Fairy Circle (36 page)

Jethin searched in the direction Saffron had indicated, and finally found the woman. Well, the dead woman. A moaning spirit. Disdain crept across his perfect features. He felt no pity for them. He had no idea why they would choose that existence. The vampire life was the most admirable, the fairy world had its perks, being human wasn’t the worst thing. But, being a ghost? Just plain deplorable.

“
She doesn’t matter. Let’s go; we have work to do.”

Since the very first moment Saffron laid eyes on the ghost, all those months ago, she had feared her. Not now. Tonight, she watched the woman with a mixture of great sorrow and empathy. Saffron felt the woman’s ache and wanted to reach out to her, to soothe and help her.

“
Don’t you feel her pain? Can’t you tell? She matters.”

“
I don’t feel anything. It’s just a defect of that fairy dust you’ve got clinging to you. C’mon, now. I don’t want to spill this all over my jeans. Drink up.” He had since bitten himself and was keeping the flow of blood back by pinching the punctures with his thumb and forefinger. He held his wrist before her and smiled. “You won’t like it at first, but give it a couple of seconds and you’ll find you become addicted very quickly. Drink away. Enjoy. I’ll stop you when you’ve had enough.” He moved his wrist closer to her mouth. “Open up, Saffron.”

She shifted her position. She screamed inside her head to tell him, “No!” She closed her eyes. He shoved his wrist in her mouth, forcing her lips open until they split at the corners. She heard a crack in her jaw and screamed with the pain. The blood was spurting from his wounds. It was hitting the roof of her mouth. It was pooling near the back of her tongue. She took a great big gulp of it. It was heinous. It tasted like copper and…. She didn’t know what else. It tasted like metal. Like charred metal. Like sickening, sweet, cloying spice swirling all together, thick and black. Her gag reflex was triggered, and she gulped down another dose of the wretched liquid.

Her eyes widened with fear as her body recoiled from it. A chill rushed through her limbs and froze her bones. She thought of old things and dead things and things unchanged and ignored since the dawn of time. All around her, it smelled like a mildewed antiques barn. She shivered. Cold overtook her entire body, and she knew that if someone were to poke her, she’d shatter into a million frozen shards. Just as quickly, the frigidness rushed from her body and she discovered her mouth was full again, full of the viscous fluid, a thickening draught which threatened to force its way down her throat. Saffron actually felt it pushing to go down as if it were
aware
of what it was doing. This time, she spat it out. Everywhere, she retched and spit and blew.

“
No, Saffron. No! You’re so close, quickly, drink again! You are on the edge of need! Just drink it and you’ll see, you’ll crave it! You won’t be able to get enough! Hurry!”

“
no.” The tiny two-letter word was firm and sure. “I will
not
drink it!” She swiped the back of her hand over her mouth and felt the oily blood smear between her fingers. This wasn’t going to be easy, but she didn’t care anymore. She knew what he was; she had figured what he was hiding. “I will not become what you are. I will not exist forever as one person. Look at you.” She leaned back to take a look at him. “You’re like a block of ice at a New Year’s parade. Yeah, you’re cut and you look like a piece of art, but there’s nothing else there! You have no pulse! And you love nothing! Remember the greatest power on earth? ‘It’s love.’ You don’t love anything, Jethin. What do you do with yourself every day, every week, every month, year, and century? If I were you, I’d fill my time up with loving people. I mean, what else is there? But I can’t love them when I’m a vampire; can I? I’ll just want to eat them.” She shook with the effort of her speech.

“
You realized too late that the true beauty of life is…” she fluttered her arms wildly. She frowned, her mouth twisting with the pressure of quick thought and exasperation. Burning blood dribbled from her chin as she struggled to understand. “…ahhh…” She slapped her forehead lightly, several times.

Jethin watched her fumbling in surprised annoyance. Luckily for Saffron, it made him pause.

