Christmas Healing (6 page)

“No,
Arthur, no. It had absolutely nothing to do with you. It was nothing you did.”

“You were tired that day. I should have not let you go out.”

“Well, you’re not the boss of me,” she grinned. “And it was my idea, not yours. Don’t worry, it was nothing to do with you. It would have happened had we gone out or stayed home.”

“What is it?” he asked, plainly. “That attacks you?”

Annalise bit her lip, trying to think of a way to explain this without confusing him.

“Um
…. blood is made up of tiny pieces, too tiny to see, called cells. All blood is, right?”

He nodded, listening.

“And two types of tiny pieces, red and white ones, in blood.”

“But blood is red,” he protested
, “and there is something wrong with yours, I can smell it.”

“Yes I know,” at least he understood that far. “
The tiny pieces in my blood aren’t working together properly, and since blood is everywhere in you, it makes me very sick. They are mutants, deformed.”

“How do we fix it?” They still hadn’
t let go with their hands.

“We
… try to kill the deformed ones,” she said, wishing she had a chart she could draw for him. “By poisoning them, and then they die.”

“Oh,” and then his face screwed up in confusion.
“So the medicine … only kills the ugly ones?”

She shook her head.
“No. There’s no way to just get those, so it attacks everything. But there’s more good ones than ugly ones, so we wait it out.”

He was silent a moment, baffled by this concept.

“You could die?”

“Yes, probably,” she replied, knowing that the answer was almost definite.
Annalise was on her third round of cancer, and a forth remission was not in the cards for her. But she didn’t need to overcomplicate it for him.

“Do you want to?”

This was a heavy question, and she knew she had to approach it carefully. He was looking for common ground for his own depression, but she couldn’t lie to him.

“I know that there’s the option for immortality. But I believe in natural life
coming to an end, and seeing what’s after this.”

“Life should end,” he agreed, and she sucked in a breath, wondering if she’d pushed him too far. “Yes. I wish it could.”

“I don’t want to die,” she clarified to him. “I just want to live until I’m meant to move on.”

“You don’t want to be a vampire?” he asked and she shook her head.

“No.”

“Because we are such monsters.”

“No,” this answer needed to be clearer, and she squeezed his hand. “Because there are other options after death and I want to take that route.”

“Yes, I also,” he sputtered brokenly, and she
felt her heart shattered. She squeezed his hand and they looked up to meet each other’s eyes for a long moment before they were interrupted by a nurse bustling in. In her hand was a printed sheet of paper.

“Good news,
Annalise. Your levels have come up enough that I think we can discharge you. Are you ready to go home?”

“
Hurray!” she cried, the moment breaking as she grinned. The nurse turned to Arthur, glancing at their clasped hands.

“We can have her discharged before tonight. Can you drive your girlfriend home?”

“Oh, he’s no t…” Annalise interrupted, Arthur’s face a mask of confusion. “We’ll call someone who can.”

“Alright.
I’ll process these and be back in a bit. It was nice to meet you, Annalise, but I hope that you don’t come back soon.”

“Thanks!”
Annalise grinned and put her arm out as the nurse reached to withdraw the needle. Arthur watched, wincing as the long needle came out of her hand, and blood began to pool. Out of habit, Annalise glanced at him, but he seemed more concerned for her safety than his blood craving.

Once the
monitors were off, she sat up, stretching her back and reached for the cell phone on her night stand.

“Can you call your brother for me, and ask him to come get us?”

“Huh?” Arthur looked in confusion at the cell phone. She hadn’t taught him anything about it, really, never mind how it works, but he had seen it used often enough. There was no better way to learn than to practice, in her opinion.

“Hold down the green button,” she said. “I just called him, so it’ll call back. Yes, that one. Hold it down. Now, it’s going to ring, so put it to your ear,” she was amused by the expressions on his face as he did, looking at her for direction every step of the
way. Apparently, Gregory picked up immediately, and Arthur repeated what Annalise had said, falling over the words in English and switching to Latin more than once.

Eventually, when
Arthur seemed to be staring at the phone in confusion, she took it back, concluding that the call had likely ended.

“What did he say?”

“He said … he’ll come. How does that thing work?”

“It’s a whole day’s lesson for another time,” she yawned, settling back on the pillows. “How did you get here?”

“Knox,” Arthur said. “He is off to cause trouble up the road.”

Annalise
laughed, crossing her legs at the ankle. Now that getting out was in her near future, her mood was much improved.

They chatted
with a natural flow and only a few translation errors appearing until Gregory arrived. She was happy to see him because that meant going home and escaping this place. As a wheel chair arrived - hospital policy to take her to the car - she realized what a shift in attitude this was from the day she arrived. She had been petrified of the Initials the day she arrived, feeling like a prisoner. But now, a part of her brain was happy to go home with them, grateful for the escape, and she couldn’t wait to settle onto the couch in the mansion and relax.

Gregory
, ever the gentleman, reached for the handles of the wheelchair to push her out and Arthur nearly body-checked his brother out of the way to do it. Annalise looked up with a smirk.

“I guess I’m a popular person.”

“That you are,” Gregory agreed, as they started down the hallway.

“How’s
Rosa?” Annalise asked.

“She’s fine. A bit stressed, I think, because her show opens on Tuesday.
”

“Oh that’s right!”
Annalise had forgotten all about Rosa’s performance in Jonesville, a half an hour north of the city, where one of the bigger theaters was. “You’re attending, of course?”

