pride and prejudice and zombies:: dreadfull ever after

Part 7

CHAPTER 7

The first thing Darcy became aware of was the fact that he was aware. This was a change of pace.

All was blackness and had been ever since ... something. Somewhere. Some when. The difference now was that he knew the blackness for what it was. He remembered the possibility of light.

His consciousness dragged itself from the abyss a little more, enough for him to feel surprise that he was alive. If this was living.

A nameless dread stirred deep within him. If he wasn't alive, then what was this? Damnation? Limbo? What else was there that wasn't life but wasn't death?

An image flashed into his mind, obliterating all thought: a steak and kidney pie, the crust golden brown and steaming, the minced center bloody and raw and liberally garnished with ... were those fingers?

His stomach growled.

His eyes opened.

Still, all was black.

No. Not all black. The more he stared into it, the more he could make out black-black and gray-black and brown-black in patterns that remained indistinct yet strangely familiar. There was a comforting quality to it all. It felt almost like home.

Surely, he was home, for out of the corner of his eye he noticed the outline of a slender woman at his bedside. She had dark hair and dark eyes and seemed to be wearing the black mourning dress of a widow. Or a widow-to-be.

"Elizabeth."

He reached out and took her by the hand ... a cold, bony hand that could belong to his wife only if she'd spent the past week fasting in an ice house.

Darcy tried to snatch back his hand, but skeletal fingers clamped tightly over his.

"It's all right, Fitzwilliam. You're safe. You're with me."

The woman leaned closer, her face piercing a stray shaft of moonlight cutting through the room, and Darcy found himself holding hands with Lady Catherine's daughter, his cousin, Anne de Bourgh.

She looked as gaunt and sallow as the last time he'd seen her. Exactly as gaunt and sallow, in fact. She hadn't changed a bit in the past four years. She was a ghostly, ghastly, listless little thing, and at one time Darcy would've guessed that the slightest breeze from a drafty window would be enough to puff her into the afterlife. She'd obviously managed to survive if not thrive, however, carrying on in her immutable, enervated way, like an old tortoise or a spindly tree.

"You have nothing to worry about anymore," she said. "Nothing to fear."

Her words only served to remind him what he did have to fear, even if the details remained hazy. He brought his free hand up to his neck. The bandages were still there. "I wish I could agree with you."

"Oh, but you should. Even the strange plague is no match for Lady Catherine the Great."

"You know what's happened to me, then?"

Anne nodded, her eyes filled with compassion rather than the revulsion Darcy would have thought his due.

"Yes. I know. It doesn't bother me. We're all family here."

At last Darcy realized where here was and why it had seemed so familiar. He had awakened in a bed he knew well—the one in his favorite guest room at Rosings. The memory of his last conversation with Elizabeth came to him then as well. Darcy found himself eager to forget it again.

He managed to free his hand from his cousin's icy grip. The fingers had gone numb.

Anne retreated, and her features were swallowed by darkness, turning her again into little more than the muddled outline of a woman. In a way, that was how Darcy was used to seeing her—though the shadows in which his cousin eternally dwelled had, in the past, been cast mainly by her mother.

"Is Georgiana here?" he said. "I ... I seem to remember that she was with me during the journey from Derbyshire. I should very much like to speak with her."

"She's asleep. She has been for hours."

"What time is it?"

Anne's silhouette shifted, seemed to grow and then contract.

She was shrugging.

"Three? Four? I can't remember the last time I heard chimes from downstairs."

"Three or four? What are you doing in my room?"

Anne giggled. The coquettishness of it caught Darcy off guard. He'd known this woman all her life, yet her laughter seemed like something new and strange to him.

"I'm watching over you, silly," she said.

"Aren't you tired?"

"Always ... and never. Sleep hardly seems to make a difference. I certainly haven't missed it tonight."

"It was very kind of you to keep vigil. You need not trouble yourself any longer, however. I think I'll sleep all the more soundly in solitude."

"I understand." Anne rose to go. "I will always be near if you need me. You can rest assured of that."

She bent over Darcy and brushed his forehead with lips that were as cold as her hands. It was like being kissed by a granite slab. Then she turned and left without making a sound.

She was so quiet, in fact, and the room was so dark that Darcy couldn't be sure she'd really gone. Indeed, her presence seemed to linger in the air, hovering like the must of mold and decay in a cobwebbed attic. No matter how long he lay there, perfectly still, perfectly silent, Darcy couldn't quite feel he was alone.

Anne had promised to stay near him, and somehow Darcy knew she meant it. It did not, however, help him "rest assured."

He didn't sleep again all night.