Jason walked briskly to his father’s plot. When he reached it, a small tattered flag stuck out of the ground, fluttering in the wind. Presidents Day had only just passed, but the elements had already assaulted the flag. Beside it lay a bundle of dead daisies whose dried petals jumped into the breeze one by one. He plopped down, sat cross-legged, and stared at the majestic stone before him. He traced his father’s name—his namesake—with his index finger and spoke.
“I’m sorry, Dad. I won’t apologize for the admiration I hold for you. I won’t apologize because you were and always will be my idol. I won’t apologize for wanting to be just a fraction of the man you were. It’s not what you wanted for me, it’s not college, but I promise, I will make you proud.”
With that, Jason set a photocopy of his completed application before the headstone and stabbed the flag’s little wooden staff through the paper, pinning it to the ground. He stood up and kissed the cold stone, feeling good about the life before him. On the way back to his car, he heard sobbing competing with the whistle of the wind in the bare tree branches. Jason wondered about the woman he’d accidentally run into earlier.
Jason searched the cemetery and soon located the source of the crying sitting on the ground against a tombstone: a young lady with dark hair, the one he’d thought he recognized. She wore large sunglasses, and her dark hair swallowed the sunlight, reminding him of the woman he had seen at his father’s funeral six months earlier. Perhaps that’s why she looked familiar. She must have sensed his eyes because her head snapped up and she lifted her shades. The gaze she offered pierced him.
***
Last night, Lyla had finally done it. She sat up against the pillows on her bed. A mixture of disbelief and excitement made her shake with a borderline erotic tremble as she recalled the details of the previous night’s festivities. Casually, the man had mentioned his wife. Just sprinkled that information in among civilized conversation. The smoldering coals that forever resided inside of her flared up.
Lyla’s cheeks had burned. Flashes of her mother’s bloodless, broken body emerged. Inwardly, she justified killing the man, her decision made without hesitation. She couldn’t recall the rest of the date except for repeatedly checking the time, reading it upside-down on his wristwatch.
After dinner, Lyla and her date had walked arm-in-arm out to the parking lot. They had driven separate cars. Lyla pretended to scratch around in her purse for her keys as she pried open her mother’s tortoise shell eyeglass case. She had removed the glasses long ago and filled it with syringes of the last of the succinylcholine she’d recovered from the hospital.
When the man had walked her to her car door, she drew him near with her left arm firmly around his waist. He leaned in for a goodnight kiss. Lyla kissed him back as she snaked her right arm up and around his neck. Seconds into the kiss, she felt his body jerk at the surprise of having been jabbed with a syringe. His body froze. Lyla glanced from left to right. No one around. She jumped in her car and pulled off before his body had time to hit the pavement.
She’d driven away with a newfound exuberance and slept soundly. In the clarity of a new day, it felt like a victory for her mother. Lyla had to tell her. She quickly dressed and headed for her mother’s grave.
Lyla arrived and crept up the paved walkway through the towering, wrought-iron gates. Only a few living souls meandered among the deceased, and the phrase silent as the grave entered her mind. Emotions danced in her stomach as she neared her parents’ plots. She hadn’t visited since their funerals because she felt torn between her love for her mother and her contempt for her father.
But Lyla pressed on, partially frozen blades of grass crunching underfoot. When she looked up from the frost-covered ground, she noticed a woman huddled near her parents’ graves. Lyla quickened her pace, but the woman scurried off at her approach.
“Hey! Hey, you! Get back here!” Lyla called, trotting through the grass in her high heels.
Lyla’s failure to recognize the woman drew her stomach into her throat. The stranger had most likely come to visit her father’s grave. One of his girls. Perhaps the girl, the one who had led her mother to her miserable end. Lyla furiously pursued the woman, threading between the headstones, ignoring the bare willow branches whipping at her cheeks, but the intruder had vanished. Lyla was left alone among a sea of names etched in stones.
Lyla panted, both from the chase and from her fury. Like a snorting bull, she stood hunched over in the center of the cemetery, eyes searching for her father’s mistress. Seeing the woman reminded Lyla of the anger she still felt toward her father and husband. Not sadness—for she felt none—but the raw anger that fueled the power of it all. The power she’d felt last night.
