The Blood: A Denouement

So, I was reflecting on the last segment I posted--I mean, i'm always reflecting on how something will be received--and I thought how, in paper form, if one culd read all of this in one or two sittings it would be fine, but five pages at a time on a computer screen might make one wonder--WHERE THE FUCK ARE WE???I mean, this story is taking place in at least three different settings with multiple characters and at least three of those characters are reading journals so.... story inside of story.

Now wouldn't you know it, even as I was thinking it, two of my readers both were like:WHERE THE FUCK ARE WE?So, friends. Here is a bit of a catch up chart to get us back on track:

The blood thus far

There is, at the opening of the Long Lees chapters a story about a slave ship landing on the coast of North Carolina. It starts out as a fairy tale but changes every few chapters revealing new facts.

1. Roughly around January 15th, Lewis Dunharrow, Christopher Ashby, Marabeth, Kristian and Jim Strauss set out in a yellow Volkswagon van for Long Lees with Levy Berringer and Loreal Moreland
2. Around this same time, Laurie has a nightmare about Lynn and wakes up with Dan. A knock at the door heralds Kruinh and Sunny along with Myron Keller and Anne, commissioning them to go to England to confront Rosamunde Court, the vampire who made Dan and is Kruinh’s niece and an accomplice of Eve Moreland.
3. Meanwhile our friends reach Long Lees, the home of Augustus Dunharrow. Dunharrow gives Marabeth the journal of her father Nathan, and she begins reading. He also gives Jim a box containing wolfskins.
4. Marabeth begins reading the journal
5. In Chicago, Uriah and Owen come to the house of Onnalee and are given the Jacquillard Journal.
6. Owen and Uriah read the story of Genevieve
7. In the night, a cat and a dog come to Owen’s house and Drusilla, Owen’s sister and the grandmother of Lewis arrives in the morning. (2-7 ALL TAKES PLACE IN THE SAME TWENTY FOUR HOUR PERIOD)
8. Marabeth, Kris and Jim with Seth’s help, warg into animals.
9. Marabeth—contemplating the fact that this very night she and Jim will attempt to change for the first time—continues to read her father, Nathan’s journal.
10. Dan Rawlinson along with his best friend Myron get on the plane for England
11. On the plane with Myron (and presumably Anne and Tanitha) Dan reads through his journal wondering how he got here, and begins to remember his past properly.
    
    

And now we continue with out tale..

For about the space of an hour, when she’d held the furs in her hands, Marabeth had imagined how brave it would be to put them on and go out into the night with her cousin and no one else. But as the next few hours passed, she began to understand the wisdom of having Seth present, and then her mind went to how Kris should be there, for if they came to a bad end, there should be one Strauss who saw what happened. And then Marabeth decided that what she wished for was Lewis and Loreal. She had never seen either one of them do anything… magical, but she felt their power, and she was convinced that if Lewis was present, nothing terrible could happen.

Marabeth had watched werewolf movies and movies in general where people turned into things, and she always wondered what had happened to their clothes. She was fully convinced that she had to be naked for the Change to occur, and as she said over and over again, the Change, she was thrilled and terrified. It was like putting her feet on the edge of very cold water.

No, more like a whirlpool, she reformed her thoughts

What if she could not come back?

The courageous, or stupid part of her fantasized about going out alone and taking her clothes off to stand naked in the warm night and slip into the skin, but the part of her which was cautious, which had sense, was relieved when she left the house with Jim followed by her brother, Lewis, Loreal and Seth. Chris Ashby had not come, nor had Levy. Augustus they had not asked because it seemed as if he had better things to do

“You should Change in the bushes,” Lewis said.

“What if it takes effect the moment we put them on?” Jim said.

“What if it does?” Lewis said. “But I doubt it will?”

“What if nothing happens at all?”

“You do realize,” it was Loreal who spoke, “that those pelts you are wearing must be at least fifteen hundred years old, but they aren’t worn or moth eaten or anything?”

Jim started, and Marabeth said, “I had never thought of it.”

“They are enchanted,” Loreal said. “Something will happen.”

Marabeth looked at her messy haired brother and said, “You’ve remained silent.”

“So I have.”

“What in the world can we expect? From this?”

