Nightwolf

“If Mara is a demon, then how come you saw it?” Lenore asks. “Solon told me demons were a human issue.”

“Amethyst is human,” I remind her. “And it’s true that we don’t usually deal with demons, especially with the Mara, since death isn’t as constant in a vampire’s life as it is for a human. For humans, death and loss are inevitable. But some vampires are unlucky. I saw the Mara before my father died.” I pause, the memory of being back in that house in the woods, of being so small and afraid, slides into my veins like ice, like it was yesterday. “I woke up to have the demon on my chest, and then I saw a figure I later learned was my father. It was him, coming back to me, to tell me he was going to die.”

“Or,” Solon adds quietly, “it was a product of the Mara, not your real father at all.”

“Either way, it was foreshadowing,” I say. “From the future. And aside from the demon that was plaguing Amethyst, we both saw her mother.”

Lenore gasps. “You saw her mother!”

“We didn’t know it at the time,” I say quickly. “She was in the hospital gown, but her hair was down and I don’t know if I’ve ever seen Yvonne with her hair not in a bun. And her face was bloody. We couldn’t tell.”

“But still, you knew,” Solon says, though his tone isn’t accusatory.

I shake my head. “Not at first. I didn’t realize why it was so familiar to me. Then, I didn’t want to think about it and I didn’t want to scare Amethyst if I couldn’t be certain.”

“Maybe you should have,” Lenore says, and her words spear me. Even Solon gives her a harsh look. “What? I’m just saying maybe if she knew what the Mara was, she wouldn’t have let her mom go for a walk. Maybe you wouldn’t have left for Shelter Cove.”

“And you expect Amethyst to wrap her mother up in a bubble for the rest of her life?” Solon says sharply. “Moonshine, come on. Maybe Wolf should have told her for the sake of being honest, but it probably would have done nothing to stop this from happening. All it would have done is make Amethyst paranoid and anxious until…” He doesn’t have to finish that thought.

We fall silent.

“Sorry Wolf,” Lenore says to me, cheeks red and looking reprimanded. “I didn’t mean it that way. It’s not your fault.”

Well, fucking hell, if I was already worried it was my fault before, this isn’t helping. “Either way,” I grumble, “what’s done is done.”

Suddenly a look of realization, of horror comes over Lenore’s face. “So does this mean she’s going to die?”

I look at Solon, because I’m unsure how to answer that. I haven’t even let myself think about death yet, not with Yvonne.

Solon mulls that over for a moment then glances down at Lenore. “The Mara bring death and misfortune. This might just be misfortune. It doesn’t mean that Yvonne is going to die.”

“Yeah, but Wolf’s father did.”

“Doesn’t have to be that way,” Solon says in a clipped voice, just as some nurses pushing a stretcher come past us in the hallway. There’s an old man on the stretcher, oxygen tubes going up his nose, and he seems out of it. I can sense the weakness in him, imbalance in his blood cells.

Suddenly his eyes fly open and I feel his fear. He lifts his arm and points at the three of us, a look of absolute horror on his face. The nurses look over at us in confusion, and instead of giving us an awkward smile like, don’t mind him, he’s dying, they look disturbed by us.

“What the hell was that?” Lenore whispers as the cart continues down the hall, a nurse glancing at us warily over his shoulder.

“You haven’t noticed all the looks we’re getting?” Solon asks quietly, and the moment he says that I realize I’ve been noticing it subconsciously from nurses and workers passing us by. “You know people find us strange when we’re by ourselves. Two vampires together even more so. Three, well, it’s starting to spook the humans, even if they don’t know why.”

“In that case, I’m going to go get a coffee from the cafeteria, in case we start attracting negative attention,” Lenore says. She eyes me. “You want any?”

“Please,” I tell her, pressing my hands together in show. As much as the adrenaline is rushing through me, I didn’t sleep at all last night and the drive down has made me exhausted. Even vampires crash from time to time, especially if they haven’t fed in a while.

Solon tells Lenore he’s fine and she goes off down the hall, disappearing around the corner.

I immediately turn to Solon. “How is she really?”

“Yvonne?” He presses his lips together for a moment and exhales hard through his nose. “It’s not promising.”