The Beasts: A Winter's Tale

Penultima

One should die proudly when it is no longer possible to live proudly..

-Friedrich Nietzsche

Levy could hear the fighting in the room beyond, and he struggled between the urge to run out there and do something or at least go see, and the voice that said, Don’t be in the way, and don’t be the dumb Black kid that gets killed in the movie.

But now there had to be more than the five people in the room, and was Dan alright? What about Sunny? He knew, he knew that it was almost impossible to kill them. But was it totally impossible? And what about Myron? What the hell had that been about? But they had said he was a werewolf. Didn’t they say that? Only he didn’t know it and—

A hand clapped over his mouth. Someone pulled him back, and there was a blade at his neck.

“Kill him and be done with it,” a voice hissed.

Levy spun around, too enraged to be scared.

“Get off of me!” he shouted, and the last thing he saw was a shocked white face hurtling down the hall, its head banging into the wall. The other one beside him, eyes also wide, knife held up, blinked, and Levy said, “Get back,” and he fell back.

Levy ran into the living room and it was filled now. Myron was there beside Anne, who had just arrived with a knife in each hand, her hair whirling around her, fighting a man tall as a tree. Kruinh held a limp body and it fell to the floor, slumped over. Tanitha was standing over an open mouthed corpse and David had vaulted out of the window after someone. Sunny was in the midst of a struggle, and beside him Laurie, his immaculate clothes half ruined, was wrestling with a woman whose long white blond hair whipped about as she fought him.

“Dan, watch out!” Laurie bellowed. But just then, as Dan was fighting the dark faced vampire, a bloody blade thrust out of his stomach from one who had stabbed him in the back. While his attacker fled, Dan fell back, stomach covered in blood, his face suddenly white, and the one he had been fighting, assumedly a vampire, leapt on him until blood bubbled from Dan’s stomach, and when Dan opened his mouth, the other Drinker took his knife and cut across his throat, black blood shooting out. He staggered to the ground as Levy saw Laurie leave behind the blonde woman who leapt after him but was intercepted by Myron of all people, who must have gotten used to his power and knocked her across the room where she bounced against a wall.

Meanwhile Laurie had leapt on the back of the man who had stabbed Dan, and with a savage roar, torn out his throat, and while David came back in, dark blood on his shirt and on his face, and Laurie pushed away the body of the man who had attacked Dan, suddenly, the blond woman came for Myron, and Levy shouted:

“Get back!”

At once everyone in the room looked at him with varying degrees of astonishment. Myron looked on in surprise. Anne, who had deftly snapped the large man’s neck and left his body on the floor, and all of Kruinh’s clan, looked on with something like discomfort and surprise, but the blond woman and the attackers, looked as if they had been slapped.

Levy did not understand, but he advanced into the room repeating, “Get out! Get out! Get out! Leave.”

And just like that, shrieking, five of the attackers left, flipping out of the windows or even slithering out on their half broken backs to Levy’s horror. And because it seemed good, like something Lewis would do, Levy even made a circling arc with his hand and said, “Get out!”

“Except you,” Kruinh stepped forward, and when he did, Levy put down his hand. The woman with the white blond hair was the only one left, and Kruinh said, “It’s time for you to speak.”

But now that the room was quiet, they could hear Laurie whimpering, which was un Laurie like, even Levy knew this, and Kruinh, his hand still over the blond woman, looked over at Dan who was bleeding and breathing shallowly.

“Laurie, you’re losing him.”

“What do you want me to do?” Laurie looked up desperately, and his eyes were shining with tears. He looked down on Dan who was going whiter, blood dripping from his chest and throat. Clearly, if someone was injured they could be saved by becoming a vampire, but if someone already was one, what then?”

“Levy,” Kruinh said, steadily. “I am not a witch, so you have to listen to me carefully. Come here.”

Levy did, and Kruinh, still looking at Evangeline, said, “Hold your hand over her like this, and say, “I bind you, Make this gesture, and this gesture and this, to the north and to the east, to the west, and north again. Do you understand?” Kruinh asked gently.

Levy nodded and moved forward.

“Good man,” Kruinh told him, and touched the back of his neck affectionately before going to Dan. “Do not loose your concentration. Let it flow from you.”

And so Levy could not look, like he wanted to. He could only see from the corner of his eye Kruinh kneel with Laurie, and Dan in the pool of dark blood, and he could only dimly see Kruinh pull off his shirt and then pull Dan’s head to his chest. Kruinh got on the floor, on his back so that Dan could lay across his chest, and then he guided Dan to his breast.

“Drink,” he said.

It went on for some time before Kruinh said, sounding slightly winded, “Levy, your binding should be set by now, you can release your hand. She isn’t going anywhere. Go sit down. Rest yourself.”

Laurie was still kneeling beside Dan and Kruinh, anxious, and Sunny pulled Levy over and gestured to the couch.

