Coven of Mercy

Deborah Cooke

I hate the month of March. It’s an indecisive month, hovering on the cusp between winter and spring. Indecision drives me wild.

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.

Mrs Curtis’ pulse faltered beneath my fingers and I forgot his alluring gaze. I reached past him and slapped the alarm button for Miriam. “We need an infusion, Miriam, stat,” I said, not waiting for her query.

She knew where I was and would call up the blood type.

The stranger, meanwhile, had stepped around the end of the bed. He leaned over Mrs Curtis and, before I could stop him, touched her throat gently with his fingertips. The gesture was reverent, that of a lover saying farewell.

When he lifted his hand, those two round holes were gone.

As if they’d never been there.

I blinked and stared, but the flesh was perfect.

I had seen them, though. I had seen what he had done.

Mrs Curtis sighed and her head fell to one side. The pulse monitor began to sound an alarm.

Everything happened quickly then: Miriam arrived with the blood and we worked together, two other nurses following instructions. Mrs Curtis’ vitals rapidly went from bad to worse. Her pulse rate slowed and became erratic. Her breathing became more laboured, rattling in her throat, her skin became paler. Nothing we did made a difference. Miriam was the perfect partner, both of us knowing exactly what had to be done when.

But it was too late.

My hands were on her scarred chest when Mrs Curtis’ heart stopped right beneath my palms. I would have kept trying, but Miriam touched my shoulder.

“There’s no point, Dr Taylor,” she said quietly, and even knowing she was right, it was hard to lift my hands away.

This battle had been more important to me, although they all were critical. I blinked back unexpected tears as Miriam pulled the sheet over Mrs Curtis’ face. The two other nurses left quietly and I took a shaking breath. I turned away from the sight of Mrs Curtis’ still figure.

I’d lost.

The night was inky black beyond the windows, a perfect echo of my mood.

No. I hadn’t lost. I’d been cheated.

By Micah.

I spun, finding Miriam halfway to the door. “That man, Miriam, did you see him? Where did he go?”

Miriam gave me a quizzical look. “What man, Dr Taylor?”

“Mrs Curtis’ visitor; you couldn’t have missed him. You must have passed him on your way in here with the blood.”

She frowned. “I didn’t see anyone but staff tonight.”

“Maybe he works here.” I shrugged. “He was with Mrs Curtis when I arrived, talking to her. He was tall and dark, about thirty-five, leather jacket and long dark hair . . . ” I faltered to silence as I realized Miriam had no idea who I was talking about.

“I think I’d remember a man like that,” Miriam said with a smile. “Are you sure, Dr Taylor?”

I glanced back at Mrs Curtis again. I knew what I had seen. Why hadn’t Miriam seen him? I remembered the way he had made the marks of his feasting disappear, and bit my tongue.

No one would believe that I’d seen a vampire.

And I wasn’t going to ask Miriam about bats in the ward.

Miriam crossed the floor, her shoe soles squeaking on the linoleum. She touched my elbow briefly and I started in surprise. No one ever touched me, especially not at work. “Time to go, Dr Taylor.” She gestured to the door and I knew she was right. Lingering wouldn’t change anything.

“I’ll call her family,” Miriam said kindly when we were in the hall.

“Does she have a partner?”

“A sister. I have the number. I’ll tell her how hard you tried.” Miriam studied me, then smiled. “Go home, Dr Taylor, go home and get some sleep.”

I was confused by her compassion. “I’m fine. I’ll go down to the lab . . . ”

She exhaled sharply and looked stern. “I understand that you did rounds at seven this morning, and now it’s almost midnight.”

There was frost hanging from every word of my response. “I always work long hours.” And they were no one’s business but mine.

“But you don’t always see people who aren’t there, Dr Taylor, do you?”

I could have argued that the stranger had been there, that I knew what I had seen, but I saw that Miriam wouldn’t be persuaded. I nodded an acknowledgment, thanked her and returned to the elevator.

But I didn’t go home.

I went to the cafeteria and nursed a coffee from the vending machine, reviewing everything I had done, seeking the error in my judgment. I always do this kind of examination, always try to improve my strategy.

I’d done nothing wrong.

I just hadn’t allowed for vampires in my statistical analysis.

Vampires. Maybe there was something to Miriam’s concern. Maybe I had been pushing myself too hard. I was tired, there was no disputing that.

But how can anyone sleep when the battle is so relentless? Cancer never sleeps and it takes advantage of every weakness. It would win, maybe even while I was sleeping, and I couldn’t let that happen. There already weren’t enough hours in the day.

It was getting light when I ditched the cold coffee, then left the hospital. If nothing else, I’d shower and change my clothes at home before returning for morning rounds. I tried to swallow the lump in my throat to keep from looking back to Mrs Curtis’ room. I ignored the cars of my co-workers pulling into their parking spaces.

