The Blood: A Denouement

That night Marabeth was glad when Loreal came to visit. She was sitting alone in her room. She had been reading the last pages of the journal over and again.

I’m sad Delia’s gone, and I wasn’t right to her, but now it means me and Becca can be what we are supposed to be…

Sometimes, I feel like Kris hates Jim so much he must know the truth. I wonder if I told them the truth could they really start to be friends?

Me and Grange decided to do the Change. This month he will do it and I will bind him. Next month he will do the same to me…

For the first time in years I did the Change. I wasn’t bound, but I was locked in the room. Grange and I spent the money on cows. One to be brought each night. When I woke up I was covered in blood and that room smelled of the dead cow across from me. I feel so alive….

Kris Changed for the first time. We always hope it won’t happen this time, and sometimes it doesn’t. Some of Aunt Maris’s grandkids never have….

Waiting on Jim’s Change. But it still hasn’t come. We’re all watching him, waiting for something to happen. Is it because he’s blond? Could that be it? After all, Pamela and Grandfather didn’t change unless they wanted to….

Peter said he wants to be bound. Grange is dead set against it. Peter lost his shit, and Peter never does that. He said if he’s going to bear the pressure of the family he’s going to have this too. He says he made a major sacrifice and lost his girlfriend for this family. He’s just a boy. He’s not my son. He’s not even my nephew, but I feel like he is, and it actually breaks my heart to put a seventeen year old boy in a harness and watch this happen to him…

Vanessa called me and Dillard to the house. Seems Grange had gotten lose. She was afraid we’d blame her for shooting him, and Dill did, but his wife and Becca circled around Vanessa. Cynthia, Dill’s wife has a detective in the family, she says they can make it look like an accident. Her boy Myron starts to come in and ask us what’s going on. I look for my sister in him, then tell myself to stop that. We just send him away…

She told Loreal that the good thing that had come of this was leaving the journal with Jim and Kris.

Sometimes, I feel like Kris hates Jim so much he must know the truth. I wonder if I told them the truth could they really start to be friends?

Seeing those words in his own father’s hand, Kris had caught his breath and almost burst into tears, so unlike the sardonic scholar they all knew.

“I don’t hate you,” Kris said, wiping tears from his face. “I don’t. And I’m sorry if I ever made you think that. I just wish I had known. I wish I had known. That I had a little brother.”

Jim tried to make a joke of it.

“It’s only six month’s difference,” he said, sniffing.

“I wish I’d known.”

“Well, we know now.”

“You always do that,” Kris said, red eyed. “See the best in things.”

“It’s not that,” said Jim, “It’s just I’m not going to let myself get bogged down in what’s too fucking late to be changed. And anyway, we’ve got the rest of our lives.”

“So,” Loreal said, “Jim is your brother, and your father’s son, which means he still is Jimmy’s grandson, and he’s still Steiger’s grandson, but he’s also Steiger’s nephew because Delia was Steiger’s sister as well as his…”

“It doesn’t do to think too much about it,” Marabeth said, “and Steiger’s so old there will be no telling him. Maybe not even telling Grandma. Can you imagine telling that dear old man that Pamela was his mother, that she slept with him, that she was Delia’s mother too… It explains everything about Jim. I suppose, in a way, without trying to, they were making the ubermench when they were making Jim.”

“The uberwulf,” Loreal corrected.

Against her will, Marabeth snorted.

“How German,” Loreal noted, and Marabeth felt light for a moment. “How very, very German.”

But it still didn’t answer an important question. If Jim was this uberwolf, then shouldn’t Delia have been the Queen of the Pack? Far from being a friend of the family, she was the most Strauss of the Strausses, the granddaughter and great granddaughter of Friederich, her father’s sister, her grandmother’s daughter, far more pure Strauss than Maris or Claire or Marabeth’s own grandfather.

“Because she was not made on purpose,” Loreal said. “Because she did not have the blood of Frau Inga, and frankly, because she was not you, Marabeth. Personal strength and intelligence cannot be bred. They are given. You are the real thing. The Queen. Too much breeding just makes redheads who have sex with their cousins and jump out of windows leaving their kids orphans.”

“This is too much,” Marabeth shook her head.

“It is too much,” Loreal agreed. “You should call Joyce. And she should tell Peter.”

“There are things about his dad…” Marabeth shook her head in disbelief. “No, you’re right. I will call them.”

Joyce was her old best friend and Marabeth had never really had another. It was at that moment, sitting beside Loreal, she realized she did.