Final Farewell

I stand on the sidewalk watching the white ranch house on the opposite side of the street. Shadows glide past windows blazing with light. I’ve never set foot within the building but I have been drawn here by a voice in my mind; a voice I have not heard for more than half a century. They say that you never really get over the loss of your first love and I suppose it’s true. If not for that memory, why else would I be standing on a darkened street as mid-west snow swirls around me.

I breathe the air, taking the stench of doom into my lungs, letting it leech through me, armor against what’s to come. Swallowing hard I step off the sidewalk and cross to the front door, high-heeled boots tapping out an echoing cadence into the silent night. Before I can raise my hand to knock, the door is opened. His wife stands before me, brown eyes wide, not certain of what she’s seeing. Meghan has changed much since I last laid eyes on her. Mahogany curls have gone gray and worry lines crisscross once smooth features. A frown creases her brow for a moment before a simple exertion of my abilities makes her forget what she has seen.

“You will invite me in.” I whisper, dropping my voice to its lower register. I’ve learned over the decades that humans seem more prone to suggestion when it is given in this manner. Don’t ask me why, I can’t explain it.

“Who are you?” Meghan asks, showing more resistance to me than the average human.

“An old friend,” I answer, with a little more insistence.

“Of course, come in.” She gives way, standing to one side. I step through the door, into a small foyer. The walls are covered with family photos. Faces of children and what I suspect are a couple grandchildren stare at me accusingly. I wouldn’t be here if not for death’s song rising from this once happy home. The scent of lingering, painful death fills my senses. Stifled cries clamor through my mind as skulls flicker over his photographed countenance. Meghan leads me through the hall to the living room where family and close friends are gathered, waiting for a few moments to tell the dying man things only spoken of at a deathbed. Without thinking I lull them into a deep sleep. A talent that’s carried through the blood, one I’ve nurtured so that I’m more skilled than many of my brethren. As Meghan’s mind succumbs to my gentle persuasions, I catch her around the waist and ease her sleeping form to the floor.

I walk through the house, following the scent of death, to his sick room. As I step across the threshold a small girl with blonde curls turns hazel eyes to me. Her face lights up with curiosity. The smile I remember seeing on his face, countless times, crosses her delicate features. With those features and her age there’s no way to deny, this child is his granddaughter.

“Are you an angel?” she asks.

“What?” I reply a hint of anger creeping into my voice, her innocent question catching me off guard. I’ve been called Servant of the Devil, Agent of Death but, never an Angel.

“You’re not like everyone else.”

“No I am not.” What am I thinking telling her that I’m not like everyone else? Goddess, I have to get her out of here.

“Will you help my papa? He’s very sick.”

“I know.”

“I don’t want him to hurt anymore.” She moves to stand between us, shielding her papa with the only weapons she has, her small body and love.

“You know he’s hurting?”

“He doesn’t think anyone knows, but I do.” She replies; meeting my gaze with the brash defiance only the young can afford.

“What’s your name?” I ask, dropping into an easy crouch that puts me at eye level with the child.

“Deanna. What’s yours?” I fall into those eyes, silenced by the innocent question for what feels like an eternity before I answer.

“Your papa called me Belle.”

“When did you know my papa?” I fight the smile threatening as her brows knit in the way only a thoughtful child’s can. The way that means what they’re thinking is either pure innocence or evil.

“A very long time ago.”

“You don’t look old enough to have known him a long time ago.” Deanna answers, before turning her eyes away from me, as though finally ashamed of speaking her mind. With her eyes turned, I cover my mouth with a gloved hand, hiding the grin I can no longer control.

“Well, that’s a long story.” I begin, taking a moment to swallow laughter before continuing, “A lot longer than I have time to tell you. Besides, shouldn’t you be in bed?” I can feel the laughter threatening again. This girl is so much like her grandfather when we were in love.

“I was, but I heard papa calling me.”

“He called you?”

“In my dream. He said that you’d be coming for him. I’m not supposed to talk about the dreams; grandmamma says that they’re evil. Why would she say that? Are you going to make him better?”

“I can’t make your papa better honey, I wish I could.” The answer comes in an automatic whisper as my mind begins to spin. How is it possible that this little girl heard her grandfather calling to her in the dream world?

“What will you do?”

“The best I can. But, you have to go back to bed.”

“Why? I want to stay with papa.” The pleading in her eyes is enough to shatter the most stoic heart; mine has no chance.

“Okay.” I whisper, unable to break this girl’s heart. “But you need to promise me that you won’t get in the way.”

“Promise,” she replies in the barest of whispers, she clutches his hand as if her pulse will keep his moving in time.

“And when this is over you won’t remember me.” The words are spoken in the low register that worked so well on the adults downstairs.

