BEAUTY
Sitting beside the bed that they'd shared for over half a century, waiting for the end, Matthew was lost in the memory of their early days at Les Revenants. Back when the library of meticulously bound and catalogued family artifacts was a neglected collection of disorderly boxes and loose papers carelessly strewn about the room. Before the cherished portrait of the two of them that Jack painted for Matthew's birthday all those years ago was moved from Clairmont House and installed in the salon directly below where he now sat. When they would spend their evenings reading, talking, or making love while their children slept in a single cradle by the fire. The corners of his mouth turned up into a small smile and he took Diana's wizened hand in his.
He examined her hand as he lightly stroked it. It looked smaller than it used to. Blue veins stood out in relief against the soft, silken skin that clung loosely to her bones. Her almond-shaped fingernails were longer than they usually were, and her wedding ring spun freely on the fourth finger of her left hand. With this ring I thee wed, and with my body I thee honor. This beautiful hand that brought him such comfort in times of pain. That contoured so perfectly to his cheek that it seemed as though it was made to fit there. That clenched into a fist in anger or determination. That held his fast when he needed strength. That rowed boats and turned pages and dressed their children and wove the threads of life into the warp and weft of the universe to create invisible knots that made the world a more beautiful place. He turned it over so that her palm faced up revealing the strands of color that ran from the tips of her fingers down to her wrist, where they joined to form an ouroboros. One by one, he traced the lines of color. White. Gold. Silver. Black. He bowed his head and placed his lips to the ouroboros, drinking in her scent of honey, chamomile, willow sap, and frankincense that, like a fine Madeira, had grown sweeter and earthier over time. Her pulse was weak. It wouldn't be long before the siren song of her blood would come to an end.
"Matthew," Diana murmured, her eyes fluttering open.
"Yes, mon coeur, I'm here." He reached up to kiss her hair. It was cloud white now and still worn long so that it cascaded down her back in diaphanous waves. Matthew adored it. Seeing the years playing out on her body was one of the great joys of his life. This always amused Diana, who would teasingly remind him of the attendant aches and pains whenever he waxed poetic about the slow transformation. Don't think I'm not utterly thrilled that you enjoy seeing my wedding ring on an aged hand, it's just that the arthritis makes it feel rather less than miraculous. He largely kept these thoughts to himself, but—as he often playfully reminded her as she lay in his arms after having performed their much-loved ritual of revealing their souls to one another—her witch's kiss was a double-edged sword, and if she didn't want to know how he felt about the changes to her body, she was free to dispense with the practice altogether–witch.
"Where are the kids?" she whispered.
"Rebecca and Jack are downstairs and Philip is on his way. They will be up soon."
She sighed contentedly, but then directed a pointed look at Matthew. "When was the last time you left this room?"
"Don't bother, Diana. I'm not leaving you."
She smiled wanly, her strength sapped from just those few words. "Drink," she commanded.
"Are you sure?" He hadn't taken her blood since before she'd lost her appetite, and she looked so thin and fragile, he worried he might break her.
"Matthew, I'm not a twig, I won't snap in half."
"All signs point to the contrary, ma lionne," he retorted, placing a kiss on her temple where the branches of the tree of life fanned out from her scalp.
She breathed a light laugh. "Touché," she replied. She held his eyes until, with a resigned sigh, he rose to climb next to her on the bed.
He hovered over her and studied her lovely, sallow face. That the time was fast approaching when she would be lost to him forever didn't bear thinking about, and he rallied all of his strength to practice what Diana had spent all of these years teaching him, to live in the moment. He cupped her cheek in his hand and passed his thumb across her mouth. The color had left her face so that her eyes resembled disembodied stars, burning jewel-blue through a monochrome morning mist. She had never looked more ethereal or, paradoxically, more indestructible. Her body was fading away but she was somehow eternal. He kissed her, gently and deeply, and she responded with soft enthusiasm, until he kissed down her throat and poised himself over the papery scar above her breast. He gave her a final glance and she nodded in assent, and he sank his teeth into the familiar place where her secrets lived.
Her thoughts flowed gauze-like through her exhausted blood. He relived highs and lows from their life together. Friends and family, many of whom were either currently gathered or en route to Sept-Tours to pay their respects to the Bishop-Clairmont family, bloomed in his thoughts. The flourishing love between Marcus and Phoebe, Miriam and Chris, Jack and his mate Evelyn, Philip and his wife Violet, and Margaret and her husband David. The painful deaths of Sarah, Hamish, Agatha, and Sophie. The challenges and blessings that befell them and other pioneers of the new world in which the existence of creatures was known to humans, and the hatred, prejudice, love, and gratitude that ensued. The blending of Marcus's family into theirs as the wounds of the past slowly healed. The progress and setbacks of Jack's continuing struggle to master his blood rage. The divergence of the children who once shared a cradle into independent, though interconnected, individuals. Philip's chagrin at looking like a small child well into his teens due to the vampire properties of his DNA, and Rebecca's chagrin at looking like a child well into her thirties due to the much more dominant vampire properties of hers. The acoustic trill of "Landslide" wafting from the teenaged Rebecca's room as she accompanied herself on the guitar clashing with the resonant strains of Bach's Cello Suite No. 1 emanating from Philip's. The rare time-travelling vacations they took as a family, invariably involving much teasing from the children at Matthew's incessant need to recount his own personal history or dispel popular myths about the times, locations, and people they encountered along the way. The slightly more frequent getaways he and Diana took together to briefly escape whatever turmoil was surrounding them at any given time. Diana's covert visits to Philippe's bedside after his ordeal at Chelm, weaving healing spells to dull his pain, holding his hand when he was at his most terrified, whispering soothing words of comfort as he raved incoherently.
