A Curse Of Glass And Iron (Dark Heralds Book 2)

by Lynn S.

  Garan scanned her, interested. She had dark eyes and hair, a beautiful woman, somehow desperate to reach out to him, at a personal or professional level. Her smile stretched so far, she might just get dimples on her dimples.

  “Now we are talking, Miss…” He looked once again at the card, a little embarrassed not to know her name.

  She was quick to remind him. “Don’t worry, Garan. Can I call you Garan? I’m about to tell you to call me Tracy. I’m the one willing to bet you’ll make an interesting addition to our roster.”

  They talked until closing time, which Veronica extended until one in the morning just to fit them in.

  As they left the premises, the bar owner gave Garan a quick peck on the cheek and warned him, “See you tomorrow. Don’t go running off with the first pretty face to waive a contract in front of your eyes, and be wary, cher. She looks like she wants to mix her business with a bit of fun.”

  “Sure, Mom!” he answered with a playful smile. “I’ll just walk her home. It’s the least I could do. I’m going nowhere.” He waved at them all, Veronica, Benny, and Susy, who waited their table. Little did he know it was going to be the last day he’d be at that bar.

  When they got out into the street, the rain had subsided to a steady, soft mist moving along with bursts of warm breeze. Thunder was far in the distance, lightning flashing north of the city, away from the Quarter. Garan gave Tracy his jacket; even if slightly warm, she trembled.

  “Thank you. This is sweet. All this gallantry will convince me to ask you to come upstairs.”

  They walked several blocks to St. Peter Street. A stray cloud intensified into a shower and furious lightning struck somewhere, perhaps at one of the spirals of St. Louis cathedral. Tracy held onto Garan. Her hands were cold against those of the musician. She told him she had a whole flat of colonial architecture. An extravagant second-floor residence that ran for almost one fourth of the street; one of those permanent testimonies to the grandeur of French architecture.

  “Now, that’s a chance! I worked in construction for a while. But I’ll be damned, I’ve never gotten a close look at a grand colonial.”

  “Really?” Tracy chuckled, leaning further against him. “And here I was planning a whole, lengthy seduction, while all I had to say were the magic words: wrought iron.”

  They almost ran upstairs, rushed by the returning rain and the emerging need to get to know each other a little better. The fury of the new, incoming rain was silenced as soon as they stepped into the apartment. The place was dark, covered in thick curtains better suited for winter in the northeast than anytime at all in the south. There was a tubular lamp on the ceiling that cheapened the beautiful work on the stucco.

  The walls were painted in white that gleamed in the dark, so vibrant that when Tracy turned on the lights, it stung the eye. A place stripped of personality that struck Garan as a poorly put together rent-a-room display. The furniture was streamlined, leather clad, and smelled new. Garan had the impression this place had not been properly shaped into a home, yet Tracy said it had been her family’s summer retreat for at least twenty years.

  “I’m a terrible host! We are both a wet mess.” She ran off, presumably to the bathroom, and brought back a couple of towels. “Just, ah…have a seat. Dry off a bit. I’ll slip into something comfier.”

  Tracy excused herself and Garan just stood there, feeling like another piece on that awkward display. He sat down, assaulted by an unwelcomed confusion. Something in the house smelled of ambergris…incense perhaps? But Garan was not sure if he was smelling it, or simply being reminded of it. A headache set in, intense, stabbing the right side of his head. He blinked, and the walls collapsed.

  Lights dimmed and the white of the stucco became cedar wood, stained dark by fragrant oils and human bodies that at given times thought themselves shadows on those walls. Curtains became Persian rugs and canvas framed along a labyrinth of hallways. Faceless patrons reached out to him through their opium dreams, begging for him to bring them back or sink them further in, through music. His skillful hands played a song of sorrow through strings, leading the way. The end of the road was always the same—their salty skin against his lips, tempting. The taste of blood.

  A hushed voiced brought him back to his senses. Tracy, talking to someone, probably on her cell phone. Garan decided it was better to leave. His vivid dream left him on the threshold of a panic attack. He found himself revisiting feelings of dread he thought left behind in childhood. Something was off within him, and whatever it was, it would ruin the night for both him and Tracy.