She longed for that again. She craved it even then as she glanced from grave to grave, wondering if the men buried beneath them had been faithful or philandering. That wasn’t the first time she found herself thinking such thoughts about men. Because of that, she no longer felt capable of living an ordinary life. Last night proved that something extraordinary pulled at her. At first, Lyla had found herself startled by the urge to kill the men who sat across from her at the candlelit tables and cozy booths of romantic restaurants. Now she knew better. Abandoning her pursuit, Lyla again headed for her mother’s grave.
The late-winter chill had absorbed into her mother’s headstone. When Lyla approached, the sight of her father’s grave next to her mother’s sickened her. He didn’t deserve to be near her in death any more than he deserved to in life. Lyla turned her back on him, then she sat and inched backward to lean against her mother’s stone.
She tried to imagine herself as a girl, leaning into her mother’s arms after her nightly bath as her mother gently brushed her hair. In reality, the frost penetrated her clothes and reminded Lyla of her mother’s lifeless body the day she’d found her. In that moment, the tears overcame her. She sat sobbing for what felt like an hour.
Sensing a presence, she sat erect, hoping someone had come to comfort her. She hoped for the spirit of her mom—a woman who had believed in such things. Disappointment set in when she saw a kid with a funny haircut staring at her from twenty yards away. Lyla knew he’d heard her crying and glowered at him for invading her intimate moment of vulnerability.
After snatching her sunglasses from the top of her head and shoving them in her coat pocket, she wiped her face aggressively, chiding herself for her weakness. Resolute and composed, Lyla stood and boldly faced her father—his grave anyway—and spit on it. To her mother’s stone, she whispered a defiant vow, one she’d come up with while driving away from her date’s body last night.
“Don’t worry, Mom, I’ll get ‘em. Every last one of them. I got one last night and...” Lyla straightened. Suddenly, she wished she had something to leave behind. Not flowers, but something to prove her allegiance to her mother. Each kill avenged her, one man at a time. Then something came to Lyla. She bent closer and whispered, “Next time, I’ll paint you a better picture.” With a wink, she walked off, still speaking. “Now if you’ll excuse me, Mommy, I have a date tonight.”
8
Blood in the Paint.
LYLA’S SLENDER FINGERS pried open the tortoise shell eyeglass case full of syringes. She removed the only one containing blood. She’d killed again last night, hours after visiting her parents’ graves. Hours after seeing one of her father’s hussies hovering over him, grieving someone who wasn’t hers to grieve. Lyla had thought of that scene many times during her date. She thought of it again as her date toppled to the ground, and once again when she extracted a sample of his blood.
When she and her mother painted together, Lyla’s favorite part was watching her mother mix the paint. She’d turn red and white into the perfect hue for a pink summer sunset. Susannah had known just what combination to use for the trees’ reflection in the river or a sunflower coated with dew. Lyla would watch her magically create colors, stirring gently. Her tendons pulsed with each motion, almost in anticipation of the
art to come.
In the center of her recently converted art studio, Lyla released the syringe’s blood into a small, newly bought can of cadmium red paint. She tossed the syringe in a bag by the door. She would dispose of it more permanently later. Leaning over her desk, she spun a carousel full of paint brushes. Tall, lean shadows swirled across all four walls. When the brushes came to a standstill, like a beautiful, painter’s bouquet, Lyla chose a slender, round brush with a wooden handle and rubber grip. She cradled the small can and adoringly stirred the blood in the paint.
Lyla had promised to paint her mother a better picture. What better image than the terror behind her victims’ eyes? What better medium than their blood?
So Lyla rocked gently on her wooden stool. She wore her mother’s favorite butter-yellow shirt, hummed her mother’s favorite Beatles song, and painted her mother a pretty, terrifying picture.
*Note from the Author: Now that you have finished Blood in the Past, won’t you please consider leaving a review on the website from which you purchased your copy? Reviews are the best way for readers to discover up and coming authors, such as myself, and I would really appreciate it. Thank you.
