There wasn't an ending. Not for a long time.
She waited a couple days after the end of the full moon but Veruca never returned to their room. Silence and the gathering, thickening, gloaming of dust.
So for an ending, Tara has to go back to the last time she saw Veruca. Second day of the full moon, the height of it, and she was sitting cross-legged on her bed, reading Marge Piercy for Intro to Women's Lit. Veruca came barreling into the room. She always bounded and clattered, wherever she went, the air around her fragmented and syncopated, faster-moving. Her own climate.
Tackled Tara, pushing her back onto her pillow, head banging against the wall and she smelled like everything Tara is supposed to be afraid of.
Blood, soil, men, water, lymph, grass. Everything elemental, sperm and spit and more blood. Always more blood.
Veruca was laughing, squirming above Tara, one knee pushing Tara's legs apart. Laughing like water, like coming, her hair scratching, rasping, over Tara's face.
"You're okay," Tara said, because she worried.
"Better than that." She kissed Tara's neck, licked the veins there, drew the tip of her tongue like a scalpel over the hollow of Tara's throat. "Fanfuckingtastic, baby."
"Tell me --" *Where you were, what you did, why you smell like men, like sex, why you left me alone.*
She used to go watch Veruca sing. She'd stand in the back, arms wrapped around her waist as she swayed. Like that, listening to Veruca then, the last time, wrapped up in Veruca's hot breath on her face, her fingers climbing like kitten's claws up under Tara's skirt, over her thigh, as Veruca panted and gasped and told her, told her everything. Told her about hunting and fucking, dark of night and light of the moon, and *you know what it's like, don't you, baby? Letting the monster go, going with the demon, finding a friend? You know just what it's like.*
Tara did know. Does.
It's why she loved Veruca, why she listened and watched and kissed back. Why she'd crawl on her knees to bite and lick her way up Veruca's long thin leg, soft golden hair on the calf, sparser on her thigh, why she'd use her extra inches and pounds to push Veruca over onto her face and spread her legs.
Why she wasn't allowed to be jealous.
Because she was, she is, a demon herself. Only a matter of time.
"You'll like him --" Veruca wrapped her fingers in a lock of Tara's hair and tugged. "You'll love him. Small and beautiful and *fuck* if he doesn't know how to work his tongue --"
Tara wanted to cry. All this gritty heat clogged her chest, crawled like lice and maggots up the back of her throat, but Veruca kept rocking and whispering and when she kissed Tara and Tara tasted blood and love and milk, spicy-sweet, Tara forgot to cry. Kissed back, let Veruca pull her head back, let the heat build and thicken, past tears, toward then into desire.
She'd do anything.
Veruca was the first woman who looked at her like her mom had, with love and interest. She was a monster, just like Tara, and impetuous and foolish and loud, jangly as cheap bracelets and Tara watched out for her, guarded her, cared for her the best she could. She was a clutch of nerves under that sharp beautiful face, tangle of hair and small hands that told secrets inside Tara's body.
That was the last time.
It wasn't an ending.
Veruca wanted to get outside before sunset, go find her wolfboy, and Tara had class and when she got back to the dorm room, it was already dark. She thought she'd see Veruca in the morning, with the man in tow.
Veruca never came back. Her stuff stayed on her side of the room and Tara slept in her bed under the ruby-red quilt. She knew better than to call the police. She wanted to, though.
By the time Willow first came to visit, Tara had rearranged the room. It was after Christmas break, and she cried as she pulled the beds together, dragged the extra desk into the hall, hung new tapestries. When Willow stepped inside, the room looked like a single, like a refuge, like a place to hide and to heal. Willow needed that as much as Tara did. She was small as Veruca, quiet and sad, and Tara thought of a robin with a broken wing.
Willow wasn't Veruca. Too quiet, too scared, but she crackled with power when they did spells. The air around her then was burnt, flashing with yellow light, and that was almost enough. Never the same, but the power around them was almost like Veruca's feral climate.
Willow kissed like a girl, shy and soft. Veruca kissed like a woman, like a demon. Tara had to hold back with Willow, touch her with stuttering fingers, care for her, never scare her.
Willow wasn't the end, either. She was an interval, a lovely soft scared little thing who barely knew her own power.
The end only came when Oz's nostrils flared, white and mean, and he started to leap. Air pushed before him, fast and rich, blood-sperm-spit-passion, and Tara couldn't, wouldn't, run. She closed her eyes and it was the last scent of Veruca, it was knowledge full of pulsing blood and cruelty, it was knowing what he'd done to Veruca. Ripped her throat open, and Tara's head fell back, offering.
It was the end.
It should have been.