Little Vampire Women (18 page)

W
hen Jo came home from her stay in New York, she had been struck with the change in Beth. No one spoke of it or seemed aware of it, for it had come too gradually to startle those who saw her daily, but to eyes sharpened by absence, it was very plain and a heavy weight fell on Jo’s heart as she saw her sister’s face. It was no brighter and but little thinner than when she left, yet there was a strange, transparent look about it, as if the immortal had been refined away, and the divine was shining through the frail flesh with an indescribably pathetic beauty. Jo saw and felt it, but said nothing until Laurie was gone, then proposed a mountain trip; Beth thanked her heartily, but begged not to go so far away from home. Another little visit to the seashore would suit her
better, so Jo took Beth down to the quiet place, where she could live much in the open air, and let the fresh sea breezes blow a little color out of her rosy cheeks.

It was not a fashionable place, but even among the pleasant people there, the girls made few friends, preferring to live for one another. Beth was too shy to enjoy society, and Jo too wrapped up in her to care for anyone else. So they were all in all to each other, and came and went, quite unconscious of the interest they excited in those about them, who watched with sympathetic eyes the strong sister and the feeble one, always together, as if they felt instinctively that a long separation was not far away.

Jo did feel it, yet didn’t speak of it, for she couldn’t understand the situation well enough to explain it; her sister seemed to be dying, and dying profoundly, of nothing in particular, as if life itself were killing her. It made no sense and defied the laws of nature, for vampires didn’t die except through violent means, but as much as she wanted to blame Dr. Bang and his associates, she knew this was no chilly death. Beth remained lucid, conscious, and calm, nothing ached, yet she was slowly drifting away from her.

“Jo, dear, I’m glad you know it. I’ve tried to tell you, but I couldn’t,” Beth said, looking at her so tenderly that there was hardly any need for her to say anything. “I’ve known it for a good while, dear, and now I’m used to it, it isn’t hard to think of or to bear. Try to see it
so and don’t be troubled about me, because it’s best, indeed it is.”

“Is this what made you so unhappy before I left for New York, Beth? You did not feel it then, and keep it to yourself so long, did you?” asked Jo, refusing to see or say that it was best, and surprised to discover that anxiety about Dr. Bang had no part in Beth’s trouble.

“Yes, I gave up hoping then, but I didn’t like to own it. I tried to think it was a sick fancy, and would not let it trouble anyone, for it is still incomprehensible to me even now how it could be happening. But when I saw you all so well and strong and full of happy plans, it was hard to feel that I could never be like you, and then I was miserable, Jo.”

“Oh, Beth, and you didn’t tell me, didn’t let me help you? How could you shut me out, bear it all alone?”

Jo’s voice was full of tender reproach, and her heart ached to think of the solitary struggle that must have gone on while Beth learned to say good-bye to health, love, and life, and take up her cross so cheerfully.

“Perhaps it was wrong, but I tried to do right. I wasn’t sure, no one said anything, and I hoped I was mistaken. It would have been selfish to frighten you all when Marmee was so anxious about Meg, and Amy away, and you so happy with Laurie—at least I thought so then.”

“I can’t do without you, Beth. You must get well!”

“I want to, oh, so much! I try, but every day I lose a
little, and feel more sure that I shall never gain it back. It’s like the tide, Jo, when it turns, it goes slowly, but it can’t be stopped.”

“It shall be stopped. Something dreadful is causing this. Vampires don’t die from some vague, unnamed wasting disease. It’s not possible. There’s an explanation for what’s happening, another dread potion, and we must find it. I’ll work and pray and fight against it. I’ll keep you in spite of everything. There must be ways, it can’t be too late. God won’t be so cruel as to take you from me,” cried poor Jo rebelliously, for her spirit was far less piously submissive than Beth’s.

Simple, sincere people seldom speak much of their piety. It shows itself in acts rather than in words, and has more influence than homilies or protestations. Beth could not reason upon or explain the faith that gave her courage and patience to give up life, and cheerfully wait for death. Like a confiding child, she asked no questions, but left everything to God and nature, Father and Mother of us all, feeling sure that they, and they only, could teach and strengthen heart and spirit for this life and the life to come.

By and by Beth said serenely, “You’ll tell them this when we go home?”

“I think they will see it without words,” sighed Jo, for now it seemed to her that Beth changed every day.

“Perhaps not. I’ve heard that the people who love best are often blindest to such things. If they don’t see
it, you will tell them for me. I don’t want any secrets, and it’s kinder to prepare them. Meg has John to comfort her, but you must stand by Father and Mother, won’t you, Jo?”

