“Aleksandra, stop him!” Judith urged as Wesley pulled her arms free. “Let go of me!” she yelled, thrusting her body weight against him as she held tightly to her father, “Wesley stop! Let me go! Get off me!”
Aleksandra glanced up, glaringly, and I held her stare. “Do as she says, Judith,” she instructed.
“But I cannot leave him! Please, do not make me leave him! He is dying, Bree,” Judith plead as they led her near the door. “Give me this time with him. Please, Bree, this is all I will ask from you; just let me have this time with my father. Please?”
“Take her away,” I told them as Wesley pulled her sobbing from the room.
Lying in his bed, Colin was but a mass of organs and blood and tissue. Tubes nourished him. Machines breathed for him. Doctors kept Colin alive.
Reaching up, I silenced the alarms and sat down next to his bedside. The chair creaked beneath my weight, yet he remained unresponsive. There was less than an hour left until the sun crept over the horizon. The dusky light wafting through his window casted shadows over his graying face, and he already appeared dead.
Peter would not recognize his son, lying here lifeless in a hospital bed. Colin’s own students – who just days before had heard him lecture on Yeat’s - would not believe this man was their great teacher.
I grabbed his hands, stroked them beneath my grasp. Their warmness startled me.
“The silver apples of the moon, Bree,” her voice whispered from the far corner. An obsidian sliver snaked into view as her habit caught the moonlight.
“The golden apples of the sun,” I replied. “How did you know?”
“I know everything,” Sister Veronica whispered from the corner. “I know he is dying, just hours now.”
“But that… that poem, that is ours,” I spat. How dare she come into his room, as he lay fragile and exposed, and defile our friendship. “That is something we will always have,” I whispered, turning back to him, my eyes falling on his withering body.
“Bittersweet endings, professor, you always lectured about them. He hated them,” I said turning to Veronica.
“He preferred a real, gritty page turner. Life, he would say, it is not full of happily ever after. Now he is living it, is he not? He does not get a happy ending.” She did not reply as my eyes traveled over Colin’s ashen face. “I wish I could share with you those golden apples, those silver moons. Or hear your voice recite Yeats and Joyce until you are blue in the face.”
“You could, you know,” she whispered. The habit rustled as her shoes clicked against the hospital linoleum. Her hand pressing into my shoulder felt real, felt solid. “He was not going to stop searching for you, holding out hope.”
“No, he didn’t.” Recalling the roses, the last line of Yeats’ poem attached. That had been years ago, after meeting the night of the Field Museum gala. “But I cannot turn him.”
“It is what he wants, Bree,” she whispered as she leaned over his face. Her fingers slid across his brow. “It is what he has always wanted.”
“He did not even know about us until now, and now we are in the midst of chaos. And he is terrified,” I spat. “This is not what he would want. It is what you want!”
“He wants to be with you, Bree,” she said. Her haunting glare ate at me. “As he lies here dying, as he listens to us right now, his soul is crying out to you. Listen to him! He wants you! He has always wanted you!”
I closed my eyes, listened for his thoughts. Behind the ventilators drone and the IV dripping, his mind hissed and whispered. After the hours Wesley and Aleksandra sat vigil in this room, they had not listened to Colin – to what he needed, to what he wanted.
Gasping, I opened my eyes. “How did we miss this?”
“It is easy to miss a dying mans last words when you are not listening for them – or you do not want to hear them, Bree,” she replied. “Will you grant it?”
“I… I cannot.” I slumped into the chair. “How can you expect me to do this, Veronica?”
“You must! It is his dying wish!” she demanded. She came toward me with an unworldly swiftness. I knocked into the hospital bed as I stood from chair, Colin’s hand flopping to his side. .
“He will die,” she said, “and it will be your fault.”
“The car accident killed him,” I spat, “not me. I could not turn Mavra, or Viktor, and I cannot turn him.”
“You caused the accident,” she retorted.
“The amulet caused the accident,” I countered. “So it is Aksel’s fault.”
