She Dies at the End (November Snow #1) (26 page)

“Why?” Ilyn asked Lilith in a voice that made November shudder.  His fangs glinted in the light of the trees.  His face was feral.  This man looked like the creature who had beheaded a thousand werewolves in one night all those centuries ago.  This man bore no resemblance to the absent-minded professor who'd sat at her desk.

“He will make me a queen!” she cried pathetically as Ilyn released her jaw.

“As I would not?  I assume you refer to Luka,” the king said evenly.  “This is his knife, is it not?  My wife gave it to him in her will.  Fairy forged.  It’s quite unique.  Unmistakable.”  He showed it to the crowd, who murmured with anger and agreement.  The mob was terrifying to behold, all fangs and rage barely held in check.   “He put you up to putting silver in their blood?  To poison us all?”

For a moment, it seemed that Lilith had regained control of herself and would say no more, but her thwarted fury and the certain knowledge of her impending doom loosened her tongue.  “Yes, Luka!  He will be king.  I once thought you were a great leader, but you are weak.  He will set us free to reign over the animals as we should.  The bombings were just the beginning.  Tonight I have failed, but he will not be stopped!”

“And this knife?  Whose life was it meant to end?  Surely not the oracle child.  Luka covets her too much.”  He smiled: a sharp, dangerous smile.  “It was for me, correct?  After all, it would take an awful lot of poisoned blood to kill a vampire of my advanced years.  But the silver might have weakened me enough to be vulnerable to a more conventional attack.  Did you intend to stake me with it, Lilith, dear?”  His tone might make one think he was amused, until one looked at his eyes.

“Of course it was for you!” she screamed in rage.  “I gave you centuries, for what?  To watch you let your throne slip away inch by inch?  To watch you be betrayed by your own son?  To watch you fawn over some stupid cow of a fortune teller?”

“I'm so sorry to be such a disappointment.  I assure you I intend to do much better,” he replied sardonically.  The crowd laughed a bitter laugh, fully on the king’s side now, whatever doubts they may have had over recent months and years.  “And just what else was intended to happen tonight?” the king asked in a deceptively casual tone of voice.  “You don’t expect me to believe you had no plans for the fairies or the vampire survivors, do you?”

She was suddenly reticent.  The king made the knife fly into the air, held it a millimeter from the traitor’s face.  “Have you ever felt a fairy-forged blade, Lil?  Highly unpleasant, I can assure you from personal experience.”  The scar on Ilyn’s face twitched, but he received nothing from the traitor.  The blade began to spin like a drill as Ilyn asked the crowd, “Should I start with the eyes?”  They cheered, eager for blood.  November wanted to close her eyes and cover her ears.  Thankfully, Lilith’s want of courage spared November the sight of torture.

“The cars,” she whispered.  “Bombs in the cars.”

“To be triggered how?”

“Cell phone.  In my purse.”  At that, the vampire slumped, now defeated, never again to be feared.

At Ilyn’s nod, a small army of security personnel went to begin checking the line of limousines snaking along the drive while another one of them began examining Lilith’s bag.  “Put her in the dungeon,” he told the men who remained.  Before lowering her to the ground, the king wrapped her in so much silver chain she looked like a shining mummy.  She screamed ceaselessly as they carried her off.  The smell of burning flesh turned November’s stomach.

The crowd seemed a bit disappointed.  “You’ll have her blood and ash soon enough,” the king assured them.  “Let’s see if she can be of some further use against the rebel lord of Arizona first.”  He locked eyes with every lord in attendance before continuing.  “Despite our best efforts, it seems we will have war.  We’d best be as prepared for it as possible.  I see some of you have filmed this sad spectacle with your telephones.  Perhaps you’d be so kind as to discreetly share your footage with those not in attendance this evening who may be unconvinced of Luka’s perfidy.  And please do stay here until Lord William’s men determine it is safe for you to leave.  If you have the skills, please assist Rose and Birch in managing the care of the injured.  Otherwise, please stay out of the way.”