“If I can. But, Beth, I don’t give up yet. I’m going to find what’s causing this and save you,” said Jo.

Beth lay a minute thinking, and then said in her quiet way, “I have a feeling that it never was intended I should live long. I’m not like the rest of you. I was never supposed to be made immortal. I never made any plans about what I’d do when I grew up. I never thought of being married, as you all did. I couldn’t seem to imagine myself anything but stupid little Beth, trotting about at home, of no use anywhere but there. I never wanted to go away, and the hard part now is the leaving you all. I’m not afraid, but it seems as if I should be homesick for you even in heaven.”

Jo could not speak, and for several minutes there was no sound but the sigh of the wind and the lapping of the tide. A white-winged gull flew by, with the flash of moonlight on its silvery breast. Beth watched it till it vanished, and her eyes were full of sadness. A little gray-coated sand bird came tripping over the beach “peeping” softly to itself, as if enjoying the moon and sea. It came quite close to Beth, and looked at her with a friendly eye and sat upon a warm stone, dressing its wet feathers, quite at home. Beth smiled and felt comforted, for the tiny thing seemed to offer its small
friendship and remind her that a pleasant world was still to be enjoyed.

“Dear little bird! See, Jo, how tame it is. I like peeps better than the gulls. They are not so wild and handsome, but they seem happy, confiding little things. I used to call them my birds last summer, and Mother said they reminded her of me—busy, Quaker-colored creatures, always near the shore, and always chirping that contented little song of theirs. You are the gull, Jo, strong and wild, fond of the storm and the wind, flying far out to sea, and happy all alone. Meg is the turtledove, and Amy is like the lark she writes about, trying to get up among the clouds, but always dropping down into its nest again. Dear little girl! She’s so ambitious, but her heart is good and tender, and no matter how high she flies, she never will forget home. I hope I shall see her again, but she seems so far away.”

“She is coming in the spring, and I mean that you shall be all ready to see and enjoy her. I’m going to have you well by that time,” began Jo, feeling that the talking change was a wonderful sign, for it seemed to cost no effort now. Perhaps the ease with which she spoke indicated the start of a recovery, for the sea air, bracing and brisk, had reinvigorated her before.

“Jo, dear, don’t hope anymore. It won’t do any good. I’m sure of that. We won’t be miserable, but enjoy being together while we wait. We’ll have happy times, for I
don’t suffer much, and I think the tide will go out easily, if you help me.”

Jo leaned down to kiss the tranquil face, and with that silent kiss, she dedicated herself soul and body to saving Beth.

She was right. There was no need of any words when they got home, for Father and Mother saw plainly now what they had prayed to be saved from seeing. Tired with her short journey, Beth went at once to her coffin, saying how glad she was to be home, and when Jo went down, she found that she would be spared the hard task of telling Beth’s secret. Her father stood leaning his head on the mantelpiece and did not turn as she came in, but her mother stretched out her arms as if for help, and Jo went to comfort her without a word.

W
hen the first bitterness was over, the family accepted the inevitable, and tried to bear it cheerfully, helping one another by the increased affection which comes to bind households tenderly together in times of trouble. They put away their grief, and each did his or her part toward making the time she had left happy.

The pleasantest room in the house was set apart for Beth, and in it was gathered everything that she most loved, flowers, pictures, her piano, the little worktable, and the beloved dolls. Father’s best books found their way there, Mother’s easy chair, Jo’s desk, Amy’s finest sketches. Every day Meg entertained her with tales of domesticity, and John quietly set apart a little sum, that he might enjoy the pleasure of keeping the invalid
supplied with the kittens she loved and longed for. Old Hannah never wearied of fussing around her, straightening the coffin sheets and fluffing her pillow.

Oh, yes, everyone graciously acknowledged the truth except Jo, who ranted and railed nightly against the morbidity of treating a living girl like she was a household saint in its shrine. This was the true sick fancy, she thought, as there sat Beth, tranquil and busy as ever, for nothing could change the sweet, unselfish nature, and even while preparing to leave life, she tried to make it happier for those who should remain behind.

As much as she wanted to spend every waking minute with her sister, Jo could not stand by and watch her family blithely welcome death into their home. Beth’s illness was an anomaly, an impossibility, a glitch in the normal function of demonry, and Jo knew it had to be caused by some logical event. Brooke swore he knew of no potion or formula that could create a wasting disease such as this in any vampire, but she felt in her soul that his former associate Dr. Bang was responsible for the strange illness and would not rest until she proved it.

