* * * *
Why had he never noticed how green Lucy’s eyes were or how soft her body was? The glow from the sunset turned her eyes to emerald fire. It made the moisture on her silken skin glisten. Shel kissed her again. Lucy tasted like sweet tea and fortune cookies. He was an idiot to have ever doubted her love.
This moment was too precious to shatter with loud words. He had a lifetime with Lucy, to protect her and cherish her the way she was meant to be. Shel pressed his lips close to her ear mouthing the words he needed to say in a delicate whisper, “I love you.” Lucy’s breath caught. He needed her again. Shel began to move.
* * * *
Lucy watched the small boat slow to a stop a few yards from shore. She made out DeLong and a Werewolf she didn’t know. The faint sound of their argument reached her. They seemed to be worried about the book. Lucy stood, brushing the sand from her dress. The fire had died in the rain. They were too late. Shel stood with her as the two Werewolves ran up.
“Where is it? Where’s the book?” DeLong asked. His companion glared at her.
“I burned it.” She looked DeLong in the eye.
“You burned it?” DeLong’s eyebrows rose to his hairline.
“I did.”
“And you let her?” DeLong turned his gaze on Shel.
“Seemed like the thing to do at the time.” Shel slid his arms around her waist. She leaned against him.
“Are you insane?” The unfamiliar Werewolf shrieked, dropping to his knees to claw through the ash.
“Nothing left?” DeLong raised an eyebrow at her.
“Nothing.” Lucy smiled at the Werewolf.
DeLong’s companion stood and glared at her. “I suppose you’ll have a list of rules and demands for us now.” He gave DeLong a dirty look.
Shel’s presence at her back was warm and welcome. Lucy looked the Werewolves in the eye. “No.”
“The Council… No?” He blinked at Lucy. “But Isabel, the book… Her power…”
“I’m not Isabel. And I don’t want any power.” She waited while that sank in.
The Werewolf’s eyes shone with unshed tears in the afternoon sun. He shook his head in wonder. “Thank you.”
Lucy watched him turn and start back to the boat they’d come to the Island in. DeLong watched but didn’t follow right away. He turned back to her and smiled.
“We’re having a barbecue Saturday. Why don’t you and Lucy join us?” DeLong winked at her.
“We’ll do that.” Shel squeezed her shoulder. Lucy put her hand on his and squeezed back.
“Good. The wife wants a word with you about that scratch on her van.” DeLong turned to follow his companion back to their little boat.
* * * *
Night had fallen some time ago. They lay in each other’s arms. Shel shifted, easing his injured arm. He thought about everything that had happened. It seemed strange not to feel the need rising up inside anymore. Shel ran his tongue over his teeth, ordinary now with normal sized canines. The heightened senses were gone as well. He wouldn’t be able to smell Lucy’s presence anymore. Drawing her closer Shel inhaled the scent of her hair, shampoo and sex, and Lucy. With a sigh, he pushed it all away. He would adapt. As long as he had Lucy he could do anything.
Epilogue: Walking On Sunshine
Shel sat on deck watching the brilliant oranges and purples of the tropical sunset. A dark line of thunderheads to the east promised fall rain later. He sipped his after dinner whiskey and listened to Lucy moving around below. It just might be time to think about buying a house. Something close to the marina so he could still take clients out.
It got quiet in the salon. Shel put the glass down on the console and listened. A muffled shriek came from the vicinity of the head. He picked up his glass and drank the rest of the whiskey. A slow smile spreading across his face he ambled down the steps into the salon.
Lucy barreled into him, knocking the air from him in an oof. Shel staggered back a step catching her, wrapping his arms around her as she kissed him. Yes, a house with a fenced yard. And that swing set I saw at the home store.
