She Dies at the End (November Snow #1) (9 page)

“So do you think whoever hired them is the same person who is behind the assassinations?”

“Maybe.  Maybe not.  You would be a serious threat to him and whatever his ultimate plan is, especially now that you’re in my possession.  They know I would fight to the death for my father the king.  So, if the terrorist leader didn’t send these two looking for you, he’ll send someone else.  Every supernatural creature on the continent with ambition is going to want to get his hands or paws or fangs on you, November.  I wanted you because I think you can help us defeat the terrorists and defend the kingdom, preserve the peace and prevent war.  Others will have other reasons, some of them not so noble.” 

He continued, “I wanted you to know that I’m sending Willow and Pine out at dawn to go find your mother’s body and give her a decent burial.  The map you drew looks quite detailed.  I’m confident they’ll find her.”

“I want to go with them,” she said, looking up at him.

“I don’t think that’s a good idea.  The last thing we need is for you to be in danger, and the body won’t be in very good condition.  There’s no reason to put yourself through that,” William replied.  “Besides, you need to get some sleep.”

“I already saw what they did to her, believe me.”  November replied.  Her chest tightened as she tried to take her next breath.  “I’ll never be able to forget.  Besides, I might be able to see something about Agnes and Philemon and their employer if I’m on the scene.”  She looked down at her hands before continuing, “She is my mother.  Was my mother.  She may have been a bad one, but she’s still mine.  She still gave me life.  I didn’t get to say goodbye to her when we left the carnival, thanks to you,” she said, reminding him of the previous night’s cruel departure.  “Please,” she said, the tears beginning to flow again.  “Let me bury her and say goodbye.  Goodbye to her.  Goodbye to that life.” 

William wavered.  The information could be invaluable, and her tears were discomfiting.  “Alright.  You stay with my people at all times.  No wandering.”

“Of course."  She had no desire to run into any more danger.  "Thank you.”

“I don’t suppose you’d allow me to go with her?” Zinnia piped up.

“I’m afraid not,” William replied.  “I swore an oath to your mother to keep you safe, and I’m disinclined to take any chances.”  Zinnia looked disappointed but knew better than to argue.

“I am sorry for your loss, November, truly.  I should have thought to protect her, but I allowed my contempt for her to cloud my judgment,” William confessed.

November absolved him after a moment of thought. “I don't blame you.  They probably hoped I would, so I wouldn’t be helpful to you.  I blame Agnes and Philemon and whoever sent them.  My mother was never going to make old bones.  I’ve seen her die of an overdose.  I’ve seen her beaten to death by a pimp.  I’ve seen her hang herself in prison.  I’ve never seen her dying peacefully in bed.  She’s been trying to kill herself for about 15 years.  Part of me is relieved that she’s free now, though she didn’t deserve to die like that,” November admitted, more to herself than to them. 

William looked at the window.  “It’s nearly dawn.  I must retire,” he said.  “You handled yourself well, November.  You’re a formidable child.”  He walked over to her and touched her hair lightly, as though blessing her.  “Be careful today.”  November nodded, and William walked briskly out the door, leaving her to prepare to depart.

November quickly dressed and packed her worn, military surplus rucksack with food and bottled water.  Zinnia helped her find the garage, where Pine and Willow were loading some gear into the trunk of a grey 4-wheel drive Audi, one of an incomprehensible variety of vehicles filling the cavernous space.  Pine and Willow looked extremely competent and slightly annoyed.  She suspected that they resented being sent such a long way just to bury some human.  Zinnia gave November a quick hug and a whispered, “Good luck,” and disappeared back into the house.

“Ready to go?” asked the violet-haired Willow, opening the back passenger-side door.  November nodded and clambered into the car. 

"You drive," Pine said to Willow, tossing her the keys.  "You're less likely to get pulled over for no reason."  Willow snorted and did not argue.  Fairy or not, what police saw when they looked at Pine was a black guy in an expensive car.

The ride was long and uneventful.  November's mother had been killed near Inyokern, in the middle of nowhere in the high desert.  She had no idea why her mother had headed in that direction, but then again, Julia was never known for logical planning.   November was able to get a few minutes of sleep, for which she was grateful. 

She also used her gift to take a little peek into the cases in the trunk.  The abundance of weapons secreted therein was both alarming and reassuring.  She kept quiet for the most part, though she did speak up at one point to thank the two fairies for performing this unpleasant task.  Pine responded, “We’re not doing it for you.”  He smiled, though, as he said it, taking some of the sting out of the words.

When the miles and miles of farmland gave way to the trees of the Sequoia National Forest, November knew they were getting close.  The closer they got, the more tense she became, and the more difficult it was to block from her mind the violent images of her mother’s murder.  She did her best to hide her discomfort. The last thing she wanted was to seem weak to these two warriors.

“Pull off here, please,” she said, directing them down a tiny road off of 178.  Very quickly they were out of sight of the main road and seemingly isolated from civilization.   The two fairies gave each other looks indicating some degree of skepticism of her navigation.  These looks were soon erased when her mother’s beat-up motor-coach came into view.  The fairies wanted to check the scene for dangers before letting November out of the car, which gave her a few moments to steel herself for the unpleasantness ahead.