Although she no longer believed so stridently in the scientifical method, Jo consulted with Gentleman Jackson, for she would leave no stone unturned in her hunt and he had many masons at his disposal. By day she haunted the salon’s library and by night she haunted the countryside, napping only briefly and
finally achieving full transmogrification when she was tired enough to empty her mind of everything save the star-dappled velvet sky. As a bat, she covered many miles, making her way clear to Boston but discovering nothing of interest there or anywhere in the nearest hundred miles.

And then one night she figured it out. Beth bit into a beloved kitten, her feeble fangs draining it as the creature softly mewed, but she was far too tired to have more than half and insisted Jo finish it.

As the cost of kittens was dear, the consuming of them remained Beth’s special province and she dined on them almost exclusively now, for everyone wanted her to be as happy as possible. But Jo welcomed the leftover, a sweet delicacy and a genuine treat. As soon as she finished it, she felt overcome with exhaustion, as if the hours she’d been keeping to find Beth’s killer had caught up to her all at once, and she left her sister’s side to seek her own coffin. She slept long and hard that day, waking up several hours past sunset with a strange feeling of desolation, for it hardly seemed worth rising from her casket if it meant watching her sister’s frail body sink inexorably into nothingness. It was far better to stay there, wrapped in oblivion, far away from a battle that was already lost, even if the little soldier had yet to leave the field.

She woke many hours later, still lethargic but determined to shake off the fatigue that clung to her
like a frightened child, for the weariness shamed her. Her nights of late had been a frenetic mix of traveling, studying, and nursing but she happily did it all for her dear sister and wouldn’t complain about it for a moment. Her constitution, like all vampires, was robust and strong and capable of withstanding a great deal of abuse, so much so that it seemed to her now that the tiredness had an out-of-body feel to it, as if a large, heavy weight had been pressing down on her chest. The feeling of hopelessness about Beth was also strange, for in that moment she had given up entirely on her sister, and that was something she would never in her right mind do.

With that thought, she threw off the last vestige of sleep and, clearheaded once more, realized that she
hadn’t
been in her right mind. Something had affected her and changed her behavior. She recalled the strange period of exhaustion and despair and tried to remember what preceded it, a deep sleep, certainly, but a symptom, not the cause, and before that the kitten.

The kitten!

Jo bounded out of her coffin, the conspiracy so clear to her now that she couldn’t believe she hadn’t seen it sooner, for it was written plainly on every paw of the indulgence Beth loved. Her brief recovery at the seaside and her seeming improvement during this most recent trip affirmed her dark suspicion that her sister was consuming poisoned kittens. How? she
thought, scrambling down the hall, her legs blurring with speed, as she tried to imagine the science that made such a hideous thing possible, and hideous indeed it was, for it had attacked Beth on two fronts, one physical, the other metaphysical. Now her sick fancy that she was always meant to die made perfect sense, for Jo herself had felt the same despair after only a small taste. Poor Beth had been consuming her darling kittens for months.

She recalled the many times she found Beth reading in her well-worn little book, heard her singing softly, to beguile the sleepless day, or saw her lean her face upon her hands, while sobs wracked her frail body, and Jo would watch her with grief as deep as the sea, feeling that Beth, in her simple, unselfish way, was trying to wean herself from the dear old life, and fit herself for the life to come, by sacred words of comfort, quiet prayers, and the music she loved so well.

Seeing this had done more to anger Jo than any action of Bang’s, for Beth gave death the upper hand with this attitude of surrender, although consistent with the uneventful, unambitious beauty of her life, full of the genuine virtues which “smell sweet, and blossom in the dust,” the self-forgetfulness that makes the humblest on earth remembered soonest in heaven.

But now she understood that it wasn’t frail, meek Beth who had handed over the keys to her soul but an evil potion that had made her abandon all hope.

In her room, Jo rushed to Beth’s coffin, expecting to find her asleep.

“Not asleep, but so happy, dear. I’ve been much to you, haven’t I, Jo?” she asked, with wistful, humble earnestness.

“Oh, Beth, so much, so much!” and Jo’s head went down upon the pillow beside her sister’s.

“Then I don’t feel as if I’d wasted my life. I’m not so good as you think me, but I have tried to do right. And now, when it’s too late to begin even to do better, it’s such a comfort to know that someone loves me so much, and feels as if I’d helped them.”

“It’s not too late, dear. It’s not. I’ve learned that I won’t lose you, that you’ll be more to me than ever, and death can’t part us, though it seems to. It’s just poison making us think that. Hold on a little longer and you will be healthy and strong.”

