After Dawn, What Came Next

Mack had been blessed. Thomas had tried for years to convince his grandfather to give up cheap cigars and beer, take his medicine, and to exercise regularly. Mack had done things his way and chose the methods of his own destruction. But, he had died happy with a steak on the grill, a stogie in his shirt pocket, a cold beer sweating in a coaster on the arm of his easy chair, and most important of all, dearly loved by family.

He had seen little Gracie born and bounced her on his knee. He had lived long enough and stayed healthy enough to take his grandchildren fishing in the pond down by the lake for summers on end. Who could ask for anymore than that? It had been eight years since a heart attack had taken Mack away from them. His death had been sudden and quick and that was just the way Mack would have wanted it.

Thomas wandered the crooked rows of tombstones and uneven ground. Mack was in good company here in this quiet place of timeless decay and solitude. He had been laid to rest beside his son. Robert and Danielle’s marker was in the row of gray tombstones behind Mack’s, Lucien’s was in the next row over and two down to the left. And Nurse Ginger was here too to take care of them all.

Much to Thomas’s and the entire town’s amusement, the old busybody, Mrs. Jones, was buried in a place of prominence on top of the hill at the base of a gnarled old oak tree. She overlooked the whole cemetery. No doubt in it finding the captive audience she had always wanted. That old bastard, snot green eyed, hell spawn of a cat she so dearly loved had mourned itself to death when she passed. Not knowing what else to do with the carcass, her son, who hated the cat as much as the rest of the town, had seen it fitting to stuff the furry son of a bitch into a cardboard box and bury it at his mother’s feet.

The graveyard had its share of visitors in the paleness of dawn’s first light and in the evenings just before the purple haze of twilight. Thomas read the names on the stones as he walked the rows. There were young and old, some who had died horribly and others that had simply slipped away. A few headstones that were so weathered by time he could only tell by feeling the faint impressions on the worn stones who was laid to rest beneath them. The town founders were buried here, the Grays, Grants, and the Harris’ of early Moore County. He had gone to high school with a few of the people immortalized by the names and dates engraved in granite. A rare few represented here he had brought into the world and there were those he had no other choice but to let slip through his fingers and give into death’s embrace for safekeeping.

He wished nobody ever had to die. So far, medical science had no way to stop the inevitable from coming and probably never would. This early in the morning with his mother as a silent shadow on his heels, he wondered if it was a good day to die or if perhaps, tomorrow might be a better one. Oh, it wasn’t his death that concerned him, not yet anyway. Mouse had challenged her grandfather for rights to the pack and it was what might come with the dawn that preoccupied his mind.

Jan, his wife, was pack. She had gifts Thomas still couldn’t completely understand. His children were half wolf-half human hybrids. His human DNA toned down their more aggressive tendencies, but he wasn’t exactly a marshmallow himself. He had stood on the bluffs and bled the ground red for Jan and for the future of his family. He knew plenty of pain and sacrifice. The earth was a thirsty place. Today, it was somebody else’s turn to bleed and suffer and maybe, to die.

His children claimed their wolf heritage whole-heartedly. They had the gift of the wolf and although the two youngest weren’t of an age to shift, the other five were proud recipients of the lineage and the world into which they had at least in part been born into. Jan had chosen a more human life than her children chose to live. She maintained some measure of pack magic. Late at night when the moon was full and the song of the pack was in the air he would lay awake at her side and watch her battle the beast trapped inside of her skin. She could no longer shift. She aged at an almost human rate. Her hair was streaked with gray and the strain of the battle. The years of laughter and joy they had spent together lined the corners of her eyes and the edges of her mouth.

Jan would be venerated upon her death in the ways of the pack and the brotherhood, as would he. The graves beneath the headstone they had yet to purchase would be for the most part empty. Their ashes would be released into the hands of the goddess in the open air and whatever remained of the pyres yet to be built and the shrouds yet to be embroidered would be buried here beside his father and grandfather. The kids would need a place to come and to remember and something left behind to remind them of where it was they had come from.