I was halfway across the lot when I saw the stranger leaning against the front fender of my car.

Waiting.

For me.

He had that amused smile again, which was more than enough to set me off.

I was across the parking lot in record time, fury and exhaustion making me more volatile than usual. “You killed her!”

The stranger didn’t move away from my anger. He leaned one hip against my car, his arms folded across his chest. He was dark and large and could have been carved from stone.

No, he could have been sculpted from stone. He was beautiful, his dark eyes thickly lashed, his mouth sensuously curved. I felt an awareness of him and our proximity, an awareness I resented.

He was a predator, a murderer, a vampire. He might as well have been on the enemy side.

Micah. It was a name that suited him. Just a little bit different. Unexpected. Old and strong.

I glared at him. “You did, didn’t you?”

He inclined his head slightly. “Yes.” He moved slowly, elegantly, every gesture thoughtful. He closed his eyes briefly, his features touched with a sadness I didn’t understand.

“How could you do that?”

“I have to feed.”

“Isn’t there someone else you could kill? A criminal or a wild animal? Someone who deserves to die?”

“Everyone will die, deserving or not.”

“But she was going to live. I was winning . . . ”

“Maybe she’s at peace now.”

“No. She’s dead now.”

He was amused again. “Not in heaven?”

I was as impatient with this idea as ever. My father and I had argued this up, down and sideways and I knew my position well. “There is no heaven and there is no hell. There is life and there is death and everything else is just romance.”

“Just romance?”

“There’s no point in self-delusion. Get away from my car.”

“You need to understand . . . ”

“I understand everything, thanks. You fed, and she died because of it. That’s evil.”

He didn’t move. He frowned and averted his gaze, and I thought that maybe I had touched his conscience. But to my surprise, he spoke with regret and changed the subject. “Once I had a child,” he began softly, but his own history didn’t interest me.

“No. I don’t care. No matter what you’ve lost, you have no right to decide whether another person lives or dies.”

He met my gaze steadily and parted his lips, letting me see the sharp points of his fangs. “I have every right.”

“No. No. Vampires don’t exist,” I said. I jammed my key into the lock of the door on the driver’s side. He still didn’t move.

“Then who killed the woman?” he asked mildly. “You?”

“No! I was the one who would have saved her. You stole that victory away.”

“Victory?”

I heard my own fears in that single word. “Sure, it was back, but it hadn’t won yet. I had a treatment plan prepared. We would have gone after it, hard.” I held his gaze, knowing my own was filled with accusation and anger. “I would have won. I would have saved her. But you stole her first.” I took a deep breath and glared at him. He watched me steadily, those full lips curving in that damned amusement. “You cheated me and you cheated Mrs Curtis.”

“Are you sure?”

“Yes!”

But I wasn’t and he knew it. You can never be sure. Remission might be permanent or might not be. I’d been sure that Mrs Curtis’ previous round of treatment would finish the cancer, but the blood tests don’t lie.

He was watching me. “Don’t you want to know the rest of the story?”

There was something seductive about his voice, something that I feared I would find compelling. There was something more seductive about the notion that he knew more than I did, and that he would share. Why did I recognize him? How could it be possible?

How could I not remember?

I felt charmed by him and didn’t trust the jumbled feelings I felt in his presence. I was aroused. I was furious. I wanted to know how he kissed. I wanted him to disappear for ever. “No,” I said with a heat that was rare for me.

His eyes twinkled, their darkness lit as the night sky had been lit with stars. “What if I don’t want to go?”

I shoved him and he moved from the fender of my car. There was nothing virtual about him. He felt muscled, as if he worked out, solid and real, and I tingled in an unwelcome way.

“You can’t stop the coven of mercy, Rosemary,” Micah whispered, his words making me catch my breath.

“How do you know my name?” He’d known which car was mine, too.

“I know a lot of things.” He arched a dark brow. “I’ve watched you for a long time. Not everyone prefers solitude.”

His words startled me, in more ways than one, but he didn’t have a shard of doubt. He was too smug, too sure.

Maybe a little bit too much like me.

I needed to get some sleep.

“There is no coven of mercy and there was no mercy in what you did. Get away from my car.”

“Is her death what’s really bothering you?” he asked, his words low. “Or is it that you lost a chance to win? Is this about the person or the score?”

I slapped him then, hard, right across the face. His head jerked to one side and the red mark of my hand showed on his cheek.

I was afraid then, afraid for a moment that I’d pushed him too hard.

What he did next astonished me.

He looked at me steadily for a long moment in which my heart thundered in terror, then he pivoted with the grace of a giant cat. He strode silently across the parking lot, towards the surrounding scrub of trees.

