by Densie Webb
Aurelia.
Chapter 58
Andie
This isn’t real. This isn’t real. This isn’t real. I keep repeating the words to myself as I shiver uncontrollably with very real fear.
“What do you want, Aurelia?” Vincent demands.
“We’re all here,” she says, as she makes a sweeping motion. “It’s a family reunion. Trés bon!”
The fear on Vincent’s face is replaced with confusion. “You know that Andie is your—?”
“My descendent? Yes. I’ve been following you, and Nicholas isn’t the only one who can intuit thoughts. Vincent, really, such lust for my great, great, great granddaughter. Tsk, tsk,” she says, smirking. “It positively borders on incest. You should be ashamed of yourself.”
“Aurelia don’t do this.”
“Quiet!” Aurelia’s voice expands with terrifying power.
I tell myself this is simply a frightening nightmare and I will wake up, shake it off, but it was all too real when Nicholas stood over my bed and shook me awake.
****
“Nicholas, what are you doing here?” I had blinked, rubbed my eyes, and looked around the bedroom. “Where’s Vincent?”
“Andie come with me. Vincent’s going to meet us.” He spoke barely above a whisper.
“What? I’m not going anywhere with you.”
I hadn’t forgotten Vincent’s reason for wanting to give him the cure. I didn’t trust him. I sat up, reached for my glasses, pushed my hair from my face and slipped them on. His brown eyes, the healthy honey glow of his skin. My confusion drowned out a throb of regret as I understood that Vincent had already given him the cure. There would be no do over. All the happiness we had envisioned, reveled over, would never become reality.
My heartbreaking realization was interrupted by the appearance of a blond woman in the doorway, dressed in a floor-length, sheer white dress and black boots. Her turquoise bracelets tinkled with each movement. She looked familiar, but I couldn’t place her—from work, the park, at Lizzie Borden’s?
“Well, well, Antoinette. How are you, my dear?”
And then it hit me. She was an updated image of my black-and-white photo. The sound of my gasp reverberated in my skull as she virtually pirouetted to the edge of the bed and lighted beside me, all smiles, as if she were a good fairy there to make my wishes come true. Not the sadistic killer I knew her to be. Yet, I was enthralled by her grace and horrifying beauty. She placed her cool hands on my chin and I recoiled as she refused to let go, turning my head from side to side.
“You’ve inherited the Rogé chin and the beautiful almond-shaped eyes. It would be such a pity to have it all shrivel with age, no?” Her lovely French accent masked the ugly message behind her words.
I was face to face with my history. And possibly my fate. A flash of fear raced through my body, searing my brain.
****
Now we’re here, on the roof of Vincent’s building, and she’s shoving me into Gus’ arms as she grabs Nicholas. My shoulder snaps and I cry out. My stomach churns. My teeth chatter. I look at Nicholas. We’re both defenseless pawns, pinned with no way to anticipate their next move—stalemate or sudden death? But while Nicholas looked frightened before, now he’s unsettlingly calm. The look of dread in Vincent’s eyes tells me everything I need to know.
The full moon casts eerie shadows on us all, playing hide and seek behind the clouds, a moving spotlight shining on the sick scene. I chance a look at Gus. He radiates menace. Will he break my body into pieces, leave me bloodless? Will he laugh while he feasts? Will it be quick or will it be a painful, drawn-out death? Has this been my fate all along? Was this why I was spared at fourteen? Why I met Vincent? So that my life would end on the gravel rooftop of a building in Manhattan at the hands of a monster? I begin to sob—rough, gasping sounds. I can’t breathe.
“Awww, see what you’ve done, Vincent? You’ve made her cry.” Her taunting voice suddenly becomes angry, her words set in steel. “This is your doing! You put all this in motion when you chose to leave me. When you chose a human over your own kind.”
“Let her go, Aurelia. She bears no responsibility for what happened between you and me.” He pauses and lowers his voice. “Does it mean nothing to you that she is family?”
I take a deep, hopeful breath and stop crying long enough to hear her answer. She looks to the sky, taps her finger on her chin.
“Non mon chèri. Rien.”
Gus emits a sound like a wounded animal and tightens his grip on me.