  “Tracy…what about a raincheck?”

  He stood up, not quite sure where to go, and then he heard her agonizing scream.

  “Oh God! Garan, help me!”

  He ran toward the voice, finding the hallway was even darker than the living room. Knowing her way through the place, Tracy had not turned on lights. He tried, but the lamp above just flickered and buzzed to no avail. A door was opened and Garan moved toward it. He found it was a bedroom, twice as big as the living room. Tracy was wearing shorts and a t-shirt, her face contorted in a painful grimace as she sat at the edge of the mattress, arms across her stomach.

  “What’s going on?” He tried to see if there was something wrong, but she just kept crying. As he turned to get his phone out of his pocket to call 911, Garan noticed they were not alone. A couple of violent punches to the face reinforced by brass knuckles opened an old scar across the eyebrow and made him bleed profusely. His vision blurred with blood as a third hit, to the side of the head, made him lose consciousness.

  There was nothing but darkness, and the soft song of water.

  Garan couldn’t tell how long he was out, but as he woke up, Tracy was still at the foot of the bed, dressed in jean shorts and a black t-shirt. She looked icy in her composure. The woman was flanked by a couple of guys who easily fit the bill for body guards: Brass Knuckles and Whack in the Head, no doubt. There was a third man, pale and wiry, looking like he owed time to a tanning bed.

  Garan’s right arm was tied with a double knot to the back of the bed. His left arm was bared, the cloth of his shirt ripped from the shoulder down. It was immobilized, but he couldn’t tell by what. Wet with blood, product of a hundred paper thin cuts that had not bothered him since his accident on the feast day of St. John as a child. Now they burned and stung as the first day.

  “Hey, Morena! I think our blood doll just woke up.” The wiry guy looked at Garan with contempt as he called for someone. There was no need, Tracy held onto him with utmost devotion. It was obvious her interest in Garan was at best feigned.

  “Whatever it is that you are thinking about, I’m sure we can sort this out.” Garan tried to keep his voice steady, to not allow the panic or the pain of his extremities tied at an uncomfortable angle to take over. As he spoke, he knew these were not run of the mill criminals of the Quarter. There was a little too much orchestration and effort placed on taking hold of a guy who had nothing to offer them. If they had confused him with someone, maybe there was a way out. Tracy and her guy got closer, inquisitive.

  “Look, honey, it’s just like she said. The cuts in his arm opened on their own.”

  “She? Who is she?” Garan demanded. He tried to move into a sitting position but the rope kept him steady. Now he was completely sure his life was being gambled away on a misunderstanding. He had been keeping away from chasing skirts, let alone crazy ones, for the best of two years…and now this.

  “Well, darlin’. We are talking about she who gets what she wants.”

  He recognized that voice without laying eyes on her, but soon enough, the curvy black girl and the leggy blonde appeared in the room, making their way in through an adjacent door. They had probably been in there all the while.

  “Are you sure you want to do this?” Brigitte asked of the pair while blatantly ignoring Garan’s questions. She looked the aspiring necromancers straight in the eye, pointing at each of them with the tip of the blade she wield
ed in her hand. The Lady always offered a chance. They both nodded and proceeded to roll out a curtain.

  There was no window behind the drape, but a mirror, a Venetian monstrosity that took almost half a wall. Though Garan thrashed about, trying to break free, his reflection mocked a grotesque work of art, an inviting picture to what laid behind the mirror, waiting. The couple touched the surface of the glass and it hummed and rippled. A blast of cold filtered through the surface and made them shiver.

  “You’ll have all the power you deserve…” Brigitte’s voice was sultry and insinuating. “Once we allow the mirror to get what it wants.”

  She walked up to Garan and, not allowing for him to say more, gave him a cool kiss on the lips.

  “Do you know who I am, Garan Nolton? Something tells me deep inside you do, because I can smell hoodoo in your blood, child. Once you became a man, there were a thousand roads you could have taken, yet you came here, chasing after a storm. Everyone who purposely threads into this city is bound to meet me once in a lifetime, and this is your official introduction.”