The hospital was new, built slightly outside of town, surrounded by undeveloped land. There were scrubby trees and a little creek, a tangle of undergrowth and a nature trail. There was still snow there, caught in the bit of brush, and the tree branches were dark and bare.

The sky was turning pink in the east by then, and my hands clenched as I watched his dark figure move away. His boots crunched on the snow, as real as I was. I was so angry that I was tempted to go after him, argue some more, shake him.

Kiss him.

A car door slammed near me and I jumped, surprised to find Dr Bradley stepping out of his Subaru so close at hand. He ran the labs and was my boss. “Are you all right, Dr Taylor?”

“Good morning, Dr Bradley.” I forced a smile.

He didn’t smile, just came to my side, his expression concerned. “Have you been here all night? Again?” He was paternal, a good twenty years older than me.

I made a gesture of futility, not knowing how much I wanted to share and too tired to work it out. “I was just going home for a shower.”

“And arguing with yourself about it.”

“What?”

“You were shadow-boxing when I pulled in.”

“No, there was a guy here . . . ” I recognized immediately that Dr Bradley hadn’t seen the stranger.

Just like Miriam.

I stopped talking before I condemned myself.

Dr Bradley cleared his throat. “I know you’ve been working really hard lately, Dr Taylor, but indulge me, will you?”

I was wary. “What do you mean?”

“You look exhausted and have for a while. I’m wondering about your iron and iron stores. You’re probably not eating well any more often than you’re sleeping well. And I’m probably being cautious, but your expertise is valuable to the team.”

He smiled, softening the impact of his words, but I got the drift. No one was glad to have me around, but they liked my abilities. Someone like Dr Bradley would never understand why a lack of human connection didn’t bother me.

Even if, this time, it did. A bit.

“Meaning?” I asked in my most professional tone.

“That prevention is the best medicine. Indulge me and get a routine suite of blood work done. We both know that it’ll be easier to improve your iron counts sooner rather than later.”

“There’s nothing wrong with me. I just didn’t sleep last night.”

“When did you last have a physical?”

I shrugged. I wasn’t the only one who never got around to it.

He smiled, the way he always did when he wanted something extra from his staff. For once, it worked like a charm on me. “Just humor me.” He winked and turned away, giving me a last wave. “I’ll leave the requisitions on your desk this morning. Promise?”

“Sure, Dr Bradley.” It wasn’t as if I was afraid of needles and test results. And I had felt as if I was running on empty lately. I knew I just needed more sleep, but it wouldn’t hurt to have my haemoglobin checked.

I got in my car, went home and had a shower.

Then I drank the better part of a pot of good coffee and came back to work. Cancer doesn’t need to rest, after all. The battle rages, even when we leave the field. Maybe it moves faster when we aren’t looking.

Coven of mercy. What had the stranger meant?

His name was Micah.

Micah.

Two days after Mrs Curtis’ death, her last batch of test results came back from the lab. There was also a reminder from Dr Bradley that I hadn’t given my blood samples yet. I crumpled the message and tossed it out. I’d just been too busy for details.

I wasn’t going to look at Mrs Curtis’ results, as I was still unable to accept what I’d seen. But on some level, I needed to prove to myself that I’d been right, that Micah had been wrong, just in case I ever saw him again and could tell him so. I needed data to argue my point of view.

I knew this was ridiculous – that I needed to muster my resources to argue with a vampire – but couldn’t put it out of my thoughts. I argued with myself until close to midnight.

Then I gave it up. I got a coffee from the vending machine, sat down at my desk and clicked through on the file. I stared at the numbers for so long that my coffee got cold.

I checked them four times. I assumed initially that they had to be wrong, but they were completely consistent. The cancer had efficiently progressed while we’d thought we were killing every last cell.

Against all expectation, it had turned even more virulent and metastasized. It had used the highways and byways of her lymphatic system to colonize every corner of her territory. Despite the treatment regimen. Mrs Curtis had been so much more ill than she had appeared to be. The counts were staggering and impressive.

Cancer had already won. I had maybe slowed its progress, but I hadn’t come close to stopping it.

I remembered how Mrs Curtis had cheerfully suffered through her more recent bout of treatment, enduring more no matter how violent her reactions were. I had been so sure that short-term pain would lead to long-term gain. I had never underestimated the disease so much.

I felt a bit sick that she’d gone through that for nothing.

Just like my mother.

Yes, my mother’s treatment had been just as futile. I’d found copies of the correspondence with her doctors in the house after my father’s death, when Rick and I were cleaning things out, still refusing to speak to each other. I had reviewed them with the eyes of a trained oncologist, seeing then the inevitability of her counts. She was diagnosed too late for the treatment protocols available at the time to turn the tide.

I had known at twelve that she would die, even without that training, and I had been right. Later, I saw that there was mercy in the speed of the disease’s progression. Three weeks of knowing, two weeks of suffering, then the battle had been won.