“I don’t know,” Kris said. “I’ve never Changed.”

“But you have,” Lewis reminded him. “That once. The madness you thought overtook you, when your parents put you on the pills, you must have Changed. Once.”

“That’s right,” Kris realized. “But I cannot remember. Well, I hope you all have a better time than I did.”

Among the trees Marabeth, stripped off her housecoat and attempted to arrange the wolfskin about her as much as she could to keep her modest.

But why should I even come out of these bushes?

“Jim?”

“Yes?”

“Are you changed? Are you in the skin?”

“Yes. And I feel like a fool. What do we do now?”

“I… How should I know?

“Because you are the Queen.”

“But you are the King.”

“I don’t know,” Jim whispered. “I think, if we are the King and Queen then… We need to stop chattering on like idiots. We have to want it. We have to be it.”

Wanting, being, stretching out your hand to take the thing instead of wishing for the thing. The very way witches must live, the stuff of magic, Marabeth supposed. She reached out to Jim, her King, the Golden Brother, the grandson and great grandson of Pamela, the great grandson of the wolf. Jim, the courteous, the kind the sweet, the fierce and gentle lover with Seth. Her mind flowed into him, flowed into his body, his longings the strength in his flesh when he and Seth’s minds had sailed in the air this evening, when, in celebration, they’d made love, twisting golden limbs together, when right now, as skin had touched skin, human skin, naked skin touched wolfskin and hair touched fur, and human nature met wolf nature, now twisted with the past, the two legged with the four legged, the swift nature…

In one moment like the lines in a coloring book disappearing, Jim’s lines had faded and almost with the warmth of orgasm, he melted into this new form, this absolutely right form, and as he was trotting forward, Marabeth, who had been inhabiting him, realized she was herself again. She was long and sleek, and the night was filled with new sights and sounds, and a white gold wolf with golden eyes was before her. He cocked his head and his tongue lolled out in an insolent and Jim like way, and then, nudging her and slapping her with such a long bottle brush tail, he ran into the green night, and she followed him.

Afterward she would say how different the world was with these new senses, how new the ground was when four feet raced lightly upon it, how natural the things a human did not do, spraying the ground, leaving one’s droppings seemed, how, in the end, she took down a rabbit after Jim had, and rejoiced in the taste of living meat.

They had run together for some time, but had gone off to explore on their own, Now Marabeth’s ears pricked up at the call of her King, and she trotted toward Jim’s direction. It was time to go home, which was not only to the house they were visiting, but to humanity and their human friends.

It was by willing it, only, as if waking up from a dream once you knew it was a dream, that she shed the skin and stood naked and rejoicing, not even wanting to put back on clothes. But they were waiting for her, and Jim had already pulled on shorts and a tee shirt and was calling to her.

She followed her handsome cousin out of the woods, conscious of his loping gait, wondering if he’d always had it. No, but he was a man, but no there was something of the wolf about him still. And what about her?

The Dunharrows stood on the porch all with quiet smiles as if to say, see, now you know magic. But Seth did more, pulling Jim to him and kissing him on the mouth, and the two young men stood together, devouring each other and embracing as if no one else was present until Loreal cleared her throat, and they smiled and separated… a little.

“Kris,” Marabeth said.

She could not tell the look on her brother’s face and, at last, he said, “So you all did it.”

“Yes—” Jim began, his heart rejoicing.

“But what about the rest of us?”

Marabeth wanted to speak, and Jim wanted a right response, but Kris Strauss simply turned around and went back into the house.

Whatever Marabeth felt for her brother, the desire to go after him and give comfort evaporated when she felt Jim’s eyes on her and turned around.

But Jim was turned around too, and it was not his eyes that had been on her.

Far across the green, in the semi moonlit night stood a man, and before she could open her mouth, Hagano turned around and disappeared.

Hand to her chest she stared after him into the darkness and they were all silent until, finally, Lewis Dunharrow spoke.

“He was not a fantasy or a private vision. We saw him too.”

Oh, lastly, this is Q and A day, so if you have any questions about the story or me or how i make the story or any good shit like that, this is the day to ask. If any of it ruins the story, I'll just give you a roundabout answer so... ask away. Or don't.... I dunno.