Crossed

by J. F. Lewis

  In the moonlight, if I looked just right, I could see Diane. Head lolling at an unnatural angle, her dress had been torn open and blood ran down a nasty wound on her inner thigh, but she was still smiling. She nodded once, then faded away, the first and only ghost I’d ever seen.

  Eric let out a long breath and rested his forehead against the wall. “Finally,” he sighed. “That bitch was driving me crazy. I don’t know what she was clinging to anyway,” he mumbled to himself. “Creep for an old man. Fat-ass kid lying around the house . . .”

  As if he’d forgotten all about me, he straightened up and walked out into the hall. It was weird, like I had little control over my own actions, but I followed him. Diane and Henry were both dead, which meant there was no one left to tell me what to do. I should have been scared or angry, but instead, I was numb. I needed someone to tell me what to do, and the vampire was the only person around. He went directly to the kitchen and looked at the clock on the stove. “Three forty-five!” he exclaimed. “I’ve been wandering around the beach for four hours looking for this stupid house. It’s not even on the beach,” he said accusingly.

  He brushed past me again and turned on the TV in the living room. Twisting the knob, he flipped through the channels before he put his fist angrily through the front of the screen. I screamed when it exploded. Sparks shot out across the carpet and Eric’s arm caught fire. Calmly and with some annoyance he snatched up a sofa cushion and used it to put his arm out. “Now that’s typical. No cable and I set myself on fire. That’s perfect,” he told me. “How am I supposed to know when dawn is if you don’t have cable?”

  “You could look in yesterday’s newspaper,” I offered.

  “Do you have one?”

  “Uh, maybe.” I headed to the kitchen to dig through the garbage. Henry always read the paper, wherever we went. He read it and he threw it away. If Diane wasn’t quick, she didn’t get a chance to do the crossword puzzle. Something about Diane not being able to do the crossword puzzle disturbed me. My stomach rebelled and I fought back the bile. Parts of the newspaper were covered in coffee grounds, but not the pages he wanted. “Dawn is a little before six,” I told him, “5:55 a.m.”

  “I should never have let Roger borrow my car,” he said, sitting down on the sofa. “Everything just took too damn long.” He stared at the broken television set and then looked at me. The smoke alarm hadn’t gone off. I can’t say exactly why I noticed, but it bothered me that it hadn’t. “I’ll just have to fly for it,” he said, abruptly standing back up.

  “You could stay here,” I whispered.

  He rolled his eyes at me. “I’m a vampire. I eat people. Why on earth would you want me to stay here with you? Shouldn’t you be running away now?”

  “You killed them,” I said softly. “Not that I’m blaming you. I . . . you killed Diane, but you killed Henry . . . um, Hank . . . too, so that sort of balances things out, but it does mean that I’m out of a home now. I’m sure I’ll get placed with another foster family and everything, but I’d rather not. Could . . . couldn’t I just go with you?”

  “Go with me?” he scoffed. “What’re you, fifteen? Sixteen? What do you need me for? Just cash in on—”

  “Nine,” I interrupted, “but I’ll be ten in a few weeks.”

  “Nine? Nine what?”

  “I’m nine years old.”

  His blue eyes locked with mine and his pupils flickered reddish orange like the eye of a stove heating up. “Say that again.” He cocked his ear toward me.

  “I’m nine. I look older. I know. I’ve always been . . . big . . . for my age.” I sniffled and wiped my nose on the sleeve of the stained nightshirt that smelled like Henry.

  Little streaks of red appeared at the corner of Eric’s eyes and ran down his cheeks. He wiped at them angrily with his palms. “C’mere,” he said softly. Tentatively, I crossed the room. Crying, he looked more dangerous than before. Angry, he had seemed more predictable, but I wasn’t expecting softness.

  I was taller than him and I probably weighed more, but he held me just the same and I felt safe for the first time since my grandmother’s death. Maybe I was in shock, but in his arms I felt utterly and completely at home. He had leapt through the window, killed Henry, and punched through the TV like it was all nothing. I couldn’t imagine anything that could hurt him or anything that he couldn’t protect me from. If he wanted to he could even protect me from death.