It wasn’t always that kind.

I stared at Mrs Curtis’ charts.

Coven of mercy. I recalled Micah’s words and had to consider them. If Mrs Curtis hadn’t died two days before, would these two days of treatment have been merciful? No, of course not. Chemotherapy and radiation are seldom easy, and we would have had to hit her harder this time. I had to face the truth.

With counts like this, she would have been gone in a week or two anyway, barring a miracle.

I felt a presence at my side and knew who it was. It was the warmth, the watchfulness, the scent of leather that gave Micah away.

“You knew,” I said, without looking.

“I knew,” he agreed.

I spun in my chair to face him, surprised at his size and intensity. He was all male – brooding thoughtful male – and he filled the bit of spare space in my crowded small office. “How?”

He frowned and folded his arms across his chest, scanning the floor as he sought the words. I liked that he didn’t dismiss my question, that he didn’t rush into explanations.

I felt a strange sense of union with him and was struck by the fact that it was easier to talk to him than any other person I’d known.

“We can smell it.”

“Cancer?”

“Death.” His gaze collided with mine, his eyes filled with enigmatic shadows. “You have to understand that it’s our biological need to feed on blood. Some of us choose to use that need for compassionate ends. Some of us choose to feed strategically.”

“Why?”

His smile was fleeting and his eyes gleamed as he watched me. “Some of us have an inexplicable fondness for humanity.” He shrugged. “Or maybe we just remember the pain of being mortal.”

“You’re immortal, then?”

He nodded.

“But every day, you have to kill somebody?”

He shook his head. “The hunger comes with some regularity, but not daily. Exertion affects the appetite, as does quality and quantity consumed.”

It made sense to me, in biological terms. I could understand him as a different species better than as a fable. I looked at my computer screen again, fighting the sense that I could fall into his eyes and lose myself for ever.

I looked up. “‘We’? You said ‘we’. How many of you are there?”

“The coven has twelve members right now . . . ”

“Shouldn’t there be thirteen?” I joked but he didn’t smile.

“Yes,” he agreed, then continued with his original point. “We are committed to mercy, to using our power to improve the lives of individual humans.”

“To killing.”

“Sometimes it is kinder to die. Sometimes suffering achieves nothing but pain.”

That was a sentiment too close to my own recent thoughts. My tone was more sarcastic than he deserved. “So, you’re all stalking cancer wards and palliative care units?”

He didn’t respond to my tone, which only made me feel rude.

“We all have our tendencies and our passions. Beatrice is sensitive to victims of abuse, perhaps because of her own history. She knows some scars cannot be healed. Adrian hears the anguish of broken children, and Lucinda shares her kiss with the old and infirm. Ignatius can be found in war zones, Petronella in areas struck by famine, Augustine near outbreaks of plague.”

“And you?”

That sad knowing smile curved his lips. “I have my own quest.” His words were soft and he seemed to have turned inwards, away from me. I felt the loss of his attention and the weight of his grief and had to say something.

To my surprise, I didn’t want him to leave. “Tell me about your child,” I invited. His gaze locked with mine, a familiar sorrow lighting its shadows, then he swallowed. “You said you had a child. Tell me.”

Micah shook his head and stood, facing the window and the night. I was struck that he seemed overcome with emotion. I had thought that he would be a monster, a cold and calculating predator, but his anguish was raw.

And I was astonished by my own wave of compassion for him. I stood, but couldn’t bring myself to go to him, to touch him.

“Boy or girl?” I asked quietly, not expecting him to answer. He sighed – a shudder that rolled right through him – and glanced over his shoulder at me.

That gaze, so filled with torment, caught at my heart. I couldn’t look away.

“Elsebietta,” he murmured, reverence and love resonant in every syllable. He swallowed. “Her mother died in labour and they said she would be a sad child.” He fell silent for a moment, and his voice was thick when he continued. “But she was as radiant as sunlight.” He raised a hand, closing it on nothing. “She was my joy. The centre of my world.”

I had to ask. “Did you kill her?”

The quick shake of his head was no lie. “It was before, before the coven.” He swallowed. “I had to watch her die, and then there was no point in living any more.”

“But you’re alive now.”

“The coven came to me and I found their proposition appealing.”

“Why?”

“Elsebietta had consumption. There was no real treatment and no cure. She wasted to nothing before my eyes.” He inhaled sharply, then eyed me. I couldn’t avert my gaze. I knew that consumption was an historic diagnosis that contemporary researchers believed meant cancer. “My daughter needed my help and I had nothing to give her.”

I swallowed then, knowing that sense of helplessness all too well. We had been to the same place, Micah and I.

“Only her hair held its colour.” He smiled, lost in recollection. “It was so beautiful, like spun gold.”

