16. Of Duty
Alcide jerked back and shielded his eyes as Sky suddenly seemed to erupt in a shower of extreme brilliance. When the light faded, he dropped his arm, as the others did.
Where Sky had been sat a white wolf, her fur pure and perfect, her eyes gleaming gold. She sat staring at him.
"Sky was a werewolf?" Sookie blurted.
"No," Alcide said. "'Weres are born, not made. I... don't know what this is." He was wary. She didn't smell like a wolf. She smelled... like an angel.
The wolf's eyes left his and she looked at Sookie.
Sookie jumped, then said, "She says that Sky can live, but there is a price."
"What?" Alcide demanded. "She hasn't paid enough yet?" he yelled, anger and pain burning him.
The wolf's eyes met his again.
"The price is no longer hers to pay," Sookie said, "but yours. She wants to know if you are willing to pay the price?"
Alcide didn't ask. He didn't care. "Yes," he said.
"You don't even know what it is!" Sookie argued. Bill grasped her arm as she started forward.
"It is his choice, not yours," Bill said to her.
"I'll do it, if Alcide won't," Eric said.
Alcide growled at him.
"You must protect her," Sookie said when the wolf looked at her again. "As long as she lives in the mortal plane, Sky will continue to heal on the plane of life. They are linked now. If one dies, the other will die."
Alcide blinked. "Why are you taking such a terrible risk?" he asked the wolf. "Sky might still die, her wounds were terrible."
The wolf looked back at him again, "Because Sky kept her animal magic alive. Because she gave up family and friends, everything. All because she would not give up her love for life. She chose animals to love and give life, and so they have answered her need as she answered theirs," Sookie related, tears running down her face. "Humans so often sacrifice the ones they love in order to find peace and happiness for themselves. Sky sacrificed herself so that the ones she loved could live. For that, I am willing to take this risk." Alcide understood that Sookie was saying it as if the wolf herself was saying it.
"Now it is your turn. You must care for me and watch over me on the mortal plane. It will not be easy. There are many things that will sense my presence here and will hunt me. If you fail to protect me, we will all die. But consider carefully, for if you fail to protect me, she will be trapped on the plane of life with no way to return. The stakes are high."
"I love her. How can I not try?" Alcide knelt on one knee to look the wolf in the eyes. "I will protect you."
"I will protect you, as well," Eric said.
Sookie gasped. "The evil that will come for me is greater than yours, vampire," she said to Eric as the wolf's eyes gazed directly at him.
"She gave her life for mine, when I was helpless," Eric said. "I can do no less for her and still call myself a man."
"I will help," Sam said.
"Me, too," Sookie told her.
"I will do what I can, but my responsibilities lie elsewhere," Bill stated.
"She knows," Sookie said.
The white wolf stood.
"So be it. Your pledge is sealed and our fates are linked," Sookie said in a whisper. But there wasn't a man in the room that didn't hear it clearly, and feel the finality of it.
Sky would live or die and be trapped forever, depending upon their actions.
And Alcide was afraid. He had already failed her once.
Sookie dabbed at her eyes. "She says she has Sky's knowledge, and we should clean up. She'll show you where the other two bombs are."
"Bombs?" Bill asked incredulously. "She set the bombs?"
"She was recruited for the CIA, cut out the day she was supposed to take vows," Eric said.
"How did you know?" Alcide asked, jealous that she'd told Eric before him.
"I did a background check on her when I was trying to find her for you. Remember?" He kicked a piece of broken wood off of the steps. "She graduated top of her class. The same in veterinary school. That woman put her heart and soul into everything she did. It's no wonder 'there's magic in her'."
He looked at the wolf. "I don't understand this. I've never seen anything like it before. But knowing what I do about Sky, she is an exceptional human."
Carlos's voice came from above them. "All anyone ever noticed was how insecure she could be sometimes. Dropping things and stammering when she was nervous. She was the most down-to-Earth person I've ever met." He sat down on the steps, grimy and dirty. "She's dead, isn't she?" Tears streaked down his face.
