15. Of Death

He couldn't reach her. There was a wall of fire between them so thick that he could barely see her. He heard her shriek with pain and he almost plunged into the fire, but his body refused. He saw her rolling, patting at the fire with her hands and heard the terrible sounds of her screams.

The terrible sound hammered into his very soul and he landed on his knees, a guttural, agonized, inarticulate wail emanating from his own throat without his conscious control. He searched for a way to get to her that wouldn't consume him before he even got there.

Then the fire died instantly, though he saw that she was still on fire. He leaped forward, but the witch landed in front of him, between him and Sky. Two wolves leaped down, and by their scent, he recognized Marcus and Debbie.

"I'll kill you all," he said. It wasn't a threat. He meant to do it, or die trying.

He stepped forward and Marcus leaped on him. He caught the wolf by the neck, but Marcus was in his magical form, and Alcide was not. Claws raked his belly and pain screamed in his body. Marcus squirmed, his teeth setting into Alcide's wrist.

Blood flowed, but Alcide did not relax his grip on Marcus's neck. Snarls sounded from behind him and he felt teeth at the back of his leg. He cried out as pain flared, and barely managed to wrest Debbie free before she had hamstrung him.

He threw her with all of his superhuman strength, and she struck the wall with a yelp.

Marcus's claws left a trail down his side, and more blood flowed. He dimly heard Marnie laugh. "The boy with no wolf," she mocked. "Not so dangerous now, are you. You should have heeded your wolf's fear of me," Antonia said through Marnie's lips.

Alcide saw Debbie coming back and this time he threw Marcus. The wolf skidded across the ground. Alcide caught a glimpse of Sky beyond him and his heart ached. She was crawling across the floor, leaving a bloody trail behind her as she tried to escape.

He tried not to think of the terrible pain she must be in. Her hands were shredded and he saw the white of bone through the charred remnants of her legs. Fury born from agony rose in him and he growled at Marcus.

He heard Debbie behind him and he whirled and grabbed her as she jumped for his neck. He threw her at Marcus and they tumbled over each other like pins in a bowling alley. He followed it up with a powerful kick, and was gratified to hear bone crunch, though he didn't know whose.

He picked Marcus up by the neck and began to squeeze. Claws raked him and he ignored the pain that flared. He wasn't going to win this fight—he couldn't. But he would take Marcus with him, if it was the last thing he did.

He knew immediately that it was Debbie whom he had broken, but it wouldn't hold her off long enough for him to finish Marcus. He felt the leg tear. Felt himself falling. He saw her coming for him and knew that in seconds, his throat would be gone. It was the wolf way. He tightened his grip on Marcus, falling to one knee.

As soon as his feet touched the ground, Marcus began to twist and jerk and writhe for his very life. But Alcide clung to him.

A sudden, violent roar filled the room, cutting through the smoke and Marcus's snarls with terrifying clarity. Debbie fell, her human form restored in death. Her eyes stared at him in silence as a small trickle of blood fell from a gunshot wound in the dead center of her forehead.

Alcide looked over to see the scope gun clatter out of Sky's mangled hands and hit the ground.

Marcus took advantage of his second of lost self-control and lunged. Alcide felt his eye pop as Marcus bit him in the face. He didn't care. Marcus had used the last of his strength. With his good eye, Alcide saw Antonia kick the gun away from Sky and then felt rage flare as she kicked Sky in the face, knocking her to the ground and leaving a smear of blood and soot on the wall where she had been slumped.

Marcus twitched in his hands, then shimmered. He dropped the dead body to the ground, then realized how much blood he had lost. He was dying as surely as Sky was.

He tried to go to her, but his body refused to work once more. He fell forward, realizing he felt no more pain and knowing that meant it was the end.

"Well," Antonia said. "It was a noble effort. But not good enough."

She stepped over a burnt beam toward Alcide.

He looked at Sky and saw that she was crying. She reached for him and he felt despair run through him on a profound level.

"Marrok," she whispered, her voice hoarse, "help us." Her head fell and she sobbed.

Alcide closed his good eye and felt pain again. It tore through his body and he convulsed. He thought he saw the wings of death, then realized it was just smoke, rising from the ashes of the tortured mansion.

He convulsed again, and then he was free of his human form and there was only fury and fear and violence in him. He snarled at Marnie and jumped on her. The scream of her dying was music to his ears. The ears of a werewolf.

He tore her throat out in his rage, jerking and pulling until flesh came free. He dropped the broken, bloody throat on her as she choked and spasmed in the claws of death. Then he forgot her and trotted over to where Sky lay.

He licked her face and tasted tears and death. She cried and he felt her pride in him. "Good boy, Marrok," she whispered. "Good boy. But we really do need to talk about the licking."

He got up, feeling the prompting of the man within. He trotted down the hallway and down the steps. Guns pointed at him, and he let go so that the man could return. He knelt with the man and told the vampires that the witch was dead.

"Sky...dying..." he said.

"I know," Eric said. "I can feel her. Get this silver off of me now!" he screamed at Sookie.

It was immediately clear to Alcide that he'd been demanding it for a good while. He was gratified to know that Eric had felt it and, while helpless to do anything, had at least wanted to help her. It must have been terrible to be a thousand year old vampire and to find yourself tricked into helplessness.

He dropped onto his hand, blood all around him. He heard his own heartbeat slowing. There was barely enough blood left to push through his veins.

Eric stopped at his side. "Save her," Alcide told the vampire.

"I cannot. She is too far gone," Eric answered. He looked at Bill, now standing and rubbing burned, chafed wrists. "Heal him. Quickly."

Then he was gone. Alcide was offered blood and at first refused. But he felt Marrok's objection, and he knew he owed the wolf. He drank, reluctantly at first, then freely as he felt health course through him.

