by F. E. Arliss
Knowing she had to make a choice and soon, Remi took a look at the suits. Bad energy radiated from the group. All of the suited group had shades of red hair, and in the wavering light of the lantern it appeared like blood coagulating around a wound, causing her nape-skin to squirm in distrust just as it did with her father’s cartel buddies. Who knew red hair could be so off-putting when seen enmasse. Normally, she loved red hair. Nothing was normal about that group.
Turning towards the man that had used his command-voice on her, Remi gave him a good hard look. He seemed a little shocked that his voodoo-juju command hadn’t worked on her, as his mouth had opened just a tad and he had rotated his large head to look at the woman beside him in a questioning manner.
Remi didn’t bother to hesitate any further. She simply walked towards them and when the huge man stepped forward and swirled her against him in one sweeping elegant move, she gasped, shocked at his strength. For a brief moment her temple was pressed against his ice-cold jaw. Aware of the tips of his long nails pressing into her arms, she held stock still.
Within a split second she was released into the arms of the woman she’d admired and then whirled in an effortless dance through the small knot of dark shapes to the empty street behind.
As she passed through the group, glimpses of pale faces, large bald heads, unusually large, popping veins, long claws, and a strange, sickly-sweet smell of must, moldy blood, iron and spice assailed her in a kaleidoscope of impressions.
The tall woman released her, gave her a gentle push and said, “Run to safety. Quick as you can.”
Remi smiled into the woman’s amber eyes, said, “You’re magnificent,” then ran for her life.
Chapter Three
Hallucinations
The next morning Remi woke in her hotel room, safe. She surfaced from a disturbed sweaty sleep, her head aching. A large glass of water and two aspirin helped a little, but still...what the f__k!
Showering and changing into a clean pair of Levis, a cashmere turtleneck and pulling on her Jeffrey Campbell pearl-studded biker boots, Remi went in search of a filling breakfast and some clarity in the light of day. Two eggs, toast and three cups of black tea later, she felt a bit better.
The night before seemed like a twisted dream and though she somehow knew it was real, her logical mind kept shoving that notion away. Back in her room she shrugged into her vintage Dior turquoise cashmere coat with its enormous Mongolian lamb hot-pink collar and as she pulled it up around her neck, a whiff of musty metal scent tugged at her nostrils. This had been the scent of the group from the night before. It hadn’t been a dream. Or a hallucination. It had been real.
That cold hard fact had Remi scurrying out of the hotel and down the street to the Musee d’Orsay. There was nothing like beauty to drive away confusion and fear and settle peace in her heart. Settling in front of Monet’s Blue Water Lilies, a painting that never ceased to fill her heart with joy and her mind with peace, Remi calmed her mind and simply sat, staring.
Looking at great art was like meditating. It cleared the mind of all the garbage and allowed her to focus on only the most important aspects. It helped her find clarity in life. One thing, as the hours passed, that she became more and more clear on, was that last night was a momentous happening. She’d stumbled into something “other”. What that was, she wasn’t certain.
As she’d cleared her mind, images from the fifteen seconds that had comprised last night’s incident on the bridge had begun to clarify. Sometimes things fell away when she looked at art. That was because they weren’t important. Things from last night clarified.
The suit-wearing, redheads had large fake smiles. The dark, bald, misshapen group hadn’t smiled at all except for the woman. But what she had seen, made her even more confused. Fangs. Long, slightly curving, pointed fangs that had appeared at the corners of thick-lipped mouths and pressed into pale skin. That meant they were very long fangs. So long, they couldn’t be contained inside the lower lip of their owners.
The woman even had fangs. Smaller ones, but still visible when she’d smiled briefly at Remi. She didn’t know if the man had fangs. Remi hadn’t really seen them. She knew he had very long, claw-like fingernails. All this had solidified as she sat hours in the salon of the Musee and stared at Monet’s masterwork.