Finally, they signaled her and she emerged, walking slowly towards her mother’s body.  Julia lay where she fell, in the dirt next to her home.  The smell was awful, though thankfully her body was still in the shade of the trailer and hadn’t been baking in the sun all day.  There were flies, of course, attracted to all that blood.   For some reason, that was the hardest thing for November to see, flies covering the flesh of her flesh.  As much as the body, they testified to the reality of death.  She did not cry, nor did she flinch from the carnage.  After all, she’d already seen it countless times and shed many tears.

She swatted the insects away, took out a wash cloth she’d packed in her bag, moistened it with water, and washed the blood from her mother’s face.  She was prettier dead than alive.  Death had taken life’s hardness out of her face. Kissing her on the forehead, November whispered, “Goodbye, Mama.”  The fairies were keeping a respectful distance.  She stood and motioned them forward.  “Now what?” she asked.

“We’ll dig her a grave,” Pine replied.  “Won’t take long.  We’re fast workers.”  Willow was already pulling two shovels out of the trunk.

“I’ll see if I can sense anything of Agnes and Philemon, alright?”  November responded.  He nodded, and the two fairies got to work.  Their movements were efficient and speedy and graceful, a strange little dance of death.

November began circling the murder scene, looking to see if there was anything left behind.  No cigarette butts or chewing gum or other human detritus, of course, the attackers being vampires.  She tried to pretend she was a detective, not some terrified little girl now orphaned in a cruel world.  She tried to pretend this was like the countless other deaths she’d been forced to observe over the years.  Not finding anything on the ground, she returned to the body reluctantly, examining it with great care.  Her thoroughness was rewarded when she found a strand of light brown hair.  November smiled for the first time that day.  She and her mother had black hair.  November had a piece of Agnes, a piece that with a little work and a little luck might betray both the vampire and her employer.  She pulled an envelope out of her bag and placed the hair inside for safekeeping, then searched a few more minutes but found nothing else of use.

Checking the trailer’s interior was more difficult than she'd expected.  The awfulness of the body, she’d prepared herself for, but the flood of memories that assaulted her as she entered her former home were something of a surprise.  The surprise was that they were not all bad: nights spent doing each other’s nails while a thunderstorm raged outside, birthday parties kludged together with candles stuck in Little Debbie Swiss Rolls, breakfast for dinner.  She was expecting all the bad days to come back in full force, all the neglect and abuse and drugs and men.  But somehow, as November said goodbye to her mother and to her old life, the happy moments were what rose to the surface.  Not sure if that was merciful or cruel, she wept quietly for a few moments before drying her eyes and closing the ratty screen door for the last time.  She found no useful evidence within those flimsy walls.  There was nothing there for her anymore.

The fairies were waiting outside.  “We’re ready.  We need to get a move on if we’re going to make it back before dark,” Willow said.  “Is there anything in the trailer that could lead anyone to you, even to your name?”

“I don’t think so.  I don’t have school or medical records.  She didn’t keep pictures.  We didn’t get much mail other than overdue bills.”

“We’ll torch it just in case,” she said.  “Shall we proceed?”

November nodded and watched as Pine lifted her mother as though she weighed nothing and carried her a little ways into the brush, where they’d dug Julia’s grave.  Willow cleared a wide firebreak around the trailer.  November wondered if they had to do this sort of thing often.  They seemed to have a system down.  Pine hopped into the hole, placed her mother gently at the bottom, and jumped back out.  He looked to November, and when she nodded, he began filling in the hole so quickly that November could barely follow his movements.  When he was finished, November knelt and patted the mound a few times.  She rose to her feet, saying, “Thank you,” and walked back to the car without another word.  As she watched the trailer go up in flames, the three of them began their drive back to civilization, back to November’s new home.

The first few hours of the drive were uneventful.  November ate her packed lunch and the fairies argued over the music.  They sounded like an old married couple.  She supposed they’d been working together for some time.  Outside Bakersfield, a monstrous traffic jam brought them to a dead stop.  “Wonderful,” Pine said.  “I'll check the traffic on my phone.” 

They were still waiting for the traffic map to load when November piped up from the backseat.  “Overturned tractor trailer, maybe 7 miles away.  It’s on fire.  All lanes blocked.  We’re going to be here for awhile,” November reported, pleased to be useful.  The fairies raised their eyebrows at each other.

“I’ll look for an alternate route and report back in to the boss,” Willow responded, while Pine swore impotently at the other vehicles.  “Let’s circle back and take 99 instead of I-5, go through Merced and Turlock.”  As Pine moved to comply, she dialed the house in Oakland.  “Willow.  Give me Birch.  Yeah, traffic’s awful.  We need to take 99 to 205.  I doubt we’ll make it back before dark.  We’ll have to stop for gas, and presumably the human will require something.  They always seem to.  Yes, please inform Lord William when he rises.”