“
To be born again!” Saffron yelled, causing some wild turkeys to fly from the branch where they had been roosting. Was that what she meant to say? All of the puzzle pieces were so confusing. It was true; there were two sides to every story. And anything could be justified. “In your search for the most envious life, you messed up. Instead of getting more, more, more; you denied yourself. You denied yourself the prize most humans take for granted. Change. You truly are dead.” Her mind popped with epiphanies. “You want that life back. You want a chance to be what you used to be. Man, you reek of jealousy. My God, what was I thinking?” She rubbed her knuckles into her eye sockets.
“
I was going to throw my life away because it was the easiest thing to do.”
Her eyes burned like an evangelist’s one hour into the sermon. “But I’m not dead. I can start over any time I want! You have absolutely nothing to give me.”

Not a blink or a twitch broke the stare that bound them. She waited for him to attack. Her intestines spasmed and she doubled over. She groaned and hissed when she spoke. “How dare you!” Her nostrils flared and her eyes narrowed as the blood continued to drip from her chin. “You were tricking me in the same, exact way that Cecilia tricked you. Why? Weren’t you mad at her for doing that to you? Didn’t she hurt you so bad you could never be happy again? Why would you do that to someone else? Why would you do that to me? Jethin, I would
never
do something like that to you.”

He had been sitting there, all this time, watching her work things out. He could have slaughtered her ten times over; he could have walked away. Yet, he sat there and watched in amazement at the transformation that sped through her like pure energy. He felt a grudging admiration for her. Did
he
cause her to change like this? He was more powerful than he thought…

She was mostly right in her accusations. She had the wrong person though…the Countess hadn’t thrown him over the edge. Li had, when she was Molly. He couldn’t tear Saffron’s steaming organs from her lily-white belly now. How could he enjoy it? She gave him no incentive. After all, she wasn’t afraid anymore. He could feel it, the fear draining from her as water from a sieve. Now she felt…pity. And pain. Blek. What a waste of a night. How would he piss Li off now? Maybe if he got Saffron to marry him… He sniffed. Like a dandy perturbed before his cold afternoon tea, he actually sniffed with great disparagement.

“
Fine, Saffron. This is all very well, but I should let you know. If you don’t continue the process within the next few seconds, you are going to become very, very…unwell. My blood flows through you. Your blood will reject it as a foreign invader. If you don’t allow me to drink of your blood and break down its defenses, you will enter a world of such extreme torture the likes of which you and your kind could never imagine. Do you think you’ve had nightmares before? They will not compare to the inescapable hell you are about to enter - a black death that will eviscerate you and leave you delirious with pain. That doesn’t sound very good, does it?” He tilted his head. “And just when you think the pain couldn’t possibly get any worse, it does, and it leaves you begging for the easier pain you had just wished away.

“
We must continue what we have started or, simply put, my blood will attack you.” He sniffed again, “it will probably eradicate you.” He raised his eyebrows and shrugged as if to say,
Oh,
well.
In fact, he said nothing and watched to see how this little bit of terror would affect her. He was being fair; he had warned her. He was going to have a lot of dancing to do after this fiasco to get her to marry him. Just the thought of it was exhausting.

Saffron gave him nothing. Her face was screwed up in shifting grimaces of pain, but she just stared at him. She had nothing more to say.

This was crap. He wanted the last word. He stood up, casually dusted off his clothes, and stretched luxuriously like a cat emerging from a sunbath. “Have you really never wondered how it is that we were fortunate enough to meet?”

Saffron ignored him. She pretended to study her flip-flops as she bore the pains in her belly.

“
Li, Saffron. Li is the reason why we have met. As a matter of fact, Li knew this moment was coming all of your life. Yet…” He looked around; over the lawn toward the sea, through the ghostly branches of the trees, and into the alpaca field. “…where is she now? In your hour of need, where is she?” He spoke as gently as a lover. “Is she leaving you to die, Saffron? Because you will, you know…die. That pain you’re feeling is the foreplay of death.” He continued to smile pleasantly. “I’m here. I can help you. No matter what you say, it hurts me to watch you suffer like this.” He stretched his arms above his head and tilted his head to get a crick out. Saffron heard the crunch and shuddered. He shifted his legs. “She might thank me for your death. I’m sure she has been wishing for your death since you were born. Have you suffered many accidents in this life? Any repeated incidents of near-death calamities?”

Saffron gasped.

