She steps toward me, tensed as if waiting for a blow, and for a moment I wonder if I'm hallucinating. Is she a ghost? A haunting? Emily is different than I remember, more animal now than woman, but I feel our shared blood pulsing between us like an electric wire. There is a feral grace to her posture. A wildness that was always there and has finally come into full bloom, erupting into the light of darkness.
God, how I love her.
I bear my fangs and hiss, "He's mine."
A shocked look crosses her face. "Since when is anyone yours, sister?"
"Since now."
"As you wish. I didn't realize I was hunting your boyfriend."
"He's not my boyfriend." She raises an eyebrow. My hood has fallen back and my bare face, no doubt, reveals all my uncertainty. "He's . . . um, he's a writer," I say, as if this will elicit sympathy.
"Just what the world needs, another vampire book."
"He's not writing about vampires."
"Zombies? The end of the world? The fiction today is utterly detached from reality."
"Some would question your sense of reality."
She smiles. "Touché'"
Bewildered, I look at William. He is unconscious. Gently, I run my hand across his forehead and brush the hair off his face. "What did you do?" I demand.
"I was waiting for the right moment when suddenly that little blind fellow darted in front of him, entangling him in the lead. The man stumbled back and fell, dashing his head against the gravestone of Thomas Wolfe, no less. I must say he's not as strong as I thought, to be felled by such a small creature."
"Why didn't you kill him?"
"That ungodly howling caused me to hesitate. I would have silenced the noisy fox, but I never kill canines. I heard you coming and didn't want our reunion to take place over a corpse. I knew it would offend your delicate sensibility."
"How did you know it was me?"
She looks away. "I've been here a while."
"How long? Have you been watching me?"
"So many questions, sister, for a graveyard and a fallen man. I'll make it short. I've been looking for you and Branwell and the trail led me here."
"Branwell?" Unease crawls up my spine. And guilt. I haven't seen my brother since I was newly turned and we didn't part under the best of circumstances.
"Yes, well his trail has gone cold, but I smelled you in the woods and knew I was close."
"Did you kill those girls?" I am afraid of her answer.
She looks at me perplexed. "I only hunt males. I like my blood strong."
"No one is stronger than a mother."
"Oh, Anne," she says in a sad whisper.
Carefully, I move William off the cold gravestone to a soft bed of grass away from her. He is heavier than I would have thought. There's a density to his bones I didn't expect. Rage wells up in me and the sudden urge to rip out my sister's throat hits. So much havoc she's wreaked and so little shame.
I cradle him in my arms. Woody is glued to his side, still trembling, but less so. My presence comforts him. I long to stroke William's skin, to feel its warmth beneath my fingers. I want to run my tongue up his neck and know his taste, but Emily is watching.
"Anne," she says, regaining my attention. "It was my hope that you would be happy to see me. With such an exceptional heart as yours, I thought you might . . ." She tries to finish, then gives up, turns and peers into the darkness. Her white neck is a taut curve. I fear she will vanish as she did before, and I'm not sure what is worse: condemned to kill in darkness by the one I love or abandoned to walk in darkness alone.
She frightens me, but I don't want to lose her again.
Though Emily was a year ahead of me, as girls we were like twins. How I worshipped and loved her, as much as my own flesh—nay, more. Far more. She could read my thoughts without my speaking. She knew them by the turn of my chin or the glint of my eye. When we looked out upon the world, we saw the same things: raw beauty and mystery, stories, and clouds, and moors. It was as if our every thought and feeling hummed along an invisible current, experienced by us both, connecting us like soul mates.
We grew into young women and I took her place at Roe Head when she, the strong one, could not physically survive being away from home. Then I, the fragile one, went on to Blake Hall and Thorpe Green in search of independence, refusing to cave to my loneliness and despair. Striving to win my employer's approval, and failing, always failing, but still refusing to return home vanquished.
Emily called me a martyr. Claiming I wanted to die on the cross of my sacrifice in the service of soft, rich imbeciles. Would that make God happy? she asked. Is that the God you believe in? He's not my god, she said. My god is freedom and strength, not chains and misery. My god is power, not castration.
Needless to say, it was a painful separation.
While I worked as a governess, Emily stayed behind, roaming the moors for hours each day, attuned to every tremor in the air, every shade of grey in the sky, all the while sinking deeper into fantasy, lost in her tales of beloved Gondal—an obsession as tough to quit as Bran's alcohol. As I spent years amidst strangers and wealth, with barely a moment to myself, she spent years swallowed by solitude and freedom, disappearing for great lengths of time into the moors, protected we hoped by her faithful mastiff Keeper and her own indomitable strength. In time, her will turned akin to the landscape, not above or beside it, but within it—fierce and implacable.
Her Gondal stories became increasingly violent. Brutal. Full of vengeance, betrayal, and torture. But as they increased in harshness, she showed them to me less and less, until my creative confidante became an utter mystery and shut the door on me once and for all.
I lost her before she ever died.
"Emily . . ." I search for the right words. Such masters we once were and yet how they fail us! I'm dizzy with anger and love. She was my best friend in all the world, but as I grew warmer, she grew cold. As I grew kinder, she grew hard. She grew toward darkness as I grew toward light, and then she turned me, punishing me for some wrong I still don't understand!
My own sister sentenced me to darkness. She tried to kill William. Finally, I have found someone, been kissed, and my sister tries to kill him. I don't know whether to take her in my arms or strike her.
