Epilogue: Fin de Siècle
Burke’s ascension proved even more horrific than promised. It proved not only life-changing, but life-ending.
We filed down into the subterranean vault, only to find him displayed on an x-shaped cross, naked, his bare back toward us.
Cherise lashed him while reciting further dark liturgies, her every line echoed by the attendants. Every crack of the whip elicited a sharp groan and a red welt. Some strokes reopened old sores, fresh wounds, the tapestry of suffering that marked his flesh. The crude, Goetic tattoos carved upon his back echoed the ink scrawled up and down his arms.
I relished his suffering—at first. No one deserved his fate more than Burke, not after what he’d put me through. Yet as my eyes stole around the room, taking in the hungry, jaded, and menacing glances of the other Blooded, I revised my opinion. Some of these wolves—some of these killers—looked capable of worse than Burke had ever done. He’d pulled me into this Abyss with him. Now here I stood, savoring his torment. I should not. I would not become like the worst of them.
Once Burke bled enough, the members of the Braden clan filed past, one by one, and partook of his blood direct from his wounds. I, a mere mortal, was excluded—to my great relief. The other guests held back as well; they were not of the Braden lineage and so could not partake of a Braden’s suffering directly.
The most ghastly spectacle came when Cherise claimed her thrall. The crypt, a vast, subterranean vault of undressed stone, full of reeling shadows, illuminated by candelabra, resonated with eerie chants as the Blooded urged her on for the kill.
Drums pounded from unseen quarter as the candles flickered out, one by one. In the end, only a single torch above the thrall illuminated the ghastly scene. To her credit, Cherise did not prolong his agony.
One moment, she stood twenty feet away, reading from a battered book, blood running from her own gouged breast. The next second, she appeared at his side. She moved so fast, she blurred. Hands jerked his head backward. Fangs flashed like steel knives. She broke his neck as she tore into his flesh, killing him quick and drinking of his blood. Only at the last did she dangle her own life’s blood to his dying lips.
The torch flickered out and the assembly dispersed. Burke died. Three days later, I saw him again. Chalk white and hollow-eyed, he looked like a corpse risen. Which he was. Yet as the days became weeks and his feral period ended, he recovered a semblance of his former life. He also lost all interest in tormenting me. Cherise rode him hard and with their new bond, he could not escape his dark mistress.
They deserved each other.
After the events of that night, I did not think I would ever choose to become Blooded. There was no deadline, no commitment, either way. I remained content in my role as a mortal servant of Clan Braden. I did not live in Braden House—I still could not abide Burke or Cherise, save in small doses—but Colin owned his own house, a seaside cottage outside Port Selkie.
During the day, he attended to clan business. I watched Netflix, played with Pookie, and updated my TV blog. No video directors or French actors delivering hot takes. No fancy programmers or army of youngsters. Just something small on WordPress I put together myself. Over time, it picked up a small following. Enough for me.
In the evenings and weekends, on long holidays that we took often, we did things—whatever we wished to do. Visited Portland or Sedona, traveled to Paris, attended functions at Braden House. Time made our love stronger. We lived as if we’d been together all our lives.
Time stretched out eternal for him in a way it did not for me. Mortal and immortal, Blooded and unblooded, wolf and sheep: it could not last, yet it endured.
But in the end, there was but one choice I could make.
We lay abed in our seaside cottage. Outside, summer morning beckoned and the waves rang against the shore like the music of eternity. Inside, love play gave way to lazy talk.
“We’ll always have Paris,” Colin said, screwing up the corner of his mouth.
I hit him with a pillow. “Why are you using that funny voice?”
“Don’t you recognize it?”
“Should I?”
“Humphrey Bogart?”
“Who?”
“Casablanca?”
“That old thing! Get with the times, Colin! The kids today like the Twitters.”
“I see we’re going to have educate you on the classics. Hitchcock, Bogart, Film Noir.”
“Only if you’ll watch Highlander with me.”
He winked. “It’s a date.”
“Colin,” I said, shifting toward him.
“Uh-oh! I know that tone. What is it, love of my life?”
My hand stroked his cheek. “When you Blood me, I don’t want to be stripped, whipped, and mangled in front of outsiders.”
Pensive surprise clouded his face, replaced by delight as my meaning dawned on him. “No, we don’t have to do it like that.”
“Can you do it right here in our cottage, while I’m asleep?”
He licked my hand, nipped it with a playful fang. “Aye, lass. I can at that.”
The End