Exsanguination and Other Love Stories

XIII. The End

I took a deep breath, and chose my door.

No sooner had I reached for the handle than it flew open, and a great force pulled me forward violently. Then there came the rush of water over my head, filling my ears and blurring my vision.

My feet hit the bottom of something. I pushed upwards instinctively, and surfaced.

I was standing knee-deep in the shallows of a woodland pond, in late afternoon. Looking up, blinking at the sudden increase of light, I saw a picnic blanket spread on the shore ahead, and a very old man sitting cross-legged on it, making sandwiches.

Since this was the werewolf world - tacked onto mine, as Florian had put it - this man must be a werewolf. He had a bit of a look of the last body Cordelia'd been wearing, in the bristly brows, but he was thin and wiry, while the man she'd called "the wolves' uncle" had been heavy-set.

His beard was long and grizzled, and an old-fashioned handkerchief was spread over his lap. As I waded forward, out of the water and onto the bank, he let out a very inhuman growl, and rose to his feet, bristling.

I held my hands out. "Look, I know what it looks like, but I'm not a witch!"

"You're supposed to be dead," said another voice, from nearby: and a slight figure peered down at me from a crooked spruce with familiar mournful eyes. It was Omri, perched on a branch about twenty feet up.  "They never found your body in the States. How did you escape the Blue Room?"

"So she IS a - " The old man's expression hardened further.

"No!" I cried. "That's not it at all. I'm not Cordelia. I'm not possessed! I'm me! Bill Vane. I've just been... in the Fourth World. I – Omri, don't you remember?" I entreated. "The tank – in the Blue Room – it was full of magic water!"

Omri just stared down at me blankly. I remembered he hadn't been in the Blue Room for very long and at the time he hadn't been very focused on the architecture, either.

"How do you know it was magic, if you're not a witch?" said the old man, with narrowed eyes.

"Because it sent me to a river world with magic doors and then back here again! I didn't make it happen on my own!"

"That's a fish tale if I ever heard one!"

"No need for accusations, Geron," said a new voice. "Let's be hospitable."

Another man had stepped out of the trees. Besides the fact that he had the appearance of a matinee idol dressed in lumberjack clothing, the thing that I noticed first about him, as he approached, was that he was holding a pen knife. As I took several hasty steps back, he cut his own palm open with it and tossed the knife lightly down on the ground.

He held out the bleeding hand for me to shake. "I'm Adon," he said.

I hesitated. They were all watching me expectantly now.

"He's pack leader," said Omri. "You should take that."

I approached and took Adon's hand, after a long, long, five seconds of squeamish deliberation.

This seemed to satisfy him: he smiled as soon as our hands made contact.

"Not a witch," he said, nodding to the others as he released me. "Welcome to our woods, Bill. Will you be staying long?"

"I don't know," I said. "I mean... I..."

"There's the cat sanctuary," said Omri, without looking at me, and seemingly to no one in particular. "They might like how she smells better than Boris."

Then he hopped down from his tree and began to rummage around in the picnic basket.

"What kind of cats?" I ventured, to Adon.

"Very particular ones," said Adon. "Our late relation, Nikolas, used to look after them: but he drowned at Azure Tech six months ago. Hit by falling debris, that's what they told us."

"I'm sorry..." I said.

"Wasn't a werewolf," said Omri shortly, stuffing four pieces of steak into two pieces of thick, dark bread. Geron shot him a glare. "Tigers didn't mind him. They're giving Boris an awful time now."

"I guess I could stick around until you find someone new," I answered, with habitual resolve. After all, it wasn't like I had many other options at the moment. For all I knew, back home I was legally dead... "Wait - did you say tig- "

"Here," said Geron gruffly, grabbing Omri's monstrous creation from him and shoving it into my hands. "Have a sandwich!"

Splash, came a sound from the pond behind us.

I whirled. The sandwich fell from my fingers.

"I can see you are all blinded by my otherwordly beauty," said Florian Werther Bathory Byron, as he strode forth from the water. The werewolves and I stood transfixed. His eyes were bright and triumphant: his hair flowed and shone in the wind: his marbly skin had taken on the literal luminescence and glitter of a pearl. It hurt my eyes to keep focused on him for more than a few moments.

"What did you DO to yourself, Florian?" I cried, shading my eyes. "I thought you picked the star door!"

"I did," said Florian proudly, stopping a few feet away, and beaming at me. "Then I came back and picked the wolf one. I've drunk liquors brewed by nubile space sorceresses for the renewal of dying suns, and I take my sustenance now only from the dreams of stars! I will never have to do anything as messy as feeding on a squirrel or preying on housebound maidens ever again!"

Wordlessly, Adon jerked up the picnic blanket from the ground, and tossed it at him. Geron stared in open-mouthed horror as Florian appropriated it, and tied it neatly into a makeshift toga around himself. This somewhat reduced the glare of his pearly incandescence, but only slightly.

"Can you turn that down, please?" asked Omri, shading his eyes aggrievedly. "Or off?  Please?"

"Ah - no. I don't think so. But why would I want to? It's a feature, not a bug! This is me! Me as I've always secretly been inside! I have inner lumination now! I've remade myself in my own image! "

"Florian," I said, "You can't go anywhere with normal people like that..."

Florian smiled broadly and toothily. "You're right. The mundane world isn't at all worthy of me. I suppose I'll have to stay here indefinitely with you all, instead."

And that, despite all our protests, was exactly what he did.

THE END