She Dies at the End (November Snow Book 1)

by A. M. Manay

  The man himself was fairly unremarkable. He was of average height, medium build, with brown hair shot liberally with gray above a high forehead creased from years of concentration as a human scribe. He was dressed like a religious brother, in a long black cassock with a high collar. His long fingers were stained at the tips with what November sincerely hoped was ink. His most striking features were his eyes, of course, shrewd and intent, one green and one brown. A hawkish nose and a cruel mouth completed his intimidating face. He wasn't exactly handsome, but he had a cold sort of charisma, and his features certainly commanded one's attention.

  “The food was to your liking, my dear?” he inquired, finally breaking the silence.

  She nodded. “It was excellent, thank you.” It was a struggle to force out the words through trembling lips.

  “Yes, we captured a very good chef some years ago whom we put to work overseeing the kitchen. You’ll find we take great care with our animals. They are well fed, well clothed, and well housed. The vast majority of them are content and live long and pleasant lives, far better than their previous ones,” he opined, as though a farmer discussing his sheep. His casual superiority made November’s full stomach churn. “I feel I must apologize for the ineptitude of some of those in my employ. Lilith was under the strictest orders to bring you to me in pristine condition. Alas, when you caught my father’s eye, she could not control her jealousy. She failed me twice that night. She is lucky her death was not at my hand, or she would have known much more suffering.”

  Not having any idea what to say, November searched for words. She swallowed and said, “I assumed as much.”

  “In spite of the trouble you have caused to me and my plans, kitten, I have no desire to see you suffer. It is not your fault my brother got to you first. That failure belongs to me,” he said magnanimously.

  He seemed to expect a reply, so she said, hesitatingly, “I’m relieved to hear it.”

  He smiled wolfishly at her before responding, “Yes, I should think so. Now, November, in between filling your head with lies about my character, did any of my relatives bother to tell you what you are?”

  “What I . . . they just said that humans like me are rare, that I have a special gift.” November was puzzled at the turn this conversation was taking. She had been expecting to be interrogated about Ilyn and William and her visions.

  He gave a bark of laughter. “True enough, if incomplete. Do you mean to say that you still believe that all you are is a teenage carnie from a trailer park? A human child of a whore, barely grown, who has somehow become enmeshed in a supernatural power struggle, guiding the plans of kings and lords when she ought to be studying for the college boards?”

  Pride reared up in her, and she lifted a defiant chin. “I’m not ashamed of who I am or where I come from,” she retorted without thinking how her defiance might be perceived.

  “Good for you, kitten,” he said indulgently, to her relief. “I came from the gutter, too, and I applaud your sense of self-worth. But have you really never wondered why you were so unlike other humans, other children? Why you feel so removed from them? Why you are so comfortable with supernatural creatures and so ill-at-ease among the mortal? Why your relationship to the passage of time is so unusual? Why you have so little fear of death? Why you can send your soul out of your body on reconnaissance and bring it back again?” He seemed incredulous.

  “My gift – the nature of my upbringing— they isolated me from other people,” she protested haltingly.

  “Human beings do not see the future, November. They do not read minds. They cannot affect the weather. They can’t fly or bend spoons. They cannot resist thrall. They have no supernatural gifts whatsoever. Fairies are born with gifts. Vampires acquire them when they are reborn, the lucky ones. Werewolves, rarely, acquire them when they are bitten or come of age. Humans lack them altogether.”

  “Savita could read minds when she was human. And her sister could tell fortunes,” November protested.

  “Exactly, my dear. Savita has never been human,” he replied with a smile. “Nor was her sister.” He shook his head. “I wonder why Savita didn’t tell you. William, I understand him not knowing it. He is tragically ignorant. Ilyn, I thought, was better read, or would have tasted it in your blood, since he had so much of Savita’s and might recognize its similarity.” He shook his head again.

  She must have betrayed something in her face, for his next comment was, “Don’t tell me my father hasn’t tasted you?” She just looked at him. “Truly?” he asked, incredulous, looking back at Willow for confirmation.