During his last, brief, moments of lucidity, Diana had sneaked into his office and, at his request, retrieved a pen, a sheet of paper and an envelope, sealing wax, a letter opener, a gargantuan cigarette lighter in the likeness of the Egyptian god Amun, and what looked like a tiny jewelry box hidden in the back of one of the pigeon holes in his desk. When she exited the office to sneak back to Philippe's rooms, she froze momentarily at the distant sound of agonized sobs, shouts, and growls as Baldwin, Ysabeau, and Matthew fought desperately over whether to accede to Philippe's frantic entreaties to be put out of his misery. She squeezed her eyes shut against the sting of tears, then proceeded determinedly back to Philippe's side, where he composed a short letter. With shaking hands, he folded up the paper and placed it in the envelope, and asked for the box. Diana took the lighter, which Philippe in his distress had forgotten wasn't strictly necessary as Diana could have conjured the fire on her own, and held the flame to the wax until it was melted enough to seal the envelope. Philippe opened the box and revealed that it contained an ancient coin with the de Clermont insignia, which he pressed into the wax. Diana recognized this as the letter Alain gave her when she and Matthew returned from 1591. He proceeded to give her detailed instructions on the location of the ledger that contained the accounts of her inheritance, told her to place the letter inside the ledger, and said that Alain would take care of the rest. She kissed his deformed cheek and squeezed his hand. His task now completed, his concentration wavered and his agitation began to mount once more. Within moments, he was screaming in pain and fear, and Diana realized to her horror that he still held the letter opener, which he began plunging into his wrists again and again. Scraping, stabbing, gouging, trying vainly to outpace his resilient vampire skin, which stubbornly knitted itself together almost as soon as the knife was removed. Diana tried to prize the knife from his grasp, but he was too fast and too strong, and within seconds she heard the vampires approaching, so she had no choice but to gather the letter, wax, lighter, and box and hide herself behind a curtain and pray that her scent and beating heart wouldn't be noticed amid the uproar. She barely made it out of sight when the residents of Sept-Tours—Ysabeau, Baldwin, Matthew, Verin, Alain, and Marthe—rushed in to the pathetic and terrible sight of Philippe trying to take his death into his own hands. Alain and Marthe hung discreetly near the door, while the four family members gathered around Philippe. Ysabeau! Philippe wailed. She took his blood-soaked hand in both of hers. Please, I beg of you! Please, let me die! Ysabeau stilled and her eyes grew cold and dead as she made the impossible decision to do as he asked. Philippe, my love. I will end your suffering. Her children pounced on her and, with difficulty, restrained her. Verin roared that, as Ysabeau was not Philippe's blood, she had no right to go against her and Baldwin's decision to keep him alive. Baldwin bellowed that, as Philippe's eldest son, his judgment was absolute. In the turmoil, Diana was the only one who saw Matthew's eyes turn black, his hackles raise, the tendons on his neck stretch and tighten, and his mouth batten onto Philippe's neck. It wasn't until Philippe's cries gave way to moans that they turned to see Matthew not only draining but actually consuming Philippe's life force in a heroic act of mercy. They froze, too shocked to make any attempt to stop Matthew from taking Philippe's life. Matthew's eyes were wild, his features distorted in torment. He began to seize and jerk in pain and exhaustion as Philippe's deranged memories ripped through his body, but he persisted until Philippe was finally drunk dry. Matthew slowly swung his ravaged face to look at his family in blood-raged defiance, and after a moment of paralysis, Baldwin lunged toward Matthew in a fury, but Matthew was gone in a flash. It would be months before he made contact with Ysabeau again. After the vampires trudged out of the room in a daze, Diana replaced the objects and returned to the present.
Matthew would never forget when she returned from her final visit to Philippe. He knew of her visits even though she forbade him from coming along, but he had no idea that she would ever witness his greatest shame. When she walked into the library, bloodied and bemused, he'd panicked that she'd been attacked. When she recounted her experience, it triggered an episode of blood rage that he spent months working to control, with Diana by his side at every moment.
He stopped drinking and returned to the present. He kissed the wound from his teeth as he always did after tasting her blood, smiled at her shyly, and then he gingerly pulled her into his arms and held her in silence. There was a soft knock at the door. "Yes," he said quietly.
Rebecca stuck her head in. "Papa, Philip est arrivé."
"You can come in," he replied, and Rebecca, Philip, and Jack filed hesitantly into the room.
