Club Vampyr

Epilogue

"Dad?" Nathaniel asked the answering machine, the phone clutched so tightly in his hand the plastic creaked. "If you're there pick up. I was just wondering if you knew whether Michael survived the fire yesterday. I know it's a long-shot, but Kerry's…" he hesitated. "Well, she's not doing so well. I'm worried."

Nathaniel hung up and walked back into Kerry's bedroom. It was pitch dark and had been since he arrived in mid-afternoon, wondering why he hadn't heard any signs of life yet that day. The day before her sobs had broke his heart, but at least then he knew she was alive.

He had to check for a pulse when he found her still in bed, unmoving. He had been scared to touch her throat, the bruising on it deep, angry purple and swollen. She hadn't even flinched, though he was able to detect the steady rhythm of her heart. Even now she was comatose against the world, her eyes wide open and barely blinking. He thought that she was somewhere else, and he hoped it was a better place.

But only if she didn't stay there.

Kerry was wrapped in the leather jacket she had worn out of the club. Nathaniel sat beside her, watching carefully for signs of life, and wondering what more he could do for her. In a twisted way, he hoped that someday someone loved him with such devotion. It was another day before he thought to try to force some water down her throat. Her lips were taking on a distinctly parched look and he was horrified to realize that though he had seen her go to the bathroom once on her own, he had completely taken for granted that she was taking care of the other necessities for life.

It was another two days before she opened her eyes and really saw him, and only then it was because he had tried to remove Michel's jacket.

x.x.x

Kerry stared at the gun in her hand, alone in her dark room. One shot and it would all be over, like a twisted Juliet story.

x.x.x.

"Thank God you're back!"Nathaniel exclaimed, pulling Nelle into a relieved hug. "She's been completely despondent since he died. I haven't been able to get her out of bed for the past week. She wouldn't even have showered if I hadn't told her she'd start replacing his scent with hers on the jacket."

Nelle looked puzzled.

Nathaniel sighed, exasperated. "I don't have time to explain. He loaned her a jacket and she keeps it wound tightly around her body. She isn't eating, all she does is sleep, and I can't get her to go see a doctor."

"A doctor?" Nelle echoed.

"I think that bastard did some permanent damage when he strangled her and all her crying didn't help the matter. She hasn't spoken a word since the morning Michael died. You need to go comfort her, or slap her, or whatever it is you best friends do for each other."

His explanation only seemed to make Nelle more confused. "I don't understand why she's acting this way. I mean Michael was a great guy and all, but he's my sire, and even I didn't have an emotional breakdown when he died and Kerry's a million times more stronger than me. She only knew him for a few days,"

Nathaniel pursed his lips in distaste for having to break the news to Nelle – again. The messenger was always the one who was shot. "She's known him significantly longer than that. Michael was Ethan Bryne, and he was the one who kidnapped her."

"What!" Nelle exclaimed. "All that time she pretended that vampires didn't exist and—"

"Shut up and think about someone other than yourself for once!" Nathaniel barked, ignoring the dark look she shot him. "Or, actually, let's continue living in Nelle's world for a second. Do you think he would have changed you if you weren't her best friend and if she hadn't started to beg? I don't think he would have, so why don't you return the favour and make sure Kerry doesn't die of grief."

.xXx.

A few moments later, Kerry opened her eyes to see Nelle sitting in the chair next to her bed, a thoughtful expression on her face. The desk light was on and Kerry blinked against the brightness. She had shrouded herself in the dark since – that time – keeping her window covered, the lights off, and had found solace in the absence of the traitorous sun.

"Hey Kerry," Nelle said brightly.

Kerry closed her eyes, hoping to go back to the state where all this was blocked out. She couldn't deal with life anymore, but she wasn't strong enough to die yet.

"Let's talk about Michael."

Kerry opened her eyes.

"He was always kind to me," Nelle continued, "even though I didn't appreciate it at the time. He looked out for me, you know, like he would a little sister or a daughter or whatever our relationship was."

