The Old

Mercies

Conclusion

“So you’re staying here, tonight?”

“I think I’d better,” Lewis said. “If dreams are what we need to address, then the best time is now and my place would be here.”

“I guess you’re right,” Chris said reluctantly, “but this was my night off. We were going to…”

“Well, I promise you, I’ll be home as soon as possible,” Lewis said, “and then whatever you were going to do before, we can do then.”

As Chris walked down the street, his thoughts turned not to the cries for help, or to the hearts pounding with evil, but to the cries for mercy. The cries for mercy were the best. These were the cries where he could hear everything better, the singing of the crickets, the last twitters of night birds. He turned to the El and rode out to Howard, and then from Howard he took the Purple train and got off, making his way almost lightly to the hospital. He felt solemn as he entered, but also light, because now he had no questions about what he was doing, what was about to happen.. He made his way to the seventh floor and it seemed at this time of night so dark, so forlorn, like company was just the thing anyone here would desire.

He came to the room she was sharing with a woman who was already sleeping, and Chris saw that a re run of Wheel of Fortune was on. How boring, and he realized he was bored with her boredom. The old woman was watching him. She smiled as he entered, her face a net of laughing wrinkles.

“There’s a chair for you right there,” she told him. “We might as well let Vanna finish.”

Chrisnodded.

“You’re right,” he said.

He was getting his chair when he said, “Do you want anything?”

“Water?” she said. “Some cold water. I don’t need ice. There’s some in that refrigerator.”

Chris went to the fridge and took out a bottled water, and he poured it into the cup with the straw, and so the two of them sat there, the old woman in the bed, and he beside her, feeding her from the straw as they watched the letters turn and Chris guessed:

“Maid in Manhattan,” and as the woman laughed, he said, “I really hated that movie.”

When Wheel of Fortune was off, Chris said, “Do you want to see Jeopardy?”

“No, love. It’s time.”

“Oh,” Chris said, politely, “Of course.

“Will anyone see?” she asked. “You won’t get in trouble?”

“No,” Chris said. “Bless you, no.”

“I’m so glad you finally came for me. You heard me calling, didn’t you?”

“I did.”

“It’s funny,” she said, as she sat up and Chris moved her into his arms—how very light she was! “I had almost stopped believing in God before you walked into this room like his angel.”

Suddenly Chris’s eyes were wet, and he had to blink to see clearly.

“You know,” his voice almost trembled, “until you called I had almost stopped believing too.”

He cradled her and she said, “It will be gentle, won’t it?”

“Oh, yes,” Chris said, his voice trembling, and a tear rolling down his face. “Yes. Just like… sleeping.”

She stroked the back of his neck like a sleepy child and said, “You know the song. You know it.”

His voice unsteady, Chris sang.

“Softly and tenderly Jesus is calling—

Calling for you and for me;

Patiently Jesus is waiting and watching—

Watching for you and for me!”

“Ah,” she whispered, “That’s it. That’s it.”

Together they sang:

“Come home! come home!

Ye who are weary, come home!

Earnestly, tenderly, Jesus is calling,

Calling, O sinner, come home!”

As she slept in his arms, her heartbeat weak, but too strong to die of its own accord, her body full of morphine and pain, but now full of peace, Chris sang on to her:

“Why should we tarry when Jesus is pleading—

Pleading for you and for me?

Why should we linger and heed not His mercies—

Mercies for you and for me?”

The life was released from her as his teeth sank into her skin, as he drained her with sharp teeth, transparent, slender, painless,and sweet blood, the blood of a sweet life, of a good soul, the blood of a spirit that wanted to be released filled him with a terrible unbearable light. It wasn’t like good food. It was like… being with Lewis, or being with his first love, the first time someone held his face in their hands and told him they loved him completely, and it was too much. He wanted to weep for the total acceptance and the total communion, and when he was done he wanted to weep for the total knowledge that in this room, holding Cora’s dead body, he was, after such a graceful communion, completely alone.

The light that came into the room was grey, and Seth said, “You can go home now. I know you need to sleep in your own bed.”

“We did it, though,” Lewis said. “We made it through the night.”

