Companion Guide (Grave Danger)

by K.E. Rodgers

  Chapter 1-

  “Relax, kid,” Chas barked. “You’re jumping around like some kind of deranged jack-rabbit.”

  Chas and Jackson stood on the Bridge of Lions, the connecting ground that would take them into the historic downtown streets of St. Augustine. It was close to midnight and in a few more minutes they’d be allowed to cross the border where the Eidolon people made their home; ghosts to the rest of the world.

  Jackson paced back and forth, stopping to lean from one leg to the other. He still wasn’t used to all this. It had been almost a year since he’d stared at the face of death and then been returned to an existence that was less than satisfying.

  “Shut up, Chas,” he barked back to his older brother. Chas wasn’t really his brother, but when you belong to a minority species that pines for the flesh and blood of humans you’ll take whatever familiarity you can get.

  The LeMoyne's had adopted him so to speak when Clarissa, a Death Bokor, had reversed the process of death and returned him to a semi-living person. It had been an accident that she’d been the one to plunge the Baiser de Mort (Kiss of death) into his heart. She’d believed he was possessed by a demon. He had been possessed, but by a different kind of demonic force; an astri-zombie, Francisco Fatio. He had been, before being destroyed, a leading councilman in the Eidolon Community. He’d used Jackson’s body in much the same way as a demon possession. He along with Clarissa’s ex-fiancé had been targeting psychic people to increase their own elemental powers, all the while making the corpses of their victims look like they’d been attacked by a flesh-eater or something of a similar genus.

  The Eidolon had gone so far as to bring in a death Bokor, Clarissa’s ex-fiancé, teacher and murderer to take care of the LeMoyne family for good. Clarissa had confronted Jackson in his possessed state while Jackson was about to take the life of his good friend and witch, Leah Moon. He, Fatio, in a fit of rage had tried to suck out Clarissa’s soul. As Clarissa was a ghost - albeit a very powerful one - if he had succeeded it would have destroyed her. She had reacted in self defense. It was difficult for Jackson to blame Clarissa completely for his current state.

  Now he was a flesh-eater, what most uninformed persons would call a zombie, and he was staying with a ‘family’ of them in a high walled commune on Anastasia Island. Jackson would only become a ‘zombie’ when he abstained from consuming the life essence found most abundantly in the human species. Too bad it required death to get it from them. Though Trueman was struggling to find a way to get around this singular need and hopefully find a satisfying alternative. But it was taking time.

  Corrigan, one of the first flesh-eaters Jackson had met when he was human and somehow befriended was now dating and potentially engaged to before mentioned ghost, Clarissa. Before she was suspended from the Eidolon community for switching sides, she was staying with his grandmother who was an S.S (Spectral Services – workers for the Dead). Jackson had found out from personal experience that Clarissa wasn’t a typical ghost. Most of her life essence had stayed with her in death including her Bokor powers and she’d found true love in a creature she had once been taught to destroy.

  Jackson was aware that Corrigan had almost died, a true death, when he went on an abstinence run during the first weeks of their secretive courtship because he couldn’t stand the deaths anymore.

  He wasn’t the only one who had such thoughts.

  And somehow during an argument with the motley crew of brothers, Trueman, the mad scientist of the bunch, had come up with the concept of using Clarissa. She was already dead. He hoped to harvest part of her life essence from her to be used to supplement their diet.

  Until then, though, using the living was the only way to survive. The life essence coursing through the human's blood and tissue, like a breathing/living entity, was what supplied the necessary nourishment for his kind to survive. If not they became the true monsters of the night, the kind of creatures you’d see on the silver screen and in books.

  Jackson inhaled a deep breath. Scratching his blonde head with one hand he leaned the other against the cold side of the bridge. His cornflower blue eyes scanned the downtown area, his senses reaching out to find a target. Maude, the wife of the head of the family, Ambrose, had tried to teach him how to find those that death had marked. It was a subtle sign that helped them find those who the world would not miss and be better without if they were gone. Even still it was a death, no matter how you spun it. It was murder.

  However, one of the first rules - not that there was a list of them - was that under no circumstances were they to target the innocent or those that were protected by the Eidolon. At one time Jackson had wanted to be one of those people. He had wanted to work for the Eidolon Community of St. Augustine, a small community within a larger one that stretched the world over. Now he was exiled from them all.

  He could never claim innocence again.

  “You are seriously bumming me out kid,” Chas said, pulling out the buds from his ears and pushing pause on his mp3 player. “And I thought Cor was moody, but you are a veritable storm cloud in an otherwise clear sky. It doesn’t do well for the digestive system to be so tightly wound.” Chas had theories about limbering up before they went out to hunt. He also liked to steal from his targets, hence the mp3 player he’d stolen and was now sporting on his arm.