What had claws and fangs? Well...as a child she’d loved stories about werewolves and vampires. But, after having seen the real-life destruction that her family’s gun empire wrought on the world -- war, murder, genocide -- she’d given up those tales as something that glamourized death. Death was not pretty. It was not enticing.
She’d never felt so disgusted as when films became blockbusters portraying vampires as pretty creatures that sparkled like diamonds in the light. Death was never that pretty. It literally smelled bad and the images of it stayed with you in dreams for decades.
Finally, the guards asked her to leave. Clearly, she was freaking them out with her stone-still stare, bald head, and immobile thinking processes. Oh well. If they’d seen what she’d seen, they’d need to think for hours too. Not that she’d really come to any revelations except that she’d stumbled into the twilight zone, and not the pretty one inhabited by Robert Pattinson. This twilight zone might actually have some real-life implications and gut-wrenching ugliness.
Back at her hotel, Remi ordered pasta from room service and a large bottle of ice-cold limoncello. There was nothing like good food and some sharp booze to take a girl’s mind off of things she just didn’t want to understand.
Though to be honest, good food and good wine had gotten her into the mess she’d stumbled into last night. Maybe she should go back to herbal tea, rice and chicken, even though now that she was medication free from all the poisons the doctors had been pouring down her throat, her digestive system seemed to be back on track. It would be a shame to waste that, she reassured herself. Food and a good libation, taken in moderation, were among the greatest joys of life.
Dusk had fallen as she nursed her limoncello on the terrace of her hotel room. Slowly the lights of Paris flicked into life and the magic that was Paris at night filled her with joy. It took only a split second for her to register the hectic swirl of large-bodied moths, scented with spice and a musty-metallic air that eddied around her, before she whirled in panic. Face to face with the large bald man from the evening before, Remi didn’t know what to say or do.
In an age-old habit, passed down from an etiquette-loving mother and grandmother, she simply fell back on manners. “Good evening,” she managed to murmur, clueless at what else to do.
“Good evening,” the large man rumbled warily. His yellow eyes razored into her, seeming ready to anticipate any screaming or hysteria that most likely usually came over women when face to face with his enormously tall, black-clad figure and grotesquely large head and ears. Yeah, well, there were the claws too. And the yellow eyes. And the fangs.
And the smell. Which was very odd. The spices were nice. A sort of turmeric, cardamom, curry, cinnamon mix with a twist of oud. Remi loved oud, the heavy wood-scented perfume common to the Middle East. Under the oud, the musty-metallic scent reminded her of moldy blood.
How did she know what moldy blood smelled like? Hunting lodges had that smell in their mudrooms. It was where hunters left their boots and outerwear after having killed something. She knew the smell well. Her father and brothers often reeked of it.
“Can I help you? A seat?” she asked politely, and gestured to one of the woven deck chairs that graced the terrace’s tiled slate deck. She sank into one of them, unable to keep her legs under her, but wanting to appear as though she was being gracious.
The hulking shape hesitated, then sank slowly into one of the chairs several feet away. “Thank you,” came the rusty rumble.
Several moments passed in silence. “Wine or a limoncello?” Remi asked, gesturing towards the bar cart just inside the door.
“No, thank you. Another time perhaps,” the enormous lump of black said slo
wly. The deep rusty rumble grating on her nerves a bit.
Sighing, she sank back, gathered her courage and said again, “Can I help you?”
“I am Saulaces,” yellow eyes watched her intently as this statement was made.
“I’m Remi,” she answered, not knowing what else to say.
Another long silence reigned.
“Last night,” Remi whispered, “the woman. Is she ok?” Something about the bundle Saulaces carried reminded her of the woman - perhaps it was the small rim of a tophat that peeked out of the edge of the fabric wrapping.
“No. No she is not. The Empusas have killed her. After millenia, the Colchi queen has fallen,” the figure hunched suddenly, as though in pain.
