The Blood: A Denouement

“Well, that was something different,” Peter said.

“But not so different,” Jim said. “For we saw it happen, saw Rosamunde or Rosamunda consume Hagano.”

“But,” Marabeth said, “I believed that, well, actually, my brothers Kris and James, Myron believed, that the Grandmother was Mechtild, the first of us, the first Queen. And then the Riding Hood was Rosamunda, her granddaughter.”

Clotilde smiled with approval, and nodded.

“It was Leinghelde the link between them, who I saw,” Kris said.

“And it was Rosamunde who was Nathan when he died,” Jim continued.

“And the wolf did not kill the Grandmother,” Peter said.

“No, no, no,” Clotilde agreed. “The Wolf did not kill the grandmother. The Wolf… how do you say… fucked the Grandmother. So Leinghelde was born. Leinghelde was the child of Hagano the Shapeshifter, but she became the shapeshifter because she was also his lover.”

“Like Pamela,” Marabeth murmured.

“Many times over,” Jim said.

Seth looked at Jim and Jim understood the reason he was resistant to the damaged version of the Gift, the version that was a curse.

“Leinghelde’s daughter was Rosamunde who bore Hagano a daughter and a son, her son who was the first of the Jaquils, our family, which split off from yours and remained in France, but whom Geneva would marry back into. And then from Geneva the lines would split again. Leinghelde, the mother of Red Riding Hood, who sends her child into the forest to visit Grandma, sent Rosamunda to do as she had done, to be consumed by the Wolf and to consume him is to be consumed not only by the Gift but by its spirit. This was how she tied the Wolf Gift to our lines forever. This is how it was restored. Through the ritual of giving yourself to Hagano, taking him and letting him take you. No one can do it but you. This is why your are the Queen.”

“You cannot have sex with a ghost,” Kris said so forcefully it was almost funny.

Marabeth, squeezing Jason’s hand as he sank lower in his seat, looked on his unshaven face, the prickles of red gold hair on his cheeks, remembered last night, and tried not to laugh. If only Kris knew, but then they had made love in human form and as wolves, and she knew they would do it again.

It was Seth, however, who suggested, quietly, “It may be a metaphor.”

“It is,” Jim said, “incomplete.”

Clotilde looked at Jim with a challenge, but not with disbelief.

“And who are you?”

“I am the King.”

“We had no kings,” Clotilde said. “Our clan had only queens.”

“Maybe you did have kings,” Jim said. “Maybe you just killed them. But whatever happened, you do not have the whole story. It wasn’t just a matter of blood. It was a matter of sorcery. Hagano used a Chalice to transform, and Leinghelde used a glass Orb. We know what happened to one, but not to the other.”

“Then you do know everything,” Clotilde said, her own face changing.

“We know everything,” Jim said, “except why my line was almost killed off by vampires, why our enemies attempted to steal—succeeded in stealing the Cup and would have stolen the Orb.”

Clotilde stood up and she left the room and returned with a case. She opened it and placed, squarely on her lap, a flawless, round globe of transparent glass.

“But it was our share,” Clotilde said. “The thing which our family held as you held the Cup. We kept it better, I suppose.”

The older woman looked about the young people in the room.

She said: “It is ours.”

“It is mine,” Seth said, simply, and picked it up from Clotilde while her mouth opened and shut like a trap.

“Or it is Lewis’s, or Loreal’s. It belongs to our family, and it is meant to return to us. There will be no sleeping with ghost, and no incest. At least not to make or prevent werewolves.

“And now,” Seth continued, “unless you have more to tell us, I think this is everything.”

He stood up, the Orb firmly in his hands.

“You are welcome to come with us if you please, but we all traveled a very long way, and we’ll all be going to our separate homes. Until then, we’ve got to get back to Long Lees.”

Seth placed the heavy orb in Lewis’s hands,and Lewis held the globe, looking upon it and said, “Yes, now. Yes…”

“What?” Chris said.

“Nothing,” Lewis said. “Only… well, now I begin to see. More.”

He handed it to Augustus, who held it, and then Augustus handed it to Loreal.

“I think,” Lewis said to Augustus, “you should have the Sword after all.”

“No,” Augustus shook his head. “My heart was in a strange place when I sought it. Besides, I hold the Lantern.”

“And Loreal holds the Chalice,” Lewis put his hand out to Loreal.

“I will hold the Orb. Me and Seth, we should hold the Orb and the Sword together.”

Levy looked at the Orb and Lewis said, “You want to play with it, don’t you?”

“Kind of.”

“We’ll talk.”

“We can all talk later,” Augustus said, “but for tonight, we will have soft shell crab, gumbo with andouille, etouffee, crab. Oh, so many things!”

“To celebrate the return of the Orb?” Seth said.

“To celebrate that you are leaving.”

While the Dunharrows were talking, the Strausses and even the vampires, Dan Rawlinson and Lawrence Malone had been quiet. Tanitha had departed for Glencastle.

Now Peter said, “But how does it work? How does the Orb... and the Cup… do its thing? Their thing?”

“Don’t you understand?” Lewis began, then said, “Well, no, you don’t. In ancient times they did have great power, and have power still, but the Orb and Chalice were…. What I believe is called in modern terms, a McGuffin.”

Peter blinked and Jenean, beside Kris, tilted her head.

“All magical tools are,” Lewis continued. “The first rule in magic is that every magical tool is an extension of the mage. That’s why a wand is only a stick of wood. Nothing is more powerful than the one who bears it.

“What Augustus understood, in his way, and doubtless my Uncle Uriah too when he brought Kris to my initiation, was that we three, the Drinkers, the Dunharrows, the Strausses and Kellers…. And I suppose the Jacquillards, who had once been united by something else, united by blood, I suppose, should be reunited again. The treasures which only we can use, and which only we should use, were to be returned to their proper work, which we will slowly relearn. The truth that was hidden, would be revealed.”

Through the memory of his body was the scent of Lake Michigan, his first meeting with Chris, the first lovemaking that was really only the first of that life, his teeth descending on him, skin for skin, blood for blood, was Seth, his forever partner, riding him last night into the dark and James Strauss, his golden hair and spearment breath as he was penetrated by him.

Peter opened his mouth, but Lewis continued:

“In your vision, which I barely saw, Rosamunda said to your father that if he fixed his eyes on her, then he would survive the Change. And then she said that you all needed your Queen, and your King. I tell you now, that if you learn the Change at will from Jim and from Marabeth, and even if you fix your eyes upon them when you feel forced into the Change on the full moon, you will be restored.”

“And you know this for a fact, Lewis Dunharrow?” Peter said.

“I know if for more than a fact, Peter Keller,” Lewis said. “With the Orb, while I cannot see everything I know the things I have forgotten, and that I know as a witch knows anything.”

Her cousins, Myron and Peter, were looking at Marabeth. Jim, her new brother, and Kris her always brother were looking at her as well.

“Mara,” Joyce began, unable to describe the look on her friend’s face, and Jason said nothing.

“It’s only that…” Marabeth began, “On Christmas Eve, I woke up in horror. Now, I sit here in joy.”

After such a long tale we need an epilogue and a good coda, and that will come tomorrow