“I wish you’d go to bed, but you’re probably not able to sleep now.”

“No,” Levy said flatly, “and I don’t understand any of what just happened.”

“Even we understand very little of it,” Anne said, going to the sink to wash her hands of blood as if her clothes were not covered in it.

“I don’t… get any of this,” Myron sat down, trembling far more than Levy.

“They’re vampires,” Levy said, flatly. “And you’re a werewolf.”

“Well,” Sunny murmured, “so much for the gradual approach.”

“Gradual died the moment those assholes leapt through the window,” Dan murmured.

“Dan!” Laurie exclaimed.

“Big Brother.”

“Dan!” Laurie took him up in his arms and Kruinh reached for his shirt. Laurie wept on Daniel, unashamed, and then pulled him away from Kruinh.

“Don’t ever do that to me again.”

“Allllrigggght,” Dan said, awkwardly. “I won’t.”

“Master, are you well?” Laurie looked to Kruinh, who was standing up.

“I am very well,” Kruinh said, though he looked a little dizzy as he stood on his feet. “I just… need to sit a bit.”

It was Sunny who, rather than guiding Kruinh to a chair, brought a chair quickly to him and set him down in it. Kruinh touched his hand affectionately, and Sunny glared at the woman still sitting on the floor looking around at them.

“And now, Evangeline,” Kruinh said to her, “for you.”

“Why are you here?”

When Evangeline said nothing, Kruinh said, “I do not wish to repeat myself. I am too tired to repeat myself. Why are you here?”

Kruinh looked back to Levy and said, “He can compel you. You know he has that power, as Lewis did. What is more, I can too. So tell me.”

“When we saw you all leaving Chicago with a mortal, we assumed you were leaving with Laurie’s woman. His great-grandaughter, you know, the one he—”

“Basta,” Kruinh said lazily, while Laurie was clenching his fist.

“Keep to your point.”

“We thought it was time to take care of everything at once,” Evangeline said.

“Everything includes me?” Kruinh said.

“If we could get rid of all of you,” Evangeline said, “and get rid of you at the same time we got the girl and the child, then so much the better.”

Though Laurie’s face seemed to bear something more than rage, Kruinh’s was blank.

“But,” Sunny interjected, and Kruinh nodded his head, “it was your endgame to get rid of us.”

“To replace you,” Evangeline said, succinctly. “The killings have already begun. In Chicago you can barely tell, but certainly in Lassador you will feel it. The killings according to what we say is allowable.”

“I have to get to Lynn,” Laurie said, though he kept looking at Dan who was pale and tired and Kruinh, who seemed to be holding himself together after the blood loss of feeding Dan.

“Lynn is untouched,” Evangeline said. “Everyone thinks she is here. Everyone came here.”

“At my niece Rosamuunde’s behest,” Kruinh said.

Now Evangeline laughed.

“For the first time you’ve got it wrong, old man,” she said.

Sunny reached out and punched her in the face, knocking her to the ground.

“Alexander,” Kruinh chided him.

“I won’t let you speak to him that way,” Sunny said. “I won’t”

“It’s alright.” Kruinh said as Evangeline got up off the floor, shaking herself.

“It is alright,” Evangeline said. “I remember when we were together in the same clan, before Kruinh made you his catamite. How’s it feel to go from what you were to what you are?”

“It feels great,” Sunny said, acidly. He laid his hand on Kruinh’s and said, “It always feels great.”

Levy did not know what a catamite was, and resolved to ask later.

“Go on, Evangeline,” Kruinh said.

“I left Rosamunde. We left her some time ago. We’ve been gone from her. We turned to other help.”

“Like the Dunharrows.”

“Of course not all of them,. You know that. Lewis would as soon kill me as speak to me, and that bitch, Loreal—”

“You’ve got one more chance—” Laurie began.

“But Augustus. And Eve. And Ethan. Yes.”

“Augustus Dunharrow knows you were trying to kill me?” Kruinh said in disbelief.

“Not exactly,” Evangeline said. Then, “Not at all. But he knows about Laurie’s baby. He knows about me taking my own corner of power, raising my own house. He even lent me help.”

“Eve knew,” Kruinh said. He looked to Laurie.

“You have met Loreal’s sister. Is she young enough and stupid enough to try this?”

“Yes,” Laurie said. “And I don’t know anything about Augustus, but from what I know of Lewis and Owen—and Loreal—he couldn’t know anything about this. He has his own concerns, maybe even his own violence. Going after a clan of vampires is not something he would do.”

“No,” Kruinh agreed. “It is not. And it is not for us to touch Eve Moreland. She will be punished, but not by us.”

Kruinh turned to Evangeline.

“Where are the others of your clan, the rest who planned this?”

“The ones who are around are the ones your new witch sent out the door,” Evangeline pointed to Levy.

“I’m not a witch!” Levy protested.