Not a single person have I ever loved more than her.
How could she leave me?
"You caught me off guard, but believe me when I say I'm glad to see you," I say. "I didn't know if you were dead or alive. To see you is an immense relief." She frowns ever so slightly, and I inwardly cringe at my choice of words. Relief? It's so much more than that. "However" —I look at her directly, wanting her to understand— "that doesn't erase the fact you tried to kill my friend. He's an honorable man. Why would you choose him?"
"He's clean. I like clean blood."
Strong, clean, male blood. My stomach tightens.
"Did you attack those hunters? The night before last?"
A slow smile spreads across her face. "The young one was a fighter. Lucky for him I'd had my fill." Her smile fades. "You interrupted me that night as well. You are a bit of a killjoy."
"There is no joy in killing. Especially people in their prime." I place my hand on William's chest and stare at her. His heart throbs against my palm. With each beat, my anger grows. "If you hurt him, I will never forgive you. It is a vow I make with the dead as my witness."
"So little forgiveness in your heart for such a devout girl."
"A great deal of time has passed since you abandoned me to the night." She turns her head in denial. "We are both altered. You must leave, Emily. An Alpha is here, hunting girls. One of them was killed in daylight."
Her body goes rigid. "A Day Walker! Have you seen him?"
"Only his handiwork."
"Why in God's name are you still here?"
"I'm leaving soon."
"An Alpha cares nothing for your version of 'soon.' The only way for you to escape is to run immediately. God, Anne, you're an Alpha's dream. You must leave. Now."
I feel the heat of William's body beneath my hand. The rise and fall of his chest. I won't leave him like this. "I'm not going anywhere," I say, suddenly defiant. "I was here first."
"Since when have you become so territorial?"
This takes me aback. Since I came to this town. Since Dana and Lucien and William. Since William kissed me.
Emily looks at me with glittering eyes. "I won't hurt your pet, but I'm going to stay around for a while. You need my protection."
"I've survived this long without you. You weren't worried about that when you left me alone with Branwell."
"He's our brother. I didn't think he would hurt you."
"You didn't think about much, did you?" Disgusted, I pull out my phone and call 911.
"What are you doing?"
"Calling an ambulance."
"You have a phone?"
"Of course I have a phone. I have a job. When you have a job, you need a phone."
"A job?" She wrinkles her nose in distaste. "Our kind doesn't work. We're free. What is this persistent fascination you have with work? I would have thought you'd be over it by now. Really, Anne, you don't let go, do you?"
I gaze at her in disbelief. She stands beneath the moonlight, glowing like a nocturnal goddess. If I am the gentle doe, she is the jaguar, strong and proud. All her awkwardness is gone and with a wrenching heart I realize there is the Emily of before and the Emily of now and they are not the same. My sister has taken to the night as a wave takes to the shore. For her, there is no great struggle. No moral dilemma. Merely the inevitability of nature taking its predestined course. She's shed her human skin and with it the precepts of humanity to be reborn into a perfect, shining animal.
They were right all along.
I remember like yesterday when Emily released her masterpiece to the world. So much trust she placed in tiny Charlotte, who, with the stamina of a gladiator and the will of an emperor, finally convinced Emily to relinquish her work. The reviews were damning. Emily had bared her heart and soul, poured out her innermost desire onto the page, only to be met with outrage and shock. They said she was godless. Barbaric. Savage. Oh. how I defended her, even though Wuthering Heights filled me with dread. How ignorant they all were, I declared. What small, frightened minds they had.
Wuthering Heights was hellish, I knew, but not Emily. It had nothing to do with Emily.
But now I see it. She is savage. It was there all along, abiding. Coursing like a subterranean current beneath the skin, emerging for moments in stories and poems and Heathcliff until the turning set it free. Branwell did this to her. He claimed he couldn't allow the world to lose such a genius. Even then, I knew he was lying. He didn't care about the world. Only himself. He just couldn't bear to lose his sister.
How has our love caused so much damage?
I tear my gaze off her, back to William. He should be waking by now. Gently, I palpate his skull, feeling for deformity and searching for the sense of blood welling beneath the scalp. This loss of consciousness is beyond concussion. A bleed must exist in some part of his brilliant mind. The thought is terrifying. Instinctually I sink my teeth into his wrist and drink, oblivious to my sister, aware only of the thick, pulsing life that coats my tongue with warmth.
Through a fog of want, I hear Emily whisper my words:
I have flown to waken thee, for if thou wilt not arise, then my soul can drink no peace from these holy moonlight skies.
I'm starving and his blood is strong and clean and beautiful. I feel the heat of it streaking down my core. I suck desperately, my body clenching and warming, wanting more, needing more, when an image of Christ rises up, burning white hot like a nuclear blast. I pull away, panting.
I will put others before myself. I will sacrifice.
Emily watches silently. William rests in my arms like a fallen prince. Pale and still as the Pietà. I bite into my lip hard, so that our blood may mingle in my mouth, and kiss him deeply so that he may know our blood together on his tongue, down his throat, healing his flesh, erasing all injury.
Sirens howl across the night like lonesome wolves, yet my lips linger. I want more. More blood and flesh. More heat. Life. He's healing and I'm falling into sensation, foreign and utterly forceful.
"If you're not careful," Emily says, "you're going to turn him."
With a start, William wakes to find me kissing him.