic shitty punk band I was manager for to play the reception and then, and then it would be. It would be. Happily ever after.”
Bette pauses, catches her breath even though she doesn’t need to, and swallows down a sob, and makes herself look Rose in the eye as she says the next part, even though her heart feels like it’s breaking. “You were the love of my life. I’m so fucking sorry I died. I wish I hadn’t. I wish I could live that future with you.”
Rose’s face is sad and wise, like she understands what Bette’s saying even be
tter than Bette does. Because Rose is already older than Bette will ever be.
“I know,” is all she says, and then she starts crying, and that starts Bette crying even harder. They hug, like the childhood best friends they used to be, two little girls clinging to each other.
~
Eventually Bette gets up off the bed, walks across the basement—it’s never seemed this small before—and climbs up onto Rose’s work bench, and the out the high basement window. Rose follows her, standing on the other side of the window as Bette stays crouched in the garden outside.
“I uninvite you,” Rose says quietly, keeping her gaze steady on Bette’s, her crying stopped for the moment even though her chin and lower lip tremble with held-in tears as she speaks. Rose is hardcore badass, and Bette is glad to have lived a life that had her in it. “You aren’t welcome here anymore. Don’t come back.”
Bette smiles at her, raising one hand in a wave. “Bye,” she says, like they’ll see each other on the walk to school in just a couple of hours.
Then she turns and walks away, breaking into a run as she reaches the edge of the front garden. She runs through the lightening pre-dawn streets, the world all shapes and monochrome shadows as she races down street after street, the wind whipping freezing against her bare bone-white cheeks, pushing her hair back and making her heart thud-thud a little faster from the exertion.
She runs all the way home, and up the stairs, and she’s glad that Jay isn’t sleeping over with Blake on this particular night, because it would be totally embarrassing for him to see her like this, curled and shuddering in the bracket of Blake’s arms and sobbing, sobbing, until exhaustion drags her down and she sleeps the quiet still sleep of the dead against his side.
TIMOTHY
It was in the third week of Ilia’s visits to Timothy at night when the end came. Timothy knew that it had to, sooner or later. Each time Ilia drank from him, or he drank from Ilia, it was like he slipped a little deeper into dark stillness. This was not the lively, burbling water, sparkling with sun-bright ice chips, that Ledishka took her name from. This was the fearful frozen black of his most terrifying childhood nightmares.
The Wolf House: The Complete Series Page 47
