Nightwolf

“What?” I answer cautiously.

I swear to god I see a flash of red in her pupils, but I’m sure my eyes are playing tricks on me. She only feeds on Solon, as he does with her. Even so, the hair on the back of my neck begins to rise. It’s moments like this that I remember what Lenore is.

“If you could become a vampire,” she begins with deliberation, “without going mad or becoming a monster, would you seriously do it?”

I stare at her silhouette, aware that I can’t really see her expression but that she can see mine.

“I think so,” I say. “I’d probably have to think about it a bit more to make sure, but yeah. I think so. To be with Wolf, to help him let go, so that he knows I’ll be with him forever. So he doesn’t have to live without me. Yeah…I think so.” A beat passes. “Why?”

Another weighty pause. The whole room seems to be holding its breath.

Finally she says, in a low voice, “I might have the solution.”

Chapter 19

Amethyst

I go over to the fridge and bring out a honey brown lager that Lenore bought for me the other day, crack it open, and take a big, satisfying gulp.

I’m waiting on pins and needles here for Lenore to return, so I take another gulp, half the can gone already and start pacing around her kitchen. Given that I haven’t had anything to eat all day, I can feel the alcohol in the beer starting to hit me.

Lenore hasn’t explained yet what the supposed “solution” to my problem might be. She said she had to run upstairs and get my meal from her parents, and though she should already be back down here, she’s probably stuck talking to them.

My heart pinches. Lenore told me that my mother’s death has made her realize she needs to spend more time with her parents, and so even though she’s still living with Solon at the house, she’s here a lot too, with me and with them.

And so I don’t want to rush her right now if she’s trying to soak up quality moments but…

What is the fucking solution!?

I’m trying to wrap my head around it, but this can of beer isn’t helping so I open the fridge and bring out another one.

Is there a way that Wolf can, like, reverse-vampire himself? Is that a thing?

And if it is a thing, would I want that for him?

It wouldn’t be right to ask him to give up his years of immortality just to become a human. Again, even if it were possible, and I don’t think it is or else I would have heard about it.

I’m near the bottom of my second can of beer when the front door opens and Lenore walks in holding a plate in her hands covered in foil.

“Got your dinner,” she says with a bright smile. “Meatloaf. I know, don’t groan, it’s actually really good. Trust me. If I hadn’t fed on Solon this morning I would be all over it.”

She opens the fridge and places the plate in it and when she closes the door and turns around, I’m staring at her, arms crossed and waiting impatiently, not really caring about meatloaf at the moment.

“So?” I say to her.“What is the solution?”

She gives me a stiff smile and then sits down at the kitchen table, gesturing for me to take a seat across from her. “I’ve been thinking about it…and maybe I spoke too soon.”

“You’ve been thinking about it?” I repeat. “You were upstairs for ten minutes.”

“I know but in the back of my head, you know.”

“Well, still, what is it?”

She takes in a deep breath, as if steadying herself, and I sit down because I feel like this is going to be a doozy.

“When I was in the Red World,” she begins, “and Solon died in front of me, I didn’t know what to do. He was killed in beast form but reverted back to being a vampire and he just…died. He was dead and I didn’t know what to do.”

I hang on her every word because though I heard about what happened when Solon and Lenore went to Finland to fight Solon’s evil vampire king of a father, Skarde, and had to travel to another world, I didn’t get that many details of what went down. I know that Lenore discovered she could fly. And that she killed her own birth father, Jeremias, an evil warlock (and not her father that’s upstairs), and that Solon killed his father (if you haven’t noticed by now, Solon and Lenore are bonded by their daddy issues). I also heard that Solon died, stabbed in the heart by a witch’s blade.

And that Lenore brought him back to life…

“He was dead,” she goes on, sounding pained at the memory. “And I couldn’t do anything. My beautiful Solon, I couldn’t…I couldn’t let go. I wouldn’t. So I took a chance because I had nothing left to lose. I tore open my wrist. I put it against his mouth. And I prayed for my blood to reach him.”