“Aurelia, I’m begging you…”
“See? This is what your poor choices have done—turned you into a sniveling beggar.” She looks me in the eye and I’m certain I detect a slight softening. She will have mercy. I pray she will grant mercy.
“I tell you what, Vincent. For the sake of our past connection, I will make this easier for you; I will allow you to choose.”
“Choose? Choose what?”
“Between your faithful companion and your precious Andie, of course. The choice is yours. One dies, one lives. C’est très simple.”
Vincent is a statue, frozen in place. His silence hangs heavy and the seconds stand still.
“No! Aurelia, you cannot do this!”
“Ah, but, Vincent, I can. And I will. Now choose!”
“I’ll do anything.” He looks at her, his face full of desperate hope. “I’ll go with you. Yes, that’s it, I’ll go with you and I won’t leave this time. Just don’t make me choose, I beg of you.”
“I will destroy them both if you do not.”
His perfect features have melded into expressionless grief. The scene playing out is an even more sadistic version of the deaths of his wife and child. He had no choice back then. Not that he could have made such an inconceivable choice—his pregnant wife or his young son. And he couldn’t have comprehended what was happening, or just how evil, evil can be.
Now he knows all too well the consequences if he doesn’t go along with her merciless game. A swirl of nausea overtakes me and my knees give way. If it weren’t for Gus’s relentless grip, I would be face down on the gravel.
“Don’t dally, Vincent,” Aurelia goads.
Her arms are wrapped around Nicholas, a python around its prey. He makes a tight, nodding motion, as much as Aurelia’s grip will allow. Vincent mouths “no,” but Nicholas manages to eke out a strangled “please.”
“Time’s running out, Vincent. Tick tock.” She clicks her tongue, seconds on a clock.
He shakes his head. “I can’t. I can’t,” he mumbles into the breeze. He looks around as if there might be someone to come to his aid. “Please, I’m begging of you, don’t make me do this.” He looks at Nicholas again. Nicholas nods once more and closes his eyes. Vincent places his hand on his forehead and bends over, one hand on his knee. He looks up to the sky and whispers, “Forgive me.” I can only imagine his anguish as he screams, “Take Nicholas! Take Nicholas!”
Aurelia smiles before sinking her teeth into Nicholas’ newly human flesh and his blackened blood spills out, trickling over the gravel like a mountain stream.
Gus giggles with delight, but then Aurelia clutches her throat, vomits blood. Shock and incomprehension flood her cerulean eyes. Before crumbling to the ground, she reaches out and desperately calls, “Augustin, Aidez moi!”
He runs to her, screaming, “Maman! Maman!”
Chapter 59
Vincent
Maman? Aurelia is Gus’ mother? A flash of Andie’s genealogy papers. The journal entries—Aurelia left with her oldest son when she disappeared. Gabriel Augustin was his name. Gus? Did a pack of Kindred turn them both? Mother and son Kindred, together for eternity? It makes a kind of perverted sense. Evil begets evil.
Aurelia was the force behind Gus’ actions all those years ago in London, as he tried to seduce me back into the fold. As he tracked me down and was strangely interested in Andie. And when he lured me with a cure he never intended to give. But I am complicit, I am to bl
ame for this conflagration.
Nicholas and Aurelia fall to the ground together as if in a lover’s embrace. But they are not entangled for long. As Gus kneels over Aurelia’s body, it crumbles to dust and the gray flecks are swept away with the wind, leaving only her clothes, her jewelry, her belongings. Nicholas is bloodied, still. I no longer sense his heartbeat. He is gone, finally at peace.
Gus is wailing, clutching Aurelia’s dress in his hands.
Face twisted, he directs his ugly gaze toward Andie, then at me. “My loss will now be yours.” In a single swift movement he wrenches her limp arm to bring her closer and before I can stop him, he digs his teeth into the soft flesh of her neck. I fight to pry him away, but he is in a blood-induced trance, his strength doubled. “Gus, no!” He is deaf to my pleas as the color leaves Andie’s face in degrees.
