by A. M. Manay
“I will do my best,” Ilyn replied, knowing that what she asked would be impossible.
"I'm worried about what Luka said, about how he took precautions," November confessed. "What could he have done?"
"He was almost certainly bluffing," Ilyn responded in a voice more sure than he felt. "And we really have no other choice."
By now, the bloody tears streaked Ilyn’s face, and he did not bother to wipe them away. Pine, Zinnia, and Hazel snuck back in. “Do you want us here?” Pine asked softly.
“Yes, please,” November said weakly. “I love you all,” she murmured. Zinnia looked stricken, but she held herself together for her friend’s sake. She could collapse later. Everyone sank to the floor, surrounding her with love.
“Ilyn,” November said. “I think time is running out. I’m so tired.”
The king lifted her gently into his lap, cradling her head against his shoulder. Ilyn bent and quickly buried his fangs in November’s neck before he could think too much about it; he began to drain the life from the only person who had made him feel anything in two centuries. Under other circumstances, he would have been delighted by her blood, but he could barely taste her as he focused all his attention on his race with her fluttering heartbeat and ragged breathing.
For her part, November was floating, lightheaded but feeling no pain, feeling as comfortable and safe as it was possible to feel while bleeding to death. She was a little surprised when Ilyn pulled away and bit his wrist, holding it to her mouth. It seemed like dying should take longer. He had to coax her to begin drinking, but as soon as she tasted his blood, a terrible thirst took over, and she drank eagerly, desperately. She whimpered with an infant’s impatience each time Ilyn had to pull away to reopen the wound. When her thirst was finally satisfied, her head fell weakly back to his shoulder.
It was then that the visions began, all a jumble, a mishmash of Ilyn's life, her own previous lives, and the perilous future. "On, no," she whispered. "No, please. No. I can't do this." She began to struggle frantically to rise from her deathbed, desperate to escape the visions and her long-sealed fate. Her friends were horrified. They tried to quiet her, but she was beyond hearing their voices.
“The maker’s vows,” Hazel reminded Ilyn, who was staring in despair at his now-terrified victim.
Ilyn looked at Hazel, paralyzed for a moment before remembering the words he was expected to say. He squeezed November's hand. She could not feel it. “With my blood, I give you life immortal. With all my strength, I will protect you. With all my knowledge, I will teach you. With all my heart, I will--" He hesitated before continuing, "I will love you. This is my solemn vow.”
November looked up, gazing straight through him. “Where is my mama? I want to go home. Mama?” she murmured pleadingly. Ilyn closed his eyes, wishing he could cover his ears. How many times had he heard the dying begging for their mothers?
“You’ll feel better when you wake up,” Ilyn promised, “And then we’ll go home.” He then kissed November’s lips tenderly, tasting her blood and his own mingled together. She smiled and opened her eyes for the last time, able to see everyone’s faces once more as the light grew dim. A moment later, her now-rasping breath fell silent, and she faced the end of her human life peacefully, with her eyes open wide.
Ilyn sat stoic and still as a statue, his eyes now dry, while somewhere in New Mexico, Luka screamed in rage as he felt the life ebb from his lost prize. Ilyn carefully lowered November’s body to the floor.
Pine held Zinnia as she collapsed into sobs. “It’s okay, Zin. We’ll see her tomorrow.”
“But she won’t be the same!”
“No one stays the same forever,” Pine said gently. “Even human, she would have changed as she grew older. She will still love us and need us, and now she will be stronger. She’ll be a hell of a lot sturdier than you, actually, and that’s a good thing, given what a shoddy job I’ve done of protecting her.” He closed his eyes, trying to hide his own pain.
“She didn’t deserve this,” Zinnia said, despondent. She gave Ilyn a look filled with blame, but said nothing else.
“In my experience, people rarely get what they deserve,” Hazel softly replied.
Ilyn pulled out his handkerchief and wearily wiped the blood from his face. “Hazel, we obviously must stay until tomorrow at the earliest. But the wolves should leave ahead of us. November might lose control if she smells them right after she wakes.” He sought refuge in the details, as he had always done. Old habits can be useful in times of crisis.
“I know. I already informed my son that they will arrive tonight and he is to send back the plane to get us tomorrow. He’s arranging for extra animals at the ranch for November, and he’s working to procure some human blood. I’ll have someone find her food for when she wakes tomorrow night.”
“She won’t forgive me if I let her kill an innocent,” Ilyn replied warningly.
“I know. We will do our best to avoid it. We should prepare her for burial,” Hazel urged gently. “Do you want me to clean her up?”
“I’ll do it myself,” he replied quickly. “I just need a few moments.” He retreated, intending to sit in the basement to compose himself, but he stopped short when he ran into Carlos and Hector in the hallway.