One advantage of their change in route was the beautiful scenery through the Sequoia National Forest.  November couldn’t help smiling as she looked up through the window at all those trees.  The quiet and shade lulled her into a much-needed and mostly vision-free nap. 

The traffic jam and change of plans cost them a lot of time.  By the time they stopped for gas in Manteca, it was getting dark.  “I need to use the bathroom,” she told Willow quietly, a little embarrassed by her human needs.  The bathroom was in a separate building rather than inside the little convenience store.  Willow came inside with her to get the key from the cashier and followed her to the entrance, waiting for her outside the door after peeking to check that both stalls were unoccupied.  It felt strange, to be the subject of all these precautions.  It was not until she was washing her hands that she realized that Willow’s efforts had been both necessary and ineffective.

November heard a struggle begin outside the door.  Before she could react, she herself had been flung against the wall, a hand around her throat.  As she struggled to breathe, her assailant gloated.  “Waited on the roof.  Came through the window,” crowed a large fairy with bright yellow hair and eyes.  “Now we wait for my partners to finish with your guards, and then we’re going to take a little trip.  If you scream, I will make you regret it.  Understand?”  November nodded, and he released his hold on her neck.  She could hear Willow and Pine outside and caught a mental glimpse of their violent struggle.  There would be no rescue from that quarter.  She was on her own.  “I wish it was daylight,” the fairy whispered right into her ear. “So I could have a taste.  Ah, well – there’s always tomorrow.”

Her thoughts began to race.  Her mind flashed back to a lesson from her mother.  Once puberty hit, Julia had taught her daughter some basic defensive strategies.  It was perhaps the only useful mothering she had ever done.  “Make them underestimate you, think you’re not a threat.  Then go for the eyes and the groin.  Fingernails are good.  Car keys are better.”  November’s fear crystallized into an icy clarity.

November looked up at the unknown fairy and allowed her mouth to tremble.  “Please don’t hurt me,” she whispered, tears beginning to flow.  A moment later, she slumped down to the floor in an apparent faint.  As the fairy swore and bent down to check on her, her hand came up with the crucifix of her rosary between her fingers, and she planted it firmly in his left eye as she brought her knee up between his legs.

He began to scream, tearing at his face.  November tried to run past him to the door, but he grabbed her ankle and gave it a yank, knocking her to the floor and climbing on top of her.  He began to hit her even as her rosary was still sticking out of his eye, landing blows on her ribs and her face as she tried to protect herself with her arms.

“I should kill you, you little whore,” he screamed, but then seemed suddenly to weaken.  “What have you done?” he whispered as light suddenly began to pour from his wound.  She closed her eyes reflexively as the light grew brighter and brighter; her eyelids glowed red.  There was one more scream, and when she opened her eyes, her assailant was gone.  Her rosary sat in the middle of an empty floor.

The adrenaline was such that she felt none of her injuries as yet.  Her shock held her still for a moment as she sat on the floor, staring at the place her attacker should have been, not comprehending what her eyes were telling her.  The sound of screaming out in the parking lot reanimated her; she grabbed her rosary and stood up, having absolutely no idea what she was going to do.  Her clarity of mind returned, and she used her ability to peer at what was happening on the other side of the door.  Willow seemed to be holding her own, but Pine was in desperate straits, on the ground, his attacker above him.

November finally remembered the case of gear the two knights had loaded into the trunk.  Praying that Pine had left the car unlocked, she took a deep breath and ran as fast as she could to the car.  Relieved to find the car open, she popped the trunk, pulled out the shovels, and opened the case. 

Carefully cradled in foam sat a variety of silver weapons with leather-wrapped handles along with a couple of firearms.  Having no idea how to aim and shoot, she grabbed a silver-tipped mace and placed a coil of silver chain over her shoulder.  She began to move toward Pine.  His attacker had his back to November, and she hoped he was too engrossed in enjoying his imminent victory to notice a weak little human.  He turned to look at her just as she got close enough to strike, and she hit him full in the face with all her weight behind the blow.

The painful shock to her arm and shoulders caused her to drop the heavy mace, but she was still able to throw the chain over her enemy while he was on the ground, clutching his head and recovering from her assault.  The injured fairy’s cry distracted his remaining partner-in-crime just enough for Willow to get the upper hand.  She sliced into her opponent’s neck, and at the instant his head was separated from his body, he turned to a flash of light.  Willow placed her hands on her thigh, bent over with exertion, and assessed the scene with a few efficient glances before she began issuing orders.

“November, move everything currently in the trunk to the floor in the rear.  Then help Pine get in the back seat.  Start the car and sit in the front passenger side.  Understand?”

“Yes, ma’am,” November replied, moving quickly to do her part.  As she did, Willow secured the surviving assailant and tossed him in the trunk.  She then turned her attention to the crowd of witnesses who were watching from the entrance to the store.  She enthralled them into forgetting it all and tampered with the surveillance system, moving quickly enough to be practically invisible.  They sped away and were already halfway up the on-ramp by the time they heard sirens approaching the gas station.