About Penny Ash
I started trying to write science fiction and fantasy romance stories way back in high school with a friend. We spent hours making up tales involving our favorite characters. We had no idea that others were doing the same thing. We just loved telling stories. Back then my friend and I didn’t know what we were doing was called fan fiction. Fast forward to a fateful night in 2003. Surfing the net for entertainment, I rediscovered fan fiction. A light went on in the dark dusty mental room where I’d stored all those high school stories. I began to think hey, I can do this. I took a deep breath, sat in front of my computer, and began to ask what if. Several truly bad stories later, I got up the nerve to post a story and waited for a response. To my surprise and excitement people read my stories and even better they liked them. I began to learn how to create characters of my own and to plot. Then someone said those magical words, “You should publish this.” I thought “Um, well, why not?” So I sent my first original story in. They lost it. So I sent it again. About six hours later I had my first sale and voila, a career was born. All thanks to the training ground called fan fiction. So thank you fan fiction, I wouldn’t be here without you.
I currently have three books available, Pale Fire, a science fiction romance, Far From Montana, a contemporary suspense romance, and Puca, a fantasy romance. All are available on Kindle.
SUNRISE DECISION, by Anne Phyllis Pinzow
They were all dead leaves; those blood reds varied oranges, brittle browns and spotted yellows as they drifted slowly down outside Sarah’s window, released from their last competitive hold on life by the early morning breeze.
Their beauty made this her favorite time of year as this was her favorite time of day, still too early to really get up, yet, regrettably, too late to go back to sleep but perfect to snuggle into her comforter and slowly contemplate the dawn.
So of course, with persistence, the ringing from her office finally made it through her meditative fog. Barely awake, yet she had to answer the call. Making it to her office, she forlornly looked at the refrigerator. G-d Almighty, it’s not even half past orange juice yet, she thought as she picked up the phone.
This early it had to be someone who thought if their story got in the paper, all their problems would be solved. If this were to be a harbinger of her day, she probably wouldn’t get to drink that elixir of life until noon.
“I want you to do a story about my son,” came the gravelly slightly slurred voice over the phone.
And hello to you too Missus you can’t be polite enough to introduce yourself first, Sarah thought at the immediate demand. Yet it was the nature of her job as a freelance journalist to be courteous at all times and to everyone, no matter what.
“Good morning. Could you please give me your name?” Sarah responded, checking to make sure that her phone line recorder had tape in it and that it was hooked in properly while booting up her computer.
“Why do you need my name? I don’t want to give you my name,” the woman’s tone was more than the usual shyness that most sane people exhibited at the possibility of having their name in 42-point print on the front page of a newspaper.
“Even if your life or reputation would be endangered, I really need your name in order to print your story. Otherwise, I have no proof that I didn’t make it up.”
“I can’t give you my name.”
“I’ll keep it in confidence.”
“No, no, you can have his name though, I think. It doesn’t matter anymore. But not my name, please.”
It had to be the third time in just this week that an anonymous caller tried the ploy. Rule number one, her first editor had drilled into her head, when no name was given, even to be held in confidence, there was no story. No story meant no money and, besides, all these blood sucking time wasters wanted was some attention and mutual misery.
Sarah never drank coffee but it was times like th
ese she wished she did because she could definitely use some of that reputed awakening force.
Well, if the direct approach didn’t work there was always Plan B.
“Could you tell me how you got this number?” She kept it unlisted for a reason.
“Your editor. She said I should talk to you.”
It never failed. Sarah had honestly thought she was done for the week and was looking forward to a nice free day with all her stories emailed off and Ellen sends her another proud mama whose story takes priority over all the work done the other 168 hours of the week.
Thanking another boss who had talked her into caller ID, Sarah quickly typed the number into the reverse telephone directory website.
“Ah, Ellen said you’d be calling me, Mrs. Santos,” this was based on the idea that if she had a son, and given the address on the computer, more than likely this was a married woman.
“But, Rosa, may I call you Rosa, she didn’t say why you’d be calling.” This woman sounded too nervous to realize she had been ID’d or that the question of her identity had been neatly sidestepped.