  It’s my fondest memory, that night when he first held me in his arms, platonically, like a real dad would. Sitting in the Pollux, thinking about what Uncle Phillip had told me, I wished that Daddy were home, that he could hold me again, rock me back and forth, and tell me everything was okay. He wasn’t and he couldn’t, so I stared at the stage and concentrated on the tenuous link between us, hoping that somewhere Eric . . . Dad . . . knew that I needed him and was on the way home.

  Instead of Dad, though . . . I felt someone else. Another mind, searching for Dad. Questing. And then it hit me. I knew exactly who the other vampire was, the female vamp that was as powerful as Dad. It was Dad’s sire. It was Grandma. He’d gone to Paris to find her and she’d come here looking for him. They’d missed each other.

  Grinning, I grabbed my pillow, blanket, iPod, and a change of clothes from upstairs and took them back out to the garage like I had every night for the last few weeks. Making a pallet amid the bones, I climbed into Fang’s trunk, turned into a mouse, and curled up inside Telly’s skull. There, closed inside Fang’s trunk, I felt safe, and the pain of Dad’s absence lessened. I was about to start watching the next episode of Tatsu 7 (it’s a super robot anime I like) on my iPod when I felt her again. Still searching.

  “She’s looking for Daddy,” I whispered to Fang. He revved briefly in response. In fits and starts, I gathered information from the Emperor vampire who sought my father. Lisette. The name popped into my head with a brief glimpse of her instead of a full dossier. She was fat. I didn’t expect her to be fat. She was old, too, a hundred years or more. I couldn’t tell exactly, because I didn’t have a good frame of reference, but she felt old. After a few more passes, I had enough information for one night, enough to be sure.

  A new hunt. The idea of it made me feel better, eased my tension. I crawled through Telly’s eye socket (in through the right and out through the left, duh) and started the episode before retreating once more within Telly’s cranial cavity.

  “I’ll kill her for you, Daddy,” I muttered as the bombastic theme music began. “I’ll kill Grandma. You’ll see.”

  Om. Nom. Nom.

  21

  TALBOT:

  JOBS NOBODY ELSE WANTS

  Greta didn’t know I was watching her. Most vampires don’t. Vampires have excellent hearing and good vision, but a cat sees things in a way no human ever will. A Mouser sees them even better. I could see Greta’s aura right through the trunk of the car. I sat on the roof of the Demon Heart and let the rain wash over me, soaking me to the bone. Dressed in a plain black suit that I’d bought off the rack and a green shirt from the same store, I wasn’t worried for my wardrobe. The sun was coming up, but with the clouds, it was barely noticeable. Greta went still, completely still, and I crossed over to the parking deck.

  “Tuck-in service.” I needn’t have said anything, but dealing directly with Eric’s memento mori made me nervous. Fang essentially was part of Eric, the darkest part of him—not the vampire part. There is no “vampire” part per se. It might feel that way, to humans, but that’s a coping mechanism. The “vampire” side is nothing more than survival instinct. Thinking differently makes some vamps feel better about it, makes those of them that dream sleep better at day.

  On the other paw, Fang was also its own being. I couldn’t be certain, but I didn’t think it had all of Eric’s memories. It could tap into them with Eric close by, but with him so far away, I expected Fang was taking most of its cues from Greta. Conceptually, very scary.

  Fang’s trunk popped open and I reached inside, tidying
things up. Greta typically reverts to human form sometime during the day and I didn’t want her to break her newest pet skull. Daikatana was screaming “Damn it” as he did at least once per Tatsu 7 episode when I turned off the iPod and stored it safe and sound atop Greta’s neat little pile of clothes. I picked up the skull and gently shook Greta-the-mouse out into my hand. I positioned her near the middle of the trunk, tucked her in under a corner of her blanket, and arranged the rest of her things around her. Greta’s pet skull fit nicely against the inner back of the trunk, next to the clothes, where she couldn’t crush it accidentally. Clearing away the bones that might poke or prod her when she changed took all of a minute.

  “All tucked in.”

  “Thanks, Kitty.” She morphed back to human and I jumped, startled by her words more than by the change. Greta is notoriously hard to awaken, but she’d spoken like a sleeping child wakened by a dutiful parent straightening the covers. Being on fire had barely been enough to wake her last year, but . . .