“I’m sorry,” Remi said, her voice ringing with sincerity. “I found her magnificent. I felt like we had some sort of connection.”
Saulaces reared up, his yellow eyes blazing, “She thought so too, or I would not be here!” The rusty voice sounded angry and forlorn. “I have brought her things. There are no other women in the clan for which she had any feelings of respect. It is wrong to give a queen’s things to anyone she does not respect. If we do not pass them on, her powers die. It is unbearable, this choice between our own kind and someone with whom she connected who is human!” His voice was deeply raw, rough and scornful.
Remi said nothing, simply sat trying to take in what the man meant. “I’m truly sorry.” She was. The woman had been...mesmerizingly magnificent.
“What is your “kind” sir?” she asked quietly, not quite understanding. Clearly, she was human. His kind was something else.
“You can’t be that stupid, child,” he said scathingly.
Remi tried not to feel hurt. But she did. “I’m not stupid,” she defended herself. “But neither am I a trusting idiot,” she said pithily. “Clearly, all those fangs and claws are not “human”, as you so derogatorily qualified me,” she added sharply, still smarting. “But, since you haven’t harmed me, killed me, eaten me, disemboweled me, or decapitated me, I’m going to go with the idea that you at least have some sort of code, or want something.”
The bald head hung slightly for a moment as though abashed at her reminder of a code. “I apologize,” Saulaces raised his yellow eyes to hers and stated solemnly. “Kandake was a great woman. A powerful queen. A talented Solomanari.”
At Remi’s raised eyebrow, he answered her unasked question. “A Solomonari is a great practitioner of the arcane arts...magic, alchemy, herbal lore. They are...were...students of a school founded by King Solomon in ancient Syria, the Scholomance. That is all I can tell you for now.”
She nodded. “I am sorry for your loss of her. She struck me as a great force of nature.”
For the first time, Saulaces raised his head and opened his mouth in something that sounded like a broken laugh. In the light of the moon, his fangs were clearly visible for the first time. Remi was surprised somehow, that they appeared no more than elongated incisors. “Force of nature?” he barked brusquely. “Most think we are abominations on the face of nature.”
“Nature has all sorts of things man has never even seen hidden in the depths of the seas and forests,” she muttered, then shrugged. “Humans are often abominations on the face of nature. I have seen that frequently for myself.” She sat quietly for a moment. Saulaces nodded slightly, as though surprised at her insight. “What exactly are you?” Remi asked bluntly, tired of beating around the bush.
“What do you think we are?” he asked, yellow eyes flashing as one clawed hand swept towards her in question.
“Hmmmm, don’t know for sure. Could be anything. Natural phenomenon. Medical experimentation - I know for sure doctors will do just about anything in the name of medicine. Lycanthropy. Vampirism. Any sort of other Grimm’s fairy tales sort of thing,” she ruminated slowly. “Though the suits looked flash, they emanated evil. While your group emanated death and violence, it didn’t set off my nape-skin alarm,” Remi gestured slowly with one hand at the back of her bare neck.
Saulaces rumbled an abrupt laugh, then grinned again. This time his fangs seemed to grow before her eyes. “You’re not dumb,” he stated roughly, then said no more.
“Thank you,” Remi said, then grinned back at him. “Bald, but not dumb.”
“Why are you bald?” he asked. “I smell no sickness on you.”
“I was sick. Too much medicine for conditions I probably didn’t really have, or at least didn’t need that much medicine for. Thyroid and different auto-immune type illnesses. I quit taking all the drugs and am feeling much better. I do take some all natural thyroid drops, but that’s it for medication now. I can feel my hair growing back a bit, but I’m not sure about letting it come in. It feels uneven and hard. Patchy and not all there and certainly not like it was,” she added simply, running a hand over her head in search of the bristle she knew would be coming in after not shaving her head that morning.