His strength may have doubled, but I feel my own tripled. I rip him off of her, exposing the gaping, oozing wound on her neck and hear the rattling in her chest. He releases her and I manage to root myself firmly between Andie and him. He glares at me and snarls before his face crumbles like a lost child and he stumbles over to Nicholas’ body and what’s left of Aurelia. “Maman,” he repeats, wretched with grief.
If I dig deeply enough, I almost feel empathy for him, for the loss of his mother. But his next action shocks it out of me. He sinks to his knees and grabs Nicholas by the hair, jerks his limp head back, leans over and bites down, hard. Within seconds, Gus is writhing in pain and his ashes, like Aurelia’s, are lost to the wind. Gus is no more.
I kneel beside Andie, place my ear to her chest. I detect a faint heartbeat. Her still-warm blood sluices down her neck with each pallid beat. She struggles to breathe.
She is dying.
My love may be cut short, but my grief will last an eternity.
Brushing the blood-matted curls from her face, her neck, I gaze into her hazel eyes as she closes them and I lean down to kiss her warm lips, one last time.
50 Years Later
Vincent
There are no warnings, no signs when your life is about to take a dramatic detour. The sound of Mozart’s “Requiem in D Minor” didn’t swell in the background when Aurelia knocked on my door in Paris all those years ago. No deep-throated narrator announced, “And this is where they meet,” when I walked into Lizzie Borden’s that fateful night. Events simply take place and you are left to question, to wish, to wonder. To cope.
Do we get what we deserve? I honestly don’t know. Half a century has passed since my rooftop confrontation with Aurelia and Gus. The irony has never escaped me that Nicholas’ struggle ended the way it started—at the hands of a Kindred. I think about it, about him, often. I wish to ask him, “Is death, real death, cold and formless or is it a warm comfort?” The question is unanswerable to those who most want to know.
I read somewhere that exposure therapy, reliving painful experiences over and over, takes away the destructive power they have on your psyche. I have not found that to be true. But I persevere, rerunning my losses through my mind, hoping that perhaps this time, on this day, the images will cease to cause me anguish.
My time on this earth has taken inconceivable detours. And it is about to take another. The view as I gaze out of the window of my small cottage reminds me of just how far I’ve come—the flower garden being tended, fields cleared for cash crops, the cacophony of languages, the sensuous sounds of the nearby stream. And the empty hot houses that not so long ago were filled with hundreds of black orchids in full bloom. Everything I’ve created here will never make up for my unimaginable losses, but my surroundings soothe me.
I wonder what Nicholas would have thought of all of this. Sometimes I can hear his voice, “You did it, mate. You showed me wrong. Hand me a lager, drink up, and let’s celebrate.”
The front door opens and the heat of the day wafts in with her. “Vincent are you daydreaming again?”
“No. Just thinking.”
“About what? As if I didn’t know. Where do you think we should we go, you know, after? Return to Paris, London, New York? Or maybe we should live the nomad life, moving from place to place.”
“We could, but time will no longer be limitless, a concept that itself will take time for me to accept; it’s been over two centuries since time was something for me to take into account.”
“Maybe travel a bit and then settle on a place to stay?”
“Yes, perhaps.”
She wraps her arms around me, looks up and smiles. Her blue eyes sparkle with anticipation, with hope.
My Antoinette.
I couldn’t let her go. I had to save her. And then she saved me—from myself. In the beginning, she was a hurricane of hunger and hatred. And I constantly questioned my selfish decision to save her. Only my sustained vigilance prevented her from carrying out horrific crimes. Crimes against humanity for which she would never have forgiven herself. I feel blessed that she has never taken a life.
Among Aurelia’s things left behind on the roof that horrible night was the engraved wooden box Gus had taunted me with when he first offered me le reméde. Inside, was a tiny scroll tucked behind the lid—the formula for the cure. A future. Our future.
When we left New York, we made our way to this tiny island in the Pacific, where the black orchids flourish, and began the work of recreating the cure. Word eventually spread about our little island and, with each passing year, a few more Kindred have found their way here. We now have a small community of like-minded Kindred, all anxious to finish out the lives they were born to live. And the locals? They fear and respect us.
