Daisy felt an unwarranted swell of pride when she heard the courage in the girl's voice, and her ability to stay silent about her vampire friend. "Where are your parents?" the woman had asked.
"Away," Perdy answered.
The woman remained silent a moment, likely dissatisfied by the answer. "Where do you live?"
"Over the hill," she said while gulping down her lunch. That stretched the truth far, but Daisy thought it a good act of dissembling for such a young child, and considered how she had learned it so young.
The children were sent back outside to play. Perdy's smell came back to Daisy, the child smelled cleaner, and the blood from the scrape clotted into an unappetizing, stale food scent that no longer appealed. Daisy focused on the sound of the mother, who stood on the back porch. She dialed her phone.
"Hi. I wasn't sure if this was the right number to call, but I would like to report a found child."
There was a pause as the operator on the other end prepared to take her statement.
"Catherine Mallory," she said, and gave her address.
"No, I don't know where she came from. She just showed up and was playing with my children out back. She said her name is Perdita." Another pause. "She said she's seven years old, but she's rather small for her age; she has brown hair and eyes."
She waited for the next question. "I'm not sure. Hispanic, maybe? She's a bit light, so it's hard to say."
After another moment, she thanked the operator, and hung up. She dialed again to tell her husband what happened. The last line caught Daisy's ears, "I doubt it. They'll be here in half an hour to pick her up."
Rash thoughts ran through Daisy's mind in the dark corner of the shed. Another tarp-covered rescue came to mind, but it seemed just as impractical and useless when she could think of no place to hide afterward that wouldn't be seen by the other children. Why did she go out in the first place?
Daisy cursed herself. Foolish old woman! I ought to have known she’d get hungry. Decades of parenting, and she failed the girl in the most basic task because she was sleepy! Daisy knew she could only sit and wait and listen. Sitting idle made her more anxious than the thought of the sunlight on her skin.
When twilight came, Daisy ran her fingers through her hair and straightened up, listening. During her wait, she used her keen senses to pick up and remember the scent of the officer and social worker who had come for Perdita. She listened as the officer introduced himself as Lieutenant Vasquez and the woman with him as Ms. Lee.
Perdita had fought them, shouting, "No! Please don't take me back," as they pulled her into the car and drove away.
Catherine Mallory couldn’t adequately answer her children's questions as to why Perdita had to leave.
Behind the glass of the car windows, Daisy could make out Perdy's voice as she cried out, "Anthea, please! You promised!" Lieutenant Vasquez nodded to the girls standing on the sidewalk waving to them sadly as the cruiser pulled away from the curb.
The darkness filled the sky and gave a glittering sheen to the rooftop of the Mallory house. Daisy left the shed without the difficulty Perdy experienced that morning, and rushed down the street in the direction of where the car had headed. The scent of exhaust obscured their trail, but Daisy headed toward the nearest police station and found Lt. Vasquez’s particular odor renewed at the entrance. The giant white box of a building had incongruous Greco-Roman columns on a raised porch, two metal staircases descended on either side of the columns like a pair of hideous wings.
Perdy's sweet cream scent mingled with those of the officers and petty criminals that walked here. Daisy had been a teacher most of her adult life. If police procedure remained the same since her retirement, she knew Perdita would soon be sent to a transitional home by the social worker until they could find her family.
Daisy smoothed out her hair and brushed at the leaves and red clay caked onto her dress hem, and entered the station. She knew she looked conspicuous coming in off the street, and hesitated briefly as she considered whether the receiving officer at the other end of the lobby thought her a vagrant and what she might do. She smelled delightful.
Daisy offered her sincerest smile, and approached slowly, walking as she had when she was infirm and nearing death. She used the time to take in the odors and look through the windows down the hall. As she reached the counter, the officer said, "Can I help you ma’am?" She gave Daisy an uncertain once over.
"Pardon me, dear girl. I’ve gotten myself a bit lost. How do I get to Montpelier from here?" It was the only street she could recall with clarity from her last trip to Macon. There might be a Main, a Pine, and possibly even a Jackson Street, but she wasn’t completely certain about any of them.
She made appropriate nods to the young woman behind the front desk as if she were listening to her, but her focus remained on ferreting out Perdita's scent. Her hearing, too, sought out sounds of a child’s voice. Daisy held her tight smile and patted the woman’s hand. Perdita wasn’t there anymore, but she had been hours ago. "Thank you, honey. My, that’s a lovely fragrance. Reminds me of wildflowers."
The woman looked momentarily confused. "Oh, I’m not sure if that’s me," she said.
"No? Surely you don’t have any babies pass through here," Daisy said with an appropriately concerned frown.
"Sometimes we do. If there’s a lost child that’s been found, or someone leaves a child."
Daisy put her hand to her chest and shook her head. "It saddens me to hear it, though I know it happens in this world. What happens to them after they come here?"
"Either we find their parents, or a social worker takes them to the Children’s Home until they’re sent to foster homes," she said, and knit her eyebrows into a disconcerted frown as though unsettled that she’d said so much.
