by K.E. Rodgers
Chapter 6-
“You worry about him too much,” Corrigan whispered in her ear, slipping his arms around her otherworldly form, holding her to him.
They both stood silently on the beach as they watched the oceans waves’ crash against the shore, enjoying the close connection they had when their forms touched.
Clarissa was a ghost, but she was not intangible. In fact there was more life essence in her body than in some humans. Her extrasensory gifts as a bokor intensified themselves even in this death-like state. He’d never try to change who and what she was as she would never try to change him.
They had their bad days, sometimes needing to be apart from each other for several hours or run the risk of hurting the other. But by now they knew the other’s breaking point and could disengage before all hell broke loose. Clarissa had her friends on the mainland and he had his brothers and sisters.
Jackson didn’t really have anyone anymore. At least that was how Jackson felt. Corrigan felt sorry for the kid, but knew from experience that their constant hovering was having a negative effort on his adjusting to this different lifestyle. Clarissa needed to let go or she’d loose her friend and brother.
“Of course I’m worried about him.” Clarissa leaned back against Corrigan’s warm body. He didn’t seem to mind that her body was so much cooler than a normal woman. He was so much warmer than a typical human man, his oversized organs pumping the necessary blood through his system keeping him alive; alive in a deathly sense. Her body didn’t possess human blood and her energy was cool rather than hot, but it was just as lethal as any firestorm.
She brought his hand to her mouth, kissing the hot tanned flesh of his inner wrist. Nipping the tender flesh with her teeth she smiled when he flinched. Another interesting fact about ghosts was that they were elemental with the energy of the world which could be converted into electrical currents that could shock a body. Clarissa’s kisses could be as sweet or intense as she chose, like kissing a flower petal one moment then the tail end of a lightning bolt. Her personality was similar in effect.
Corrigan leaned down, biting the flesh along her shoulder. Where his mouth touched her, her skin glowed ever brighter, spreading along her otherworldly skin like a blush.
“She doesn’t know what to do,” Clarissa managed to say aloud even though Corrigan was trying to distract her by moving his hands along her body causing her skin to glow like a full moon in the dark night sky.
“Who?” he asked between kisses along the back of her neck.
“Maddy,” she answered back with only a slight breathless hitch in her voice. “She’s worried that if she tries to contact Jackson the Eidolon will see it as a threat. She works for them, a paid employee and we are not on the best terms with her bosses.”
Madeline Connors had worked for the Eidolon community of St. Augustine since she was a young woman and many of the residents had watched as she grew up. To some she was like family. If she tried to make friendly with the monsters on the island, even if her beloved grandson was one of them now, it could be construed as a fracture in her loyalty to the Eidolon people. She couldn’t then be fully trusted to keep the secrets of her bosses. Not to mention Cyrus detested the flesh-eater family. Tolerating them was a big sacrifice in his mind.
“Would she give them up to be in his life?” Corrigan asked, stopping his seduction for a moment to wonder about that question himself. If what he knew about Jackson’s grandmother was true then he knew that she loved her grandson above any other person in this world. But then she had loved Jackson when he was human and alive, not the flesh-eater version. Would she feel differently about him now that he was a being her ghostly friends hated the most in this world.
“I don’t know. They’ve been with her longer than we have, longer than I’ve known her. Did you know that it was Henry who first started calling her Maddy?” Henry Portier was the community polestar and had been the first ghost that Clarissa had met in the city. He’d become a good and understanding friend despite her jumping ship to be with Corrigan. He was also madly in love with her other ghostly friend, Eleanor Masters, though he’d never tell her. “She’s spent so much of her life with the Eidolon. How can we expect her to join with their enemy?”
Corrigan touched the smooth skin of her cheek. He’d never get tired of feeling the cool touch of her skin or be amazed at how solid and alive it felt beneath his fingertips. “Was it difficult for you to not be with the Eidolon people? Do you ever miss not living with them?” He sometimes wondered if she felt left out at times with his family because she wasn’t the same as them. His family did their best to include her, but some activities were meant only for them. They tried to behave like a normal living family with Sunday diners at home. Was it enough though?