“I won’t remember,” she murmurs. I sigh, knowing that before I leave I will have to create a memory for her. Nothing too complex just something to explain the last minutes of his life. Her eyes measure me they grow distant, seeing something that even I cannot. She turns, his eyes open and find her, with a smile he touches her cheek. I drift into the deep shadows of the room, waiting as he sends Deanna back to bed with tender words that only work coming from a grandparent.

“I know you’re here,” he whispers, his voice roughened with emotion. I drift out of the corner, a wide brimmed hat concealing my features, dressed in the black that Hollywood placed has my kind in exclusively. “Is it time?” The fear lacing his voice is intoxicating.

“That’s up to you.”

“Never thought Death gave the dying an option.”

“I am not Death. At least, not the way you have imagined.” I cross the few paces from my shadowed hiding place, taking my time, letting the light play over my youthful features.

“Belle?”

“Yes.” I whisper, responding to the nickname I haven’t been called since I was fifteen, reveling in my first taste of what I thought love was. You were the only person I ever let call me that. It always seemed foolish from anyone else, even David.

“What happened to you?” He asks, eyes meeting mine.

“It’s a long story and one you wouldn’t believe.”

“You haven’t changed,” He reaches a shaking hand toward me, thick blue veins showing under paper-thin flesh. It’s as though I won’t be real until we touch.

“Not Physically.” Taking his hand I cradle his shaking callused palm in my steady smooth one.

“How did you find me?”

“Call it a gift. I am drawn to places where Death plays his game. Where he draws out the suffering.” I sigh settling my weight on the mattress beside him. Being this close, I hear the slow beat of his heart, can almost taste the copper tang of warm blood sliding along the back of my throat. I shouldn’t be feeling like this, not yet. He’s going to take longer than normal.

“A moth to the flame?” he asks, brows knitting together in an expression I know means that he is considering a difficult problem.

“You could say that.”

“And you’ve come to me.”

“Yes.”

“How long…?” He asks, letting the question hang unfinished.

“If I do not intervene?” His only response is a slow painful nod. I sigh and take a moment to let my heightened senses detect the fetid scent of cancer, eating away healthy tissues, over the incense and perfumes his family has used to cloak his demise. “I cannot be one hundred percent certain but I’d say about three months.”

“Three months?”

“Yes.”

“Will it be quick?”

“I’m afraid not. You will slip into oblivion.”

“How long until that happens?”

“A day, maybe two.”

“A day or two before I slip away?” The despair in his voice is almost too much for me to resist. I feel my canine teeth slip their protective sheaths, two sharp points pressing into my lower lip.

“Then you will linger in this body for another three months.” I murmur. “I couldn’t stand being a vegetable, if that ever happens to me. I hope that my family will pull the plug.” You said that more than once Thomas, when we were planning a forever that never came.

“In pain?”

“I can’t say for certain but I’ve heard some who refused my offer screaming in agony after I’ve gone.” I whisper, moving to kneel beside his bed.

“Did you help them?”

“No. Once my offer is refused; I am shut out. Death has won.” I explain, removing my hat. My auburn hair falls around my shoulders.

“What is your offer?” he asks, eyes narrowed hinting at the shrewd intelligence I remember.

“A relatively painless release.”

“Just another type of death. Why can’t you halt it? Give me whatever was given to you?” He is defiant, angry, demanding. The same as our last fight, the night the final pillars of our relationship collapsed. My memory flashes on the small ranch style house in California’s farm country. Every detail of his parent’s home on that night is etched in my mind. And the fight; one of those foolish things that feels like the end of the world at the time. In the end, the truth was that he wanted a girl who was willing to be a housewife and mother. Everything I didn’t want to be.

“That’s not part of the bargain.”

“What bargain? We don’t have an agreement.”

“No, we don’t. But I have one with Death. Call it a game if you will.” I shrug. I have had decades to make peace with what I am.

“Some game, toying with human emotions. Is that what you have become?” His hazel eyes bore into me, Devil, Monster, Murderer. Words he hasn’t spoken assault my mind as images of fangs ripping into flesh and fountains of blood flash in my mind’s eye.

“You have no concept of what I have become!” I whisper.

“So show me.” He taunts, the desperation in his voice palpable; Make me what you are. I push away from the bed, letting my hat fall to the floor as I struggle to put distance between us as if physical distance will keep his desperate thoughts from invading my psyche.

“I cannot. It is my curse. I cannot create another of my kind; part of the bargain I made with Death. The offer of a painless release or to play by Death’s rules.” Simple, elegant deadly.

“You are one of his servants then.”

“I suppose, you could call me that.”

“How did you come to be this?” Monster, he doesn’t say it but the implication is clear. He is falling back on the faith that’s carried him through to this point. I can’t blame him. Vampire though I may be, I am still a creature of my faith.

“I was young, no more than two years out of high school, away from that small farming town. And I was dying.” I move back to his side and retrieve my fallen hat. “It wasn’t anything lingering, a severe car accident. Drunk driver ran a stop sign; too bad I was there. I was bleeding and the scent of my blood drew Stefan to me. He offered me this life; his life. The game with Death came later.”

