She Dies at the End (November Snow #1) (20 page)

“No, Ben, don’t.  You don't want to do this,” she begged in a whisper, not sure whom she was trying to save.

“Hush, now.  You liked it well enough when the lord of the manor did it,” he replied with a twist of bitterness.  “I can’t turn you over to Luka without at least getting a taste first.  It's my only chance.  I doubt he’s much for sharing.  Magic humans are quite the delicacy, I’m told.  You can scream if you want.  It’s soundproof down here.”  He smiled a terribly sharp grin as he promised, “I’ll be careful.”

Just as his fangs were about to pierce her skin, Ben turned his head, reacting to a sudden sound.  This was November’s cue to drop to the ground as William and Birch leapt from the bolt-hole and tackled Ben.

Ben never had a chance against them.  His elders were so much faster, so much stronger with the centuries of life’s blood and energy fueling them.  The traitor howled in frustration and pain as they bound him in silver with their gloved hands.  He writhed on the floor as William bent down to check on November.

“I’m fine, but I’m afraid that you owe me a new sweater.”  With trembling hands, she handed William back his phone, which they had used to record the entire episode.

“I’ll see what I can do,” he replied with a trace of a smile.  “Good work, human.”  He helped her to her feet.  “Are you sure you’re alright to walk back?”

“Yeah.  I was dizzy, but I’m okay now.”  She managed a smile that, based on William’s expression, was not terribly convincing.  “Really, go deal with that . . . creature,” she said with revulsion. “I’ll be right behind you.  I’m going to need a few minutes to calm down though, before I can be useful.”

“Of course.”

The men began carrying the prisoner back down the passage while November walked a dozen paces behind, not wanting to get too close to her former friend.  The vitriol erupting from his mouth made her skin crawl.  She wanted to ignore him but feared she might miss something important.  Once he started screaming about what a whore she was, she decided that blocking him out was the best course of action after all. 
I really hate that word,
she thought
.  Men only call a woman a whore if they're angry that they can't control her.

The men exited the passageway when they came to a cutoff for the dungeon.  Em continued to climb up to the linen closet.  She just needed to get away from Ben for a few minutes.  Her skin prickled.  She felt cold where he had touched her. Her clothes smelled like him.

Though she’d remained calm while down in the chase, she fell apart once she reached the safety of her bedroom.  She caught sight of herself in the mirror: her clothes torn, her neck bare, her cream skin and the edge of her pink bra exposed.  It was then that she really began to shake all over, tears pouring silently out of her shock-widened eyes.

She told herself that all had gone to plan, that she had never been in real danger.  She had thought she had been prepared to feel Ben turn on her.  It had been her idea, after all, to lay a trap for her erstwhile friend.  Even still, the look in his eyes had terrified her.  They had been full of lust and violence and the fire of radical belief.  They were a potent reminder that the enemy she’d signed on to fight was dangerous and merciless and dogged, and she feared that the next time she had to face one Luka's loyalists, she might be all alone, with no one ready to jump out and save her.

   After a few minutes, she managed to pull herself together.  She changed clothes and washed her face just in time for Zinnia to come barreling through the door.  Her fairy friend was crying with equal parts relief and fury, not wanting to believe that Ben had tried to frame her but overjoyed that November had cleared her of suspicion.  “You saved me,” she kept telling November, over and over again.

  “You’d do the same for me,” the human replied.  “I knew it couldn’t be you.  No one really believed it.”  November stroked her friend’s back as the fairy cried on her shoulder.  She glanced at the shards of images that presented themselves: Zinnia crying in her cell all alone, thankfully not in chains.  She saw Zinnia’s relief and shock as Ben was dragged in to take her place, her screaming rage as she flew at her former friend, Willow and Daniel pulling her away lest she kill the guilty party before he could be questioned. 

“They put me in the dungeon, Em,” she cried, heartbroken. “I’ve known them since I was born, and they put me in the dungeon.”

