Sanctifying Grace (Resurrection) (24 page)

Then there was my mother. She was strong and capable and did what needed to be done. But she, too, was dying inside: me
, literally, her, figuratively. But it was no less painful for that.

I should have ended it when I had the chance, but those times with Roman had been oh-so-sweet, so worth staying alive for.

The day passed slowly, with me mentally beating myself up over things I couldn’t change and alternating between wishing I were in a drug-induced unconsciousness so I didn’t have to think, and being glad that I was pain free and alert. I lay there listening to my body, feeling the weakness within. My heart stuttered and faltered on a regular basis and I knew instinctively that it would soon give up on me. I was terribly frail, not having eaten for days, and my organs were beginning to shut down, one by one. My hands and arms were bone thin, and now the skin on them had taken on a yellow cast, as my liver and kidneys gave up the ghost.

I would die this night. My mother knew it, too. Apart from brief excursions to the kitchen for one of her endless cups of tea (that’s all she was living on now, unless dad brought her food on a tray and stood over her whilst she picked at it), and the bathroom (the end result of all that tea), she never left me.

My father and Ianto came to say goodnight and I blinked at them in acknowledgement, too weak and tired to do anything more.

My mother followed them out of the room and I heard her in the hall. ‘I’ll wake you if –’ She choked back a moan of grief, and I heard Ianto slam out of the rarely used front door, unable to deal with his emotions. He always hated to let anyone see him cry.

My mother was composed again when she returned. She turned on the TV and we watched without seeing…waiting, waiting.

I must have
drifted off to sleep, though the line between consciousness and unconsciousness was blurring once more, because Roman was not there one minute and the next he was.

He was as taut as a coiled spring, all suppressed excitement.

‘I have to see Viktor,’ he announced, appearing at my side as if Scottie himself had beamed him there. Neat trick.

I turned slow eyes to my mother. She was asleep, for now.

‘V…?’

‘Yes, I need to speak with him.’

Why on earth did he feel the need to come to tell me that?

‘I may not be back until near sun up.’

Ah, that was why.

‘I didn’t want you to think I had abandoned you.’ He came closer and scrutinised me thoroughly. He didn’t seem to like what he saw. I couldn’t blame him – last time I looked in a mirror was a couple of weeks ago and I hadn’t liked what had stared back at me then, either. Sallow, pale skin the colour of curdled milk, eyes sunken back in their sockets, filled with a bleak despair, and I was so thin I could count every rib. I looked exactly
like what I was – terminally ill.

‘Don’t you die on me yet, Eryres,’ he said, and I couldn’t tell whether he was begging me or threatening me. ‘You have to live through this night and tomorrow. Promise me!’

He grasped my hand in a knuckle crunching grip and my bones ground together painfully. ‘Promise me,’ he repeated.

How co
uld I promise something so beyond my control? Yet I nodded my promise to him, for all the good it would do. For his sake, I would try to stay alive for another twenty four hours. Roman needed me to live for another day, so live I would, but I was making no promises beyond that. Hope flared in me, feeble and hesitant – perhaps he had found something after all. Perhaps there had been a breakthrough and Roman was close to finding a way to resurrect me.

‘I will return as soon as I can,’ he pledged, kissing me on
the forehead. I breathed in the unique smell of his, closing my eyes, remembering other times when the scent of him filled my soul, and I knew when I opened them again he would be gone. I was right.

He came in the depths of the night, silent and swift, like all of his kind. I was awake, yet I wasn’t aware of him until he loomed over me, making me start, sending nerve-tingling adrenalin surging through my wasted body.

I couldn’t see his features clearly in the reflected light from the lamp, which had been left on in the sitting room, but I knew who it was instantly. I opened my mouth to scream but he was way ahead of me. An iron hand clamped across my face and then I was struggling to breathe.

He let me flop like a stranded fish for interminable seconds as my lungs howled for air, then he lifted his hand away long enough for me to suck in a breath before his fingers tightened over my mouth and nose once more.

‘Hush. You don’t want to wake your mother, do you?’ The threat was clear and very real.

I shook my head and he let go of my face. I tried not to cough as I gasped and gulped. And even as I was wondering what he wanted, one part of my mind was marvelling at the body’s desire to live. What difference would a few hours make, yet here I was desperate to breathe, to stay alive for a few more seconds. Anyway, I had promised Roman.

Once my breathing had some semblance of normality
, I cast a furtive look over at the bundled figure in the recliner. My mother had fallen asleep on sentry duty, yet I didn’t stop to figure out why she hadn’t woken up. Normally, the slightest noise from me was enough to rouse her. I think she may have been listening out for my last breath. I was just relieved she was not face to face with Jeremiah. He was here for a purpose and he wouldn’t let a mere human woman stand in his way.

I was terrified and horror-struck – emotions I hadn’t felt for a long time. Jeremiah had abruptly made me remember what vampires truly were: alien, a separate species, one that didn’t dance to the same music as humans. He was cold and implacable, without remorse or conscience or pity. And this poured off him like
the cold from an open fridge door.

As my eyes adjusted to the faint light
, I saw his face and it was devoid of any expression or emotion. I meant as little to him as an ant meant to a small boy, and he would squish me and mine with as much concern as my father had when he put down ant killer.

So what did he want with me?

I looked closer at him and was struck by something odd. He was dressed strangely, in a pair of jogging bottoms which were obviously too small and a ripped t-shirt with a fleece draped over his shoulders. He also smelt like a girl.

‘Where is Roman?’ he asked softly.