  He felt it in her kiss. How long she had traveled, from shores beyond. How she lay almost dead until the voices and the drums called her, summoning her into life eternal in a foreign land. And now the beating of the city was hers and her name carried from the French Quarter into the depths of the bayou. The Lady. The blessed Lady.

  “Every bit you’ve heard is true. And I pray we could have time to talk it over, but there are things, cher, that are more important now. For one, that compulsion of mine of refusing to take no for an answer. Forgive me, darlin’.”

  In a matter of seconds, the edge of the blade dug deep into Garan Nolton’s neck, and the eyes of the musician rolled back.

  Chapter IX

  The New Tenant on St. Peter

  The edge of the blade parted skin, leaving traces of red. Involuntary movement as Garan convulsed made the knife cut deeper, through muscle, until Brigitte’s hands were soaked in wasted life. Outward onto soft linen, inward until Garan had a taste of his own blood.

  Unfortunately, Nolton didn’t lose consciousness. The being that slept for so long within him had woken, and it needed his eyes to look onward, his senses to keep alert. Brigitte’s murderous hand barely acknowledged, eyes of glacier blue turned toward the surface of the mirror.

  The venetian glass vibrated, taming the violence of the room with the soft cadence of a song. The chorus of voices was every bit as terrifying as Brigitte’s close up menace.

  “Finally, finally found you, wayward son of glass and blood. We’ll drag you here, wrested off sun and life, to feed the thirsty roots of the dark forest…”

  The dweller was about to burst through Garan’s skin. His flesh turned haggard, cadaverous in its paleness, the blue of his eyes blurred by the shadow of death. The dark-haired man curled his lips and they all could see incisors dropping and a second row of deadly, dagger-like teeth pushing their way out through his gums.

  “Ah, ah!” Brigitte had proven to have considerable strength, keeping that monster at bay. She swung her head in the negative toward Bansit, who had moved forward. Brigitte needed the Morrigan to keep the four mortals from bailing out on their little contract. Not that there was much to fear, the aspiring necromancers and their two past-prime jocks looked for safety in numbers and now pressed their backs almost against the mirror.

  “Listen to me, Garan Nolton, I know you are still in there. Though for how long, it all depends on you. Right now, a monster that has slept within you for the best part of almost twenty years is deciding if it should drain you from the inside and jump into another host. The only thing keeping it from doing so is that your body fits him like a pair of worn jeans. I like you too, you know. You might not see it because I just killed you, but looking on the bright side, you get to live forever now! I need you to fight, Garan, to make a deal with your dweller. If you give in, then my friend Bansit will reap your soul. It will be the right thing to do. After all, you are drowning.”

  Though short in stature and delicate in appearance, the oracle was able to keep Nolton’s body pinned to the bed, applying no more than the pressure of a hand on top of his chest. Garan was able to gain control, if only for a moment, suppressing the murderous intent that tried to guide his body into action. He heard a voice resounding inside his head, the voice of the faceless violinist who had haunted him in visions just minutes earlier.

  “You must let me be, human creature. Sleep and let me rise. Drift deep into the dark and feel no pain. I am the only thing keeping you alive.”

  Brigitte kept repeating that Garan must force the dweller into a deal. Garan heard her voice as a distant echo. Her hand felt scorching upon his torso. The Cajun tried to open his eyes and focus on her. Through bloodshot eyes he saw her painted in chalky colors, white upon the dark of her skin. A serpent slithered over the length of her arm, white stitches that moved and hissed, keeping him down, coiling around him.

  The Lady recited a prayer he had heard before, from his mother’s lips, to the better angels. Through Brigitte, it resounded with the warning of consequence. “I reach and touch his gros bon ange, the spirit that is shared by all the living, the one that none can touch. Let him be, dweller, or suffer judgement.”