“Let it grow,” he said simply. “You will have something to attach her hat to.” He held up the tiny tophat and let her see it in the dim light. “She loved this hat. It was made for her by Elsa Schiaparelli in the 1920’s here in Paris. She simply commanded it to stay put and it did.”
Remi stood and came to his side. Gently he placed the hat into her palms, claws slowly unfurling to let her take it. She stepped into her hotel room, placed the dainty hat with its fingertip veil on her head, then turned slowly to let him see her.
“Lovely,” came the halting rasp. “She would be happy.”
Remi removed the dainty hat carefully and sat it on the low dresser next to the bed, then stepped back out into the darkness.
“I still don’t understand. Perhaps you can explain things more?” she asked.
Suddenly the man stood, shoved the small bundle of fabric into her arms and said, “Not tonight. The loss of our queen is too new!”
Remi automatically clutched the bundle to her chest and burst out as he whirled to leave, But I don’t understand what you are? Tell me, so I can understand her!”
“Striga,” was all she heard as Saulaces was gone in a swirl of wind. Huge moths fluttered in the lamp light briefly, then dispersed.
Remi carried the bundle into her room, laid it gently on the bed and then quickly closed and locked the door to the terrace. Pulling the curtains closed, she sank onto the bed and burst into tears. She had no idea why she was crying, but she felt the loss of the magnificent black woman from the night before keenly.
On the roof above, little did Remi know that Saulaces waited, feeling an odd satisfaction that the little human below also felt the loss of Kandake, his vampire clan’s queen, powerful mage, dragon rider and weathermaker.
Chapter Four
The Items
The next morning Remi woke slowly and let her eyes rest on the delicate black-wool top hat with its intricate netting veil and silk hatband. It truly was a work of art. The quality of the materials was evident by the way they had withstood the test of time and the almost pearlescent sheen it had when the light struck the beaver-fur wool and silk hatband attested to its caliber. A tiny diamond brooch, pinned into the silk hatband, held a tiny cluster of red feathers to one side. The entire item exuded panache. Remi loved it.
Swinging her legs out of the bed, she approached the bundle of fabric Saulaces had left the night before. Unrolling it gently, the scent of spices and mustiness grew stronger. The black velvet fabric held only a small jeweled evening bag of intricate beadwork with a gold clasp and short gold-chain strap, woven through with a black silk ribbon. The beadwork was exquisite - a sort of paisley, damask pattern made of crystals, seed pearls and hundreds of rondel beads. At the bottom of the bag, a row of jet drop-beads added to the feminine aura of the small evening bag. It was gorgeous. The gold of the chain and clasp were worn and glowed with an almost otherworldly patina. Remi believed them to be made of solid 22k gold.
Twisting open the clasp, she let the two sides fall open. Inside a small bundle of papers tied with a r
ibbon and an old-fashion key, also tied onto a worn red-silk ribbon, were the only items.
Gently, Remi lifted out the papers, unfastened the frayed ribbon and delicately smoothed the worn papers flat onto the surface of the desk. The papers were written by hand with what was clearly an old-fashioned quill pen.
Squinting and pulling the desk lamp closer, Remi studied the documents carefully. They appeared to be papers of deed to a building in Paris not far from her hotel. It was an apartment on the Place des Vosges, as far as she could tell. A more modern, but still yellowed, business card was included in the pile. Cleary Gottlieb was printed on the card in script. The address, on the Rue de Tilsitt, wasn’t one Remi was familiar with. She’d check it out after breakfast.
Pulling her coat more snuggly around her, Remi looked at the discreet gold sign attached to the bright blue, arched double doors at 12 Rue de Tilsitt. It hadn’t taken her taxi long to get here. It was, afterall, only a few hundred meters past the Arc de Triomphe, just off the ring road. Ringing the bell, Remi explained she had some papers that appeared to be written by an attorney named Mel Steen. They’d been bequeathed to her by a woman named Kandake Impundula and she’d like to discuss them. Would they see her now?