“
Ah, hah. I see
that
means something to you. I only point it out because this gasp of, ‘Hhhgggg,’ denotes shock, whereas the other gasp you made earlier of, ‘Wheeeeew,’ was clearly from pain.” He smoothed his eyebrows with his fingertips. “I’ll take the blame there. I should’ve told you. Li is
so
possessive.”

Saffron jerked her face away from his line of vision. Her eyes rolled back in her head as the pain mounted and squeeeeezed her gut. How she wanted to cry, but couldn’t even take the breath to moan.

Jethin leaned on her back and put his mouth by her ear. She could smell his fetid breath. “If you won’t let me help you, there’s nothing left for me to do. Goodbye, my Saffron.” He stood up and bowed to her. “See you next time.”

She felt the wind at her back. He was gone.

Her eyes began to glaze with the pain. Her feet scraped down the slope of the roof as hot waves of cruel, spasmodic stabbing pierced through her lower intestines. Her breathing came in pants as she fell back against the wall of her home. She wanted her mother. She didn’t know what to do to reach Audrey beyond the sound barrier that Jethin put up. Low, guttural sounds poured from her lips, sounds she wasn’t even aware off. Then, “Ma, Ma, Mommm….” so weakly, that the gnomes only heard, “Mm, Mm, MmMm,” and went back to catching nightcrawlers.

Saffron was foaming at the mouth. Her body began to convulse. Just before she passed out, she heard the tinkle of one tiny bell. Her head lolled to the side and that was the way Li found her, a limp lifeform in a pool of black blood. Li assessed the scene, and then crouched beside Saffron, careful not to slip in the blood. Was Saffron becoming a vampire or was she dying? Li prayed for Saffron’s death. How had this all happened so quickly? She didn’t want to believe Saffron would rush to Jethin so soon. She had assumed she could keep her safe. She had made a grave mistake. She ran her hands over Saffron’s inanimate form. A small smile of triumph crossed her lips. Saffron was not a vampire. It occurred to Li that the gore around Saffron’s wasted body was a telltale sign. Li could see that he had tried; but he wouldn’t have left a new fledgling in such a way. Saffron would have been weak and sick as a newborn vampire; he would have stayed very near during her three days. Something had gone wrong here. Saffron had been left to die.

The fairy looked around. This was a lot of blood to clean. There was blood splattered on the side of the house, blood sticking and running down the roof, blood dripping off Saffron’s chin and soaking her robe, blood stuck in her (short?) hair, congealing in dark clumps. Li sat on the roof and pulled Saffron’s boneless, sticky body into her arms. “A fine mess you have left for me, little girl.” Li retrieved a gossamer cloth from among her robes and gently wiped at Saffron’s face, then neck and arms, and hair, and finally her clothes. Wherever the cloth touched, the blood was wiped clean away. The cloth itself blackened but it didn’t drip.

When Li was done, there wasn’t a trace of blood anywhere on Saffron. For a good while longer, Li worked on the mess that had splattered all around. Soon, the walls of the house, the shingles on the little rooftop where they sat, and any tainted surrounding areas were all spotlessly clean.

Across the field, and deep within the shadows, Jethin watched the fairy work. He leaned, arms crossed over his taut chest, on the trunk of a massive willow that stood on the edge of the forest. Its drooping limbs and tender, knifed-edged leaves swished back and forth in the gentle night breeze. The branches hung low and obscured him from human sight, but the animals knew he was there. They could smell him. Li knew he was there. She could feel him.

His lush lips were pressed together and his eyes were squinted in thought. It wasn’t often he could lay eyes on her like this. Her beauty still touched him. The grace in her movements filled him with an agony that was too much to bear. He could move at her but she could move more quickly and leave him even more angered for his embarrassing try.

“
As always, my beautiful girl, I rush to your side to help you. Oh, what would you do without me?” Li smiled pleasantly while she worked, overjoyed to be of such great use to Saffron. “We don’t want people wondering why you were dining on blood this fine warm evening, now do we? You have learned your lesson; have you not? No more associating with vampires.” She looked at Saffron’s limbs and cocked her head. She adjusted Saffron’s arms so they folded over her belly, straightened her legs so they wouldn’t be skewed, brushed her long bangs to the side, and hooked them behind her ear. “There. Now you be good and watch me clean your mess.