I knew then that his wife and daughter had been blonde, like me. My hair has always been wavy and unruly, so I keep it tightly controlled, captured beneath dozens of pins and clips. I saw the yearning in Micah’s eyes, though, and I wanted to console him, this haunted man who mourned his only child.

It was such a small thing to give. Even if I was clumsy with such gestures.

I unpinned my hair and shook it out. It fell just past my shoulders, and seemed to writhe with pleasure to be free for once. I shoved the pins in the pocket of my lab coat and looked up to find his dark gaze fixed upon me.

Filled with admiration.

In an instant Micah was beside me, although I never saw him move. He lifted a hand and gently captured one tendril between finger and thumb. That secretive smile touched his lips again.

“So soft,” he whispered, then bent his head and kissed that lock of my hair. When he glanced up, those dark eyes were near mine, that mouth so close that I could almost feel it on my own lips. I caught my breath, felt my eyes widen, and saw that sparkle light his eyes. There was a moment in which we stared at each other, a moment in which time stood still, a moment in which there was nowhere else I wanted to be.

Then he kissed me.

I could have stepped back. I could have ensured that he never touched me. But one kiss, one kiss was nothing. A taste. A tease. A temptation.

And it had been so long since I’d kissed anyone.

I let him kiss me, and he seemed to understand that I wouldn’t give much, not without being persuaded to do so. The first touch of his lips was as light as the brush of a butterfly’s wings. Ethereal. Almost illusory. I made some small involuntary sound – one of disappointment – and he bent close again, his kiss soft upon my mouth.

Persuasive.

Tender.

I thought of Micah helpless to save his child. I thought of the wife he had lost. I recalled my own mourning of my mother. I remembered how our small family had dissolved and scattered in her absence, and guessed that he had experienced a similar loss. The same sense of having no direction. Of being lost. Adrift.

Alone.

The isolation must have been worse for Micah. I had had my father, barricaded as he had been in his own grief. And my brother, Rick, now on the other side of the world and estranged. We had had the comfort of each other’s physical presence, at least.

But Micah . . . Micah had been all alone.

I kissed him back. There was solace in the common ground of sorrow, purpose in consoling another. Our kiss was sweet and gentle, but then it changed. Then it became more sensual, more rooted in desire than in consolation, more demanding.

More exciting.

I opened my mouth and gripped his shoulders, leaning against him as he caught me close. He knew when to entreat and when to wait, how to drive me crazy as if we’d been lovers for years. I wanted more. I wanted it immediately, and I knew he tasted that in my kiss.

It was unlike any kiss I’d ever had, making all others look like pale shadows of this perfection. It was the kiss I had always wanted and I realized, as he let his tongue tempt mine, that I had been looking for just this kiss.

Then I felt the brush of Micah’s sharp tooth against my lower lip. There could be no stronger reminder of the predator he was.

And I heard music.

I broke the kiss and backed away from him in fear.

He let me go, watching as intently as I’d come to expect. “Now you look alive,” he murmured with satisfaction.

I pivoted to check my reflection, and was shocked at my own appearance. My hair was loose and wild as it had never been, my eyes sparkling, my lips swollen. I looked like a woman who had been thoroughly kissed, and as different from my usual prim self as could be.

I would have blamed Micah for that, but when I turned back, he was gone.

As surely as if he had never been. My hands were shaking as I scooped up the scattered pins from my hair, and I pulled my hair up so tightly that it made me wince.

I could still taste that kiss, though.

I knew I would relive it in my dreams.

We aren’t supposed to become involved.

We learned that in med school. Oncologists should be professional and detached, in order to make the best logical decision for treatment. We are the rudders, the realists, the rational ones. It’s the only way to balance the emotions we encounter, the ones that cancer rouses.

It’s the only way to fight the battle over the long term. I may have been called Icicle Taylor, but I haven’t been the only one with my moat filled and my portcullis dropped. I have waded through buckets of emotional reactions every day since graduation, but always kept my eyes fixed on the prize.

Maybe it’s not an accident that I chose to stay in research, to be a specialist called in for tough cases, but never the primary contact.

But, two years before this particular March, a little boy named Jason had reached in and grabbed my heart.

He had been all of five years old when he came to the ward with leukaemia, the adored elder child of a devoted couple. They were a picture-perfect husband and wife, trim and attractive, affluent and kind, professionals. They were affectionate with each other and with their adorable son and daughter. They were the kind of people who get what they want, and what they wanted was their son healthy again.

They would do whatever it took.

Jason was solemn, with a tangle of dark hair and eyes that seemed too big for his face. He had beautiful dark lashes and a surprising ability to understand what was really going on. His leukaemia was aggressive and I was testing a new drug. Their oncologist, pushed by Jason’s parents to do more, called me in.

I was not used to being noticed in these situations. I’d explain the drug or the protocol, the risks and advantages, the unknowns, then step back and let the patient’s oncologist handle the rest. I witnessed but didn’t really participate.

