by Michele Hauf
To his right, the sun flashed on the horizon, pinking the sky and promising a warm August day. Already the bees were headed out on their pollen routes, which would take them across the field of wildflowers, and miles away in some cases, in search of nectar.
He walked past the spot where Mireio had fallen to her knees the night that she’d drunk the vampire’s blood. He knew she’d gotten sick and the next morning when he’d come out to toss some dirt over it, he’d seen that it was gone. The bees had landed on the blood-covered flowers and drunk it. Weird. But that was bees for you. He’d once read about bees producing blue honey because they’d gotten into some melted sugar candies tossed into an open factory Dumpster.
And now that he thought of it, he wondered about experimenting with planting some new flowers next summer. Pollinators thrived on a variety of flowers. He’d have to talk with Mireio about it. She knew about things like flowers.
Stopping before the bee shed, he reached to open it, when a sudden twinge in his chest stopped him. He clasped a hand over his heart. Something stabbed at him. And burned. It clenched his spine from neck to hips.
He cried out, but that sound was abruptly cut off as he blacked out and his body dropped, there on the dew-frosted grass before the hives.
* * *
Mireio had listened to Lars carefully place the rolls in the oven and then sneak out. He was so thoughtful trying not to wake her. She loved the big ole wolf. But Charlie had stirred as soon as the screen door had closed. So she dragged herself out of bed, pulled on one of Lars’s worn gray T-shirts that fell to her thighs, and picked up the infant.
“You get to taste vanilla frosting this morning, Charlie. What do you think of that? Oh, mercy. The man has a way of leaving the really stinky ones to me. Do you know that?” She kissed the baby’s cheeks, and blew each one a raspberry. “Yes, you’ve got some deadly stuff going on in that diaper. Talk about a witch ward.”
She changed Charlie and then checked on the cinnamon rolls. They were done, so she pulled them from the oven and took the frosting she’d made last night out of the fridge. In ten minutes the rolls would be the perfect temperature to frost, then she’d bring them out to Lars.
But she didn’t hear any hammering, so she decided to see what he was up to.
“Maybe Daddy is trying to be quiet,” she said to Charlie as she skipped down the front steps with the infant propped at her hip. “We’ll let him know we’re up, then he can go to town with making you a new bedroom. What do you think about that? You’re going to have your own room. And I’m going to make sure the other room becomes our bedroom. Lars!”
He wasn’t in the framed rooms, so she scanned around the backyard and when she didn’t see him, she frowned. “Maybe he went for a run?”
Her vision soared over the meadow, dappled by the rising sunlight and then she spied the opened bee shed. And lying on the ground before it—
Breaths chuffing from her as if she’d been thumped in the chest, Mireio gasped. “Oh, goddess!”
Running toward her husband, who lay on the ground, she called out to him. Charlie bounced at her hip so she clutched him tightly.
Plunging to the ground, she set the baby down as she realized her husband was not moving. He lay there as if he’d decided to take a nap on the summer grass, but...
Panicking, she pressed her fingers to his wrist, seeking a pulse. Mireio moaned. Her throat tightened. And her heartbeats thundered.
“No. Not now. This cannot happen! Lars!” She shook him at the shoulders but he did not rouse.
Why was he on the ground? Had he had a heart attack? He was a young, healthy man. Who’d been on a fast track to death until she and her friends had worked their witchy magic.
Or had they?
“No, the spell had to have worked! Come on! Lars!”
Charlie rolled over and caught his arms on one of Lars’s legs. Mireio kept the infant in sight and didn’t want to alarm him, but she didn’t know what to do. Lars wasn’t breathing.
“No, no, no no.” Pressing her palms to his chest, she remembered the CPR training she and her friends had taken in case they ever needed it at the brewery. She pumped his chest with both hands. “This can’t be happening!”
She had to call for help. Her cell phone was in the cabin. She didn’t want to leave Lars.
She bent and pinched his nose. Tilting back his head, she breathed into his mouth. No reaction. She pumped at his chest again. Now she shouted his name and kept repeating “no,” aware that Charlie was becoming agitated, but unable to stop her actions. She pumped hard, then breathed into her husband’s mouth.
“Please! By the goddess!”
What spell could she work to bring him around? She had none. Had exercised the most powerful spell she could find to give him life... To dissuade death. And it had not worked.
Now Charlie’s wails cut the air. Mireio turned to lift the infant. She pressed him against her thundering heartbeats, wishing it were Lars who was reacting, moving, hugging up against her for reassurance. It couldn’t end this way.
It couldn’t end.
How could it end?
“No!” she shouted and her tears spilled out as she rocked with Charlie before Lars. On her knees, she cried to the rising sun, to the trees and the flowers. And to the bees. “Please, don’t take him like this. Not from his family. Not from...me.”