Because of what Andie had become, of what I had made her, she had no choice but to cut all ties to the past, disappear into a Bermuda Triangle. She was forced to leave Mackenna in the dark, forever worrying, forever wondering if she had been kidnapped, murdered, her body dumped in the Hudson River. I was likely the prime suspect in Mackenna’s mind, as I dropped out of sight as well. Andie tortured herself for decades over Mackenna’s heartbreak. But she has taken a measure of solace in the fact that Mackenna had Chester all these years to fill the void.
Andie rests her head on my chest. “Are you frightened?”
I lift her chin up to look her in the eye. “Non, ma chérie. No fear. Only joy.”
She nods to herself. “It’s just strange,” she says, and cocks her head as if looking at me for the first time. “I don’t even know what you were like—before.”
“The same, only—less.”
“Less?”
“Less power, less hunger, less choking regret.”
The rain showers that always appear midday and thicken the air have dwindled and the sun is making a valiant attempt to shine through the canopy of trees before beginning its steamy decent into darkness. But this sunset stands apart. This will be our last sunset as Kindred.
When the sun rises tomorrow, Andie and I, along with everyone else in our little community, will gather to take the irrevocable step to reclaim our fragile humanity and take on newly minted identities.
For so long, I’ve wondered if I would ever have clarity again, but now it’s there for the taking. She looks down at the engagement ring, still on her finger. “Do you think you will ever be as happy as you were before…before Aurelia?”
“Andie, I will never forget Danielle and Phillipe and I don’t think you would want me to. Just as I wouldn’t want you to ever forget your parents or to stop missing Mackenna. But now?” I look out the window again. Fellow Kindred are watching the sun slowly begin to slide across the sky and I know they are meditating on tomorrow’s sunrise as well.
“Now, there will only be after.”
Epilogue
Obituary
It is with great sadness that the family of Vincent Arnaud Dubois announces his passing on July 12th at the age of 58 after a brief battle with leukemia. A native of Paris, France, Mr. Dubois lived most of his life in New York City. A world traveler and an entrepreneur, he owned several successful businesses, incl
uding “Dubois Designs,” which provided catering services and created floral arrangements for celebrities and heads of State. A significant portion of profits from his businesses went to several charities dedicated to helping women and children out of poverty. He also donated his time to Operation Rescue, an organization developed to rescue victims of human trafficking. He was an advocate of the arts and established the Danielle and Phillipe Dubois scholarship for promising art students in New York.
He is survived by his wife of 30 years, Antoinette (Andie) Rogé, son Nicholas Dubois (26), daughter Renee Dubois Rosenstein (24) and three grandchildren. Memorial services will be held at Saint Jean Baptiste Catholic Church in Manhattan. His wife asks that in lieu of flowers, memorial donations be made to the Foundation for Children’s Destiny in New York City.
****
Obituary
Antoinette (Andie) Rogé’s family announces with heavy hearts, the passing of their mother, grandmother and great grandmother on December 15th at the age of 85. According to family members, she passed away peacefully in her sleep. A native of Iowa, she traveled with her husband, Vincent Dubois, for several years before settling in New York City, where they met. A successful author and editor, she was the author of Design of the Dusk and The End of Darkness. She founded the Family Tree Foundation, an organization dedicated to preserving historical records for genealogy research and she continued to work with the charities her husband had started. She lived an adventurous life and leaves behind a legacy of love for her family. She is preceded in death by her devoted husband of 30 years, Vincent Dubois.
She is survived by a son, Nicholas Dubois (55), daughter Renee Dubois Rosenstein (53), 6 grandchildren and 2 great grandchildren. Her children ask that memorial donations be made to The Family Tree Foundation and the Leukemia Research Association.
A word about the author…
Densie Webb (yes, it’s Densie, not Denise) grew up in Louisiana, spent 13 years in New York, and settled in Austin, TX, where it’s summer nine months of the year. Le Reméde is her second novel. Her first novel, "You’ll Be Thinking of Me," is a romantic suspense story about the fallout from a celebrity stalker. Densie is a music lover, a walker (not of the dead variety), an addict of streaming movies and shows, a reader, a dreamer, and a warm-weather enthusiast (the coat comes out with anything below 60 degrees). She drinks too much coffee and has a small “devil dog” that keeps her on her toes. Visit her at ww.densiewebb.com.