A lump grew in my throat as Aksel’s name surfaced. Blaming him for such an unfortunate circumstance was shallow and pathetic. One death from the amulet, and the night was yet to be over. The burden he left burned a hole in my pocket.
“And, my old friend,” she came to rest her hand on my shoulder once more, a tear in the crease of her eye, “who made Aksel? You have the power for a reason, use it,” she whispered before fading as a mist before my eyes.
With my right hand securing the amulet, I hovered over his body. With my left hand, I removed the ventilation tube and crooked his head to the side. My teeth pierced his salty flesh and I thought I heard him grimace beneath my tight grasp. His life splashed in, each searing ounce filling me in this chilly pre-dawn hour, warming each cell as I stood holding him above the hospital bed. Blood droplets collected on the starched, fitted sheet, the powder blue blanket already stained from the ventilator fluids.
His body went slack in my arms, his legs drooping on to the bed below. I closed my eyes and let droplets of my blood from my bitten wrist drip into his mouth. I waited, fighting exhaustion as his blood mixed with my cells, rehydrating me.
Images scrolled furiously before me. Their vividness was blinding as each flash revealed another secret from Colin’s past. There he was, a little boy, his knee scraped against the sidewalk. A bike now lies askew in the middle of the lane as a group of kids taunted him. The next drop framed him as a teenager hidden in a darkened library, submerged in a sea of books.
Instead of studying economics, he studied the red head with emerald eyes the next table over. His first kiss, with the fiery red head, that came with the next drop. Then as his breathing grew shallow, and his heartbeat slowed, the memory of Judith being born. Highlights and memories cascaded with his blood, one after another until his body collapsed in my arms.
Looking down on Colin’s broken body, I remembered how Judith had just been there. Moments ago, I had torn her from her father. I forced her from this last hour with him.
I had done that.
Sitting next to him in that hard visitor’s chair, I recognized death’s shadowy veil nearing him. Death was there for Colin, to claim its prize. With his ventilation removed and nearly all his blood gone, I was surprised he still held on. He mocked death’s vicious scythe.
Then he turned. His body seized in a moment of breathless abandonment. As I stood and backed against the wall, what little color he had leached from his skin. The waxen vampiric complexion spread, quickly erasing the deathly ash. His limbs twitched and fluttered; his eyelids blinked.
He held out his hand to me and I went to his side, grasping it. It was cold now, his hand – unearthly cold. Gone forever was that mortal heat, which even in sickness a body retains.
“Our poem, Bree, you remember?” he asked, his voice deeper with the blood.
“Of course, Yeats’ ‘The Song of Wandering Aengus’. How could I ever forget that?”
“You are her,” he said, sitting up. “In the poem, you are the girl and I am the poet. I am old now and I have wandered through hilly lands and hollow lands, looking for that girl who got away. Now you returned and saved me.” “You left me no choice, Colin.”
“And now I will ‘kiss her lips and take her hands,’” he recited.
“And walk among long dappled grass,” I replied.
“And pluck till time and times are done,” we recited together, “the silver apples of the moon, the golden apples of the sun.”
<
br /> THIRTY-TWO
Remember the plague?” I asked Sister Veronica. “Remember how it robbed us of our childhood, stole our families?”
I had returned to the State Street apartment after turning Colin, and after phoning Wesley to come fetch the newly formed, immortal poet. Now I stood on the balcony peering over the street as traffic slowly filtered into the city. The morning commute snaked past as the sun peeked over the horizon. A sliver of its golden warmth winked behind the steel and glass monstrosity across the street.
Weakly I spoke to Veronica, and to the universe, and to anyone who could answer, “Why did we survive?”
“Each life has a purpose,” she replied, her voice steady behind the traffic’s vibrations.
The dawn light’s glow warmed her pale complexion, and her pupils were now orbs of rare ebony within their white settings. My hand crept toward her cheek, reaching eagerly to stroke her milky, glistening skin. She veered away, turning her face so the corner of the habit grazed my hand. The fabric – the rough, aged cotton – felt solid as it brushed against me.