A whisk of wind whipped her hair about her face and then the air stilled. Charlie’s cries softened, as did Mireio’s. She looked about, feeling a weird tingling in the atmosphere. As if magic, but not something she had invoked.
“What’s happening? Please don’t take him. Please?”
And then she noticed the dark swarm that rose up from the hives. It was thick and wide and buzzed loudly with the flutter of thousands of wings. The susurration of bees moved over their heads and hovered there like a black cloud. Strangely fearful of the swarm, she gripped Charlie closer and shuffled away from Lars’s side. Yet, she was also curious. What would cause the bees to act so?
Charlie stopped crying and pointed up at the bees. He babbled something that sounded like “Baa.”
“Yes, bees,” she said on a tearful sniffle. “What do you think they’re doing? Are they flying over your daddy?”
The swarm congregated over Lars’s body, lowering as if it was a single entity. Some of them landed on him, crawling over his face and skin. And then Mireio noticed the ones that had landed on him were falling away, dead. Bees didn’t just die like that. Not unless they stung someone.
“They’re stinging him? No,” she pleaded, but it came out as a whisper.
Bees would not sting unless provoked. What were they doing?
A rain of dark droplets began to fall over Lars’s body. Mireio thought it could be honey, or perhaps the waxy propolis that the bees exuded after they’d processed the pollen in their bodies. Whatever it was, it was stained red, almost as if it were blood.
Instinctively, she glanced to the place where she’d knelt weeks earlier, sickened after her cruel act, which had served to give her immortality. Or had it? Had she expelled so much vampire blood that she’d never had immortality? And the blood that could have given that to her...
Had the bees taken it up and somehow alchemized it into their honey?
Now watching the bees with awe, she held Charlie as he stood in her arms and pointed at the swarm. The infant was in as much awe as she. If the bees had consumed the vampire’s blood, could they possibly have taken on the immortality spell?
Whatever was happening, she had no intention of interfering. Lars had tended those bees with love and care over the years. He had spoken to them, telling him his trials, adventures and about the good times. Surely, he’d confided to them about the bad times. Had he spoken of her to the bees?
Were they now honoring their fallen
keeper?
It was a beautiful thing to witness. Lars’s body dripped with the blood-tinged substance. Bees crawled over him, fluttering their wings where he’d been stung. They were forcing it to permeate his skin, making it enter his bloodstream. Amazing.
“Baa?” Charlie looked to Mireio. The boy stretched out an arm and a bee landed on his fingers. The infant giggled as the insect walked along his skin.
She didn’t shoo it away. As long as Charlie was curious, she was too.
“Thank you,” she felt compelled to say to the insect. “For all the love you have given Lars. You bless us all.”
The bee alighted, flew above her head so she could feel the hair move against her forehead a little, then soared back into the swarm. In its wake the swarm lifted and followed their leader back to the hives until finally the sun shone across Lars’s body.
Making sure that there were no work tools lying about, Mireio set Charlie down and slowly crawled on her hands and knees toward Lars. Her husband’s clothing was soaked from the bees’ mysterious honey bath, and while she’d been certain he’d been stung—dozens of dead bees lay around him—she didn’t see any swollen stings on his skin.
She dared to touch his cheek, then smoothed her fingers along his beard, thinking this might be the last opportunity she had to touch him so intimately. Her tears dropped onto his chest and she plunged forward to hug him. Drawing in the sweet taint from the sticky substance the bees had left behind, she sniffled and listened as behind her Charlie burbled gaily.
She must remember this moment with joy and give thanks for the short time they had had together, and hope for a future with Lars’s son. He’d given her something special. She would honor his wishes and raise his child as her own.
So when the body beneath her suddenly jerked, Mireio let out a chirp and shot upright. “Lars?”
The werewolf groaned and his eyelids fluttered. Bee substance dripped from his lashes as he opened his eyes and looked at her. “Mireio, I love you.”
Epilogue
Four months later...
The first storm of the season dropped six inches of snow in the first week of December. The day was bright and the air crisp. Lars clapped his gloved hands together while he waited for Mireio to situate herself on the big red plastic sled with Charlie in her lap. She’d bundled him up in a puffy blue snowsuit that made him look like a ball of dyed wool, but his little eyes gleefully beamed up at Lars.
“You ready, Charlie?” he asked.
“Onward!” Mireio called.
Lars gave a tug and headed down the path that cut through the forest. Snow crystals fell from the tree branches, clattering softly against one another. A red fox darted ahead of them. And life had never been better.
With Mireio’s encouragement, he had returned to the doctor for another battery of tests a week after the amazing rescue mission performed by his bees. And...the doctor had been speechless. He’d pronounced him healthy, with no signs of the degenerative failings he’d previously shown. Though he’d warned him that something like this could return, he’d told him to leave and live life.
