Coven of Mercy

Deborah Cooke

In this short story, a disheartened woman finds hope - and an unexpected future - 

with an enigmatic and handsome stranger.

I like clear-cut strategies, battles that are victories or failures. Nothing in between.

March hovers, indecisive whether it should herald warm and sunny spring, or more winter – cold and overcast, the skies thick with falling snow. It ends up in that mucky zone, somewhere in between. Freezing rain and relentless grey, dampness and dull days, are followed by teasing intervals of sunshine. It’s unreliable, untrustworthy, despicable.

Give me black or white. Give me winter or spring. Give me February or April. You can keep March.

My mother died in March; maybe that’s part of it. Diagnosed early in the month, gone by the end of it, hers was a chaotic and whirlwind departure, a roller-coaster ride of triumphs and setbacks. That journey to death – the one no one wanted to take, the one that changed everything forever – is echoed for me every year in the weather.

March makes me restless and impatient, sharp and irritable.

That year was no different.

My hospital was a research hospital. That gave me the option of working in the labs, researching instead of practising. There are no mucky grey zones in the labs – a new drug is effective or it isn’t – and that polarity always worked for me.

I had a bit of a reputation on the wards, where I would be called in as a specialist on the tough cases. ‘Icicle’ Taylor cut to the chase, took risks, won more than she lost. Each case, for me, was an array of statistics, a flotilla of blood test results, and I chose the armaments with which I would engage based upon experience and the sum of results to date. I never wanted to know the patient – that was just extraneous detail. I never wanted to familiarize myself with the territory in dispute.

I just wanted to win.

But that March, one patient wasn’t having any of that. Mrs Curtis was in her forties and had a wry smile. She refused to let me slide in and out of her life without making a connection. She continued to insist that I call her by her first name, for example, even though I never did. She always wanted a conversation when I slipped in to check her charts or progress. She introduced me to her family and friends. There are many points of contact in an aggressive routine of chemotherapy and radiation, and Mrs Curtis put every one to work in her effort to charm me.

In a way, she waged her own campaign against my clinical detachment while I fought the disease that had invaded her body.

She had one advantage she never realized and it was the one that made the difference – she looked like my mother. She was taller and more buxom, but that glint in her eye, that ability to see right through my carefully composed lines to what I really meant, was my mother back from the grave. It caught at my heart, ripped a hole in my composure, and exposed a small vulnerability.

So, I was even more determined than usual to ensure that Mrs Curtis was a triumph. My mother, you see, had lost her battle right before my eyes. Mrs Curtis was my chance to prove that I wasn’t some helpless twelve-year-old forced to stand aside and watch while her life disintegrated before her eyes.

Mrs Curtis was a territory I intended to win back from the enemy, one cell at a time.

And that’s why I was back at the hospital close to midnight that night, on the way home from a date that I hadn’t wanted to keep. It had been a double date, set up by a friend despairing of my “perverse affection” for solitude, and it had been a disaster. They all were. He’d been nice enough, but not nearly as fascinating as the mutating opponent I met in the lab every single day. And he didn’t understand what it was to be passionate about anything – other than football and sex. I’d tapped my fingers on the table and smiled thinly throughout the meal.

We were probably all relieved when the cheque came.

I’d immediately gone back to the hospital to look over the most recent bout of test results, just to make sure I hadn’t missed anything. I knew I hadn’t, I never do, but it gave me the excuse to look in on Mrs Curtis again.

She was probably awake. We shared a kind of insomnia, a restlessness in the middle of the night that only conversation cured. She had a private room, so I knew I wouldn’t be troubling anyone else.

I needed to talk to her about doing another biopsy anyway. The last had been painful, deeper than anticipated. I’d feared that the subsequent radiation would finish her before the cancer did. But Mrs Curtis had rallied, as she always did.

So, unfortunately, had my determined foe – the cancer.

The ward was quiet. I’ve always preferred the hospital at night. During the day, it can be fraught with emotional energy, people demanding answers and desperate to do something to help. I’d never done well with that kind of anxiety.

I was always better with test results, percentages, calculations, cold hard maths. Winter, if you will – relentless but consistent, instead of the capricious and fleeting charm of spring.

In the quiet darkness, the hospital was more pure in its function. Monitors beeped and intravenous tubes dripped. The machines ran the show, which worked for me. Patients slept. Visitors had left. Gurneys were moved as the dead journeyed quietly down to the morgue. The nurses focused on the checking of patients and keeping records.

I savoured the dimness of the lights and the emptiness of the lobby as I crossed the threshold that night. I was looking forward to seeing Mrs Curtis too, even with the discussion ahead of us. The elevator came immediately and, in the comparative silence, I heard the whirr of its mechanism as I stood alone in it.

I nodded to the night nurse, Miriam, one of the most watchful and competent of the nursing team. I hesitated outside Mrs Curtis’s room, my steps frozen at the sound of voices.

She had a guest.

How could that be?

I looked at my watch. It was almost midnight. Outrage rose within me that anyone would disturb a patient as she healed, but then Mrs Curtis laughed.

It was a different laugh than the one I usually heard in her presence. Low. Breathy. Sexy.

