Immortal Prey

by Diana Ballew

  And waited.

  Hours later, she still lay motionless.

  My panic grew with the lengthening shadows of late night. I cursed the moon and stars and anything I could mentally grasp in my rising anger. I nuzzled her icy-cold neck, her face, her nose.

  Nothing.

  All those years ago, I had tempted fate and made a sinful alliance between the living and the dead. Now my reason for breathing had vanished.

  I pulled Erin’s cold body close and curled next to her on the rocky shore. Even if I had to spend all of eternity burning in the fires of Hell, I was determined to die alongside my beloved before the break of dawn.

  Chapter Twenty-Three

  I gasped and opened my eyes.

  A blanket of dense fog shrouded the bay as daylight broke. Angry as hell that I had survived the night, I bolted up in my human form, naked as a newborn baby, and tossed off the wool blanket.

  Mrs. Schauss was crouched beside me, rubbing Erin’s forehead.

  “Anything?” I asked?”

  She fastened the top button on her dark cloak and shook her head. “No.”

  What if this had all been for nothing? I dug the heels of my palms into my eyes. “My God, what have I done? What have I done, Mary?”

  Mary Schauss rose and touched my chilled shoulder with her warmer hand. “You have done all you can, Derek. Now we must wait. You must have faith.”

  Faith. I’d carried the heavy weight of faith on my shoulders for over three hundred years. And where had my blind confidence taken me?

  As I stared down at the pale, lifeless body of my beloved, I wanted to scream and shout and curse whoever fabricated the ridiculous virtue.

  Faith? Faith was a lie.

  Mary jutted her chin forward. “I brought your clothes. Over there on that rock.”

  Her voice pulled me from my dark hole of pity and self-loathing. “Thanks for covering me in the blanket. I saw how fast you sprinted last night. It was you who forced Regine onto the tracks of the approaching train, am I right?”

  Nimble fingers brushed a fluttering strand of shock-white hair back into place. “You know there’s nothing I wouldn’t do for you … or my daughter.”

  It was true. It had always been true.

  After discovering her daughter’s body in the shallow grave in the meadow, the woman’s deep sorrow had led her to edge of madness in the dead of night.

  Guided by the aroma of fresh blood, Franz had found Mary Schauss kneeling at the creek bank, self-inflicted knife wounds to her wrists. Devastated, she sobbed and begged for the Were to finish her life so that she might join her beloved daughter — her only child — in heaven. Naturally, Franz obliged her desperate request, and we welcomed her within the pack.

  After Ersule’s rebirth, it had been especially hard on Mary as she watched me fall more in love with Erin with each passing year. And it was she who warned me that a shattered heart was sure to follow if I continued on the destructive path.

  But I did fall in love with Erin. Hopelessly in love.

  All these many years, Mary had prayed for the return of her charming daughter, Ersule. But unlike me, Mary’s reserved nature had never allowed her the luxury of hope and optimism and, yes, faith.

  Not until now.

  As I breathed in the sea air, I sensed Ersule’s presence nearby, as though she were whispering over my shoulder, reassuring me that the path I had taken had not been in vain.

  Have faith.

  I stood and wrapped the wool blanket around my waist, ready to retrieve my clothes, when a small gurgle resonated from deep within Erin’s throat. I gasped and choked out, “Did … did you hear that, Mary?” I dropped to my knees.

  Mary stared, unblinking. “I most certainly did.”

  I brushed windswept hair from Erin’s cheeks. By all appearances, the wound upon her neck looked to be healing.

  Mary pointed. “Look!”

  Erin’s wounds grew smaller and smaller, then disappeared completely, and a pink hue rushed to her pale skin.

  The air in my lungs sat heavy and stagnant. I was afraid to move or speak, for fear of breaking the spell of what appeared to be life emerging before my very eyes.

  I heard a deep inhale of breath, and her rosy lips twitched. Erin slowly licked her parched lips and murmured, “Derek.”

  Mary crouched down, tears flooding her eyes. “Oh, my God in heaven.”

  My heart thumped so hard I thought it would explode. I brushed the tears from Erin’s eyes and hovered over her. “It’s me — it’s me, my darling.”

  She stretched and yawned, as though waking from an especially long, peaceful slumber. I pulled her into my arms, tearing steaming down my chilled cheeks, trying desperately not to crush her smaller frame.

  “Derek. I remember. I remember … ” She stared at Mary, her eyes narrowing as though trying to recall who the woman might be.

  Confusion blinded me, and my heart suddenly throbbed with pain. At that moment, I had absolutely no idea which woman I held in my arms.

  Erin closed her eyes, “I remember. We had made love.”

  I’d made love to both Ersule and Erin the night of their deaths. I said, “Oh, my darling, yes. Yes, we made love.”

  A smile bowed her full lips. “We were in bed, a fire in the hearth. I couldn’t wait to tell you.”

  Tell me what? I held my breath.

  She closed her eyes. “I’m so confused. Memories are flooding through my head from so far away and, yet, from just last night. My father must be worried sick about me.” Her eyelids flew open wide, and she gazed up at me. “That night … in our cottage in Bedburg. I knew you were somewhere inside that … that creature.”

  The breath I’d been holding within my lungs came out in a sudden blast of relief. I wiped my eyes. Dear God. I could not have wished for anything more perfect.