For the first time in days, Kerry gave her full attention to something other than heartache. Her eyes stayed open, despite the light, and she raised her head on her pillow in order to see Nelle as she spoke.

"The night he brought me back from the dead he said he was repaying a life debt to an old friend. That was you, wasn't it?"

Kerry nodded, a glimmer of tears in her eyes.

"Do you want to tell me about it?" Nelle asked gently. Kerry shook her head, and Nelle continued talking, realizing that her strategy was working. "He was very attractive, wasn't he? When he was trying to teach me the ropes of vampirism, I got all confused by the pheromones and the smell of sex from the club and tried to seduce him."

Kerry sat up, a slight frown across her brow, and it was the first emotion she had felt in days that wasn't related to her grief.

"Do you know what he said to me?" Nelle asked, hiding a smile. "He told me I was pretty, but not his type."

"I can't feel him anymore," Kerry whispered, her voice dry and cracked. She bundled her fist in the leather of his jacket and held it close to her stomach. "He's gone completely. What if I killed him?" Her dull eyes focused on Nelle's face and Nelle could see that beyond the grief was guilt and self-loathing.

"You couldn't save him. Once a vampire catches fire from the sun, it's all over. Not even a fire extinguisher could have put out the flames."

Kerry shook her head. "You don't understand," she croaked. "I loved him. I loved him so much and I kept lying to him. To myself. I don't know. He gave me so many opportunities to say something, and I kept—" Kerry's face contorted into a sob, but no tears came.

"Oh Kerry," Nelle said softly. "I'm sure he knew. It's difficult to keep things like that from us."

Kerry shook her head again. "You still don't get it. I didn't tell him. What if when he took the power back he also got my emotions and he reacted the way he did because—" Kerry covered her mouth with her hand, desperately looking to Nelle for comfort or reproof. What if her love for him had transferred along with his essence, so that he protected her with his life because of a false emotion? What if for an instant, he had thought she was worth his death only because she had loved him?

"You're right," Nelle told her, "I don't understand at all. Now stop being an idiot and get out of bed and come watch Knocked Up with Nathaniel and me."

"He died for me," Kerry said in a tiny voice, lying back down and pulling the jacket to her face. "And I can't live without him."

"You can't die for him either!" Nelle said sharply, reaching under the bed and grabbing the shoebox which held Michel's gun. She left coated with impatience and frustration, but Kerry didn't care. She hadn't been able to use the weapon on herself no matter how much she stared at it and wished she was strong enough to pull the trigger.

Darkness consumed her after Nelle left, and Kerry didn't notice the passage of time.

On the two week anniversary from the day Michel had returned to her life, Kerry finally rolled out of bed on her own. It was the day after Black Friday and it suddenly struck her that she was wasting her life. If this had been the future Michel wanted for her, he would have let her die that night. Kerry had a final cry, lamenting her own foolishness, and wandered into the kitchen in search for food. Nathaniel had been forcing soup down her throat for days, but now she wanted something far more substantial. She opened the fridge and located the deli meat, throwing together a sandwich. In the living room, she squinted against the harsh reality of the sun, the natural light hot and burning against her face. Suddenly furious, she stood and tried to close her curtains, but they were too sheer to block the daylight.

The next thing Kerry knew was she was pounding on Nathaniel's front door. He opened it, his forest green and Christmas red hair sticking out all over the place like a demented wreath. At first, he looked disgruntled at being woken up, but then smiled in relief once he realized who was at his door. It didn't matter that Kerry's hair was greasy and tangled so badly it felt in limp tufts down her back, nor did the sun-deprived paleness of her skin or dark rings beneath her eyes detract from his joy of seeing her. Kerry finally back with the living was one of the most beautiful things he had ever seen.

"I need blinds," she told him, pushing past him and staring at his windows with aversion. "Heavy ones."

"Fine," he placated her, too pleased that she had gotten out of bed on her own to be concerned with her growing obsession with window coverings. "Just let me take a shower – say half an hour?" He didn't really need one, but he wanted to give her time to clean herself up. The knots in her hair would take at least that long to condition and comb out.