  “I think he feared upsetting her. William has fed on her, a few sips, months ago, but not Ilyn,” she replied with a hint of amusement.

  “What a sorry excuse for a vampire he is,” Luka said in disbelief. “I don’t know why he bothers anymore.” He pursed his lips in amusement and gazed silently at his captive, drawing out the suspense.

  Unable to contain her frustration any longer, she finally demanded, “Fine, then, what the hell am I?”

  “A demon,” he said, as though this were the most obvious answer in the world.

  She looked at him, disbelieving. “You’re saying I’m possessed? I have heard that one before, you know, along with people yelling ‘freak’ and ‘witch’ when I tried to go to school.”

  “Your body is possessed, silly girl. You are the demon possessing it. If you don’t like that word, you could go with wraith, spirit, whatever you wish. The bottom line is that you are a non-physical supernatural being with the honor or misfortune of being tethered to one body after another for all eternity. When one body no longer operates, you move on to another, taking possession of it at the moment of its conception. For all we know, you’ve been fairies and vampires and werewolves as well as human beings. You’re not eighteen years old. You could be eighteen hundred, or eighteen thousand. You could be as old as creation.” He seemed terribly earnest, almost professorial.

  “This is crazy,” she whispered, disbelieving.

  “Is it? It is any crazier than the fact that you can see the past and predict the future? Crazier than dying and climbing back out of the ground? Crazier than people who can fly or bleed light or turn into wolves?”

  “I am a person. I’m not some kind of . . . supernatural parasite.” He’s just trying to manipulate you, she told herself. Savita would have told you if it were true.

  “Why in the world would you rather be a human than a goddess?” He seemed genuinely puzzled.

  “If this is true, then why don’t I remember all these other lives?” she asked slowly, trying to remain calm and formulate coherent questions.

  “Oh, but I think you do, in a way,” he countered. “Who knows how many of your visions of the past might be of your own lives? As for not consciously remembered every detail, perhaps it is a coping mechanism, or aids in the survival of the host body. That much of a past could be a burden to one’s mental health, I expect. Savita remembers more the older her current body gets, or so she’s told me.” He studied her for a moment. “You still don’t believe me. Have you ever looked at your eyes by fairylight, November?”

  At her shake of the head, he raced invisibly fast around the room with a whoosh of displaced air, shoving aside her dinner tray and placing a mirror before her on the table. He picked up a delicately folded piece of paper patterned in violet and yellow. He pulled at it gently and it unfolded into a little cylinder the size of November’s hand. With no bulb and no flame, the magic lantern glowed magically from within from the moment it was unfolded. He stood behind her chair and draped a blanket over them, blocking out all other sources of light. The vampire leaned over her shoulder, uncomfortably close. “Look in the mirror and tell me those eyes are human.”

  She looked at the glass, her image gently lit by the fairy lantern. Her irises remained the deep blue to which she was accustomed, but the whites of her eyes were now replaced by the same midnight blue. This blue, which looked like a becalmed lake by normal ligh
t, now looked like a night sky running in fast forward. Pinpricks of light flashed and flickered and whirled around like stars speeding in the heavens. Her pupils, black by day, glowed with the blue-white of a hot flame. She wanted to believe it was a trick, but she knew in her heart that it was not.

  November dropped the mirror and jumped back in her chair. Those eyes were not human.

  “Maybe everyone’s eyes look strange by fairylight,” she protested feebly.

  “Don’t mine look the same?” the vampire asked her, amused by her reaction. She darted a glance at his face and nodded. He pulled away the blanket, and her eyes returned to normal as the ordinary light returned. “The eyes are the only thing that says the same, from body to body. You should see Savita’s. They’re nearly as spectacular as yours. Hers glow gold with red sparks."

  Luka spun her chair around to face him. He looked down at her, saying, “Now I’m sure this is a great deal for you to have to take in all at once. We can talk further tomorrow evening. I’m sure you will have many questions. Dawn is approaching, and we have a little business to attend to first.” November shrank away from him as he bent to sniff her hair. “You reek of my father. I must say, I don’t care for it.”

