Jane Slayre (53 page)

CHAPTER 40

READER, I BURIED HIM.

Following the instructions in my uncle's journal precisely, on the rising of the full moon--the first full moon we were together again--I tethered Edward's hands and feet with silver chains and filled him full of potion.

Twelve vials remained of the potion Edward Rochester had saved from the fire, and I made him drink three for good measure. Uncle John mentioned a specific potion that could be got in Rome to

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chase the lycanthropy--as he called it--from an infected body, but he never specified the volume of potion required for a cure. If this was indeed the very potion, and I prayed it was, then I knew two wouldn't kill him, for Richard Mason had drunk two at Mr. Rochester's urging and he'd lived to walk away. Three seemed a more potent possibility. Four might have been too much. As it was, the fever broke over Edward and he began to writhe in a pretransformation dance as he drank. John had to help me hold him to force the third down his throat.

Edward became agitated and powerfully strong, despite the silver chains that were to help weaken him, and John and I had to hurry through the ritual to accomplish our goals in time. I feared we wouldn't make it. Halfway through the digging of the grave, I began to cry, but soldiered on.

Edward twisted in his bindings. We doubled them. His nose and mouth turned to something of a snout, and all my earlier efforts to cut and tame his hair had come to naught. Hair grew all over him, including a considerable length on his already abundantly tressed head. I shuddered to see him thus, but I tenderly addressed him and refused to look away. Still, I was wise to avoid drawing close enough to get bitten. I was glad, now, he couldn't see because the worst was about to come.

John and I had to lift Edward into a box that would serve as his temporary coffin and bury his body in the temporary grave. It was as my uncle advised. The potion would eventually work its magic, slowing the heart and the breathing, shutting down all but the most necessary body functions. In short, it would bring on a condition closely resembling death, necessary for the body to heal. To facilitate this process, my uncle Slayre advised digging a hole, like a grave, and covering the body with dirt.

Why was it advisable? It seemed a tad too hard for me to bear. But bear it I did. My uncle documented his experiments, and a number of the potion-treated werewolves who were not buried broke into a murderous rage, escaping their bindings and killing

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many of my uncle Slayre's assistants. The burial was a safeguard in case of the the worst, the potion having an inflaming effect on the drinker. Burying the werewolf made it harder for him to escape and attack in such an event. And in the best case--that the potion worked properly--the body functions were shut down to the extent that the drinker needed little oxygen to survive for the eight hours required.

In the best case, I would dig up my Edward in the morning, in the hour before sunrise, to find that he was alive and well--and cured. In the worst case, I would find a corpse. It was a tremendous risk.

Would it not have been better, reader, to let nature take its course once a month? To lock him up until it passed and hope he would never break free? It seemed to me it would. But Edward would not hear of it. If there was a cure, he wanted it. He had been through enough with Bertha to ever imagine himself in that wolf-like condition, to think that he could be in a murderous state with his precious Jane near. So, a cure was tried.

The potion consumed, the hole dug, the box ready, all that remained was to wrestle our enormous, beasty Rochester into his temporary coffin and bury him in his grave. It was accomplished more easily than John or I imagined, for Edward had begun to settle down. I hoped it meant the potion was beginning to take effect. Edward's gaze met my own as I closed the lid, and I felt certain in that second that he could see me. Curious, that! And not only that he could see me, that he recognised me with love in his eyes. Once I closed the lid, I kissed the top and rained tears all over it.

John urged Mary to lead me to a chair and bid me to drink some wine, to calm me, while he finished shoveling the dirt onto the coffin, filling the hole.

All that remained was the waiting. It was the longest night of my life.

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CHAPTER 41

THREE DAYS AFTER THE full moon, reader, I married him.

We had a quiet wedding in a church with only the parson and the clerk as witnesses. Edward had become superstitious about having guests at a wedding, and I couldn't blame him, though I knew he no longer had anything to fear or to hide.

On the night of the full moon, after the eight hours had passed, I'd cried all over again when we'd opened the coffin and found Edward, not a wolf, but a man, smiling sweetly in his sleep. He awakened, groggy but alive, some minutes afterwards and declared that my face was the most beautiful sight that ever met his eyes. He had his vision back, as well as being free from the lycanthropy. Our happiness on that morning was exceeded only by the elation we knew at finally being pronounced man and wife.

When we got back from the wedding, I went into the kitchen of the manor house, where Mary was cooking the dinner and John cleaning the knives.

"Mary, I have been married to Mr. Rochester this morning," I said.

Mary and John were both calm, unexcitable people, but Mary dropped her ladle and looked up with a start, and one of John's knives clattered to the floor. Then, as if I'd announced we had just got back from a walk, as on any other day, she picked up her ladle, calm as anything.

"Have you, miss? Well, for sure!" she said. "I saw you step out with the master, but I didn't know you were gone to church to be wed." She went back to basting her chickens.

John, when I turned to him, was grinning from ear to ear. "I told

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Mary how it would be. I knew what Mr. Edward would do, and I was certain he would not wait long. He's done right. I wish you joy, miss!" John left his knives and came over and gave me a hug, prompting Mary to do the same.

"Thank you both. Mr. Rochester told me to give you and Mary this." I put into John's hand a five-pound note. Without waiting to hear more, I left the kitchen.

I wrote to Moor House immediately, to say what I had done, fully explaining the situation. Diana and Mary approved the step unreservedly. Diana announced that she would just give me time to get over the honeymoon, and then she would come and see me.

"She had better not wait until then, Jane," Edward said when I read her letter to him. "If she does, she will be too late, for our honeymoon will shine our life long."