Carlos held out a blue dress. It was obvious the boy had been crying and was frightened of Ilyn, but he screwed up his courage to address the vampire king. “I found this in a box in her room. Do you think she’d want to wear something pretty for her funeral?”
Ilyn was taken aback, and his eyes once more filled with bloody tears. “Yes, I do. Thank you, child,” he managed.
“Hector says you are making her a vampire,” the boy continued bravely.
“That’s true,” Ilyn answered. “It was her choice,” he said pointedly, glancing at Hector. “She wanted to keep fighting Luka.”
“Then why are you sad?” Carlos asked. “I thought vampires liked killing people, anyway.”
“That rather depends on the people in question, in my case,” the king replied. “As for my sadness, I . . . suppose it is . . . irrational.”
“Will she still be my friend, even though I’m a werewolf?” Carlos asked worriedly.
He hesitated before answering. “Yes,” Ilyn finally said, not sure if he was lying. “I am quite sure she will. Now, you and Hector are going to go ahead of us to California, and we’ll meet you there after November rises tomorrow. It will be safer that way. Baby vampires are very hungry when they wake up.”
“What about Zinnia?” Carlos demanded, suddenly panicked, looking around for her.
Zinnia, overhearing, joined them from the living room. She knelt next to Carlos and wiped away her own blue tears in order to tend to him. “I’ll be there soon, I promise. But I need to be here for November. She is the closest friend I ever had.”
“She died protecting me,” Carlos said guiltily.
“She protected me as well,” Zinnia replied. “That bullet might have killed me, too, young as I am.”
“I’m sure she was glad her death did so much good,” Ilyn managed to say, swallowing his grief and rage in order to comfort Zinnia and the boy, because that’s what November would have wanted him to do. He turned to Hector. “Pine will take you to the plane. I know you are uneasy about staying with us, but I ask that you remain with the boy at least until Zinnia arrives.”
“I will,” Hector replied. As Ilyn turned to walk away, the werewolf added. “I’m sorry, bloodsucker.”
Ilyn walked away, wordless.
Ilyn’s private mourning was soon interrupted by the arrival of his progeny with sniper in tow. Forster looked quite a bit the worse for wear, and the sight of Ilyn full of grief and guilt and righteous anger did not make him feel any better. If it was possible for a vampire to blanch, he certainly would have. Someone was most assuredly going to pay, and Foster knew it would most likely be him.
“Name?” Ilyn asked languorously after a pregnant pause, looking as though he was bored
already with his prisoner. Savita put a hand on the gunman’s shoulder and closed her eyes to concentrate on his thoughts. Forster flinched at her touch.
He considered keeping his mouth shut but thought better of it. “Forster,” he admitted.
“Explain yourself.” Ilyn pulled a sharpened stake out of his inside jacket pocket and began using it to idly clean under his fingernails.
The prisoner’s words came tumbling out. “Lord Luka put out a bounty on this Ben kid. A big one. Didn’t think he’d be in company like this.” Forster swallowed convulsively.
“Obviously not,” Ilyn replied, voice dripping disdain.
“Are you . . . are you King Ilyn?” the prisoner managed to ask.
Ilyn raised an eyebrow. “I was.” He leaned in. “Should have shot me first, boy.”
“Look, I . . . I’m sure we can work this out. I mean, I only killed the traitor and the bloodbank, so, like, no real harm done, right?” the terrified vampire stammered.
Ilyn’s eyes were daggers. He leaned in close to his prisoner. “Certainly few tears will be shed over Ben. I’d raise him and kill him again myself if I could. The . . . human . . . on the other hand, was rather more valuable. Perhaps you heard rumors about an oracle discovered on a carnival midway? The one Luka kidnapped for himself and intended to turn?” Forster’s eyes widened as he realized the magnitude of his error. “I’m quite certain Luka would be very unhappy that you killed his prize. Perhaps nearly as unhappy as I am. I must confess, I was rather. . . fond of her.”
“He didn’t say anything about the girl when he posted the bounty, I swear! I wasn’t even aiming for her. She threw herself in front of that mutt,” Forster protested desperately.
“And how were you to collect your payment?” Ilyn asked, abruptly changing the subject. “Were you to meet somewhere?”
“Over the internet,” Forster answered, startled into truthfulness.
“Get every detail of how Luka communicates with these mercenaries and how he pays them,” Ilyn ordered his people. “I have other business to attend to.”
William cracked his knuckles. “My pleasure,” he said, smiling. His personality flaws notwithstanding, he really had rather liked November.
***
Ilyn had seen and perpetrated a great deal of violence over the millennia. Nevertheless, it pained him to see the wound in November’s stomach. Her scars were also rather upsetting. There was the fresh mark on her arm from the fairy blade with which he was already intimately familiar, along with others more mundane, inflicted mostly by her mother or by herself.