  Willow chimed in. “They had Pine strong-arm her into drinking some of his blood just a few days ago, so they could trace her. It looked like at least an ounce in the vial.”

  “He didn’t even do it himself? Have her drink straight from his wrist? Does he take no joy in anything?” Luka asked, once again incredulous. “I do hope he’ll be brave enough to come for her himself, if he lives that long. Not that the blood will be any help to them in finding her, thanks to you." He turned back to his new pet soothsayer. “You have a new master now, kitten. I’ll wait until tomorrow to bite you, so you can regain your strength. But tonight, I need you to drink a few sips of my blood.”

  Panic returned. She struggled to think of a way out, her mind racing. “You don’t want me to do that,” she protested desperately. “I’ll see things you don’t want me to know. I’ll learn your secrets.”

  “That would only concern me if there were any chance of your escaping my control, which I assure you, there is not. I want you to see visions of my future; that is part of your usefulness, after all.” He rolled up his sleeve and prepared to bite his wrist.

  “No!” the girl cried instinctively, “I won’t!” She could not face the reality of this monster’s blood coursing through her, visions of his sins filling her mind.

  He clucked at her. “I promise you, you will. Why make it harder on yourself? Cooperate, kitten. If you don’t, I shall have to punish you. I don’t allow defiance.” He gazed down at her face, which was already wet with terrified tears yet still full of the fight rising within her. “You always have been too brave for your own good, kitten. So much fight in you. You made those Jesuits torture you for hours and gave them nothing. You will make a fine vampire. Willow, some assistance, if you please.”

  Before she could blink, November was on her back, pressed against the table with enough force to smash the mirror into pieces. Willow held her down by her shoulders while Luka tore into his wrist and pinched his victim’s nose closed. As the seer thrashed, shards of glass tore through her nightgown and cut deeply into her back. She held her breath as long as she could, but soon enough, her mouth opened seeking air, and Luka’s blood poured in. Forced to swallow lest she choke, she finally gave up fighting, and her tormentors loosened their hold on her. “There, now,” Luka said soothingly, stroking her brow. “That’s a good girl. Almost done now.” His skin healed, and the flow of blood ceased.

  She curled into a sobbing ball on top of the table, blood soaking through her nightgown. The last thing she heard before succumbing to the visions was Luka’s instruction to Willow: “Heal her at dawn, strip her, and put her in one of the cubes. Perhaps a day down there will put her in a more cooperative frame of mind. And grow her hair back while you’re at it. I like to have something to grab hold of.”

  A little girl, broken, lies in the dark, waiting for death. Luka cuts her bonds, takes her blood, gives her his. Her eyes are deep blue, flecked with starlight. She is happy to die, not understanding that she can’t. Juana. He calls her Juana. Luka, crippled, pulls himself along in a contraption made by his enemy. Ilyn, running, surrounded by smoke, calling her name. Luka, killing Agnes. Luka, digging a hole in the ground and climbing in, covering himself with dirt. Luka and Savita, feeding together on dazed humans in a hovel. A werewolf, strapped to a gurney, howling as he changes form, howling in pain at what they do to him. Two werewolves tear each other to pieces while a crowd watches with Luka, laughing. Rubble where a building once stood, the dust still billowing. An old woman, burning at the stake, a cross in her hands. A young woman, throttled at a crossroads. A girl on horseback, fleeing. An oracle in a temple, surrounded by pilgrims. A young girl running in the woods is suddenly a wolf instead. Luka pulls a hatchet out of Willow’s skull. A fairy flying, with eyes like the night sky. Explosion after explosion. Scream upon scream. Rivers of blood.

  She woke up in darkness black as pitch. She reached up to touch her tender scalp, finding her long locks restored. She felt for the cuts on her back, but her skin was once again unbroken, though it crackled with dried blood. As her awareness returned, she realized that she was naked, freezing cold, and utterly alone. Claustrophobia clouded her mind with fear, and she began to shake. She told herself to focus. She tried to give herself tasks, to calm her anxious thoughts. This was a method she’d often used when placed in isolation at the hospital. Explore the space, she told herself.

