The woman in black stood over Malia's remains admiring her precision. Two panthers lay a few feet away, panting. All stood in shock trying to put together the pieces of the last ten seconds.
"Elizabeth?" Pam stood up, leaving Eric's side and walking towards the woman in black. In response, the woman turned slowly and looked at Pam through deep blue eyes.
"Pammycakes?" She smiled, and Pam shed a single crimson tear. Eric looked up at me at the mention of Pam's pet-name, and smiled. Eric was going to be just fine. I continued down the stairs and as I reached the bottom step both of the panthers stood. I crossed the floor slowly as Pam and Elizabeth found themselves held tightly in a long-awaited embrace. "I thought you were dead. Father said you ran away."
"I had to. I couldn't stay." Pam said, her tears falling in to Elizabeth's hair.
Elizabeth began sobbing in Pam's arms. "I knew it. I knew you hadn't gone to France. I swore I saw you in the window for months after you were gone." Elizabeth beamed and the sisters pulled away from each other. Looking at them both with blood-stained cheeks, I saw that they shared far more than life forever- including the same bottomless blue eyes and high cheekbones, the same sandy waves falling effortlessly down their backs. I don't know how I could have possible mistaken Elizabeth for anyone else. I reached Eric and took his arm, pulling him up and in to our own embrace. His hair was disheveled, the skin on his neck and arms had been torn but was healing before my eyes.
"Are you okay, my love?" Eric asked. I hadn't even been touched in the whole ordeal, while he, Pam and Yule had taken quite a beating. Yule stood off to the side in Leif's strong arms, both watching the reunion of two sisters separated by an ocean and 100 years.
"Never better." I smiled and ran my hands through his hair, planting a light kiss on his lips. "I'm sorry- I don't know what happened."
"I'll tell you what happened!" All of the vampires turned to see Amelia Broadway walking down the stairs in a deep blue ball gown. "I started keeping tabs on Hunter, Sookie's second-cousin after she became a vampire. He's..." she struggled for the right word to describe him without blowing both of the Stackhouse family telepaths out of the water, "different. He's something extra, like Sookie. So checking in on Hunter led to working with Remy who knew about Barry who knew about the mutant," she pointed accusingly at the corpse, now slowly disintegrating as smoke spirals rose from her torso, "someone should really clean that up. Anyway, I found out about that thing and then the ball from Sookie and Eric, and put two and two together. Apparently, I wasn't the only one who did though, and I had to work my magic on a few Feds to find out what I was dealing with. I made the bracelet for Sookie and hexed it so that she would literally be pushed away from danger- the higher the risk, the farther she would go." Eric and I both looked down at my wrist at the bracelet, still glowing but not nearly as brightly as before. "Sorry E- that was bad planning on my part. So after Eric invited us all here for the wedding, Jason came to us and asked if we would help him to be a real panther instead of the half-panther he was before." Jason in his beautiful dark panther form walked over and stood by Amelia, lying down again at her feet. She had transformed him in to something beautiful, and he was glowing with pride. Sam went and joined Amelia on her other side and plopped down with a loud purr. "We came, we saw what was about to happen- Octavia's really good at that- and she turned the arrows in to platinum instead of wood. Turns out Sam's a whiz at chem and he figured that would do the trick…and I think we're good here." Everyone in the room stood staring at the bubbly witch who had just saved the night. "So who's ready to party?"
