“I’m all good,” she says, nodding her head enthusiastically and giving me a look I am way too tired and shocked to try to interpret, “he’s nothing like Gerald.”
I close my eyes for a second, sway, unable to take in all I am hearing.
“How did you know I was here?” I whisper. My face, I know, is as white as a sheet as my brain scrambles for purchase in this upside-down scenario.
“Oh, I’m sure you have many questions,” he laughs, “we will have plenty of time to get to all those. But as to our current location, Margarita told me.”
“Margarita?” I shake my head, “why?”
“Oh, she really didn’t have any choice,” Daniel says gently, “I just asked the right way, and she told. Didn’t you, my little pinata?” he turns and looks down at her as she smiles back at him.
“Anyhoo old chum,” Daniel laughs, “how about handing that weapon over to Margarita for me, I’d rather not touch it myself, I have a very safe place I’d like to store it, let’s save all this malarkey.”
I nod and walk towards the pair slowly, limping, my ankle twisted from my fall, my arm where I was staked healing, but aching terribly. I want to know how this is possible, how he found me that day I was walking to Ereston, how he knew I had the weapon. I want to know a million things. But I don’t think for a second I am going to live long enough to ask any of them.
In slow motion, I hand the weapon to Margarita who, smiling up at Daniel, without hesitation, plunges it into his side.
I’m so shocked, I can’t move, or speak, as she jumps forward to stand beside me and smoke begins to rise from his body.
With a roar-like scream he lurches away from us to face the church and disintegrates into a million pieces, the force of the explosion so strong, it knocks over Margarita and I, and every gravestone in the cemetery, bar one.
I lay for several minutes after the dust has settled, unsure of what just happened, how and why, before rolling over and seeing Margarita. She is also lying, staring at the stars, but her body is shaking all over, at first I think in shock, but then I realise, in laughter.
“I told you I would never be a suck and fuck doll again, Chiquita,” she says, turning her head and smiling at me as she pulls up her sleeve to reveal the bracelet. “He had no control over me. He just thought he did.”
“Jesus, fuck, Margarita,” I sob, “why didn’t you say something when I handed you over to him?”
“I didn’t want him to kill you,” she says, her voice sombre, “and I knew together, we could destroy him if we were smart about it.”
I begin to struggle to my knees, but they are so shaken, I am so shaken, I can’t stand. I hear a motorbike coming closer, presumably the gamekeeper wanting to know what the hell kind of explosion just destroyed the church and its grounds.
“The gamekeeper,” I whisper.
“I’ll occupy him. Go tohim,” she says quietly, raising her hand and pointing to a body a short distance away.
My eyes instantly closing in pain, I let out a primal moan as I crawl to where Nicholas lays, unmoving, his eyes staring unblinkingly at the stars, and I realise what I have done.
Reaching him, I draw my hand across his eyelids, gently closing them, and lay my head across his chest, clinging to him, my grief so great, I can’t even cry.
Hours have passed since Margarita and the gamekeeper left, finally giving up their entreaties for me to rise and come back to the manor with them, to release my hold on my dead lord.
I know, I must.
I am stiff from lying across Nicholas’ body, and a coat of snow has fallen, covering us both, so that to the casual observer, we would simply look like a drift.
Wiping the new snowflakes away as they fall, I look down at the face of my pursuer, captor and ultimately, lover. So still in death, yet so beautiful.
“Nicholas,” I call softly, raising his head from the snow and cradling him close, this man who had consumed so much of my time and thoughts and emotions over the past year or more. “I’m so sorry. I should have just agreed to be your Kept right from the start. I’m so sorry.”
Slowly, incredibly slowly, he opens his beautiful eyes and looks up into mine.
“I’m not dead,” he whispers.
I stare sadly at him, shaking my head before bending down to kiss him gently on the lips. I don’t want to get my hopes up. I know what is going to happen. The Hunters said all vampires would die when the ancient was destroyed.
“Perhaps not yet,” I shake my head, “but any minute I expect 500 years are going to catch up with you, and you are going to turn to dust in my hands.”
“Always thinking the worst,” he shakes his head, grimacing. “Although that is certainly an ending I would wish for Elsbeth – I fear you may be right, I don’t feel well, I feel, very strange.”