“We were chosen, Bree. We had a calling, a reason to live beyond that wretched pestilence.” Her wary eyes gazed into mine as she faced me once again, then they fell to the horizon.
“Then why am I here? Answer me that!” I demanded. “Find the scripture that says be obedient, be pure, sacrifice and you will be rewarded with an eternal curse! Show it to me, Veronica!”
Veronica’s lips pursed as she slid the balcony door closed. The glass made a subtle, nearly inaudible thud as it met the wall, and then she locked it. The curtain ruffled, billowing against the spotless glass before settling and obscuring my view of the study.
“I died twice the night Wesley took me, Veronica,” I feebly whispered as I watched the sunlight play on the windows around me. There was warmth in the air, hanging like a palpable cloud. This was warmth I no longer remembered, or had forced myself to forget. I inhaled the dawn – my eager mouth open to the crisp morning – and found the air a bittersweet reminder of my sacrifice. The air soured against my lips and turned rancid as it stung my tongue.
“After he turned me I looked back at the convent,” I continued, watching the sunrise. “We were miles away on that hill in the abandoned castle overlooking the creek.” She smiled in remembrance. “I could see the candles flickering, Veronica. All that distance away… what, five miles? – I could see them and I heard the sisters crying and praying. Some were weeping – openly weeping, Veronica. I had never heard them do that before – crying out to God with raw agony bleeding in their voices. The lights, the sounds, it was as if they were happening next to me. Then I realized you were not at mass.”
Veronica’s eyes softened and her head bowed as my skin warmed.
“I worried you had been blamed for my escape,” I admitted. “But when Wesley told me you were confined to your bed with grief, I died yet again.”
“Those were dark days,” she whispered.
“My life only grew darker, I am afraid,” I whispered, glaring at the sun as it threatened to breach the building shielding me. “That day stained my life deep ebony, my friend, and there is no lightening it.”
“All the light you will ever need is with you now, Bree,” she said, her hand coming to rest itself on my shoulder. It was a comforting notion, giving what was about to happen.
“Stop,” I quivered, “it is too late for hope, for comfort.”
“It is never too late for hope,” she said. “You have had the answer all this time.” She reached into my pocket and pulled out the amulet. Reaching for my hand, she unclenched my fingers and placed the cold, jeweled circled antique in my palm. “The answer is within, Bree; just use it.”
Bringing the amulet to eye level, it gave its age in the growing daylight. The jewels glistened, but the portrait – my portrait – showed a slight fading. Tiny cracks ran along the portraits surface. Years of fondling had worn the varnish and rust grew at its clasp.
“He left that to you for a reason,” she said with a new urgency. “And you cannot let it fall into the wrong hands.”
“They are taken care of.” My eyes glanced to the shut door, and then shifted to the growing daylight. My flesh grew with an uncomfortable heat.
“Don’t be too certain,” she spat.
She urged, “An obsessed man can be tenacious.”
“I do not have a choice then, do I?” I asked, resigning to my fate. Why had I not questioned Aksel more? Why had I not forced him to tell me everything about this amulet?
“What on Earth possessed Aksel to make this curse – this weapon? What was he thinking?”
“Curse? Weapon?” Her voice softened. “He loved you. He stopped at nothing to protect you, Bree.”
“He has done a swell job protecting me with this, has he not?” my voice boomed. “This amulet has caused more damage than protection.”
“How so?” she asked.
“Are you serious?” I stepped back and the balcony railing cut into my back. “Countless mortals are dead and I forced this curse on a dying man.”
“Mortals die every day, every minute in fact.” She gestured to the street below, now congested with morning traffic. Honks and hollering – the orchestra of a busy, midweek city’s solemn requiem – gave her gestures audience.
“Car accidents, heart attacks, by their own weak hands, mortals perish,” she continued, “And you did not force this curse on Colin. You heard his thoughts; it is what he wanted. Bree, human lives, they are insignificant. They are here today and gone tomorrow. And you know this. You understand this.”