  Be it because of interest of fear, the vampire ceased to rage, the pain subsided enough for Garan to have a word. He couldn’t speak, but his mind was uncluttered and words came easier than he thought they would. “I could die ’ere, let myself go, as you say…and who is to tell? The Lady is keeping us both down. You might die along with me. She doesn’t look happy about setting you free. I don’t know what is behind that mirror, but you and I know we stand a better chance with Brigitte on our side. What if she hands you over if I don’t make it out of here alive along with you? So, it’s not as much as what you can do for me, but more of what I can do you for. A spirit cannot break that glass, but I can. I did it before, when I was a child. Even then I was strong enough to close that portal. I remember now…everything that went down that night. The screams from the other side, the shattered mirror. What did you do back then? Which rules did you break? How bad was it that years have gone by and they still sound angry?”

  “I have no patience for threats, human!” the voice screeched inside Garan’s head. Though cruel, it carried a hint of desperation that was not there before. Time was running out. For it. For both. “If you accept me, there will be no way to tell which is which. I’ll have your body and you’ll have my essence fused to your soul. I’ll see through your eyes, feel through your skin, and you’ll lose your memories of the days before me. Vampire forever, human no more.”

  “Every minute of the rest of my life,” the agonizing man responded.

  Something akin to a deep and painful howl tore through Garan. Blood splattered everywhere. Brigitte, feeling both man and spirit had reached an accord, lifted her hand.

  That which once was Garan Nolton moved with inconceivable speed and gathered strength, tearing the bindings that kept his arm tied, ripping the heavy cedar bedpost against which he was secured. With a thrust of said arm, the dislodged piece of wood crashed against the surface of the mirror. The glass shattered in a thousand gleaming tears. A roar, similar to that of magnificent waterfalls, filled the room, chanting.

  Hell broke through the glass. Bansit and Brigitte were barely able to resist that first wave of raw power. Faceless, bird-like wraiths, dressed in ragged mists, armed with jagged beaks and onyx talons, tried to force their way out of the portal. As they tore and brought down one another, the victors grew stronger, their hungry eyes fixed in a world beyond shadows.

  Garan, or at least the vampire who now controlled half of his being, longed to replenish. He pounced upon one of the big guys who not so long ago easily overpowered him. Nolton’s hands, now covered in bony protrusions that turned his fingers into lethal black blades, found their way through the bodyguard’s thoracic cavity. The man barely opened his mouth as a bleeding heart was torn off his chest
. The second man lived just a few minutes longer, as the vampire decided not to waste and simply drained him in one quick motion. The man screamed, for as long as it took the dark-haired, blue-eyed monster to lift him and break his back against the woodwork of the bed. Both man and craftsmanship gave away as if they had been dried sprigs. Garan drank greedily, steadfast on the man’s neck until his eyes turned black. Still, the vampire wanted more.

  “Keep it steady, Cajun! Use your head!” Brigitte’s voice came loud and clear, and that part of Garan that was left untainted by the dweller’s curse came to the forefront. He saw that both Brigitte and Bansit were struggling to contain the assault while keeping the necromancers in place. His own blood drenched display was emboldening the thirsty creatures of the mirror realm.

  Information only known to dwellers started swirling in Garan’s head. The blood thirsty spirit had been scared. In a sense, it still was. That justified the rampage, the fury, and the excess. But now it was time to treat it all with a level head. The musician had come through, and so did the Lady. Garan conceded his body and Brigitte allowed for him to inhabit this new form, spirit attached to flesh. He was something different from any other of his kind: a vampire spirit reborn. This new state of his drew the creatures from the mirror into the mortal plane. They wanted what he had, and if he didn’t do something, they’d trample over Garan’s body and draw him out to get it. The dweller felt the guard, the snake coiling around Garan’s soul. He didn’t have time to fight new enemies and might as well embrace it.

  “Silence!” His voiced carried an extra edge of authority that made the spirits draw back. “Off my head, you hungry leeches, let me think for a second!” The spirits moved at the edge of the portal, as if the vampire’s voice suddenly reminded them there were rules to follow.

  “You have lost your mind, it is obvious,” Garan continued. “Have you forgotten, by any chance, that you cannot come out of the mirror but only during one night, and that’s the Feast of Jean Baptiste? If you were successful in possessing someone tonight, it is written you’ll surely die tomorrow. The hosts will find a way to rebuke you and you’ll die a second, irreversible death. What do you want? To risk it against all conventions or to keep living a semblance of life behind the mirror until the right time comes?”