  “I’m not moody, I’m thinking,” Jackson argued. “And stop calling me ‘kid’, we’re almost the same age.” Jackson would have his nineteenth birthday in a few weeks, not that it would mean anything. The dead don’t age. And anyone who thinks that’s cool needs a reality check; some people just don’t understand. Their bodies might not change like a normal human, but the years still passed and time can do more than just give you wrinkles.

  “Yeah,” Chas said, stretching his arms over his head as he stretched. He had been in charge of taking the ‘newbie’ out to show him how things were done and to make sure he followed family rules. “And how old are turning Jackie boy, eighteen?”

  Chas had died at age 20, by his father’s hand. A plantation owner in South Carolina, Chas’s father had apparently had enough of his by-blow from a slave woman that reminded him too much of himself that it had caused his wife to notice. And the one time Chas had stood up to his father, he’d killed him for it. That had been back in 1836 and yet Chas never forgot.

  “I’ll be nineteen next month and you’re barely twenty,” Jackson retorted. “And you don’t have the right to call me anything but Jackson,” Jackson added angrily.

  “I still got a hundred and seventy five years on you, kid.” Chas said the last word with cruel inflection. “And unfortunately you’ll always be a kid, so get used to it.”

  That set Jackson over the edge. He came away from the side of the bridge in a flash, grabbing hold of Chas and flinging him to the ground. He crouched down beside him, one hand to Chas’s throat. “I’m getting really tired of all of you treating me like I’m some kind of baby that needs to be looked after. I didn’t ask to be like this and I didn’t ask to be part of your family. So fuck off and leave me the hell alone.”

  Jackson stood up then, a sneer on his face. “I know what I am. I’m a fucking flesh-eater, worse than dead and I’m sick of you all reminding me of what I lost. Every day I wake up thinking it was all a dream and I can go home. That I can go back to school and see my friends and my grandma,” he paused, trying to push down that lump that always formed when he thought of his grandmother. His parents had told him flat out that he was no longer welcome in their home and that his grandmother, due to her psychic gifts was too much of a temptation for his baser beast to be around. “But I can’t go back,” he finished in a tight voice.

  Chas was on his feet in an instant. Part of them was animal and because of that the beast in them gave them certain abilities; agility and swiftness one of them. The second was the means to communicate with one of their own through psychic wave lengths. Jackson never used this link to converse with his new family; ever.

/>   “Listen,” when Chas would have said kid he stopped, seeing Jackson’s frown. “Jackson, I spent the first years of this existence by myself. I didn’t have anyone telling me how all this was supposed to work. I lived in caves and burned out huts, eating whatever living creature crawled under my door at night. And that’s a shit load better than the other’s had to deal with. So staying in a nice room in Ambrose’s home isn’t the worst place you could be. Don’t forget that there are still people out there who want us dead and those who wouldn’t mind looking the other way.”

  Jackson turned away from Chas on a snort. He was still pissed, but he was smart enough not to comment. Olivier Prince, the bastard who had murdered his friend Clarissa, almost extinguishing her life for good. He had been the catalyst to convince Francisco Fatio to take over Jackson’s body so he could absorb the life essence and psychic energy from the kills and as yet he was still at large. Prince was a strong death Bokor and the flesh-eaters worst enemy. They all knew that he hadn’t gone far and it would only be a matter of time before he returned to St. Augustine.

  As for those who would turn the other cheek, that would be the Eidolon people. The flesh-eaters and they weren’t on the friendliest of terms. It didn’t help much that they each had something the other wanted. Ghosts were made from a human soul, the energy of the earth and some of the life essence that they had in life. The Classical Phantasm had about half of their original life essence. Clarissa had more. And it downgraded from there; residual hauntings and the like. But a ghost did not possess flesh and blood, a thing that the flesh-eaters did. And ghosts didn’t fit into the human world and so much of the livings refused to acknowledge them.

  The flesh-eaters lost most of their life essence, but gained the advantage of flesh and blood. The livings could see them. However the flesh-eaters preferred as little contact with their targets as possible. They didn’t play with their food. The flesh-eater medical condition was like an anemic hemophiliac in humans and if they didn’t constantly replenish what their body destroyed inside them then they’d become deranged. The livings supplied a basic need for the flesh-eater and friendship was never an option.

  There were prejudices a plenty on all sides and for the most part Jackson had thought that he’d been impartial to them all. Yet now that he was one of these demonized species, his objectivity seemed to leave him as quickly as the blood that flowed through his un-dead veins.

  “It’s about time you dragged your lazy ass out of bed,” Jackson heard Chas call down to the dark figure moving quickly up the bridge. There were still cars passing up and down the bridge, but none of them really noticed the night demons of St. Augustine.