Maude always prepared a vegetarian dish. Cooked meats tasted terrible and upset their systems. Though Xavier, who was a crazy loon to begin with, liked to a have a rare steak now and again; rare in the sense that it didn’t need to be hot, it just needed to be dead. But then for them, the more alive the prey was the better. The life essence coursing through the blood and tissue of living things kept them mobile and sane.
“No,” Clarissa answered with a smile. Turning around in his arms she kissed his warm chin. Looking up into those iridescent blue eyes always reminded her why giving up being a councilmember for the Eidolon was worth it. Some had wanted her to take Francisco’s place.
When they had first met those beautiful blue eyes had been empty, soulless, the eyes of a walking dead man’s. Now they were full of life and happiness. Clarissa had made sure to keep it there. Corrigan had found the strength to accept himself and the love of his family and he accepted her just as she was and loved her all the more for her biological differences.
“I didn’t give up anything,” she reached up the distance to run her fingers along his slightly scruffy cheek, “I gained something far more precious.” Clarissa didn’t need to say the words, they were written in the depths of her eyes, a profound statement of endearing power that would never change or fade throughout the ages. It was an enduring love that existed and shone even in the darkest of nights.
“Do you even realize how much you mean to me, Clarissa?” he spoke softly, holding her delicate, pale face in his large hands. “I couldn’t exist if you weren’t with me.” He truly meant that.
It was a scary thought for both of them. For one of them to have so much power over the other, it was not an easy knowledge to live with everyday. Clarissa felt the same way. She knew deep in her heart – his heart that she would fade into the shadows if they were forced to be without the other. The others in her new family likely felt the same for their heart-mates.
“I’m not going anywhere any time soon,” she assured him, turning to kiss his open palm on her left cheek.
“Make sure it stays that way,” he answered back with a slight growl in his voice. “As for Jackson and his grandmother, we can only give them time to adjust to the choices that have been made. If the woman loves her grandson as she professes then nothing, not even death, will keep her from finding a way to be with him.”
“And if not,” Clarissa whispered, her eyes turning to look out into the ocean. Everyday Jackson drifted farther away from them, swept away like the sand beneath the ocean currant. Was he strong enough to endure and survive this existence? She didn’t know.
Corrigan forced her face to look back up at him. “We’ll cross that bridge when it comes.”
She nodded, keeping her thoughts to herself.
Corrigan touched the end of her nose. “I thought you wanted to go swimming,” he said, trying to force her mind away from their newest brother.
She frowned, looking at his clothes. He wore khaki shorts that showed off his strong tanned legs. Her own skin would never tan like that even when she was alive. His collared shirt was green with vertical stripes of navy blue. Clarissa had been trying to improve his wardrobe and he only complained every other day that she was treating him
like a dress-up doll. “You didn’t bring a suit,” she remarked casually.
He laughed at that. Clarissa was all together too modest sometimes, and adorably naïve at others. Corrigan had assumed that most of the ghosts were prudes, but he’d never allow Clarissa to get that way. “Who needs a suit?”
“We’re not going,” she paused, looking around for people on the empty beach before continuing, “Skinny dipping.”
“Sure we are.” He took his shirt off, bending down to take his shoes off and throw them over his shoulder. Then he reached down and grabbed her, hoisting her over his shoulders as he ran down the beach.
Clarissa screamed. But there was an edge of excitement to it that told him she enjoyed his caveman behavior. That wasn’t always the case sometimes.
A figure stood in the bushes watching the couple as they splashed around in the water. He bent down feeling the sand between his fingers, cool and soft. The woman seemed to glow like moon in a cloudless night sky, her strange skin shimmery and beautiful. The man appeared normal for a human, nothing unusual except for his scent. It was the smell of death, an old death, but the fragrant notes of the cologne were still clear and fresh. These two would not be much of a challenge. He would find her in this city of dead things and there was none who could stop him.
He turned away from the scene in front of him, slipping back into the cover of night as if he had never been.
