A Vampire's Christmas Carol (11 page)

She rose and stepped back, preparing to go,
but stopped when he called her name.

“Carol?” His lips pressed together and his
face screwed up in pain. He spent a few minutes fighting it before
he could speak again. Then he said, “One…more favor?”

“What?”

“Can I have…your cross?”

“My cross? Won’t it hurt you?”

“Don’t think so. Not anymore.”

She stared at him for a moment, wondering if
this was some devious sort of trap. It wasn’t obvious how it could
be. She reached up and unclasped the chain. Rehooking it after
she’d taken it off, she bent down again and slipped it into his
hand, winding the chain around his fingers. She was ready to pull
it back if it caused him pain, but instead he closed his hand
around it.

He gave a small sigh and some of the tense
lines in his face relaxed. “No pain. Comfort.” He looked at the sky
for a second. She followed his gaze to where a soft pink glow lit
the horizon.

“Dawn,” he said. “Go now.” A spasm twisted
his body, jerking his arms and legs against the chains. It didn’t
appear to be blood lust this time, but pure, uncrazed agony.
“Please,” he begged, the word a thin, stretched wire of sound.

“God bless you.” She whirled, hurried to the
steps and rushed up them. Tears all but blinded her and caused her
to stumble on the second step. Steadying herself on the rail, she
made it up and into the kitchen. She shut the door and didn’t look
back. His death wasn’t going to be easy or pretty. She could at
least grant him the dignity of privacy.

As long as she lived, she’d never forget
Michael Carpenter.

She walked back through the house, feeling a
bit lost, uncertain what to do next. On impulse she lifted the
telephone handset. She almost dropped it again when the dial tone
buzzed. She began dialing, but stopped after nine and one.

“Find your hero,” he’d said. “He’s out
there.”

But he wasn’t. He was right behind her. In
the backyard. She’d never met anyone more courageous and heroic
than Michael Carpenter. She doubted she ever would.

She set the phone back on the hook.

It was dangerous. It was probably stupid. It
might be futile and useless and that would break her heart.

He’d asked her not to try to save him because
he didn’t want her risking her life. She had to respect that to the
point of asking seriously whether she should try it. At best, she
might save his life, give him back the years of real human life
he’d lost. She couldn’t give him back his family or his fiancée.
Maybe he could find new versions, though

At worst, she’d fail, he’d make her a vampire
and they’d both die in the sunlight. Not a happy prospect, that.
Because that was the one outcome he couldn’t stand, she’d have to
be sure she erred on the side of caution if she did this.

The most likely outcome, though, was that it
wouldn’t work and he’d just die. As he planned to anyway.

A glance at the window showed the sky
definitely growing lighter. If she was going to do this, she needed
to get started. She hurried into the living room and thumbed
through the several pages of notes she’d made earlier while Michael
told his story. Finally she found it and re-read the instructions
he’d given.

It wasn’t as specific as she would have
liked, and he’d taken pains to say no one was sure it would work.
It was just something he’d heard about.

The risk… She hesitated, considering the
dangers and how tricky the timing would be. Why should she even try
it? She owed him nothing. Yesterday this time, she hadn’t known he
existed. He’d done nothing for her… Okay, not quite true. He’d
given her shelter even though he expected it to make his fight to
stay human harder. He’d refrained from drinking her blood, at
considerable cost to himself. He’d saved her from Antoine’s
machinations.

Still, he’d told her not to try it.

But only because he didn’t want to endanger
her. He admitted he would have liked to have a normal life back,
that dying was his best option only because he didn’t believe any
other was possible.

“Go find your hero.”

She closed her eyes against the sting of
tears starting to flow again. Dammit. He did deserve better.

Drawing a deep breath, she calmed herself.
She’d need a knife. Not the one she’d used on Antoine. This one
couldn’t be tainted with vampire blood. Another trowel or shovel
too. God help her, this was going to be hard.

It hadn’t been easy to take care of Antoine
and this would be ten times worse.