Daisy gave another smile. "Well, bless them. Perhaps after I’ve gotten properly cleaned up at home, I can look into offering a donation to those poor children." She patted the clerk’s hand, and asked for the address of the home. "Thank you again for your help."
As expected, Perdy's scent didn’t linger in the station; Ms. Lee had already been with the officer and must have made speedy completion of the paperwork. Daisy followed as close as she dared to the road toward the Center, staying clear of bright lights and traffic cameras. She fed along the way, snacking on large rodents, but avoiding the pocket gopher she stumbled upon. Too rare to eat, she reminded herself. Years of hiking had developed her ability to identify the fauna who made their home in Georgia.
She’d walked slowly at first past houses with white farmers’ porches—houses in yellow or beige or taupe—not wanting to attract attention outside the station. As she neared her goal, Daisy found it difficult to keep from running. Even with the shadows to protect her, Macon wasn’t a small enough town—anyone might see her acting out of character. Walking as fast as she considered reasonable for a woman her age, it took her a little over an hour to make the three mile journey using back roads and skulking through private yards to catch her quarry.
When she picked up a strong taste—for now the fragrance lingered over her tongue—of Perdita, she knew she drew close. A manicured lawn stretched out for over an acre with minimal coverage. The diminutive shrubs around the perimeter of the building and dotted around the property prevented children from escaping the grounds unseen. Even the brick signs to the Home weren’t higher than her head.
Daisy used speed to her advantage now, as the security lights glared off white two-story buildings with sloping, gray tiled roofs. Moving faster than human eyes could follow, she sped from one communal building to another, searching for a stronger trail toward Perdy.
Though she’d fed along the way, the sweet cream scent of the child kindled a deeper hunger. How the raging thirst that nearly drove her into the sun earlier in the day could be so easy to ignore now, she could not fathom. A few rodents, a scavenging animal, could these sustain her? Now I have a purpose, she thought. Bless that child for not giving me away, so that now I mi
ght rescue her. Thank you, Lord for my strength this evening that I might do so.
Lights remained on in the lower rooms of the building in which she tracked down the girl, but all of the dormitory rooms above were bathed in darkness. As Daisy's ears noted, that didn't mean the children were all abed. Whispers came from the upper rooms across beds, questions to one another about who they were, where they were from, how long they each had been without a parent or guardian. One of the children wept, and given the tenderness of age, Daisy couldn't tell if the child was a girl or a boy.
Daisy scaled the wall as she’d once scaled mountains, but it didn't require the effort it once had. What other skills did I gain from Nathaniel and his blood?
Only a few girls stayed in the room, most of the beds remained empty. Since orphanages gave way to the foster care system, most children need not stay too long in an institution, or at least that’s what she had read in the local paper back home. For some children this would be an improvement, for others, there are homes like Perdy's where neglect and abuse reign free. A thrill of anger coursed through Daisy, causing her to tremble, and she hesitated to open the window until she could regain control over herself.
She slid open the window without resistance despite the obvious lock in place. The sound proved problematic for a handful of small faces peered toward her in the darkness. Within the moment of a thought, she closed the window and moved from her perch on the sill to a dark corner where she could not be seen. To the girls in the room, they saw a blurred silhouette backlit by streetlights move by and was gone. One of the smaller ones whimpered and another questioned whether anyone else saw the boogie man as she had. It was Perdita who spoke up, and the twinkling of eyes turned toward her dark shape in bed. "No boogie man. Just an angel watching over us."
An older girl scoffed and snorted. "No such thing as angels. Or boogie men." As she lay back onto her pillow, Daisy smiled to herself as she listened to the older girl's heart thumping away in her chest. At least she feigned bravery for their sake, she thought, and listened as the other heartbeats in the room calmed. The sound stirred something in Daisy, though, and she once again warred with the cells teeming in her body demanding blood. She refused to turn this room into a scene from their nightmares.
Instead, she silently recited prayers to herself, then Psalms, and when none of them worked, she thought further back to her youth when she learned the spiritualist ideology of her parents. A chant for inducing a trance calmed her mind, and she concentrated on the words and rhythm until the children settled into restful sleep. All but one.
As though sensing that she was safe, Perdita climbed out of her bed, and walked slowly to the corner where Daisy waited. Though she couldn't see through the dark, Perdy found Daisy's face, and smiled. She took her savior’s hand and led her to a cubby where her clothes were washed and folded. Perdy took them in her arms, and Daisy gathered up Perdy, her precious bundle. She headed for the window, but remembered what got her into this mess in the first place. For an instant she considered whether to find food out in the world or take what they would have fed Perdy if she stayed until morning. Daisy chose the latter, and made her way rapidly and soundlessly to the kitchen, keeping the girl tucked into a ball in her arms.
Someone stirred in a room off the main hall. Daisy heard the turning of the pages of a paperback, and paused momentarily to ascertain the direction to the kitchen. After a moment, she moved, grateful she would not need to maneuver around the adult keeping night watch in the other room.
Once they reached the kitchen, Daisy set Perdy down and urged her to silence while she checked the cabinets and industrial refrigerator.
