End of the Knight
by Lorelei Sieja
Nick knelt down silently beside her bed. She lay very still, only a shadow of the vibrant woman he had loved all these years. Her once vibrant auburn hair , now thin and quite gray, graced the soft blue satin of the pillowcase.
Tenderly, he pressed his lips to the gnarled, wrinkled hand of his beloved. For sixty-two years she had been an integral part of his otherwise cursed existence. Now, on the eve of her hundredth birthday, he was going to lose her.
He thought back to the first time they had met. He was a corpse in a body bag , delivered to the coroner on duty- one Natalie Lambert. She had witnessed his miraculous healing, his blood-thirst, and then, she had resisted his attempts to wipe her memory.
For several years he had grieved for her, for the dark and lonely path her life had taken because of him. But Natalie was his rose, at once fragrant, beautiful, enduring, and protected on a stem of thorns. She had survived. She had flourished. And when he had stopped trying to shelter her, when he had allowed their relationship to develop, she had become his one joy, his reason for existing.
They had had a good life together. She never stopped trying to find a cure for him. As she aged, and he did not, eyebrows raised among their neighbors. Eventually, they were forced to move on, as vampires often do, but she had gone with him.
After Toronto they bought a large farmhouse in western Minnesota, surrounded by three hundred acres of cropland. Here they had raised their family, in relative peace. They adopted five children, four boys and a girl, the survivors of a housefire that had claimed the lives of their parents and youngest brother.
Nick could still see their vacant faces, their large, haunted eyes. He shared their fear of fire. It was one of the few forces more powerful than the curse of vampirism.
He and Nat tried everything to help the children- time, patience, counseling, medication, ...until Nick finally told them the truth about himself. He'd shared with them a little about his own childhood- in the thirteenth century. He told them about his fear of fire.
What seemed to worry the children most, was that they had been unable to say good-bye to their parents. So, Nick had suggested that they write down their good-byes on paper. He helped the little girl, since she couldn't write. And he had written to the parents as well, promising to take good care of their children, and asking them to pray for him. Then they gathered all their love notes into a wooden box.
They took the box out into the yard and burned it. The children watched with fascination as the small, controlled flame charred the box, transforming their messages into smoke, and carried them into Heaven.
The children had grown, and married, even their children had grown. Not one had ever betrayed the family secret, that their adopted father and grandfather, was still a vampire.
They had all come this past week, knowing that Natalie's health was failing. Now, they were gone, back to their busy lives, rich and full of mortal problems. And Nick felt strangely at peace. He knew what would happen.
His wish would be granted at last. The way to mortality that Janette had discovered by accident, would finally be his salvation.
He rose, and went to the window, drawing back the curtain. The distant horizon glowed with the first pink rays of the new day, while night still lingered overhead. A soft smile touched his lips. How appropriate for Nat to have held on all night, to breath her last at the dawn of his new life.
Nick went back to her, and lay down beside her. He gathered her into his arms, and kissed the top of her head once more.
Her eyes fluttlered once and opened. She smiled at him. "My Knight," she whispered.
And that was it. She breathed out, her body turned cold. And Nick felt her spirit depart. And he wept.
Not tears of grief. Not tears of blood. He wept for joy. They had had a good life together. He had lived according to the laws of God and Man, and now, he would live out his last days on Earth, as a mortal.