"No," Eric said. "Not exactly. But she is gone, and probably won't be back for a long time." Carlos began to cry, and Eric continued, "I will see to it that your salary is paid in her absence. She will need you when she returns, I suspect."
Carlos muttered something that sounded a lot like, "thanks" through his hands and went back to crying.
Alcide felt a nudge on his hand. He found himself hugging the white wolf.
"She said that you can call her Avalon," Sookie told him.
"Sky would like that," Alcide said.
"I know," Sookie's chin trembled as she said it quietly. She walked past him, squeazing him gently on the shoulder as she went.
It was a week later that Alcide stood in her house, looking at the back yard where he had played frisbee with her and played chase and ran around. It was dotted with dandelions, and he smiled.
"It needs some weed killer," Sam told him.
"No. Sky would never forgive me if I killed her dandelions," Alcide told him. "She told me once when we were out here that dandelions are proof that God loves us. They can be eaten, used in poultices, and are generally very human-friendly. Good for the liver. She said that, despite our best efforts to kill them off, they always come back. And that has to be proof that God loves us."
"You believe in God?" Sam asked.
"I'm not sure. But I know that Sky loves them, and that's good enough for me. They'll be staying, because she would want that."
He looked down when Avalon walked out of the house and sat beside him. He smiled at her. "Avalon approves," he said.
Then he went back inside where the stones and marble for the fireplace were. He would build it for her with his own hands. When she came back—and he had to believe she would, or he wouldn't be able to go on—she would have her fireplace.
Bidding Sam good-bye and thanking him for helping him clean the place up, he sat down to look over the plans he'd drawn up, and consider where and how to begin.
When Eric came by that evening, he asked if Alcide wanted help. "No. I'll do it myself. With my own hands. I want it to mean something to her."
"Do you think it wouldn't if you had help?" Eric asked.
"I could pay someone else to do it, and she would love it still," Alcide answered. "But it's important to me to do it myself."
"Suit yourself," Eric replied. "Be watchful, though. Do not endanger Avalon by becoming too engrossed in your task."
"I will not," Alcide answered him. "I know the stakes, Eric."
"Right," Eric answered, and flitted away.
Alcide sighed. "They all think I'm crazy," he told Avalon. "They don't understand. Sky could buy anything she wanted. She bought this little house and made it cozy. The only thing she wanted that she didn't have was a fireplace. Anybody could buy her one, or even make her one. But... she'll understand why I had to do it by hand, I think." He patted her. "What do you think?" he asked.
She cocked her head sideways and sat up.
"Me too," he said, certain that was agreement. "Let's do it."
So he began that day to make her fireplace.
In the early morning hours came the first wave of demons. He'd never believed in demons before, but now he did. They wanted Avalon and they meant to get her. When it was over, he and Eric slumped on the sofa, the back yard covered in demon blood.
Showering, Alcide bathed Avalon, fearful that the blood would never come out of her fur. But she was white when she dried and he woke with her lying at his side.
In the back yard, the blood had killed all of the grass. All that remained were the dandelions. 'Proof that God loves us'. Not even the demons could destroy them. Choked up, Alcide touched one of the bright, cheerful yellow blossoms.
"Wherever you are, Sky, can you see the dandelions?" He looked up at the sky and smiled slightly. "They're still here."
And in the plane of Life where Sky lay curled and floating through the aether, she dreamed of Alcide fighting demons and wept. Where her tears fell, dandelions grew, though she never saw them. Instead, she dreamed as her body was slowly healed by the creatures, and even the souls of the humans she had saved.
As each soul came and blessed her, she healed a bit more. The dandelions bloomed, and closed and opened again, until the seeds of her compassion spread across the landscape of Life.