Jason was the first to challenge that. We were at the end of our meeting, the oncologist summing up the strategy for Jason’s parents, when this boy reached out and grabbed my hand. I jumped. I had thought they had all forgotten my presence.

“Will it hurt, Dr Taylor?” he demanded, his eyes wide.

I was so surprised that I couldn’t lie to him. “Yes,” I said. “But if you can do this, you will get better.”

His mother caught her breath sharply. His father watched in horror. The oncologist closed his eyes. The tension in the room was palpable.

But Jason studied me, his gaze searching mine. I stared back at him steadily. I knew we would win and I let him see my conviction. His lips set and he nodded then, as committed to the course as I was.

And he was a trooper. Never complained. I went to his second marrow transplant as an observer, unable to stay away. The first hadn’t been easy and the second was likely to be worse. Jason had seized my finger in pre-op, insisting that I hold his hand.

The whole team was shocked when Icicle Taylor agreed.

I was more shocked when Jason ran to give me a hug on the day of his final discharge. No one had spontaneously hugged me since my mother’s death. I didn’t think to hug him back. I was surprised and touched, and although I had rationalized it since, I still relived that moment of triumph.

It was a battle we had won.

But a week after Mrs Curtis died, Jason came back.

Capricious, deceitful March.

I’d been working even more hours, cross-checking everything, determined not to let anyone down the way I’d almost let Mrs Curtis down. Dr Bradley was a genial nag about my apparent inability to give the lab some blood. I’d never logged so many hours and I was exhausted, but I felt on the cusp of a breakthrough.

Until I saw Jason’s parents in the ward. My heart stopped cold with the knowledge of why they were there. I have never wanted to be wrong as badly as I did then. Headaches, lassitude, infections that wouldn’t go away, night sweats. His parents knew the truth as well as we did.

Jason had always reminded me of somebody I couldn’t quite remember. I was so shocked at the sight of him this time that I realized who he resembled.

He looked like Micah. He had the intensity of focus and thoughtfulness that characterized Micah. That solemnity, that intensity, that watchfulness. Never mind the dark eyes and dark hair, the beautiful features.

It made no sense. I had met Jason before Micah.

No. That wasn’t true. I remembered suddenly that I had seen Micah before. He’d been at my mother’s funeral, a stranger on the perimeter of the gathering of mourners, watching.

Watching me.

My father had told me to pay attention and had been impatient with my insistence about the stranger. He had said that there was no one there.

I had never told anyone about the dreams I’d had later, dreams of that same man who didn’t exist. I had shoved the recollection of those dreams aside, like so much else that made no sense that year.

Once recalled, I couldn’t forget them. Micah had been watching me.

Why me?

I had a dreadful feeling about Jason’s prognosis. We ordered the tests and tried to make cheerful noises, but the oncologist on the case and I avoided each other’s gaze.

I was there the night the tests came back from the lab, a little ping from my computer indicating that the file I was watching had been updated. I didn’t get coffee, just sat and read.

The results were terrible.

Inescapable.

I shut the door of my office and wept. Optimism isn’t nearly a good enough weapon. I know the statistics and the survival rates as well as my own name. I looked again at Jason’s blood work, even though I knew.

I was caught. We couldn’t deny him treatment. I couldn’t be fatalistic. I couldn’t send Jason home to be happy for as many months – or weeks – as he had left. But I didn’t want to put that darling boy with his trusting eyes through a treatment ordeal that wouldn’t matter at the end.

I didn’t want him to suffer more than he would anyway.

I wanted mercy for him.

I knew that Jason’s parents would spare no expense and no trouble in their quest to see him cured. They had proven to be great allies in his past treatment regimen.

But this time they would fight, and they would lose.

And so I cried. I sat alone in my office and I wept for the futility of it all. I wept for Jason and his parents and the fact that he would never grow up to be the heartbreaker I wanted him to be. I wept for Mrs Curtis, believing at the end that she was dancing with a handsome man. I wept for my mother, and my father who had never been able to talk about his own pain, and my brother who had run as far away from the past as was physically possible. I wept for Micah and his lost wife and his beautiful daughter.

It was late when I had shed all my tears – two decades worth of them – and the night was still and dark. I wiped my face and blew my nose and decided I needed some sleep. I was straightening my desk when I grimaced at another email from Dr Bradley. The message from the day before was still unopened as I’d assumed it to be a nag about iron supplements. This one was marked urgent.

Some people don’t like to be ignored.

I had done the blood work, for goodness sake.

I rolled my eyes and flicked open the file, guessing that he’d been right in his diagnosis. Low iron is a common problem among women, and I knew I wasn’t that special in biological terms. I certainly didn’t practice good self-care.

But it was a referral to the head oncologist on our team.