“What is the game?”

“He offers prolonged, painful ends and I bring swift, sweet release.”

“How is that a game?”

“Death does not like to lose. If he has bestowed suffering then it shall be.”

“And you don’t share that belief?” His voice is stronger, holding more of its old confidence, I know that he has made his decision and is trying to justify it.

“No. I do what I can to ease suffering.”

“So, you want to give me a quick death.”

“Yes.”

“What will my family think? Meghan must have recognized you.”

“They will not remember my coming. Do not fear for them.”

“I can’t. It’s too much like suicide,” he whispers, after a few moments silence.

“You’re dying Thomas. There’s no force in this world that can stop it. Please allow me to ease your suffering and your family’s,” I whisper half choking on the cloying scent of the disease devouring my first love’s flesh.

“You never were a moralist Belle.” He slips his hand away from mine.

“At one time, you said it was one of the things you loved about me. That I didn’t preach morality. It was what your mother hated most.”

“What happened with us Belle?”

“I think I knew from the start that I could never be what you wanted. A wife: content to stay at home, have your kids and run the house. Not that it’s a bad life, it’s just not for me.”

“Are you happy? In love?” he asks eyes searching.

“I’m happy,” I answer, the realization hitting me for the first time. You’d think I’d know, but sometimes a memory needs to be stirred, an old wound opened, demons exorcised. “And in love,” a smile crosses my features as an image of David forms in my mind’s eye. Even through this haze of death and incense I catch a hint of his cologne clinging to my clothes. I close my eyes and concentrate for a moment on the sharp woodsy scent. It’s utterly masculine like the man who wears it.

“What’s he like?” Thomas asks, and I know what his decision will be, nothing I say or do will change his mind. The idea of suicide is overly repugnant to him.

“Why does that matter?” I ask, pushing him to say the words I don’t want to hear but expected.

“I want to know.”

“He lets me be myself.”

“Good. Because, though it is tempting, I refuse your offer.” The sigh that accompanies his words is heavy with the weight of a life in its balance.

“So be it.” I stand taking a moment to see how time and disease have ravaged his body.

“You aren’t staying?” He asks as I settle my hat back in place, letting the shadow hide my pain.

“Why should I?” I ask, letting my words wound, it’s better this way. I shouldn’t have come; this was never a place for me.

“Will I see you again?”

“No.” I reply before turning my back on him, on my past. Thick carpet muffles the sound of my footsteps as I cross to the door.

“Belle?” he calls softly. I don’t respond, that name means nothing to me now; those who are truly dead do not speak.

I glide through the hall stopping at an open door to check on Deanna, knowing by the slow pulse of her heartbeat that she’s gone to sleep. “You always did have a way with children. I suppose being the eldest does that, I was the baby and wouldn’t know.” I kneel beside her bed and whisper in her ear, she will not remember what happened this night. After brushing a dark wave of hair out of her face I make my way back to the hall. The photographs taunt me as I pass them: mementos of a fully lived life coming to an end. The skulls flicker as I pass, a sign that Death’s song has already begun and his true handmaidens will arrive soon. I pause, with my hand on the doorknob before passing into the night, locking the door behind me though the real threat doesn’t use the door.

I close my eyes and take a deep breath, letting the frozen air burn my lungs, before I open my eyes and drink in he night. A figure stands at the sidewalk, dressed in a dark blue suit, immune to the cold. “David.” I whisper crossing to meet him.

“He refused your offer.” My lover’s melodious Southern accent drifts out of the darkness, a soothing caress.

“How did you know?”

“Your flesh is pale. It wouldn’t be if his blood flowed through your veins.” David answers, slipping an arm around my waist.

“Always observant.” I answer, melting into the comfort of his six-foot frame.

“Always my love. Did you really think he would accept?”

“I had to try.” I whisper into his shoulder fighting against the despair that’s been worming its way into me. I lean into him, drawing on his presence for strength.

“I don’t understand why.”

“We’ve had this discussion before David,” I try to push away from him but his embrace is like silk, soft but deceptively strong.

“I know. I hate this place, and what it’s doing to you.” His lips drift along the curve of my neck caressing for a moment before he whispers, “Come away with me. Somewhere warm where the moon shines in all her splendor,” he whispers. I know he’s trying to distract me, if only for a short time. To turn my thoughts away from the last thread binding me to what I was. The thread that will break with Thomas’s death. I smile and pull him closer to me, reveling in the warmth that’s radiating off of him. He must have fed recently to be this warm.

“Mmmm Some place warm.” I whisper.

“As you wish.” he replies, his hold on me shifts so that he’s standing at my side. I feel pressure from his arm and together we slip into the shadows, leaving Death and the game behind.

He has won this time.