“Yes,” he replied, as they went through the double doors, into the bright sunshine. She
blinked twice, not used to the outside light. It was cold out, winter was on its way, late as always and she drew her coat tighter. “I’ve enjoyed ballet for centuries, and the Nutcracker is one of my favorites. And the fact that your girlfriend is dancing in it makes it better?”

Gregory
smiled.

“Something
like that,” he said. “If you two want to stay here, I’ll get the car.”

“Thanks,”
Annalise said, reaching up to tie her hair into a pony tail and looking up at Arthur. “Do you want to go?”

“Where?”

“To Rosa’s show. On Tuesday.”

“With you?” he looked down.

“Yes, unless you hate me or something.”

“No,” he shook his head, frustrated. “I mean, are you well enough?”

“They let me go, didn’t they? Anyways, it’s in a few days away, right?”

“Yes,”
Arthur agreed as Gregory’s black SUV pulled up. “Perhaps.”

“Think of it as a
lesson,” she said, about to get up. Arthur was in front of her in an instant, and before she knew what was happening, she was in his arms again, being carried to the car. The wheel chair moved in the wind, and she was about to protest that someone should have put the brakes on it. But she was enjoying the warmth he provided, the shelter from the wind, and so she said nothing, burying her face in his neck. It wasn’t strictly necessary, she probably should have walked, but there was something about his arms around her that made her feel safe. Safe. A word she never would have applied to the Initials before today.

She felt so safe, in fact, that she fell asleep on the car ride home, her shoulder nestled against
Arthur’s muscular arm. A bit uncomfortable, he wrapped his arm around her, letting her head fall deeper against him. Gregory glanced in the rear-view mirror.

“Is she alright?”

“Yes,” Arthur said, although he sounded unsure of himself.

“Your language has improved greatly,” his brother said, by way of compliment. “Are you starting to feel less overwhelmed by the world?”

“The world has changed very much, and not all for the better,” Arthur replied, and Gregory couldn’t necessarily disagree with that. “But Annalise shows me the things that are good.”

He probably didn’t mean it as sweet and kind as it came out, but his brother smiled anyways, going back to driving, and occasionally glancing in the mirror. For the first time since
Arthur’s awakening, he saw him focused on something other than his pain, his depression. He saw a flicker of the old Arthur, his regent and right hand man, forgetting his troubles to focus on Annalise’s comfort. Perhaps this girl was good for him in more ways than they had counted on.

What pained him, though, was that knowing
Annalise wouldn’t last forever. One way or another, the girl was mortal and would meet her fate soon enough. She had made her wishes clear should she suddenly expire, and he wondered if Arthur knew that.

Being an immortal and age old vampire, death was just a part of living, and yet, it always hit harder than it should. Even
Rosa, who made her wishes of vampirism clear, would be a different person when she was turned, and the human he knew would be dead. It was never an easy transition, whether they lost their mortality to this curse or to a grave.

He just hoped, when the time came, that
Annalise’s death didn’t undo all the good that she had done his brother.

Gregory
pulled up in the driveway and didn’t attempt to help Arthur with her. Arthur was fully focused on her comfort and concerns, and she barely stirred as he carried her into the house. Gregory watched, with a twinge of pain, as he took her upstairs.

Since the love of his life, his human life, had perished over a
millennium ago, he had never been able to bring his heart to care for a woman as strongly. He cared deeply about Rosa, but it wasn’t love, not the way he used to have it. He had a flicker of hope for Arthur though, that maybe there was something there with this girl, and maybe she could mend his broken heart before the end.

“
Arthur,” he said, trying to break the horrible mood. “I asked you to do the dishes at home. Why weren’t they done?”

Arthur
looked confused.

“Don’t we have servants to do that?”

Gregory raised an eyebrow and Annalise shifted.

“No more slaves,
Arthur, remember?”

“Yes, but servants?” he looked down at her, and she glanced at
Gregory, smiling a bit.

“When have you seen servants in this day and age?”

“When we went to the market,” he replied. “They were helping us, and folding clothes.”

Annalise
exploded into laughter, burying her face in his shoulder. Even Gregory had to smirk at that. She looked up at the oldest brother.

“Help.”

He shook his head.

“That’s on you,
Annalise.”

Arthur
looked between the two of them confused.

“What?”

“We’ll do a lesson on retail clerks later,” Annalise replied, snuggling deeper in his arm, her heart bursting with affection. “You’re adorable.”

When Tuesday came around,
Annalise awoke to chaos in the house. She was feeling much better, and her eyes opened before her alarm clock went off. Of course, that could have been due to the thumps and thuds that were coming from downstairs, followed by quick conversation.

Dressing quickly, she ran a brush through her hair, and wandered down the stairs, leaving the door to her room open. Once she would have locked it, fearful for her life and her possessions. Not that a lock would have done anything against age old vampires, but it was a start, and peace of mind. Now, however, she had no qualms leaving it open.

The giant staircase that she descended down led to an even bigger lobby, a wide open space only populated with furniture on its outskirts. Gregory had mentioned that they had used it for balls and dances in the past, and it appeared that’s what it was being used for now. Or at least, a single dance.

Rosa
, clad in tiny shorts and a tube top, exposing more skin than most lingerie models, had her ballet shoes laced up her legs, her hair pulled up in a bun. Gregory, his suit jacket off for once, stood on one side of her while Knox stood on the other. Annalise watched while the ballerina leapt and spun and even, to her great surprise, back flipped, everything leading her into landing en Pointe. Both brothers caught her periodically, firm hands on her waist, and Knox even lifted her to assist in a leap.