by A. M. Manay
Now she stood beneath the shower head, scrubbing herself raw, turning bright pink. The comfort of hot water thawed her frozen calm. She finally broke down into tears when she realized that she was washing her hair for the fourth time because she couldn’t get the smell of Luka out of it.
She got out of the shower feeling better for her little breakdown. The fear and grief was beginning to transform into a well-banked, slow-burning, and righteous anger that would serve her better. Clean, dry, and dressed, she felt a bit more in control. Images of Neil’s teenage daughter flashed before her; she was currying her horse.
November rooted around in the desk until she found a pair of scissors. When a knock came at the door, she was standing in front of the bedroom mirror, the scissors in one hand and a lock of hair in the other.
“Come in,” she called, expecting Ilyn or perhaps Zinnia. She smiled with surprise to see Greg standing in the doorway.
“King Ilyn’s still out feeding. I thought somebody should check on you,” he explained.
“Thanks,” she replied, gesturing for him to come in. Greg perched somewhat incongruously on the edge of the little-girl bed.
“So, what’s with the scissors?” he asked in the sing-song tone of someone who is worried about provoking a crazy person but trying to sound nonchalant.
She looked down. “Oh, right. You didn’t think I was going to try to hurt myself or something, did you?”
“It has been known to happen with traumatized people, you know,” Greg replied.
“I was just . . . see, he made Willow grow my hair back, and now I don’t like it because it’s how he wanted it, and it smells like him, and I was just thinking I might cut it back off, but now I’m not sure, and --." Her cheeks bloomed an embarrassed red at her outpouring of angst, and she shrugged her shoulders and sighed. “So, there’s that.”
“It’s your hair. You should do whatever you want. You’re beautiful either way, believe me. But maybe today isn’t the day to be making major changes, or to do something to yourself just to spite Luka. As brave as you are, you’re still traumatized, and you need time to recover.”
She put the scissors down and sat down next to the vampire on the bed. “Fair enough.” She turned her head to look at him. “Thanks for coming to help save me. You could have died.”
“It was rather the least I could do. You did save my life on New Year’s Eve, remember? At rather great cost to yourself, as I recall.”
“Still, thank you,” November insisted with a smile.
“You are welcome.” They sat silently until Greg caught her staring down at her hands, pulling her sleeves over her wrists. “What’s wrong, November?”
She hesitated. “I just keep seeing . . . Luka had these shackles, you see, and he made me, so everyone could see – it was just so humiliating.” November found she couldn’t continue. Silently, she leaned her head against Greg’s shoulder and closed her eyes to hide the tears, not seeing Greg’s face darken.
“Well, that I can certainly empathize with,” he replied softly after a long pause. “You don’t ever forget how that feels. But, at least knowing what it is to be in chains will help you understand the importance of freedom for all people. That’s how it is for me, anyway.”
November looked up at him gratefully. “I suppose that’s a good way to look at it.”
“It beats shame. He’s the one who should be ashamed, anyhow, not you,” he replied with a stern insistence.
“I know,” she said, smiling briefly. “Thanks for the reminder.”
A throat cleared. The companions looked up to find Ilyn at the door. The king raised a suspicious eyebrow at how cozily they were situated. “I’d like a moment, Gregory, if you please?” he said silkily. His grandson moved to comply, but not too quickly. November stood to give Greg a hug before he left, and Ilyn’s eyes followed him all the way out the door.
November looked up at Ilyn incredulously at this display. “What was that about?” she asked, simultaneously amused and offended.
He didn’t answer. He simply sat down next to her on the bed.
“I don’t belong to you. He’s my friend,” she said firmly, not willing to let this slide. “I’m not your property. I’m not even your girlfriend. Your grace,” she added belatedly.
He snorted. “Please, I hardly qualify for honorifics now,” he replied, ignoring the substance of her statement. “I’m a king with no crown, no court, no kingdom. Ilyn will do for now, though I suppose I’ll have to change it again, now that everyone thinks I died in the hotel.”