“I can’t dance now!” she protested in a tone of voice that indicated she’d like to be persuaded otherwise.

“Of course you can,” a man insisted. His voice was low and rich, a murmur that made me shiver.

“The IV . . . ”

“We’ll ignore it.”

“But there’s no music,” Mrs Curtis argued, her tone light.

Flirtatious.

Did Mrs Curtis have a lover? She’d never mentioned it, but then I made a point of not asking after personal details. I knew nothing about her life and, until this moment, that had suited me just fine. I peeked around the edge of the door, curious.

There was a man on the far side of Mrs Curtis’s bed, standing with his back to the window. He had dark hair and dark eyes, and seemed to be younger than Mrs Curtis. He was handsome, handsome enough to make me yearn for something I hadn’t had in a long time. He was wearing a black leather jacket, black jeans and a black T-shirt. A silver earring gleamed from his left ear lobe. No pretty boy – he was older, knowing, a little bit world-weary.

Sexy.

Familiar.

Although I knew I’d never seen him before.

Mrs Curtis had braced herself on one elbow, her hair a tangle of silver and russet on the back of her neck. Her skin was pale and she was thinner than I’d realized. The back of her hospital gown was open, and I was shocked at how clearly the individual vertebrae were delineated. The IV in her right hand looked enormous in comparison to her delicate hands.

“Isn’t there?” he asked, his smile broadening. He had a sensual mouth, a full and mobile one, and his smile looked positively decadent. I couldn’t identify his accent, but it was European. Exotic.

And then I heard the waltz. It seemed as if an orchestra had struck up in the ward, although that made no sense. The music lilted through the room, barely audible to me in the doorway, but achingly beautiful.

Mrs Curtis was laughing at the man, who watched her as if she was the most beautiful woman in the world. A lump rose in my throat at his kindness.

Or maybe the state of his infatuation.

“How did you do that?” she demanded.

“Does it matter? Or should we simply dance?” He offered his hand to her, palm up, and I was struck by how tiny her right hand looked when she placed it in his. How wrong that IV needle looked in the back of her hand, with its three strips of tape.

I had never seen Mrs Curtis healthy.

I had never before heard her laugh.

“OK,” she agreed, conspiratorial. “Let’s dance.”

He gathered her in his arms, bodily lifting her from the bed. My mouth went dry at the tenderness in his expression. She was all bones and pale skin, a rag doll, a wisp of the woman she must have been.

She slid her hands up to his shoulders, rapturous in his embrace. He smiled down at her, loving, possessive, gentle.

She laid her head on his shoulder and sighed. I saw her eyes close. I saw the glimmer of a tear on her cheek. She looked so fragile and faded, like a rose left in a vase too long. I thought he was going to kiss her and I knew I should look away.

But his gaze suddenly locked on mine.

That one glance stopped my heart cold. I was caught.

But there was no surprise in his expression: he’d known all along that I was there. That realization shook me, rooted me, made it impossible for me to move.

He knew me as well as I knew him.

Impossible.

He had smouldering dark eyes, eyes filled with a thousand shadows, eyes that seemed to see straight through to my heart. His hair was long, tied back; his features could have been sculpted out of marble. But his dark eyes, his eyes saw so much.

More than I allowed anyone to see. I wanted to avert my gaze, to hide. I saw the glimmer of a smile, as if he were amused by me.

Then he bent his head and sank his teeth into Mrs Curtis’ neck. Mrs Curtis gasped and arched her neck, as if in pleasure, then laid her cheek upon his shoulder in surrender.

I knew that my eyes had to be deceiving me. There were no vampires in real life.

But the blood was flowing, easing from the corner of the stranger’s mouth to slide down Mrs Curtis’ fair skin. The rivulet was red against her pale flesh, and he drank steadily. The music soared and swirled as I gaped at them, then I saw her fingers go slack on his shoulder.

That made me move.

“Stop it!” I almost flew across the room, intending to pull him bodily away.

He stole one last massive gulp, then straightened. By the time I crossed the room, he’d laid Mrs Curtis back in her bed with that remarkable tenderness. He was a good foot taller than me, broad and imposing, but I shoved past him in my haste.

He stepped gracefully aside, as if he’d meant to move all along. I bent over Mrs Curtis, checking her monitors and her IV, placing my fingers under her chin.

Her pulse was weak, irregular, but still there.

The music, the lilting music that seemed to have drifted from another world, faded to nothing. I doubted I had even heard it in the first place.

“It’s too late,” the stranger said quietly. At close proximity, I was even more aware of his potent voice. It was more than low – it was languid. Melted chocolate on fruit.

Dark chocolate.

Tropical fruit.

I could feel the heat of him beside me, feel his scrutiny, almost hear his pulse. He was flesh and blood, like me, not an illusion.

Not a fable.

Before I could decide that my eyes had deceived me, I saw the proof: there were two perfectly round punctures in Mrs Curtis’ throat.

He
was
a vampire.

I sputtered, far from my usual coherence. “How could you do this? Who are you?”

His smile broadened, but there was a tinge of sadness in his eyes. I had the sense that he knew more than I did, but I was too angry to care. “My name is Micah,” he said softly.