Chantelle, maddened to the point of her dried husk of an epidermis crumbling from her face, repeated the stabbing with a flurry of grotesque-faced sneers. Nothing?
The portal remained as it was, Grella still suspended as though within it. The Hierarchy paled.
“Die damn you! Die, Merryweather, you good-for-nothing waste of an Eternal! Why… won't… you… die?”
Merryweather got to his feet, brushed the accumulated dust of his journeys onto the floor, tapped his chest and grinned. Hope returned to my world.
Chantelle groped inside the box. She thrust in her hand and withdrew a fistful of dust; it fell from her fingers like life from the dead.
When the girl materialised in the middle of the room, head thrown back, white hair billowing, she laughed. Aurora held her father's heart, as she had from the day she was born. It pulsed between her gentle fingers safer than it had ever been within him.
“Kill them, Vincent! Kill them all!” Chantelle screamed.
The Marquis turned back to his controls.
“Monsieur, aid him.”
My father's eyes narrowed as he turned from us to depress a button high on a control panel. The curtain that contained us glowed brighter, but nowhere near as bright as me. He sought to terminate his own son.
I exploded.
Whether it was the sight of Grella, his life ebbing, or the ultimate betrayal by those I'd all loved in my way, who knew? But the rage that had risen in the Arctic at Sunyin's presumed death, resurfaced. Even Walter backed away.
Despite the pain, the agony of the forces that crackled across my body, I tore at the fabric of all that contained us. There was no more Jean the nonchalant misfit; Jean the lover; Jean, he who turned the other cheek. All that remained was the power of eternity focused in one determined man. The unseen wall and its cobalt fires never stood a chance.
I stepped from our prison, the thing disintegrating in a burst of violent energy, to bask in the portal's golden light. I looked to its rippling surface, all that history, all that promise, then turned away. There was only one thing I wished for.
I bowed low, crackling in the so doing, and took the hand of she who I should have held all along. In the golden glow of the portal's imperious light, without the need of sheltering my eyes or hers, I advanced upon those who would have killed us.
Chantelle reacted first. She ripped her sister from their mother's grip and put the knife to her throat.
I smiled an unconcerned riposte and advanced in slow, purposeful footsteps.
Chantelle span to my father as Walter stepped from his once cage to join us. She dug the dagger into his neck and drew blood. I advanced further, my talons crackling with the processed energy of humanity.
Desperate for an edge, she turned her attention to Walter, sneered, and grabbed for Serena.
The Nordic Queen's reaction was instantaneous.
The Marquis saw it in advance and sought to end his life in a less painful way. He depressed a throbbing, red button and the curtain of light began to fall: Serena struck.
Seeing the Queen of those who were the most powerful of our kind, the closest to our vampire descendants, our real descendants, cut loose, was a thing of murderous madness. She decapitated Vincent with a single thrust, my father in two; I was glad to see him go. The three females took her on as one: Linka biting; Chantelle stabbing; their mother a rabid animal, all tooth and claw. And all the time the containment field descended. It was the stuff of legend how she tore them to pieces. I would never forget the look of fear in each of their eyes as she refused to die.
When she staggered back, Serena was no more the disenchanted monarch. Stooping, eyes overflowing with love, she looked to Walter, bloodied and desperate. He raced to the energy curtain as a blur and I realised how wrong I'd been about him and her. It was planned. It was all planned. They'd chosen to die together. But like everyone who had ever met her, except perhaps me, they had underestimated their daughter once again.
She moved as a blizzard of white, in, then out. As the remains of the others incinerated to a charcoal nothingness, the mother of us all was hauled in a blur of invisibility from her cage. She reappeared next to her husband and daughter on our side of the sparkling death clasping Aurora's hand.
“Thank God for metaphasic cloaks and the human who gave us it,” Walter chuckled.
Then and only then did Aurora look to her brother. Then and only then did a goddess cry.
Chapter Thirty
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Eternity
“My Queen.” Walter bowed, wrapped his arms about Serena, and then pulled Aurora close. “My family.”
“Were you worried?” Serena said sucking in a non-breath.
“Never that, my love, although you could've told me about the sun.”
“Your resolve was weakening,” she spluttered.
“But my love never did.” Walter smiled the gentle smile I'd ever seen. “We haven't long left.”
“The sun diminishes faster than we imagined,” Serena spoke with a look of reluctant acceptance.
“Things always do at the end. It's not as if we haven't had time to prepare.”
“Too much time,” she agreed.
“Shh, save your breath.”
“Is there still time?” Serena said and pulled her daughter closer.
Aurora nuzzled in as though she might never leave that half-embrace.
Walter looked on approvingly. “There is always time for love,” he said, his chin held high, pride etched upon his pale face. “You and Jean must flee. Hurry to Sunyin's side whilst still you can.”
“Not without you.” Aurora was adamant.
“We will not leave you,” I said retaking her hand.
“We were never leaving. We could only plan and hope,” Serena gasped as her life essence pooled about her.
“You must,” Aurora pleaded.
“I will carry you,” I insisted.