“What’s your real name?” she asked, curious.
“It’s unpronounceable. I never use it. I wanted to forget my human life. I've used a lot of Russian names, sometimes Polish or German. I was pale enough to pass for European after I was turned.”
"That's sad, don't you think? You shouldn't have to hide who you are. It's not good for you," she replied. "Maybe someday you'll tell me what your name was." She began to reach out to take his hand but stopped short, still wary.
They sat in awkward silence. November didn’t understand how she could feel so glad to be near him and yet feel so uncertain. They sat six inches apart. Part of her wanted to fly into his arms, but she wasn’t about to show her feelings, not after what had happened the last time she had taken that chance. Vampires weren’t the only ones with pride. She cleared her throat. “Did you want to talk about something?” she finally asked.
“I wished to apologize. You have suffered greatly for my mistakes, and I am terribly sorry. I will understand if you wish me to stay away from you as much as possible.”
“Is that what you want?”
“No,” he said with a quiet desperation. “But how could you not hate the sight of me?”
“I was angry before, about the things you said to me, about your making me drink your blood. But while I was with Luka, and I thought I was going to die, I let it all go. I don’t think you were deliberately cruel to me. You seem to regret it, and I’ve forgiven worse. I’m just glad you’re not dead.”
“When I . . . rejected you, you must understand, I had no wish to harm you. It’s been centuries since I felt much of anything at all. But meeting you – something in you called to me, awakened me. That is . . . disturbing. Numbness is so much easier than caring. When I was a young vampire, happy in my new love with Marisha, I couldn’t understand the jaded old vampires, so bored with life, walking around dead inside. Then the years went by . . .” He shook his head before continuing, “Then there’s the vampire’s pride, and habits of centuries. We pretend we’re of more value than humans because how else do we bear what we are, what we do, what we see? Watching people die year after year? Killing what we used to be in order to stay alive forever?”
“So you’ve decided that you . . . care about me? As a person, not a weapon? Even though I’m only human?”
“Yes,” he replied. “If I saw no value in your humanity, I would follow William’s advice and make you a vampire now. There must be a reason that I . . . hesitate.” He looked at her questioningly, as if she in her youth could explain something this ancient creature couldn’t understand.
“And if I didn’t have my gift, would you still . . . feel things?” she asked.
“Probably not,” he began. At her stricken look, he hastened to add, “No, that’s not what I meant. It’s simply -- you wouldn’t be the person you are without it. It has shaped you. And we would almost certainly never have met without it. But if you woke up tomorrow and couldn’t do it anymore, I would still care for you. I think.”
Good enough for now, I guess, she thought. She was ready now to talk about her experiences in the previous days. She told him everything; she minimized nothing to spare his feelings. There were no tears; she had spilled them all in the shower, and they’d been washed down the drain. She described her terrifying kidnapping, the painful hours in the dark, Willow’s ruthlessness interspersed with her strange moments of kindness.
She told him of her f
ear and humiliation and of the suffering of the wolves and the humans at Luka’s mercy, of gagging on Luka’s blood and shivering naked in the cold. She told him of her unexpected compassion for Philemon, a strange moment of connection with her mother’s murderer that had made her own rescue possible in the end. She told him about her new ability to find him with her gift. She described the panic she felt when her inability to tune into him made her think him dead. She told him about the moment her hope had returned. She told him everything she knew about Luka’s views and plans for the future.
Finally, it was Ilyn’s turn. He spoke of their frantic drive across the desert, their tense efforts to locate her, fruitless until Ben and Philemon appeared. He told her how on the day Willow stole her away, Pine had dragged himself to a fire alarm, pulling it in time to allow people to evacuate in the twenty minutes between Willow’s escape and the crash of the plane into the hotel. Ilyn told her of his frantic search for her, his despair when he realized that she was gone, and his rage when Pine told him who had betrayed them. He described his own narrow escape and Amandier’s refusal to leave. He counted for her the dead and missing: 87 vampires, 29 fairies, 107 humans. Without November’s warning and Pine’s alarm, it could have been markedly worse.