“I know,” November answered.  “But what else could they do?  Besides, you were safer there, and it made it easier to catch Ben.”  Her friend interrupted her weeping to look up quizzically, so November explained, “Ben might well have tried to kill you, to make it look as if you were guilty and had run away.  With you under guard, he didn’t have the opportunity.  And it made Ben think Lord William had believed his ruse, which made him careless enough to be tricked into giving himself away. 

"You were the last person anyone wanted to believe was a traitor,” November emphasized.  “That’s one thing that’s so insidious about this.  Knowing there is a traitor in the house, everyone starts doubting each other.  It weakens us even above and beyond the information he gave Luka.”

Zinnia finally calmed down enough to say, “At least it’s over.  You caught him, and we have one less thing to worry over, especially with the king coming next month.  That’ll be a security nightmare.”

November was about to ask her friend to tell her more about the court when they were interrupted by Savita, who quickly embraced them both and asked if they were alright.  After the appropriate reassurances were made, November said, “Let me guess – he wants me downstairs.”

“Indeed, we do.  Are you ready to face Benjamin?”

“As ready as I’ll ever be, I suppose.  Might as well get it over with,” the seer replied.  “Is Lord William going to kill him?”

“Yes, eventually,” the lord’s sister replied.  “He will be tried first.”

“With your brother as judge?”

“Perhaps.  I know, our ways must be strange to you.”

“At least I won’t have to testify, right?” November asked, unnerved by the thought.

Savita paused a bit awkwardly before answering, “No, humans cannot give evidence to convict a vampire or fairy.”  November was both relieved and offended.  “There’s the recording, and Birch can testify, as he was witness to your conversation.”

“Are you okay, Zin?” November asked her friend.

The fairy took a deep breath and squared her shoulders.  “Yes.  Go ahead.  Find out everything.  Squeeze the bastard dry.”

***

Ben looked a bit worse for wear by the time November arrived in the basement.  William and Birch evidently hadn’t been gentle while transporting the prisoner.  It appeared that they’d grown irritated with his vocal bravado and gagged him.  It looked like the whole household was in the dungeon, seeking a glimpse of the traitor, disgust in their eyes.  Lord William declared that enough was enough and sent them all packing.  Only he, Birch, Savita, and November remained when he closed the door.

The fire in Ben’s eyes grew dimmer as fear began to take over.  As brave as he might try to be when questioned, there was no way to fight the two magical women standing in his cell.

November almost felt sorry for him, until she thought of the gas station attack, poor dead Carly, her murdered mother, betrayed Zinnia, and her own near-miss kidnapping in the tunnel.  As she sat down to begin, he looked right at her.  She expected rage or hatred, but what she saw instead was more like shame, a sort of acceptance of the fact that he had lost and acknowledgement of the fact that she and her gift had prevailed this time.  It was almost as if he no longer cared what happened.  She soon began to see how that might be.

As she immersed herself in visions of Ben’s life, November watched him get turned by his vampire father.  Ben had been enthralled when he died, pain-free and unaware that his human life was bleeding away.  He clawed his way out of the earth to find his maker and his sister waiting with his first vampire meal, a pretty young woman dressed to the nines.

His sister was beautiful and sad, with green eyes and perfectly coiffed blond hair.  November watched Ben fall in love with her while her will to live continued to fade away.  She saw Ben discover her ashes after her suicide.  She listened to him wail like a wounded animal.  She watched Ben go off the rails, carelessly feeding, taking no care to avoid discovery or suspicion, constantly reproved by his maker, who himself was maddened by grief for his daughter.

Finally, she saw the moment when Ben took a step too far.  He killed a girl, a werewolf girl who’d caught his eye and had tried to fight back when he attempted to prey upon her.  He lost control, tore her to pieces, and only afterward began to realize what he had done. 

She saw Ben and his father surrounded by angry wolves, saw Ben’s father offer himself to the dead girl’s father in place of his child, in order to preserve the peace.  Ben could do nothing to stop it, watched them tear his sire apart until the resulting rivers of blood turned to ash.  She watched him scream alone into the dark once the wolves tired of mocking him.