Forty-five minutes later as they got into the car he had borrowed from his father, Nathaniel refrained from commenting on Kerry's wide-brimmed hat and sunglasses, but he did glance at the leather jacket she was wearing with obvious distaste.

"You're crazy," he said fondly.

That Monday, Kerry went to class to take her not-so-pop quiz. She still moved as though she couldn't quite see the world around her, but slowly she came back to life. She stayed in the dark as much as possible, keeping her skin completely covered against the sun's rays. It became easier for her as the temperature dropped and Christmas approached, since everyone started to wear gloves, scarves, and heavy coats. She still insisted on wearing Michel's leather jacket, though she had to start layering fleece beneath it to keep warm, but she stopped wearing it to bed. Instead, it stayed draped over the chair in her room where she could keep an eye on it.

Sometimes, she spoke to it and told it how difficult it was to exist without him.

The gun remained where she had hidden it beneath her bed, stolen back from Nelle. She needed it because it had once been his.

Three weeks after Michel died, Kerry allowed Nathaniel to convince her to leave the apartment for fun. They went to the movies, picking a romantic comedy that Nathaniel seemed to enjoy immensely. Kerry wanted to leave, the romance too much for her and the comedy not that funny, but she managed to stick it out.

Nathaniel told her he was glad she was "finally frigging moving on" and she didn't say anything to dissuade him. It wasn't completely untrue, even if she didn't feel like she moving on at all. She was just coping better.

But if anyone deserved to believe the lie it was Nathaniel. He was the one who had taken care of her like one would a sick child, making sure she didn't starve to death in a bed of her own filth. Only, he hadn't believed the lie, if the conversation she overheard Nathaniel having with his father was any indication:

"She's not doing better. At least before she was numb with grief, but now she's going through the motions and fooling people around her into believing she's okay. But she's not experiencing anything. I'm not sure she even feels the pain anymore."

Kerry wasn't sure either.

In her mad dash to get to her final exam about a month after Michel's death, she forgot to wear her wide-brimmed hat and didn't notice the sun warming her face until her walk back home. She panicked for a moment, feeling the burning of blood on her skin in that second before her world went up in flames, but then the sensation passed and she just felt the cool breeze of crisp air and the warmth of sunshine.

It healed her a bit.

Kerry still cried herself to sleep some nights.

The day she was heading home for the Christmas holidays, she rolled out of bed early, unable to sleep with the dreams of impossible happiness swirling in her head. She saw him sometimes when she slept, which made slumbering a tantalizing lure in those first days. Lately, she couldn't deal with always waking up with disappointment that he wasn't even there. She barely even went to bed anymore, but that only meant she had studied for her finals with a greater intensity than usual.

If Michel's death was good for anything, it was getting A's on her exams.

She went to the bathroom, and then wandered into the kitchen for breakfast. She was still shockingly thin from her week of starvation and the following month of picking at food, and she knew that her father would notice. Kerry had never told him what was going on with her, and even in the midst of her grief she had still managed to call Ian and pretend for five minutes. She wasn't looking forward to keeping the charade up for days, even if it was getting easier to smile and pretend it reached her eyes.

As she bypassed the living room on her search for food she frowned and diverted her path, staring at the opened blinds with confusion.

"It was a little gloomy in here," Michel said, holding out his hand for her to join him. She could see the glint of gold on one of his fingers, and stared, frozen on spot. Large, wet trails of tears fell down her face, gathering at the collar of her night shirt. He was beautiful, sitting on the couch with the sun glinting blue highlights in his dark hair.

He had a slight scruff of beard.

"Oh," Kerry whispered, placing her hand over her mouth to stop a sob from emerging from her lips. She would never have imagined that, and in that instant she knew it wasn't a dream. Despite the tears she was smiling.

"You weren't supposed to mourn for me," he told her, standing and moving towards her. Kerry fell into his arms.

"I love you," she said frantically, pulling him against her and holding tight as if he would disappear.

"I know."

©RelenaFanel.June5.2008

Complete.