Of the dead vampires, 6 were lord governors who had refused his pleas to make an escape plan after November had shared her vision of the fire. The survivors had fled to their homes, fearful of losing their holdings to local rivals in the confusion, wanting to protect their fiefs in case of further action by Luka, wanting to be prepared to switch sides if it became advantageous. There would certainly be fighting for control of the newly lordless states.
All hope of a unified response to Luka had gone up in smoke. Other than a few close allies who remained loyal, there was little confidence in Ilyn among the lords. Rumors were swirling that Ilyn was dead or gravely wounded, or that he was himself behind the attack in order to defame his son, or to grab land. The kingdom was in shambles.
There was a sad silence, finally interrupted when November replied with a weak smile, “But other than that, then, things are going okay?” Ilyn raised an eyebrow, then laughed, surprising even himself.
“At least you live,” he replied. He looked down at his hands. “If he had killed you, made you his, I do not know what I would have done,” he added, looking up to gaze at her intently.
“Killed us both, hopefully,” she replied in a flat voice. She was as serious as the grave.
“I’m not certain I could have,” he admitted.
“There’s something else I should tell you . . .” November began, drawing in a large breath. “Did you catch what Luka said about searching for me for 500 years?”
“I assumed he meant he was searching for someone like you. He always had an interest in . . . unusual people. Like Savita, for example. He was always fascinated with her, wanting to understand how her gift worked when she was human. He went through a lot of wise women and soothsayers and spoonbenders over the years. It never ended well.” Ilyn shrugged as if to say, “Kids today and their crazy hobbies and the rock music.”
“Yeah, well, apparently, he was being literal. Luka is of the opinion that I am an ancient demon who has possessed a succession of humans, fairies, and werewolves for centuries, maybe millennia. He thinks I was, among other people, a girl named Juana whom he found and tried to turn during the Inquisition. She was staked before she could rise, much to his consternation. He thinks Savita is a demon, too.”
A double eyebrow-raise communicated Ilyn’s lack of faith in his enemy’s theory. “I’m afraid I find this rather difficult to believe,” he replied.
“Yeah, so did I,” she said. “Until he showed me my eyes by fairylight, and which point I freaked the heck out.” She grabbed his hand. “Turn off the light,” she commanded. Ilyn raised his eyebrows again. “Humor me,” she said, and he complied, flipping the switch without moving a muscle.
She pulled the lantern out of her pocket and lit her face with it. “There,” she said. She looked at him, chin tilted up, eyes open wide.
A slow smile snuck onto his face. Rather than recoiling from her, as November had feared, he bent to look more closely, gently sweeping her hair back from her face. “Well, I’ll be damned,” he whispered. “I thought I’d seen everything.” He laughed with a child’s delight. Finally, he pulled away and she broke the moment.
“I take it other people’s eyes don’t do that?”
“No, they do not,” replied the dumfounded vampire.
“So, yeah, not completely human, then,” she summarized.
“Do you remember these supposed other lives?” he asked, full of childlike curiosity, just as he had been back in Oakland looking through her binders. He looked like he was bubbling up with questions.
“I’ve been having a lot of visions about them recently, and I’ve seen some of the same women throughout my childhood. I thought they were ancestors, or maybe just random visions. I didn’t realize that they were somehow me. Luka claimed Savita also remembered some things, that he told her of his theory centuries ago.”
“Why didn’t Savita tell me about this? I can’t believe I didn’t notice that about her eyes after all these years,” he said, shaking his head. “Even with our sharp senses, we look but we do not see.”
“Apparently, the light has to be just so, only fairy light,” November replied.