I clicked through to my own blood tests and sat back, stunned. My haemoglobin was down, but my white blood counts high. Worst of all, Dr Bradley had requested a cancer antigen test, because of my family history, and its high result told me all I needed to know.

My old adversary had moved the field of battle into my own cells.

Cancer is sneaky. It takes advantage of your mistakes. I’ve learned that, but I had left one flank undefended. My mother, after all, had died of ovarian cancer. Her death was what got me into this line of work. I wanted the power to do something other than stand by and watch for the inevitable. I’ve made a lot of saves in my time, and spearheaded a lot of research. I’ve done good work.

Maybe that’s why it came after me. Maybe I was too worthy an opponent. Maybe that’s why it took advantage of my genetic weakness.

It had certainly taken advantage of my slip-up. How long had it been since I’d had a physical examination? A suite of blood work done? A Pap smear? I just never had the time. Or maybe, I’d thought I was invincible, since I was fighting for the good guys.

It didn’t really matter. I knew too much about treatment, about pain and suffering, and I knew the statistics. I knew that the oncologist would review my family history and immediately order an ultrasound of my lower abdomen, and I knew what he would find. I understood suddenly why I couldn’t shed that round belly I’d developed, and it wasn’t the food in the cafeteria.

I had a tumour and, with these counts, I would bet that it had already metastasized. It made too much sense. I knew that by the time there are symptoms of ovarian cancer, it’s all over.

Even more damning, I had known my mother would die, with unshakeable certainty, when she was diagnosed and I had the same conviction that this cancer would take me, too.

Maybe I had always known that. Maybe that was why I hated March so much. Maybe it was a kind of foresight.

I didn’t cry for myself. I’d cried all my tears for Jason and for Mrs Curtis. I was too angry that the fight would go on without me, that the battle would rage without my contribution. It wasn’t fair. I was surprised by how much I wanted a different answer than the one I routinely gave.

I looked out the window at the night, seething.

Micah was leaning against the fender of my car again, and he looked as if his gaze was fixed upon my window. I understood then why I was the only one who could see him. Just as Mrs Curtis had seen him.

He was waiting for me.

And I knew why.

“You knew,” I said when I was still twenty feet away from him.

Micah inclined his head in agreement, that same graceful gesture, but there was no amused curve to his lips this time. He was as watchful as ever, though.

Still.

I couldn’t simply stand, not with this chaotic need to do something swirling inside me. I was excited, agitated, uncertain. Could I battle my old enemy in a different way?

“I need to walk.” I headed for the scrap of wilderness around the parking lot.

Micah followed. I walked quickly, striding through the brush, ignoring the patches of snow underfoot and the brambles snatching at my clothes. It felt good to push my body, a denial of the disease that lurked inside my cells.

When I finally halted and spun, there was nothing but Micah, his glittering eyes and the stars overhead. I was aware of the warm strength of him, aware of the lump in my throat.

I saw no need for pretence. “Tell me about the coven.”

“We offer relief to those who suffer, especially those who suffer needlessly. It’s a choice on our part.”

“When treatment is futile.”

“When there is no chance of healing.”

“Like Elsebietta.”

He nodded once and looked away, still tormented by that loss. “It was hell.”

I knew exactly what he meant and so I did what I never do – I reached out and touched him. I offered solace.

He eyed my hand, then reached down and captured it in his. My heart skipped at the heat in his eyes and I sounded breathless. “So, you joined the coven.”

“I saw the chance to diminish suffering.” He grimaced and bent his head, staring at the glint of the creek. “I follow the edicts of the coven of mercy, but I’ve been looking for something different than the others. Something more.”

“Like what?”

He looked at me so quickly that I couldn’t look away, his eyes gleaming. “I don’t want to be alone,” he whispered.

I swallowed, guessing his implication. “You said the coven is short one member.”

He nodded once. “I asked for the right to fill that place. I have been waiting for a dance partner for a long time.”

“How long?” I knew the answer, but I had to hear it.

“Twenty years, this very month.”

“I thought I saw you at the funeral,” I guessed. “But no one else did.”

“No, you could only glimpse me then. It was too soon.” He smiled. “But you dreamed me. I managed that.”

He was right. “Why me?”

“Because I saw the same passion in you that burns in me.”

I caught my breath and looked away, dizzy at the implication. I heard the music begin, sounding as if it carried from a distant orchestra, and panicked. “But Mrs Curtis died.”

“Because I didn’t stop.”

I eyed him, seeing that he looked paler than he had, seeing a gauntness to his cheeks. “You’re hungry.”

He nodded, licked his lips and looked away. “I’ve been waiting for you, Rosemary.”

“For a long time?”

He smiled. “Always.”

“And I would be able to do what you do, to give mercy?”

“Yes.”

“But I would be your partner?”