Get going. Every second of delay diminished
the chances of success.

Carol went back to the kitchen and riffled
through several drawers before she found the knives. They all
looked sharp, but she selected two that had serrated edges as well
as wicked points. She got another shovel from the mud room.

Before she went back out, she shed the coat.
She’d be working hard enough to keep her warm.

As she descended the steps to the yard, she
scanned the horizon. The sun hadn’t risen past it yet, but it
wouldn’t be long. It was light enough that she could see easily.
Antoine lay where she left him. She made a wide berth around the
body to get to Michael.

He was still also, eyes closed. If he still
breathed, she couldn’t see it. His features looked set, fixed,
lifeless. Too late. She’d debated too long. Her eyes burned and
tears ran down her face again. Damn. She hadn’t cried this much in
years.

Then she noticed that he still clutched the
cross in his left hand, the fingers closed around it. A few moments
later, his eyes opened. A startled expression crossed his face,
followed rapidly by joy, alarm, anger and despair. He made no move,
however. He might be too weak by now.

He barely mouthed the word, “Go.”

“No. I want to try to save you. But I need
you to help me. I need you to tell me when the time is right.”

“Can’t…trust me.” The words came out slowly,
taking an effort to shape each one.

“Yes, I can. You’ve fought it off this long.
You’ll do it for the last few minutes to give us both a chance. You
have to. I won’t go away. I’m going to try.”

He licked his lips with a dry tongue. It took
him a while to form the next words. “Carol. No.”

“Yes.” The more he protested, the more
convinced she became it was the right thing to do. “I trust you to
give us both a chance. Tell me when the time is right. I’m going to
do it, so if you care at all, you’ll make sure I do it at the right
time. Meanwhile, I have to dig a hole.”

His nod was the barest motion of his head.
The words “not yet” weren’t even quite a whisper. She could see he
didn’t want to hope. He couldn’t afford it. She didn’t blame
him.

He appeared to be aging right in front of her
eyes. His hair had gone thin, his face even thinner. The little bit
of flesh he had left seemed to evaporate.

But he still had another raging frenzy left
in him. The red glow flared in his eyes just as she turned away to
pick up the shovel and begin digging. He started to writhe, twist
and yank at his bonds. After a few short, sharp yells, his
vocalizations settled down into more of a long groan.

Carol stayed out of his reach as she used the
shovel to brush away snow from a patch of ground near him. It took
some hard work to crack through the ice and get enough of it
cleared away.

Michael’s raging didn’t last long. He didn’t
have the strength to support it for more than a minute or so. The
last spasm faded away well before she’d finished breaking through
to the dirt.

Carol was sweating by then, desperate to get
it ready in time, and praying for the strength to do this
properly.

She was still clearing off ice when the first
rays of the sun peeked above the horizon.

Because of where he lay, the sunlight reached
Antoine first. There was no big “poof” this time either. Instead he
began to dissolve into a cloud of mist, just as he had when he left
earlier, only the process was slower. And the mist began to settle
onto the ground as particles of what looked like dust, rather than
disappearing.

Carol stopped to watch. Over the space of a
few minutes, the body sort of came apart, dissolving and falling to
pieces at the same time. When the process finished, it left only a
man-shaped patch of dusty residue with a pair of shoes and a sprawl
of clothes mixed in. The wooden stake lay on top.

Michael groaned and it drew her attention
back to him. His eyes were closed and his face screwed up in agony.
The sunlight had touched his feet.

He fought back the pain long enough to open
his eyes and look at her. He just barely breathed the word,
“Now.”

She couldn’t remember when she’d last prayed
so much or with such ragged, painful desperation. One last heave
with the shovel loosed a big chunk of ice and revealed a circle of
ground about six inches in diameter. It better be enough.

She tossed the tool aside and picked up the
knife.

Michael moaned steadily, unable to bear
quietly the pain that drew all his muscles tight. It rose steadily
to be near a scream.