And she floated, and dreamed. She wept for those she had killed. She wept for their families. She wept for Alcide and for Eric and for Sam... even for Sookie, who fought beside them, Sky knew not why. Beyond her awareness, in the mortal plane, they fought and were wounded and they cried and they struggled and they felt pain. They knew the joy of triumph and the exhaustion of fleeing in defeat, only to regroup and recoup the next night.
Sky dreamed it and wept.
And when the day was upon the world and Alcide slept, she dreamed he visited her and they played in fields of dandelions that grew larger each dream until there were dandelions as far as the eye could see and they could dance and laugh and be free together without boundaries.
On the first full moon, Marrok ran with Avalon and they delighted in each other beneath a heavy, low, fecund moon that promised peace to the world. Sky wept at their beauty and their joy and where her tears fell, there sprang lotus blossoms that would bloom eternally in that place.
She drifted and she dreamed and sometimes the pain came. She cried out and begged that it cease but it went on, relentless and inevitable.
As he fought in the mortal plane, Alcide heard the echoes of her screams. But when the darkness closed over, and the night was at its blackest and the evil pressed in the worst, he heard her tears and felt her love. Some nights, the screamed fueled his rage. Other nights, her love led him back from the edge of the abyss.
"Do you ever feel her?" he asked Eric one night as they stood in the blood and gore of dead demons and wraiths.
"Never," Eric said. "But I remember her screams as she burned. They haunt me."
Alcide didn't ask how a vampire could be haunted by screams. The words did not need to be said between them.
"Sometimes I hear them still," Alcide told him. "Like she's out there, hurting. All alone in the darkness."
"I do not know where she is, or what she is experiencing," Eric told him. "But I know that even with vampire blood, recovering from burns is excruciating. I do not wish that upon her."
"Sometimes when I hear her, I think I made a terrible mistake," Alcide finally said, leaning on the window sill of the broken window Eric had thrown a demon out of. "So much pain just because I couldn't let her go. So much suffering when she didn't want to live."
"If you need someone to blame, blame Avalon," Eric told him. "Without her, Sky would be dead, just like you want her to be."
"I don't want her to be dead," Alcide snapped at him. "I just know that she's hurting and I hate it!"
"Watching someone you love suffer is painful," Sookie said from behind them. "But sometimes it's necessary." She pointed at Avalon. "She said that."
"How much longer?" Sam asked, coming back from the bathroom where he stashed his clothes for the transformation.
Sookie looked at Avalon. "She says a month, maybe. The healing is almost complete but she is not prepared for the transition yet. She is weak and too much of the dark blood remains in her."
"I will not be able to feel her when she returns?" Eric asked.
Avalon walked over to him, and he knelt down in front of her. She reached out and touched his cheek with her nose, as if in a kiss.
A tear fell down Sookie's cheek. "She says that if you had not fought the darkness so long and so well, Sky would not have been able to go to the plane of Life. She says that you should not hate yourself for making her transition harder, when only the purity of your heart in the face of darkness allowed her to pass over at all."
Then Avalon looked at Alcide, and he felt something dark pass over him, like a cloud across the sun.
"She says you have not forgiven yourself. Without it, Sky cannot return."
Alcide turned away. "How can I forgive myself? I got her into all of this. I nearly killed her twice. I wasn't there for her."
Avalon's head pressed under his hand, and he dug his fingers into her fur.
"You must, Alcide. If you do not, you will push her away again to punish yourself, and all that will do is punish her, instead."
Alcide glared at Avalon.
"Actually," Sookie told him, "that one was me."
"How do you forgive the unforgivable?" he asked her. He walked out into the darkness and realized that it would be a full moon the next night.
He had never even told her that he loved her.
He heard doors opening and closing and knew that the others had gone home. Ghostly in the darkness, Avalon sat beside him on the porch. She tilted her head back and howled at the moon. A second later, he let his own head fall back and joined her.
Discarding his clothes on the steps, he stripped. Marrok ran across the dandelion covered back yard in the wake of the white wolf that held Sky's soul anchored to the mortal plane.
In her cocoon of Life, Sky wept with joy once more.