“Maybe. Maybe not. We can only try when we have similar powers and objectives.” His smile was fleeting, barely curving his lips. “I’m inviting you on an adventure.”

It was an invitation that I was destined to accept. Another chance, an opportunity to make a difference . . . with Micah.

There was only one element in my past, only one detail that I wanted to resolve. “Will you show mercy to Jason?”

He shook his head and my heart sank. “I think he should be yours.”

In a way, my decision had been made when I saw my own test results. I offered my other hand to him, palm up. My words were thick, my voice not sounding like my own. “I’ve never learned to waltz.”

“I’ll teach you,” he pledged. He pulled me into his arms and that music became louder. It was evocative of another time and place, romantic and sweet and ethereal. As seductive as he was.

“How do you do that?” I asked.

“It’s easy,” he whispered and I believed him. I felt his hand on my back, his chest against mine, then he pulled me close. His breath fanned against my ear, my neck, and I gasped at the tiny prick of his teeth.

Then my blood was leaving me, its heat flowing from the wound on my neck. I felt him drink, felt him take the life force into his body. With every beat of my heart, Micah felt stronger and larger, firmer and warmer. And with every beat, I felt less substantial, weaker.

I was becoming a ghost. The cares of the world fell away from me and I saw the course of my life with perfect clarity. I saw that every step had been on the same journey, bringing me to this place at this moment with this man. I relived that forgotten glimpse of Micah at my mother’s funeral, reviewed those dreams, and tasted the force of destiny in my life.

I saw the pattern in my dating, my dissatisfaction with all those dark-eyed, dark-haired men, none of whom could hold a candle to Micah. I saw my own impatience with any relationship that was not a perfect communion, and knew what I had been seeking.

This.

Him.

I saw how the past shapes the future, but gained a sense of how the future could shape the past. My life had brought me inexorably to this destination, to this junction, to this destiny.

Who could tell where the adventure would lead from here?

I wanted to know.

And just when it seemed that I would cease to exist for ever, just when it seemed that I was no more substantial than the wind, Micah lifted his head. He bit his own hand, then fitted my mouth to the wound. The blood was salty, not truly to my taste, but he coaxed me to drink of it.

Once I had started, I couldn’t stop. Micah’s blood flooded through me like a draught of starlight. It set me tingling with a physiological change that I knew I would have to analyse later. For the moment, though, there was only the sense that I was changing, becoming something closer to ice and moonlight than before.

I was trading the sun for the moon, in more ways than one. I felt stronger and more vital, purposeful and focused. When Micah made me stop drinking, I believed I truly was invincible.

Finally.

I smiled at him, seeing him fully for the first time. He was larger and darker than I’d imagined, the secrets in his eyes more profound. His skin was finer, his presence stronger, his hair more luxurious. My desire for him had multiplied tenfold.

My gaze was sharper, my ability to perceive detail almost dizzying. All of my senses were heightened and my body was stronger. I flexed my hand, awed by the change. There was so much to learn.

And I had all of eternity.

Then I lifted my arms, astounded to find myself rising above the earth by will alone. I looked down upon the collapsed body of Dr Rosemary Taylor, that mortal shell I needed no longer. She lay on the bank of the creek as if she were sleeping, no more a part of me than the shoes I’d kicked into my closet.

Micah offered his hand and we moved like the wind through the air, the speed leaving me dizzy and disconnected from space and time. I knew where we would go and trusted him to take me there.

Jason awakened to find me by his bedside. He smiled, this thoughtful gem of a boy, trust filling his eyes. I heard the music again, that ghostly waltz, and my throat tightened at its import.

“Would you like to dance, Jason?”

He looked between me and Micah, with uncertainty. “Will it hurt, Dr Taylor?”

“Never again,” I vowed and he searched my gaze as he had once before.

And then he smiled.

“OK.” Jason opened his arms to me.

I smiled and leaned closer, gathering the precious burden of him into my arms as Micah watched. I smelled the death in Jason and my heart swelled that I could give him this gift.

This mercy.

“Listen to the music,” I murmured.

“Pretty,” he said and closed his eyes, his dark lashes thick upon his cheek. He’d never awaken again and I was fiercely glad of that. I bent my head to his sweet neck, tore the flesh and drank until he was gone.

Until he was at peace for ever.

Micah brushed my fingertips across the two puncture marks, showing me how to remove the proof of our presence. His hand was warm over mine, protective. As I stared at Jason, finally so tranquil, I was fiercely glad of the choice I’d made. I had become something new, and was determined to use my power as Micah did.

For mercy.

So, I smiled when Micah took my hand in his and I squeezed his fingers in mine. His eyes glowed with promise.

I went willingly. There was so much to learn, and all the time to do it. I had been waiting for this opportunity and I knew that I – we – would make the most of it.

For ever.