“I know death cannot, and I don’t fear it any longer, for I’m sure I shall be your Beth still, to love and help you more than ever. You must take my place, Jo, and be everything to Father and Mother when I’m gone. They will turn to you, don’t fail them, and if it’s hard to work alone, remember that I don’t forget you, and that you’ll be happier in doing that than hunting slayers or seeing all the world, for love is the only thing that we can carry with us when we go, and it makes the end so easy.”

“You don’t have to go, Beth. You’re being poisoned
but that’s over now. You’re going to get better, I swear it,” cried Jo.

But indeed it was too late, for the potion that had wrought so much misery, wrought one more and ended the dear girl’s life. As Beth had hoped, the “tide went out easily,” and in that desperate moment, as Jo gripped her hand and willed her to live, whatever life remained in her vampire body ceased to be a force.

Jo wailed and howled at the stupidity of it all, a young vampire girl tricked into mortality, willing herself to death to satisfy some unknown ambition. Her parents rushed to her side, their grief as profound as hers but gentler in its understanding that even this, too, had a purpose. Marmee counseled acceptance but Jo could not comply, for she knew there was no divine plan to her sister’s passing. No, a human hand had done this thing, one that Jo was determined to remove from its body, as well as its arms, legs, head, and entrails. She promised her sister’s death would not go unavenged.

With prayers and tender hands, Mother and Meg made Beth ready for the long sleep that pain would never mar again, seeing with grateful eyes the beautiful serenity that soon replaced the pathetic patience that had wrung their hearts so long, and feeling with reverent joy that to their darling death was a benignant angel, not a phantom full of dread.

While her mother and Meg thanked God that Beth
was well at last, Jo tracked down the kitten supplier, a Mr. Cleaver who ran a warehouse on the outskirts of town. He was a tall man, a great hulking beast of a human, and the second she unfurled herself from bat form, he attacked, knocking Jo to the ground and ramming her head into the bricks. Her vision blurred; her ears roared. Cleaver pounded his fist into her face, laughing as she struggled to gather her wits. He punched her again, but rather than disorient her further, the act snapped her scattered mind into focus. She pooled her strength into her arms and tossed him off her as if he were a twig instead of a log.

His laughter grew louder as he hurled insults: beast, abomination, animal, atrocity, scum. From somewhere, he grabbed an ax and ran toward her, swinging in a wide arc, left, right, left, right. Although she wanted to run, Jo planted her legs and waited. Left, right, left, right. Then, when the blade was a hair’s breadth from her neck, she jumped, her body soaring up, up, up to the rafters. She flipped once and landed, only a split second later, behind Cleaver. Before he could even register shock, she held the ax against his throat.

“Who?” she asked lowly.

“So it worked then?” Cleaver asked, grinning despite the threat.

She pressed the blade closer. “Who?”

“He said it would. Start with the weak one, he said, just to make sure the new formula worked.”

Jo moved the ax an inch to one side, cutting his skin. Blood trickled down his throat. She could smell his fear. “Who?” she asked again. She would not leave until she had the name of the man who had given him the potion that he’d fed daily to the cats.

He laughed but it wasn’t like before. Now it was a hollow sound trying to mask the terror. Jo drove the ax into his skin again. “Tell me, or die”—she made another incision—“slowly.”

Silence followed. Jo waited, absorbing the smell of human blood. How sweet it was.

Finally, he stuttered, “S…S…Simpson. Henry Simpson.”

“And where can I find this Henry Simpson?” she said softly.

“Market Lane. Third house.”

Market Lane was near the old Backbird farm, only two miles from there. She could be at the man’s door in less than fifteen minutes. Satisfied, she took a half-step back and lowered the ax. Seeing an opportunity, Cleaver swung out a leg. Jo stumbled, then fell, the ax landing with a clatter a few feet away. He pulled a stake, long and vicious, from his pocket, hurled it at her with all his might. It sped through the air, quicker than a bullet, and landed in her arm. She didn’t even notice, as she threw herself on him and knocked him to the ground, her eyes kindling as the scent of blood pervaded her nostrils.

She had meant to leave him there, bleeding but alive, to hunt the next victim and the next victim until she finally held Dr. Bang’s life in her hands. But now she had the smell of blood in her nose, a smell too sweet to resist and she didn’t see why she should. She owed this man nothing, not her parents’ humility, not Beth’s goodness, not her own abstention. If anything, the debt ran the other way, and in exchange for her sister’s life, she would take his and feed her own soul on the vibrant red blood that, in sustaining him, sustained her.