“Their lives are not insignificant, Veronica,” I groaned through stiffening lips.
The sun was nearly over the buildings now, its heat seering my skin. Moving to the balcony’s edge and gripping the handle, I peered into the growing sunlight. It was a phoenix, rising into the sky aflame and anew, mesmerizing me as it climbed higher. The light seared my eyes, yet I could not turn from the orb’s glow or the orange aura surrounding it. The blueness of the sky, the muted whiteness of the clouds, it had been too long since I had seen such raw splendor.
“I watch them hurry, scrambling to start their lives before the sun is even up,” I said, not peeling my eyes from the sky.
“Such purpose, such drive and spirit. They are raw, Veronica, and passionate, and innocent creatures exploding with history and virility. And no matter what horrid circumstance life throws at them, they persevere. My kind? We cower in the shadow like rats hoping to not be discovered for the monsters we truly are! These people below, they rally and fight; they love and argue. I admire humanity, more so now that I have the blood than I ever did when I was human.”
“Then you know what you must do.” Her lips pressed against my burning cheek and I winced.
“It has to be done,” I said. I looked away from the sky and angled my head down State Street, taking in the city now bathed in a golden aura.
“Destroy the amulet, my friend.”
THIRTY-THREE
October 22, 2012
In a darkened room – partitioned from the study where they seldom ventured – Aleksandra and Wesley left a motionless, hardened shell of a matriarch. Bewildered, they placed Bree’s body in the room, laying her on a relocated settee. Judith and Colin came, and the four were aghast at the site before them.
“Her skin is rough. Feel it,” Aleksandra whispered. “Wesley, what happened to her?”
Bree’s skin was granite beneath Aleksandra’s touch. The sun’s heat emanated from the matriarch’s cheeks, and it singed Aleksandra’s fingertips. She winced with every touch, bringing the sore tips to her mouth to lick the heat away.
“She’s burning up!”
“She was on the balcony,” Aleksandra continued. “Feel her!”
Wesley flicked on the lamp and held his hand to Bree’s face, immediately withdrawing it. In the lamp’s light, the matriarchs delicate, honey drop curls were incandescent, roughened ringlets. Her tightly drawn lips we
re cracked and blood stained. Her once milky skin lay taut, spread tight against her bones, threatening to rip its new tan. As broken as his sister was, Wesley thought, studying her, something about Bree ringed with a vague and sickening familiarity. She appeared strangely human.
“She went into the sun,” Wesley said, his fingers smoothing Bree’s hair.
“How could she have? Wesley, she would be a pile of ash.” Aleksandra crouched to the floor, resting on waiting knees beside her mother’s body. She clasped Bree’s hand and let the heat warm her skin. “We have both seen a body burn. That is an unspeakable horror – one I will never forget. But it does not do this.”
“I have no other explanation,” he conceded.
“What is she clutching?” Colin stepped from the shadows and pointed to Bree’s left hand.
Gnarled into a tightened fist by the sun, Bree’s fingers snaked around an obscured object resting in her palm. Colin leaned over the matriarch’s body, delicately taking her hand in his. Her hand was delicate porcelain beneath his grasp as he tried prying her fingers loose. When that failed, though, he grew eager in his approach, forcefully grasping at the fingers. Judith pushed him aside when she heard a wee cracking.
“I almost had it!” he growled.
“You almost snapped her finger off!” Judith said. She then ran a finger over Bree’s left hand feeling for damage, and sighed with relief when she found none.
“What do we do with her?” Colin asked. “I mean, is she alive? Is she dead?”
“We care for her,” Aleksandra blurted.
“Aleksandra, feel your mother’s skin. It is scorching. She went into the sun. I cannot explain why she did not burn, why there is not a pile of ash greeting us on the balcony. I am certain Bree will not be waking from this coma. She is no longer with us, and you must let her go.” Wesley placed a cautious hand on Aleksandra’s shoulder. “How should we do it?” Judith asked, her voice dripping with sugary kindness. “Do you want me to phone around?”
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