He turned away from the crowd and walked over to November.  “You saved us all, little one,” he said, kneeling beside her.  He smiled at her for the second time, and it again transformed him.  The beast was gone, the anger and the lust for blood.  For an instant, he looked young and capable of happiness.  The moment passed, and the king continued looking her over, trying to reassure himself.

“I’m fine.  A little dizzy is all.  And there’s this little scratch on my arm, but there’s hardly any blood,” she said, displaying the slight wound.  “It does kind of hurt,” she admitted, wincing.

“No,” Ilyn whispered, stricken.  Pine swore.  Tears welled in Zinnia’s eyes.

“What?” she asked, suddenly frightened.  “Tell me.  You’re scaring me,” she pleaded.

Ilyn scooped her up in his arms and started running to the house.  “Zinnia,” he called over his shoulder, “Find Savita and send for a fairy doctor.  Tell William and Hazel to deal with the rest of this fiasco.”

Her head spun and her arm burned as Ilyn carried her to her bed.  “Was the knife poisoned or something?  What is going on?” she asked frantically.  What scared her most was the wild, desperate look in the king’s eyes.

He knelt beside her and pulled out the knife. It was shining and razor sharp, with a wooden inlay down the center of the blade, rendering it both a stake and a dagger.  The panic left him, replaced by the calm born of surviving many crises in his long life.  He knew she needed him to be calm. 

“It’s not so much poisoned as . . . evil.  It has to do with how it’s made, the magic they use, how they make the alloy with silver, how they temper the blade . . .” He hesitated, not wanting to go into the gory details of its manufacture or its effect.  “A fairy forged knife creates a wound that will only heal if a powerful fairy chooses to heal it.  Otherwise, it will inevitably kill its human victim.  The wooden inlay is for striking vampires in the heart, of course.”

“So we have someone heal it in the morning,” she replied, uncomprehending.

He looked so very sad before he hid his feelings behind his customary stoicism.  “You might not last that long.  And even if you do,” he continued after a pause, “you might wish you hadn’t.  The pain . . . it will get much, much worse.  I myself lasted perhaps twenty minutes before I began begging to die.  Fortunately, Marisha soon found me and transformed me into a vampire.  The fairy had attacked me in order to hurt her, you see, and the fairy lost both his life and his weapon in return . . . Of course my wounds were more numerous as well as much deeper . . . but I was also much larger and stronger than you are.”  By this point, the room was filling up.  William, Savita, Zinnia, Esther, and Pine had joined them.

“You should turn her. Now,” William said without preamble.  “Screw the law I wrote.  Pay a fine.  There’s no way she’ll make it to morning.”  The evening’s events had put him in a ruthless mood, apparently.

“She’s too young,” Savita protested weakly.

“She’s older than you were,” came William’s retort.

“And I was too young!  And we all paid for that, as I recall.  How many innocents died as a result?  Hence, the law.”

“But we can’t just let her die!” cried Zinnia, trying with limited success to hold herself together.

“We aren’t going to let her die,” Esther said firmly.

The pain was becoming difficult to ignore, as was the distress of her friends.  November tried to think rationally.  The thought of becoming a vampire that night made something within her cry,
No!
  “This isn’t how I die,” November said with quiet firmness, cutting though the argument.  “It isn’t supposed to happen this way.  And I’m just not ready.  So you’re all just going to have to do your best to keep me alive until dawn.  That’s what?  Five or six hours?”

“Most of us aren’t ready when the moment comes to die,” Ilyn said.  “And what does it matter how it’s supposed to happen?  What’s wrong with sparing you suffering from this wound if you’re just going to end up one of us anyway?”

“It’s important somehow, my staying human a little longer.  I don’t know why, I just know that it is,” she stated with a sudden conviction.  The more she thought about it, the more convinced she was.  Her other sense was fairly vibrating with the certainty.  “I am sure.  I wish I weren’t, but I am.   And I’m the psychic, so we’re just going to have to go with that.”

She looked each of them in the face in turn, feigning a bravery she did not feel, but knowing there was no escape.  “If I am literally about to die, then go ahead and make me a vampire, but you must do your best to keep me alive until the sun comes up.”  Pain shot through her arm and into her chest.  She pressed her lips together.  “Regardless of what I might say later.”