  Fang closed his own trunk, forcing me to jump back a bit or risk losing a hand. Still worried about Greta, I closed my eyes to the physical world and reopened them to the akasha. Greta’s spirit writhed in agony, red and violet. It was hard to look at so I closed my eyes to the akashic light and waited, listening to Greta’s sobs muted by the fall of the raindrops, the sounds of plastic pins being hit by proactive urethane balls, a selection of music best left forgotten, and the thousand other sounds that assailed my ears at any given second. I won’t go into the smells.

  It wasn’t much better. So I opened my eyes to the akasha once more and resumed my vigil. I tried to explain it to Eric, once, the way cats (and Mousers) can see the world. This was before I knew him well. I went into the whole thing, the flow of life, souls, spirit. I touched on the Panchamahabuta, the five great elements in Hinduism, and tried to explain how akasha moves through every living thing, that it is present in earth, air, fire, and water, that it holds together and links all things. Not that I believe in Hinduism . . . I’m more of a Book of the Dead, born and bred, say hello to Sekhmet Egyptian mythos kitty myself, but at the time I thought the Hindu approach was easier for a vampire to grasp.

  Eric listened to everything I had to say, looked me dead in the eye and said, “Don’t give me that Surat Shabd Yoga bullshit. So what . . . you can see the Force. Can you make a light saber?”

  Of course, I had no idea what he was talking about at the time; I thought he was a total moron. Later, when I saw Star Wars, my mouth dropped open. In his own way, Eric had nailed it in one: we see the Force. And the answer is no, we can’t build light sabers.

  Greta rolled over, reaching for her pet skull and cradled it to her breasts before passing out again. Her aura changed, mingling with Fang’s. All of the emotions, the pain, died down to nothing and she lay there in the trunk of her father’s car, just as she had every night since Eric left for Paris, a glowing spot of unlife where no life should have been. That—the ability to escape into a dreamless, painless state, free of all emotions—is one of the reasons all good little kittens hate vampires. Even when we’re asleep, someone we know can walk up to us in the dreamworld and start chatting. Fights between spouses can carry right over into sleep. I don’t hold it against vampires, though. I think it’s cool. Of course, it’s been a long time since anyone has called me a good little kitten.

  Inside the Demon Heart, Magbidion was saying good night to the last customer of the evening, a redcap who works over at the Iversonian. I stopped at the front door of the Pollux, by the shiny new numeric keypad, and typed in the passcode, paused, and reset the system. Something was wrong. Someone or something walked across my grave, turned around three times, and sat down. The scent slid into my nostrils and I wanted to hold on to it, to never let it go. Warm, musky, and magical, it . . . she . . . smelled like home.

  “So this is how you spend your life now, Blackbird?” asked a familiar voice. “Playing nanny?”

  “I prefer the term manny, Dezba,” I answered, half sarcastically, as I turned toward her. She stood in the dry spot under the awning. Wide-eyed and beautiful, Dezba was an Egyptian Mau, and her silver coat was dappled with crisp black spots. No cat I’d ever met was as beautiful or as cruel as Dezba. Her chosen name was from the Navajo language and it meant “Goes to War.” If I’d known she was coming, I’d have worn a better suit.

  “As in a nanny, but still a Mouser, I hope,” she sneered. “Or have you really been exiled so long that you would take pride in a title that labels you a man?”

  I dropped to all fours, becoming a black cat, albeit a black cat with glowing star emerald eyes. “Don’t worry, Dezba, I know exactly who and what I am. It’s you who seem to have forgotten. I certainly didn’t exile myself.”

  “You helped a vampire, Chogan! You went into the holiest of places and stole knowledge, then used it to help a vampire!” She’d used my Narragansett name, a name I hadn’t heard in more than a decade.

  “The vampire needed help defeating one of the Nefario,” I said calmly. “And you know Eric is not just any vampire. You’ve seen him in the light of akasha; you know he’s more than that.” It would be easy to lose control around Dezba. For fifteen years every cat, Mouser or mundane, has refused to acknowledge me, has acted as if I were a human. A few had even attacked me. To have a cat, any cat, acknowledge me was so wonderful that it was almost impossible to keep up appearances. For that cat to be Dezba . . .

  A momentary flash of paranoia overtook me and I glanced back at the parking deck. I could still see Greta’s spirit. She was fine. When I looked back at Dezba, she laughed at me.