Thomas rounded to the corner to the row of graves he hated the most. It was here he could feel the ghosts of the departed more acutely. His father and grandfather had moved on to whatever waited beyond this life. There were others buried here who had not. Alex crouched at the foot of a lonesome grave. One of her dainty hands rested on Lucien’s stone and the other arranged a fresh bundle of flowers at the foot of the headstone beside his. Lucien had been laid to rest on a pyre. The grave beneath his headstone was empty, but her mother occupied the ground beneath the marker beside it.

Her mother, gentle Leigh, had fought a long and hard battle with breast cancer and had lost the fight. Thomas could feel her presence on the soft breezes of the dawn. He could sense Lucien in the rolling thunder of an oncoming storm. The two of them hovered in between the land of the living and that of the dead, keeping watch, he supposed over, Alex.

Alex smelled Thomas long before she heard him approaching from the row of headstones behind her. The two of them were the coffee clutch of the Shady Rest Cemetery. She hated her morning vigil of coming here bringing bundles of cut flowers and laying them at the foot of her mother’s grave in offering, but how could she not? She had always thought that her dad was her favorite of her two parents. She couldn’t have been more wrong about that. Maybe, it was guilt that drove her to visit the grave day after day. There was something she could have done to keep her mom alive and in the end she had been too chicken shit to force it on her mother.

Alex dug her fingers into the loose soil and clutched the grass in her fist. It had been almost a year, two years in total since the time of her mom’s diagnosis and the awful finality of the end of things. Her mom was a warrior princess, bravely undergoing each and every treatment with grace and dignity, no matter how slim the chance that some miracle might save her life.

The miracle was within Alex, flowing through her veins, but in the end not even her vampire blood had been enough to save her mother. When the cancer got so bad, Alex had encouraged her to drink to ease the suffering. Without turning her, all Alex’s blood had managed to do was prolong the agony of living another day. One day the pain of it became too much for her poor mom to endure and at long last the battle ended.

It was strange. Lucien had been gone almost thirty years, yet she could still feel him peering over her shoulder as acutely as she could sense her mother lingering in the breezes brushing her cheek. The two of them were together now and still with her. Perhaps though, that was just wishful thinking on her part and they were gone. Alex hoped whether they were here or there on the other side of the Great River, Lucien was taking good care of her mom. But, of course, he wouldn’t need reminding of his duty. Protective of anything and everything she loved, it was just his way.

Her dad was doing ok and these days that was all she could ask of him. He went about the business of being left behind with stoic determination. Alexander Gray was not one to show as much as a hint of weakness to anybody, not even his daughter. He thought he was being strong for her sake. His show of strength had nothing to do was just as much for his own benefit as for hers. Maybe, her mom and Lucien weren’t the ghosts, but her father and she, the ones left with the task of living, were the specters.

Her father’s name was carved on the stone in neat lettering. His birthday was coming up soon. It was a reassurance to run her fingertips over the date of his birth etched into the granite and feel the smoothness of nothing on the empty space on the other side it. If she had her way about things, there would never be a date of death engraved on the stone. The grave beneath her would never have a body in it. He wouldn’t want to live forever. Alex knew that, but she also knew sometimes, people weren’t given a choice.

What she was thinking of was nothing short of heresy. The lengths she might go to save his life could very well cost her, her own. Force was not something the brothers agreed with and if her father died in the process, after the brothers caught up with her, she would die too. Alex wouldn’t risk Chance like that. Her husband was a warrior and a son. He would be expected to do his duty above all else.

Alex hated it, but her dad was living on borrowed time. He would turn seventy-six this year and in all her days she had never seen a truly geriatric vampire. Vampires as old as the pits of hell itself, sure, but an elderly vampire, she had never run across one. Her dad had a paunch belly, weathered sun leathered skin, deeply grooved wrinkles, and his once red hair the shade of autumn leaves had faded from the pale blonde of late middle age to the snowy white of the winter of his life.