She looked up at Ilyn, wondering if he was about to overrule her, wondering if he was preparing to drain her blood and her human life away.  She wasn’t much afraid of that, she realized.  She would be sad about it, but she trusted him.  She was just afraid that to die now would be a mistake, perhaps a fatal one.

“Alright,” he said, looking in her eyes and finding her resolute.  “I think we have to trust your judgment.”

“No!” cried William.  “It’s too risky.  We can’t afford to lose her!  You must do it, or I will.”  Ilyn fairly growled in reply.

“It’s my life, not yours.  I’m more than your chess piece,
my lord
,” November spat with uncharacteristic vehemence.  The pain was starting to get to her.  “Now I don’t know how long I’ll be coherent, and I’d like to get out of this dress.  The men will please leave.  I’d like the king and Pine to please return in 15 minutes, and the doctor, if he’s here by then.”  She did not think William’s presence would be very helpful.  He looked like he was about to start smashing furniture.  The men reluctantly obeyed and continued arguing audibly in the hallway.

Zinnia and Savita helped her out of her dress and into a nightgown.  Esther supervised from her chair, telling them from experience how to move November without causing her additional pain.  “The satin one with the buttons, please,” November requested.  “I don’t think I can lift my arm.”  The wound had turned angry, her whole upper arm red and throbbing now, too heavy to move.

She struggled not to cry out as her friends dressed her, helped her to the bathroom, and got her back in bed.  She leaned back against the pillows trying to catch her breath so she could tell Zinnia and Savita, “I’m not sure how long you two should stay.  It’s not that I don’t want you to, it’s just your gifts might make it hard for you when things get really bad.”

Zinnia began to cry again.  “But you’re my best friend.  I should be here.”

“I know, but you’re an empath, and she’s a telepath, and I don’t know if I can handle this if I’m worrying how it’s affecting you, too.”  Zinnia gripped her hand.  “I won’t hold it against either of you, really.”

“She’s right,” Savita said quietly.  “My father and Pine will certainly stay, and Lady Esther.  She won’t be alone.”

“You can stay for awhile, but when King Ilyn tells you to go, you should go,” November managed.  Speech was becoming more difficult.  She laid her head down and tried to ride the pain.  She noticed when the men returned and conferred with the doctor, who did not seem terribly optimistic.

She murmured that she’d like someone to take down her hairdo from the party.  The pins were sticking in her scalp; this had become intolerable all of a sudden.  To her surprise, it was Ilyn who began gently disentangling her hair, combing it smooth with his fingers.  It was very soothing.

She opened her eyes when the doctor asked for permission to put in an IV for hydration.  She nodded agreement and offered her arm.  “No sedatives, please,” she whispered.  “Bad visions from those.  I’m already getting intrusion,” she added, looking fixedly at an empty corner of the room.

“Intrusion?” asked the king.

“That’s what I call it, when images from visions start mingling with the present and I can’t really tell the difference between what's real and what isn't.  There’s somebody standing in the corner.  A little kid.”  He had the king's mouth.  Her voice was oddly affectless, and she tore her eyes away from the specter.

Dr. Cedar’s eyes widened.  “Alright, then, no sedatives.  I doubt they’d do much anyway, and human painkillers would have no effect, I’m afraid,” he replied.

Ilyn pulled a chair up to the bed.  She looked at him and managed a faltering smile.   “You’ll stay?  The whole time?”  He nodded and took her hand.  “Please don’t leave me alone,” she begged, suddenly desperately afraid.

“Of course not.  I’ll stay,” he promised.  “I’d stay forever.”  She looked at him, confused, uncertain whether she'd heard him correctly, until she was overtaken by a wave of pain that arched her back wrung a cry from her throat.

“Here we go,” Pine said, stone-faced and knuckles clenched to white.

“It’s all my fault,” came Pine’s voice, despairing.  “If I had just been a little faster. . .”