  Jackson turned in time to see Corrigan leap from the darkness, nearly on top of him. The older man had him about the neck in a light choke hold, holding him in place while he messed up his hair. Corrigan wasn’t a small man. Standing at about six feet, six inches tall with the muscles of someone who worked out regularly, the weight of his light hold on Jackson’s throat would have done some serious damage if Jackson had still been human.

  “Get off me,” Jackson yelled, trying to back out from his brother’s hold. “You’re cutting off my air supply.” He wasn’t.

  Corrigan let go quickly. Like the others he was wearing jeans and a dark colored t-shirt. His was midnight blue, a shade that complimented his iridescent blue eyes. Chas wore army green, his emerald green eyes off set in a light mocha complexion a half shade darker than his wife’s. Jackson chose to wear black as he’d been mourning his death regularly for almost a year.

  Corrigan had been a sailor before his death in 1853 at the hands of his own brother. Since he’d met Clarissa he’d begun to open up to the rest of the family, telling them of his days as a slave to his bokor mistress, Elmira. He’d escaped after her death and traveled to the States, finding the LeMoyne family and now he’d found his forgotten soul in Clarissa. Jackson was glad for him even if he didn’t outright show it.

  His brother was almost a different man since finding Clarissa. Jackson was indebted to Corrigan for saving him from some thugs several years back when he’d been a stupid teen. That man had been moody and almost completely soulless. And now… well now he was actually happy, as happy as any brooding nineteenth century Irish man can get.

  Jackson watched with an almost sour expression as Corrigan leapt up on to the railings of the bridge. He looked like he was doing some kind of Gene Kelly, Dancing in the Rain moves. Jackson recalled that they’d watched the film recently during family movie night. Margaret Ann, the youngest sister with the oldest living experience had got to make the choice.

  “It’s a great night, boys. It almost feels like fall is coming early to Florida.” Corrigan looked out on the downtown streets, the lights twinkling from the shops and restaurants as people were still milling about in the late night hours. It seemed a little cooler tonight than usual, a nice reprieve from the hot, humid weather of summer.

  “Watch out for the new students around Flagler,” he continued, jumping down from his perch. “The girls said they found some of them wandering about in the dark. They were lost and more than likely intoxicated. One of them actually asked if he could touch Helen’s teeth.”

  “What did she say to him?” Chas questioned, his face turning stern. Helen was his wife and Chas had a tendency to be overly protective of her.

  Corrigan laughed at his brother’s expression. He’d likely harbor the same thoughts if someone had wanted to touch Clarissa. The glow of her soul, she was like an earth bound angel. She was so enthralling in her otherworldly form that it was hard not to stare or want to reach out and touch her. But it was at his touch that her soul shone the brightest, becoming almost complete.

  When Corrigan didn’t answer right away Chas wacked him against his shoulder trying to get his attention back on focus. He stared up at his usually moody younger brother. Chas was several inches shorter, about Jackson and Trueman’s height, while Ambrose was closer to Corrigan’s. Xavier, the volatile Spanish conquistador, was the shortest brother.

  Corrigan was smiling, a faint turn of the mouth, and his eyes were staring off into his own head. “Hey,” Chas yelled, punching him in the arm this time. “What did my wife say?”

  The man shook his head, remembering where he was. “Helen told the kid he had to buy her dinner before she’d even let him near her mouth,” Corrigan paused to laugh as he remembered his sister telling him of their adventures with the new college students, “and only if he let her have several of his fingers afterward as payment.”

  Chas just shook his head at that. “She’s going to drive me insane one of these days. You’re lucky yours stays home at night.”

  Corrigan laughed hard at that, his head flung back. “You think I can keep Clarissa on a short leash?” He shook his own head at his brother’s ill informed ideas about his and Clarissa’s relationship. “I have as much control over Clarissa as you do over Helen. They’re true modern women and when she’s not off with her ghost friends or living friends she’s off on her grand adventures with our brother, Trueman. Not to mention her continuous hunt for ‘him’.” His voice sobered at that point. Corrigan never said Princes name. “I worry about her all the time. But I can’t do anything about it, not unless I want to sleep out in the living room.”

  “And speaking of that,” Chas said folding is arms over his chest, “When are you two going to move out and find your own place?” They’d been living in the main house, Ambrose’s house, for months now. The other siblings had their own homes on the property except for Corrigan, Clarissa and now Jackson.

  Jackson wasn’t listening to his brother’s conversation anymore. He was staring off into the city below them. Each night they’d go out hunting for their survival and each night he felt another piece of his humanity was leaving him. And there was nothing, no one, to anchor him or keep him from becoming the monster that threatened to steal his very soul away.