“George Langron, head of the V.F.W. told me you wrote that article I read about that Army guy home for Memorial Day.”
And now there was the other side of the coin. If it wasn’t a proud mama it was one of those old codgers who have nothing better to do than complain about something no one else gives a damn about. Like just because it gets printed in the newspaper, their baseless opinions mean something.
But, okay, fair is fair, Sarah thought. Proud mama gets points for reading the article, no points for needing someone else to tell her who wrote it. The woman, couldn’t bother to read a byline?
As the call wore on and no calories had entered her system yet, Sarah knew her patience was shrinking as her cynicism was growing.
“And told me to tell you he wants you, you should do an article about my son.”
As if that is supposed to mean something, Sarah thought. But she never insulted a contact, it was bad for her bank account’s health.
She wasn’t even dressed, had not had her orange juice, no heat was coming from the gas heater which meant countless minutes trying to light the pilot. So cold and hungry, Sarah settled in for the interview.
“Who is your son?”
“He’s a Marine, Lance Corporal, a sharpshooter. Sixth platoon, Infantry; He was sent out to Iraq on January 2, 2004 and he’s 19 years old and in April he was in the worst part of the war. The worst part of the whole war was in April. He was in al Falujah. They were going 24/7, running from place to place fighting the bad guys.”
Rosa’s rapid-fire response had been in one breath, her agitation obviously growing with the telling of her tale. But “bad guys?”
The bad guys: Not that Sarah was a fan but from what she had read the “bad guys” thought of Americans as the worse guys, the great Satan as she recalled.
“You mean the insurgents?” she asked. Well, the woman deserved a little put down, but Sarah didn’t think she’d notice.
“Yeah, the bad guys, the ones we’re there to kill.”
Oy vey! This conversation was definitely going to be a challenge to Sarah’s sense of balanced news reporting. Speaking of which, Sarah glanced at the green blinking light on her line recorder. Oh, oh.
“Rosa, just so you know. I’m going to record this conversation. I don’t keep the tapes and they’re only used by me for notes and always recycled but if you don’t want me to record you, just say the word and the tape is off.”
“Oh, you can record, it’s okay. I just want you to write about my son.”
Phew, “So, you were saying…”
* * * *
“The infantry is in the front of our forces, the first ones in. Everyone there supports the infantry. They do the dirty work. You know, they make sure everything is secure, safer.”
Enough had been in the news, on television, even in its highly sanitized state there were few who didn’t know what the infantry did, when they could steel themselves to think about it.
“The end of March, they were relieved from their position. It was then that their lieutenant told them that it was like another Vietnam War. They were in the field, not taking showers for weeks, not able to take time to eat much. Fortunately, they didn’t lose any members of their platoon. They were commended for their work and they killed a lot of bad guys.”
Already Sarah hated this. For one thing, so far, there was no story. Thousands of soldiers, mostly kids were in Iraq. She felt for their families. She supported the military. But this was not a story.
For another reason, talk about tunnel vision. The United States was supposed to be trying to make peace with the “bad guys.” In fact, the United States was supposed to get them to respect the American way of life so that they wouldn’t want to kill everyone who wasn’t a member of whichever tribe was in power.
Was it any wonder it didn’t seem to be working?
“Rosa, can you tell me a little about your son? What’s his name?”
“Oh, yeah, Nicholas. His name is Nicholas and he’s a good boy, a sweet boy. Everyone likes Nicholas.”
Got it. Everyone likes Nicholas, Sarah thought, but she bet the “bad guys” didn’t like Nicholas the sharpshooter very much.
“What did Nicholas do before he joined the Marines?”
“He was on the football team and the wrestling squad but snapped his ankle during wrestling and needed surgery and the doctor told him he couldn’t leave for boot for at least a year so he was delayed for a year to recover before going for three months in South Carolina.”