“Nonsense.  I kept that viper in my nest for 200 years.  Hazel tried to warn me, as did my children, and I wouldn’t listen.  The blame is mine,” Ilyn replied, determined to take all the responsibility for November’s injury.

“It was my job to keep her safe.  She trusted me.  Lord William trusted me.”

Ilyn studied the young fairy sitting vigil with him.  “Do you love her?” he asked in a deliberately casual tone, noticing how hard Pine seemed to be taking this turn of events.

Pine raised his eyebrows.  “Yes, but not the way you mean, sir.  I’m gay.”

“Ah.  Do you have someone?”  The king seemed uncharacteristically talkative and curious about matters of the heart that evening.

“I did.  He died a few years ago.  Old age.  We had nearly 50 happy years together.  I have the gift of illusion, so his family and friends thought I aged with him.”

"What about him?  Did he knew what you are?"  Ilyn sounded a bit scandalized.

"Yes.  I broke the law," Pine admitted.  "He was my mate.  I wasn't going to lie to him his whole life, our whole life together."

“You aren't the first to break that law, I suppose."  He shrugged before adding, "You won't be the last.  I’m sorry for your loss, truly.  You still wear the ring?”

Pine nodded, looking down at the scuffed gold band on his left hand.  "I can't seem to manage to stop wearing it."

"Neither can I.  And it's been centuries."  The king shook his head.  “Sometimes I think it’s easier for us vampires.  We can make the humans we love immortal, so we can have more time.  But then they can still die, and it isn’t any easier for having had more years with them.”

“Life always contains loss.  I believe in finding happiness where I can, for however long it lasts,” the younger man replied philosophically.

“November said almost the same thing to me the other day.”

“Maybe that’s one reason the two of us get along so well.”  The men lapsed into silence.  Pine screwed up his nerve and asked his king, “Do
you
love her?”

He looked sharply at the much younger man.  “I don’t believe that I’m capable of feeling . . . for a human . . .  I know her suffering grieves me.  I know I enjoy her company, which is more than I can say for anyone else since my wife died.  I know her gift is remarkable.  But how do I compare this child to a wife I loved for thousands of years?”  Ilyn looked down at November, who looked so very small and fragile as she whimpered and trembled, insensible, in his lap.

“You don’t.  You can’t.  It isn’t fair to either of them.”  Pine managed a half-smile as he added, “If you do pursue her, please do try not to hurt her, your grace.  I’d hate to have to take a swing at you.  It was all I could do not to break Lord William’s nose for leading her on.”

“You and me, both,” Lady Esther interjected, looking up briefly from her high-speed knitting.  It was a miracle the yarn didn't catch fire.

“I shall take care.  Your grandmother would be irritated if I had to kill you for raising your hand to me.  That would be most inconvenient.”  The king closed his eyes for a moment.  “I should probably just leave her alone, for her sake.  She’d be so much better off if we’d never found her.”

“Someone else would have found her, wanted to use her.  Better us than Luka or the wolves,” Esther said.  The king knew she was correct, but it was a difficult truth to believe as they watched the innocent seer suffer for other people’s sins.  They lapsed into silence.

The girl in question heard very little of this conversation.  November had been trapped in agony for hours now.  When she wasn’t screaming, she was murmuring incoherently in foreign tongues or keening like an animal caught in a trap.  She gripped Ilyn’s hand like a vice even as her strength waned.  The king now held her in his arms as though she were a sick child, her feverish head leaning on his chest when she curled into a ball, or else cradled in his palm when she arched her back in pain.  She seemed somewhat more comfortable with him than lying in her bed, though it was hard to tell for certain.  She was by then unable to speak coherently, so they had been spared her pleas for mercy, at least, after the first hour had passed.  The hardest part for Pine had been the ten minutes she'd spent calling out desperately for her mother.

Needing something to do, Ilyn sang her songs he’d thought he’d forgotten: some from his human life, some he’d learned later.  Pine and Esther found it quite touching.  Ilyn was not exactly known for gently crooning lullabies. It helped pass the time, and drown out the moaning, and his voice seemed to give November some comfort.  That’s what he told himself, anyway, to justify this unseemly gentleness.