  “Same old Chogan, my little Blackbird. No, I’m not a distraction.”

  “I answer to Talbot now,” I said, angry with myself for letting her bait me. “I answered to other names before Chogan. I have no doubt that I will answer to other names after Talbot.”

  “So if a human threw a ball and said, ‘Fetch, Talbot . . .‘” She shook her head. “No, I’m sorry . . . Talbot . . . please forgive me . . . Talbot. I meant to say if a vampire said, ‘Fetch,’ then you’d just run out into traffic . . .”

  I stood on two legs and became human again, turned, and punched in the security code. “It was nice seeing you again, Dezba,” I said softly.

  “Blackbird, wait.” I felt a hand on my shoulder; it was soft, affectionate. “You know I can’t help it. You know how I feel.”

  Her arms slid around me from behind in an embrace I hadn’t felt for fifteen years. It froze the breath in my chest. She let her head rest on my shoulder, and I exhaled raggedly, overcome with sheer desire. “Something is coming, Chogan . . . Talbot. It isn’t a danger to us, but then . . .”

  “I’m not technically one of you anymore,” I completed her thought.

  “We can pull all of ourselves onto one plane.”

  “Oh.” Mousers are creatures of more than one world. There are plenty of creatures capable of seeing into another plane than the one in which they normally exist. If you see a domestic cat staring at the air, that’s probably what it is doing. With my kind, it’s different. In exile, I was essentially straddling more than one world. To pull all of myself onto this plane would give the Ancients a good shot at making my exile permanent. “That.”

  Closing my eyes to the physical world and blocking out the akasha, I opened my other eyes, the ones set in a sable-furred leonine body resting in the dream world. The other part of me. It was a body with golden chains around each massive silver-clawed paw and around its great neck. All I had to do to escape the chains was pull myself all the way out of dreams. Six Mousers of lesser breeding stood ready to enact a Seal and bar me from returning if I did so. I closed those other eyes and became conscious of Dezba’s touch again.

  “You could snap the chains, Chogan.”

  “Perhaps, but not today. I deserve my exile.”

  Her arms vanished from around me, and when I turned toward her, she was feline again. “Be careful,” she meowed at me. “Earthbound
cats cannot escape if Lisette threatens, but you are still my Blackbird, and blackbirds can fly away. No one can enforce your exile, Talbot. We know that all too well.” She turned, looked up to the moon, and leapt into the sky. I stared after her for a few minutes and then noticed Magbidion standing in the doorway of the Demon Heart, smoking a cigarette and looking straight at me.

  “Did that lady cat just jump to the moon?” he asked.

  “Don’t be silly,” I told him. “Everyone knows that’s just a fairy tale. Besides, that was no lady cat; that was my wife.” Ba-dum-bum.

  I left him standing out there with his mouth open and went inside the Pollux. Once inside, I dried myself with a cantrip and for the first time in three years, I marked the threshold with my musk. If someone slipped in past the security, I would know. Eric never liked it because he could smell the musk, but it was becoming abundantly clear to me that Eric might not be back in time to handle the situation. I went upstairs, gathering Greta’s trail of bloody clothes as I went, walked into Eric’s bedroom, and dropped the clothes in the sink. I ran cold water over them to let them soak.

  In my mind’s eye, I could see what Eric would be doing at this time of night were he home. Greta would have fallen asleep somewhere in the Pollux, letting herself drop, not because she couldn’t feel the onset of sleep, but because she knew it would make her father care for her. He’d drag Greta’s corpse-like body off into the shower. Hot water would rush out of the showerhead and sweep the blood from her skin. Some of it would have dried and he’d work on particularly crusty spots with the loofah sponge Rachel leaves in the shower. Her hair might need shampooing, so he’d take care of that before patting her dry, putting her in a clean T-shirt, and tucking her into bed.

  As dysfunctional as Eric could be at times, he had never needed this much looking after. Greta required something that I couldn’t give her, and if she didn’t get it soon then things were only going to get worse around here. The clock on the wall read six thirteen. That made it after 1:00 p.m. in Paris. There was no way Tabitha would be up, but maybe Eric . . . I called the number they’d given me for the hotel in Paris and asked for their suite.