She worried that her dad wasn’t long for this world. His posture became a little more stooped and she could see the spark fading from his blue eyes bit by bit with each day that passed. A part of him had already joined her mother in the grave and soon, the rest of him would follow. There were so many things she could do. She didn’t need to see the future to know how this was going to turn out though. He was going to die soon and there was nothing she could do to stop it. “How am I going to let him go, Thomas?” she asked in a strangled voice.

Thomas didn’t know exactly how to answer that one. He chose to remain silent and let Alex thing through it herself. This was the curse of the blessing of a long, long life. Watching those around you wither and fade and slowly die bit by bit, piece by piece, day after day. Alex looked the same as she had on the day they first met. She had a young face and very old eyes that told the truth of her age. His mother, still hovering in the background was silent as well. But, he knew his mom and she was probably asking herself the same question about him. How was she going to stand back and do nothing when her only son drew his last breath?

How did anybody do it? It was obvious to Thomas that graveyards weren’t for the dead, but for the living. This was how you let go and moved beyond all your grief and suffering to a place of peace. You remembered and after you were gone, if you were lucky enough, somebody else remembered you. Instead of answering, he rested a hand on Alex’s shoulder and gave the thin bones a squeeze. They stayed like that, her staring at the grave and him, anchoring her to the ground until the wind held its breath as the sun breeched the horizon and the voices of the dead grew silent.

Alex squinted at the rising sun. She had been a vampire for over thirty years and she still could not bear the coming of a new day. Prisms of color assaulted her vision. Her retinas throbbed and pain like a lance speared her temples. Sunlight couldn’t kill her. She would not burn to ash. Out in the daylight she felt exposed and vulnerable. Being vulnerable in any way, shape, or form was not something a vampire relished. Alex still liked to think of herself as human, but standing here amongst the graves and knowing a millennium or more could pass before she occupied one. Her eyes seared by the first light of dawn. She realized just how far from grace she had fallen.

“I should get to the bluffs,” Thomas said. He had his medical kit on board in the back of the truck. Fallon might need his help this morning. He had attended more than his fair share of battles fought for whatever reason. He had pulled some back from the brink of death and others, he had stood witness as they flung themselves headlong into it in their vie for immortality. He shrugged and said, “Just in case.” He turned to walk the stretch of grass leading to the lane and stopped to glance over his shoulder at her. “Alex, do you know what is going to happen today?”

Alex shook her head. She was the prophetess, yet somehow the goddess had stayed eerily quiet about the future as of late. Perhaps, the future was not as set in stone as some wanted to believe. Sometimes, maybe just maybe, destiny wasn’t decided for you. Rather, you decided it for yourself.

Chapter 4

Driven out of bed by insomnia, Nash spent a sleepless night pacing the confines of his study. This was his sanctuary. Except for the bathroom, the study was only quiet place in the entire damn house where a man could be alone with his thoughts. He had tried to sleep and simply given up in preference to waking his wife Eloise with all his tossing and turning. Let her get her rest while she could. It might be a long time before the comfort of dreams and the sweet solace of sleep came to her again.

Deft fingers wound the silver strands of his hair into a tight braid and worked the braid into a plait at the base of his skull. The night before was always like this, sleepless, tense, and filled with more than its share of worry over what was to come. He had been challenged many times for his title. The adversaries were worthy, but none of them had been good enough to best him in a fight to the death. Today, this morning all of that would change and finally a contestant worth dying for and handing the pack over for safekeeping to had stepped forward.

He needed no mirror to know his braid was tight and straight or to see the steely, grimness of the expression on his face. Every challenge mattered. Every contest had to be answered. This one was the last battle to the death he was ever going to fight. He sighed deeply and ran his palms over the soft, worn leather of his buckskin breeches. Today would be a good day to die as it had been for his father one hundred and two years ago when he, as a hungry young wolf, had issued the challenge to the man who had given him life.

One hundred and two years was a pretty impressive term to serve as pack master. His father had survived this lofty place of honor for far less. Nash was no longer in his prime. Well over a hundred years old himself, he was getting too damn old to hold the title for much longer. There was still plenty of life left in this old dog though and he would rather go out bravely in battle with his back straight and his head held high and proud than wither and shrivel up into a dried husk of his former glory.