Later, she would struggle to describe the visions she’d seen in the throes of her delirium.  The one mercy that night was that she’d be able to remember so little of it.  She was accustomed to recalling her visions in precise, excruciating detail.  She was unable to forget anything from her real life, either.  But that night would stay with her only in fragments of memory, flashes of vision, a brief period of convalescence, and the memory of the kindness of those who had cared for her.  She would remember the pain not at all.

Her temperature was starting to climb again.  Dr. Cedar pumped her full of useless fever medication and saline solution to prevent dehydration.  Ilyn held cold, wet cloths to her head and neck, to little avail.  She was a furnace.  Ilyn gazed down at her dark hair now soaked with sweat, then looked mutely at the doctor.  Cedar shrugged helplessly.  “I’ve given her everything I have, and we’re keeping her from getting dehydrated.  We’ve only got the last ditch, old-school remedies now if the fever gets any higher: shaving her hair, cold baths.  She’s already at 104.  Much higher, and we have the risk of brain damage.”

This was sadly all too familiar to the king, who’d watched many die of fever over his long lifetime, including his human wife and child.  He told himself that it didn’t matter, that when she started to fail, he could simply make her a vampire.  He told himself that it would be better that way, that she would be stronger, that she could start her new life, that the two of them would be family then, and on a bit more equal footing.  Nevertheless, he knew that he wasn’t any more ready to kill her than she was ready to die and rise again.  He wasn’t sure why, but he knew it to be true.

“You’d best send down for some blood for me and Esther,” Ilyn requested at some point, his fangs half showing.  “I am finding it difficult to be hungry this close to her,” he admitted matter-of-factly, his teeth just inches from her neck, his cheek resting on her hair.

After eating, he again stroked her face with the cold cloth, battling indecision.  “We’d better cut her hair now, before she starts seizing,” he said.  “It’ll be easier now than trying to do it if she’s thrashing.  We might hurt her.  And send Willow down for enough ice for the bath.”  Willow was keeping watch in the hallway.

“Such a shame,” Esther said sadly as they plugged in the clippers.  “She has such lovely hair.”

“It’ll grow back,” Ilyn said.  “If she lives.”  He stroked her hair one last time before he began.  “But yes, it is sad.”  And November’s long, black tresses fell to the floor.  She took no notice at all.  Ilyn tried not to think of his human wife.  Nadi’s red hair had never had the chance to grow back.  He could still see her long braids in a pile on the dirt floor.

Ilyn proved prescient.  November’s febrile seizures began when her fever spiked ten minutes later.  Into the ice water they went together, Ilyn holding November carefully, keeping as much of her immersed as possible while ensuring her head stayed above the water.  It would have looked funny if it hadn’t been so deadly serious: the ancient and dignified king in the bath in his tuxedo pants and shirt, the jacket and tie long since discarded, the girl in a nightgown splashing water up his nose.  Pine occupied himself with refreshing the ice as it melted.  “She hates being cold,” Pine commented morosely.  She wasn’t crying out anymore.  The most she could mange now was the occasional whimper, which was somehow more frightening.  Esther watched quietly, able to do little but hope for the girl who had tried to help her from afar.             

This is how they passed the rest of the night, monitoring her pulse and temperature all the time, hoping against hope for dawn to come.  “I’ve never wished so hard for sunup,” Esther muttered.

“It’s almost here,” Pine said.  “Willow’s right outside.  I’ll send her down to get my grandmother.”

“And you must go to ground, Esther,” the king admonished.  “I don’t want you to jeopardize your recovery trying to stay awake past dawn.”

“I know, I know,” she replied to her father-in-law.  “I just want to know that she’s alright.”

“You’ll know.  You'll know when you hear the screaming,” Pine said grimly.  “It’s going to be a rough road back from the brink.”

With that, Esther took one last look at the girl and wheeled herself to the elevator.  Pine carefully lifted November out of the bathtub and carried her back to her bed, where Ilyn wrapped her in a dry blanket, partly for modesty’s sake, as her soaking wet nightgown had become transparent.  Fairies and vampires didn’t much care about nudity, but he suspected November wouldn’t want to exhibit herself to a crowd.