But, quiet and a little weary, Kruinh told the boy, “Yes, Levy. I am afraid you are.”

“That was by my count, four, one with a broken back that, unless he finds a kill will be healing quite slowly, and a vampire with a broken back will be finding it hard to kill tonight.

“They’re gone,” David said, sitting down and unloosening his tie, He looked to Levy very different from the affable man he’d met this afternoon asking him about cocoa.

“All of them,” David said. “I got three. Tan got the last.”

“He struggled,” Tanitha said, quietly. “But not for long.”

“Daniel,” Kruinh called him over.

Dan came to him so that he and Sunny flanked the head of their house.

“There are two things you must do, explain to your friend Myron quickly what is going on, tell him to leave the room and then, yes, there is a third.”

“Okay,” Dan nodded.

“Oh, yes,” Evangeline turned, smiling, her eyes hooded, “the werewolf.”

“What?”

“Myron Keller, a Strauss,” Evangeline said. “You never even knew such strength as you displayed tonight. Never had to, I imagine. How like Henno you were.”

“Lady,” Myron forced all the violence he could into that word, “I don’t like you, and I don’t know what the fuck you’re talking about. I don’t know anything except this kid is some kind of a witch and my friends are vampires and, well, shit, if that’s a thing, and I guess it is, then I’m cool with it. But I know I hate your ass, and I know that at this moment you make no sense.”

“Henno was your great-great grandfather.”

“My great-great grandfather was Hans Keller.”

“He was one of them, you know you have several. I am referring to the father of that fierce old man on the wall of your library at 1948 Dimler Street.”

“You bitch!” Myron jumped up.

“Myre,” Dan said, trying to be forceful, but too weak to be much of anything.

“She can’t fuck with my family. I won’t allow that. Don’t you dare talk about my cousin’s house or anyone else.”

“Or your Queen, Marabeth? She’s not my enemy. Eve wanted to make an alliance with her.”

Myron’s eyes went steely. Something had come over him.

“If you are looking to frighten me, you are only making me angry. You need to talk right now.”

“That is precisely the look Henno had on his face before I killed him. He was a fierce opponent. We tried to make alliance with the Strausses near the end of the 1800s. Almost did. But it didn’t work out. So they had to go. Imagine our surprise when, having killed Henno and his wife and children, his brothers and sisters, that whole clan, we found out little Friederich was alive over the mountains. Imagine the surprise of Vepsema, our old lieutenant, when Friederich killed her and five of her own, and we learned that the Strausses had become stronger than before. When that bitch Inga came after us, and came after us with other witches. We learned our lesson then. And then, I suppose Inga must have known what Kruinh knows, that blood drinkers could not harm witches, and she must have told Pamela, though I doubt Pamela understood everything. So she married her blood to Inga’s blood, Strausses to the witch blood of the Von Bülows who, through Ada became the Kellers, and from then on the werewolves were witchblooded, and so largely untouchable. Heard enough?”

Dan turned to Myron in a very different voice and said, “Have you heard enough?”

“I think I have,” Myron said, dully.

“Myron,” Kruinh said.

“Whatever happens next,” Myron said, jamming his hands in his jeans pockets, “I’m staying. Okay?”

Kruinh nodded.

“Daniel,” he said.

“Really?” Dan said, looking to Levy and to Myron.

Kruinh only nodded. “They are part of us now. And she is yours. She tried to kill you. You are my lieutenant. This is how it must be.”

Dan nodded, but he said, “Very well, but let Levy unbind her first. It must be fair.”

Evangeline sneered. “The vampire boy against me? Fair?”

“Are you sure?” Kruinh said.

“Yes,” Dan said.

Kruinh gestured to Levy. “Please tell her she is released.”

As he said it, Evangeline leapt up, but Dan caught her throat in his hands, pulled her forward, sank his teeth into her neck with a growl, and there was a moaning groan and then a snap of her back bone as he broke her in two and fell upon her. She trembled under him just a little, and her hands still clawed, but he pulled them down as he sucked the life from her, no blood could be seen he drained her so thoroughly until, at last, he rose from the broken white body with its colorless hair and dead open eyes.

Dan stood there, glowing, his usually ivory colored face, burning white, his eyes like lamps, a trickle of blood on his red lips, and now he licked it away.

“She was an old one,” Kruinh said. “She lived from the 1600’s. Her blood is strong in you, and you have taken her life. And you have taken life from me. You are strong now, Daniel Rawlinson, stronger than you’ve ever been before.”

Levy felt, heat prickling his skins, waves of power radiated from Dan who stood near him.

“Go out and run it off,” Kruinh instructed, and Dan was in one moment at the broken window, and at the next leaping out of it, then gone.

“That was Chris’s sister,” Sunny said, looking at Evangeline’s graying body while Laurie looked out of the window from which Dan had disappeared.

Kruinh said, “So she was.”