sw-harker

[sw-harker]

lily mountains

When the circumstances were right, dying looked peaceful. 

It could be. There were glimpses of peace even with hands wrapped around your throat or a knife in your gut, moments to be found between the rushes of adrenaline. Mercy knows it well. Whether you’re drained by a biter or torn apart by a pack of lycans, seconds of calm weave between the blind panic and the muscle memory piloting your arms to reload silver bullets. 

Warm memories of her mother. A flower dripping dew into the grass. The smell of lilies.

Mercy’s breath comes ragged and wet.

Dying should be peaceful. Something slow and easy after whatever deed it took gets done. It shouldn’t be the frantic hooves of a horse jostling your cold body held in colder hands. Hands more dead than she would be. 

Esther isn’t gonna let this go. Mercy drags her eyes from the bouncing dirt road and the navy sky slowly growing soft, instead watching the way Esther’s golden hair brushes her shoulders, each loose curl shaking in a different way. Perfect despite the dust and dirt and grime the Oregon deserts and the filth that inhabit the wastelands accumulate and spread as their sole duty. 

It’s not home. Nowhere is as green as it was back home. It’s all deserts and factories out here anymore. The smell of iron and the taste of muck that even finds its way into meat. 

Mercy’s limbs rock uselessly. Not even Esther’s preternatural strength can keep her spurs from clicking together, steel toe boots heavy. Fingers numb. She lolls her head back into Esther’s bicep. The sun will rise soon. 

It will be her final one. There’s no arguing what the slow beat of her heart tells her. Limply, she reaches up and curls her fingers against the rough fabric of Esther’s coat.

Her eyes dart down, bright and frantic, the rich crimson of a freshly fed vampire. Mercy guides her gaze out to the skyline just over the mountains — Esther knows her well, knows to follow where her eyes lead. 

Mercy knows her well, too. 

She ain’t gonna listen.

If Esther doesn’t find somewhere to camp, the fresh morning will take both of them. Mercy gurgles and coughs, sputtering, heaving until Esther’s horse comes to a stop and she’s turned over to spit it on the ground. Flecks spatter Esther’s skin and burn her like cinders from a fire.

“We can — we can —”

Mercy shakes her head. Her vision blurs and turns, her stomach flipping while it can while Esther wraps her into her arms once more and hisses as holy blood drips through her clothes and singes her flesh. She runs frantic, then slows to a jog, and finally stops when they come to a clearing. 

They’re higher up than Mercy thought they were. She can see the sky turning pale, the cloak of night slipping away. The sun will warm her face. 

Esther kneels over her, hands shaking and face pinched, fangs pricking her lips and eyes watering. Mercy turns her palm over in the dirt, wet from this early morning's sprinkling of rain. She thought it was a good omen. Should’ve known better. Esther clutches her close.

“If I gotta die with anyone,” Mercy rasps, throat raw and torn. Esther shakes her head again and again. Unwilling to hear it.

“No. I can — my blood — you can take my blood and you’ll — you’ll heal. You hear me, Mercy May? You’ll heal, dammit!”

Esther makes no move to feed her any. Mercy makes no attempt to keep her mouth closed. 

The amount of consecrated water she drinks has turned her into a walking corrosive. Spit and blood and tears all waiting to burn away the profane. Any of Esther’s  blood would likely boil in her mouth before it had any chance to close her fatal wounds.

Esther holds her hand in hers and brings it to her forehead, rocking slowly. 

“It’s the end, darlin’.” 

She laughs bitter and wet, dark tears rolling across her pale skin and dripping down Mercy’s wrist, as warm as Esther’s fresh kill. 

“Been a long time since I heard that.”

Too long. Mercy laughs, too, a croaking sound that pulls at her guts. Cacti and gold poppies and sharp lilies sprout in the rich soil and jagged rocks in the outcrop Esther’s brought them to. Mercy exhales slowly. Slower now. 

Esther doesn’t know what else to say. It’s like she’s trying to drink in the last of her features, finally looking at the fine lines that started sprouting up around her eyes a few years ago, instead of averting her gaze. She traces one with a delicate finger.

Mercy watches her back. Pretty, even with tears smearing her face and blood dripped across her jaw. As pretty in the moonlight as she once was in the sun. Esther reaches and uncurls Mercy’s palm, using her own hand to tenderly stroke her face as Mercy did before. 

“Lived a long life. For a hunter.” 

“There’d never be,” she pauses, drawing what little breath she can into her lungs. “Enough time with you.”

Esther shakes her head, her face pinched.

Questions flit through Esther’s mind. Mercy’s own may be easing out of focus, but she knows Esther Heartwell as well as herself, and she knows the same, age old question is bugging her — why not let me turn you? Why refuse me?

“Lived a long life. For a hunter.”

“Not you,” Esther whispers desperately. “Not you. You’re all I have.”

A mourning dove coos somewhere else. It waits in its nest, cozy in a pear tree that can’t grow in the unforgiving bushlands she’s taken to roaming for the last eighteen years. 

“It’s my time, darlin’.”

Esther still only shakes her head. Can only hold tighter to a hand that has lost feeling. Mercy blinks slowly. There was no future where she and Esther stayed hunting the creatures of the night as a team. No road they could take together forever, no path that would not fork. Mercy always knew it. Their time was always meant to be temporary. Fiery arguments and passion that burned too hot to keep itself going. 

She rolls her head slightly. Enough for her hat to budge, enough for Esther to get the message. She guides Mercy’s hands once more, giving her the pleasure of settling the flat crowned hat over her curls. 

Handsome, Mercy mouths, her tongue too thick to move. 

Someone calls her name, echoing over a field of green, smelling like lavender and fresh bread. Mercy watches Esther’s face for just a moment longer.