He cracked the joints in his toes and swiveled at the waist to limber up his old body. He would have to put on a good show today. He would have to do the unthinkable and leave his mark on Mouse’s pretty skin. Exact his pound of flesh from her before he gave up the ghost and departed this world for once and for all.

Nash tucked a single black raven’s feather into the braid and settled his weary bones before the crackling fire. Dawn was just beginning to peek her fiery head over the horizon. Before long he would have to abandon his perch of warmth and comfort and make the trek to the bluffs.

His chest bare, he ran his fingertips along the puckered silvery line of scarred flesh crisscrossing his skin from the base of his right rib cage across his pectorals and up the side of his neck to end at a jagged point at the base of his jaw. The wound had been brutal, more damage than his wolf could heal.

His father’s wolf had made the scar with a terrifying lunge and swipe of his massive claws. It had almost been the end of him, but his wolf had been younger and faster, and hungrier to earn the title than his father’s wolf had been to keep it. His father had been a formidable opponent. The fight had not been for show, but for life and death. It had been the dawning of a new era when Nash had challenged his father for the title. It was the dawning of another new era. One of rapid change and technology, fitting he thought, that in this new dawn, he was giving it up.

His eyes scanned the pictures hanging in a collage of frames on the walls, lining the fireplace mantle, and taking up every inch of available space in the study. So many generations had passed. The first pictures weren’t really pictures at all, but hand rendered drawings of people and places that had long since faded to dust. The tin plates came next and then grainy black and white photos. The color pictures were his favorite, the vivid detail of the shade of a family member’s hair and the exact color of brown of a loved one’s eyes were what he cherished most. His picture was there on the wall along with so many others. He as a boy, wearing knickers and smiling stiffly at his mother’s insistence as the photographer captured the staged shot.

That was a long, long time ago and an era that had faded into the past. The family tree occupied the wall behind his desk. He stood from his comfortable seat and meandered over to the wall. The names of his family had been carefully engraved on to brass plates and hung in their proper place of reverence on the green backdrop of the painted wall. He traced the branches of the tree, starting at the bottom with the youngest up to the top, to the very head of the immense tree. The first Great White Wolf, the Prophet, the father of them all.

He missed the cryptic, cagey founder of their race. Nash wondered how much the old Prophet had known about the events that were to come when he had first sent the pack here over twenty-five years ago. There had been a lot of changes and a lot of new additions to fill in the blanks in the family tree. What had once been a sprig of twigs and branches was now a tree bursting with life. There were over four hundred pack living here, each name engraved and in its place on the family tree.

His fingertips followed the brass branch down to his own nameplate and traced the line branching off of it. His sons and daughters had been quite fruitful. He had grandchildren and great grandchildren and even a few great-great grandchildren and so many pictures of them on the walls. The family tree had been carefully planned and positioned to maximize the wall space. There was plenty of room for generations and generations to come. Hell, maybe at some point in the far distant future, the walls of the entire study might be covered with brass nameplates.

He had served his pack well. He hadn’t done it on his own though. He had a lot of help along the way. Eloise and Torr, the combining of their packs into one had filled in two missing branches of the family tree. He would miss Torr and his quiet reluctant ways. He would miss Eloise and her gentle smile so full of love for him. Out of all the regrets he had about what was about to happen with the rising of the dawn, leaving her was the thing he regretted the most.

He fingered his nameplate and ran a fingernail up the line to his mother. He was second-generation pack and one of the most powerful males. Nana, as everyone called his mom, had gone to her pyre some fifteen years ago. God, he missed her, perhaps more than anyone else, even the Prophet. She never hated him for doing what he had to do. She had accepted the death of her mate, his father, with the stoic dignity and grace befitting a first generation daughter. In the end, pack was what it all boiled down to. The things the founders of each new generation did to ensure the future of the generation to follow. Today it was his turn to do what he must and someday, it would be Mouse’s turn to follow in his footsteps and do the same.