  She used her ordinary senses first. She felt around next to her. The floor was thickly padded. She crawled until she hit a similarly padded wall a few feet away. She moved along the periphery, finding the door and a drain that reeked of human waste. She could feel air circulating from a vent in the ceiling. She realized that if she was still, she could hear faint voices through the air ducts. This calmed her a bit. She wasn’t entirely alone after all.

  Exhausted as she was, she was afraid to sleep, afraid of the visions that would pounce on her. She sat in the center of the room and drew her knees into her chest for warmth, then cast out with her sixth sense, trying to get some idea of the layout of her enemy’s fortress.

  She found dormitories full of addled humans. Some were sleeping, some reading or watching movies. Others were performing chores. They seemed healthy enough, but zombie-like. She continued exploring. The whole place seemed to be carved out of a mountain, a warren of tunnels and man-made caves, five or six floors worth, packed with vampires and fairies and human livestock. She found a few surprising things, including a helicopter, a laboratory, and what appeared to be an auditorium. She found several padded cells like her own, one of which was occupied by a man obsessively banging his head against the wall. She wondered what his transgression had been.

  Finally, she stumbled onto a heartbreaking scene: a small group of people, isolated from the others, leather cuffs around their necks and attached to the wall by shining chains. She gasped in distress when she saw that one of them was a child. At first, she couldn’t figure out what made them different from the others. Then they began to howl, the sound echoing through the ventilation system. Luka is keeping werewolf prisoners. As their aching song faded, November’s heart filled with dread. Whatever the governor of Arizona was keeping them for, it couldn’t be good.

  When her mind returned to her tiny prison, she tried to think of something, anything, to distract herself from the fear and the cold. She began to sing, softly at first, then with growing volume, trying to fill the space and warm her body. She finished a song and grew quiet. In the silence, she heard a voice. “Keep singing, sister,” echoed quietly inside the vent. So she did; for how long, she had no idea. Eventually, her body succumbed to its hunger for sleep, though she woke often, crying out in distress.

  The door opened, the light blinding her for a moment before someone shoved a black bag over her
head and hauled her to her feet, propelling her into the passageway. She stumbled, her limbs stiff from cold and from sleeping on the floor. “Morning, Oracle. Hope you like the accommodations,” came Philemon’s cruel voice on her left. “You look delicious. This walk will be the highlight of everyone’s day.” November’s stomach clenched and her face flushed hot with humiliation at the thought of being paraded naked through the halls.

  “Stow it,” Willow snapped from her right, strangely protective of her charge's feelings.

  They seemed to walk forever, past endless twists and turns and up a spiral staircase until they finally removed the bag from November’s head. She blinked in the bright light, finding herself in a large bathroom with dozens of toilet stalls, sinks, and open showers. It was clean and bright, covered with white tile.

  Willow pointed to the stalls, and November stumbled over to relieve herself, once again mortified that they were listening to her. In her brief moment of privacy, she tried to steel herself for battle. She told herself that this was part of Luka’s punishment, that he wanted to humiliate her, and that the best course of action would be to refuse to let it get to her.

  Willow handed her a basket of toiletries when she emerged. “Thank you, Willow,” she said casually, as though the situation were the most normal thing in the world. She then proceeded to ignore them entirely. She walked over to the sink and carefully brushed and flossed her teeth. She then strode purposefully over to the showers and was pleasantly surprised at the piping hot water that washed over her. She sighed with relief as the water drove the cold out of her limbs and washed off the accumulated blood, sweat, and tears of her days of torment. Just as with the previous evening’s meal, she didn’t know when her next shower would come, and she was determined to enjoy it as much as she could manage. Thankfully, the rushing of the water mostly drowned out Philemon’s comments about what he would do to her if he were Luka. She stood under the water until Willow ordered her out, handed her a towel and a comb, and pointed her toward a bank of blow dryers along one wall.