Jordanna East
About the Author
Jordanna East readily confesses that she started writing a novel one day when she was broke and unemployed. Her cable had been turned off. SHE WAS BORED. So she sat down on her bed and started writing...and she hasn't stopped. Though, now she has cable and pens her Psychological Thrillers at an actual desk. She lives with her husband in South Jersey and their two cats, both named after food.
Blood in the Past is the prelude novella to her debut Blood for Blood Series, which follows three lives entwined by deaths and consequences, revenge and obsession. The first full-length novel in the series, Blood in the Paint, will be released Winter 2013. Also be on the lookout for The Word and the Way, a serialized novel revolving around a fanatical cult plagued by abusive and power hungry members, sexual abuse, and murder—and the young couple trying to escape. Episode One of the series will be released later this year.
Contact the Author
Jordanna East loves to hear from her fans. You can find her everywhere:
http://jordannaeast.com
http://www.facebook.com/JordannaEast
http://www.twitter.com/JordannaEast
https://www.plus.google.com/JordannaEast
http://www.goodreads.com/JordannaEast
Or email her directly:
[email protected]
Acknowledgments
Bear with me while I grovel at the feet of a few people. I would like to thank my editor, Cassie Cox, of Red Adept Publishing Services. Working with her was invaluable. Kit Foster, of Kit Foster Designs, for designing my cover, my author logo, and my press logo. Thank you, Kit, for always dealing with my pickiness and nagging emails so graciously. Thank you to Karen Perkins, of LionheART, for her formatting services. I never could have done it myself. I would also like to thank my beta readers, Amanda Surowitz, Ileandra Young, Rhonda Ramsey, Tonya Kerrigan, Erin Lewis, and Courtney Moore for taking the time to read, critique, and point out major plot holes that I’m too embarrassed to even think about now. Thank you to Greg Johnston for looking over the opening scene that the betas didn’t get a chance to see. A huge thank you to the members of the Crime Scene Writers group on Yahoo, specifically, Kelly Whitley, Melissa Maygrove, Lee Lofland, Wes Harris, and Wally Lind. They provided me with their experience and expertise in medico-legal procedures and even, on occasion, reviewed a few of my scenes. (And it goes without saying that any mistakes found are mine alone and are a result of my own misinterpretation of their facts.) And thank you too all the blog and social networking followers I’ve befriended over the last year and a half, those that have supported me, cheered me on, and featured me on their own websites. I hope I can repay the favor one day.
Thank you to my sister, Danae, my niece, D’vonnae, for their constant support and excitement. And for telling me how proud they are of me (And they should be. This was hard!). Thank you to my fantastic in-laws. Momma Lisa, Mr Rob, Courtney, & Dan, I really lucked out with you guys. Thank you to my friends who have supported me, asked me “How’s the writing going?” and “When’s the book coming out?” over and over again and never tiring of my answer (“Soon!”).
And I saved the best and closest to my heart for last. My husband, Justin. I could write a separate book about his never-ending love and encouragement, but I’m not a romance writer, so he’s stuck with this paragraph. I dedicated this book to my husband because without him it just wouldn’t be. I would’ve quit and regretted it for the rest of my life. Not only that, Justin financed this little endeavor. I’ve had the privilege and luxury of writing full-time while he shouldered all the responsibilities and all the stress of running a household. That’s how much he believed in me.
Copyright
This book is a work of fiction. The characters, incidents, and dialogue are drawn from the author’s imagination and are not to be construed as real. Any resemblance to actual events or persons, living or dead, is entirely coincidental.
BLOOD IN THE PAST. Copyright © 2013 by Jordanna East. ALL RIGHTS RESERVED. By payment of the required fees, you have been granted the nonexclusive, nontransferable right to access and read the text of this e-book on-screen. No part of this text may be reproduced, transmitted, downloaded, decompiled, reverse-engineered, or stored in or introduced into any information storage and retrieval system, in any form or by any means, whether electronic or mechanical, now known or hereinafter invented, without the express written permission of Blood Read Press, except in the case of brief quotations embodied in critical reviews and certain other noncommercial uses permitted by copyright law.
FIRST EDITION
Blood Read Press
Collingswood, NJ 08108
EPub Edition June 2013
ISBN: 978-0-9895810-0-4
Blood in the Past (Blood for Blood Series) Page 9