How St. John received the news, I don't know. He never answered the letter in which I communicated it. Six months after it, he wrote to me without mentioning Mr. Rochester's name or alluding to my marriage. His letter was then calm and, though serious, kind. He has maintained a regular, though not frequent, correspondence updating me now and then on his mission, how many vampyres he has destroyed, and telling me of his latest inventions. He always adds that he hopes I am happy and trusts I am not of those who live without God in the world and only mind earthly things.

My tale draws to its close. I have now been married ten years. I know what it is to live entirely for and with what I love best on earth. I hold myself supremely blessed--blessed beyond what language can express. I am my husband's life as fully as he is mine.

We have built a large manor house in the meadow near where Thornfield Hall used to stand. Adele comes to visit us with Sophie on holidays, though less frequently through the years as she has established her own society of friends and admirers in Paris, where Edward only hopes she does not decide to make her debut on the stage. We have two children of our own, a boy and a girl, and neither of them can deny the Slayre blood in their veins. My daughter's

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favourite story is the one I tell of dispatching the zombies at Lowood. My son shows remarkable skill at sharpening stakes and hitting targets with the rapid-fire crossbow that I have taught him to use, with supervision, and that I occasionally practise shooting along with him.

One never knows when such skills may come in handy. According to St. John Rivers, the vampyre populations have waned in India and he suspects there'll be another rise in England soon.

I will be ready.

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READING GROUP GUIDE JANE SLAYRE

Charlotte Brontë and Sherri Browning Erwin

INTRODUCTION

Raised by vampyre relatives, young Jane Slayre is forced to adhere to a nocturnal schedule, never enjoying a sunny afternoon or the sight of a singing bird. But things change for Jane when the ghost of her uncle visits her, imparts her parents' vampyre slayer history, and charges her with the responsibility or striking out on her own to find others of her kind and learn the slayer ways. She begins at Lowood, a charity school run by a severe, stingy headmaster, who Jane quickly discovers is reanimating dying students to be trained for domestic service. With the help of head teacher Miss Temple, Jane frees the souls of her friends and ends their zombified misery. Eventually, she decides to venture out once more, this time as a governess to the ward of wealthy Mr. Rochester, whose dark good looks hide an even darker secret. Deeply in love, she agrees to trust him against her better instincts, until a surprise revelation at the altar brings her dreams of marriage to an end. Determined not to become his mistress--for Rochester is already married to a mad werewolf, who he keeps locked in his attic--Jane secretly departs. Alone, penniless, and starving, she is rescued from the brink of death by local clergyman St. John, who shelters her with his sisters. Jane recovers and thrills to discover that St. John is a slayer, like her. Together they work to develop new weaponry and train the local children to kill vampyres, but when St. John proposes that Jane marry and

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accompany him on missionary work to hunt vampyres in India, she must decide once and for all where her future lies.

DISCUSSION

1. What seems to be more repugnant to the Reeds--that Jane is a dependent of common blood, or that she's human? Do you think Mrs. Reed is more irritated that her niece has a continuous flow of warm blood on tap and she doesn't, or that Jane won't share? What finally induces her to beg that Jane help release her soul?

2. Bessie suggests to Jane that much of the Reed children's nasty disposition can be attributed to their vampyre nature. Do you agree? Could there be another explanation? Do you think they would be such immortal brats if they'd been allowed to finish puberty before Mrs. Reed turned them into vampyres? Discuss the effects of being stuck in a child's body forever.

3. John Reed constantly threatens Jane, who believes his habit of taking small bites of her flesh indicates that he sees her as little more than food. But more astute critics have noted the complexity of John's personality: left without a male role model, this sad, misunderstood boy in a house full of women may simply be "pulling pigtails" to get Jane's affection. What effect does his expression of unrequited love have on Jane's adult interactions with men?

4. The Reeds are famous for hosting extravagant parties featuring buffets of noble-blooded guests. Why do you suppose people keep coming to Gateshead? Is it possible no one cares that so many rich folk have gone missing? How are vampyre-related disappearances explained throughout the novel?

5. Jane's charge to kill vampyres and release their souls is a Godly mission, yet she feels far less angelic than her friend, Helen Burns. If Helen is such a paragon of goodness and devotion, why doesn't Jane want to be more like her? Does Helen inspire

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or annoy the crap out of you? Were you surprised that Jane didn't cut off her head sooner? What would you have done?

6. The zombies in this novel appear in two major roles: as poor charity-case students and as domestic servants, both groups for whom life is defined by obedience. To kill a zombie, one must take off its head. Do you think the author is making a statement here, or are the zombies just another excuse for the gore so common to nineteenth-century novels, which have been deemed vulgar by today's more genteel standards. If the former, what do you think the author might be saying?

7. Once she leaves Gateshead, where she's been exposed to vampyres, zombies, and stories of so much more, Jane develops a tendency to suspect nearly everyone of being unnatural. Is she simply obsessed with killing monsters as surrogates for the Reeds (especially John Reed), or does this reflect a more innate narrowness of thought crucial to her slayer destiny? Or perhaps, do you agree with critics that she's a Victorian feminist expressing her sexual frustration? Do you think it's a coincidence that she zeroes in most on people who make her uncomfortable, like Grace Poole or Lady Ingram? Is it possible that her instinct is correct--all people are really just monsters in disguise?

8. At Thornfield, Jane spends a good deal of time ignorant of and then denying her feelings for Mr. Rochester. He seems to drop a lot of hints that she simply doesn't catch. Do you think her inability to see what's right in front of her (aside from unnatural creatures) is a product of a childhood absent of love, or is it a necessary feature for a vampyre slayer, as natural to Jane's character as her killing instinct? Do you believe she can ever really love anyone? Why or why not?

9. On page 269, Mr. Rochester exclaims that in revealing the truth about his wife, others may judge "whether or not I had a right to break the compact." Do you think he's justified, or is he just another Englishman looking to unload his stroppy cow of