“Jean, Jean, Jean, when will you ever listen. We cannot go. They will no more take us now than they would back then. It is you two they will come for, the two who have shown vampires have hearts. It is only in your love and the self-sacrifice of he who will forever be the greatest of us, that the Eternals would return.”
“Eternals?”
“Yes, Jean. Humanity were the Eternals, never us. In their acceptance of he who created them, they found the key to forever. They never left just stepped into the light. Now, Grella has given everything to save his sister, to give the pair of you that same opportunity they had. It his self-sacrifice, unasked for, unprovoked that has unlocked the door to a better place. You would dishonour him in refusing his gift, it is all he has left to give.”
Aurora and I exchanged glances.
“And they said it could never be,” Walter sniffed. “That's shown them unless they already knew? Hmm, humans are a tricky bunch! The Hierarchy only ever believed what they wished to believe in their insular minds, created their own version of the truth. Either way, my heart never had a thing to do with it, it died the moment he bit me.”
Aurora unclenched her fingers. The thing she'd risked all to save had turned to coal. It weighed heavy in her hand.
“But we are the Eternals,” I insisted.
“No, Jean, we only borrowed eternity.”
“But…”
“No buts,” Serena smiled.
The world shone a little brighter in its glow.
“Only the last born will see a new dawn,” Walter said stroking his beloved's long hair. “You and Aurora are the last born, Jean, not we. Serena kept her daughter's birth from all those who otherwise would've sought to destroy her. Even those who resided deep within Hvit's own walls never knew her, never saw her, never guessed.”
“Linka?”
“Created as she said, never born like the girl whose hand you hold. They made her to thwart us and almost did.”
“But you said…”
“I said a lot of things to reach this point, Jean. Anything I said about Aurora was
designed for the ears of others. She is our daughter even if she took a long time to grace us with her presence. I like to think she awaited you.”
“Giving birth to life is no easy matter for the dead,” Serena said and kissed her daughter's hand."
“I thought my facade had slipped enough for you to realise the truth. But, as fortune would have it, and having saved our plans in the doing, you did not realise that it is not just the name Alba that means dawn.”
“Aurora,” I said.
“Yes, Jean.”
“She is my second dawn.”
“She is and she shall never set.”
“And she grows brighter by the moment.” I kissed her gently on her cheek.
“Now, do not tarry or all we have committed to will be wasted. The sun slips away.” Walter raised his hand and pointed behind us.
And it did. What had begun as droplets of spilt wine gushed in cascades of ruby, the sun fading into infinity.
“Go, our children. Go. Grella perishes before our eyes and they will not wait beyond the last stirrings of his life. Go,” he whispered, and the two founders of a race curled up together in an embrace lifetimes in the making.
My eyes met Aurora's. There was nothing else for it.
The princess stooped to kiss her parents upon their foreheads. I squeezed each by the shoulder; I was never good at goodbyes. As one, hands clasped and united, we fled.
We ran under the shimmering doorway to the far wall and leapt high. Talons made for evisceration dug deep into the artistry of a forgotten world and we climbed. Like two bugs crawling from the pit, we moved hand over hand, past the portal, no thicker than a human hair, maintained by the blood of he above it. We ascended into the cold light of earth's last day and the muddied silts of the drained sea. Grella awaited. The best of us all, his sacrifice to the one we should always have worshipped paid for our sins.
He hung like a draped curtain too weak to lift his head. A mirror of the empty past we'd seen in the Baltic seabed, Grella made for a sobering reality. If there'd been more of our kind strung up to dry, I couldn't have coped, but I had to for he.
Aurora was to him in a flash.
Sunyin remained on bended knee at Grella's feet chanting into the forever.
I wondered if Grella would ever have found his way if Sunyin had not deserted us to guide him? The little monk never failed to amaze.
“Brother, I am here.” Aurora lifted his head with the delicacy of an angel.
Grella was a mess. The goggles that covered his albino eyes were broken and useless, his clothing blood-strewn and ragged. His sister ignored it all.
“Aurora, is that you? I cannot see.”
“It is, brother.”
“Are you safe?” His voice barely audible, more a hush of words.
“Yes.”
“Then, hope remains.”
“Thanks to you.”
“And, Jean?”
“He is here.”
“Good. He will take care of you in the next life. He is a good man. I am glad we were friends.”
“Best friends,” I added. I didn't know what else to say.
“Yes, best friends. My only friend,” he whispered.
He hung there, the place where his heart once sat a gaping cavern, for only then did I see what Sunyin held dripping in his old fingers. I wanted to look, to stare, but refused. Grella deserved better.
“Mother…” His words laboured.
“She and Walter are reunited,” Aurora replied. “They are happy.”
“At last.” Grella sighed so deep, I thought he might expel all that remained of himself upon us. “At last,” he whispered again.
The Nordic's head lolled in Aurora's hand. Sunyin responded by chanting louder, his words a soothing balm, the only sound at the end of time, the only solace in the quiet of the coming void.
“Sister, I am leaving now.”
“I know.”
“I have one last wish.”
“Anything.”
“I want to see the light of day.”
“It might finish you.”