“Savita?” Ilyn called softly. “Come to me.” He reached out to summon his daughter.
A half-breath later, Savita opened the door. She stood, a shadow framed in the doorway, lit from behind by the hallway light. Observing Ilyn and November on the bed, the fairy lantern between them, she sighed. “Well, now you know,” she said quietly before shutting the door and joining them on the bed.
“Oh, darling, why did you not tell me?” Ilyn asked, reaching toward her. His daughter’s eyes were no longer their familiar deep brown but rather a swirl of ruby and gold, lit from within.
“I simply didn’t want to believe that Luka could be correct about what I am. It means I am even more of a monster than I even knew. It means that even when this life is over, there will just be another one to ruin. There’s no escape at all, no peace. Not for me. Not for my sister. Besides, what difference does it make?” Savita replied hopelessly.
“We’re not monsters,” November countered. “It’s not as though we asked to be born this way. There must be a reason we exist.” She shook her head. “I wish you would have told me. So I didn’t have to find out from Luka of all people.”
“I wanted to spare you. Knowing didn’t make things any easier for me,” Savita replied, looking down at the coverlet.
“You’re not evil, either one of you,” Ilyn stated flatly. “I’ve seen evil plenty of times, believe me, and neither of you qualify. Besides, the ancient Greeks didn’t think daemons were evil. In Islam, jinns can be good or bad. There are good asuras, too, according to your own countrymen, Savita.”
“You were the one who staked Juana, weren’t you? When Luka tried to turn her?” November asked, giving voice to what she had suspected for days.
Savita nodded. “I hated to betray my brother, but I feared how Luka would use her . . . you. I wanted to save you from him, even though I loved him. I feared what he would make you into. And I thought . . . what if you were my sister? I never saw Juana’s eyes by fairy light, so I thought, maybe . . .”
“But I’m not?” November guessed.
Savita gazed downward, looking like she was about to cry again. “No. I wasn’t sure, at first, of course. Not until I saw your eyes in the fairy light, at the garden party. I’m not sure if I was disappointed or relieved.” She shook her head. “I should have told you. I just couldn’t. I told myself that it would do no good, your knowing. And then Luka took you again, and I thought we would be too late to save you, too late for me to confess what I withheld—“
“But you weren’t. I’m fine. And the truth is out. We just have to figure out what it all means
.” November reached out a hand to her. “And you won’t have to stake me the next time I get turned into a vampire, because it won’t be by Luka.”
“You still think that can’t be prevented?” Ilyn asked.
November shook her head. “I’m going to get mortally wounded, somehow. The choice will be to let me die or change me. I’ve decided I want you to change me if it comes to that. I wasn’t sure before Luka took me, but I am now. Look, I don’t want to be born again not knowing what I am or how to handle my gift. My childhood was a nightmare until I got some control over the visions. I don’t want to have to fumble through it all again, all alone, in constant danger from Luka without even knowing it. Luka needs to be stopped, and I need to see that through. Dead and reborn as a crazy infant, I can’t do that.”
“I hope you’re wrong,” the king replied with sad eyes.
“There’s a first time for everything,” November replied, not feeling very optimistic.
The three of them emerged to find Hazel and William deep in whispered conversation in the hallway.
“Well, then, what do you think we should do with the pup?” William asked, sounding exasperated.
“It isn’t our responsibility. Hector should make arrangements for him once we get to California,” Hazel replied. “Put him in touch with the local packs. It’s not as if I don’t have enough to worry about right now.”
“What about Zinnia?” November interrupted.
“What about her?” Hazel asked, confused. “This is a werewolf matter. I mean, she can’t possibly keep him! When he hits puberty and the transformations begin, he’ll want to rip her throat out.” Her phone rang yet again, and she excused herself. “Birch, dear one, what’s the word?” she demanded, zipping down the hallway.
November turned to the three vampires. “I don’t know if separating them is such a good idea,” she said.
