If

He pushed her, and she died.

Such a silly thing, they weren’t even playing roughly or arguing, but she made an inane remark and he pushed her. Half in fun, half retaliation. She must have been off-balance. Or maybe the heel of her shoe had given way. She staggered.

He could never look at the heel of that shoe and know, yes, there it was broken, any more than he could ask her why she fell. One minute she was there, laughing, snarling – he could no longer remember which – then the table cracked under her weight, a leg splintered, she fell against it and she was gone.

Angelus found him curled into a ball beside the sofa and heaving sobs that rose from within his chest so utterly pure in his misery that there was no need for him to think, no requirement to name the source of his pain even in his own mind. Nothing to do but feel.

Angelus stopped beside him, and then, after a bit, hunkered down.

‘What’s the matter, Will?’

He burrowed his face into his hands. Of all the things he’d ever thought he would do as a vampire, he’d never imagined that one day he would have to tell his sire that Dru was dead.

‘Will, it’s no good leaving me to guess.’ Angelus didn’t say it unkindly. After all, he could be kind if he chose. And he quite liked finding his fledglings in tears – the childishness appealed to him.

So there Angelus was, unthinkingly playing one of his normal games. The last time he ever would be normal again. Will didn’t want to speak so he pointed.

‘What? You broke the table? Oh dear, bad boy. Why the sniffles? Hmm?’ Angelus’s hand stroked a damp lock away from his face. And from under the protection of that broad, strong hand Will looked at where she had died.

There was nothing there. No neat grey pile of dust and ashes. No body lying still and cold and peacefully dead. Just the raw wound of the broken barley-twist table leg and the numb horror of an eternity he would have to live on without her.

Please let Angelus know. Please let him feel it through the magical blood bond of being her creator. Through all the unstoppable power and strength of a master vampire. Being sire.

Angelus stroked Will’s forehead again and Will said ‘Dru just fell against the broken part. She’s gone. It just happened and now she’s gone.’

He waited for Angelus to beat him into the oblivion of unconsciousness. To crack his bones and pound his flesh with the righteous fury of revenge. He had no idea what to do when his sire eased himself down to sit beside him and, resting his head back against the sofa, began to cry.

They had to tell Darla. They had to tell the minions. At one point the postman called with a parcel and Will found himself telling the postman.

‘I am so very sorry. Please accept my condolences.’

Will nodded politely. Go away, he thought, you cannot possibly understand.

Darla called him back into the drawing-room. Someone had cleared the broken table away and then, to try and hide the gap, put a pot plant there. It squatted green and sour smelling, its strangled ribbon leaves bent, dragging across the floor. He sat on the sofa, shoulder rubbing against Angelus’s. ‘What happens now?’

Angelus shook his head, staring off into the eternal distance.

‘What do you mean?’ Darla said.

Will frowned and looked away, at the splashes of sunlight leaking past the curtain onto the floor.

He remembered being busy. He could remember death from when he was alive and it was always busy. There were papers to sort. Letters to write. An endless stream of visitors being very careful not to say anything much at all. Details of the funeral to decide. Mourning dress to be obtained. Making sure that everyone knew so that everyone knew to care. A continuous torrent of business to drown them in the knowledge that in the midst of death they were still alive. They had closed all the shutters and lowered the blinds, but in this house the blinds were always closed already. No funeral to arrange.

Who cared to be told that a dead girl was dead?

He folded over and cried again, because there was nothing else to do.

One night they caught a black-haired whore. Dru had always said that whores tasted of salt.

Angelus was about to kill her when Will, standing in the light of a street-lamp doing the leading-astray in the tight mask of his human face, said ‘Why don’t you come home with us?’

Angelus paused, and gave Will a curious look. Will looked back solemnly, past the whore who was staring at him with rheumy, drunken, living eyes. So they took her home, and they took her apart – one cut at a time for three screaming hours. The three of them doing it together. After all, they were going to have to get used to their number being three now.

‘Are you scared?’ Will demanded. ‘Are you frightened, knowing you’re going to die?’

‘I fear no evil,’ the whore sobbed. ‘Yea, though I walk through the valley of the shadow of death, I will fear no evil.’

‘But what if there’s nothing there?’ Will yelled. ‘What if it’s nothing but dust and ashes?’

‘I fear no evil for I trust in the Lord.’

He dragged the railway spike down through her breastbone, feeling it plough and splinter apart beneath his supernatural strength.

‘So is she in hell? I want there to be a hell because then I can meet her again. If we scream together in unimaginable agony then at least it will be together. But what if there isn’t even hell?’

He dragged his fingers into the bloody furrow. Wrenching the flesh aside, digging. Seeking.

‘What if there is nothing at all?’

The whore’s screams were never loud enough to pierce the silence of no response. Angelus and Darla stood and did not answer his question. Will could hear the blood dripping from the body for hours. But there was still silence, because none of them had any answer to give.

He sat by Angelus and stared into the red heart of the fire. Craving peace but not able to stand being alone. Angelus could read apparently, but then Angelus was always stronger than he was.

The fire was a flickering spike, sliding along a log and reaching up to stab the air. Jabbing and poking at the smoke above it. Scattered beneath it was ash.

‘Do you think we should pack away her dolls?’ Darla asked.

Angelus turned the page of the book. ‘If you think so. Do we need to?’

‘No.’

What would they do with them, Will wondered.

Darla brought her hand up to her face, and then looked away into the corner, as if there was suddenly something very interesting there. ‘We don’t need to deal with them yet. It can wait for now.’

‘Yes.’

How long did ‘for now’ mean? The days and weeks seemed meaningless – time was only something that carried on without her.

‘Will they be thrown away?’ Will said quietly.

Angelus wasn’t looking at the book any more, his eyes were fixed somewhere beyond the page, somewhere that didn’t really have a focus in the room.

‘I don’t know. I can’t decide yet.’

‘Maybe she would have liked for someone else to have them.’

‘Maybe.’

I ought to know, Will thought. If she meant so much to him then he ought to know what she would want done with her most precious things. It should be there at his fingertips, an answer for every question. Who was she? What was she? What did she mean in each and every aspect of her being? Each tiny nuance of her expression, each syllable she had ever uttered. All of her had to be in his mind now because he couldn’t find her anywhere else to ask.

‘What do you think, Will?’ Darla said, and he stared at her blankly because she never asked his opinion on anything.

‘Maybe… the people at the asylum?’ The reply came to him out of nowhere, from the thin air that she had vanished into.

He waited for scorn. Angelus cleared his throat. ‘Do you know, that may not be a bad idea.’

And the flame licked up into the air and burned a little brighter.

‘Well let’s do that then,’ Darla said. ‘But not just yet.’

‘No. Not just yet.’

And afterwards they sat, the three of them who were left together, watching the fire burn on.