I couldn't help but laugh. "Could we have a few minutes to just…be?" I loved Amelia's enthusiasm- disaster one minute and drinks all around the next. "Maybe an hour break to get things cleaned up?" A few others agreed and headed back up the stairs to the lobby, where waiters still danced around with trays of blood in champagne flutes. Amelia nodded and grabbed a waiter's attention, telling a waiter she would need some champagne for herself and the panthers. The waiter, unsure of what she meant looked down the stairs and nearly wet himself when he saw two large panthers walking up to meet him. Jason, already headed to the lobby, turned at the top of the stairs, revealing his naked backside complete with a farmer's tan and some scratch marks running down his back. Somehow I doubted they were from fighting… One of the Scottish vampires blushed a little and winked at Jason, and then offered him her tartan, which he quickly draped around him and blew a quick kiss to her. I said a quick prayer that nothing would come of the vampire and the panther and she turned and walked the other way, grabbing a flute of blood off a waiter's tray. Amelia had grabbed Sam's clothes for him and they were both walking up the stairs, he still in the panther form he had adopted for the evening. Sam was a true shifter and could change in to anything, while Jason only changed into a panther. He wasn't born like that or anything- he got tangled up in this girl who happened to be a were-panther and there were some jealously issues between Jason and her fiancé and there were fights and bites and long story short, Jason ended up a panther. Because he had been bitten instead of born panther, he only changed in to this furry furry-man beast that looked like the classic werewolves that you see on old horror-movie marathons. With whiskers. But that had changed since he had worked with the witches and he was now proud of the beautiful, deadly beast he became on full moons and when he just needed a break from being human. He and Sam had become quite close and a few people had even spoken about the collie and panther that had been seen playing out back at Merlotte's. Sam turned and looked back down at the ball room and waited while Amelia and Sam reached the top of the stairs. Before they disappeared together Jason gave me a quick smile and wave. I gave him a quick thumbs up and mouthed that I was proud of him.
Pam and Elizabeth still stood together, speaking quickly. Pam invited her sister up to her room so they could both clean up- neither of them could bear the thought of being seen in public looking as messy as they did. So hand in hand, they disappeared up the stairs too.
"Wow." Eric said, a damn good summary of the past two minutes. "Ummm….I could use a shower. And a drink. And I should probably go tell the agents that Elizabeth killed Malia. Hmmm. We still on for midnight?"
I couldn't help but laugh. What a casual way of asking if I still would marry him. "Yes Eric, we're 'still on' for Midnight." He also headed upstairs quickly, and I just sat down at one of the large tables, all decorated appropriately with deep red roses in ornate vases. I was only seated for a few seconds before Barry joined me at the table.
"I let the agents out. They're…mostly fine. They'll be in after a couple minutes to collect evidence." I nodded. If I were still breathing, this would have totally been a 'sigh' moment. Malia was gone. Eric was safe. Pam had found Elizabeth. Jason was a real panther. And I was getting married at midnight to one bad-ass vampire. "I know." Barry said- he'd been picking up everything I just had put down. "Wow." I chuckled a little.
"We should have t-shirts made up about this or something. With Malia and a bunch of vampires and machine guns and witches and panthers and just right across the chest, write 'wow' because that just seems to be the only thing to say right now." He cracked a smile and flagged a waiter over, motioning for some champagne. "You know-" I changed the subject as the Feds started coming down the stairs, bearing cameras a suitcases, "I wish I could still get drunk. I don't even know how anymore."
"I think you just bite drunk people. Seems to work for everyone else." I picked up his memories of working at the vampire hotel in Dallas of staggering vampires, angry and over-strong. "I'd let you bite me after a few drinks." We both smiled as the Feds circled Malia's remains. A few began taking pictures but saw that she was quickly disintegrating in to the floor and Agent Copple yanked the arrows out of her forehead a chest, letting the acid drip off of them on to the floor before he started to examine them.
Should we be over there answering questions or anything? I thought to Barry, who thought that he'd rather them spend months trying to find the source of platinum arrows and the short black cat hairs that littered the scene. You're right- they wouldn't believe a witch turned the arrows to platinum as panthers carried her off a vampire. And then we just sat, watching. I let my brain turn off and just enjoyed the peace of the night, and Barry was more than relieved to have the Feds clear out with their cameras, accusations and judgments. A couple maids were sent down to clear up the rest of Malia and soon after that the orchestra started again as vampires shuffled in slowly, sitting around the tables and continuing the small-talk they had started before a government experiment tried to kill everyone in the room. Life- no matter what side of it you're on- goes on no matter what. This mess would be a distant memory someday and everything would go back to normal. There would be other conventions, but there would be no panthers- they would be long gone by that point. There would be new witches, more vampires and new threats to our existence. Thinking about the future was something I tried to avoid doing because I knew my next century would be the hardest of my forever-life as my loved ones slowly slipped away.
A warm hand found its way over mine and Amelia sat down in the open chair next to me and gave a quick smile to Barry. The clock on the wall struck midnight.