The pulse in her wrist stopped beneath my fingertips.
“Nanna?” I shouted over rumbling thunder as I repeatedly patted the back of her hand. “Nanna!”
Time slowed and the roaring wind blocked out all other sound, making the moment surreal, like a movie I was watching instead of living. I saw Dr. Faulkner use his hands like electric paddles to zap Nanna’s chest, making her lifeless body jerk. Tristan’s dad ran over to us as if in slow motion, abandoning his throne to kneel on the soaked sponge that the moss had become, joining Dr. Faulkner’s attempts. Their combined energy made Nanna’s upper body lift several inches off the ground with each electrical jolt, then land with a small splash in the growing puddles beneath us. I tried to think of something I could do to help, but Clann rules had forbidden my family to teach me anything about magic. I wasn’t yet a full vampire, either, so I couldn’t turn Nanna into an immortal. Despite all the fears of both the vamp council and the Clann regarding what I might be able to do someday, the reality was I was powerless to save even my own grandma. All I could do was cause destruction and the threat of another war between the species.
And make dumb decisions that resulted in my grandma fighting for her life in the woods during a storm.
Mr. Coleman and Dr. Faulkner fell into a rhythm as a two-man team, taking turns zapping her chest, checking her pulse and blowing air into her mouth. I lost all sense of time as they worked for minutes that could have been hours, the rain soaking through their clothes and hair and eventually pouring in tiny streams down their arms.
Nanna never woke up.
Eventually, the men’s hands withdrew from Nanna’s too-still body. Dr. Faulkner was saying something to me. But I couldn’t hear him.
“What?” The dreamlike feeling of shock drained away, leaving me soaked and chilled to the bone. Only then did I realize the wind had died down again and it was only my blood rushing in my head that was causing the roaring sound in my ears. “Is she all right?”
I reached past Mr. Coleman to pat Nanna’s cool cheek, willing her to wake up. “Nanna? Can you hear me? Come on, Nanna, you’ve got to wake up. I’ve got to get you home now and into some dry clothes. Wake up, Nanna. Come on, wake up!”
Her eyes remained closed.
I circled around Mr. Coleman, kneeling so I could lift her head and shoulders and cradle them in my lap. She was still asleep, but she would wake up soon. I just needed to elevate her head, help her breathe easier. All she needed was a little time to come around.
I looked up at the sky, ignoring the flock of crows beneath their umbrellas still lingering at the edges of the clearing. At least the storm seemed to be passing. The thunder and lightning had eased, and the rain was coming down in actual raindrops again instead of a waterfall. That was good. Dad could carry Nanna back to the car now. We’d get her home and into a hot shower to warm her up, then into some dry clothes. She’d tell me how to fix her a cup of hot tea the way she liked it using some of her homegrown mint leaves….
A heavy paw of a hand rested on my shoulder.
I looked up at Mr. Coleman, but he was too blurry to see clearly no matter how much I blinked. All I could make out was his bushy white beard.
“I’m so sorry, Savannah. We tried everything. But…she’s gone.”
“No.” She wasn’t. She was just asleep. Raindrops splattered over Nanna’s cheeks again, gathering in the deep laugh lines at either side of her mouth, and I wiped them dry.
“Savannah, it is too late,” Dad said, standing at my other side. “There is nothing else we can do.”
“No.” I shook my head, staring at Mr. Coleman, willing him to help me. “Use your powers—”
“We did,” Mr. Coleman said.
“Then try something different!” I turned to Dr. Faulkner. Why was I the only one here still fighting for Nanna’s life? He fixed people for a living and he was a descendant. He had to be able to heal her. “You’re a surgeon. Can’t you go in and magically repair her heart?”
He shook his head. “I tried that. But I wasn’t fast enough. There was years’ worth of damage to the tissue. She must have had heart troubles for a long time now. Didn’t she say anything to you?”
I stared down at Nanna’s face, at her chest that refused to rise or fall. She had kept so many secrets. She hadn’t even told me about my family’s past until I was fifteen.
But why keep this secret? If she’d only told us, we could have done something to help her get better, made her lay off the fatty fried foods or helped her work out or something. Didn’t they have surgeries and transplants for this kind of thing?
I tried again, asking both Mr. Coleman and Dr. Faulkner at the same time. “But you can still fix it. You can do a spell or—”
Mr. Faulkner shook his head again. “We can only do so much. We can’t bring the dead back to life. At least, not with a soul—”
“Then bring her back without one!” I said, my hands aching to slap him. He was just refusing to help because we were outcasts, because I was a half-breed. “She’s my grandma! You killed her. Do whatever you have to do, but bring her back!”
“No.” Mr. Coleman’s tone was final. “We don’t do that. It’s against Clann law to create zombies. And that’s all she would be, a zombie, no personality, no true life within her. Just an animated corpse. Is that what you want, what your grandmother would want?”
I almost said yes, but the words choked in my throat. Nanna would be horrified and furious if she could hear us now. She couldn’t stand to watch zombie movies and refused to read books about them. Even if I could convince the Clann to bring her body back to life, it was useless if it wouldn’t really be her again.
“Please, there has to be something….” I whispered, staring down at the tiny wrinkles in Nanna’s thin eyelids. I stroked her soft cheeks, then stopped as I realized she was already turning cold and losing her color.
No. This couldn’t be happening. She couldn’t be gone.
“I’m sorry. But there’s nothing more we can do,” Mr. Coleman murmured. “I swear, if we could bring her back for you, or undo what’s been done here today, I would make that happen. But even descendants have limits.”
So that was it then. Like me, even with all their supposed power, the Clann could only take Nanna’s life, not bring it back. Nanna was really gone. I’d gotten here too late to save her after all.
And now I had to say goodbye.
“Nanna,” I whispered, the ocean of ache in my chest spreading over my body to make my limbs so heavy I could hardly move. The ache bubbled upward, rising to fill my throat and burn my eyes and the inside of my nose, until I felt sure it would push right through my skull. If I had been standing, it would have knocked me over like a tidal wave. But I was already on my knees, and all it could do was bend me in half over my grandmother’s body and leave me gasping for air.
I wrapped my arms around Nanna, lifting her to me in a one-sided hug, remembering all the times she used to hold me in her lap and rock the both of us in her rocking chair when I was little. And how she used to kneel just like this on her knees day after day, despite her joints getting creaky and popping with age, so she could talk to the herbs and fruit plants she so carefully tended in our backyard. It was the last time I would ever hold my grandma, the woman who had helped raise me, who at times had been there for me even more than my own mother.
She was gone. Because of me.
“I’m so sorry, Nanna.” I couldn’t say it enough. A lifetime of apologies wouldn’t make up for what I’d done.
“Savannah,” Mr. Coleman said. “Please accept my deepest apologies for your loss, and also pass on my condolences