Obviously proud mama couldn’t get her head un-fixated about the Marines. Already Sarah felt sorry for poor Nicholas.
“Then he left for Camp Lejeune in North Carolina. He was there from the end of December to the following November when they were told they’d be deployed to Iraq. He graduated there with the highest honors as a Lance Corporal, an E3 and as a sharpshooter.”
“So, he joined the Marine Corps right out of High School?”
“No, he joined before.”
“How did he do that?”
“Nicholas is very much into sports. He did baseball, football excellent. There were colleges that wanted to give him full scholarships, but because he hurt his knee, that was a problem. He finished High School and always wanted to go into the Marines but he also wanted to go into football. But I think the Marines overtook him, that’s what he really wanted to do so at 17 I signed him up.”
“Why did he want to go?”
“He always wanted to go but 9/11, that really upset him.”
Sarah could do a study on this, write a book maybe but this still was not a newspaper story and Sarah was about to scream.
“Rosa, is there anything that stands out in your memory about something unusual that your son might have done.”
Sarah needed something to hang this on to make it a story. Please Rosa, please try to think about something other than the Marines and give me just one thing so this isn’t a total waste of my valuable time, she thought.
“He had an active social life, friends, lots and lots of friends. He worked during the summer for the production company of “Stake House” you know that show everybody was watching. It filmed down here sometimes. When he left for the Marines they gave him a picture; the whole cast signed it.”
Sarah was totally under-whelmed. She could just see Ellen’s eyes rolling now, through the phone, too. And Archie, her publisher would spout a million puns over this. Okay, one last shot, when all else fails.
“Is it possible for me to talk to your son?”
”He’s there, in Iraq. He’s going to be there for nine to ten months.”
Duh!!!
“Does he have access to a phone, maybe a computer?” As she kept telling her 86-year-old aunt, this was not World War II. If a soldier had a laptop, he or she packed it in the duffel and took it.
“Yeah, he’s allowed to call sometimes. The last time I talked to h
im he told me, ‘All I have on my mind is what happened on September 11th and Nick Berg and what happened to the children. And that makes me so mad.’ He said, it doesn’t bother him, the job he has to do, killing when it’s either him or them. He said ‘I keep thinking about that, how they’re killing people, their own people. If you’re not here, you really don’t know what it’s like to deal with people in Iraq and the country itself.”
September 11th, unless he was there it’s old news, Sarah’s heart was breaking. The horror of beheadings, still, old news and unless the victim is local, Archie would never print it.
But that last thing that Rosa said, “what happened to the children,” that could be pay dirt, or maybe not, but there was something there, the way Rosa said it.
“What happened to the children Rosa?”
“When he first got there he went to Al-Tawaal in the southern part of Iraq. There was no fighting there then and all they did was walk the streets and met a lot of the children and they used to call him Van Damm because my son is very big and he has beautiful green eyes and he’s real good looking. The Marines would give the kids candy.”
* * * *
Yeah, Sarah had heard this before too.
“My son, he likes kids. He even worked in summer camp teaching them sports just so he could play with the kids.”
So he taught some Iraqi kids to play football? No, there had to be something more. Sarah admonished herself to just let her talk, just let her talk. Well, maybe she needed a little push.
“Rosa, Nicholas likes the children?”
“Yes,” Sarah could hear her sniffling now. “It was just before they were to leave for al-Fallujah. The bad guys came. They had seen my son and his platoon playing with the kids, giving them candy. Oh, he was so upset, so upset. I know it’s all he thinks about.”
Sarah was about to hit something with her phone.
“What is it Rosa?”
“They, the bad guys, about 500 of them. They took all the children in the village, rounded them up with their parents and used them as human shields.”
Yes, Sarah thought to herself, I’m a callous bitch. It was necessary to do her job and at times she was even proud of the distinction. But this still wasn’t news. It had been done before. It was not any worse than using those poor deluded souls as suicide bombers.
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