'Til Death Do Us Part

CHAPTER TWELVE

Eliza and Tomas

“They are gone or they are dead, Eliza, how much longer must we walk around this dead city?” Tomas asked.

Eliza was about to answer when a woman clutching a bottle of amber liquid stumbled out of her house. “Are you that bitch?” Mary yelled.

“Well, well what do we have here?” Eliza said bemused as she strode over the lawn towards Mary.

Mary’s booze-induced bravado barely held up as Eliza stood face-to-face with the woman. But she stood defiant in the face of death. “You are…aren’t you? I can smell the stench of death all around you.”

“What do you know of me?” Eliza asked Mary out of curiosity.

“You’re not smo bad!” Mary slurred, trying to stand up taller, hoping her slight height advantage would somehow intimidate the smaller woman. But what Eliza lacked in size she more than made up for in intimidation.

“Oh, I can assure you that I am,” Eliza said.

“That Talbot fellow…he was all petrified of you. I don’t see why,” Mary said, taking a huge swig of the bourbon she was clutching.

“Where is he?” Tomas asked, suddenly interested in the conversation.

“He’s dead!” she shouted, swinging the bottle, some of the fire water sloshing out.

“And you know this for a fact?” Eliza asked, a smirk on her face.

“The big black man and his own brother said so. They’re all dead!” she shrieked.

“BT is dead?” Tomas asked saddened.

“I’d imagine,” Mary answered.

“You don’t know?”

“How the fruck would I know, do I look like a psychic?” she said, taking another swig. “I’m just glad they took the old bat with them.”

“Deneaux was with them?” Tomas asked.

“Fucking witch. Now she was scary,” Mary replied.

“How long have they been gone?” Tomas asked.

“Who the hell are you?” Mary asked, taking another swig.

“I am her brother.”

“Lucky you,” Mary said sardonically.

“Did they say where they were going?” Eliza asked.

“Why?” Mary asked suspiciously.

“Why did you not leave with them?” Tomas asked.

“It’s not safe out here, not safe at all for my Joshie.”

Eliza looked past Mary. “A child perhaps?” Eliza asked.

“He’s not in there!” Mary said loudly when she realized she may have said more than she intended.

“So you who thought the world was too dangerous for your spawn, sent him away? Then opened your door to challenge me? How has your kind survived for so long?”

“My kind? What are you? I didn’t believe any of that horseshit about you being a vampire.”

“Well that was your second mistake,” Eliza said, effortlessly pushing Mary aside so she could enter the house.

***

Mary began to scream as Josh’s body flew down the stairs, to slam against the far wall, then crumple in a heap at the bottom of the stairs.

“The whelp is dead!” Eliza said hotly as she came down the stairs.

Mary dropped her bottle and fell to the floor to wrap her arms around her son. “He was sleeping!” she screamed. “You’ll hurt him!”

Tomas stood in the doorway; he could smell the death on the child and madness upon the mother. Eliza had not done it, he was thankful for small favors.

Eliza stepped over the huddled family and walked past Tomas to get back outside.

Tomas thought there might yet be hope for his sister that she had not killed the mother then he realized quite the opposite was true, she had left the mother alive to mourn over the loss of her son. Her cruelty was not bound by any depths.