I stared up at him, eyes wide in fear, taking quick panting breaths as I fought to control my panic. If he was here to kill me, I wished he would just get on with it. But please, please, spare my family. And don’t take any of my blood. I don’t think I could stand it if he fed from me. It would be like being raped. Roman was the only vampire who had tasted my blood and biting and sex were so intertwined that I found it hard to separate the two acts in my head. Please don’t bite me, I begged silently. Please.

He could smell my fear. It was coming off me in waves and it made him smile, a hideous, terrible parody of a smile, all teeth and greedy hunger. It was like watching the devil grin and I wondered when he had last fed.

He, like Roman, could read me easily.

‘I am not here for your blood,’ he said. ‘Though
, perhaps later, I might… If I need to. But there are others here who can satisfy my craving. Others who are healthy and strong.’

I didn’t need to see his pointed look towards my sleeping mother: I was dying, not stupid.

‘You didn’t answer me. Where is Roman?’

I opened and closed my mouth, unable to speak, then shook my head. Even if I wanted to tell him, I don’t think I could.

‘I know he has been here and recently, too. I can smell him.’

‘Gone,’ I breathed, but it sounded more like ‘Ga’.

‘I know that.’ His patience was wearing thin and he took a step towards the recliner, slow and deliberate and full of menace.

‘Gone,’ I repeated urgently, the cords standing out in my neck as I fought to get the word out.

‘Yes, I know. Where has he gone?’ Another step.

‘V
–’ I attempted. Sorry, Roman: I didn’t want to betray him, but he could be miles away and Jeremiah is here, and so is my family. Roman could take care of himself; my family needed any help I could give them, though I honestly suspected that no amount of help would be enough. Once Jeremiah had gotten what he had come for, there was no reason to leave any of us alive.

‘And where is Viktor?’

I shook my head.

‘Don’t know or won’t tell me?’

‘D…d…’

‘You don’t know?’

‘Nuh.’

He glared at me, searching for the truth
, and he must have seen it in my eyes because he stopped his steady advancement on my defenceless mother and turned fully towards me.

‘Why Viktor?’

‘Duh…’

‘You don’t know. I get it.’

‘Did Lettuce, sorry
Leticia
, tell you?’

The scorn and venom behind those few words sent fresh adrenalin shooting round my body. Fight or flight? I was in no position to do either and the only thing that particular hormone was doing was making me even more scared than I was already. If that was possible.

I shook my head again.

‘She didn’t tell me, either,’ he said.

I hunted his face for clues as to the meaning behind his words. He must have spoken to Leticia recently, but either she didn’t know or she had refused to tell him. I couldn’t understand why he was so interested in Roman’s whereabouts.

‘He will be back for you,’ Jeremiah declared, ‘so I will wait. However long it takes. Even if you are dead
, he will return one more time.’ Jeremiah was too close, far too close. I sensed he was poised to make an end of me. Then he changed his mind. ‘I will let you live for now,’ he decided. ‘You will be more of a distraction if your heart is still beating. It will be a weakness if he tries to defend you.’

This was surreal. Why was he doing this? He was acting like the villain in a bad thriller who insisted on discussing his plans for world domination before he devised a devious, convoluted plan to kill the hero. Just shoot me for God’s sake and get it over with!

Jeremiah settled down to wait and I sensed any immediate threat from him had diminished, for a while, at least. It wasn’t me he was after, it was Roman, but I had no idea why, so I asked.

‘W
–?’ my wooden mouth attempted.

‘He is delving into things that are best left undiscovered,’ was all Jeremiah would say and he smiled a cold, remote smile,  revealing extended canines, long and sharp, gleaming whitely in the room’s dim light.

And so we waited. Jeremiah, statue-still, yet on full alert, only his eyes moving whenever he heard a noise beyond the range of my inadequate ears.

I watched him for as long as I could
, but my body was too weak to stay awake for any length of time, and I must have slept.

When I awoke again
, something became clear to me, and I wondered why I hadn’t noticed it straight away: Jeremiah was wearing Leticia’s clothes and he stank of her perfume.

I understood then what he was planning. Roman, when he returned, would sense the nearness of another vampire, would be able to track him or her by scent before he was close enough to make visual contact, so Jeremiah was trying to mask his own smell by dousing himself in Leticia’s. That was why he was wearing women’s clothes – they belonged to Leticia. If he could fool Roman into thinki
ng the vampire he could sense by my bedside was Leticia, then it would not be until Roman actually came into the room would he realise he had been tricked. Roman was going to walk into an ambush.

Jeremiah saw I had worked out his plan.

‘Don’t think of alerting him,’ he warned, and he deliberately licked his lips as he looked at my still-sleeping mother. ‘You will die before the faintest of sounds has left your mouth,’ he promised, ‘and once I have killed the human-lover, I will take care of all those you hold dear. Slowly. I will enjoy it.’

The human-lover? Is that w
hat this is all about? Roman being in love with a human? What did it matter to Jeremiah? I was about to die anyway. All he needed to do was to wait a while and the problem that this particular human posed would be dead and buried. Literally.

Jeremiah wasn’t thick, he could work that out for himself, so there must be something I wasn’t getting.

It may have been as much as an hour later, having tested various reasons and theories in my head that I stumbled across what I thought must be the real reason for Jeremiah’s actions: Roman’s research. Roman was investigating the link between humans and vampires and the dependency that vampires have on human blood, and searching for the genetic reasons behind the ability of some humans to be resurrected and not others.

The question is: what would happen when this discovery was made?

Perhaps this is what Jeremiah was afraid of, a change in the status quo which had existed for millennia. Was Roman trying to play God?