He had removed her clothes and tossed them into the fire, first retrieving her rosary and lantern from her pockets. Zinnia had brought the prayer beads for her from Las Vegas, carefully secreted in an envelope. He let the silver burn his hand before placing it in his own pocket for safekeeping. November would never be able to touch it with bare hands again. He then used his gift to pull the bullet from her body. He wondered if she would want to keep the silver portion and placed it in a plastic bag for her. The splinters of wood joined her clothes in the flames.
He then carried her back to the bathroom adjoining the bedroom she’d been using. He laid her down in the bathtub, careful not to crack her head against the porcelain. He had done this before, preparing his wife and son for burial when he had been human. The task was only slightly easier with indoor plumbing. He bathed her carefully, wiping away the blood and tears and bodily soil. He taped a thick pad of gauze over the entry wound, which continued to leak blood. He brushed her hair and her teeth, then dressed her in the blue dress and carried her out to the garden, to the spot he thought was prettiest. He gently propped her up against a tree. The tangled roots supported her as he paced out a grave, marking the boundaries with the shovel someone had found in the barn.
A trickle of blood had leaked once again from November’s mouth, and her wound had begun to stain the dress in spite of the bandage. So much for cleaning her up, he thought. But what did it matter? She would probably make a mess of herself anyway during her first feeding after she awoke. Everyone did.
Ilyn’s own suit looked like it had been worn by a butcher, soaked as it was in her blood. He was beyond caring. He didn’t bother wiping her face again. What was the point? He left Zinnia to sit with the body so November wouldn’t be alone. Hazel was cleaning up the blood inside the house. The living room was filthy as a charnel house. He couldn't bring himself to close her eyes.
The erstwhile king returned to the basement. When his children reported that they had gotten everything they could out of the assassin, Ilyn said, “You’re lucky we are the ones who found you. Luka would not have been this generous.” And without another word or hint of hesitation, Ilyn staked the hired killer and turned to leave without so much as a backward glance. “See if Neil has a shopvac for the ash, will you? I’d hate to leave him a mess,” he said absently as he climbed the stairs. Forster’s remains slowly settled to the floor.
It was awfully quiet in the garden as William dug the grave. His movements were sure and rhythmic, with the ease born of repeated practice. Greg came out to pay his respects before going hunting for November’s first meal. He was glad to have an excuse to miss the burial. Even though he knew she’d be rising soon, it would have been painful to see her disappear beneath the dirt. Even after a few centuries as a vampire, Greg had not grown comfortable with the death of innocents. He silently promised November that he would help her adjust to her new life. His own first years had been difficult.
Neither did Hazel stay to see the psychic put to ground. She could not bear the look on Ilyn’s face, so she accompanied Greg on the hunt.
Zinnia cried quietly. As vampires and fairies left no bodies, she had never been to a burial. Fairies had a memorial ceremony, but in all the craziness, there hadn’t yet been time to mourn her mother. So she wept for Amandier as well as for November.
Once she came outside, Savita simply sat, silent and exhausted and sad.
Ilyn sat by November with his eyes closed, keeping his thoughts to himself, looking like a statue, too wrung out to even bother keeping up the pretence of breathing. It had been a long time since he had buried someone he cared about. William, it had been. That poor young man had been bloody, too, cut to pieces in a pointless battle over a worthless patch of dirt. Savita, though, she had been whole. Some plague or other had been draining her life when he drained her blood and replaced it with his own.
He thought of his human wife and child, dead for so many centuries. As long as it had been, he could still remember the taste of his tears and the smoke as he put them on the pyre. He had tried to throw himself into the flames; relatives had struggled to pull him away as he screamed for his family. The widower had been 19 years old then, when his hair had started coming in gray.
William finished digging. “It’s nearly dawn, Father.” He was trying his best to be gentle as he hurried Ilyn along, but gentleness did not come easily to him.
The ancient vampire roused himself. He moved slowly, gently lifting November’s body and placing it carefully into the grave. He straightened her dress. He finally closed her eyes. She looked so small. Zinnia threw a flower into the grave, her face stained with streaks of blue. Ilyn demanded the shovel from his son and began filling in the hole; he changed his mind and joined November in the ground over William’s protests. Now there was no need for relatives to pull him away from the fire; this time there was no reason he could not accompany her into death.
He looked at November one more time as William began to bury them. He closed his eyes and curled protectively around the girl, hoping that she wouldn’t be afraid when she woke up in the dark earth.
The sun rose. The dead slept. The living waited, standing guard as the sun rose high and warmed the earth and the seed within it. The living waited, as the sun descended and the air grew cold. And when the sun finally set, the seed sprouted and the dead stirred. Two pale hands burst out of the ground, clutching one another, their fingers
intertwined. Life rose from lifelessness: a miracle. A curse.
