by Lumi Laura
CHAPTER 48 Another Funeral
They held Alex's service five days later. All that time, Jaklin and Mikhail waited for her to wake up, but she remained lifeless. Alex's body had been charred from the explosion, her skin a dark cinder, and her multitude of wounds never healed. Mikhail's complaint was that although her joints were stiff, rigor mortis never fully settled in. Her flesh remained soft and pliable.
The police were satisfied that the public menace was over and went back to fighting crime. The dignitaries who’d been inside Peleș Castle were told the building had suffered a fire in the wine cellar that was successfully extinguished. Everyone went back to their normal duties. The remains of the vampire bodies were introduced to Stefan’s crematorium.
When Father Zosimos called them, Alex's family returned to Sinaia, as they had when the family matriarch died. The adults shed no tears, but Sonya's four girls screamed and wailed. The littlest, Anica, fell to the floor and kicked in a prolonged grief tantrum.
Catherine was anxious to see her granddaughter, Madalina, Alex's mother. She introduced herself as a distant relative. "I'm a lawyer also," she said, hoping to bond with this middle-aged woman. Madalina gave her the once-over but was distracted and didn't respond.
Father Zosimos produced Alex's last will and testament, in which she left her estate to little Andra and designated Catherine Cantacuzene as her guardian with complete control over her life and finances until the age of eighteen. Alex's father was dumbfounded and said nothing. Her mother shouted at Father Zosimos for not notifying them that she was pregnant. He pleaded extraordinary circumstances but would not delineate. She would not believe he didn't know the father and looked daggers at Mikhail. She tried to enlist Mikhail's help, to get him to admit that he was the father and own up to his responsibilities.
Mikhail turned away. "I am not the father," he said. "I wish I were."
Again and again she probed Father Zosimos concerning the events surrounding her daughter's death.
"I don't know," he lied, looking off to the side as he did. "We found her in the forest burned with a uniform coating of ashes and naked, except for the lapis lazuli ring upon the third finger of her right hand. Perhaps it was a bolt of lightning."
"I want to see the corpse."
Once at the mausoleum, her mother stood silent before the charred remains. "Okay. That's Alexandra, no doubt. But why all the bite marks?"
"Forest animals tried to eat her," said Father Zosimos. "Probably rats."
"Cremate the body," she said. "Finish the process left so cruelly incomplete."
Mikhail flew into a rage. "Never!" he shouted. "I'll defend this corpse until the end of my days."
They put her in a casket.
Alex's mother looked blankly at Catherine but addressed Father Zosimos. "I want her Cantacuzene genealogy investigated. What legal right does she have to Andra? And the execution of the estate? That belonged to my mother."
Father Zosimos lied again. "I've known her personally all her life and can vouch for her as part of the family." He produced a picture of Alex's grandmother with her mother, handed it to Madalina.
"Yes. The resemblance to both is remarkable. Photoshopped no doubt. I'll file a lawsuit. Something I, as a lawyer, am certainly capable of executing."
"Oh, Mother," said Gavril. "What would you do with another child? You never paid any attention to the three you raised."
"You've already demonstrated your mothering skills with Alex," said Sonya. "The way you failed to raise her."
"Humph," said their mother.
Finally, they began the funeral at the family graveyard. All was solemn and more grief stricken than at Alex's grandmother's, with no one crying except Jaklin and Sonya's girls, of course, who wailed incessantly. Mikhail was rather stoic, as if trapped in a perpetual state of disbelief. Even as they lowered the casket into the grave, Mikhail said, "This is not right."
They all left the family cemetery, except for Mikhail, and the groundsmen shoveled dirt in upon the coffin. Mikhail waited among the tombstones, at times leaning against a tree, at others sitting in the grass among leaves, as if he were waiting for someone. He would not eat. Jaklin came to visit and stared at the grave with him. From time to time, she brought Catherine and little Andra. No one came to violate Alex's grave, and no one rose up from it. And yet Mikhail waited. He had the time. He was an immortal vampire and getting on with his life was not a priority.
"I'll wait a thousand years if I have to," he said.
Jaklin and Mikhail could no longer locate Alex on Millennium Road. She had died not only on Earth but had also vanished in vampire psychic space, as if she had been feral.
Catherine had the gazebo rebuilt from architectural plans she found in the attic. All the while, Mikhail sat leaning against Alex's tombstone watching the workmen and would not budge. Then for days on end at Shadowrise, Mikhail would stand in the finished gazebo shouting first at Velinar and then Catalin, neither of which once showed their divine faces.
They receive a call from the medical clinic asking about the baby and wanting another DNA sample. Catherine, Jaklin and Mikhail were unanimous that they should never again respond to a request from the clinic.
One morning before sunup, Jaklin went to visit Mikhail at the gravesite where he'd again spent the night and found that he'd dug up her coffin.
"Are you going to take her corpse into the house and put it in bed with us? Are you, Mikhail? Speak to me!"
"Perhaps." He stood staring down at Alex in the open coffin. "I think she looks a little better. I just can't leave her in the ground. I'm convinced that she's not quite dead yet."
"Vampires die all the time, Mikhail." Then Jaklin broke down. "I can't believe it either," she wailed. "She can't be dead. She just can't be."
He opened one of his own veins and dripped blood into her mouth. Nothing. He cut Jaklin's palm over her protests and dripped her blood. Still nothing.
"Perhaps Andra's blood," he said.
Jaklin shook her head no. She'd not permit it. "Missy's immortality on Earth has ended." She dried her tears. "We'll have to find a way to accept it."
"Just a drop," said Catherine, who had appeared with the baby from behind them. She too couldn't believe it. Still, nothing.
"But Millennium Road," said Mikhail. "She's trapped there somewhere. I'm convinced of it."
"She's dead, alright." It was a deep shaky voice from behind.
They turned to see Alu step from behind a tree. He had a woman with him, beautiful, ethereal, one of the angel vampires. She too had an ashen look about her. Somehow, they'd both escaped.
Alu was humbled. He sat and talked with them just as would any other human being. He shed tears over the loss of his angel vampires and also for his Ms Alexandra. "I know you think I'm a heartless monster. But I love life here on Earth and simply wish to prolong it for all those sympathetic. Sylphia here is the lone representative of what could have been. I can no longer turn them. She can't tolerate the sun, but she has neither the Curse of Cheiron nor the Stigmata. Nor can she propagate. Yet, she is immortal, an earthly immortal. She'll remain a living symbol of what could have been."
"Perhaps, if you'd been more open," suggested Mikhail.
Alu smiled, looked at the ground. "Perhaps, if she'd been more trusting."
"But the Ichor Dome."
Alu shook his head. "I was horrified too. When the transformation worked, the results were beyond imagining. And when it didn't, it was too horrible to believe. But hideousness did happen, and still, I couldn't stop. Just one glimpse of Sylphia, my first success, and I had to try again."
Just before the sun poked over the mountains in the east, Alu took one last look at Alex, shook his head. "What could have been." Then he and Sylphia walked away.
"You'll stay away from here, if you know what's good for you," said Jaklin. "You got the most precious person who's ever been on Earth killed."
Alu looked back. "The monsters from the Divine World, they used her. She was t
heir instrument. But they didn't completely destroy us, you know. That's an act of mercy. I'm still convinced that the All Powerful has a soft spot for vampires. We just haven't found the right mix."
"That's a self-serving assumption," said Mikhail.
"Come see me in thousand years," Alu said and disappeared with his consort into the gloom.
"Okay, Ruski," said Jaklin. "Put the lid on it, and let's get out of here."
Finally, Mikhail relented, and again they closed the top, shoveled dirt, and put her tombstone back.