He heard an unholy shriek from above and staggered to his feet. But then Eric arrived, laying Sky down gently on the ground. "Even if we took turns giving her blood, we could not save her," he admitted.

"Turn her," Alcide demanded.

"No!" Sky objected. "I can barely live with what I've done today, Alcide. Please, don't do that to me. I don't want to live. I don't want to remember people dying at my hands. I don't want to be a killer forever!"

"I can't," Eric said. "If I turn her like this, she'll be like this forever."

She looked at Eric and touched his cheek, jerking her hand away when it hurt. "Are you crying, Eric?"

"I should have glamoured you into marrying me," he told her.

She smiled, a small, gentle smile. "You wouldn't. You know I love Alcide." Then her body arched and she gritted her teeth, gasping. When she settled again, she said, "Promise me that no matter what he says, you won't do it. Don't make me live with what I did today, Eric." When he looked away, she grabbed him with a small gasp of pain. "Promise, Eric!"

"I swear it," he told her.

Alcide grabbed him by the shirt. "How can you do that? Don't you care about her at all? Even a little?"

Eric just looked at him.

"Alcide, if you care for me, if you love me or if you could love me, you won't do that to me," she said, her voice weaker. "Please. I didn't want to be a killer. I wanted to save lives." A sob escaped her and she grimaced with pain. "Today I became everything I didn't want to be." A tear ran down her cheek.

"What's going on—Oh my god!" Sam rushed into the room, stopping abruptly as he saw Sky.

"The witch is dead," Sky told him. She lifted a hand, crusted with soot and charred skin. She immediately withdrew it, "Sorry." Then, "Everything's going to be okay."

"Except you," he said. Then he shifted, dropping his clothes. He laid down beside her, not quite touching her and began to purr.

She smiled and patted him. "I'm afraid it's too late for that, Sam. But you are dear to try."

Her eyes met Alcide's then. "I'm sorry. I should have told you that I love you. That I love all of you—both of you. Tell Marrok. And tell him how proud and grateful I am that he came when he was most needed."

Alcide choked on the pain in his throat. "He knows. He felt it in you."

"I don't want to live," she said. Her head fell to the side. "I can't bear it." There was silence for a second. "No, I'm not done. But I did something. I made things."

"Who is she talking to?" Bill asked.

"She's dying, she's hallucinating," Eric said.

"No!" Alcide denied the facts in front of him. "No. She can't die." He looked up. "Do something! Anybody!"

Eric stood up and stepped back. He opened his wrist and stepped toward Sky. "The only thing to do now is to make her comfortable until she's gone."

He knelt down beside her head and turned her toward him.

"No!" she shrieked. "No, please, you promised!"

"It will just dull the pain," he promised her. "That's all, Sky, that's it." He reached toward her mouth.

A powerful force struck him, knocking him backward. For an instant, it seemed as if the image of an enraged white wolf hovered over her form, before drifting away like smoke.

"She's got magic in her," Alcide told him. "The witch felt it."

"She's a witch?" Bill objected.

"No," Eric said. "I feel nothing. Do you?" He looked at Sookie, who shook her head.

"Then who is she talking to?"

Sookie reached out and touched her on the temple. With a startled cry, she yanked her hand back. Sky continued to talk to an invisible something beyond Alcide.

"It's that wolf. She doesn't want me in Sky's mind. She's talking to the wolf."

Everyone turned to look behind Alcide. "There's nothing there," Eric said. "She's hallucinating."

"No," Sookie said adamantly. "There's a wolf. And she does not want me reading Sky's mind right now."

OoOoOoO

The golden eyes stared at her with a direct, penetrating gaze, and Sky felt as if the she-wolf could see all the way into her soul.

"Are you done, then? Have you done all in the world that you sought to do?"

"No," Sky answered honestly. "I've done a lot, but I wanted to do more. I wanted to help. To save lives." She felt the horror of the day rise up in her, faces of those whose lives she had ended. "But I took them instead. I promised myself never... but I did it."

"Why?"

"I... I was protecting the vampires. I was protecting Alcide."

"You are dying."

"I know. I don't want to live. I don't want to live with these faces in my memory."

"They threatened you and the ones you love. They attacked, unprovoked. They gave up their lives willingly in order to steal others' lives. Do you not think it justified?"

"No," Sky admitted, sobbing. "I can't justify it. I can't forget their faces. I can't stop thinking of how their families will feel, knowing their loved ones are dead."

"Yet you expected to have to live with that, and you did it anyway."

"Yes," Sky said. "I did. I knew it would hurt. But I... I love him. I love each of them. I couldn't throw their lives away to people who wanted them for no good reason."

"Do you not think that the lives you have saved are greater than the ones you have taken? You have saved many lives, not only the ones you saved this day."

"People, even animals, are not replaceable. Each life matters on its own merits," Sky responded. "I have no right to judge."

The wolf sat down. "You must live, Woman-of-the-sky. There are more lives at stake in the future. Lives you will save because you use the magic in you."

Sky sighed. "I have no magic," she told the wolf.

"All humans have magic," the she-wolf responded. "But not all of them use it. Many live desperate lives and give up everything they love. The magic of humans is in doing what they love and giving to others. Without that, their magic dies as their love does. You used your magic and did what you loved instead of what everyone else demanded of you. That is where the magic happens."

She walked toward her, and Sky reached up to touch her, but her hand passed through her.

"I'm dreaming," she said.

"No," the wolf said. "And neither are you to die."

Sky screamed as pain blazed through her and she felt herself ripped from existence. She was dragged across a great black chasm, and screamed and shook as fires licked at her again. Then, there was only blissful darkness and dreams came upon her like the falling petals of a rose.