“God help me, please,” she muttered over and
over again as she picked up the knife. She had a moment’s
hesitation, a bare second of doubt, before she knelt close to
Michael and grabbed his hair, lifting his head to position his neck
over the space she’d cleared.

She held the knife near his throat. Nausea
roiled her stomach so badly she had to swallow back against it to
keep from throwing up.

Still groaning, Michael opened his eyes and
looked at her. The expression of concern and gratitude mingling
with the agony in the sunken, shadowed blue depths shattered her
heart.

Refusing to think about it, she reached down
and jerked the knife across his throat, pressing hard to slice
deeply through the skin, into the muscle and blood vessels
below.

His body shot up, back arching off the ground
into a taut arc of sheerest agony, stretching as far as his chained
hands and ankles would permit. He couldn’t scream anymore. With his
throat cut, the only sound he could make was a choked gurgle.

It was by far the most horrible noise she’d
ever heard.

A few seconds later, his muscles all went
slack and he collapsed back to the ground. His body lay limp and
sprawled as it fell. His eyes slid closed and his face emptied, all
expression draining from it.

Blood poured out of the wound and ran down
onto the earth. She leaned back to avoid getting spattered with
it.

How long to wait? Nothing he’d said helped
her judge that. Not long, though. If he wasn’t already truly dead,
he would be within minutes. She dropped the knife she’d used on him
and picked up the second one for herself. She positioned her arm to
cut across her left wrist and realized she didn’t need to. In
wrestling the shovel through the ice, she’d reopened the cut
Antoine had made. She’d been so focused on Michael and what she had
to do to him, she hadn’t even noticed her arm stinging or the
warmth of blood running down her arm beneath the sweater.

She moved around to the other side of
Michael’s body, rolled up the sleeve and held her arm out over his
mouth. He didn’t react. A drop of blood fell on his face, but
missed his mouth and landed on his chin. She shifted her arm and
the next drop hit his lips.

They didn’t move. He made no effort to part
his lips to take her offering.

Beads of sweat rolled off her temples and
landed on his cheeks.

She tried again, this time using her fingers
to open his mouth and then close it again over the drops of her
blood. She waited, but still nothing happened.

Despair warred with disbelief. She’d waited
too long, dithered too much and it had robbed him of his chance.
But how could she have failed, when she’d tried so hard and prayed
so fervently over it?

She let a few more drops fall onto his face,
but again they produced no movement, no reaction at all.

“No,” she muttered to herself. “It can’t be.
He deserves better. It’s not fair!”

With her right hand, she moved his lips,
forcing them apart again. This time she forced a trickle of her
blood right into his mouth. Still no result.

Maybe he needed more than just a few drops?
Bracing herself against the pain, she pulled apart the lips of the
wound and pressed. A stream of blood rushed out and she held his
mouth open to receive it as she let it flow from her. But it
produced no movement, no breath, no change in him.

She squeezed her arm to force out as much as
possible, letting it drip into his mouth. He didn’t appear to
swallow.

Tears made her eyes sting again and began to
carve hot trails down her cheeks. They dripped on his face as well,
landing on his cheek, where they mingled with the sweat of
earlier.

A wave of dizziness assaulted her. She hadn’t
lost that much blood, so it had to be a combination of emotional
stress and exhaustion. Other than the coffee and sandwiches, she
hadn’t eaten since early yesterday evening, either. All of it
together made her feel faint and nauseated.

Tears poured down her face even faster as she
tried to squeeze more of her blood into him, refusing to
acknowledge failure. But he didn’t respond. Her tears fell on his
cheeks until enough collected to run down his face and into his
mouth as well.

She couldn’t stand it.

Carol put her head down on his chest and
rested her bleeding arm over his face. He obviously wouldn’t be
reaching down to tear her wrist or throat open and drain her.

She cried for the waste of a man who’d been
extraordinary in his courage and honor. She wept for all the things
he’d been denied, the opportunities he’d never have. She even,
selfishly, cried for herself and the possibilities she’d lost.

Finally she either fell asleep or passed out
from exhaustion.