  I knew exactly who the woman I held in my arms was. She was the love of life, modern, headstrong Erin whom I had grown to love with my entire being, joined with Ersule’s memories of our enduring love from centuries past.

  I smoothed her ebony hair. “You said you never had the chance to tell me. Tell me what?”

  “Mother knew before I did, didn’t you?”

  Mary smiled and wiped away her tears. “That I did, my darling girl.”

  Turing her face to me, I was struck by the beguiling smile that had melted my heart centuries earlier.

  “I couldn’t wait to tell you the wonderful news that I was finally with child, my love,” she said. “Our child we had longed for.”

  Ersule had been with child the night I had viciously taken her life?

  My God. And I had killed them both.

  I fought back a rising sob. “I … I didn’t know,” I choked out. “I never would have —”

  She pressed her finger to my lips. “Do not mourn, my love. When you told me not to answer to the Angel of Death, I did not.”

  She placed her hands on her small belly and gazed at me with eyes like sparkling emeralds.

  “Alongside you, I have existed somewhere between the living and the dead, between dusk and dawn. Hope is not lost. Hope was never lost, my darling.”

  Hearing her words, my heart and soul had never felt so full.

  She smiled. “I carry our child, Derek, and our dreams of eternal love await us.”

  Mary lifted her face to the straining sun breaking through the fog and murmured a prayer of gratitude.

  My beloved tugged my chin and whispered in my ear. “I will love you for all eternity.”

  My heart soaring, I kissed her warm lips and whispered, “And I will love you, always and forever, my cherished queen.”

  The End

  “Ode to a Nightingale”

  My heart aches, and a drowsy numbness pains My sense, as though of hemlock I had drunk,

  Or emptied some dull opiate to the drains

  One minute past, and Lethe-wards had sunk:

  ’Tis not through envy of thy happy lot,

 
But being too happy in thine happiness, -

  That thou, light-winged Dryad of the trees, In some melodious plot

  Of beechen green and shadows numberless, Singest of summer in full-throated ease.

  O, for a draught of vintage! that hath been Cool’d a long age in the deep-delved earth,

  Tasting of Flora and the country green,

  Dance, and Provençal song, and sunburnt mirth!

  O for a beaker full of the warm South,

  Full of the true, the blushful Hippocrene,

  With beaded bubbles winking at the brim, And purple-stained mouth;

  That I might drink, and leave the world unseen,

  And with thee fade away into the forest dim: Fade far away, dissolve, and quite forget

  What thou among the leaves hast never known, The weariness, the fever, and the fret

  Here, where men sit and hear each other groan; Where palsy shakes a few, sad, last gray hairs,

  Where youth grows pale, and spectre-thin, and dies; Where but to think is to be full of sorrow

  And leaden-eyed despairs,

  Where Beauty cannot keep her lustrous eyes,

  Or new Love pine at them beyond to-morrow. Away! away! for I will fly to thee,

  Not charioted by Bacchus and his pards, But on the viewless wings of Poesy,

  Though the dull brain perplexes and retards: Already with thee! tender is the night,

  And haply the Queen-Moon is on her throne, Cluster’d around by all her starry Fays;

  But here there is no light,

  Save what from heaven is with the breezes blown

  Through verdurous glooms and winding mossy ways. I cannot see what flowers are at my feet,

  Nor what soft incense hangs upon the boughs, But, in embalmed darkness, guess each sweet

  Wherewith the seasonable month endows The grass, the thicket, and the fruit-tree wild;

  White hawthorn, and the pastoral eglantine; Fast fading violets cover’d up in leaves;

  And mid-May’s eldest child,

  The coming musk-rose, full of dewy wine,

  The murmurous haunt of flies on summer eves. Darkling I listen; and, for many a time

  I have been half in love with easeful Death, Call’d him soft names in many a mused rhyme,

  To take into the air my quiet breath; Now more than ever seems it rich to die,

  To cease upon the midnight with no pain, While thou art pouring forth thy soul abroad

  In such an ecstasy!

  Still wouldst thou sing, and I have ears in vain -

  To thy high requiem become a sod. Thou wast not born for death, immortal Bird! No hungry generations tread thee down; The voice I hear this passing night was heard

  In ancient days by emperor and clown: Perhaps the self-same song that found a path

  Through the sad heart of Ruth, when, sick for home, She stood in tears amid the alien corn;

  The same that oft-times hath

  Charm’d magic casements, opening on the foam

  Of perilous seas, in faery lands forlorn. Forlorn! the very word is like a bell

  To toll me back from thee to my sole self! Adieu! the fancy cannot cheat so well

  As she is fam’d to do, deceiving elf.

  Adieu! adieu! thy plaintive anthem fades

  Past the near meadows, over the still stream,

  Up the hill-side; and now ’tis buried deep In the next valley-glades:

  Was it a vision, or a waking dream?

  Fled is that music: — Do I wake or sleep?

  — John Keats

  A word about the author . . .

  Diana grew up in Virginia where her love of American History began. Living near an abandoned Civil War graveyard as a child sparked her active imagination with tales of honor, romance and things that go bump in the night. She enjoys writing about strong heroines up to the challenge of fighting harsh circumstances while taming the heart of the man she loves.

  Diana resides in Nevada. Visit her at www.dianaballew.com.

  Also from Diana Ballew

  Thorns of Eden — Trifecta Publishing House

  Bound by Glory — Coming 2016 — Trifecta Publishing House