She watched him fall further into despair, starving himself, nursing his hatreds until a man with two different colored eyes came calling.  He spoke to the vampire child’s pain, turned his loss and resentment into something useful.  Luka led Ben down the primrose path, leading him to blame William and the rest of the vampire establishment for his loss and abandonment.

Luka told Ben that he had been right to kill that werewolf girl, that she was his enemy and deserved to die.  He told Ben that his maker would still be alive if only William Knox hadn’t made a peace treaty with the werewolves and charged his lesser lords with preserving it.  He told him that his beautiful lover would still be alive if she’d had the guidance of a real vampire, a strong predator who could have taught her the proper pride.

Luka’s seeds had found fertile ground in Ben’s grief and humiliation, and by the time Lord William had come to take Ben in hand, his loyalty was to the scheming Lord of Arizona.  She watched Ben making furtive calls on a disposable cell phone.  Sometimes he seemed frightened while listening to the person on the other end.  She supposed that Luka might be a rather impatient and exacting task master.  It must have been difficult, spending so many months as a spy, all alone amongst his enemies.

She watched him enthrall the doomed maid, sending her on his errands.  She watched him make friends with Zinnia and try to pump her for information, with a fair amount of success.  She watched him steal Zinnia’s scarf and strangle the unfortunate Carly.  Finally, exhausted, and afraid to look to the boy’s future, she surfaced back in the present.

She shook her head to try to clear it.  “Was I gone long?”

“About two hours,” William answered, casually sipping blood out of a beer stein.  She glanced at Ben, whose eyes never left the blood and whose fangs had descended of their own accord.  Young vampires had to eat often to keep up their strength, especially when injured.  Ben was seriously hungry.  Savita was scribbling notes in a pad, and the recorder on the table was running.  They had been questioning him the whole time she’d been under.  “Let’s take a break,” Lord William commanded, ushering everyone out of the room and locking the door securely behind him.  He left the glass of blood on the table, just out of Ben’s reach, of course.

He called Daniel to guard Ben as they sat in the library to pool information and map out a strategy for further questioning the spy.  As the seer poured out what she’d found, everyone shook their heads.  The whole thing was such a waste.  “I think that’s how he gets the bombers, too,” November said.  “He finds damaged young people and fills them full of his anger and propaganda.”

“It’s a shame,” Savita replied.  “Luka is very persuasive.”

“What did Luka mean, talking about the werewolves?”  November asked.  Her lack of knowledge of supernatural history and politics was starting to become a bit of a liability.

Her three companions exchanged a look.  “About fifteen decades ago, Lord William spearheaded a treaty with the werewolves, ending centuries filled with one war after another.  There were those who felt that was a betrayal of our people, especially fairies, who had suffered most of the losses,” Birch explained.

“My enemies like to call me a werewolf lover, an appeaser, a traitor to our kind,” Lord William added.  “The fact that I hunt animals like a werewolf doesn’t help my reputation.” 

“Luka has long advocated exterminating the werewolves,” Savita chimed in.  “Ben losing his maker to the wolves was a perfect opportunity for our brother to get his fangs into a youngling.  I believe several of the bombers had ancestors killed in the old wars.”

“I’d hope they would be glad that people aren’t still dying that way,” November said.

“Forgiveness and peace aren’t our strong suits, I’m afraid.  But we’re very good at vengeance,” Lord William replied tiredly.

“What’s going to happen to Ben?” November asked with a bit of hesitation.

“We will record all the evidence, and when he is no longer useful, he will be publicly executed,” William answered matter-of-factly.  “He will get a trial, of course.”

“Execution will have to wait until the king comes,” Birch pointed out. 

“That’s ridiculous,” William snapped.  “I have every right to handle this myself.”

“Legally, yes.  But he has the right to appeal, which means he can’t be executed until his appeal is heard by the king in person,” Birch pointed out.  “And that’s not even considering the fact that this trial will be politically very sensitive.”