Ilyn took no notice of his own wet clothes.  He knelt by November’s side and paid attention only to the approaching dawn and to her faltering breath and pulse, willing them to continue long enough to reach daylight.  Hazel rushed in, joining Pine, Ilyn, and Cedar.  Willow and Zinnia waited anxiously in the hallway.  The other vampires waited uneasily in the crypt.  

Finally, light’s first blush arrived, and Hazel placed her millennia-old mahogany hands on the human girl, who even near death was again clinging to Ilyn’s hand.

November said later that the heat of the fever had been nothing compared to the fire that had burned through her as life poured back into her dying body.  The pain was as sharp as anything she had suffered that night, but the quality was different somehow: the pain of birth rather than of death.  Pine had been correct: she screamed with a newfound power as Hazel pulled her out of the grave.

As she healed, she regained enough consciousness to realize what was happening and stopped trying to fight the process.  It was so much easier somehow, once she knew that the pain would soon end.  Finally, suddenly, the anguish disappeared, leaving only a dull ache throbbing softly through her bones.  She opened her eyes, dizzy and confused, not knowing if she was surrounded by reality or delirium.

She looked over and saw Ilyn.  She reached out and touched the tip of his nose to try to see if he was real, just as she had done days before.  He laughed with relief.  It was a wonderful, seldom-heard sound.  It brought a weak, transient smile to November’s weary face, and it set Pine grinning from ear to ear.  Hazel hugged her grandson and collapsed into a chair, exhausted by her efforts.  Zinnia rushed in at the sound, weeping with happiness, and ran to her friend’s side.  November looked around in a daze, not speaking, not sure where she was or what was happening, but seemingly relieved.

“Alright, everyone, let’s give her some space.  She’s out of danger, but she needs to get some rest,” the doctor admonished.

November then glanced over at Dr. Cedar in his white coat; he was filling a syringe from a vial.  She was seized with an irrational panic.  Suddenly, she was a terrified little girl again, in a hospital she hadn’t seen in years.  “No, please, I’ll be good, I promise!  I’ll take my pills.  I’ll eat.  You don’t have to!  I won’t scratch my eyes anymore, I swear.  Don’t drug me!  Don’t put me in that room!”  She struggled to escape her blanket, tangled up, trying desperately to flee.  She tore at the IV line still attached to her arm.

Ilyn swiftly freed her from the blankets and took her by the shoulders.  “Look at me, please, November.  It’s Ilyn.  You’re safe here.  You’re not in a hospital.  You’re not in danger.  You’re at home. You’re safe at home.  He’s not giving you human drugs.  It’s just vampire venom, so you can sleep without seeing anything.”

He kept saying these things, over and over, until she finally seemed to hear him.  She threw her arms around him and buried her face in his neck, sobbing noiselessly.  Ilyn looked startled for a brief moment, unused to such displays of emotion.  He quickly recovered and wrapped his arms around her, stroking what little was left of her hair until the stopped shaking and raised her head.  While she was crying in Ilyn’s lap, Willow had taken the opportunity to change the sheets, and Zinnia had pulled out a fresh nightgown.

November looked around the room, her eyes resting briefly on her friends as well as on empty spaces filled with people only she could see.

“Are you alright, brave girl?” Pine asked, crossing the room to kiss her on the forehead.  She reached out for him weakly, patting his arm reassuringly, but said nothing. She cocked her head and squinted at him as if puzzled.

“Em?” Zinnia asked, kneeling at her feet.  “Say something, please.”  November gently touched her friend’s hair and managed a twitch of a smile, but said nothing.  “Why isn’t she talking anymore?” Zinnia asked the doctor with alarm.

Cedar cleared his throat.  “She’s been through a great deal.  As I said, the patient needs rest.  There will be plenty of time to talk to her later.  She spoke when she was . . . altered, so there’s no physical damage to her ability to speak.  I’m sure she’ll feel better after she wakes up.”