None of the food enticed her the way it might have when human, but she knew what children tended to like, and grabbed a few cans from the pantry and cold chicken from the fridge. With much less care this time, Daisy left through a back door with barely a flicker on the cameras monitoring the building. Perdy clung to her neck, holding fast to the bundle of food wrapped up in her cloths.
Daisy wished that one of her gifts involved destroying security tapes, but felt it best to get out and as far from there as she could. By the time they left, Perdita fell into an untroubled sleep, and the rescue had taken such a short time, Daisy was free to run as long as she needed to get to her destination, though she had to stop once to retrieve Perdy’s belongings and tie them into a tight bundle around her waist when the slumbering child’s fingers went slack.
Even more important, Daisy noted, she was running faster than before. Much faster. Though she ran in sprints, from one shadowed place to another, rather than a cross-country jog, she made better time than she had any night before. At this rate, we’ll be in Atlanta in under an hour!
Just as the elation of this journey soon coming to an end urged her forward, Daisy heard someone approach, accelerating to match her speed. From behind, she heard a man’s voice singing, "Daisy, Daisy, give me your answer do …."
An Old Friend
Daisy slowed, looking around her. A blurred form rushed by her, stirring her stray, knotted hair. "Nathaniel," she said, stopping in the unkempt yard of a dilapidated house. "Quit playing around and show yourself."
Dear God, what does he want? Has he come for Perdy? She snuffed that thought. A scent of leather, pepper, and ash pervaded the surrounding area, and the whispering movement of grass suggested he circled them. He wants me, not the girl.
"You look madder than a wet hen. Come now, Daisy, don’t you want to play?" he sang to her. "Or would you prefer I recite your favorite poem?" He moved to a different spot, faster than she could see. "‘Pull my daisy, tip my cup …"
"Don’t be crude."
"I thought you liked Kerouac and Ginsburg."
"You loved them."
He chuckled. "That I did, in more ways than—"
"What do you want?"
"To save you," he said. "You were careless tonight."
Daisy turned toward his new position, scanning for a sign of him.
"Security cameras, Daisy. The pigs are out sniffing for you."
A quick flash of fear chilled her to her bones, and she glanced down at the slumbering child in her arms. I’ve been a fool, thinking I could sneak around with her.
His movements stilled, and silence followed. Daisy focused her senses outward. She sniffed the air. Nathaniel had positioned himself behind an aging ash tree much in need of pruning.
"I made a mistake. I let you herd me here. Why?" she studied the tree and the house by which it stood. The sagging porch and broken windows. Tattered, yellowed curtains hung from a few remaining rods. A layer of graffiti created a fading web of spray paint from people who had long since left the house to ruin.
Without an answer, the front door of the house opened. She never saw him move. "Come inside," his voice said.
"What makes you think I’d go anywhere with you, Nathaniel Hitchens?"
His voice came once more from the tree. "Don’t be stubborn now. You’re a wanted woman, Miss Daisy."
The dazzling white smile greeting her wasn't what she expected, as he stepped from behind the ash’s trunk. Growing up, he always sported a stump where he’d lost a tooth to an angry cow. Now his teeth were whole.
He wore black from his boots and pants to a torn, punk band t-shirt, and a leather duster out of season. Even the strip of hair that hung down from the top of his head in an unadorned Mohawk had been dyed black, just as she remembered him.
"Nathaniel," she said, more a breath than a sound. Until she saw him, it seemed more dream than reality. Now he stood before her, wearing a feral grin in the night. A flood of remembered feelings returned.
"Daisy, darlin’. So glad you remembered." The freckled skin on his nose wrinkled as his smile broadened. The glint off a silver skull earring hanging from a hoop on his left ear flashed with the motion of his head. He made no move toward her, his hands never left the pockets of his jeans.
Daisy stood, braced for anything, her arms sheltering Perdita. "What do
you want with me?"
"Aw," he said, and stuck out his lower lip. He took a step forward, leaving the tree behind. "That’s no way to treat your daddy, is it?"
"You aren’t my daddy, Nathaniel, and by the looks of us both, I’m the older of us," she said.
Nathaniel laughed, and took another step forward with his palms open, as though he meant to calm her like a shepherd soothing a wild-eyed sheep. Daisy stepped backward, nearer the porch. "So you are, Miss Daisy, so you are. An old woman—seventy-six years old! Do you realize how long I’ve been waiting for you to die?"
Another raucous laugh, and he moved again. This time, closing the distance between them. Perdita awoke and saw Nathaniel approach. She screamed. "Anthea!" Daisy raced into the house, and slammed the door shut, fully aware that it did little good. But Nathaniel didn’t make a move to enter the house.
The girl buried her face in Daisy’s chest, sobbing. "It’s him. It’s him that took me."
Daisy pet her bister hair, and shushed her. "I don’t think he’s here to hurt us. He’s just a bit misguided. I knew him a long, long time ago."
She moved slowly through the house, minding the debris—broken bits of paneling, garbage from squatters—and went through the rooms until she found a safe enough corner of a room to help the girl sleep. "I’ll keep you safe, child. Just get some sleep."
Daisy After Life (Book 1): Perdition Page 3