“At least tonight,” Seth said.

“I was thinking,’ Lewis stood up and began shaking his legs out. “Why don’t you come to my place? In the nights. When I don’t have to go into work which, lately isn’t that often, I can start teaching you everything. “

Seth nodded.

“It was so strange,” Seth said. “When I dreamed and suddenly you were there with me. And when they came… I wasn’t afraid. We were there to fight them.”

“They didn’t even want to fight when they saw two of us.”

“When they saw you,” Seth said with certainty.

“No, Cousin.” Lewis said. “When they saw you weren’t afraid anymore. You are the master of that place if you choose to be.”

“Help me?”

“Of course,” Lewis said. “I said I would.”

Quickly Lewis pulled Seth by his neck and kissed him on the head.

“They don’t come in the daylight, do they? Not when you sleep in the day?”

“No,” Seth said, “though I rarely do. Only at night.”

“Well, then,” Lewis said, “come to me tonight. Chris will be at work so there will be plenty of time for us.”

“There’s so much I have to learn,” Seth said.

“Me too,” Lewis said. “We’ll get started tonight.”

But Lewis was half guilty about leaving his cousin. After all, the sky was grey, but just barely tinted with dawn. It was three blocks to the train station that would take him on the Red Line and then on the Brown Line back home. Part of him thought of going to the beach. After all, there were only so many weeks before the beach was no longer an inviting possibility.

It was out of the corner of his eye he saw a woman, and when he began following her, this creature with white skin and pale hair like Chris’s, Lewis realized that there was no reason he should be following her. She was not the only woman out at this time of morning, and he had no right to follow anyone. Even as he was wondering why he saw her so clearly, honed in on her so certainly, he thought, “Is this part of the power Chrisgave me?” He thought, “Is she a killer, and what am I going to do? I’m no blood drinker.”

But in the Craft while one thought he controlled his power, in the end he had to simply learn to follow it, and so he followed where led, traipsing after this woman, and now they were both headed for the park, and now she was on a bench with a man. And she was talking to him, whispering to him. He shuddered for a moment, and then she kissed his throat, and Lewis did not stop watching the intimacy as she kissed him, and then sucked on his ear and then drew his face to hers, and he was kissing her, he was nuzzling her throat, and then she was nuzzling his, sucking on his throat intensely, and as Lewis looked on, comprehending, suddenly the man fell over on his side, dead.

The woman sat there for a while and then she rose and turned around.

“Seen enough?” she said.

And because she was looking directly at Lewis as the sky behind her was just being touched by the morning sun, and the change in the air that comes with dawn moved the grass, Lewis came closer and said, “More than enough, for I’m sure than man never did you any harm.”

“And I’m sure I did you no harm, so I’m not entirely sure why you were following me. I knew you were,” she said, and Lewis thought she was exquisite. Her face was salt white, and now she wiped the deep red of blood from lips which still remained red. Her eyes were deep grey.

“I don’t really know why, either.”

“I begin to know,” she said. “You have the blood of my kin. Some of it is in you. That must be it.” She did not seem coy or proud of herself for knowing it. She adjusted the purse on her shoulder. “Yes,” she said. “Yes I see it, though not all of it. I would have to share your mind, or enter it, and you would not let me do that. You have no fear of me. It is as certain you are of the Aos Si as I am a blood drinker.”

Lewis was not going to ask her what the word she had used for him meant. He would not satisfy this woman with that, and while they spoke he was aware that a man no more than thirty lay dead on his side in the park bench. Chris had said that he and Lawrence belonged to a house with certain rules about killing, and he had insinuated that not all vampires shared those rules. Well, clearly, here was one such.

“Would you pass on a message?” the woman said. “For me?”

“If I can.”

“Oh, you can,” she said. “Tell, Chris, and especially tell Lawrence, that Evangeline says hello.”

“That’s all?” Lewis asked.

“My Lord Aos Si, I assure you it is enough.”

And then she did not fly, and she did not run. She simply moved away from sight, and as quickly as Evangeline had been there, she was gone, and in the cool morning there was only Lewis, and the dead man lying on the park bench with his mouth open.