Which was exactly what Lars intended to do. He’d been given a second chance. He wasn’t going to waste a single moment.
The cabin’s addition had been completed three weeks earlier, and Charlie’s room was currently being furnished. Mireio had talked him into making the other room their bedroom, which he could totally get behind. And with a makeshift hallway connecting the new addition to the bathroom, he had big plans to make Mireio the biggest most awesome bathroom ever come spring. Then they could sell her house in town.
Snowflakes sprayed up in his wake and Charlie giggled. The boy was walking now, with help, and Lars already thought he was growing up too quickly. Good thing he planned to be around for a long time to watch that lightning-fast growth.
The bees had saved him by dripping the vampire blood-infused honey substance over him. He knew that to his very bones. And so did Mireio. Not a day went by that they didn’t thank the bees, even as they now hibernated for the winter.
And Mireio. His gorgeous witchy wife with a smile that truly gave him life. There was a reason he’d run through her yard that night so many months ago and had seen her standing there naked. The universe had known they belonged to one another. And now as a threesome, they intended to live, love and hopefully make the family bigger.
Life is filled with challenges, struggles, trials and hardships. We can never know when we will die, only that it will happen someday. Live now. Live for every moment. And bless the bees.
* * * * *
I hope you enjoyed Lars and Mireio’s story. This is a very personal story to me, and I hope I did it justice with my words. Most of the paranormal romances I write are set in my world of Beautiful Creatures. You do not have to read them in a particular order, and if you are interested in some of the characters mentioned in this story you can find their stories at your favorite online retailer.
Eryss and Dane’s story is TAMING THE HUNTER
Valor and Kelyn’s story is THE WITCH’S QUEST
Dean and Sunday’s story is RACING THE MOON
Raven and Nikolaus’s story is KISS ME DEADLY
Keep reading for an excerpt from VAMPIRE UNDONE by Shannon Curtis.
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Vampire Undone
by Shannon Curtis
Chapter 1
“What about a nice, fresh Zinfandel?”
Natalie Segova ignored the suggestion and kept reading her book of poetry.
“Or perhaps a glass of Merlot? Something warm and full-bodied to ward off the chill evening?”
“You know you can’t serve me anything, Terry,” she whispered as she kept her eyes glued to the page.
“What about some nuts? Do you need some nuts? Advice? What’s troubling you tonight, honey?”
Natalie adjusted her spectacles then rested her elbow on the bar and leaned her chin on her palm in a move that looked comfortable but also masked her mouth from others within the bistro. “Terry, we’ve been over this before. If people see me talking to you, they’ll think I’m crazy. Shoo.”
“Can I get you something, Natalie?”
Natalie looked up as Darren, the bartender, approached her with a smile. She smiled back. “I’d love a Chardonnay, please.”
Darren winked. “Coming right up.” He turned away to ready th
e drink and Terry, the flamboyant ghost who refused to leave his job, folded his arms.
“Oh, so you’ll give him your order, but not me, huh? What am I, chopped liver?”
Natalie rolled her eyes at the apparition’s insulted expression and peered at him over her glasses. “Terry, for the last time, you’re a ghost. Deal with it,” she whispered as she again tucked her chin into her palm.
“Give me something, sweetheart,” Terry whined, his hand moving in a flapping gesture as he leaned his hip against the bar. “I’m here all by myself and you’re the only one who will give me the time of day.” He eyed his fingernails. “Which is a crime, as far as I’m concerned, letting all this go to waste.” He gestured to his form. Terry, fit and toned when he was alive, wore dark shoes, black trousers and a black bow tie, and that was it.
“I still can’t believe that used to be the uniform here,” Natalie said softly, eyeing his outfit—or lack of one.
Terry’s smile was more of a grimace. “Well, this place used to have a very different clientele. Now they’ve snootied it all up.” He sighed. “Friday nights used to be the best. The drag queens used to perform in that corner.” He waved casually to a corner near the window. He arched an eyebrow as he returned his gaze to hers. “Now we get—what? Prissy chicks reading—” He tilted his head so he could see the cover of her book and winced in horror. “Oh, my lord. Poetry. This place is going to the dogs.”
She smiled as the very corporeal Darren placed her glass on a coaster in front of her and then walked back to serve another patron.
“And you’re still here,” she murmured, sighing as Terry’s bottom lip protruded in a very good imitation of a sulk. She leaned back in her seat. “Fine. Give me some nuts,” she whispered and waited patiently as Terry moved and unsuccessfully tried to lift the nut bowl further down the bar. Out of habit, she toyed with the silver chain lariat around her neck, her fingers sliding along the links as she watched her “friend” do his thing.