“I am finished. Please.”
Aurora looked for my blessing, her eyes pleading. I inclined my head.
“Are you ready,” she whispered and kissed him on his chapped and peeling lips.
“Yes…”
With the care afforded a crystal vase in a hurricane, Aurora carefully removed her brother's glasses. She lifted his head higher so he might look down over the precipice.
I watched his ruby orbs widen suffused with citrine. Grella smiled.
“So this is what eternity looks like,” he managed. Then, he was gone.
Aurora burst into inconsolable tears, her head pressed upon her brother's crimson chest.
“He was happy at the end, Aura. I think for the first time in forever. You made his final moments worthwhile.”
As if my words a cue, Sunyin climbed to his feet. He made the sign of the cross upon the Nordic's chest and then regarded us. “Time for you to leave, my friends.”
“We don't know how,” I said.
“I do,” he replied.
“How, Sunyin? How can you know so much?”
“It is and always was my purpose. It was what I was made for by them, my creators, my real creators. When true love reappeared in this world, the forsaken would be regathered. Your love is pure, Grella's more so.”
He extended one arm to point at the shimmering rectangle. The thing hung in the air halfway between the Basilica floor and ourselves.
“I was made to show you the way. I have waited a very long time to do just that.”
“Will you not come?”
“I cannot.”
“But you must!” I begged.
“I am the key to eternity, my friend. But I think you already knew that. I am neither man nor Eternal, vampire nor construct. I am merely part of the vessel that is love. But I think you knew that too.”
I did. Somehow, I'd always known, and I did not want to argue with that kindest of souls.
“Princess,” Sunyin said in a soft, persuasive voice.
Aurora turned to the little monk. Her azure eyes shone so bright in the fading light. I was so lucky to have her.
“It is time to wave goodbye to this sun, this world, this time, this dream. I think it would be nice if you waved goodbye to your parents, too. A happy memory to take with you into the forever. And you, Jean.”
His words were more than a suggestion, as always they made perfect sense.
Walter and Serena already stared up at us from their place in each other's arms. Walter lifted his hand and waved. I did the same. Aurora blew them both a kiss. It was an image I had seen on a mural in a castle on a cliff. It was the image I would take with me to wherever I next went.
“Now, that feels better, doesn't it?” Sunyin beamed.
And it did.
“I always wondered how it would end, Jean. Everybody said it would be a great, big bang. But it's not like that at all.”
“No, old friend, more a slow dripping away.”
“Yes, you are right. The sun colours cosmic tides with a hint of claret. I don't think it will last, but it makes a nice change from black, don't you think?”
“It does,” I said, as the final hints of a dying sun ebbed away into universal night."
And there, as I looked out into the vastness of space and time, something stirred.
Sunyin smiled.
There was a definite thrumming, as of one of the Marquis' ships, but not quite. It was as if the memory of a part that once had purpose finally recalled how to work.
I listened; the others watched me do so. I strained to hear what made the funny noise. It was irregular at first, then grew steadier. After a few moments, as if sure of what it was doing, a ba-dum, ba-dum, ba-dum trickled through the onrushing darkness. The sound came from within.
I placed a hand on my chest; it moved. My chest pulsed of its own volition.
“Is it beating?” Aurora ask
ed and placed her own upon my heart.
“Yes. I cannot believe it, but my heart lives. Does yours?”
“It has beat since the day I met you,” she said, demure eyes blinking.
“Time to go,” Sunyin said in a perky voice. “Everything is now as it should be and I can depart to be with my brothers and children in eternal Shangri-La. I shall miss you,” he said, extending one hand.
I took it and returned his bloodied shake. Aurora was more hands on flinging her arms about the old monk's shoulders.
“Thank you for everything, Sunyin.”
“No, thank you, Your Royal Highness. Thanks to both of you.”
The monk bowed low and reached inside his robes. When he withdrew his hand, it held a second heart that still leaked its life stuff. He smiled in his ever so polite way, cast one last look to the sky, held both hands to Heaven and bowed, and then stepped off the precipice into the portal. Like a pond of gold disturbed by a stone, the rippling light took him. Never had there been a gentler entry to the afterlife.
I watched the ripples settle, the light increase, pulse towards us as a path of shimmering gold. By instinct, my hand moved to cover eyes not made for golden days; Aurora's moved it away.
“We need not fear it, my love. You and I never did.”
And everything turned golden. And everything was golden. And they were there, our real family, our true ancestors. The eyes of the Eternals pierced the rippling light, each and every one of them bowing low, their cloaks, just like Aurora's own, twinkling like stars in the night. They smiled with a kindness I had never known, the love of the many suffusing the two, and beckoned us.
“So beautiful!” Aurora gasped.
I took her trembling hand and pulled her close. “Are you ready?”
“For the light?” she whispered.
“No, for this?” And I kissed her like it was the last kiss the world would ever see, ever feel, ever know. I kissed her for forever and I kissed her for the past. But most of all, I kissed her for today.
Together in love, we stepped into eternity.
The End.
Chapter Thirty-One
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Into Eternity (The Eternals Book 3) Page 28