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Solon barges through the door and across the bedroom to the bathroom and we both stop, frozen in our tracks as we look inside.
Amethyst is lying on her back on the wet floor beside the bathtub, a huge tear in her neck that keeps leaking blood. Kneeling beside her is Lenore, her wrist cut open and bleeding, her hands on Amethyst’s bare chest like she’s in the middle of doing CPR. There is blood and water everywhere, and I can tell from her distinctive scent that most of it belongs to Amethyst.
“Help me,” Lenore cries, looking up at us with messy tears streaming down her face. “I can’t bring her back.”
There is so much blood that I know this is affecting Solon as much as it is me, to try and push our vampiric hunger to the side and concentrate on the matter at hand, and I hate that it’s hard to do. In this moment I despise being a vampire because even though the love of my life is lying on the floor bleeding to death, all I want to do is lap up that blood.
But that’s when it dawns on me—in a slow-motion moment of horror—that Amethyst isn’t lying there bleeding to death.
That’s already happened.
Past tense.
I’m as connected to her as I’ve ever been to anyone, and just as I knew when Yvonne’s heart gave out, I know that Amethyst’s heart already has.
It’s too late.
She’s dead.
My baby is dead.
I look over at Lenore, horror and rage erupting from deep inside me, like a volcano bent on annihilation.
“What did you do to her?!” I roar, storming toward her, ready to break her fucking neck in two. “What the fuck did you do to her?!”
Solon is in front of me in seconds, pushing me back. “Wolf,” he growls. “Don’t you fucking dare.”
“She killed her!” I scream, pointing at Lenore, feeling like I could easily tear Solon’s head off too if I just let loose. “She killed my baby! She fucking killed her!”
“I’m sorry!” Lenore wails, bloody hands pressed against her temples. “I didn’t mean to, I was trying to turn her.”
Now she’s got Solon’s attention. “What?” he snaps at her over his shoulder, while trying to hold me back. “You tried to turn her?”
“She wanted me to,” Lenore cries. She starts trying to do CPR again and I watch, mesmerized, like I’m living a nightmare, as Amethyst’s pale breasts bounce from the movement, her eyes open and staring into oblivion. Beautiful, like her namesake gemstone, even in death.
“No,” I seethe, shaking my head, feeling like I’ve lost my fucking mind. “No! No!”
I push past Solon, and for a moment I think I’ll take Lenore out. I think I’ll just grab her by the neck and twist her head right the fuck off, decapitate her in the messiest way, right in front of her lover, because that’s basically what she just did to me.
But I fall to my knees on the tiles instead, pushing Lenore’s arms out of the way, bringing Amethyst’s head up into my lap and cradling her.
Lenore scrambles back a few feet, breathing hard, crying still. “I’m sorry. I’m so sorry, Wolf. I thought it would work. It worked on Solon. I was able to turn him. But she wouldn’t come back. I killed her and she was supposed to come back when I fed her and she wouldn’t, it didn’t…she didn’t come back.”
I don’t hear her anymore. There’s nothing else in this room except the woman that I love, her lifeless face in my lap, those beautiful eyes staring up at nothing.
Fuck. I tried so fucking hard to avoid this pain, this specific pain of losing her, and yet here I am. There was no future to be afraid of, the horror story was in the here and now.
I throw my head back and I howl.
Like a fucking wolf.
Like a fucking animal in the deepest throes of pain and despair.
The sound fills the room, bounces off the walls, until it sounds like a symphony of grief. In the background Lenore is bawling and Solon is at her side, trying to console her, though the anger he has toward her is vibrating too.
This can’t be it.
This can’t be the end for her.
“I thought,” Lenore says after a moment, when I’m breathing too hard to make another sound. “I thought maybe she saw her mother and decided to stay with her. That’s why I couldn’t bring her back.”
I shake my head, unable to stop the water at the corners of my eyes. “Why did she want this?” I manage to say, my throat like sandpaper. “Why did she want you to do this?”
“For you, Wolf,” she says. I glance at her in surprise, and she hastily wipes away a tear. “To be with you. She didn’t want you to go on through the ages without her. She wanted to be by your side, through all of it. She loved you Wolf. She loved you so damn much.”
